“Jiving Justin7’ I burbled with complete lack of comprehension.

“Yes,” he cackled, flashing his teeth at me. “That’s what we used to call him at university.”

“Who, who?” I was in owl overdrive again.

“Justin Slakey. He used to play the slide trombone in our little jazz quartet. I must admit to being fairly groovy myself on the banjo as well.” “Professor! The point of it all, please—would you kindly return to it?”

“Of course. Even when I first met him, Slakey was a genius. Old beyond his years—which considering the state of geriatrics might have been far older than he appeared. He took the theory of galactic strings, which as you undoubtedly know has been around as theory for a long time. No one had ever come close to tackling it until Slakey invented the mathematics to prove their existence. Even the theoretical wormtubes between galaxies were clear to him. He published some papers on these, but never put everything together into a coherent whole. At least, until now, I thought he hadn’t completed his theory. It is obvious that he has.”

He washed some more nibbled toast down with a quick swig of coffee. I resisted more owl imitations.

“Stop at once!” I suggested. “Start over since I haven’t the slightest idea of what you are talking about.”

“No reason that you should. The reality of the worm holes between one universe and another can only be described by negative number mathematics. A nonmathematical model would be only a crude approximation—”

“Then crudely approximate for me.”

He chewed away, forehead furrowed in thought, unconsciously brushing away a strand of lank hair that floated down in front of his eyes~ “Crudely put.

“Yes?”

Very crudely put, our universe is like a badly cooked fried egg. In a pan of equally badly cooked and stringy eggs.” Breakfast had obviously inspired this imagery; I had eaten the eggs here before. “The frying pan represents space—time. But it must be an invisible frying pan since it has no dimensions and cannot be measured. Are you with me so far?”

“Yoke and all.”

“Good. Entropy will always be the big enemy. Everything is running down, cooling down towards the heat death of the universe. If entropy could be reversed the problem would be easy to solve. But it cannot. But—” This was a big but since he raised an exclamatory finger and tapped his teeth. “But although entropy cannot be reversed, the rate of entropic decay can be measured and displayed, only by mathematics of course, and can be proven to proceed at a different rate in different universes. You see the importance of this?”

“No.”

“Think! If the rate of entropy in our universe were faster than the rate of entropy in universe X, let us say. Then to a theoretical observer in that universe our universe would appear to be decaying at a great rate. Right?”

“Right.”

“Then, it also becomes obvious that if an. observer in our universe were to observe universe X, the entropy rate there would appear to be going in the opposite direction, what might be called reverse entropy. Though it does not exist it would be observed to exist. Therefore the equation is closed.”

He sat back and smiled happily at his conclusions. I hadn’t the slightest idea of what he was talking about. I told him that and he frowned.

“I do wish, diGriz, that you had taken a little more mathematics instead of playing hooky from school. To put it even more simply, a phenomenon that is observed to exist does exist and can be mathematically described. And what can be described can be affected. What can be affected can be altered. That is the beauty of it. No power source is needed to manipulate the wormholes between the universes, although energy is of course needed to establish the interface. The wormholes themselves are powered by the differences in their entropy rate. Justin Slakey has discovered that and I will be the first man to take my hat off to him.”

He lifted an invisible hat from his head, then patted it back into place. I blinked quickly and cudgeled my brain hard, trying to understand just what he was talking about. With great difficulty some sort of order began to emerge from his flights of physical fancy.

“Tell me if I have this right. Different universes exist, right?”

“Yes and no..

“Let’s settle for the yes—just for a moment. Different universes exist, and if they exist they could be connected by wormholes in space. Then the difference of entropy between these universes might be used to travel through the wormholes from one galaxy to another—and Slakey has invented a machine to do just that. Okay?”

He raised the finger, frowned, shook his head in a very negative no. Thought a bit more, then shrugged. “Okay,” he said in a most resigned manner. I hurried on before he changed his mind.

“Hell is a planet in a different universe, with different laws of physics, maybe a different chemistry, where time passes at a different rate. If that is so then Heaven is a different universe connected to ours by wormholes in space and time. There could be more..

“The number of theoretical universes is infinite.”

“But with Slakey’s machine they can obviously be contacted, over and—over again. And what he can do—you can do?”

“Yes and no.”

I resisted the temptation to rip out a handful of my hair. “What do you mean yes and no?”

“I mean yes it is theoretically possible. And no, I cannot do it. Not without the mathematical description of the entropy relationships that was recorded in the machine. The one he destroyed.”

“There will be other machines.”

“Get me one and I’ll build you an intergalactic wormhole subway.”

“I will do just that,” I promised. Not rashly but because I had to do just that to get to Angelina. Which led to the next obvious question. “Who has these machines?”

“Slakey.”

“Which Slakey?”

“There is only one Slakey.”

“I can’t believe that.—I saw three at least. One bright red with a tail. Another with no right hand—and a third with a good right hand.”

“You saw the same man—only at different times. Just as if you were to take a time machine to visit a baby being born, then went on in time to see the same baby grown—then saw him again as an old man. The mathematics is quite clear. In some manner he has managed to duplicate himself at various times during his existence. He, they, him, are all the same individual, just observed at the same time though he is from various different times. Since they are all the same person they have to share the same thoughts. That’s how—Slakey no—hand knew that Slakey right—hand was in trouble and came to the rescue. You saw this same phenomenon with your own Sons, the twins. Since they are biological twins and divided from the same original egg, they were at one time exactly the same person, or egg. So when they were in different universes they shared the same thoughts. It is all very obvious.”

“What’s obvious?” Sybil asked as she came into the breakfast room.

“What is obvious,” I said, “is that we now know how to get to Heaven and Hell—or wherever else we want to go. The good professor appears to know all about these various universes.”

She nodded. “If you know that Professor—do you know how Jim found his porkuswine in Hell?”

“I do. I read your notes concerning that visit and I agree completely with your first conclusions. Hell is obviously a malleable and unformed universe. It must have been geologically active when Slakey first found it. He mistook it for Hell—so it became Hell. You both found his Hell, but also formed a little bit of your remembered worlds there as well.”

“Then a question, please?” Sybil asked. “If we did that—why didn’t the other people we found there do the same thing?”

“Also obvious,” the professor pontificated, always happy with an expectant audience. “They were normal people—not supernormal Special Corps agents. The force of your personalities and your mental strength enabled you to force your memories upon the fabric of that universe, to bend it to your will. Where normal people might run in fear you turn and growl savagely and rend your enemies.” —