The Accidental Time Machine

6

Dopey Denny lived in a large three-story Victorian in Back Bay. He swung open the door and gave Matt a big hug. Three hundred pounds of dope dealer, understandably stoned at nine in the evening. “Dr. Einstein, I presume?” He was wearing a black robe with glittering astrological symbols, tied with a silver rope. Barefoot in January.

“Hi, Denny.” Matt looked over the big man’s shoulder. “Louise home?”

“Ah, no. No. She moved on. How you doin’ with what’s-her-name?”

“Kara. She moved on, too.”

“Ain’t it a bitch. Want a drink?”

Came here to do science, not socialize, but why not? “Sure. What you got?”

“Got it all.” He took Matt by the elbow and dragged him toward the kitchen. Matt hauled along the duffel bag with all his time-machine stuff in it.

The kitchen was all chrome and tile and looked like no one had ever cooked a meal in it. “I’m doin’ Heineken with a whisky chaser. Or is it whisky with a Heineken chaser?”

“You have one and I’ll have the other.” Matt took a seat at the kitchen table, a spare, elegant Swedish thing. There was a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Glenmorangie on it and one crystal glass. Denny produced another glass and got two Heinekens from a huge metal refrigerator that seemed to have nothing in it but beer and wine. He should use that for the time machine. It would be cold, but he wouldn’t die of thirst.

Denny tried to twist the bottles open, then remembered that wouldn’t work with the imported beer, and crashed through a drawer until he found an opener.

He put the beers down and poured Matt a generous amount of whisky, and himself a little more generous one. He sat down on the delicate chair with exaggerated caution. “So you say you need the T-Bird. But just to sit in it?”

“Basically, yeah.” Matt took a sip of the whisky and one of the beer. “Then it should disappear, and then come back.”

He nodded slowly. “Like those guys who made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Way back when.”

“I don’t know anything about that. This isn’t magic … Well, hell, maybe it is magic. I don’t know what the hell it is.”

“Not gonna hurt the car.”

“No way. It just goes, like, somewhere sideways in space. Hell, I’m gonna be in it. I wouldn’t do that if there was any danger, would I?” Matt resisted the impulse to slug back the whole glass. That might communicate uncertainty.

Denny took a vial out of his shirt pocket and tapped out a small pile of white powder, then produced a little cocktail straw and sniffed it up. He shook all over, like a big dog. “Ah! Want some?”

“No, thanks. Haven’t done it in years. Are you sure you can—”

“Sure, sure. It’s not cocaine; it’s a DD beta for alertness.” He shook again, grinning. “God damn! Cuts to the chase.”

This was just great. The sole witness to a scientific revolution stoned on an untried drug. Fortunately, all he had to do was push a button.

Which was all Matt had to do, as well. He took another sip from each reagent. “How long have you been taking it?”

“Got it last night. Right up your alley, man; work till dawn.”

“Maybe later. After it’s not a beta.” He laughed. “You’re a fucking wild man, Denny.”

“Hey, it’s a job. Somebody has to do it.”

Matt unzipped the duffel bag and brought out the camera. “You know how to work this?”

“Yeah, sure. Point an’ shoot.”

“Right. But I want to make sure the time function’s on, the clock down in the right-hand corner.” He toggled the switch until CLOCK came up, and selected it. “See?”

Denny took the camera. “No sweat.” He held it up and looked at Matt through the point-and-shoot viewfinder. “Just push this big button?”

“Right. It’ll be on a tripod, set for video, already aimed. Just start it when I tell you to, and if I disappear, leave it running till I come back.” Maybe in a taxi.

Denny looked at the back of the camera. “No picture?”

“No, use the viewfinder. That’s to save power. Don’t know how long till I come back.” He heard his voice quaver. He really didn’t know whether he’d be back.

He pushed the glass away. “Better not drink any more. Change in the bathroom?”

Denny waved an arm back the way they’d come. “Mi casa, su casa.” Matt picked up the duffel and went down the hall.

The bathroom was Italian tile with gold-plated hardware and a shower curtain by Salvador Dalí. Ornately framed nude paintings. Matt unzipped the duffel and laid out his gear. Stripped and threw his clothes back into the bag. Wallet and keys and change in a plastic bag, which he would carry into the uncertain future.

The wetsuit was talcumed on the inside, and slid on easily. How would he explain it to Denny? Just that he didn’t know what to expect. Denny would probably not be able to understand, under the best of conditions, the tensor calculus he’d used as a shot-in-the-dark guess for describing the thing’s behavior. And these were not the best of conditions.

