Infiltrating has its dangers too. The rough part comes when they find out, and they always do find you out. Then they’ll react bitterly against your deception, they’ll lash out in blind rage. If you’re lucky, you’ll be gone before they learn your sweaty little secret. Before they discover the discarded phrasebook hidden in the boarding-house room, before they stumble on the tom-off pages of your private journal. They’ll find you out. They always do. But by then you’ll be somewhere else, you hope, beyond the reach of their anger and their sorrow, beyond their reach, beyond their reach.

  III

  Suppose I show you, for Exhibit A, Cameron reacting to an extraordinary situation. You can test your own resilience by trying to picture yourself in his position. There has been a

  sensation in Cameron’s mind very much like that of the extinction of the cosmos: a thunderclap, everything going black, a blankness, a total absence. Followed by the return of light, flowing inward upon him like high tide on the celestial shore, a surging stream of brightness moving with inexorable certainty. He stands flatfooted, dumbfounded, high on a bare hillside in warm early-hour sunlight. The house—redwood timbers, picture window, driftwood scriptures, paintings, books, records, refrigerator, gallon jugs of red wine, carpets, tiles, avocado plants in wooden tubs, carport, car, driveway—is gone. The neighboring houses are gone. The winding street is gone. The eucalyptus forest that ought to be behind him, rising toward the crest of the hill, is gone. Downslope there is no Oakland, there is no Berkeley, only a scattering of crude squatters’ shacks running raggedly along unpaved switchbacks toward the pure blue bay. Across the water there is no Bay Bridge; on the far shore there is no San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge does not span the gap between the city and the Marin headland. Cameron is astonished, not that he didn’t expect something like this, but that the transformation is so complete, so absolute. If you don’t want your world any more, the old man had said, you can just drop it, can’t you? Let go of it, let it drop. Can’t you? Of course you can. And so Cameron has let go of it. He’s in another place entirely, now. Wherever this place is, it isn’t home. The sprawling Bay Area cities and towns aren’t here, never were. Good-bye, San Leandro, San Mateo, El Cerrito, Walnut Creek. He sees a landscape of gentle bare hills, rolling meadows, the dry brown grass of summer; the scarring hand of man is evident only occasionally. He begins to adapt. This is what he must have wanted, after all, and though he has been jarred by the shock of transition he is recovering quickly, he is settling in, he feels already that he could belong here. He will explore this unfamiliar world and if he finds it good he will discover a niche for himself. The air is sweet. The sky is cloudless. Has he really gone to some new place, or is he still in the old place and has everything else that was there

  simply gone away? Easy. He has gone. Everything else has gone. The cosmos has entered into a transitional phase. Nothing’s stable any more. From this moment onward, Cameron’s existence is a conditional matter, subject to ready alteration. What did the old man say? Go wherever you like. Define your world as you would like it to be, and go there, and if you discover that you don’t care for this or don’t need that, why, go somewhere else. It’s all trips, this universe. What else is there? There isn’t anything but trips. Just trips. So here you are, friend. New frameworks! New patterns! New!

  IV

  There is a sound to his left, the crackling of dry brush underfoot, and Cameron turns, looking straight into the morning sun, and sees a man on horseback approaching him. He is tall, slender, about Cameron’s own height and build, it seems, but perhaps a shade broader through the shoulders. His hair, like Cameron’s, is golden, but it is much longer, descending in a straight flow to his shoulders and tumbling onto his chest. He has a soft, full, curling beard, untrimmed but tidy. He wears a wide-brimmed hat, buckskin chaps, and a light fringed jacket of tawny leather. Because of the sunlight Cameron has difficulty at first making out his features, but after a moment his eyes adjust and he sees that the other’s face is very much like his own, thin lips, jutting high-bridged nose, clefted chin, cool blue eyes below heavy brows. Of course. Your face is my face. You and I, I and you, drawn to the same place at the same time across the many worlds. Cameron had not expected this, but now that it has happened it seems to have been inevitable.

  They look at each other. Neither speaks. During that silent moment Cameron invents a scene for them. He imagines the other dismounting, inspecting him in wonder, walking around him, peering into his face, studying it, frowning, shaking his head, finally grinning and saying:

  —I’ll be damned. I never knew I had a twin brother. But here you are. It’s just like looking in the mirror.

  —We aren’t twins.

  —We’ve got the same face. Same everything. Trim away a little hair and nobody could tell me from you, you from me. If we aren’t twins, what are we?

  —We’re closer than brothers.

  —I don’t follow your meaning, friend.

  —This is how it is. I’m you. You’re me. One soul, one identity. What’s your name?

  —Cameron.

  —Of course. First name?

  —Kit.

  —That’s short for Christopher, isn’t it? My name is Cameron too. Chris. Short for Christopher. I tell you, we’re one and the same person, out of two different worlds. Closer than brothers. Closer than anything.

  None of this is said, however. Instead the man in the leather clothing rides slowly toward Cameron, pauses, gives him a long, incurious stare, and says simply, “Morning. Nice day.” And continues onward.

