The Corianis Disaster

VII

The Corianis' loudspeaker system bellowed, demanding attention. An agitated voice tried to explain to the passengers why they must remain on board for the time being. There was now in port-in fact right next to the Corianis -another ship of the same name and same design and same interior and exterior fitting. That other ship had brought passengers to Maninea who had claimed to be, and been believed to be, the persons the Corianis brought. Somebody who claimed to be the Planetary President had been on that other ship. Naturally, there was concern when a second claimant to that identity and office appeared. There'd been a Minister of State from Kholar on the other vessel. And a Speaker of the Senate, and a Chairman of a Lower House Committee and-in short-persons claiming to be nearly everybody down to the smallest child on board the ship.

The passengers on the Corianis erupted in indignation. Everybody knew who he was! It was ridiculous to ask him to stay on board while the identification of the other person claiming to be him was investigated! That other person was an impostor! He was a scoundrel! Clap him in jail and…

Jack Bedell was possibly the only person on board the Corianis who really tried to make sense of the agitated words from the public-address system. The others seethed and growled and roared their resentment; he listened.

His expression changed from astonishment to incredulity, and then much later to a very great thoughtful-ness. Kathy watched his face as bewilderment and uneasiness increased in her.

"It's official!" he said presently, almost in awe. "And no politician would dare try to make anybody believe such a thing! It's panic-pure, unimaginative panic that makes them admit it!"

Kathy swallowed. "I can-imagine one person impersonating somebody else," she said uneasily. "But a lot of people-a shipload! And-the President of the planet? How could anybody impersonate him? Too many people know him too well!- Couldn't they be crazy to suspect us of being impostors?"

Bedell shook his head. "Delusions have a sort of cockeyed logic to them," he told her. "Nothing is as crazy as facts. I believe this. Reality can always outguess imagination!"

She stared at him.

"I've forgotten the figures," he added, "but the odds are billions to one against any person having the same fingerprints as any other member of the human race since time began. Of course, two in a generation is unthinkable. And here we've got scores of identical-fingerprint pairs of people turning up. The odds against it-oh, nobody will believe it!"

"But it can't be true, can it?" asked Kathy. She felt more comfortable, talking to Bedell, than she'd ever felt with anybody else. She hoped he felt the same way.

"Oh, it's probably true," said Bedell. "It's just impossible. That's always upsetting… Let's get some lunch and think about it."

They moved past corridors full of people who had been prepared to leave the ship and now were forbidden to do so. They were infuriated; they were insulted.

"Leaving aside the impossibility of the thing," observed Bedell as he and Kathy seated themselves in one of the ship's dining salons, "there are some other angles. There are two

Planetary Presidents. Which is which? There are two Ministers of State for Kholar. The duplication runs all down the line. I wonder if there's another me on board that other ship. I'd guess that the odds are less than for most people. And I wonder if there's another you."

Kathy started. She turned pale. "Nobody'd have reason to impersonate me!" she protested. But she was frightened. "Anyhow that-that couldn't be!"

Jack Bedell shrugged, but he smiled at her, reassuringly. They saw a waiter, but no one came to serve them. Presently other passengers came into the dining-room, talking indignantly of the affront of suspecting them of being fakes.

Strangers in uniform moved past the doorway of the dining-saloon. A pompous figure, the Minister of State, stood splendidly in their way. He addressed them as if they were voters, his voice rolling and sonorous and angry. He oratorically protested the outrage of doubting his identity. It would be resented! There would be retaliation! An apology was in order, and an immediate withdrawal of the order forbidding him to land…

The strangers walked around him and moved on. A bewildered man in ship's uniform led the way.

"They're going to the purser's office," said Bedell, nodding his head. "They'll take the passenger-list to compare with the other Corianis' list of people on board. Of course the local problem is that their president exists in two copies. That will upset the whole planetary government."

"You-seem to know what's going on," said Kathy, uneasily.

"I don't," Bedell told her. "But there's such a thing as a universe of discourse-an acceptance of the preposterous so you can arrive at sense. // it's true that there are doubles of almost everybody, alike even to fingerprints -why-such-and-such other things must be true, also. But not even in a universe of discourse would absolutely everybody on both ships be absolutely alike! There'd have to be some exceptions… How long have you been the secretary of somebody who would naturally want you on this trade-treaty trip?"

She licked her lips. She was scared; the idea of another, independent version of herself, knowing everything she knew, capable of anything she could do, but not under her control…

"I've had my job three months," she said. "Before that…"

"The chances are good that you're unique," said Bedell, "if the universe of discourse I'm thinking of is valid."

The men in strange uniforms went back past the dining salon door. They were followed by the Speaker of the Senate of Maninea. He expostulated furiously. The men in the strange uniforms looked hunted and upset. They still had the ship's purser with them.

"I think," said Bedell, "that this is going to go pretty far. How'd you like to look out a port at this lunatic world which says we can't be ourselves because somebody else is us?"