He opened the Chinese carryout box and looked at Herman, who stared back accusingly. He couldn’t leave him at home, and couldn’t leave him with his mother with no explanation. Herman probably had a better chance of surviving, hurtling into the unknown in a ’56 Thunderbird, than risking Denny’s pet-sitting abilities.

He put the jar of Baby Reptile Chow in the suit’s blouse pocket and picked up the time machine along with the case of bottled water and the bright yellow square of emergency raft, and walked back into the kitchen.

“Holy shit,” Denny said. “I’m swearing off the stuff.” He blinked twice, slowly. “I could swear you were standing there in a SCUBA outfit.”

“Just the wetsuit. I don’t know what environment we’re— I’m going into. Couldn’t afford a space suit.”

“You’re going into outer fucking space?”

“No, no, nothing like that. The last time I used this machine, it moved. But less than a millimeter.” He held up his thumb and forefinger.

“So not outer space. Guaranteed?”

“No. Not outer space.” He hoped.

“Just the fucking ocean. You’re going to take my T-Bird and drop it in the ocean?”

“No. It probably won’t move more than an inch.”

“But just in case you dump it in the ocean—”

“Or the Charles or the Harbor—look, Denny, I can’t swim. The probability is almost zero, but it scares me shit-less. ”

That mollified him a little. “Yeah. Me, neither.” He shrugged. “If it was the Charles or the Harbor, I guess we could haul it back up.”

“Yeah. No problem—unless I drowned. Then I wouldn’t be able to tell you where it was.”

Denny nodded rapidly and stood up with surprising speed. “Let’s do it.”

Matt and Herman followed him through the kitchen and out into the garage. There it was: a 270-horsepower dinosaur gleaming under a dozen coats of Tahitian Red lacquer.

“It … it’s beautiful,” Matt said.

“New paint job. Be careful with it.” He opened the door and snapped on the radio. It started playing “I’m Mr. Blue” by the Belmonts.

Matt unfolded the tripod and set up the camera so it would be pointed at him in the front seat. He put the machine and the rest of his gear on the passenger side and hooked up the alligator clip to the car’s frame.

“Hey, and don’t get any Chinese on the upholstery.”

“It’s not Chinese food. It’s a turtle.”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course.”

“Almost forgot.” He reached into the pocket with the Baby Reptile Chow and brought out a three-by-five card with Professor Marsh’s name and phone number. “Anything goes wrong, call this guy. My boss.”

“Professor Marsh, like in swamp?”

“Right.” Matt started to close the door but left it open. If he wound up in water, he wanted to be able to jump out. “I’m ready if you are. Just point and shoot.”

When Denny pushed the button, so did Matt. He was suddenly blind, immersed in opalescent gray. He heard Herman nervously scratching around in his box.

It was strange, but not unexpected. He had time to wonder whether it would be a minute, ten minutes, forty days—and then all hell broke loose.

Bright daylight dazzled him and a Yellow Cab crashed into his open door, tearing it off and spinning into the oncoming traffic, where it was broadsided by the slow-crawling #1 bus.

He was in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, outside of the Plough and Stars pub. Traffic was squirreling to a halt all around him, horns blaring. With a loud bang, the yellow raft decided to inflate itself. He grabbed Herman and scrunched out of the car, pursued by a wall of yellow plastic, his wetsuit rather incongruous under the present circumstances, morning rush hour with snow all around. A siren wailed and a large female police officer came bearing down on him with her ticket book flapping in the cold breeze.

“Officer,” he said, “I can explain …” Or could he?

She sniffed at his breath. “Are you drunk?”

A male voice yelled, “Hands in the air. Put your goddamned hands in the air!” Matt did, and another policeman marched toward him holding a really large pistol at eye level with both hands.

“But I haven’t done anything,” he said inanely. Just dropped an antique car in the middle of Mass Ave during rush hour. With no tires; those were still in Denny’s garage.

The man’s pistol was homing in on Matt’s nose. “Ran the plate,” he said to the woman. “The car’s stolen. Owner murdered.”

“What?” Matt said. “Denny?”

“You have the right to remain silent,” the woman said, her own gun pointed at Matt’s heart. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.”

“But I didn’t kill anybody.” Including the Yellow Cab driver, who was very much alive even though his nose was bleeding profusely as he stomped toward the three of them, yelling incoherently.

