Chapter 17. The Project
After we'd eaten, I knocked on Shep's door, but there was no answer. So we went downstairs and found him in the common room, just finishing up a stack of waffles with syrup and strawberries.
Angel took us over to her father's office again. This time the view was from the top of one end of a giant U-shaped waterfall. Maybe it was Niagara Falls, which I've never seen in person. Anyway, it was pretty dramatic.
We also met Mrs. Kirk, Heather she told us to call her. She had light-brown hair cut really short in a way that looked expensive, and she was wearing more makeup than my mom, almost as much as Aunt Jean. Even so, she reminded me more of my mom, because she seemed very laid-back and serene.
"My wife is an historian," Kirk told us. "She teaches at Lincoln. So do I. We're a pair o' docs."
He looked at us expectantly, so I grinned and said, "Pair of docs—paradox!" Shep almost groaned but restrained himself.
"Heather is actually the one who discovered the world you'll be going to, when she was doing some research," Kirk went on. "It's a one-off, a fluke, an anomaly. It isn't at all like the worlds on either side of it, although it should differ from them in only the tiniest degree."
"I think of it as a mutation," said Heather. Her voice was like Angel's, only a little deeper, very attractive. "Something happened at some point—we haven't found what or when yet—that didn't happen, and didn't resonate, in the worlds on either side. Whatever it was caused certain aspects of this world—not everything—to evolve in a different way."
"What do you mean, 'didn't resonate'?" I asked.
Heather looked at Andrew, and he gestured for her to go ahead.
"I'm an historian," she reminded us with a smile, "so I don't understand the, the technical parts very well. But maybe that means I can explain in a more comprehensible fashion.
"If something happens in a world, let's say our world and call it World One, it may well happen in Worlds Two, Three, Four, etc. And also in Worlds Zero, Minus One, Minus Two, and so on in the other direction. But eventually it sort of peters out. And in the worlds in which it's petering out, it doesn't actually happen, or not completely, but there's a, a reflection. For example, to take your own case, by maybe world 17 or so, you were run off the road but just sideswiped the tree. Maybe you were both slightly hurt. And by world 25, you missed the tree, and by world 50 you swerved but didn't leave the road. So even though an accident doesn't actually happen in world 50, there is a, what we call a resonance from it. Does that make sense?"
She turned to Andrew. "And is it more or less accurate?" she asked him.
"Yes," he smiled. "Very clear, I think. Do you understand?" he asked us, and we both nodded.
"So in this world," Heather continued, "the world we're talking about, the one-off world, there are almost no resonances. Or, no, that's not really true. It would be better to say that there are some things that just don't resonate, and some that don't even have counterparts in the immediately adjacent worlds."
"Or we hope they don't," said Andrew. "Go on and tell them about me."
"Well." She thought for a moment. "The Andrew Kirk in that world, let's call the world World A, for anomalous, and let's call that Andrew—let's call him Kirk A. Kirk A holds the same position on the Physics faculty of Lincoln University as in our world, but he's unmarried and has no children. He's also a very nasty man." She smiled and wrinkled her nose at her husband.
"He's possibly psychotic," she went on. "He's definitely a little, more than a little paranoid. He doesn't have many friends. He has discovered the TSA, and he's found a way to use it to play the stock market, so that he has a lot of money."
"I haven't done that," interrupted Andrew. "It would involve somebody leaving the TSA and living for a week or a month or a year in our world and then coming back and passing the stock tips on to someone who had stayed here in the TSA, who would then go back to the world a week or a month or a year ago, the time at which they, the second person had left—are you confused yet?" He shook his head and laughed.
"Too much trouble," he went on. "We do it in a minor way, with horse racing, for example, or in Las Vegas, because sometimes we need money for some aspect of our work, and because that only involves a day or even just a couple of hours, but none of us has tried to amass a personal fortune. Too much work. I'm sorry, love—go on."
"All right," she nodded. "Kirk A decided that the head of his department had it in for him. Then he decided that the department head was in cahoots with the president of the university. Anyway, he got more and more paranoid and decided that the university president—whose name is Craig Halloway, by the way, just like our president of Lincoln, so let's call him Halloway A—he decided Halloway A was going to cut off his funding, sabotage his research, have him fired, and destroy his reputation so that he could never work again. None of which is true, as far as we can tell.
"Why Kirk A even wants to go on working, when he has all that money—but anyway, he finally decided that in self-defense he would have to kill Halloway A. Or have him killed—he's a very smart man, smart enough not to even consider doing it himself. And another one of the anomalies of that world is that there are two people in it who don't exist in our world and don't seem to exist in the adjacent worlds, who work for Kirk A and do his dirty work.
"In that world, World A, they do kill Halloway A. We know that. We know Kirk tells them to, and we know that they boast about it afterward. Unfortunately, they have a cast-iron alibi for the time of the murder. We don't know how they do it.
