Einstein's Secret (17 page)

She ran to the backside of the cabin. “The ground over here is sloped. It’s less of a jump—”

She didn’t hesitate, and jumped right through the flames.

I ran over and followed her down, hitting the ground hard.

As soon as the impact finished rattling my bones, I heard Laura groaning. She was holding her leg, dragging herself away from the heat of the burning cabin. Her teeth were clenched.

I scrambled over to her, and as I did, she tried to stand up, but fell back down. She couldn’t put any weight on her right leg.

“Is someone trying to kill you?” she asked.

“We need to get you to a hospital.”

“So you’re still not going to answer my questions?” She tried to stand up again, hopping up onto one leg, but as soon as her other leg touched the ground, she grunted in pain and fell back down.

I kneeled down to her. “Give me your cell. I’ll call an ambulance.”

“There’s no reception up here.”

“Then we’re going to have to get you down the trail. I can’t leave you alone while I go for an ambulance.” I reached for her, and she latched onto me and stood up. Then, with her leaning on me, keeping her bad leg up, I started around the cabin.

“I was almost fried alive, and you can’t even tell me why,” she said.

Again, that feeling of dread washed over me. Was Van Doran after me, her, or both of us? It was now clear that she, too, recognized the small trails that the new history was blazing through the old.

“I’m so sorry,” I blurted out. Why hadn’t her memories reconstructed themselves?

“Me too,” she said, staring at the raging fire that was once her cabin. “This is connected to Alex, too, isn’t it? That wasn’t just a random hit-and-run.”

If she’s already a target, why not tell her everything?
I thought.

“And this wasn’t just a random arsonist?” she said.

“Let’s get to the car.”

We started down the trail.

It was an odd feeling to hold her so close to me, yet not tell her a word of the truth. But I held tough. I wouldn’t tell her the truth unless I knew for sure that Van Doran had already targeted her. I wasn’t going to be the one handing her a death sentence.

My resolve must’ve been palpable, because although she clung tight to me, she didn’t ask me any more questions. When we hit the steepest part of the trail, she grunted and winced as the pain from her leg worsened. I felt her body quiver, ready to collapse, and held on to her more tightly.

We made it to the car, where I helped her into the passenger seat then got behind the wheel. She handed me her keys and said, “Is there something you know that’s worth dying for?”

I keyed the ignition. “Don’t pursue this. You’re teaching at UVA. It’s your dream job come true. Focus on that.” I recognized that advice immediately. It was the advice that I hadn’t heeded.

She didn’t respond.

The trip to the hospital was a silent one.

I sat with her in the waiting room, even though she asked me to leave. As we waited, I wanted to pull out the
Fame
article. It felt heavy in my pocket, weighted with information that I desperately needed to know. Information that could save both of us.

After about thirty minutes, an orderly came out with a wheelchair, and I helped Laura into it. Then I leaned down, kissed her on the cheek, and whispered into her ear, “I promise I’ll tell you everything when it’s safe.”

I hoped I’d never have to tell her anything at all. I hoped I could fix the changes in history, go back to my time, and continue falling in love with the beautiful Laura Metcalf, the Laura who’d never known anything about this, and who’d never been swept up into the vortex.

The orderly wheeled her away, and I walked out, more in love with her now than I’d been before.

Chapter Seventeen

I headed across the UVA Hospital grounds, on the lookout for a place to sit down so I could dive into the
Fame
article. I had regrets about leaving Laura’s side, but rationalized them by convincing myself that the arsonist—and, again, I had no doubt it was Van Doran—was after me and not her.

Before I got to Jefferson Park Avenue, I spotted a bench, sat down, and pulled out the
Fame
article. I pushed away my guilt about leaving Laura and started reading.

The first few paragraphs were a quick summary of the facts, as they were known in the months following Einstein’s disappearance.

Einstein had left for a private conference on Friday. A driver was to bring him back to his home on Sunday at five p.m. At seven, Ruth Meyer reported Einstein missing. But the police weren’t concerned yet.

