House of Many Worlds by Sam Merwin, Jr.

Book Details

House of Many Worlds (1951) – The watchers of the time-tracks send two agents into the melting pot of the cosmos. These two agents travel across several alternate histories in an effort to keep all of them from collapsing into chaos.

History turns upside down when the South wins the Civil War and Napoleon founds an empire in Mexico!

House of Many Worlds is a novel of fifteen chapters.

Best known as an editor of several science fiction magazines, Sam Merwin Jr. was also a prolific writer. Samuel Kimball Merwin Jr. (1910 – 1996) wrote mystery and science fiction, published mostly as Sam Merwin Jr. His pseudonyms included Elizabeth Deare Bennett, Matt Lee, Jacques Jean Ferrat and Carter Sprague.

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1. Merwin-HouseOfManyWorlds.epub

Excerpt: House of Many Worlds

I

ELSPETH MARRINER fingered the sticky roundness of the thick tumbler on the gimpy-legged table in front of her and wondered what in heaven, earth or hell she was doing in the dingy little restaurant. As a poet she knew it was her duty to have her feet in the mire as well as her head in the clouds, but this was going a little too far.

Seeking to shut out Mack’s insistent and unsubtle prodding of the leather-skinned native he was plying with the hot and heavy liquid molasses that passed for rum in this incredibly backward little Carolina community, she concentrated on the strip of flypaper that dangled from the ceiling less than six feet from her head.

Alternate sections of its spiral glistened evilly in the dim reflection of the green-shaded lamp that hung beyond it. At intervals a trapped insect buzzed its hysterical protest at such unmannerly death as faced it. She counted the flies she could see trapped on its sticky surface. There were exactly fourteen, five more than had been there the night before.

FOURTEEN, she thought, the magic number that spells sonnet. She began to frame a sonnet to fourteen flies caught in a spiral of flypaper. Surely even such unpleasant living creatures merited some memorial to their passing.

She lost the thread, realized that her head was aching—whether from lack of sleep in the course of the assignment or from the badly fried food which was all the Carolina community seemed to offer or from the drink and a half of heavy rum she had consumed, she could not tell. Perhaps it was a combination of the three. If Mack didn’t get her back to New York on the morrow, she would—

She glanced covertly at the photographer, who was leaning toward the native as if eager to hear his half-drunken blather. It would be nice to do something to wipe the conscientious eagerness from his face, she thought, from his too-old, too-young gladiator’s face. According to Orrin Lewis, the hard-bitten and suave managing editor of Picture Week, who had teamed them for the assignment, Mack Fraser had once been a fighter. She believed him.

“His nose was slightly flattened across the bridge, a trifle off center. His cheekbones were not quite symmetrical, as if one—the left—had been broken by a fist. His eyes had a sleepy look, which she suspected came from scar tissue on the upper lids.

SHE told herself she was being a snob, that she had no right to mind the fact he had been in the ring. But she could not help resenting the fact that he always treated her as if, merely because she had not struggled out of some similar gutter, she did not quite belong to the human race.

“. . . and I’m telling you, Mack,” the native was saying as the photographer signaled the bar for a refill, “that there’s still some mighty funny stuff going on around here.” He paused and the Adam’s apple vibrated beneath the scaly skin of his turkey neck. “We don’t make much talk of it to outsiders.” He paused to chuckle. “Matter of fact we don’t talk about it much among ourselves.”

“What sort of things, Corey?” Mack asked quietly. He was leaning back in his chair now, apparently disinterested since his fish was nibbling at the bait. Elspeth thought it painfully obvious. If she were that naive—but she wasn’t.

Lacking a waiter, the bartender himself, a large lame individual with faded blue eyes and thick hair on the backs of his fingers, brought drinks over to the men. The native, Corey, mumbled his thanks, lifted his glass with clumsy courtesy to Elspeth, who managed a lip smile. Then he downed half of it at a draught. Elspeth shuddered, but it had no visible effect on Corey.

“Well,” Corey went on, planting his forearms on the table after wiping his mouth with one dirty sleeve, “it goes back a long way—some say to the Bankers and even beyond.”

“I’ve heard of them,” said Elspeth, thinking she ought to put in something for the courtesy of the toast. “They used to do things to the beacon lights to force ships ashore on the Hatteras shoals and then loot them. Nice people.”

“That they weren’t,” said Corey, apparently missing her sarcasm. “Some say they killed ten thousand men—aye, and women and little children. They could not afford to let them live.”

“But what’s this ‘funny stuff’ you were telling us about?” said Mack. His voice, Elspeth thought, was not actually bad. But it was rough around the edges, not cut for subtlety. On the whole, it went with its owner.

“Some nights the lights still shine,” said Corey, placing his gnarled fisherman’s hands flat on the oilcloth table top. His voice dropped half an octave. “And when they are seen, things happen. Other times there’s darkness—not even the stars shine through although there may not be a cloud in the sky. And that’s worse.”

“Not so fast, Corey,” said Mack, his forehead furrowing. You say ‘things’ happen when these lights show. What sort of things?”

“Bad things—big things,” the native told them. “Things like wars and troubles to match. Sometimes we don’t get to know of them until a while after. But we know when they happen.”

“Why is this darkness you speak of worse?” Mack inquired.

COREY hesitated and scratched his unkempt coarse black hair. He looked around him a trifle furtively and leaned forward. “It’s hard to say,” he told them, his voice low and hoarse, “but it is. You’ve got to see it when it happens to believe it.”

“You mean the whole locality just blacks out?” Elspeth asked incredulously. Although their assignment, to come up with a romantic picture story about the Hatteras Keys and their inhabitants, had been a notable fizzle to date she was in no mood for haunts.

“Not so you’d notice,” said Corey, regarding her as if she were a toddler who had failed to pass a first-grade test. “What I’m telling you is that Spindrift Key is the place.”

He paused and Mack cut in with, “Let’s see—that’s the island just beyond the mouth of the inlet. Looks too well groomed for this story of ours. You mean to say that—”

“I mean to say that that’s where these things happen,” the native said earnestly. “Listen, you people may be outsiders, but you’ve been mighty decent to me. I wouldn’t sell you short, not so you’d notice it. I know what I know.”

“But the place can’t be haunted,” Mack protested. “I cruised around it with Elspeth just the other day on our way to the outer shoals. It looks like a Southdown estate compared to the rest of these desolate spots. And that big house is well kept up.”

“Didn’t say it was haunted,” said Corey, looking aggrieved. “All I said was that’s where things happen—have always happened.”

“But doesn’t someone live there?” Mack asked insistently.

“The Frenchman lives there—him and his people,” said Corey. “His folks always have, far as we know.”

“Frenchman?” said Elspeth, more to keep awake than to contribute to the conversation. She was desperately tired. Three days of traipsing to and about this rough-hewn Carolina country with Mack were enough to have any girl on the ropes.

“Foreigner, anyway. Got a French name—Horelle,” said Corey.”

Excerpt From: Sam Merwin Jr. “House of Many Worlds.”