“And look at Norm and Oan,” I continued, hitting my stride, just in time to be cut off by Isaac shouting “Gah” or something similar. “Gah?” I said, seeking clarification.
“Oh my stars,” said Isaac. And, mark this, the chap’s skin started to sparkle, and he started to become noticeably translucent.
Reread that last passage if you want to, but it won’t change anything. This science fancier started to dematerialize — if dematerialize means what I think it does — and to fade into who knows where. Though, if I follow the trend of his minor plot in the present story, I rather think that he started temporarily fading out of existence, awaiting reincarnation in the beforelife.
And even though I was confident in Vera’s diagnosis, viz, that Isaac’s dearest wish was to live in the beforelife — a wish now coming to fruition through the medium of the Napoleonic serum — Isaac still refused to string along with this fact, which ought to have been as plain as the dematerializing nose on his dematerializing face.
“N-no!” he cried. “I don’t want this!”
“I think you’ll find that you do!” I riposted.
Again he protested — this time by haring across the room and picking up one of those gadgets he’d shown to me the last time we’d met.
“What’s he doing?” shouted Zeus.
“Dematerializing,” I said.
“I mean what’s he doing with that machine!” Zeus shouted, specifying.
“Well, there you have me,” I said.
Vera was, however, able to field the question. She was, if you’ll recall, singularly gifted when it came to identifying the purposes and uses of this sort of technological gizmo.
“A time machine!” she said, agog. “He’s trying to move backward in time!”
“That can’t be done!” I said, although the word “scoffed” might be mot juster. “It’s not possible. You can tell by all of the clocks running clockwise, and failing resolutely to revolve in the other direction.”
“I can make it possible!” shouted Isaac, whose voice seemed as though he was calling to us from an especially deep well, or mine shaft, or other sort of hole in which those helpful collie dogs are always finding fresh victims. “I’m going to step back before any of this happened! I’ll prevent it from the start!”
He couldn’t quite seem to manage to press all of the buttons at his disposal. I mean to say, his fingers seemed to slip in and out of existence, sometimes passing through the chrono-thingummy, and sometimes making contact.
“I don’t want this!” he cried, thus ensuring, it turned out, that the last observation of Isaac Newton was entirely incorrect. He manifestly did want this, for he now shimmered more brightly than ever before, winking out of our existence, and dropping his chrono-thingummy to the ground.
With all of the recent goings-on — the eye-popping and gripping drama that had unfolded centre stage, if that’s the expression, everyone dropped what they were doing and simply stared in slack-jawed wonder. Even the Napoleons — by which I mean the generic anti-social ones, not Nappy and Jack — stopped their attempts to get ’round Zeus and stood there staring like a handful of sheep who’ve been stunned by a card trick or an unbelievable spot of news relayed by one of the rams.
It was Norm who broke the silence. This he did by tottering over to the dropped chrono-thingummy and announcing its last reading.
“Time incursion successful,” he said.
“What?” said Zeus. “You mean . . . Isaac’s travelled back through time? So where did he go?”
“Not where,” I corrected, “when!” And I attempted to answer the q. by peeping over Norm’s shoulder and running an eye or two over the chrono-thingummy’s display.
“Ah,” I said. “He didn’t manage to change the date.”
“What do you mean?” said Norm.
“He’s got the thingummy set for the date of his installation as Lucasian Chair. He mentioned it to me when he first showed me the chrono-doodad. He said it was an important date, and it happened to coincide with the tri-centennial of some other science fancier’s manifestival. Some chap named Galileo, if memory serves.”
“So you think he’s travelled back to that day?” asked Norm.
“He has,” said Vera, still staring off into space. She had an otherworldly aspect about her, showing every symptom of being trapped in one of her televisory broadcasts.
“Or rather, his essence has travelled back to that date. But not here. He was passing between two worlds when he activated his time-shifting device. That date — the date displayed on his device — will be the day of his incarnation in the beforelife.”
