The Third Circle
Chapter 28
Part
VI - Changing the Future
Chapter 29
Chapter 28
"Jesus. Did you see that?" Claire asked as soon as the darkness passed.
"Yeah, I did!" John hurried from where they stood in the back room to the door that led to the front of the cigar store and opened it. The front windows were still covered with shades.
"That was really strange," said Claire, following him. "I knew he was close by. I wonder why he didn't do anything?"
"I don't know. Guess he approved of the trip since he didn't bother us."
"He was like a shadow," said Claire, "standing in the window."
They got dressed in silence, locked up the shop, and went outside to find a cab.
They got back to the hotel around four o'clock. There was a phone message to call Danny, and it was a new number. John placed the call, and Danny told them with excitement that Walker Creek Enterprises had an address and telephone number. He had rented a three room office in the Medical Dental Building where Bryce's office was. He had run an ad in the Globe for a secretary and a bookkeeper, and was having great fun interviewing and setting up the office. He was in touch with Bryce almost daily, he said, and he was giving him lots of helpful advice on office furniture and supplies, and how to interview people. He had also rented a nice one bedroom apartment, which was the number John had called.
After John hung up, they collapsed on the bed, and slept until early morning.
Claire woke up first, thinking of Marie. She had an overwhelming desire to go back and see her. She felt as though part of herself was missing. Even though no time had passed back there, the day they left, it had been well over a month since she had seen her daughter. It was the longest they had ever been separated.
She got up, ordered some coffee from room service, and paced. Then she looked in the phone directory and started calling airlines. John woke up while she was on the phone.
"Good morning," she said to him, holding her hand over the receiver. "They've got me on hold."
"What's going on?" he asked, yawning and sitting up.
"Sweetheart. I have to go and see Marie. I'm checking airplane schedules."
"Wow," said John, rubbing his eyes. "Well, that's cool. You go ahead and go if you've got it figured out. I'll just get our gambling finished up."
"Hang on a second," she said into the phone. She held her hand over the receiver. "You want me to go alone?"
"Why not?"
She paused and took a deep breath.
She booked herself for nine o'clock the next morning, Friday, on Pan American, from LaGuardia Airport to Los Angeles, returning Sunday. "It's a nonstop," she said, "and the fare is sixty-nine dollars, round trip. You don't mind, do you, Darling?" she asked. "I just really need to see her."
"I understand, Sweetheart. It's fine. I'm going to spend the weekend in some fairly seedy bookmaking places anyway. It will work out fine."
"I feel uneasy leaving you. But I need a little grounding. This is too dreamlike. I want to see 1995 again for a few hours. There isn't any problem getting separated in time, is there? If I go back and you don't?"
"The Genie only warned us against using both watches at once to get somewhere. Just be careful you don't run into yourself. You're going to go to the Friday right before we left, right?"
"Right. I'm going to go in the morning."
"Where will you transport from."
"Our house. I'll rent a car at the L.A. airport and drive up there and park at the bottom of the trail. By Walker's cabin. I'll walk up the trail to where the house will be. When I transport, no one will be there. We'll both be at work. I won't take much. There's a little money in the house. I'll bury my clothes, the keys to the rental car."
"And don't forget your wedding ring. Marie would miss it."
"I won't. Then I'll go in the back window. I can take the screen off. I'll put on some clothes and call a cab."
Their room service coffee came. Claire got it and tipped the waiter.
"What will you tell Marie about how come you don't have your car?" asked John, pouring the coffee.
"I'll tell her I had to get the brakes checked."
"And then the deal about 'let's pretend this didn't happen?'"
"Right. Then I'll take the cab back to our house. Put my clothes back in the closet, put the screen back on, and transport back. Drive to L.A. and fly back here Sunday."
"Sounds good to me. Look, Claire, if anything should happen -- anything at all -- and we should get separated in some way, I think we should have a contingency plan."
"That's a good idea. How about the bluff?"
"On the day we arrived. How's that? The 19th of August, 1946.'"
"Sounds good."
"We'll transport back there and wait for each other. I mean, I don't think anything will happen."
"I don't either, Sweetheart." She came over and sat on his lap. "And, while I'm gone, you'll be making lots of money, right?"