  “Wait,” Cameron says.

  The man halts. Looks back. “What?”

  Never ask for help. Fake it all the way. Jaunty smile, steely even gaze.

  Yes. Cameron remembers all that. Somehow, though, infiltration seems easier to bring off in a city. You can blend into the background there. More difficult here, exposed as you are against the stark, unpeopled landscape.

  Cameron says, as casually as he can, using what he hopes is a colorless neutral accent, “I’ve been traveling out from inland. Came a long way.”

  “Umm. Didn’t you think you were from around here. Your clothes.”

  “Inland clothes.”

  “The way you talk. Different. So?”

  “New to these parts. Wondered if you could tell me a place I could hire a room till I got settled.”

  “You come all this way on foot?”

  “Had a mule. Lost him back in the valley. Lost everything I had with me.”

  “Umm. Indians cutting up again. You give them a little gin, they go crazy.” The other smiles faintly; then the smile fades and he retreats into impassivity, sitting motionless with hands on thighs, face a mask of patience that seems merely to be a thin covering for impatience or worse.

  —Indians?—

  “They gave me a tough time,” Cameron says, getting into the fantasy of it.

  “Umm.”

  “Cleaned me out, let me go.”

  “Umm. Umm.”

  Cameron feels his sense of a shared identity with this man lessening. There is no way of engaging him. I am you, you are I, and yet you take no notice of the strange fact that I wear your face and body, you seem to show no interest in me at all. Or else you hide your interest amazingly well.

  Cameron says, “You know where I can get lodging?”

  “Nothing much around here. Not many settlers this side of the bay, I guess.”

  “I’m strong. I can do most any kind of work. Maybe you could use—”

  “Umm. No.” Cold dismissal glitters in the frosty eyes. Cameron wonders how often people in the world of his former life saw such a look in his own. A tug on the reins. Your time is up, stranger. The horse swings around and begins picking its way daintily along the path.

  Desperately Cameron calls, “One thing more!”

  “Umm?”

  “Is your name Cameron?”

  A flicker of interest. “Might be.”

  “Christopher Cameron. Kit. Chris. That you?”

  “Kit.” The other’s eyes drill into his own. The mouth compresses until the lips are invisible: not a scowl but a speculative, pensive movement. There is tension in the way the other man grasps his reins. For the first time Cameron feels that he has made contact. “Kit Cameron, yes. Why?”

  “Your wife,” Cameron says. “Her name Elizabeth?”

  The tension increases. The other Cameron is cloaked in explosive silence. Something terrible is building within him. Then, unexpectedly, the tension snaps. The other man spits, scowls, slumps in his saddle. “My woman’s dead,” he mutters. “Say, who the hell are you? What do you want with me?”

  “I’m—I’m—” Cameron falters. He is overwhelmed by fear and pity. A bad start, a lamentable start. He trembles. He had not thought it would be anything like this. With an effort he masters himself. Fiercely he says, “I’ve got to know. Was her name Elizabeth?” For an answer the horseman whacks his heels savagely against his mount’s ribs and gallops away, fleeing as though he had had an encounter with Satan.

  V

  Go, the old man said. You know the score. That is how it is: everything’s random, nothing’s fixed unless we want it to be, and even then the system isn’t as stable as we think it is. So go. Go. Go, he said, and, of course, hearing something like that, Cameron went. What else could he do, once he had his freedom, but abandon his native universe and try a different one? Notice that I didn’t say a better one, just a different one. Or two or three or five different ones. It was a gamble, certainly. He might lose everything that mattered to him, and gain nothing worth having. But what of it? Every day is full of gambles like that: you stake your life whenever you open a door. You never know what’s heading your way, not ever, and still you choose to play the game. How can a man be expected to become all he’s capable of becoming if he spends his whole life pacing up and down the same courtyard? Go. Make your voyages. Time forks, again and again and again. New universes split off at each instant of decision. Left turn, right turn, honk your horn, jump the traffic light, hit your gas, hit your brake, every action spawns whole galaxies of possibility. We move through a soup of infinities. If repressing a sneeze generates an alternative continuum, what, then, are the consequences of the truly major acts, the assassinations and inseminations, the conversions, the renunciations? Go. And as you travel, mull these thoughts constantly. Part of the game is discerning the precipitating factors that shaped the worlds you visit. What’s the story here? Dirt roads, donkey-carts, hand-sewn clothes. No Industrial Revolution, is that it? The steam-engine man—what was his name, Savery, Newcomen, Watt?—smothered in his cradle? No mines, no factories, no assembly lines, no dark Satanic mills. That must be it. The air is so pure here: you can tell by that, it’s a simpler era. Very good, Cameron. You see the patterns swiftly. But now try somewhere else. Your own self has rejected you here; besides, this place has no Elizabeth. Close your eyes. Summon the lightning.

