Rube opened it. Taped to the inside lay a three-column-wide section of newspaper. A portion of the masthead across the top read, essenger, and just below that, between two rules, the date, June 1, 1923. Below this, the caption over a photograph, which Rube read aloud, “ ‘Crowd Throngs Parade Route.’ ” He bent over the photograph, examining it: several ranks and files of marching young men, rifles on shoulders, all wearing shallow metal helmets and high-necked uniform blouses. Preceding them, two more uniformed men carrying the American flag and a banner. Rube read aloud the banner’s inscription, “ ‘American Legion Post—’ ”

  “Not the parade, the spectators.”

  He saw it immediately: along the curb between the thick trunks of old trees stood a lineup of men, women, children, dogs. Among them a tall man wearing a flat, black-ribboned straw hat. And under its stiff brim, smiling at the camera—sharp, clear, unmistakable—the face of the man beside him.

  Who nodded, reaching for his folder. “Yep. Me. Right here in Winfield. On this very street. Watching the Memorial Day parade in the spring of 1923. There’s no Project now, Major; it doesn’t exist. But there was. It did.”

  “Fine. Then why don’t I remember it? You do, you say.”

  “Something happened, Major. Something happened back in the past that altered the present.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Anything. When it happened, I was back in the past where it didn’t touch me. I took my memories with me, and brought them back. But they didn’t match the present anymore. I came back, but not to the restored Winfield. I came back to this untouched garbage dump. And went crazy. Got myself to New York, and ran the last block to the Project. And found Beekey’s Moving and Storage, nothing else. And worst of all”—he leaned toward Rube, lowering his voice—“worst of all, Danziger didn’t exist. Wasn’t in the phone book. And at the library I looked through their old phone book file back to 1939. No E. E. Danziger. Ever. No record of his birth at City Hall. And no one ever heard of him at Harvard. He didn’t exist!”

  “He did it . . .” Rube was slowly standing, his face turning red. “Oh, that son of a bitch. He did it!”

  “Who?”

  “Why . . . Marley? Morley! Simon Morley! We sent him back, didn’t we? Into the nineteenth century on a . . . mission. And he did this!”

  “Did what?”

  “Why . . . I don’t know.” He stood looking helplessly at McNaughton. “Something. Did something, back in the past, so that . . . Danziger was never born. No Project now. And never was.” He sat down, and the two men stared at the deserted street ahead. Then Rube said, “John, what keeps you here in this nothing place?”

  “My job. Part-time mechanic. At subscale pay. And the cheapest room this side of Calcutta.”

  “You ever do any fighting? Boxing, I mean?”

  “Some. In the Army.”

  “Heavyweight?”

  “Mostly. I pared down to light-heavy once, but I was young and could do it. Won easy. A supply sergeant, and soft. We showed the same on the scales but I outweighed him in the bones.”

  “Pretty good, were you?”

  “Not bad. Won more than I lost, but I lost some too. Knocked out twice, and I quit. Wanted to keep what brains I got.”

  “You ever kill anybody?

  “Never actually did. I was going to once but the situation changed. I would have done it, though. I had it all thought out.”

  “This in the Army?”

  “Yeah. But he got promoted, and transferred. Lucky for him. And me too, no doubt.”

  “Is there anything you wouldn’t do, John, to get back? To the other Winfield?”

  “Nothing. There is nothing I wouldn’t do.”

  “Do you know how Simon Morley got back to the nineteenth century?”

  “He was tutored. Learned all about it, got the feel of it. Then used the Dakota as his Gateway.”

  “The Dakota?”

  “A New York apartment building. It was there in the nineteenth century, and it’s there today. The Project furnished an apartment in the Dakota, got him the right wardrobe, made it a Gateway—”

  “Could you do it? Get back there where Morley is?”

  “Sure.” He grinned. “If you can do the thing, you can do it, Major. That your car up the street, the Toyota?” Rube nodded. “Looks a little snug for me.”

  “They fit the Japanese, John.”

  “I’ll manage.” He stood up, inches taller than Rube. “Run me over to my place. Give me five minutes to pack my stuff. Three, if I hurry. And I’ll hurry. Believe me, I’ll hurry.”