"Maybe this is where you should take over," she suggested to Andrew.
"Right," he said. "This is where you two probably start thinking, wait a minute. If you guys here in the TSA can zero in on any time or place, can't you zero in on Halloway A's death and see who kills him? Which is a very good question, and the logical thing to do, and we did. And he died at one-thirty a.m. of a massive heart attack, lying in bed next to his sleeping wife.
"So your next question would be, wait a minute, didn't Kirk A tell his two minions how to kill Halloway A? And the answer is, we're pretty sure he did. But, he told them when they were all in the TSA. Their TSA. Which does not seem to be congruent with, does not seem to overlap our TSA, and which we cannot access.
"But we feel that it's extremely important to find out how they did it, because they obviously have a weapon, or anyway a method for killing, that is undetectable, that we don't know about. And it seems to us that that's a bad state of affairs. So we want to find out what this secret weapon is, and if possible how to counteract it."
"Wait," I said. "There's lots of ways of killing someone that look like a heart attack. Aren't there?"
"Not lots," answered Andrew, "but certainly a few. And none of them were used. He wasn't drugged. He wasn't poisoned. Nobody did anything to him, not at the time of death, not earlier that day. He had a slight cold, and he stayed home, in the house, with his wife, all day. And at one-thirty in the morning, he died. And the McDowells were very definitely and obviously somewhere else, a public place, in front of lots of witnesses, when he did."
"The McDowells?" asked Shep. "Those are Kirk A's dirty-tricks guys?"
"Yes," nodded Andrew. "They're twins—fraternal, not identical. Yancy and Yarnall McDowell. And they are not Yancy A and Yarnall A, remember—they're one of the anomalies. They don't exist in any of the adjacent worlds, or in ours."
"So you want us to—to shadow them?" Shep went on. "Into the—into their TSA, to see what Kirk A tells them—how he tells them to kill Halloway A?"
"That wouldn't work," I interrupted. "We're not detectives. There's no way we could shadow anybody unless they were pretty oblivious to the possibility of being followed, and anyway, there's no way to follow anybody into the TSA. Is there? And even if we could, wouldn't we immediately be identified by the people there as strangers?"
"This is the point at which we invite Nicholas Durwood to join us," said Andrew. He started to get up, but Heather jumped up f
irst and kissed Andrew on the forehead.
"Sit tight. I'll tell him to come in," she said to him. "You don't need me anymore, or Angel for that matter—you didn't actually need me in the first place, but I wanted to meet the two of you." She turned to us and grinned. "I'm sure I'll see you again." She started toward the door, then turned back and said, "In fact, why don't you two come to dinner with the three of us this evening?"
"We'd love to," I said immediately. "Thank you, Mrs.—Heather. Is there—I guess there isn't anything we could bring." I wished I could pop back home for a loaf of my mom's bread or some of her chutney or something, to take as a hostess gift.
"No, thanks," she said, "but it's sweet of you to offer. See you this evening," and to Angel, "Bye, honey," and then she did leave.
"Good," said Angel, and then looked down at her lap in a demure fashion. "I'm glad you're—you two are coming to dinner. I'll come find you when it's time and show you how to get there."
She looked at Andrew. "I guess Mom's right and you don't need me, do you, Daddy?" She got up and looked over at me. "See you—both this evening."
"Excuse me, sir," said Shep as she went out. "I have a question—or actually, a request."
"Yes?" Andrew gave him a sort of surprised look.
"In theory," Shep started, "We could go right now and do whatever you want us to do, and when we got back here from, uh, World A, it would still be right now. Right?"
"Yes." Andrew nodded. I had already figured out where Shep was going with this, and I was really glad, even though I was sort of sorry I hadn't thought to bring it up myself, because I think of myself as being maybe more diplomatic than he is. Then I remembered him with Aunt Jean and decided he would do fine.
"Later today we're invited to dinner at your house," Shep went on, "which is very kind of you. But if we weren't invited over, we could then, in theory, after our mission, be sent right back to our own world. And after dinner, we could—you were probably planning to send us right back. Or tomorrow morning.
"Sir"—Shep was being extra-polite—"would it be possible for us to stay a little bit? Just to—experience more of the TSA? Mitch got to do that a little while I was—recovering, but I've hardly seen anything. And this is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to either one of us. Except for the accident, which was exciting in the wrong way, and which I didn't actually experience anyway."
Andrew's forehead was wrinkled, and he was looking thoughtful, so I decided to step in.
"We know it's unnecessary, our presence here, for any longer than you actually need us," I said quickly. "But Shep's right. This is absolutely the most amazing, fantastic thing"—I didn't know whether I was glad or sorry Angel had left—"and the most unique and wonderful place that we've ever been to. Could—could we please stay on for a while? Just a couple of days?" I thought maybe I was beginning to sound whiny so I stopped.
