Hawking's Hallway

by Neal Shusterman

  Was Thomas Edison really still alive, as Nick had said? If so, she wondered what Edison had told him. How had the man managed to convince Nick that joining forces with him was for the best? How could Nick think that he could find any sort of fulfillment with the Accelerati, or change them from the inside? They’d been doing things pretty much the same way for over a hundred years. Did he really believe he could alter that? Or was he just telling himself that to make going back easier?

  Whatever the reason, Caitlin realized that unless she did something quick, she and the others would be sidelined. Nick thought he was protecting them—and maybe he was, but they had begun this as a team, and as a team they had succeeded against a group that should have been able to crush them like flies. She had to believe that their whole was greater than the sum of their parts. Perhaps that was true of Nick too.

  Edison was like a searing celestial body, and Nick was Icarus, his wings on the verge of flames. Although Caitlin was far from the pull of that particular sun, there were plenty of outlying threats. Then she remembered hearing how deep-space probes would use the intense gravity of the outer planets to slingshot into new trajectories.

  That’s when she got the idea….

  The maneuver would be tricky—the particular gaseous giant she had in mind was a dangerous one—but if it worked, it would put her on a much more effective path.

  Wait one hour, she had told Nick. Then she quickly went home, found the tea bags she had taken from Zak’s mother, and brewed herself a pot of Oolongevity.

  Jorgenson was cleaning up after third lunch when Caitlin arrived.

  It was torture enough to serve just a single round of meals to thankless human larvae, but it was a new definition of hell to have to serve three lunches in a row because the cafeteria was too small to fit everyone at once.

  The other food workers wouldn’t even come near him, let alone talk to him. That was, of course, by his design, but over time he found the isolation more unpleasant than he’d expected. It wasn’t easy being the lone halogen lamp in a crate of energy-saving appliance bulbs.

  And the cherry atop this cake wreck was the sight of Caitlin Westfield approaching.

  “Lunch is over,” Jorgenson snapped, removing the remains of some truly inedible lasagna from the warming tray.

  “I’m not here for lunch,” Caitlin told him. “I’m here to talk to you.”

  “There is no spectrum of time or space in which we will have anything to say to one another.”

  Her eyebrows lifted in an exaggerated raise. Was she about to mock him?

  “Sounds like you’re bitter. Maybe I can help you with that.”

  He guffawed at the very concept that she could help him in any way. Or that she would even want to after their previous encounters. What is she playing at? he wondered.

  Jorgenson was no further along in his plot to extinguish Evangeline Planck than he’d been days earlier. He had even misplaced his sole accomplice, Theo, whom he had zipped into the lining of his coat. Unfortunately, the coat was nowhere to be found. Jorgenson had returned to the park as soon as he realized he’d left it there, but of course it was gone.

  Was he actually in such a low place that he would accept charity from the enemy? On the other hand, she was certainly as anti-Planck as he was. Some people said that the enemy of one’s enemy was one’s friend, but Alan Jorgenson had never subscribed to that philosophy. As far as he was concerned, his enemy’s enemy was his enemy squared. With that in mind, he listened to Caitlin with interest, and also intense suspicion.

  “How could you possibly help me?” he asked. “And why?”

  “I have information,” she told him. “Information that might get you back on Mr. Edison’s good side.”

  That got Jorgenson’s attention. The fact that she knew about Edison meant she had spoken with Nick Slate, and he had told her about the Old Man—which would no doubt infuriate him. And it would all be blamed on Planck, because Nick had escaped on her watch! Why, things were already looking up!

  “And what would you want in return for this information?” he asked. “Some proprietary Accelerati prototypes?” he suggested. “A dream catcher that can predict impending doom, perhaps—or a loom that can spin the hair from the ears of swine into silk?”

  “Nothing like that,” Caitlin said, her manner measured and calm. “It would be an even exchange. Information for information.”