“How do you know?” asked Oan, agog.
“I can see him,” said Vera, still staring off into the middle distance. “Plain as day. He’s being reborn. In the beforelife. On January 8, 1942. Exactly three hundred years after Professor Galileo’s manifestation in Detroit.”
“Oh, ah,” I said.
“Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Hawking,” said Vera. And she topped this off by whispering “two chairs,” whereupon she seemed to come back to the surface, popping out of her reverie.
Chapter 35
“What’s that you said?” asked Norm.
“Oh, nothing,” said Vera. “Just something from one of my visions. I’m fairly certain it solves the riddle of the two chairs — I just can’t quite see how.”
“Ah,” said Norm Stradamus. “It’s often that way with prophecy. Some of my own quatrains remain a mystery to me until sometime later, when some clever Johnny figures them out. The Hand of— or rather, I should say, Mr. Feynman and I were discussing that very point the other day. And talking of Mr. Feynman, it seems that our emissary won’t be going today — at least not the one we intended — and it might be some time before we can send another. I’ve no idea how Isaac produces this neural serum, and it might take years before we replicate his process.”
“Possibly longer,” I said, pointing at Isaac’s bay of computers. “It seems our band of Napoleons is ensuring that no one else will copy Isaac’s work in a hurry.”
And I’d said this because this band of Napoleonic loonies was merrily cavorting around Isaac’s bank of computers like a band of chimpanzees confronted with a slot machine, and they were tearing wires and knobs and chunks of hardware from their moorings, stomping on the entrails where they fell.
“Oh, my!” said Norm.
“Oh, wow,” said Zeus.
“Good riddance,” said Vera, which I thought was a little harsh. I mean to say, she’d won the Climate Change war, if it was a war, and there was surely no need to triumph over a vanquished foe.
“But I would like to be getting on with the ceremony,” said Norm. “The wedding, I mean.”
I goggled at the man.
The fierce rush of life at Detroit University had so gripped my attensh that for about the last five minutes I’d forgotten all about the ceremony. Norm’s sudden reminder caught me amidships and unmanned me, leaving me like a landed carp gasping for air. At a loss for words, I mean to say. Tongue-tied, if that’s the expression. It’s a rare thing for me, but it does happen.
Oan now made her presence known, stepping between self and Norm and asking if she might have a word or two with her betrothed.
I assented — not that I had much choice in the matter — and we moved off.
“Rhinnick,” she said.
“Yes, Oan.”
“Rhinnick,” she said once more.
“Still here, old bird, and hanging on your lips!”
“Your speech,” she said, “it reached me.”
Well of course it did, I might have said, pointing out that the acoustics in these academic buildings were second to none.
“It touched the core of me, I mean,” she said. “It showed me that you truly do see the essential me.”
“Oh, ah,�
�� I said, and shuffled a toe or two.
She didn’t seem inclined to let the subject die and carried on amplifying her remarks.
“It was that part about knowing who you really are. Who you are at the core of your being.”
“Yes,” I said, eager to push this thing along.
“It’s just — it’s just that it made me see who I really am.”
“Happy to be of service,” I said, civilly.
“I mean, who I am, not in relation to someone else, but in the deepest parts of my soul.”
This seemed to be getting a bit personal, and I became desperate for a way to oil my way out of the conversation.
“It’s just,” she said, catching my arm, her voice faltering, “it’s just like you said. You’re not merely someone else’s Hand. You’re your own man. And I can’t — I mean — following your singular, shining example, I can’t define myself entirely in relation to someone else. I cannot be She Who Is Married to He Who Is the Hand of He Who Is . . . oh, Rhinnick! I can’t bear to say the words!”
That state of affairs would have been fine by me, as I’d already found the eyelids growing heavy as she’d made her way through this extended preamble to whatever it was she dreaded to say.
Her eyes grew dewy, and then appeared to fill with resolve.
“I mean — oh, please be brave, Rhinnick,” she said.