Never losing her point of aim, the woman reached up and took the Chinese carryout box and expertly thumbed it open with one hand.

She peered inside. “A turtle?”

“Well,” Matt said, “it’s a long story.”

7

They allowed Matt to change out of the wetsuit and into gray prisoner’s coveralls. Then they put him in a small room and handcuffed him to a chair. The room had a big mirror or one-way window, and a tear-off calendar on the table said it was February 2, consistent with a time jump of thirty-nine days, thirteen hours.

“What’s with the handcuffs?” he asked the guard. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“It’s standard operating procedure when someone shows up in a wetsuit holding a pet turtle. We don’t have any straitjackets. ”

He left and was replaced with a Detective Reed, a small tough-looking man who smoked nonfilter cigarettes. Where did he get them, Matt wondered, and how come he could smoke on city property?

The detective sat down across from Matt and crushed out his cigarette stub in the ashtray, where it continued to smolder. “You knew Dennis Peposi. You bought dope from him.”

“I bought Ritalin, for concentration enhancement.”

“I suppose you had a prescription and can produce receipts.” Matt shook his head. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“December 14, at exactly 9:38 P.M.”

Reed wrote something down. “That’s about the time he died. The day, anyhow.”

“He was alive when I saw him. Drunk and stoned, but alive.”

“Sometime around then, he was murdered. Presumably by the person who stole his million-dollar car.”

“How did he die?”

“Suppose I ask the questions for a while? How well did you know Mr. Peposi?”

“Not too well. Met him through another student when I was an undergraduate at MIT. Maybe eight years ago.”

“He was just your dealer?”

“We went to some parties now and then. He liked to show off the Thunderbird.”

“You did hard drugs at these parties?”

“No—I knew he was involved with them, of course. He didn’t make that kind of money selling Ritalin to students.”

“When you last saw him, he was under the influence of drugs?”

“Yeah, but he almost always was, at night. He snorted something he said was a beta, a drug that was being tested.”

“You had some, too?”

“No. No way in hell. Denny was crazy.”

Reed nodded slowly at that and looked through a couple of pages on a clipboard. “They found a vial of white powder on his body. A stimulant of some sort. Along with the name and phone number of an MIT professor.”

“Not related,” Matt said quickly. “I gave him the phone number.”

Reed nodded. “Yes; your fingerprints were all over the card. The professor said you used to work for him. You stole some valuable equipment and disappeared.”

“Oh boy. It wasn’t like that at all.” Except that it was, come to think of it.

“Nobody’s seen you in a month or more.”

“Thirty-nine and a half days. I’ve been … Look, this is being recorded, right?” He nodded. “Let me tell you the whole story. From the very beginning.”

The detective looked at his watch. “Give you ten minutes. It was a dark and stormy night?”

“Dark and snowy …”

In fact, it was over twenty minutes before Matt wound down. Detective Reed flipped through his notes and looked at the one-way mirror on the wall. “Harry? You wanta come in here?”

The door opened a moment later and an angular man in tweeds walked in. “Mr. Fuller, I am Lieutenant Sterman. Dr. Sterman.”

“A psychiatrist,” Matt said.

“Psychologist. Ph.D.” He rolled a chair over quietly and sat down next to Detective Reed. “That was a very interesting story.”

“All of it true.”

“I’m sure you think so.” He looked at Matt as an entomologist might look at a bug whose species was not quite familiar.

“We called Professor Marsh, as Detective Reed mentioned. He did verify that a laboratory assistant named Matthew Fuller had disappeared a couple of weeks before.”

“That’s good.”

“He fired you for instability and drug dependence. Your name came up, in fact, when we asked him to explain why his name was in the pocket of a dead drug dealer—”

“He wasn’t my drug dealer!”

“—and you’ve since become rather a legend in your department. Crazy Matt who lost it and killed his drug dealer and ran away with his big antique car. They said you were babbling about time travel then, too.”

“Okay. How do you explain my materializing in the middle of Mass Avenue in this antique wheelless car?”

“Nobody saw you materialize,” the detective said. “The assumption is that you were being towed and fell off the truck. There was a tow truck in front of you, which we’re trying to find. There was quite a traffic jam when you … ‘materialized.’ ”

“What about the cabbie who hit the car door?”

“He’s sure you fell off the truck.”

