Alignment
At twelve minutes past five, Tess announced that, with only ten minutes to go, it was time to turn on the radio and get it properly tuned. Maxwell’s Island still sat in darkness, the earliest threads of dawn at least an hour away.
“This could take four or five minutes,” she said, “and I want to be out of the circle in plenty of time. Don’t want to end up like Harry Maxwell did in this universe.”
“They just need to be inside the circle,” Tess had said. “That’s all that matters.”
“We didn’t have any choice,” said Vivian.
“We didn’t have to give them a ride over here.”
“They had the radio,” said Vivian. “What were we supposed to do?”
“We could have bought guns,” said Richard. “We could have laid in wait.”
“Aren’t you a little old for an ambush?”
“One thing’s for sure,” said Richard, “after this I won’t be president of the Paradox Club.”
“President Pilgrim 3,” said Vivian. “It has a certain ring to it.”
“More of a clang,” said Richard.
Tess was proud of how well Richard and Vivian were playing their parts.
Clearly their conversation had at least partially distracted Pilgrim 3 from the events inside the circle.
Richard had powered up the generator a few minutes earlier, so thirty seconds after Tess turned the knob on the Philco, the familiar smell of its warming tubes washed her in memories.
After a few more seconds, the sound of music faded in.
Tess turned up the volume on the radio so that those standing outside the circle could hear it.
Pilgrim 3 actually felt sorry for Calvin 4.
All he had in life was his presidency and he was about to lose that.
For her, though, the presidency of the Paradox Club was a mere byproduct of the glory to come.
Anderson Tait would get the whole alignment, portal, and crossover on video.
She would explain the science to him in the car on the way back to Madison and within twenty-four hours he would sell the story to the mainstream media, and she’d be on the cover of every newspaper in the world as the woman who visited another universe.
The Paradox Club would not only become her personal dominion, but it would also become the center of the worldwide scientific community.
She would be showered with honorary doctorates, she’d visit the White House and Buckingham Palace, she’d pull in a hundred thousand dollars a pop for lecture appearances and would write a book that would top the bestseller list. And all that would be just the beginning.
Still, she found listening to Calvin 4 and Ardan 1 rehash the past few hours and talk about what they might have done to stop her highly amusing.
There was nothing they could have done. She would have gotten Montag 5 to build a raft and float her over to the island if it had been necessary.
Nothing could have stopped her then and nothing was going to stop her now.
In just over eight minutes, she would be the greatest scientist who ever lived.
* * * *
As the music from the radio drifted out from the circle, Richard said, “That’s a Mozart piano concerto. Number twenty-three if I’m not mistaken.”
“You are mistaken,” said Vivian. “It’s number twenty-four.”
“It has a tendency to lose the signal and go to static,” shouted Tess. “I’ll keep it tuned as best I can, but let me know when I have a minute to go, so I can get out of the circle.” She turned the volume slightly higher as the piano played for the first time.
“Do you know this one?” said Richard to Pilgrim 3. “Is it twenty-three or twenty-four?”
“I didn’t come here to talk about Beethoven,” said Pilgrim 3.
“Nobody said anything about Beethoven,” said Richard.
“It’s Mozart,” said Vivian.
“I don’t care,” said Pilgrim 3, showing a flash of anger and, for a few seconds, turning her back to the circle to shout at Richard and Vivian.
Worried about the clouds overhead that might roll across the nearly full moon at any moment, Anderson Tait was attaching an ultrasensitive lens to his high-resolution video camera.
He had set up a tripod and mounted the camera facing the circle about thirty feet away, with a wide enough angle to capture anything that happened amid those charred tree trunks.
But, in attaching the lens, he had his back to the circle.
That didn’t matter, of course, because attaching the lens would take only thirty seconds, and he still had eight minutes until whatever it was that this woman everyone called Pilgrim 3 wanted him to record.
Seeing the way in which they were annoying Pilgrim 3 with their meaningless chatter, Montag 5 stepped closer to Richard and Vivian and grabbed them each by the elbow, gripping hard enough to cause pain. He enjoyed that moment more than any since he had landed on this godforsaken island.
“You two shut up,” he said. “Pilgrim 3 doesn’t give a good goddamn what’s playing on that radio and neither do I.”
But at that moment—when Pilgrim 3 was still turned away from Tess and the circle and when Anderson Tait still stood in front of his camera adjusting the lens—the argument about which Mozart piano concerto emanated from the radio became moot.
The music turned to static—a static unlike anything any of them had ever heard, except Vivian.
She knew exactly what that static meant and saw that Tess had been right in her assumption. Once again, Harry was running the show.
The radio crackled with all the subtlety of a thunderstorm, emitting a roar that caused Tait to cover his ears and Montag 5 to release his grip on Vivian and Richard.
Pilgrim 3 whirled around to see the entire circle glowing in a greenish light so bright she could hardly make out Tess standing at its center.