  VI

  The parade has reached a disturbing level of frenzy. Marchers and floats now occupy the side streets as well as the main boulevard, and there is no way to escape from their demonic enthusiasm. Streamers cascade from office windows and gigantic photographs of Chairman DeGrasse have sprouted on every wall, suddenly, like dark infestations of lichen. A boy presses close against Cameron, extends a clenched fist, opens his fingers: on his palm rests a glittering jeweled case, egg-shaped, thumbnail-sized. “Spores from Patagonia,” he says. “Let me have ten exchanges and they’re yours.” Politely Cameron declines. A woman in a blue and orange frock tugs at his arm and says urgently, “All the rumors are true, you know. They’ve just been confirmed. What are you going to do about that? What are you going to do?” Cameron shrugs and smiles and disengages himself. A man with gleaming buttons asks, “Are you enjoying the festival? I’ve sold everything and I’m going to move to the highway next Godsday.” Cameron nods and murmurs congratulations, hoping congratulations are in order. He turns a corner and confronts, once more, the bishop who looks like Elizabeth’s brother, who is, he concludes, indeed Elizabeth’s brother. “Forget your sins!” he is crying still. “Cancel your debts!” Cameron thrusts his head between two plump girls at the curb and attempts to call to him, but his voice fails, nothing coming forth but a hoarse wordless rasp, and the bishop moves on. Moving on is a good idea, Cameron tells himself. This place exhausts him. He has come to it too soon, and its manic tonality is more than he wants to handle. He finds a quiet alleyway and presses his cheek against a cool brick wall, and stands there breathing deeply until he is calm enough to depart. All right. Onward.

  VII

  Empty grasslands spread to the horizon. This could be the Gobi steppe. Cameron sees neither cities nor towns nor even villagers, just six or seven squat black tents pitched in a loose circle in the saddle between two low gray-green hummocks, a few hundred yards from where he stands. He looks beyond, across the gently folded land, and spies dark animal figures at the limits of his range of vision: about a dozen horses, close together, muzzle to muzzle, flank to flank, horses with riders. Or perhaps they are a congregation of centaurs. Anything is possible. He decides, though, that they are Indians, a war party of young braves, maybe, camping in these desolate plains. They see him. Quite likely they saw him some while before he noticed them. Casually they break out of their grouping, wheel, ride in his direction.

  He awaits them. Why should he flee? Where could he hide? Their pace accelerates from trot to canter, from canter to wild gallop; now they plunge toward him with fluid ferocity and a terrifying eagerness. They wear open leather jackets and rough rawhide leggings; they carry lances, bows, battle-axes, long curved swords; they ride small, agile horses, hardly more than ponies, tireless packets of energy. They surround him, pulling up, the fierce little steeds rearing and whinnying; they peer at him, point, laugh, exchange harsh derisive comments in a mysterious language. Then, solemnly, they begin to ride slowly in a wide circle around him. They are flat-faced, small-nosed, bearded, with broad, prominent cheekbones; the crowns of their heads are shaven, but long black hair streams down over their ears and the napes of their necks. Heavy folds in the upper lids give their eyes a slanted look. Their skins are copper-colored but with an underlying golden tinge, as though these were not Indians at all, but—what? Japanese? A samurai corps? No, probably not Japanese. But not Indians either.

  They continue to circle him, gradually moving more swiftly. They chatter to one another and occasionally hurl what sounds like questions at him. They seem fascinated by him, but also contemptuous. In a sudden demonstration of horsemanship one of them cuts from the circular formation and, goading his horse to an instant gallop, streaks past Cameron, leaning down to jab a finger into his forearm. Then another does it, and another, streaking back and forth across the circle, poking him, plucking at his hair, tweaking him, nearly running him down. They draw their swords and swish them through the air just above his head. They menace him, or pretend to, with their lances. Throughout it all they laugh. He stands perfectly still. This ordeal, he suspects, is a test of his courage. Which he passes, eventually. The lunatic galloping ceases; they rein in, and several of them dismount.

  They are little men, chest-high to him but thicker through the chest and shoulders than he is. One unships a leather pouch and offers it to him with an unmistakable gesture: take, drink. Cameron sips cautiously. It is a thick grayish fluid, both sweet and sour. Fermented milk? He gags, winces, forces himself to sip again; they watch him closely. The second taste isn’t so bad. He takes a third more willingly and gravely returns the pouch.

  The warriors laugh, not derisively now but more in applause, and the man who had given him the pouch slaps Cameron’s shoulder admiringly. He tosses the pouch back to Cameron. Then he leaps to his saddle, and abruptly they all take off. Mongols, Cameron realizes. The sons of Genghis Khan, riding to the horizon. A worldwide empire? Yes, and this must be the wild west for them, the frontier, where the young men enact their rites of passage. Back in Europe, after seven centuries of Mongol dominance, they have become citified, domesticated, sippers of wine, theatergoers, cultivators of gardens, but here they follow the ways of their all-conquering forefathers. Cameron shrugs. Nothing for him here. He takes a last sip of the milk and drops the pouch into the tall grass. Onward.