I assured her I’d be brave.
“I mean,” she said, stifling a sob, “I mean I cannot be your wife.”
“WHAT?!”
“Not now,” she said. “Perhaps one day. I must first centre myself, Rhinnick. I must get back to who I am. Be a teacher for those on the brink of spiritual awakenings, not someone who values herself primarily because of a marriage to someone else. I do hope you’ll understand.”
She placed a tender hand on my elbow as if to offer me support. And I said the only two words I could think of.
“I’ll try.”
“Oh, Rhinnick!” she effused. “You are so brave.”
“Stiff upper lip, what?” I said, and she moved off, sighing another one of those sighs which seem to come from the soles of her size-nine feet. She made a beeline for Norm Stradamus, possibly to break the news.
A snort from the sou’sou’west suggested that my conversation hadn’t been as private as intended. I turned, and perceived an entire troop of eavesdroppers. It included Vera, Zeus, and Nappy, all staring at me and smiling.
“All’s well that ends well, eh?” said Vera, still with a face-splitting grin.
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. I mean to say, you can’t exactly clap your hands and leap about when an old slab of gorgonzola to whom you’ve accidentally become engaged hands you the mitten and believes she’s broken your heart.
“No wedding bells for you, I mean,” said Vera.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Well, no,” I said. “I won’t be marrying Oan. She dumped me like last week’s garbage. But I thought you’d take the view that this merely clears the path.”
“The path to what?” said this suddenly irksome beazel, making me say the words out loud.
“For . . . well . . . for our wedding,” I said, no doubt blushing a rather deep shade of vermillion.
She issued yet another one of her silvery laughs.
“Our wedding?” she said, snorting a second time. “You didn’t really think I was planning to hold you to that, did you?”
I shuffled a foot or two.
“Abe’s drawers, Rhinnick,” said the gumboil. “I know the last thing you’d ever want to do was marry me or anyone else.”
I uttered a word or two of protest. “I never said that!” I said.
“You didn’t have to,” she riposted.
“And any such feelings, if I had them,” I carried on, “would imply nothing derogatory about you. I should feel precisely the same way about marrying any of Detroit’s noblest men or women, among whom I count you and the others present,” I added, waving a hand at Nappy and Zeus.
She laughed again.
“Don’t worry about it, Rhinnick. I assumed you realized that the whole idea was just a way to get Peericks to let me out.”
It penetrated.
“So, you don’t want to hitch your lot to mine?” I said.
“Not as your wife!” said the shrimp.
“You never really thought we should marry?”
“Not for a second!” she said, laughing.
“You mean, you lied to Dr. Peericks?”
She assured me that she had. And all was clear. It was a ruse, and far from the least of them. Through a brief spot of dissembling, she’d flung wide the hospice gates, acquiring a day pass from Dr. Peericks, thereby setting our plans in motion. An ingenious idea, I think you’ll agree. It might have been nice to have been apprised of the ins and outs of this gag, as the expression is, but one can’t ask for everything.
I inspected the terrain. My wedding had been called off. My second betrothal was a ruse. Abe’s wish that I stop Isaac Newton — a silly wish, given that Isaac’s trivial meddling was, as I’ve explained numerous times, confined to the quantum realm — had been granted. All appeared to be oojah-cum-spiff. All that remained was the task of figuring out what to do with the Regent and the other freeze-dried ancients stored at R’lyeh — a problem that could be left to someone else. The city councillors, perhaps.
I knew at a g. that this particular entry on the calendar would long be included on my list of banner days. And so it was with a song on my lips that I gathered Zeus, Nappy, and Vera to my bosom, checked to see that Fenny was still secured in my pocket, and bid farewell to the other chumps in Isaac’s room — leaving the cleaning up of the mess (which was entirely of their own making) in their more-than-capable hands.
In no more than a couple of ticks Vera shrewdly found the parking spot for Isaac Newton’s car, hot-wired the machine, and we were off.