In a time when communication wasn’t instantaneous, it was possible, if not likely, that the only problem was that Einstein was late.

Still, Ruth was worried. Einstein had been secretive about his whereabouts and he hadn’t left her any contact information. She wasn’t pleased that he’d left her in the dark. By ten o’clock that night, she was positive that something had gone wrong, and by the morning of the following day, the New Jersey State Police and the FBI were investigating.

Because this article was fresh, just a few months after the disappearance, what followed wasn’t laden with conspiracy theories like the ones I’d read during my Internet search. The reporter came up with a theory, based on real facts, as to where Einstein had gone for this two-day conference.

First, without naming his source—though it was most likely Ruth Meyer herself—the reporter stated that a car with Maryland plates had picked up Einstein. Then the reporter deduced that Einstein would not have gone farther south than Washington, D.C. for any type of conference. He noted that during all the time that Einstein had lived in Princeton, the scientist had never traveled for his work farther south than D.C.

Then the reporter looked into whether there’d been a science-related conference, during the time of the disappearance, either in Baltimore or Washington, D.C.—or anywhere in between. The Maryland plates would fit in with that scenario.

But there hadn’t been any public conference. So the reporter determined that it had been a private meeting. He then explored why such a meeting would be secretive.

Now, this was during the Cold War, so the reporter spoke to other scientists about new technologies that might strengthen the U.S.’s offensive and defensive capabilities. The reporter tried to connect Einstein to some of those technologies, but, in the end, he couldn’t.

Then he looked into Einstein’s primary research passion, his “unified field theory.” Was it possible that the scientist had made a big leap, and that this leap had led to a practical application so powerful that it was being kept under wraps? The reporter reached out to Pentagon and DoD sources, but came up empty.

Then he researched the universities that Einstein might have visited on this trip. The University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Howard, and George Washington, among others. And this led him to a professor of theoretical physics at Johns Hopkins.

At this point in the article, I was convinced that the reporter was pursuing a dead end. He was far from uncovering the murder at the Weldon estate, so I started to read at a faster clip, hoping to strike gold in the next section of the article.

But while I was rushing through a description of the Hopkins professor’s area of expertise, and how it connected to Einstein, I saw that this professor had a research partner, a Professor Marcus.

At UVA
.

My heart started pumping faster. Surely this wasn’t a coincidence. This was the clue. I had to get to a public computer terminal as fast as possible and look up Professor Marcus. First, I forced myself to read through the rest of the article, just to verify that there were no other coincidences. There weren’t.

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in front of a computer terminal in the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. I looked up Professor Marcus and found that he’d been a professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at UVA in the fifties and sixties.

I found one of his journal articles, and it linked to his bio. I scanned through his bio until I found exactly what I was sure I was supposed to find. My pulse quickened and my breathing stopped. Synchronicity, history, whatever you wanted to call it—it had reached out to me again.

Professor Marcus had written “Out of Time,” a short story about time travel. The story had been published in
Galaxy
, a popular science-fiction magazine from the fifties. I looked up
Galaxy
on Wikipedia and found that it had published the stories of Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and many other well-known science-fiction writers. That was why Marcus had listed this credit in his bio. It was a feather in his cap.

Then I started to search for the story itself. With a title like “Out of Time,” it
had
to contain the clue I needed to fix everything. The original
Galaxy
magazine wasn’t online though, and although the story’s title was listed on various science-fiction websites, none had a copy of it.

After searching for another thirty minutes, I sat back and stared blankly at the computer screen. The only way I was going to find a copy of that story was by digging up a hard copy of that issue of
Galaxy
.

So where could I track it down? A yard sale?

Yes. The biggest yard sale in the world.

eBay.

But how was a man with no home address, traveling through time, going to buy a magazine from eBay?