“Jesus! And the wetsuit. What kind of crazy person would be sitting in a towed car wearing a wetsuit in the middle of winter?”

They both just looked at him.

“What about the camera? You must have taken it as evidence. It shows me and the car disappearing!”

Reed looked at his top page. “It was under your fat friend. ‘Beyond repair,’ it says here.”

“Oh, shit. Denny saw the car disappear and had a fucking heart attack! That’s how he died, isn’t it?”

“We don’t know,” Dr. Sterman said. “He’d been dead for more than two weeks. Many causes of death were possible, I suppose—I’m not a pathologist—but the autopsy indicated drug overdose.”

“Well, I sure didn’t drug him. He didn’t need any help for that.”

“It’s not that simple. When someone is as deeply connected with organized crime as Mr. Peposi was, any death is suspicious. Especially drug-related.”

“So go round up some Mafia guys. I’m just an innocent time traveler. Or a crazy graduate student in a wetsuit. I don’t see how you can hold me for murder.”

“We can book you for grand theft auto,” Reed said, “and meanwhile include you as a suspect in the murder investigation. ”

“Hey, I’ll admit to taking the car! Denny loaned it to me. You must have gotten the crystal out of the camera. It’ll show me and the car disappearing.”

Reed actually smiled. “That would be a first. Using a video of you disappearing in a car to prove that you didn’t take the car. But there’s no evidence record of a data crystal.”

“But I know it had one.” Or did it? He’d had Denny use the optical viewfinder, to conserve power. “Maybe it rolled out when the camera broke.”

“I’m sure they would have found it during the investigation. They’re pretty thorough.”

Matt wondered how thorough anybody would be, stuck in a room with a three-hundred-pound rotting corpse.

Dr. Sterman rose. “Ron, I have to get to a meeting. Let me know how this turns out.” He bobbed his head at Matt.

“Good day, Mr. Fuller.”

“I’d hate to have a bad one.” He watched the man leave. “So what now? I get one phone call?”

He slid a cell over. “Take two. You want to call a lawyer?”

“People like me don’t have lawyers. I guess the court appoints me one?”

“When they set bail, later today.”

“Better not be more than two hundred bucks.” He punched in Kara’s number, but she hung up without a word.

His mother wouldn’t be any help. The only person he knew who knew lawyers was the guy he evidently killed by surprise. He called Professor Marsh and got sputtering incoherence. The police hadn’t been too respectful when they first contacted him, after finding his name and number in the pocket of the huge rotting corpse of a drug dealer.

Detective Reed watched his discomfort with a neutral expression. He took the cell back. “I didn’t take much physics in school, just basic physical science. They said that time travel wasn’t possible, I remember. Paradoxes.”

“Well, I’m here. Whether you believe me or not, a few hours ago I was in Denny’s garage and it was 9:38 on December 14.

“If this thing’s a time machine, though, it’s an utterly useless one. As long as it’s one-way.”

“Yeah, I get that. If you could take a newspaper back to December 14, just the business section, you could clean up on the stock market.”

“And that’s your paradox. It plays hell with cause and effect. Unless every time you use the machine, it starts a new universe—one where you’re a rich guy.”

“But then when you got up here, the second of February, wouldn’t there be two of you?”

“Some say yes and some say no. Let’s see whether I walk through the door there.”

Somebody knocked on the door and they both jumped. But it was only a uniformed police officer, an attractive blond woman. “Lieutenant, they sent me up to get Matthew Fuller, if you’re done with him.”

“Yeah.” He came around to unlock the handcuffs.

“I could tell you about Kurt Gödel and Albert Einstein.”

“Close personal friends, I’m sure. Stand up and turn around, hands behind your back.”

She put a pair of soft plastic cuffs on him. “Is he dangerous? ”

“No. Just let me know if he suddenly disappears into thin air.”

“I might, you know. I don’t understand the process.”

“I half believe you. Otherwise, I may see you at the arraignment, or afterward.”

She touched him on the shoulder. “Come on, Matthew. Your room’s ready.”

His cellmate was a small man with a red face and white stubble, named Theo Hockney. He actually said, “What you in for?”

“Murder.” Saying the word made his heart skip. “And grand theft auto. What actually happened, I borrowed a friend’s car and he died right after I left.”

“Now that’s a bitch. I’m innocent, too.” As they always said, the place was chock-full of innocent people. “I ran into a guy with my car. Hell, he jumped in front of me, crazy. So he commits suicide, and I wind up in the slammer.”