"I'll go back to the cigar shop in the morning and transport a week ahead. Go to the library and check some numbers, mostly baseball games, I think. I don't want to get into a conspicuous horse deal like we did before. There's a really heavy gambling underworld scene going on here, so I want to be careful. I'll bet in six or seven different locations. Try to spread the winnings around. Lose a bit. Use different names."
"Then what?"
"By the time you get back, the Walker Creek paperwork should be here from Bryce. Maybe we can have Edgar Sarnoff look at it. Kline's attorney. Make sure Bryce is honest. Then we'll buy some stock and transfer everything to the corporation. Keep some spending money."
"And then?"
"I don't know. I saw some vacation ads in the Times. The Bahamas, the Florida Keys. Hemingway has a house in Key West, I think. I'd like to have a look at him."
"Havana sounds exciting, too. It would be like in that movie we saw, before the revolution. What about Europe? Do you have any interest in going to Europe?"
"Sure, but it's in ruins right now because of the War. If we want to go there, we should go back to the 20s."
"What about Bodie? I still want to go to Bodie."
"We can do that."
"Okay, so how are we going to get all this money back home when we leave?"
"Well, I'm thinking we can leave notarized instructions to have all of our stocks transferred to some people by the name of Claire and John Redmond on August 12th, 1995."
"The Monday after we get back. I wonder how much it will be worth by then?"
"I wouldn't even want to guess. Just a few shares of the stock we'll buy here plus the real estate value of our little cigar shop alone would set us up for lifetimes. Millions, probably."
"It's almost a little scary. What will we tell people?"
"That a rich uncle died?"
Claire laughed and kissed him. "I'll miss you in California. Sure you don't want to go with me?"
"No, Honey, it's a mother-daughter deal. Just kiss her for me."
Claire climbed on to the bed and hugged him.
"I sure do love you," said John.
"I love you, too, Darling."
They made love, and then showered and dressed, and Claire went to the International Center of Photography while John made the rounds to collect sixty-four thousand from his fight bets. While they had slept, Joe Lewis had knocked out Tami Mauriello in the first round, and the truck strike had started up again.
John placed some smaller bets on baseball games. Both leagues had busy schedules, moving toward their season playoffs. He hoped that most of the bets he placed were losers, because he wanted to stay in good graces with the new array of bookies. He didn't have any outcome information past the fight of the previous night, so he bet at random, and fairly heavily. He placed the largest bets with Tommie "The Shark" Connors, who ran the pool hall on East 76th Street, and with Sam Carbosky, who ran a bar called Barney's on 46th near Broadway. Tommie "The Shark" was a solid and muscular ex-prize fighter with a large, hooked nose that looked like it had been broken several times. He had craggy, spiny skin, and enormous hands. Sam Carbosky ran Barney's from the back card room in a wheelchair, gushing debasing obscenities at a skinny frazzled man with glasses named Frances who handled all the money. Sam, who was genial and cordial with John, invited him to come back for the regular evening poker game. John thanked him and told him that he didn't like poker all that much.
John dropped the cash he had left back at the hotel, and then met Claire at the Institute. They took a cab from there to Grand Central Station to check for any mail. The photographs Claire had taken at Danny's farm were there, and she opened them in the back of the cab as they rode to the Museum of Modern Art.
"Jesus," Claire whispered, pulling one of the pictures out and handing it to John. "Look."
It was a picture of Danny's house that Claire had taken from halfway up the ladder of the windmill. John had climbed up behind her to steady her while she took the shot. In an open upstairs window, looking directly out into the lens of the camera, was the staring man.
"My God," said John.
"He was with us the whole time!"
"Probably he still is," said John, looking out the window.
They
spent the afternoon at the Museum, and then had dinner at an Italian restaurant
just off 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. Then they went to Radio City to watch
the world premier of Notorious, with Carry Grant and Ingrid Bergman.
When they got back to the hotel, they made love on the balcony.
Changing the Future
Chapter
29
John went with Claire in a cab to LaGuardia Airport in the morning. She had to be there before seven-thirty to claim her ticket. She didn't have any luggage to check, carrying only a small overnight bag with a change of clothes, some things to read, and her journal. They had an hour to wait, so they bought a paper and had breakfast at the terminal.
