back to Mozart’s day, you can, but I will have to charge a fee, and yes, it will be quite expensive. I suggest you talk to your parents about it. I can give them a demonstration, too. I am always here while the Fair is in town. This is a unique opportunity that may not come your way again.”
Carol nodded eagerly. “It’s like a miracle, Mr. Ishmail. I’ll talk to them about it tonight.”
“Very well. Now I must rest.” He held a limp hand to his brow. “Time travel is so exhausting---you have no idea.” He retreated behind the curtain.
As they walked away, Mathew couldn’t resist saying: “It’s a fake. I know it’s a fake. Do you believe any of this?”
Carol paused. “Yeah, but what if it’s true? What if he really does know how to time travel?”
“I’ll tell you one thing for sure, Carol. Your parents are never going to go for it. Never---much as your dad loves Mozart.”
“We should have found out the cost,” she said.
“How much do you think he wants?” he asked.
“Thousands,” she said. “I’d guess 10,000 dollars.”
“That’s all?” He thought about it. “Nah, you’re not even close. I’d say 50,000--minimum.”
“But we’ve got to pay for being right next to the dump. That’s a prize location,” she said, trying to suppress a giggle. “A hundred grand definitely.”
“With an elephant in the audience? Clowns? Zebras? Come on, Carol, he wants a million.” Now they were laughing so hard they could hardly stand up.
Mathew went back to being serious. “Carol, think about it. How the hell did he do it? How, how, how? What if the joke’s on us? We may have seen somebody actually time travel just now.”
He ran both hands through his hair. Neither of them was laughing now. “That’s what we’ve got to do, girl. And we’ve got to do it as soon as possible.”
By the time they were back in school the next day, they had come to a wider perspective on this time travel thing. Clearly they had been hoodwinked, they decided, but they couldn’t figure out how. “Let’s talk to Mr. Kabala about it after class,” said Mathew. He was the science teacher, a very boned-up, cool guy—for a teacher. They were embarrassed having to admit having their chain pulled so often all over the Fair, but one thing they knew: he’d be straight with them.
“Yes, you got your chain pulled,” he said with a dry smile. “But you’re going to be surprised by my answer. Is there such a thing as time travel? Yes, there seems to be something very similar to it---something right here on earth in the here and now. And no one understands it at all. It’s one of the universe’s great mysteries, and it may stay that way for a long, long time. Have you ever heard of quantum mechanics?”
They both shook their heads.
“We haven’t touched on it yet in class. Some scientists still think it’s a crock. It bothered the heck out of Einstein. It didn’t fit in at all with his notions of space and time, but experimentally it does seem to exist.”
He grabbed a piece of chalk and quickly drew a squiggle on the classroom black board.
“I’m talking about a property of very tiny objects like this electron that enables them to travel from one place to another more remote place instantly and invisibly. It’s called tunneling.” He erased the squiggle and redrew it several feet away on the other side of the board. “How do electrons do that? No one really knows. They just do it. But it’s definitely a species of time travel.”
“Wow,” said Carol.
“They might learn how to control it some day,” he said, “but not in your lifetimes or mine. We were simply born too soon. Listen, I’ve got another class starting in a minute. I better run.” He grabbed his notebook and dashed from the room.
Mathew stared after him, a look of wonderment on his face. “That’s a really amazing thing he told us,” said Mathew. “You know, I love science. To hell with being a lawyer or a doctor. I think I’ll be a scientist.”
“You keep changing your mind, Mathew. You’re already a clown. I’d stick with it.”
He threw the eraser at her and missed.
“What do we do now?” she wailed. “Try to turn ourselves into electrons? The fact is we’ve bombed out again. Maybe time travel exists—but us humans can’t do it.”
• FIVE •
“Well, we came through with flying colors,” said Dr. Pindler.
“What was that, George?” asked his wife. “Oh, I remember. The state was having a look at your books, you said. You must be relieved.”
“I am. They almost always find something. And in the end it costs money.” He was smiling broadly. When Carol crossed through the room he grabbed her and gave her a hug and a kiss.
“What’s up, Dad? You win the lottery?”