He led the way down two levels to where nobody crowded the corridors. It was quite silent, here. Someone had turned off the thread-thin whisper of music which prevented ghastly silence on the ship while in flight. They went to the end of a corridor. Bedell cranked open the shutters of a port and they looked out.

They were in the Corianis, but the Corianis rested solidly aground two hundred yards away. The other ship was gigantic; it was solid. It was an absolutely perfect duplicate of the Corianis from which they looked. It was not the kind of object one could imagine as partaking of the impossible or the unreal. There was nothing ghostly about it; it was defiantly an actual thing.

Bedell looked down at the spaceport's surface.

"There," he observed with careful calmness, "there's the purser-from this ship. And there's the other of him, over there. There are two qf him, just as the loudspeakers said."

The men in strange uniforms had reached the spaceport tarmac with the Corianis' purser in their midst. They now met another group of uniformed men with the Corianis' purser in their midst. The port from which

Bedell and Kathy looked down was a good fifty feet high, but they could see perfectly. The purser just emerged from the ship was identical to the man already on the spaceport ground. They were identical in height and weight and the fit of their uniforms. That was conceivable. But they moved alike; they made the same gestures. It was insanely like seeing mirror-images making independent motions. One felt the same shocked incredulity.

Kathy pointed a shaking finger. "There's Mr. Brunn! My boss! But he's here on the ship! If-if there's-if I'm down there too…"

She searched for her own self among the figures down below, shaking with terror lest she might succeed.

A ground-car rolled out past the spaceport buildings and came to a halt below. Bedell recognized the man who stepped out; he was the Planetary President. With him was the Kholarian Minister of State. Both of them happened-as Bedell knew very well-also to be on board the Corianis which had recently landed.

"Now I wonder," said Bedell meditatively, "if the President who got here first is going to try to face down the President who got here second! And if the Minister of State of Kholar is going to denounce his other self, who's foaming at the mouth at this instant on board this ship!"

Another ground-car arrived and disgorged dignified persons. The intention was clear; the head of the Maninean planetary government found himself accused of imposture. Somebody else claimed to be him. Lesser officials who had seen the claimant were uncertain and unsure. But the President knew who he was! With enormous dignity he came to confound the impostor who could bewilder his subordinates. Face-to-face, he was sure, there could be no doubt of who was who!

But Jack Bedell, staring from overhead, saw the confusion and then the terrific and undignified row which followed the discovery that it was hopeless-not only to know who was who, but which was which. Other ground-cars arrived, and the two identical Planetary Presidents of Maninea faced each other. They were backed by equally identical Ministers of State of Kholar, two identical Speakers of the Maninean Senate, two Chairmen of the Lower House Committee, and so on down to the utterly identical nurses-identical to fingerprints and eye-patterns-who tended the utterly identical children of identical assistant undersecretaries, and even to the identical undersecretaries' identical wives. And even the wives were identical to the very number and location of gray hairs in their heads caused by identical griefs caused by their identical husbands! Naturally, there was tumult.

It was a beautiful row, a stupendous one, and it settled nothing whatever. The governmental process of an entire planet clanked to a halt pending the solution of the problem posed by the Corianis' tardy or over-hasty arrival. The government of another planet would be thrown into confusion as soon as this news reached it.

"I think," said Bedell, gazing down, "I think they're going to have to try something else. They'll never be able to settle the matter on objective evidence. They've just tried to act on the theory that two people can't be exactly alike-but it appears that they can be, and are. Now they'll try to find some people who aren't identical and study them to find out why not. I suspect that we may be called on, Kathy."

Kathy's teeth chattered.

"I-didn't see myself down there," she said shakily. "I-I don't want to! I'd-I think I'd hate her."

Bedell looked surprised. Then his expression changed.

"Yes. I suppose one would. Hmmm… Simple, natural instincts like that will probably have a good deal to do with settling this business."

As they turned away from the port, loudspeakers clicked and everywhere over the ship the same voice was heard in innumerable echoings of the same words: "Will the following passengers please go to the exit-port? Will the following passengers please go to the exit-port?" There followed four names. One was Bedell's. One was Kathy's. Neither of them recognized the other two.

"This is good," said Bedell. "They hope to learn something from us because we came on the Corianis and we are nevertheless like everybody else on every other planet in the galaxy. We're peculiar. We are ourselves alone. We can feel proud."

Presently, in one of the spaceport offices a harried Maninean official looked at them with great though precarious self-control.

"Look here!" he said uneasily. "On both ships together there are just seven people who don't match up to the last pimple with somebody else. You're two of the seven. Can you explain why you aren't part of the business that is driving everybody crazy?"

Bedell found himself hesitating. Then he cursed himself for self-consciousness. He said, "I got on the Corianis at the last minute-by accident. I wasn't really supposed to be on the ship. I imagine you'd say my presence is accidental. That might explain it."