The headline in the morning Times was that Harry Truman had fired his Commerce Secretary Henry A. Wallace over foreign policy statements Wallace had made in a speech at Madison Square Garden. Wallace had said that he thought that there was less danger of another war from Communism than there was from Western imperialism. He thought, according to the article, that the United States had "no more business in the political affairs of Eastern Europe than Russia has in the political affairs of Latin America," and, further, that any "Get Tough" policy was foolish; "'Get Tough,'" Wallace believed, "never brought anything real or lasting -- whether for schoolyard bullies or businessmen or world powers."
These views, the article pointed out, were at odds with U. S. foreign policy, and were causing peace negotiating difficulties in Paris for James Byrnes, the President's Secretary of State. Byrnes put pressure on Truman, and Truman fired Wallace.
"Well," Claire smiled cynically, "like it says in the Bible, 'all things work together for good for those who love God.'"
"They do indeed," John agreed.
John walked her out on the runway to her plane and hugged and kissed her good-bye. "Call me," he said.
"I will. I love you. Darling."
"I love you."
They kissed again, and she climbed the portable steps to the plane, and blew him another kiss from the top before disappearing inside.
The plane was small, with room for no more than fifty passengers. It had light blue metal walls and comfy, roomy, armchair seats. Claire got a window in front of the wing, and a stewardess brought her a pillow and a stack of magazines to choose from. A large, elderly, distinguished looking man sat in the aisle seat next to her. He wore a tweed suit, felt hat, glasses, and had a pipe in his mouth. He smiled at her politely and tipped his hat when he sat down.
"Quite a contraption," he said, looking at the ceiling. "Have you ever been in one of these machines before?"
"Oh, yes, I've flown a good deal," Claire smiled.
"Well, not me," he said. "I suspect it's safe, though."
"Oh, I think so," said Claire. "I wouldn't worry."
"It's unbelievable that I had breakfast in New York and will have dinner in Los Angeles. It makes you wonder what the world of science has come to."
"It's pretty incredible, all right," Claire agreed.
"Going to visit family?" he asked.
"Yes. My daughter. North of Los Angeles. And you?"
"Oh, I've been invited to give a series of lectures at the University of California in Los Angeles."
"On what subject?"
"Philosophy," he smiled. "Legal and political philosophy, largely."
"That sounds very interesting. Are you a professor?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I am."
"My name's Claire," she said, offering her hand.
"How do you do," he said, shaking her hand. "I'm Franklin Garrabrandt."
"Pleased to meet you, Professor" said Claire. "I'm very interested in philosophy. What is the topic of your lectures?"
He looked at her a bit patronizingly. "Well, my thesis is that the philosophy of pragmatism is revolutionizing all of the institutions of American culture, legal, political, psychological, educational. Getting our heads out of the clouds and putting us more in touch with real conditions in society."
"Institutions should serve the people whose lives they touch, and not the other way around," Claire said.
He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "Exactly so," he said.
The plane began rolling down the runway, and Professor Garrabrandt fumbled with his seat belt, his hands trembling. Claire helped him, and then looked out the window while they climbed out over the Atlantic, banking north and then west. The captain came on the loud speaker in a jovial voice and welcomed them aboard the Pan Am "Clipper Rainbow luxury liner," and said that this would be, as advertised, "above the weather travel," although the weather was reported to be good all the way, and that they would be landing in Los Angeles around two-thirty, Pacific time.
Professor Garrabrandt opened his New York Times. "Well, let's see what this Henry Wallace business is all about," he said.
Claire wrote in her journal, dozed on and off, looked at some of the magazines, and read a book she had bought at the museum called When Democracy Builds. It was written by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1920s. Garrabrandt saw it, and approved. "Great treatise on the potentials of civilization," he said. "Creative work can never be done by committee, eh?"
"So true," smiled Claire.
The professor snoozed, snoring audibly. Claire dozed again too, and the stewardess woke them up with a dreadful, dry lunch and weak coffee. After she ate, Claire got up to go to the rest room. Even though the plane was roomy, her seat mate had to swing his long legs out in the aisle to let her pass, and she excused herself. A small child had toys spread out on the floor in the aisle right in front of the restroom, and Claire had to step over him.