  Jorgenson looked around. There was no one left in the cafeteria or serving area. “You tell me yours first,” he said. “And if I find it worthy, you may ask me a question. I will answer truthfully.”

  Jorgenson, of course, had no intention of doing any such thing. Truthfulness was not in his nature—especially when it came to friends of Nick Slate.

  But then she produced a thermos. “We’ll both answer truthfully,” she said, grabbing two paper cups from the counter. She poured them each some tea with a refreshing and very familiar aroma.

  “Oolongevity,” he said, a little impressed—and a little frightened—by her resourcefulness.

  “Two months ago you and I enjoyed a little tea party,” she said simply. “I think it’s time we did so again.”

  Jorgenson hesitated. She held out the cup, but he didn’t take it. In addition to clarity of thought, and a slightly extended life-span, the Accelerati-engineered tea had the unique side effect of causing the drinker to be absolutely honest. It was a wonderful interrogation tool. But both of them drinking it at once would be a dangerous game of chess. Last time that game had ended in an annoying stalemate. But might it play out in his favor this time?

  “Tell me the nature of the information you plan to share,” he said.

  She didn’t hesitate at all. “I can tell you where Nick is, and what he’s planning to do,” she said. “I’d tell you right now, but I doubt you’d believe me unless I had the tea to convince you it was true.”

  Jorgenson took the paper cup. “Very well, then.”

  They held up their cups in a toast.

  “Bottoms up,” Caitlin said.

  They began to drink. The tea was warm but not hot, and they were able to down it in just a few gulps. The bell rang, and Caitlin didn’t move.

  “You’ll be late for class,” Jorgenson taunted.

  “Finals week,” she pointed out. “It’s a half day.” Which meant they had all the time they needed for the exchange of secrets.

  In a few moments, Jorgenson’s sense of well-being peaked, and when he remembered where he had misplaced his car keys—twenty years ago—he knew it was time.

  “So,” Jorgenson began, “you would betray Nick Slate?”

  “No,” Caitlin said, almost dreamily. “It won’t make any difference to him if you know…but it’ll make a big difference to you.”

  “And he knows you’re here, telling me this?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Caitlin said enigmatically.

  “So where is Nick?” he asked. “What does he plan to do?”

  Caitlin showed no sign of even trying to deceive him. “Nick is about to turn himself in,” she said. “He’s going back to Edison. He’s going to try to finish the machine for him.”

  Jorgenson actually gasped.

  “So if you call Edison first, you can take credit for it,” she said. “You can tell him you’re the one who convinced Nick to go back. It won’t make you Grand Acceleratus again, but it might just get you out of the doghouse…or at least out of this lunchroom.”

  And Jorgenson knew she was right. If he got credit for Nick’s return, this purgatory would end! No more dishing slop for the pubescent rabble of Colorado Springs. Perhaps he’d be allowed to return to the university. And wouldn’t that just make Planck burn!

  “Now my turn,” Caitlin said. “I want to know what the Accelerati are up to. What are they going to do next?”

  Jorgenson tried to tell her that he didn’t know, but all that came out was a stutter. He wanted to tell her that they had no activities outside of Colorado Springs, but his
mouth did nothing but drool. The tea was strong, and very effective. He could not answer with a lie. He had to tell the truth.

  “They,” he said, then cleared his throat. “We…have begun construction of the most important project we’ve ever attempted. The Accelerati have acquired land in Shoreham, New York,” he told her. “We are rebuilding Wardenclyffe Tower.”

  Wardenclyffe Tower should have been the greatest accomplishment of Nikola Tesla’s career. It should have been the fulfillment of his life’s dream—to bring free, wireless energy to the world. Free, however, can be a very dangerous word. It not only strikes fear into the hearts of dictators and oppressive regimes, it sends stock prices plummeting and can make the very rich very poor, very quickly.

  Tesla had no love of money; he felt it was beneath him. He’d wanted to share his gift with the world. Unfortunately, those who invested in his invention were only interested in gifts that could return large amounts of cash.