  5

  * * *

  ALTHOUGH THIS WAS WINTER and well after dark, the air wetly cold, a man sat on a Central Park bench near Fifth Avenue, watching the path to his left. The light from a streetlamp just touched him, a dark motionless lump. The turned-up collar of his overcoat covered his chin, his cap pulled low over his forehead. Hands pushed into the overcoat pockets, he watched the path, and when he saw the man he was waiting for walking quickly toward him—“Right on time,” he said to himself—he lowered his face, and sat staring down at the path apparently in thought.

  The man walked by; he was wearing an ankle-length dark overcoat and a brown fur cap, and when he’d walked on a dozen steps, the seated man stood up—tall now—and followed Simon Morley.

  . . . I walked out onto Fifth Avenue, a light delivery wagon rattled slowly by, the horse tired, his neck slumped, a kerosene lantern swaying under the rear axle. On the walk a woman in a feathered black hat, a fur cape over her shoulders, walked by, holding her long dark skirt an inch above the wet paving stones.

  I turned south, down narrow, quiet residential Fifth Avenue (the tall man, twenty yards behind him, turned too), glancing into yellow-lighted windows as I walked, catching glimpses: of a bald bearded man reading a newspaper, the light from a fireplace I couldn’t see reflected redly on the windowpane; of a white-aproned, white-capped maid passing through a room; of a month-old Christmas tree, a woman touching a lighted taper to its candles for the pleasure of the five-year-old boy beside her.

  . . . north on Broadway from Madison Square, I walked along the Rialto, the theatrical section of New York when Broadway was Broadway. The street was jammed with newly washed and polished carriages. The sidewalks were alive with people, at least half of them in evening dress, the night filled with the sound of them, and the feel of excitement and imminent pleasure hung in the air.

  Following only a few steps behind now, the tall man looked at the passing faces, and glanced into carriages, sometimes stooping momentarily to do so, smiling with the pleasure of being here.

  . . . I hurried past the lighted theaters, restaurants, and great hotels, until I reached the Gilsey House between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth. There, at the lobby cigar counter, I bought a cigar, a long thin cheroot, and tucked it carefully into the breast pocket of my inner coat. Outside—

  Outside on the crowded evening sidewalk the tall man sauntered now, taking his time, toward the Gilsey House . . . until Simon Morley walked out again and down the steps, tucking his cigar into an inside coat pocket, and went on. The tall man walked faster until he’d nearly caught up. Then, hanging only a step or two behind, he kept pace, one or two pedestrians between them.

  Waiting for an opportunity to present itself, he saw it presently, twenty-odd yards ahead. A short brass-railed flight of stone stairs led up from the sidewalk to the first-floor double doors; Wellman & Co., Insurance Brokers, said the gold-leaf letters on the dark windows. Directly beside those stairs another, steeper flight led down to a below-street-level barbershop: its striped pole stood at the curb.

  In the moment, in the half-step before Simon Morley reached that second staircase, the tall man just behind stepped up beside him, walked the half-step with him, then slammed the full weight of his big body sideways into Morley, thrusting his hip hard into him for good measure. He literally lifted the smaller man from his feet, shooting him into the staircase, and Morley dropped to strike the sharp stone edges of the stairs, tumbling hard down the flight until his body slammed into the locked door of the barbershop. The tall man walked on, not hurrying, and at Thirtieth Street turned the corner. Several men looked at him, and he looked back, meeting their eyes, and no one stopped him.

  For half a minute Simon Morley lay almost unmoving, his mind not truly functioning. Then the pain came into his shinbones, his right shoulder and right hip, and the palms of his hands, and he moaned. He got himself up slowly, afraid of discovering a bone had broken. Then he stood, both hands bracing against the wall beside him, his head low between them. Now he pushed himself upright, and in the weak light from the street above, looked down at the scraped-bloody, dirt-smeared palms of his hands, then at the torn trouser legs and the bleeding skin showing through. He turned and, using the black metal handrail, made himself climb the stairs to the sidewalk. On the walk again, he moved on in not quite a run but a frantic hobble.