Inside the rest room, the shocking feeling crept upon her that the staring man was somewhere in the plane. She suddenly realized, with a quake of fright, how vulnerable she was five miles up in the air. She couldn't transport from here if she had to. If the staring man was on board, she would be trapped. She was amazed that the potential danger of flying hadn't occurred to her. She had been so preoccupied with seeing Marie, and with the step-by-step plan on the other end, that the possibility of trouble with their fellow traveler hadn't dawned on her.
She walked tentatively back into the cabin, her eyes darting down the aisle at the passengers.
There he was, near the back, in an aisle seat, wearing a bright blue sports coat. His chin was raised and turned as though he was looking out of the window across the aisle.
Oh, Jesus, Claire whispered to herself, panic rising. Oh, Jesus, I'm trapped!
The man didn't look at her. She bowed her head and moved quickly back toward her seat. She navigated around the little child, and, in her haste, stepped on a small tin top, nearly falling. The top crunched under her foot, and the child began crying. Claire snapped an apology to the mother and walked swiftly to her seat, afraid to look down the aisle toward the man. Women should take better care of their children, she buzzed to herself.
"Excuse me," she said to Professor Garrabrandt, and he swung his legs out again to let her in. She sank into her seat, a dull, sickening throb of fear in her stomach. What could she do? She looked out the window and imagined transporting, imagined herself plummeting down through the silky soft floor of clouds beneath them. She wondered if they had parachutes in these planes. They probably did. She imagined herself dangling from a parachute in the middle of Kansas. She had no idea how parachutes worked. Maybe the nice pilot could show her. What a stupid thought, She told herself. Stop it!
The pilot had sounded nice and friendly on the loud speaker. She could go to him, tell him it was a terrible, life-threatening emergency. She had to land now.
"What sort of emergency, Ma'am?"
"Well, you see, I'm a time traveler, and there's this man or shadow or something following me back there in seat 17C, and he's going to whisk me off into darkness if I don't get out of here."
The pilot would say he understood completely, of course, and immediately land in a wheat field or something. She stifled a hysterical little laugh rising in her throat.
She traced with her fingers the contours of the time watch on her wrist. She looked out the window again. The floor of clouds stretched for as far as she could see. She glanced back toward the wing and saw the blur of the spinning twin propellers.
A tube. She was traveling at over four hundred miles per hour in a stupid, blue tube miles above the surface of the planet. She would not see Marie again. She would not see John again. She would die here in 1946. The staring man would make her die. The darkness was just a trick. Beyond the darkness was death. "It's almost like he's ... playing with us," she had told John.
"But for keeps!" John had answered.
And, John had been right. The man wasn't playing with them at all. He wanted them flat out of there. Out of where they were. And, now, he had Claire cornered. She could almost feel his eyes, those dark and horrible dispassionate eyes, chewing through the headrest of her seat behind her. She dared not look back, but kept glancing toward the aisle, expecting that at any moment he would appear there. He would come there in the aisle and stand and stare at her, and Franklin Garrabrandt wouldn't be able to see him, because he would make himself invisible to everyone in the plane except Claire.
They shouldn't have come. The whole idea had been stupid. They should have simply wished for ten or twenty million from the Genie and let it go at that. Take contemporary vacations, like normal people. Normal people don't get Genies, her brain said.
Oh, shut up, she answered silently. How the hell is that relevant?
She closed her eyes and tried to turn off the screaming and insane voices in her head that always seemed to come when she was frightened. She tried to find a quiet place inside where she could go to escape the fear, or maybe face it, or come to terms with it. She searched deep inside for her grassy place. Whenever fear and anxiety overcame her, her last refuge was always the grassy place. It was a sort of secret garden she had invented years before. It was actually a place she felt she had discovered rather than invented or created. It was in a deep, lush, and enchanting forest, which broke into a sort of small clearing where a peaceful brook flowed. An exquisite tiny fawn was usually there, drinking at the brook. It turned and saw her, but never ran away. It was as though the fawn knew her, knew her soul, and was waiting for her. She would lie down in the luxuriant grass beside the brook and the warm sunshine would encircle her, the soft green blades of grass caressing her cheek. The fawn would come near her, nuzzle her. She would always find here the comfort and renewal she needed to do whatever difficult task, or to walk through whatever fearful thing there was in her life. John was the only living person she had ever told about the grassy place. It was in the moment she had told him, soon after they had met, that she had known that she would marry him and be with him forever.