I supposed it was possible. But it would involve a P.O. box number, a money order, PayPal, and waiting for it to arrive. By that time history would have changed, and I wouldn’t recognize a clue if it came from Einstein himself.

For some reason I checked eBay anyway, and found the magazine. Then my eyes fell on the seller’s name, and my pulse went into overdrive, taking my heart along for the ride.

Eddie’s Emporium.

Eddie had a copy of that issue of
Galaxy
.

So it looked like I was going to be visiting him after all.

Of course, if I could get to that magazine without interacting with him, that would be the best course of action. The magazine was probably in his house or his carrel. If it was in his house, I had a chance of getting it. But if it was in his carrel, it’d be a lot tougher. I’d have to get both the combination to the trap door and the keys to his carrel.

I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm my racing heart. Time travel was messy, but the synchronicity brought a kind of order to it, even if that order was unexplainable.

I’d gone from one issue of
Fame
, to another issue of
Fame
, to an issue of
Galaxy
, as if the same note were being played again and again on different instruments. I’d gone from one Eddie, to another, and was now headed to a third. I’d gone from a memory of my dad in a movie theater to actually seeing my dad in a drive-in. I’d gone from a hospital in Rockville to another in Charlottesville, and, although I didn’t know it then, I was headed to another.

*

I crossed Jefferson Park Avenue, then made my way across campus to the Corner. From there, I hopped on a bus that ran by Eddie’s place. I had considered a cab, but thought I should conserve the cash I had on hand.

Staring out the bus window at the students and townsfolk moving in and out of shops, it hit me once again just how far I was from fixing anything. No one out there knew that Einstein had made a deathbed confession, and with every passing minute, any remaining trace of that event was disappearing.

The bus took me to within a half a dozen blocks of Eddie’s house, and I walked the rest of the way. I approached his rundown rental and spotted two cars out front. One of them was Eddie’s. So the choice was now upon me.

I could wait until Eddie left the house and try to break in, or I could step up to the door and interact with him. It turned out that the choice wasn’t that hard. As I’d realized on the bus, I couldn’t wait on anything. That short story could disappear, as could my memory of it, as quickly as Van Doran had gunned down Einstein. The fastest way to that story was for Eddie to lead me to it.

I walked up the path to Eddie’s front door, rang the doorbell, and braced myself for meeting a third Eddie. This time, I didn’t plan to fill him in on anything. If this Eddie didn’t know anything about time travel, he wasn’t going to hear it from me. I’d talk to him about his fifties memorabilia and work the
Galaxy
magazine into the conversation. Let him be suspicious. Just as I’d withheld information from Laura, I’d do the same with him.

The door opened to reveal Eddie, and as I soon as I saw him, I realized how hard my task was going to be. How was I going to hide my intentions from a guy who was sharper than I was?

“Hey, I’m a friend of Alex’s,” I said, and extended my hand.

He shook it. “Oh, right. We met at the memorial.”

Great. Now I was going to have to play the same game I’d played with Laura, trying to keep my foot out of my mouth because I had no idea what the other me had told him.

“Sorry about just dropping by uninvited, but I’m in town for a job interview, and Alex’s family wanted me to follow up on some stuff that was stored in the Caves.”

He looked me up and down. He wasn’t buying it. “You’re wearing the same clothes.”

Did he mean from the memorial service? I couldn’t have worn jeans and a T-shirt to the service.

He started to roll up his left shirtsleeve, and as he did, I waited for him to say something. He didn’t.

And I didn’t volunteer a word, either.

He continued to roll his sleeve up, past his forearm and over his upper arm, where he exposed a small, thick, pink scar. It was ugly and jaggedly circular, and though it had healed, it still had a raw look.

Though I’d never seen a bullet wound, I was sure that I was staring at one now, and it crossed my mind that I was facing the original Eddie.

But that didn’t calculate—the scar looked too old for that. Though it wasn’t faded like an old scar, it wasn’t fresh enough to have been the result of a gunshot wound from just a few days ago.