This couldn’t be it, she thought. They still had eight minutes to go.
And as that thought formed in her head, Tess disappeared.
Pilgrim 3 shrieked and dashed toward the circle and its unearthly glow as the three UFOs she had so carefully arranged followed Tess into apparent nothingness, along with the radio.
The circle was only a few feet away and the portal would be open for thirty-seven seconds, according to Tess.
But now, Pilgrim 3 doubted everything Tess had told her.
Obviously, she could be inside the circle when the alignment arrived.
Tess hadn’t caught fire like Harry Maxwell had; she had simply slipped into the other universe.
So, she had lied about that. But how did she know the alignment would come eight minutes early?
Vivian would explain it to Richard afterward.
“Harry kept precise time here on Maxwell’s Island,” she said.
“But the phrase precise time didn’t mean the same thing to Harry as it did to most people.
The longitude of Maxwell’s Island is eighty-seven degrees and fifty-nine minutes.
Harry reasoned that when it was noon at ninety degrees longitude, where Central Time was calculated, it was twelve oh eight and four seconds on Maxwell’s Island. ”
“And since he assumed he’d always experience the alignments on Maxwell’s Island,” said Richard, “his calculations were all in Maxwell’s Island time, just over eight minutes ahead of Central Time.”
Her right hand was the first part of Pilgrim 3 to enter the circle.
She felt a sharp pain radiating up her arm, but she had neither the time nor the inclination to consider its implications.
What was a little pain compared to scientific immortality?
As she hurled her body past the burnt tree stumps, the circle still glowed as brightly as ever, and to those watching she took on the green hue of that otherworldly light.
She had made it, she thought. Any second now she’d be looking into another universe.
Her entire body stung with pain, but she didn’t care.
She dove toward the spot where Tess, the radio, and the Maxwell’s Island UFOs had stood seconds earlier, but it felt as if her body hit a brick wall.
She hadn’t landed on the ground but merely bounced back upright.
She tried again with the same result. Barely able to stand, she stepped more gingerly toward the spot for her third attempt.
As she reached with her foot toward the place where she could see the indentation in the dirt made by the vanished radio, an unseen force threw her to the ground, where she lay burning with pain and firmly in the universe she had occupied for her entire life.
The green light exploded in a flash of brightness and the pillars of pine tree stumps flared like candles for a few seconds before the circle was plunged back into darkness.
“That was nowhere near thirty-seven seconds,” said Montag 5.
“I guess Tess wasn’t as good at math as she thought,” said Richard, doing his best to hide his smile.
“But Pilgrim 3 got there in time,” said Montag 5. “She made it to the circle before the portal closed. Why didn’t she cross over?”
Pilgrim 3 still lay, moaning, in the center of the circle. Wisps of smoke curled up from the charred remains of Harry Maxwell’s circle of trees, but this time the fire had lasted only a second and had been confined to the circle.
“Maybe that universe doesn’t want her any more than this one does,” said Vivian.
“You’re a member of the Paradox Club, aren’t you, Montag 5?” said Richard.
“You know I am,” said Montag 5.
“Then as your president, I’m ordering you to help the ex–keeper of the vault, Pilgrim 3, into the boat. I’ll take the first group over and be back to get you two in a bit.”
Montag 5 sighed deeply and obeyed his president.
In the canoe on the way to the boat landing, Richard turned to Anderson Tait.
“Listen, Mr. Tait,” said Richard. “How would you like to become a member of a secret scientific society based right in the middle of New York City? You wouldn’t be allowed to write about the society’s work or disclose its existence or raison d’être, but you’d have access to some of the top scientific minds on the planet in your fellow members. ”
“Why do I sense that there is a quid pro quo involved in this offer?”
“Because there is.”
“And what do you want me to do in return for my membership in your secret society?”
“Bury this story.”
“Listen, Mr. Pollard, I’m not even sure what this story is.
A woman I’ve met maybe twice in my life phones me up to say she’s on the brink of the greatest scientific breakthrough in history.
Then, instead of taking me to CERN or some other likely spot for a leap forward in human knowledge, she drags me to this remote island in the wilds of Wisconsin.
I see—I don’t know what I saw—a green light, a lightning strike, a fire, all of the above.
I do think I saw a rainbow above that circle of tree stumps, but that was probably your green light refracting in the mist. Anyhow, when it was over and my eyes readjusted to the moonlight, all that’s happened as far as I can tell is she’s incinerated a couple of old books and an antique radio, and a girl has disappeared with a piece of jewelry.
All the patter about parallel universes and portals and math—that was entertaining.
But as far as the actual trick is concerned—I’ve seen more impressive shows on the Vegas Strip.
This is hardly a story for the National Enquirer, much less Scientific American. ”
“Then we understand each other,” said Richard.
“I suppose we do.”