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"What is this? Are we into birth signs all of a sudden?"
"Just tell me."
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"August 8. Why?"
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Sarah thought for a moment. "This year, that will be on a Tuesday," she
informed him.
"Really? Well, if you say so, I guess. I don't know. How do you know?"
"For any particular year, a twelve-digit number will give you the date that
the first Monday of every month falls on. The number for this year begins with
624, which tells you that the first Monday in January falls on the sixth, the
first
Monday in February, on the second, and so on. Get it?"
Hugh frowned, but nodded. "Okay. So what's all the business with China and
rats?"
That's how you remember the twelve-digit number. It's based on a phonetic
alphabet. 6 is 'j, 'sh,' or 'ch'; 2 is 'n'; 4 is 'r' and it goes on. Just
consonants. You fill in vowels to make up something you can remember. The
eighth digit is a 7, which says August 7 will be Monday, and so August 8 must
be Tuesday. See?"
Hugh stared at her for a second or two. "Sure, it's great. I'm impressed." He
gestured invitingly. "So& is this a new hobby that you're into, or something?"
"Nothing moves physically between universes," Sarah replied. "You can't bring
back notes or pictures of what you find. So if a trade in information is ever
going to happen, it will have to be done by memory training."
"It's an old art that this gives a whole new field of application for," Dave
threw in. "Rhyme and rhythm. Homer's epics were preserved orally for six
hundred
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Hogan, James P. - Paths to Otherwhere (v1.0) (html).html years before they got
written down. Religious processions around cathedrals and monasteries were
designed to have set parts of the litany recited at specific places. It helped
fix recall by association."
Hugh sat back, put down the book, and stared across at Sarah. It was obvious,
really. He had been too wrapped up in the physics to think about it.
"Just think," she said. "If you learned how to do it, you might bring back a
new
Shakespeare play that he never wrote in this universe. What do you reckon the
rights might be worth?"
Hugh smiled. "Getting a bit carried away now, aren't we? You're talking about
realities that are way, way different, now. All we're doing is wobbling off
track a little bit into close variations of the one we've got."
"And look at the discontinuities that all three of us have experienced
already,"
Sarah said. "And it's still early days. The machine's range will be extended
more somehow."
"Somehow," Dave repeated vaguely. How was not obvious. It was something that
was already being talked about in the labs. Ducaine feared that they might be
approaching the system's design limits.
The conversation trailed off as their attention shifted to the TV It was
showing more figures in old-fashioned suits and uniforms, shaking hands,
smiling and posing for the camera. The commentator's voiceover continued:
"In July there was a further conference at Potsdam, although by that time
President Roosevelt was dead and had been succeeded by a new face, Harry
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Truman. Attlee had become the new British Prime Minister& " The gist of the
documentary was that the breakup of the European colonial empires and eventual
arming and backlash of the non-white races had been foreseen back then. The
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Cold War with Russia had been engineered as an elaborate pretext to develop
the weapons which alone could preserve the West. Russia and America had always
been comrades at heart, just as in the great joint crusade against
Nazism. Their revolutions had been fought for the same ideals against similar
monarchal tyrannies. Earlier, the news had reported that Congress had approved
more military aid to Russia, and that U.S. ground forces would be moving to
positions in the Urals.
"Oh, I get so tired of all this," Sarah sighed. "Just think, if we could find
the right direction, there must be a part of the Multiverse where Sam's kind
of world exists. Imagine finding out what it was like, even if just for an
hour."
Hugh smiled. "What's Sam's kind of world?' he asked.
"Oh& " Sarah waved toward the TV. "One that isn't run by people strutting
around full of self-importance and with power over the lives of millions.
Where people are honest and simple and decent, and value each other for what
they are instead of what they own& I'm not saying that reason and rationality
aren't important. But maybe what we need more of is Sam's kind of
knowledge some way of bringing the two together into a better balance
somehow."
"So do we take it that the rational pursuit of self-interest isn't the way?"
Hugh said. It was a gentle dig, his way of saying that they'd heard this
before, and he agreed with her.
"Not sufficient, anyway," she replied. "It was the European nations rationally
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perceived as their rational self-interests, at the culmination of an Age of
Reason, that gave us World War One. And we've been dealing with the
consequences ever since." She looked for support to the only European present.
"Right, Dave?"
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