“It matters to me,” Marla said firmly. Many-worlds theory was as irrelevant to her as Dalton’s prattling about the world being a computer simulation. Maybe it was true—standing here, she had to believe that many-worlds theory was true, that a new universe budded for every decision that was made, from the atomic level on up. But she lived in one world, and that was what mattered. Anything else was irrelevant for any purpose apart from after-dinner philosophizing.
“Yes, I know. Narrow is the vision.” The witch was grumpy, Marla thought, but that was reasonable, since she was mostly dead. “I can’t tell you anything for sure. The present is finite-but-vast, the future finite-but-even-more-vast. The future is approaching the infinite, actually, almost, if that statement has any relevance, which is arguable. Still, I can narrow it down, narrow to the marrow, yes, I can. There are two of you. Finch is dead? Umbaldo? Dalton?”
Marla nodded.
“Narrowing down,” the witch muttered. “Bethany?”
“Dead,” Marla said.
“Your hand, or another’s?”
“Mine.”
“You killed the Celestial?”
“No,” Marla said.
The Possible Witch whistled. “You’ve got more problems ahead than you know, then, but no matter, no matter. Hmm. Who won the World Series last year?”
Marla looked at her blankly, but B spoke up, naming a team Marla had heard of, vaguely. She didn’t follow sports.
“They win often,” the witch said. “That’s not a lot of help. I know who’s president, more’s the pity, lots of burned-out cinders in those futures. Moving on, let’s see. Which Cliff House is standing now? The second or third?”
“Third,” B said.
“Did the second fall in fire or earthquake?”
“Um…fire, I think,” B said.
“Sutro baths are gone?”
“Yes,” B said.
“Alcatraz is a tourist attraction? Treasure Island exists?”
“Yes, and yes.”
“Beautiful City or grid?”
“I don’t understand the question,” B said.
“San Francisco!” the witch said, leaning forward in her chair, still clutching the arms. “After the fire of 1906, was the city rebuilt according to the Burnham Plan, with streets and avenues following the curves of the hills, the ridges topped with lovely towers, and neoclassical public buildings placed artfully throughout the peninsula? Or was it rebuilt hurriedly, with streets thrown down across the hills in a grid, just like before?”
“The latter, I’m sure,” B said. “There’s nothing graceful about the streets downtown.”
“Are passenger pigeons entirely, or only mostly, extinct?”
“Entirely,” Marla said.
“Only four possibilities now,” the witch said. “And nothing much to distinguish among them, at least no differences you’d be likely to know about, down to the level of whether a particular dog in India is alive or dead, whether a priest in Romania has syphilis or not. But four is good, and two of them are close together for your purposes, so I can give you a probably, a good stiff probably, but that’s the best you’re going to get from me today, understand?”
“Yes,” Marla said. “Where will Mutex be?”
“Golden Gate Park. The Japanese Tea Garden. Tomorrow, late afternoon, or evening. A difference of two or three hours, maybe, so go at the earliest, say three o’clock. You’ll probably get there in time, though as for what you’ll do with that time, well, it branches a hundred different ways, and there’s too many maybes between today and tomorrow, too many minor and major variations, for me to say for sure.”
“You said that’s two of four possibilities. What are the others?”
“In one of them, you’re too late. Mutex’s spell is done in the middle of the night, and destruction reigns, and you can’t stop it.”
Marla nodded. She’d suspected as much. “And in the last possibility?”
The Possible Witch’s eyes moved independently of her face, a few tiny lenses telescoping forward in a manner that seemed caught between the technology of a zoom lens and the biology of a snail’s eyestalk. “In that possibility, you’ll never get there at all, Marla. You know why. Your enemy in Felport, mumbling over her spell. It’s a question of whether she gets indigestion or not. She probably doesn’t, her spell probably isn’t delayed, so you’ll probably live. But if she eats the wrong bite of salmon, she’ll heave over the toilet, and the spell will be delayed, and you will be doomed.”