“Did you know the guy?”

“Yeah, well, that’s the problem. He was sort of my ex-brother-in-law. We weren’t exactly pals. But you wanta kill someone, you don’t go hunting him with no goddamned car. I mean, I can carry a gun. I got a permit and all. So I’m gonna kill this bastard with a car?”

“I see what you mean.”

“Even though I should get a medal, the guy was such a prick.”

“He married your sister?”

“Kind of. Slapped her around. You know? Big guy, got friends on the force.”

“The police? That sucks.”

“You bet it does.” He went to the window and looked out at the gray day, parking lot piled up with dirty snow. “They’re gonna nail my fuckin’ ass to the wall.”

Matthew didn’t know what to say. He was overcome with a desire to escape from jail, especially this particular cell. “Can you … could you … prove it was an accident?”

“Yeah, I wish. There wasn’t no witnesses. Just a goddamn security camera in a bank across the street. Two in the morning.” He turned and gave Matt a look you might call murderous. “Why you so curious?”

“Sorry.” Matt raised a placating hand. “Didn’t mean to pry. I’ve never done this before, been in jail.”

“What does that mean? Like I spend all my time here?”

The blond guard tapped on the bars and rescued him. “Matthew Fuller? Come with me. You have a lawyer conference. ”

“But I thought I didn’t have a lawyer yet.”

“I guess you do. This way.” She kept her eye on the other prisoner until the door crashed closed.

“Hey!” he said. “I didn’t tell him nothin’!” She ignored that and led Matthew, without cuffs, out of the confinement area and back up to an office across from the room where he’d been interrogated.

The man there looked like a lawyer, a successful one, all Armani and Rolex with a haircut that must have cost more than Matthew made in a month. He rose and shook hands from across the scarred table.

“Matthew, I am Calvin Langham, of Langham, Langham, and Cruise.” He glanced at the officer, and she left. He sat back down, and so did Matthew.

He looked at him appraisingly. “You’re innocent, aren’t you?”

“I am, yes. Are you, what, going to represent me?”

“You wouldn’t want me to. I’m a corporate lawyer.” He leaned back and nodded. “This is peculiar. A little while ago a messenger brought to my firm an envelope with two cashier’s checks and instructions. One check was for me, and it more than covered the expense of my coming across town. The other was one million dollars, to apply toward your bail. Which, I just found out, is exactly one million dollars. You don’t look like a murderer and a car thief.”

“I’m neither.”

“When I showed the check to the judge, she accepted it, and said that after the arraignment today she would release you on your own recognizance, not to leave the Boston area. From her remarks, I take it she assumed the check was mob money.”

“But I don’t know anybody like that.”

“Nobody?”

“I guess the man who died, Dennis Peposi—the cop who talked to me said he was connected to organized crime.”

“Was he?”

“Probably, now that I think of it … He dealt drugs and had to get them from somewhere. I didn’t think he was a Boy Scout, but I knew him for years, and he never dropped a hint about that kind of connection.”

Langham shook his head. “Better watch your back. Maybe they bought your way out so they can get to you.”

“But I don’t know anything. Don’t have anything.”

“They don’t know that. All they know is the police think you killed one of them. The mob.”

“Jesus. I should stay in jail.”

“Personally, I wouldn’t advise that. It’s a high-crime area.” He took a folded-over piece of paper from a pocket and handed it to Matt. “The courier left a message. Don’t read it aloud.”

It said, Get in the car and go.

Who knew about the car? “This messenger. Did he look like me?”

“Somewhat. I didn’t get a good look at him. When I opened the envelope and came back down to the receptionist’s place, he was gone. She played back a security camera that showed the back of his head, and he was your size, long hair.”

Matt wondered. Could he have come back from the future to rescue himself? Maybe in some future, he learns how to reverse and control the process, and comes back in a Gödelian closed loop—reappearing a week ago, making a million on the stock market, and then …

“What time did this guy show up at your office?”

“Not long after we opened. I’d say 9:30.”

So he could leave before Matt got here. Just before. Which would short-circuit the paradox; they wouldn’t both be in the here and now at the same time and space.

Or maybe it was just a Mafia trap. “How seriously would you take the mob thing?”

“Do you know anyone else with a million dollars? Someone who would just drop it off and not hang around for an explanation?”

“No … no, I guess not. My department at MIT, but I’m not exactly a hero there. What do you think I should do?”

