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experience; energy would accumulate, events would undo themselves, water would
run uphill, old men would clump into existence out of the air and soil and
unlearn their profitless ways back toward their mothers' wombs.
"Which is what they do in any event," Gifford Bonner had said gently. "But
actually, I doubt that it's that paradoxical, Amalfi. Both of these universes
can be regarded as unwinding, as running down, as losing energy with each
transaction. The fact that from our point of view the anti-matter universe
seems to be gaining energy is simply a bias built into the way we're forced to
look at things. Actually these two universes probably are simply unwinding in
opposite directions, like two millstones. Though the two arrows of time seem
to be pointing in opposite directions, they probably both point downhill, like
fingerboards at the crest of a single road. If the dynamics of it bother you,
bear in mind that both are four dimensional continua and from that point of
view both are wholly static."
"Which brings us to the crucial question of contiguity," Jake said cheerfully.
"The point is, these two four-dimensional continua are intimately related, as
the twin events the Hevians observed make very plain; which I suppose must
mean that we must allow for a total of at least sixteen dimensions to contain
the whole system. Which is no particular surprise in itself; you need at least
that many to accommodate the atomic nucleus of average complexity comfortably.
What is surprising is that the two continua are approaching each other; I
agree with Miramon that the observations his people made can't be interpreted
any other way; up to now, the fact that gravitation in the two universes is
also opposite in sign seems to have kept them apart, but that repulsion or
pressure or whatever you want to call it is obviously growing steadily weaker.
Somewhere in the future, the near future, it will decline to zero, there will
be a Pythagorean point-for-point collision between the two universes as a
whole-"
"-and it's hard to imagine how any physical frame-
work, even one that allows sixteen dimensions of elbowroom, will be able to
contain the energy that's going to be released," Dr. Schloss said. "The
monobloc isn't even in the running; if it ever existed, it was just a wet
firecracker by comparison."
"Translation: blooey," Carrel said. "It's perfectly possible that a
rational cosmology is going to have to accommodate all three events,"
Gifford Bonner said. "I mean by that the monobloc, the heat death, and this
thing-this event that seems to fall midway between the two. Curious; there are
a number of myths, and ancient philosophical systems, that allow for such a
break or discontinuity right in the middle of the span of existence; Giordano
BrunoV Earth's first relativist, called it the period of Interdestruction, and
a compatriot of his named Vico allowed for it in what was probably the first
cyclical theory of ordinary human history; and in Scand-anavian mythology it
was called the Ginnangu-Gap. But I wonder, Dr. Schloss, if the destruction is
going to be quite as total as you suggest. I am nobody's physicist, I freely
confess, but it seems to me that if these two universes are opposite in sign
at every point, as everyone at this meeting has been implying, then the result
cannot be only a general transformation of the matter on both sides into
energy. There will be energy transformed into matter, too, on just as large a
scale, after which the gravitational pressure should begin to build up again
and the two universes, having in effect passed through each other and
exchanged hats, will begin retreating from each other once more. Or have I
missed something crucial?"
"I'm not sure that the argument is as elegant as it appears on the surface,"
Retma said. "That awaits Dr. Schloss's mathematical analysis, of course; but
in the meantime I cannot help but wonder why, for instance, if this
simultaneous creation-interdestruction-destruction cycle is truly cyclical, it
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