Harry and Vivian on the Dock
“Is she asleep?” said Vivian.
“She’s out of earshot,” said Harry.
“And Marie?”
“Ditto.”
“Why did you want me to meet you out here on the dock?” asked Vivian. “What’s so important that Tess and Marie can’t hear it?”
“It’s time for me to tell you the history of the island.”
“I thought I knew the history—your grandfather and all that.”
“Did you ever wonder how I came to be a member of the Paradox Club when I was only seventeen?”
“You’ve always been brilliant, Harry. I just assumed…”
“I was a legacy. My father was a member and his father before him. My grandfather died before I was born, and my father died—”
“When you were seventeen.”
“And I took his place in the club.”
“And were your father and grandfather as stubborn as you about not taking a club alias?” said Vivian.
Harry laughed. “No, I’m the first Maxwell to claim that distinction. My grandfather was Nemo 1. Dad wanted his own alias and became Lidenbrock 1. But there has always been a Maxwell in the Paradox Club.”
“Because of your grandfather?”
“Because of this island,” said Harry. “You know that I have tried to convince members of the club that there are certain physical locations in our universe that are particularly open to making connections with other universes, to receiving UFOs.”
“I’ve heard you argue that theory,” said Vivian.
“It’s not a theory,” said Harry. “It’s true. My grandfather knew it, my father knew it, and I know it. This island contains one of those places.”
“Your circle of trees?”
“How did you know?”
“I guessed,” said Vivian. “If you say someplace on this island is closely connected to other universes, it stands to reason it’s the one place you forbid everyone else to set foot.”
“My grandfather didn’t realize it at first, but he had a strong intuition when it came to UFOs.”
“Just like you.”
“Who knows how far back it goes in the family. My grandfather was on a fishing trip on this lake in the teens, before the Paradox Club was founded, before anyone knew about untethered foreign objects. He felt drawn to this place. Years later, he told his son, my father, that he didn’t understand it—he just knew he had to stay connected to this tiny, remote island.
So, he bought it. For years he came here every summer for a couple of weeks, pitched a tent, and fished.
His wife didn’t understand, but eventually he took his son along.
My father felt the same pull his father felt and one night, after a lightning storm, he crawled out of the tent and walked over to that circle of trees—the place where he had always felt most at peace on the island.
Sitting in the middle of the circle was a book—The Descent of Man. ”
“By Charles Darwin,” said Vivian.
“Yes. Charles Darwin. Only in this book, the author’s name was spelled with a double n. D-A-R-W-I-N-N.”
“Was that the first UFO to appear on the island?”
“The first that I know of. But the island has been here for thousands of years and chances are most UFOs are never recognized because they’re just chunks of rock or bits of sticks or clumps of grass.
My grandfather took the book to the librarian at his alma mater, Princeton, who referred him to a book collector named Morris Parrish just when Parrish and Albert Einstein were talking about founding the Paradox Club.
That’s how he ended up being a founding member. ”
“But the Darwinn book wasn’t the last UFO to appear here?”
“No,” said Harry. “After that night, my grandfather decided to build a cabin on the island. He even convinced my grandmother to come up once in a while. She was the one who found the next UFO.”
“Another book?”
“Gatsby the Great.”
“Didn’t the club used to use that book to test potential members?” asked Vivian.
“Yes,” said Harry. “By that time my grandparents were both members. My grandfather had intuition when it came to UFOs and what he called ‘thin places’—spots like the island that sometimes rubbed up against other universes. But my grandmother was actually a physicist, if only an amateur. She understood the science as well as anyone at the time. And she insisted they deposit Gatsby the Great at the club, where it could be protected.”
“And the book by Charles Darwinn with a double n?”
“In my library in Madison,” said Harry. “My grandfather never told his wife about that one, and it passed down to his son and eventually to me.”
“Did you ever find a UFO in the circle of trees?”
“Just one.”
“Where is it?”
“Right now, it’s here on the island.”
When she pressed him, Harry told Vivian the exact location of the UFO he had discovered on a restless night when he was sixteen.