  Back in 1901, a tower that could provide free energy to the world would also poke holes in the pockets of the world’s richest men. If it worked, their fortunes would fall.

  So, rather than allow Tesla to deliver on his promise, they tore the tower down and sold the parts for scrap. Electricity would continue to be expensive. Powerful businessmen would continue to get rich. And Edison’s name became a part of almost every electric company in the nation, instead of Tesla’s.

  But the investors who killed Wardenclyffe Tower all those years ago were extremely shortsighted. Even Edison could see that. He understood that wireless energy delivered across the globe would transform life as we know it.

  And it didn’t have to be free at all. Not if it was completely managed by a single scientific entity that knew how to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. A bigger, better Wardenclyffe Tower would allow Edison and the Accelerati to control the world’s electricity from a central source.

  Which meant that, in every way that mattered, they would control the world.

  Vince’s inability to sleep made his Scottish captivity all the more unpleasant.

  The fisherman and the woman whose house now rested at the bottom of the lake had taken the globe from him and locked him up in a back room somewhere. Not being accomplished criminals, they didn’t know what else to do.

  They couldn’t release him, for fear he would tell the world about what they had. They couldn’t kill him, because, after all, they were not murderers. Until they came up with a plan, the back room would have to suffice.

  The fisherman knew how to tie knots. The rope wasn’t hurting Vince’s wrists, but it was definitely secure. Without help, he’d never be able to break free.

  They came to check on Vince several times a day, bringing him food and allowing him potty breaks.

  “That doohickey in your rucksack is a lot like the globe, in’it?” asked the fisherman on one of these visits. “Keeps ye alive, like some kind of electric soul.”

  Vince didn’t like the sound of that. He liked to think that his soul was his own and the battery merely served as an ignition, keeping the pilot lit.

  “My mother’s just across the lake, you know,” Vince told him, nodding toward the window that afforded him a view of Loch Ness. Police boats were visible in the distance, dragging the lake. “Looks like she’s already started an investigation.” Although if they can’t find a monster, he wondered, how do they expect to find a fourteen-year-old kid? “It’ll probably lead them right to your door,” he said.

  “Mebbe so, and mebbe we’ll be elsewhere,” said the fisherman, implying that they’d use the globe to travel to the ends of the earth.

  The woman’s curiosity was Vince’s best hope.

  “I’ll wager that you know what the globe is, and where it came from,” she said to him while bringing him breakfast on his third day of captivity.

  “I might,” he answered. “Untie me and we’ll talk.”

  She didn’t untie him, just spoon-fed him some beef stew that he knew would wreak havoc in his undead digestive system.

  “I thought at first it was a bit of magic, or a military sort of thing,” the woman said. “But now I’m thinking it’s something else.”

  “Something else,” confirmed Vince. “And more dangerous than you think.”

  The woman did not like the sound of that. “Dangerous how? It’s not radioactive or anything, is it?”

  “I don’t know about that, but there are people out there who want it, and they’ll kill to get it. You’re lucky I found you first.”

  The woman scoffed at the idea, but Vince could tell she was worried.

  “I can’t see why you’d want it,” he said. “You don’t need it anymore.”

  “Of course we need it,” she told him. “It brought me to Bertie. He’s my soul mate, you know. We want to travel and see the world.”

  “Maybe he does,” Vince chanced a guess. “But not you. Coming here, finding him, that’s what you wanted. It’s what the globe did for you. And as far as you were concerned, you’d have been happy for it to stay at the bottom of the lake after that, right?”

  “Never mind that,” she said, not looking him in the eye. “It’s not at the bottom of the lake, it’s here. And we mean to use it.”

  He had baited the hook. She had taken it. And now he began to reel her in.

  “I wonder how interested he’ll still be in you, with all the women of the world at his fingertips.”

  “You hush up,” said the woman, beginning to sound a little bit bitter. “I’ll have none of that talk here.”

  “Most women in these parts just have to worry about their men going down to the pub. But for you that pub might be in Japan, with all those geisha girls.”