It had been to the grassy place that she had gone that night in the club car, the first time they had seen the staring man. It had been somehow through the grassy place that she had been able to escape the darkness. But now, in the blue tube, so far above the earth, so far away from John and Marie and everything that was familiar in her life, she couldn't find the place. The forest wasn't there.
Maybe you have to face this outside rather than inside, she thought to herself. She remembered John's experience of walking into the darkness, but also toward the man. She could do that. Take a deep breath and get up and walk back and approach him. "What did you think of the inauguration?" she could ask. That would be a good conversation opener. "Did you get inside to hear the speech?" And then ... what was the question they were going to ask? Oh, right: "By the way, how many pasts are there, potentially?"
Another thought came to her. Maybe it isn't him. It had looked like him, but maybe she had simply been projecting. She had just been thinking about him the moment before, in the rest room. After all, he wasn't even looking at her when she came out, just staring harmlessly out the window across the aisle. That blue sports coat wasn't like him, either. When she had seen him before, he was in gray. The sports coat was out of character, not dreary enough.
"Is there something wrong?" asked Franklin Garrabrandt.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You seem distressed. I wondered if something was wrong."
"Why, no. Nothing's wrong." She didn't want to lie to him. Instead, she wanted to blurt it out. He looked so intelligent, spoke so wisely, that perhaps he would understand, even help her figure out a solution. But that was stupid. Of course he wouldn't. He would conclude, quite reasonably, that she was entirely insane. This pleasant and attractive woman reading When Democracy Builds was in fact a lunatic. Garrabrandt was an intelligent man, probably highly respected, with connections, and these were the days when intelligent, highly respected people with connections, especially men, could get other people, especially women, committed to actual lunatic asylums. Old fashioned loony bins, where they overdosed people on insulin and metrazol to get them properly zoned out.
Shut up! she screamed at herself.
She suddenly felt the chill of utter isolation. She was living with a reality of such colossal proportions, compared with whatever the reality was of the distinguished man sitting beside her, that no conceivable bridge of understanding could begin to be built between them. No words could traverse that distance, no philosophy could link them.
Impulsively, she raised up in her seat and turned back to look again at the staring man.
The seat where he had been was empty.
After Claire's plane had turned into a speck in the sky and disappeared from view, John took a cab from LaGuardia across the Brooklyn bridge to the cigar shop. As he was unlocking the door, he was approached by a nicely dressed, dark haired man in his late twenties.
"Hi, there," the man said. "You the new owner?"
"I am," said John.
"I'm Bernard Jacobson," the man said, extending his hand. "I rent upstairs."
"Oh, hello," said John. "John Banister. Sorry we haven't gotten up to see you. I didn't think there was a rush since we aren't planning any changes."
"Well, that's a relief," said Bernard. "I was worried because the store hasn't been opening the last few days. Mr. Kline called and told us he sold."
"Two of you upstairs, right?"
"Yes, Brian Wilson and me."
"You're both brokers?"
"Yep. Let me know if I can be of service. I've got some nice criteria for blue chips, and things are undervalued right now."
"Yeah, things are down a bit, so I hear."
"Great time to buy. We're in for a lot of activity after the Republicans take over Congress in November."
"I expect we are," John smiled. "Well, I'll let you know. We're probably going to want to buy a short list in the next few days, in fact."
"Great! I'll be here. So, no change in rent upstairs? I always brought the check down to Mr. Kline on the tenth of the month."
"No change for now. Just drop it in the mail slot. I appreciate it. Make the check out to Walker Creek Enterprises." John pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket, wrote it down, and handed it to Bernard.
"Thanks." Bernard put the paper in his pocket. "You going to reopen the store soon? I miss stopping in the mornings."
"Oh, before long, I'm sure."
"Pleased to meet you," Bernard said, shaking hands again.
John went into the cigar store and locked the door behind him. He went into the back room and transported six days ahead to Friday, September 27th.