“I think, as I said, I would watch my back.” Langham picked up his leather portfolio and stood, looking at his watch. “The arraignment will be pretty soon. The court will appoint you a lawyer, but that’s pro forma; you probably won’t even meet him or her. Just plead not guilty. The judge has your bail.”

“I can just walk away from a murder charge?”

“They can’t charge you with murder just because you were in the victim’s car. Immobile car, I understand. You’re pleading not guilty to grand theft auto.”

“Which is true. I didn’t steal the car.”

“It’s also irrelevant. You’ll be free to go once you sign some papers.” They shook hands and he left.

Matt spent a few minutes leafing through a worn copy of Time, catching up a little on what happened two weeks before, and the blond officer came back. “This is pretty quick,” she said. “You know somebody?”

“Somebody knows me, evidently. The lawyer says a stranger made my bail.”

“Before you even knew how much it was?” Matt shrugged. “Judge said she’d take you first.”

The judge was a white-haired lady with a weary expression, sitting behind a desk piled with paper. She picked up a sheet. “This is an arraignment on the warrant initial presentment. Matthew Fuller, you are accused of grand theft auto, the vehicle in question being a … 1956? A 1956 Ford Thunderbird belonging to the late Dennis Peposi. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty. I—”

She brought a gavel down. “Your bail has been arranged. The trial date is tentatively set for March 1. You’re free to go, but you cannot leave the Commonwealth of Massachusetts without first notifying this court.” She looked up at him for the first time. “We’re serious about that. You’re a material witness in a homicide investigation. Don’t leave town, or you might find yourself back here.” She looked past him, at the man guarding the door. “Next.”

The blond officer took him back to the room with the Time magazine and told him to wait. There were no stories about time travel in the magazine, its name notwithstanding.

She came back in a few minutes. “Here are your things.” She put the wetsuit and snorkel on the table, and the plastic bag with his wallet and keys. “Those coveralls are city property. I’ll leave you alone while you change.”

Go out on the street in the dead of winter wearing a wetsuit and a smile? Evidently.

Cambridge is a college town, though, and Matthew looked young enough for his attire to be part of a fraternity prank or a lost drunken wager. People either stared or looked right through him as he hurried the two blocks down to the Gap. The wetsuit was cold, but its rubber bootlets gave him good traction on the ice.

Get in the car and go. He bought jeans and a warm flannel shirt, shoes and socks and a lined anorak. Where would the car be?

He went back to the police station and asked the sergeant at the front desk. The sergeant typed and moused around on an ancient computer.

“You can’t have it yet. It’s evidence, grand theft auto.”

He evidently didn’t know the gory details. “I don’t want to take it. I just need some stuff from work that’s on the front seat.”

He stared at Matt for a long moment. What, did he expect a bribe? Matt started for his wallet.

“You go talk to Sergeant Roman.” He scribbled on a yellow Post-it note. “He’s in charge of the vehicle pound in Somerville; that’s where it is. Maybe he’ll let you take your stuff; maybe he won’t.”

“Thanks.” Matt didn’t recognize the address, but he could look it up.

He got on the Red Line but went past Somerville to his own stop. He walked home on the lookout for Mafia goons, but saw only a bundled-up jogger who might have been sexy underneath the shapeless coverall, and an old woman in an orange jumpsuit walking two tiny dogs.

He was shivering by the time he let himself in. The apartment was stifling hot, which for a change was welcome. He put the kettle on for tea and sipped a glass of warm red wine.

He spent the rest of the day and part of the next collecting and organizing every scrap of data about the device, and made a clear copy of his mathematical analysis of it all. He put it in a neat binder and boxed it up with the cheap cell that had traveled with the machine in the first experiment, and the crystal from the camera that had recorded its going and returning. Then a long description of what had happened from the time he knocked on Denny’s door.

He addressed the box to Dr. Marsh and rode down to MIT so he could send it via campus mail. That would delay delivery for two or three days.

By the time Marsh opened it, Matt would be very elsewhere.

He went back to the apartment, figuring to get a good long sleep before he went to talk to Sergeant Roman. But a voice mail gave him a sense of urgency.

The voice didn’t sound tough. There was no cheesy Italian accent. But it said, “I represent Mr. Peposi’s employers, and we have some questions about his last hours. We’d like to meet with you at your convenience. Tonight. Please give me a call.”

He gave a Charleston number. Some fine Italian families live there. Matthew decided it was time to be missing.