  The woman fixated on the thought and just stared at him, nonresponsive.

  “Let me take the globe,” Vince went on, “and you’ll never have to worry about that.”

  “You’re a wily one,” she said.

  Just then, Bertie came into the room. “I got our honeymoon all planned out,” the fisherman said, fanning out some brochures in his hand. “A different place every day, mind you, now we don’t have to worry ourselves about airfare. We’ll start in Paris, then hop over to Venice. Then to the Pyramids, and the Great Wall of China.” He smiled at her. “And then, my dear, we will have sushi in Tokyo.”

  The woman threw Vince a quick glance, so quick he almost didn’t catch it. “Sounds wonderful, darling,” she said. “But I’m happy just to stay here.”

  He scoffed at that. “Nothin’ here but fish, fish, an’ more fish.”

  “Exactly,” said the woman. “You want sushi, we can have it right here.”

  He grunted and waved his hand, as if to ward off the very notion. “I don’t understand ye, woman,” he said. “We have the whole world at the click of a button. I, fer one, am not stayin’ put.”

  He laid the brochures on the table. “You pick where you want to go, but we will be goin’ somewhere.” And he left her to ponder the colorful pictures of places she no longer had any desire to see.

  Vince said nothing. Sometimes silence is the best way to make your point.

  When the woman returned that evening to bring him dinner, the silence continued. She didn’t even make eye contact with him.

  She did, however, leave his bonds looser, and the door to the room unlocked.

  Vince waited until long after the couple was asleep to make his move.

  Wriggling his fingers back and forth in the rope, he finally broke free.

  The house was dark; the only light the flicker of the aurora in the sky that was becoming a little more intense each night. He could hear the snores of the fisherman, and Vince imagined he could hear the steady breathing of the woman feigning sleep while listening for their captive to flee.

  The globe, he discovered, was in a place of honor: the center of the dinner table, as if it were its own feast. She had not shown him how to use it, as he had hoped, but he was a quick study and knew he could figure it out.


  Vince grabbed it. Even though the room was cold, the globe was warm to the touch. It seemed to vibrate with a deep, resonant pulse. Then he burst out the front door into a windy night.

  Hefting his backpack onto one shoulder, being careful not to dislodge his electrodes at this crucial moment—because how stupid would it be to drop dead right outside the house?—he ran.

  Just then, the fisherman appeared at the door behind him, wearing nothing but a nightshirt. “Halt, laddie! Or face the consequences!”

  Vince chose to face the consequences—and since the man did not carry a shotgun in his nightshirt, the consequence was to be chased by a man wearing slippers.

  Vince hurried down a slope, away from the main road; in front of him was a small dock and two skiffs with outboard motors. He hopped in one, cranked the motor, and unmoored himself from the dock just as the slipper-footed fisherman arrived.

  “Give it back, or I’ll make ye wish ye’d never been born!”

  “I’ve already wished that,” answered Vince. “You’ll have to do better.”

  Vince aimed the rudder, punched the motor, and powered away from the dock.

  Undeterred, the fisherman got in the other boat and pursued across the dark, windswept lake.

  Vince had a healthy lead, but he had chosen the boat with the smaller motor, and the fisherman’s boat was slowly but steadily gaining. Vince estimated it would overtake him in two more minutes. Then he realized he had a much more effective mode of transportation.

  His eyes had just adjusted to the dim, and there was just enough aurora light for him to make out the landmasses on the globe. Major cities were marked by what appeared to be tiny diamonds. Colorado Springs was so marked as well, perhaps because it had been such an important town to Tesla himself.

  At the base of the globe was a sliding switch with a plus at one end and a minus at the other. The switch seemed to shrink and expand the globe’s field. Vince set it to the middle. At the very top of the globe, right where the North Pole should have been, was a little red button. Vince had seen enough of Tesla’s objects to know that if there was a thing on it that looked like a button, it was a button.