He dressed, grabbed some scratch paper, and took a cab to the City Library. He went to the periodicals section and reviewed the baseball scores for the past six days. He decided to steer clear of the horses. He presumed that there was less of a chance that the baseball games were fixed. He did look at horse race outcomes, however, because the winning numbers on the lottery that the kid Lennie ran were the last three digits of the combined payoff totals of the horses finishing first, second, and third at Belmont in the first three races. John planned to lose heavily four days in a row, then hit the number on the fifth day, which would be Wednesday, the 25th. A direct hit on the number would pay over three hundred to one. His eyes glanced up at the other Wednesday winners. Why not? he thought. Lay off the horses until Tuesday, and then come in with a handful of daily doubles. He smiled, and made some notes. There had also been two prizefights on Monday, one of which was a third round knockout, and three more on Wednesday. He didn't think there would be any repercussions if he won both the Monday ones fairly big, even if they were fixed, because they were in different parts of the country, and he would spread the bets around using different names.
He finished his notes and casually scanned the rest of the paper. His mind wandered. He missed Claire. It felt very lonely back here without her. He began getting a headache. He couldn't concentrate on the stories in the paper. He was getting tired, and suddenly a little confused. He kept scanning the paper as though searching for something in particular, but he couldn't quite remember what. Something was there. It was like trying to recall a dream right after awakening. His headache intensified.
He closed the paper and left, taking a taxi back to the cigar store. He sat for a few moments doing mnemonic tricks Claire had taught him with the information he had gathered, and then transported back to Saturday.
It was nearly ten o'clock. He had to rush to catch Lennie. He went to the hotel, feeling better, got sixty thousand in cash out of the safe, went downstairs to the Barber shop, and placed a baseball bet with Harrison.
Lennie was doing business with some customers. The kid lit up when he saw John. They walked outside together. Just inside the hotel garage entrance was a bench, and they sat down. John gave Lennie two thousand dollars and wrote down three numbers on the slip of paper Lennie gave him, and then he gave the kid another fifty dollar tip. Lennie looked at the fifty dollar bill and put it his pocket.
"Boy, nobody never tipped me like that when they lose," he said, shaking his head.
"Well," said John, "I been doing pretty good on some other deals lately, so I'm just trying to pass the good luck around a little."
Lennie gave him a strange look.
"Where you from, Lennie?"
"I live in the Bronx."
"I mean originally." The kid spoke with a heavy accent, and John couldn't place it.
Lennie got an expression of pain mixed with suspicion. "I live in the Bronx."
"How did you get mixed up in this numbers business?" John asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You seem like a nice kid, really smart. This is sort of a dangerous business you're in, isn't it? You go to school?"
"I was in school for awhile," said Lennie. He looked intently at John. John was almost startled by the depth of the sad, mysterious, and searching brown eyes.
"Got a family?"
Lennie nodded, and a glimmer of lightness came to his face. He smiled. "My ma. She's really a good ma."
"Brothers and sisters?"
Lennie nodded. "I gotta go make my rounds," he said, standing up.
John stood up too, and Lennie drifted toward the street.
"See you tomorrow," said John. "You come around on Saturday?"
Lennie stopped, turned, and smiled a suddenly radiant smile. He nodded, and than turned and trotted down the street.
John watched him disappear around the corner, and then walked toward midtown. He spent the morning and early afternoon walking the rounds of the six bookmakers. He hung around the places, leisurely chatting and drinking coffee. He made his bets tentatively, feigning nervousness and uncertainty. He split the baseball bets fairly evenly between winning and losing games. His last stop was Tommy Connors's pool hall. He had a pastrami sandwich and shot a few billiard games. When he left, he had two hundred dollars left from the sixty thousand.
He spent the rest of the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Claire filled his thoughts.
When Claire saw the empty seat where the staring man had been sitting, she looked frantically around the cabin, but he was nowhere to be seen. Franklin Garrabrandt turned and looked at her curiously.
"Are you certain there's nothing wrong?" he asked.
She settled back in her seat. "Actually, there is." She looked at him. Then, the thought occurred to her that Franklin Garrabrandt himself was the staring man. If the staring man could turn into an old woman and a Desoto at the same time, he could certainly be Franklin Garrabrandt and at the same time sit, as he had, in the back of the plane.