And wouldn't you know it, before Kirk could answer, there was a knock on the door followed immediately by the entrance of Nicholas Durwood.
"Ah, Nick," said Kirk. "Join us. We've just gotten to the point where we need to explain to Mitch and Shep how they're going to shadow the McDowells into the alternate TSA and solve the mystery of Halloway A's death."
"Right," said Nick. "Greetings, Mitch, Shep." He nodded at each of us and sat down. "Welcome back. The reinsertion was unproblematic?"
"Yes," I said. "Very little disorientation."
"No problem," added Shep. "Minimal grogginess."
"Good. Excellent." He rubbed his hands together for a moment, looking at them and gathering his thoughts.
"You won't be shadowing the McDowells, not shadowing as such," he said finally. "This is going to sound absurdly far-fetched, even after what you've already seen and experienced. You'll just have to take my word for it that it is possible and that we have done it already, many times in fact.
"What we'll do is—in layman's terms, you understand, I'm not going to go into the technical details—what we'll do is put you, your bodies, to sleep here, in the TSA, and then insert your minds into Yancy and Yarnall." He stopped and looked at us. We looked back. I was too amazed to say anything, and I guess Shep was too.
"We won't replace their minds with yours," Nicholas went on after a moment. "We could do that—or not replace exactly but put their minds to sleep, as it were, and insert your minds into theirs in a dominant role. But we're not going to do that. You'll just be passengers, stowaways really, along for the ride, merely observing." Neither of us said anything.
"As they're twins," he continued, "it's a real stroke of luck for us to have found you two. You're not twins, not even brothers, but you're certainly very close and know each other very well. And that will make the preparation for the insertion much easier." We still weren't saying anything.
"Obviously, if you're inside someone's head as a stowaway, you can't control his body or speak through his mouth, so you two wouldn't be able to talk to each other. What we do, in order for the two of you to be in constant communication, is link your minds before we insert you."
"Link—? No," I said immediately. "No way. Absolutely not." My mind linked with Shep's? The idea was enough to totally creep me out. I didn't want anybody inside my mind with me, especially not Shep, not now.
"Yeah," agreed Shep. "Way too personal. Too—too eww."
Kirk and Nick were both smiling.
"Well," said Nick, "actually, everybody feels that way ahead of time." We must have looked surprised, because he went on, "Oh, yes, we've done this too, many times. We wouldn't try out experimental technology on you. Andrew and I have both been linked any number of times with any number of people, including each other."
No doubt we looked even more surprised. I know I was looking from one of them to the other, thinking that the whole idea was really icky.
"All right," said Kirk. "I'm going to lay it out for you. First, it's not at all the way you imagine. It's not embarrassing. It's not weird. It's not—perverse. Second, when it's over and you're de-linked, it's over. You don't actually retain the experience, except for a sort of pleasurable feeling of camaraderie.
"And third, this is the project we want you for, and this is the way it has to be done. If you don't want to do it our way, then unfortunately you're no use to us, because our way is the only way to do it."
There was a pause. Shep and I looked at each other.
"Andrew's right," said Nick persuasively. "Everyone, including us, who's been confronted with the idea of mind linkage has been negative about it, very reluctant to take part. And everyone—everyone—who has done it has said the same thing afterwards: that it's not at all the way you imagine, the way you're imagining it now, and that it's not embarrassing or disgusting or strange."
"Would you like some time to think about it?" asked Kirk.
"No," said Shep. "I'm in." He turned to me. "Come on, cuz—it's our only chance." His look and his voice were pleading.
I thought for a minute. I didn't want him inside my head mainly because of what had happened on the raft and after—I didn't want him to know what I'd thought about it and how I felt now. But he had just as much to hide, I reasoned, probably a lot more, because what he did probably hadn't just come out of the blue. And if he could stand me finding out all that, then I figured I could stand him learning what I thought. And if Kirk and Nick were telling the truth, it wouldn't be the way I was thinking it would be anyway.
"Okay," I said finally. I shrugged. "Let's do it."
"Excellent," said Nick, getting up. "If you come with me to the lab right now, we can do the linking. Then we'll give you a day to get used to it, and tomorrow morning we'll do the insertion."
Kirk held up his hand. "Wait. Heather has invited them to dinner tonight, and it would probably be more pleasant for them, for all of us if they weren't yet linked. So they can come to the lab tomorrow morning for the procedure and then be inserted the following day. If that's all right?" He looked around at all of us.
"Cert
ainly," said Nick. "All right. I'll see you chaps tomorrow morning—just come to my office. You remember where it is, don't you, Mitch?"
I nodded.
"And this way," added Kirk, "you'll get at least two days in the TSA, as you requested. And maybe we could see our way clear to letting you stay for a day or two afterward." He smiled.
"Thank you, sir," I said, echoed by Shep. We looked at each other and couldn't help grinning.
"Well, go on," said Kirk. "Go enjoy it."
We did.