Finding Philco
“Are you Herbert?” asked Marie cheerfully.
“The one and only,” said the old man, in a voice that belied his age. “How may I help you this fine day?”
“I’m looking for a few odd bits in my grandmother’s china pattern. Cups and saucers and a milk jug that have gotten cracked or chipped over the years.”
“And what was her pattern?”
“I don’t know the name, but I’d recognize it.”
“Indeed,” said the man, stroking a few wisps of hair on his chin that hardly deserved the moniker beard.
Harry smiled as he listened to Marie work, all the while holding his hand out in the direction of one object after another.
Half of an oak barrel, a glass inkstand, a Kodak Brownie camera, a gilt picture frame—each felt dull and cold when Harry touched them.
“Come with me,” said the man, leading Marie toward a narrow flight of stairs. “As the sign says, I keep the china upstairs where the bulls won’t knock it about.”
Harry marveled at the spryness with which Herbert mounted the stairs, but as soon as the old man was out of sight, he set to work more deliberately touching every object in the shop one at a time.
He could hear the murmur of voices from above and knew it would be only a matter of time before the antiquarian concluded he had no china in the fictitious pattern of Marie’s grandmother.
A leatherbound family bible, a salt cellar with a miniature silver spoon, a globe on a wrought iron stand, a lamp with a mica shade—Harry felt nothing.
But the charge of the untethered object emanated from this corner, thought Harry.
No doubt the big board was flashing red and Pilgrim 3 would soon be dispatching one of her minions to Chicago.
He heard the clink of dishes upstairs and knelt on the floor, pulling back a moth-eaten tapestry that hung off the front of an oak table.
And there, amid the cobwebs under the table, stood a Philco Model 70 Baby Grand Cathedral tabletop radio.
Harry did not recognize it as such—he only knew it was an old radio, he’d say from the 1930s if he had to guess.
The second he touched it, the buzz of another universe was amplified tenfold so that he could feel it, or so it seemed, on an atomic level.
The sensation was so strong, Harry wasn’t sure he’d be able to lift the radio and carry it to the counter, but he managed, collapsing against the marble countertop just as Marie and Herbert reappeared.
“Are you all right, dear?” said Marie.
Harry wiped the sweat from his brow with a sleeve and stood up straight. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Just one of my spells. I wonder, how much for the old radio?”
“Goodness me,” said Herbert. “Where did you find that?”
“Just in among the…treasures,” said Harry, waving his arm to encompass the entire shop.
“My mind’s going,” said Herbert. “I used to remember every item in the shop. But I don’t remember ever seeing this.” He ran a finger along the top of the radio, then wiped the dust off onto his rumpled shirt.
“Memory is a funny thing,” said Harry. “But I would be interested.”
“It won’t work, you know,” said Herbert.
“I want it more as a decorative piece.”
“Fifty dollars?” said Herbert uncertainly.
“If you’ll throw in a box for me to carry it in,” said Harry, “we can call it a deal.”
Harry phoned Richard as soon as he had the radio back in the hotel where he and Marie were spending their weekend in the big city.
“You’re sure it’s a UFO?” said Richard.
“Positive,” said Harry. “I’ve never felt such a strong pull.”
“It’s just odd,” said Richard.
“What’s odd?”
“I’m at the club right now, and I was just downstairs. The big board is nothing but green lights.”
Harry digested this piece of information for a moment before responding.
If the radio was not on the big board, that meant Pilgrim 3 didn’t know about it and couldn’t trace it.
Which meant Harry could have private access to a powerful untethered foreign object without any interference from the keeper of the vault.
“I’ll be back in Madison tomorrow,” he said to the president.
“Don’t you think you should bring it to the club, if it really is a UFO?” said Richard.
“Of course, of course,” said Harry. “I just want to…get it working first.”
“Harry,” said Richard, his voice rising in warning, “don’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t,” said Harry, before adding, “not without consulting the club first.” Before Richard could respond, he hung up.
Harry had every intention of informing the membership of the Paradox Club, including Pilgrim 3, about the radio.
But he knew as soon as Pilgrim 3 found out about this newly discovered artifact, she’d want to lock it away in the vault—in what amounted to her private safe—where Harry would never see it again.
Before that happened, Harry wanted to understand what he had found and what it might mean.
The next day he stopped by the engineering department, where Professor Napier was known to dabble in vintage electronics.
“Where did you get these?” Napier asked Harry, turning the tubes from the Philco over in his hands.
“I’m restoring an old radio,” said Harry.
“I’ve never seen any exactly like these. But I think I have some that will work.” He scrounged through several wooden boxes and presented Harry with six vacuum tubes that looked similar to the blackened ones he had removed from the Philco.
“Have all your grades in?” asked Napier.
“Just about,” said Harry. “Headed to the lake in a few days.”
Harry took those days to construct a copper shield that he fitted inside the radio and a small antenna that extended through the shield.
To anyone else the shield would look like an ordinary part of the interior of the radio.
But if, as Harry suspected, turning the radio on would cause the big board to light up, the copper over the top of the radio’s inner workings should block it from the detection, and, by extension, the probing of the Paradox Club.
The antenna would circumvent that obstruction and allow the radio to receive signals.
He didn’t want to damage the radio’s case with glue or nails or screws.
So, he simply tented the copper shield over the vacuum tubes.
With careful handling of the Philco, the copper would stay in place.
At the lake, with the new radio tubes and the copper shield in place, Harry confirmed what he had suspected the moment he had walked into Herbert’s Antiques and Such.
The Philco was no ordinary untethered object.
The radio was something special. The broadcasts, with their coverage of Amelia Earhart’s successful flight around the world; the peaceful arrival of the airship Hindenburg in Lakehurst, New Jersey; and other altered versions of the history that Harry knew told him two things.
The radio was somehow receiving broadcasts from a parallel universe, and those broadcasts had originated in what was called in our universe the year 1937.
Harry listened for the whole summer and set to work on the math.