Claire, My Dear, said her brain, if he can be an old woman and a Desoto, don't you think it's just possible that he can be an airplane and all the people in it? Why just Garrabrandt? Why not pilot, crew, passengers, this blue tube plummeting though the heavens? It's all him!
Panic swept her. She looked out the window again as though, now that she had figured it out and he had had his little charade, the darkness would come next. The clouds did seem to be building. She fingered her time watch and set it for "Home." She toyed with the lever, ready to press it the instant the darkness came. That was, of course, her only escape. Assuming he doesn't have the power to intervene in that. Even if he didn't, and she successfully transported home from here, back to the moment they left, John would be frantic when she failed to return to New York. She would have just disappeared. He would come looking for her, and would think something horrible had happened. He would go to the bluff and transport to August 19, as they had agreed, but she would not be there. Eventually, he would transport home. She recalled the curious fact that they would both arrive home in any case at the same instant.
Still, it would ruin everything. The photos would be lost. Her journal. Maybe John would fix the corporation before he came back, so at least they would have the money. Maybe he would get the pictures from Bekins Van and Storage too, and bury them somewhere. But maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he would be too worried about her. Maybe he wouldn't be there when she got back! What if something happened to him back here?
Or, the Genie had said the wish would be over as soon as they returned home. Did that mean when both of them returned home? Maybe her returning would end it, and then John would be trapped back here! Maybe it would make his watch disintegrate, too!
She wished she could call him. She looked around stupidly to see if there was an in-flight telephone above the seat.
"Is there anything at all I can do?" the professor asked. "You seem terribly upset."
"I'm being followed," Claire suddenly said.
"Oh, really?" he said, alarmed. "By whom? Are you in trouble?"
"I don't know who he is. He's been following my husband and me for a long time. We have no idea what he wants."
"How frightening!" said the professor. "He's on the plane?"
"He was. He was sitting a few seats back. I saw him when I went to the rest room. I just looked back, and he's gone."
The professor glanced back down the aisle. Claire was afraid to look again. Then, she suddenly heard herself asking him, "Do you think time travel is possible?"
"Time travel? Oh, well, that's an interesting question. Where would one go, exactly?"
"To the past."
"Oh, yes, but where exactly? I mean, let's say we wished to return to the moment that our airplane here was taking off, when we first met. The presumption is that that was some place to which we could return. In fact, though, there is no such place. There is only the present moment."
"But that happened. We would go back to when that happened."
"It happened, yes, but when it did, it too was only the present moment. There is, in reality, only ever the present moment. There is no past to which to return. We invent the past as a way of marking memory in linear terms. It's just a philosophical construct. There is no past, nor future either. Only the present."
"But that moment was real."
"Yes, it does seem to have had an integrity about it, doesn't it?" he smiled.
"And, if that was the present moment, and this is the present moment, then that isn't very far away, is it? So, traveling there seems a feasibility."
"Hmm. That's very interesting reasoning," he said.
"On the other hand, if there is, in reality, no there, then there can't he a here either."
"Well, that's precisely the case. It's all just a construct."
"Then there is no reality."
"Oh, there is, but I think it's beneath the illusion of what it appears to be through our senses, beneath the illusion of what we think it is. We think, 'all right, here is today, and there is tomorrow, and over there is yesterday,' and so on, but it doesn't ever occur that way in fact. It's just a succession of 'nows.'"
"What if ..." a little red light labeled "lunatic" went on in her head, but she said it just the same. "What if there is more than one now?"
The professor stroked his chin thoughtfully. "This is conceivable," he said.
"Parallel realities. Parallel universes."
"You might argue hypothetically then," he said, "that each reality has its own integrity apart from the others."
"Except," said Claire, "they may be connected somehow."
"So, one travels, in your view, not back in time, but across realities. That would be a difficult thesis to refute, there being no basis for it in conscious thought or logic."
"Why would you want to refute it?"
Garrabrandt darkened.
Bad question, thought Claire.
"This all seems a bit far a field from someone following you," the professor said a little sullenly.
"I only ask because you seem to have so much wisdom," said Claire. She tried not to sound patronizing. "May I ask you another question?"
Garrabrandt brightened a bit. "Certainly," he said.