“In a way,” he said. “Listen, why don’t you invite Mathew over for dinner tonight?” She looked genuinely surprised. This almost never happened. “I mean, why not?”
“We haven’t got much food,” said her mom.
“It’s okay, Mom. He’s not on the football team. He’s not a big eater.”
“I’m kind of impressed with him,” said her dad. “He really knows some science.”
“How do you mean, Dad?”
“Remember what he was saying about looking back at Mozart composing from way out in space?”
“Yeah, 200 years out,” said Carol.
“I sort of brushed him off, but I’ve been thinking about it. You could conceivably do it if you could figure out a way to gather enough of those scattered lightbeams together. I’d be fun to talk to him about it.”
A bit later, Carol was on the phone with Mathew. “Hey, bozo,” she said to him. “You’re invited to dinner.”
“Am I hearing this right?” said Mathew.
“Yes,” she said. “But there’s a hitch. You absolutely must wear a clean shirt. My mom insists. You know how she is.”
“I absolutely won’t do it.”
“Tell you what. I’ll steal one of my dad’s shirts and slip it to you at the door. Let you borrow it, I mean. You will definitely give it back to him.”
“You mean take it off at the end of dinner?”
“You can wait till tomorrow and give it back to me at school. You will also take a shower and wear clean pants.”
“It better be the most wonderful dinner I ever had in my whole life.”
“You must also use a knife and fork.”
“What a total drag,” he said, but he was smiling. He’d only been asked over once before.
“Talk science,” she said. “Dad enjoys that. Tell him what Mr. Kabala said about tunneling.”
“And squeeze in Mozart somehow,” he said.
“You’ll be invited back for sure.”
For the first few minutes dinner was a very quiet affair. The most frequently heard words were “thank you” and “please.” Then, it started to get interesting. “How did you make out with the time traveling at the Fair?” asked Dr. Pindler.
“Not too well,” said Mathew. “These side-show folks made us a lot of promises—but they didn’t deliver much.”
“There was one exception,” said Carol. “A guy told us he was the one who’d invented time travel and, then, he gave us a demo.”
“So what’d you think?” said Carol’s mom.
“I figured he had to be lying”, said Carol, “but maybe he wasn’t. What he showed us seemed really real---like it might actually be time traveling. But we also had this feeling it was probably pretend. We just couldn’t be sure.”
Mathew described the white angel boy and his invisible leap from one place to another.
“It’s a trick, that’s all it is,” said Carol’s mom. “A simple magician’s trick.”
“So how do you think they did it?” asked Dr. Pindler.
“Well, don’t ask me,” she said. “I’m not a magician.??
?
“Oh, mom,” said Carol. “That’s a cop-out. Dad, you used to do magic tricks when I was little. You know how these guys do this stuff.”
Dr. Pindler took a quick, hard look at his wife and started in. “Yes, I was an amateur magician once, and like most magicians I belonged to a club. The Magic Makers we called ourselves. Yes, I know a guy in it who I’m sure can explain how it’s done. We meet, I mean met, every month.”
“Meet? What’s this?” asked his wife. She was pretty quick to catch onto the doctor using the present tense, thought Mathew.
“Are you telling us you’re still a member?” She looked surprised and disapproving. “George, I thought you’d given up this silliness.”
“I don’t go often,” he said, “but, yes, I do go. In fact, there’s a meeting tonight.” He looked at Carol and Mathew. “Want to come?”
“Count us in!” cried Carol. “Right, Mathew?”
“Why not,” he said.
Mrs. Pindler shook her head in exasperation.
The Magic Makers met at 7 p.m. in a basement room at the local library. The place was filling up fast by the time Carol and Mathew and her dad arrived. There was going to be a featured speaker, someone who would talk about the importance of talismans. “What the heck’s that?” asked Mathew.
“A talisman? It’s something that carries magical powers,” said Carol.
“Good definition,” said Dr. Pindler. “Like a jewel or a hat or a document---almost anything. I guess it’s about the only thing you two haven’t tried.”
“Can it turn us into electrons?” asked Mathew.
“I doubt it.” He was smiling. “But you never know. Look out now. Here comes more