  I saw the theater ahead, saw its sign, Wallack’s, and the posters beside its entrance reading, The Money Spinners. I saw Apple Mary herself, the old lady who sold apples before the theaters, and tried to sprint, desperate to move faster, squeezing, sidling, bumping past baffled angry pedestrians—because Apple Mary stood facing the tall young man in evening dress. She was speaking to him, and—did I really see it? I thought so!—I saw the wink of gold from a coin dropping from his hand to hers, a dozen yards and two or three people between us. He turned, someone just ahead pausing to hold the lobby door open for him, and skipped inside.

  I walked now, only a dozen yards, walked past Apple Mary calling, “Apples, apples! Get your apples, get Apple Mary’s best!” shoving one at me. But I shook my head, and stood staring in at the busy lobby, and across the tiled floor saw the group I knew would be there: the bearded father, a ruby stud in his stiff white shirtfront; the smiling gowned mother, and their daughters, the younger in a marvelous gown of unadorned spring-green velvet. When she smiled, as she did now at the tall young man who had given the gold coin to Apple Mary, she looked lovely. I had to hear, had to, and walked in to stand close, hiding my bloody hands at my sides.

  “My dear, may I present my young friend,” her father was saying, “Mr. Otto Danziger,” and I watched the tall young man bow, knowing that what had happened had happened, and that I was too late. Now they’d met, these two young people. I hadn’t quite been able to prevent it. And now, in time, they would marry, and have a son. And I knew that far ahead, in the twentieth century I’d left, that son was a man long since grown, Dr. E. E. Danziger—the Project he’d begun in the old Beekey warehouse still functioning under the control of Major Ruben Prien and Colonel Esterhazy, and whatever it was they represented.

  But now these were thoughts of a far-off future I no longer belonged in, and I looked again at the handsome new couple, and, not knowing I was going to, found myself smiling. Then I turned and walked out.

  The tall man swung in behind Morley as he walked back to Thirtieth Street and turned east. Watching closely, he saw from the slow, painful walk that Morley’s urgency was gone. And now he knew it was over; that whatever it was that Morley was attempting had been prevented. He followed for a long block, however, and for half of the next, making sure. Then—he did not know what had happened, didn’t know what Morley had intended, but knew he’d done what he’d come for. And at the next corner, Morley walking slowly on ahead, the tall man turned away, and began hunting for a cab.

  Walking down toward Gramercy Park, I looked around me at the world I was in. At the gaslighted brownstones beside me. At the nighttime winter sky. This too was an imperfect world, and I knew it, did not need to be told. But—I drew a deep breath, sharply chilling my lungs—the air was still clean. The rivers flowed fresh, as they had since time began. And the first of the terrible corrupting great wars still lay decades ahead. I reached Lexington Avenue, turned south, and then, the yellow lights of Gramercy Park waiting at the end of the street, I walked on toward Number 19.

  At a ticket window in the small red brick Grand Central station, John McNaughton leaned toward the row of vertical brass rods between him and the waiting clerk. “Winfield,” he said. “Ticket to Winfield, Vermont.”

  “Round trip?”

  “No.” McNaughton smiled with the pleasure of saying it: “No, I won’t be coming back from Winfield. Not ever again.”

  6

  * * *

  JULIA WALKED INTO THE DINING room, set down the big blue-and-white platter of waffles, then walked around to her side of the table. She didn’t speak, though I knew she was going to and what she would say. She pulled out her chair first, sat down, managing her long skirts, inched her chair in, slid her napkin from its carved-bone ring, unrolled it on her lap, then placed her bare forearms on the white cloth, wedding ring catching the light for a moment. Watching me, hunting for signs of my mood, she pushed the syrup in its cut-glass flask closer to my reach.

  Finally, voice gentle so as not to rile me, she said, “Si. It’s so far away now. And doesn’t really concern you. Not anymore. Your Major Prien has had his Project to himself now for—is it three years? Or more. And whatever he’s done with it is done.”