She took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's suppose, by virtue of there being parallel realities of some sort, that time travel were possible, even given that we can't imagine how it might work. And let's say that you made such a trip, back in time, across realities, whatever. And let's say that while you were there, you became aware that you were being mysteriously followed by someone who apparently didn't want you there. What would you think? What would you do?"
The man cleared his throat and settled back in his seat. "That's a fairly odd proposition," he said pensively. "I should think that I would certainly wish to approach him and ask him what on earth he wanted."
"But he has some power. Some force he carries with him that threatens to destroy you."
Garrabrandt readjusted himself and cleared his throat again. His countenance had changed.
Over the edge, thought Claire. Should have kept my mouth shut.
"Let me give that a little thought," he said, standing up. "I'll be right back."
Off to make the arrangements at the loony bin, thought Claire as he moved away up the aisle. He'll tell the piot we've got another one, have him radio on ahead. The men in white suits will be on the runway in L.A. waiting for me. I'll be diagnosed as having hysteria. Nothing a hysterectomy and a little i.v. insulin for a few days won't fix right up. Maybe a lobotomy for good measure. Then spend the rest of my days in some institution sitting in a wicker wheel chair with a blanket over my knees, buzzing quietly to myself. That's what they do with hysterical women in the good old days. She became angry at Garrabrandt. What an asshole, she thought. Unimaginative, linear bastard. As soon as they touched down at LA, she decided, she'd grab his arm and scoot them back to the fourteenth century or so. That'll make a believer out of him. See if he thinks I'm crazy then! She suppressed a frenzied giggle as she pictured a stark naked Professor Franklin Garrabrandt standing bewildered on a sand dune in fourteenth century Los Angeles. "Hey, baby," she would say. "This is now. What do you think?"
She impulsively rose again in her seat and glanced back. The aisle seat where the staring man had sat was still empty.
Garrabrandt came back and sat down and lit his pipe. She braced herself for a verdict of insanity. She should have kept her mouth shut.
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I look at the problem this way. Since the place to which you had traveled would have, we are presuming, its own integrity, albeit perhaps linked with this one in some subliminal fashion, we would need to assume that different rules of logic applied. However, I happen to be of the opinion that there are no absolutely evil forces in any reality. Evil does not exist apart from good. Therefore, since you would clearly be on some wild and playful adventure anyway, I would try something wild and playful with your 'evil' man. I wouldn't panic. I would gamble that he was, in all probability, just an imp of one sort or another. A joker, perhaps. I would make up some wild, unbelievable story and tell it to him. Confound him."
Claire stared at him for a moment, somewhat mesmerized.
"You know," he smiled, "there's a great character in one of the Sherwood Anderson stories in his book Winesberg, Ohio. This old gentlemen roams about the village wearing a long overcoat with great, deep pockets. Insights about the universe come to him, from the trees and so on, and he jots them down on scraps of paper and stuffs them in the coat pockets." Garrabrandt abruptly took the pipe out his mouth, turned, and placed a large hand on Claire's knee, staring at her intently. "Then," he said, "when the pockets are full, he walks up to a stranger, retrieves a handful of paper scraps from his pocket, flings them at the stranger, and says, 'This is to confound you!'"
The professor settled back in his seat and put the pipe back in his mouth. "That would be my approach to this fellow," he mused. He pulled a watch out of his vest pocket and snapped it open "Well, we should be landing before long. We have just magically traveled three hours forward in time." He smiled as he adjusted the dial on the watch and put it back in the pocket. "Actually, your notion of going back in time is a very valuable construct. We often advance only by retreating. We actually need to go back to the place from which we started in order to place current events in their proper context, and to have good and healthy visions of the future. If we don't, we remain rather stupid, innocent and arrogant. If we live only in the past, on the other hand, we eventually become just cynical, and that's no good either. In one way, the trouble with politicians is that they refuse to be good time travelers. This is why things like this happen." He tapped his finger on a picture of Henry A. Wallace in the New York Times beside him. "A splendid and articulate pacifist, a mindful time traveler, is out of a job."
Claire readjusted herself in her seat, quiet for a few moments. "Thanks for your insights," she said softly. "I'm most grateful. I feel that you have helped me a lot."
"Well, I'm delighted, and you're entirely welcome. I hope that fellow won't bother you anymore." He smiled at her, and then rested his head back and closed his eyes.