“You know Jerome has Donald Hornig’s ear . . .”
“Hornig was Kennedy’s appointment. Everyone says Johnson doesn’t listen to his science advisers because they’re all against Vietnam.”
“This isn’t about Hanoi,” says Ursula. “It’s about the moon. If you can generate even a fraction of the power you’re projecting, it could be a tremendous contribution to the Gemini and Apollo programs. That’s the legacy Johnson wants, the one every man, woman, and child on Earth can see just by looking up at the night sky.”
“Ursula, why would your husband help me get to the president?” says Lionel.
“You really don’t understand politics at all, do you?”
“It’s not how my mind works,” he says.
“I love how your mind works,” she says. “That and other parts of you.”
They stand close together, their bodies like complementary magnets. Ursula looks at the locked door. She knows she should open it.
“A lot of people have been asking him what you’re doing down here,” she says. “He’s bringing a few associates.”
“How many is a few?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “A dozen or so.”
“So if this thing fizzles, I’m going to look like a goddamn idiot.”
“Just try not to blow up half the city,” she says.
“More like half the continent,” he says.
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m mostly joking.”
“Well, if this is the end, I’m glad we had last night,” Ursula says.
“Me too,” Lionel says.
They kiss again.
The doorknob rattles. Ursula’s eyes flash with alarm. Lionel gestures to her mouth, her smeared lipstick. She digs a tube out of her purse and reapplies it, checking her appearance in the reflective surface of the Engine’s steel casing. Lionel wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
Lionel opens the door, makes a sheepish comment about the lock being sticky. Jerome Francoeur comes in, a polite smile on his face that flickers when he sees his wife already in the lab, welcoming the others, talking up how excited she is for them to see what Goettreider’s been working on.
They file in—Skeptical, Awed, Distracted, Amused, Angry, Thoughtful, Frightened, Detached, Concerned, Excited, Nonchalant, Harried, Weary, Wise. Cheeky props herself next to Jealous, takes his arm in hers as she chats with the others.
It’s Sunday, the building otherwise empty. A reminder of how little was expected of the experiment that changed the world—nobody wanted to waste time in their busy workweek on this obscure display by an unknown scientist. The historical record says those in attendance came out of professional curiosity and loyal devotion to the grand ideals of scientific discovery. But from their general manner, polite but impatient, and Ursula’s host-like friendliness, the real reason is clear—they’re all here as a favor to the wife of the man who signs the checks that fund their research.
That man, Jerome Francoeur, squints at Lionel, a look on his face like the one you get when you can’t quite think of a word on the tip of your tongue.
Lionel avoids eye contact with anyone. He scribbles on his notepad, studious, brow furrowed. And then he notices the lipstick stain on his shirt cuff, where he wiped his mouth. He looks at the stain and reflexively looks at Jerome, who looks at Lionel and sees the stain. Lionel Goettreider may be a genius, but he’s not exactly smooth.
Lionel looks away, tries to focus on his calculations. Jerome squeezes Ursula’s arm tight enough to distract her from her small talk. When she looks at her husband, he won’t meet her gaze.
50
Lionel ignores the crowd, temples prickling with sweat, and peers at a series of gauges. And that’s when he sees something . . . strange. He taps a dial. Frowns.
“Is everything in order, Mr. Goettreider?” says Jerome.
“Of course,” says Lionel. “I just need to check the readings one last time.”
“Everyone’s excited to see what your contraption can do,” says Jerome. “We’re ready to be dazzled.”
“Jerome, please,” says Ursula, “be patient.”
“The American people paid for all of this,” says Jerome, “and it’s my duty to ensure their investment is returned.”
The assembled observers exchange awkward looks, although it’s hard to tell if they’re embarrassed for Lionel or uncomfortable about Jerome’s noisy dickishness.
Lionel plugs a device into the console, a modified Geiger-Müller tube of his own design, built to assess the half-life frequency of radiation wave forms—the notion being that the Engine may generate previously undiscovered types of radiation and he’d need to identify and catalogue them. The primitive colored bulbs on the device light up and its sensors emit sharp squeaks and scratches, detecting a radiation signature of unknown provenance. Lionel scrawls out some hasty calculations and, tense, he asks Ursula to come take a look. They murmur to each other, too low to overhear from where I stand, but then curiosity seems to best Ursula’s discretion.
“How is that possible?” she says. “You haven’t even turned it on.”
It’s an excellent question. How could an undiscovered kind of radiation be emitted when the Engine hasn’t yet been activated? And the answer is—me.
Too late, I remember that immateriality isn’t just to keep chrononauts from knocking over coffee mugs. It’s to make sure nothing from the future can be physically present in the past. Things like, you know, undiscovered kinds of radiation.
51
I’m torn between the panicky need to return to the present before I irrevocably screw anything up in 1965 and my incendiary fascination with everything I’m witnessing, both of which are soaked through with the realization that I may have already irrevocably screwed something up in the past, in which case my present may no longer exist.
But, no, the fact that I exist in 1965 means 2016 has to still be there, because I had to be sent back from somewhere . . . right? You know you’re having a seriously fucked-up day when ontology becomes a life-or-death proposition.
My father embedded several technical safeguards into the time-travel apparatus to ensure an automatic return to the exact point in space and time from which I was flung—what the chrononauts call the “boomerang protocol” because . . . actually I don’t know why. Maybe it just sounds cool. The safeguards should cause me to rematerialize in my father’s lab one minute after I left. I mean, assuming the Goettreider Engine doesn’t malfunction when it’s turned on, maybe because I accidentally corrupted its wonkily calibrated inner workings with whatever unpredictable energy glommed onto me during my space-time travels, and vaporize half the continent, including the parcel of Toronto real estate on which my father’s lab will be built.
So, I guess I should at least wait to see what happens when Lionel flips the switch before boomeranging back to a future that may not be there.
52
Lionel seems hyperaware that the mood in the room is shifting from curiosity to impatience. Someone asks Jerome how long this is going to take and he shrugs, hammy, smirking, enjoying the ozone tang of looming failure.
I expected to witness a momentous fault line in human discovery, dense with portent and grandeur, but it’s scuffed up with careless infidelity and lame office politics and clammy sweat beading on the forehead that houses history’s greatest mind.
“It’s fine,” Lionel says. “The readings aren’t at significant enough levels to affect the experiment.”
What Lionel doesn’t realize is he just discovered tau radiation—the very trail I followed back in time, the unique energy signature of the Goettreider Engine itself, wisping through my molecules and paradoxically announcing its presence minutes before it would first be introduced to the world. So, yeah, huge screw-up on my part.