The official said drearily, "The ship record says you're a mathematical physicist. Is there anybody on Maninea who might know you personally?"

"I think so," said Bedell. "There was a convention of astrophysicists on Hume, some years ago. I read a paper there. Some men from your astrophysical institute here will probably remember me."

"We'll check that," said the official. He seemed to brood. "This is the devil of a mess! The planetary vice-president has issued an executive order, keeping authority in his own hands until it's decided who is the real president. Both-both men who seem to be President have agreed to it, though both of them are raging. The two Ministers of State from Kholar have agreed to hold up official conferences until things are straightened out. And we're sending a ship to Kholar with a report and records and memos from everybody on both ships, to see if they can solve it on Kholar. You aren't anybody's double. But do you want to send any message? Nobody claims to be you-or her."

Bedell frowned. "I think," he said thoughtfully, "that there'll be somebody back on Kholar who'll claim to be me. He'll be registered at the Grampion Hotel in Kholar City. He'll be waiting for a ship that will be coming here. He missed the Corianis. I'd like to write him a note."

"You wouldn't," said the Maninean official sardonically, "you wouldn't let sleeping doubles lie?"

"No," said Bedell. "I know him rather well. If he isn't there, it will be informative. If he answers, it will be more helpful still. And I think I can promise that he'll stay on Kholar. He won't come here. I wouldn't. I don't think he will."

"It's nice that somebody believes he can arrange something helpful!" said the official bitterly. "I don't see a chance! Do you realize that every pair of doubles we've tested so far has had the same blood type and same RH factor and same immunity-antibodies in his blood at the same intensities? And they also have the same fingerprints and same teeth and same height and weight and metabolic readings? I'm getting so I talk to myself! If this keeps up I'll start answering back!"

"It could be worse," said Bedell, after consideration. "I don't think it likely, but there could be a third Corianis."

"Don't say it!" snapped the Maninean vehemently. "Don't say any more! I was relaxing, talking to a man from the Corianis that there's only one of! It felt good! Don't say any more!"

He turned to Kathy. "Young lady," he said. "I'd like you to talk to another girl from the other Corianis. She doesn't claim to be you, but she does claim to have the job of secretary to the same man. Will you see what you can find out about each other?"

"N-naturally," said Kathy.

The official pressed a button and said, "Ask her to come in, will you?"

He slumped back in his chair. Within seconds, a girl came in. She was nervous; she was jumpy. She looked relieved to see, in Kathy, somebody who didn't look in the least like herself.

"Miss Kossuth," said the official, "this is Miss Sanders. It seems that you've got something but not too much in common."

"Y-yes," said the girl from the first-arrived Corianis. "I'm Mr. Brunn's secretary. He's Assistant Undersecretary of Commerce."

"I'm Mr. Brunn's secretary, too," said Kathy. She moistened her lips. "Is his wife's name Amelie, and does he have three children-two boys and a girl?"

The girl from the first-arrived Corianis said uneasily, "Yes. This is crazy! Is your Mr. Brunn rather fat, and does he fiddle with his ear when he's dictating?"

"Yes!" said Kathy. She looked appalled. "Does your Mr. Brunn have a picture of a baseball team on his desk?"

"Yes!" said the other girl. "Alton High School. He played second base."

"So did my Mr. Brunn," said Kathy. Then she added, "I-I've seen you before. I-know you. I'm sure of it!" The first-arrived girl said helplessly, "I don't remember you. But at least we aren't doubles!"

Kathy swallowed. "But I remember you. You had the job I've got. You'd resigned to get married, three months ago, and you showed me about the work I was to do. You were going to marry a boy named Al Loomis. You said he was a draftsman."

The first girl went ashen-white. "I m-married him? I- I… But I didn't! W-we had a quarrel and-broke up!… How did you know? I never saw you before! I never told you… How do you know all about my private affairs? How…

The other girl from the other Corianis began to cry. She ran out of the room.

There was silence. Kathy turned unhappily to Bedell. He said encouragingly, "That was fine, Kathy! It clears up several points. You did splendidly!"

The official stirred. He said without hope, "I'm glad somebody's pleased! If you've got a theory, don't tell me. Get it worked out and we'll have the Astrophysical Institute boys look you over and then we'll have whoever should pass on what you think pass on it. I don't want to understand this business, because I don't want to believe it! But there's nobody claiming to be you, so far, so you can leave the Corianis if you choose to."

"No," said Bedell. "I think I'd better stay on the ship. This state of things should be unstable. I want to do some calculating from some books I have with me… But I would like to talk to the Astrophysics people."

"You sound like you think you know what's happened," the official said. "It's all right with me if you stay aboard your ship. We're trying to keep the two sets of people apart, anyhow. Do you know what happens when duplicates see each other?"

"I can guess," said Bedell, "but I'd rather not. Come along, Kathy. Let's get back to the ship."