“Zeus,” I said, once the dust had settled, the chickens had hatched, and the chips had fallen where they may. “I don’t mind telling you that, while we were still in the thick of it, and before the happy endings were strewn about with a lavish hand, there were moments when I felt things mightn’t end so frightfully well. One might even say that Rhinnick Feynman, though no weakling, came within a whisker of despair.”
“No kidding,” said the honest fellow.
“I mean, one couldn’t say that peril didn’t loom. It loomed like the dickens. The tortured Napoleons, the corrupted ancients, the bone-chilling brushes with matrimony, not to mention the even graver threat of—”
But then, we’ve covered that part, haven’t we?
Epilogue
I don’t know if you’ve been thinking the same thing, but I’d been expecting Abe to turn up sooner. Say, just choosing a time at random, at the moment when I’d finished snootering Isaac and filled the air with happy endings. I mean to say, while I’m the first to admit that Isaac’s plan wasn’t anything you might call epoch-making, it remained true that stopping his plan, such as it was, had been the quest Abe had set me, and I had brought the quest to fruition — if bringing a thing to fruition means what I think it does. Isaac had whooshed off into the ether, possibly bringing glad tidings to these Hawking persons Vera mentioned, and he now posed no further threat to local pedestrians and traffic. Yet still there had been zero words from the man up top. Ungracious, what? I mean, I know Abe’s a busy man, but I ask you!
The near-omnipotent blighter didn’t show the mayoral face until I’d conveyed self and party back to the Hôtel de la Lune for a spot of post-quest celebration. The second day of our orgy found our little troop frolicking in and around what is known as a beach cabana, sipping on fruity drinks and making merry while bedecked in louder-than-average floral shirts and knee-length shorts. I was in the midst of commenting on the quality of the local steel-drum band
and preparing to make a musical request when who should blow in but Abe himself, bearing a tray of what are known as piña coladas.
“Abe’s drawers!” cried Vera.
“And ze rest of him!” cried Nappy.
“Who is Abe?” said Zeus, the poor fish.
As for the undersigned, well, I just sat there looking agog. I mean, it was dashed tricky — even for me — to know precisely what to say. On the one hand, I was vis-à-vis with the mayor himself — the most powerful being Detroit had ever seen, give or take a Penelope — and he’d shown up bearing drinks: all suggesting that a word or two of obsequious thanksgiving might be in order. But weighing against this was the fact that I was annoyed at this municipal Grand Poobah, he having failed to lift the merest mayoral finger to assist me in what had, at various times, been a fairly inconvenient series of plunges into the soup. So as I said, I merely sat there looking agog.
Abe relieved me of the need to break the silence, unleashing a genial “Hiya, Rhinnick” in my direction.
“Ahoy, Abe,” I said.
“Hello, everyone,” he said, inclining the mayoral bean at Zeus, Nappy, and Vera in the order named.
“Hello Abe,” they said, more or less in unison, Zeus bringing up the rear, still presumably putting together in fact that the chump under advisement was named Abe.
“Everything’s settled, then?” said Abe.
“I suppose it is,” I said, dully.
“No questions or anything?” he said.
Vera beat me to the punch. I mean to say, I had about a million issues to pursue with the man myself, and it seemed to me that a brace of burning questions — queries that’d be vexing the Author’s readership — remained unasked, let alone unanswered. I mean, how do people get from the beforelife to Detroit in the first place? Does it happen to everyone? When this Hawking chap whom Vera mentioned crosses the Styx, will he be Isaac, or someone else? Does reincarnation really alter one’s personality? Important questions, every one. But all these questions bottlenecked in the vicinity of my uvula, crashing into each other and preventing any one of their number from crossing the Feynman lips. All I managed was a kind of gargling sputter, which Vera silenced with a wave of an impatient margarita. So as I said, Vera beat me to the punch, buttonholing the mayor with her own cross-examination.
Afterlife Crisis Page 40