  I nodded, knowing I ought not be irritable—because I’d had the same guilty thoughts. For months at a time I’d forget the Project, then it would come sneaking back into my mind. I glanced irritably around the room; I didn’t like breakfast in here. Too damn dark. Fine at night, winter especially, when we used the fireplace; this was a different room then. But a house stood wall-to-wall on each side of ours, no light in here except for the chandelier over the table. I preferred the big round wood table in the kitchen, the room full of daylight from two tall, round-topped windows overlooking Julia’s little garden. But eating in the kitchen was unseemly to Julia, and I understood that.

  I said, “Julia, I’d like nothing more than to just forget the Project. If I’d only been able to do what I tried to do.” I sat thinking about that. “As I almost did, God damn it.”

  “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain,” she said automatically.

  “If I’d done it. If I’d got to the theater just minutes earlier . . .” I smiled at her, and shrugged. “I could have stayed right here then, content forever. But it keeps coming up in my mind, Jule: What is Rube doing with the Project? What is he up to! It may be a kind of duty to go and find out.”

  She leaned toward me over the table. “Then go. Get it over with.” She sat back, keeping her face pleasant, and said gently, “But come back.”

  “House,” said Willy on the floor. He was sitting, his back against the wall, legs straight out, turning the linen pages of one of his picture books, touching each and every picture with a fat little forefinger and saying or trying to say its name. He was over three now; talking and edging toward reading as fast as he could go. He was fun, and of course Julia and I looked over at him now, then at each other to smile: we’d made this little man.

  “I might not be able to go back.”

  “Oh? Why?” She sliced into her waffle with a fork.

  “I was in the Central Park a couple weeks ago. Sketching the swan boats for last week’s issue.”

  “Yes. I believe I’d like to frame that one.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good one. But while I was there, walking along near the Dakota, it got dark, and I glanced up at my old apartment. I always do.”

  “So do I. I had Willy there a week or so ago, and I showed it to him.”

  “You didn’t tell him—”

  “Of course not. Just said Daddy once lived there.”

  “Well, when I looked up at it, the windows were lighted. People living there. I couldn’t use it to go back.”

  “Is there no other vacant?”

  “Wouldn’t help; it might be occupied in the twentieth century, no way to tell. To go back, I’d need a new Gateway, Jule, a place that exists in both times, so that—”

  “I know, Si, I know.”

  “Well, Einstein said—”

  “I do not want to hear about Einstein again. Or Gateways, or anything el—”

  “He’s alive, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Einstein.” She put both hands over her ears, and I smiled. “Just think, he’s alive at this very moment. Still a little kid, I think. Maybe about Willy’s age. Playing somewhere in Germany right now, and already thinking thoughts beyond me. Maybe looking at a book and saying, ‘Haus.’ ”

  “Would you like another waffle?”

  “Gotta leave.” I pushed back my chair, and Julia stood, turning to scoop up Willy and carry him to the front windows to wave goodbye, important to him and to me.

  Today I didn’t walk to work; coming down the front steps, I saw a cab waiting across the Park and decided to take it, turning to wave to Willy, grinning at me behind the window, flapping his hand. Then I walked over to the cab. I wore a derby, and my brown suit.

  At the cab I said, “Leslie’s,” waiting to see if he knew where it was. He did, and I climbed in as he got down to take away the horse’s leather feed bag. “Take Broadway,” I called to him, and settled back.

  I liked the cabs. They weren’t quite comfortable; big leaf springs, very stiff, and you moved along steadily but in a just barely perceptible series of jerks from the slow trot of the horse. Some people didn’t like that, but it didn’t bother me. They were likely to be dirty, too, and even smell a little. Julia and I once piled into one after the theater, and got right out again. But this one was okay, and I liked the snug way the double doors closed down over your lap.

  The day was sunless, no sky, just an even grayness, almost whiteness, a light fall of snow on the ground. Been gray like this for a week, not cold. We turned west on Twentieth Street, and I sat back. I knew it was true, that I was afraid of returning to my own time. Afraid of what I’d find happening at the Project, what dreadful thing I’d be helpless to stop. Stay here, stay here, my mind told me; what you don’t know won’t hurt you.

 

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