THE first indication that something unusual was going on came in the form of a late-evening phone call. It was his father, who’d been away for several weeks consulting on a government project. “Adrian,” he said. “I wanted to let you know I’m home.”
Shel was surprised. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I didn’t, either, until the other day. Listen, I’ve left a message for Jerry. Why don’t we try to get together tomorrow for lunch? Are you available?”
There was something in his voice. “Dad, are you okay?”
“Sure. I’m fine.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it. Where did you have in mind?”
“How about the Italian place?”
“Servio’s?”
“Yes. Maybe eleven thirty, so we can beat the crowd.”
“That’s good.” Shel had been watching the Phil Castle Show. They were interviewing someone who was trying to sell a new movie. He’d been about to turn it off when the phone rang. He did so now. “Are you home to stay? Or are you going back?”
“I’m going to take a couple of days off. Then I’m going back to Swifton.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it. We missed you.”
“I missed you, too, Shel.”
“And I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”
BEYOND a mild physical resemblance, Jerry Shelborne could hardly have been less like his brother. He was several inches taller than Shel and had for years enjoyed introducing his brother as “the other half of the comedy team.” Jerry was trim and kept in good shape. He was one of those guys who worked out at his club every day.
The chasm that had opened between them came from Jerry’s view that Shel was shuffling through life. That he’d caved in to his father’s wishes instead of following his own muse—that was actually the term he’d used—and that consequently, Shel would be stuck selling electronics for the rest of his life unless he got his act together. There was, unfortunately, some truth to the charge. And that, of course, made it all the more painful.
Jerry saw his own career as a way to “leave a footprint.” He argued that he was protecting those he called “the little people.” “The corporations will take us all,” he liked to tell prospective clients, “unless we’re willing to fight back.” And, to give the guy justice, he usually seemed to be on the right side of his cases. Though he was obviously collecting a substantial fraction of the money that was changing hands in the courtroom.
They were waiting for their father at Servio’s, an upscale Italian restaurant near City Avenue. “There was a case last week,” Jerry was saying, when Shel glanced at his watch and broke in.
“He’s twenty minutes late.”
“Not like him,” said Jerry.
Shel took out his cell phone and made the call. A recorded voice responded: “Dr. Shelborne is not available at the moment. After the tone, please leave your name and number.”
“Let’s go find out what’s going on,” said Shel. He told the waitress, whom he knew, what had happened. “If he comes in,” he said, “call me, okay?”
MICHAEL Shelborne lived on Moorland Avenue in a modest two-story frame with two big oaks in the front yard and a backboard that Shel had used growing up, and which now more or less belonged to the neighborhood kids. Shel and Jerry pulled up in Shel’s car and parked in the driveway. Michael’s black Skylark was visible in the garage.
“So why isn’t he answering his phone?” asked Jerry.
Lights were on in the kitchen and in the den. They walked up to the front door, and Shel rang the bell.
A squirrel wandered across the lawn, stopped, and looked at them.
Shel rang again. He listened to the chimes.
Jerry twisted the knob. It was locked. “You bring the key?” he asked.
Shel had been coming over from time to time during their father’s absence to make sure everything was okay. A control unit turned lights off and on periodically to create the illusion someone was home. Still, the Skylark had been in New Mexico with their father. It wouldn’t have been too hard to figure out no one was here.
“No,” said Shel. “I didn’t think I’d need it.”
“Maybe one of the other doors is open.” They tried the back, but it was also locked. The side door was located inside the garage, but the garage door was down, and it locked automatically.
Shel lived only a few minutes away. “I’ll get the keys,” he said. “Be right back.”
THE door was chained. “Not a good sign,” said Jerry. He stuck his head in as far as he could. “Dad, you here anywhere?”
“Maybe we should call nine-one-one.”
“Let’s wait till we see what’s going on. We’d look kind of foolish if we get an ambulance in here, and he’s just fallen asleep.” He rang the bell again.
Shel tried a couple of the windows. They were locked, of course. No rocks were visible on the lawn, but there was a broken branch that had fallen into the driveway. He picked it up and came back. Jerry told him which window to break. It was one of the reasons he and Jerry didn’t do much socializing.
Before going any further, Shel called Servio’s. “No,” they said, “he hasn’t come in.”
He picked a different spot from the one Jerry had suggested and rammed the branch through the glass. He reached in, turned the lock, and raised the window.
Jerry stood aside and waited for Shel to climb through and open the door. “Very good,” he said, as if Shel had done an outstanding piece of work.
They called out again. Still no response. Shel hurried upstairs and looked into his father’s bedroom. It hadn’t been slept in. Two pieces of luggage, full but unopened, had been placed by the window. The other bedrooms were also empty. He returned downstairs, where Jerry was coming out of the den, shaking his head. “He’s not here. His luggage is up there. It looks as if he just came in and dropped them.”
“I can’t figure it,” said Jerry. He held up a wallet and a set of keys.
“Where were they?”
“On the dining-room table.” He started going from window to window, trying to lift each one.
“What are you doing, Jerry?”
“The other doors, side and back, are both bolted.” He turned and shrugged. “The windows are all locked. He has to be here somewhere.”
Shel couldn’t picture his father climbing down from the second floor. Nevertheless, he went back up and looked through the rooms, one by one. The windows were all locked.
He was not in the bathroom.
Not in any of the closets.
Not under the bed.
“He got out somehow.”
“When’s the last time you were here, Shel?”
“Wednesday.” Five days ago.
“Chain wasn’t on when you left?”
“How could it be?”
Jerry picked up the keys again. “He never goes anywhere without his car.”
Shel went back outside. The neighbor across the street, Frank Traeger, was raking leaves. Shel went over.
“Shel,” he said, “good to see you again. How you been doing?”
“Okay, Frank. Listen: Have you by any chance seen my father?”
“No,” he said. “I assumed he was home, though.”
“But you didn’t see him?”
“No. Just the car.”
Back at the house, Jerry was calling the police.
TWENTY minutes later, a car arrived. Two uniformed officers, both males, got out. They asked a few questions, whether their father had any health problems, whether he was prone to walk off without warning, whether anything like this had happened before. They conducted a search of the house. Then they asked some more questions. When Jerry mentioned that they had no idea how his father could have gotten out of the building, the shorter of the two, who seemed to be in charge, responded that the exit was really a secondary matter. “Let’s find him first. Then we can worry about the details.” When they’d finished, he said okay, they’d m
ake a report. “We’ll call it in,” he said. He was overweight, African-American, and he would now have one more crazy story to tell his kids. Shel suspected he’d concluded this was a hoax, that their father was playing some sort of elaborate joke on his sons. “We’ll need a description,” he added.
Shel found some pictures. Several with both parents and their two sons. Another with Michael and his nearly grown-up boys standing under a tree. And several relatively recent ones, including a photo of the father and his sons raising a toast while they celebrated the opening of Jerry’s law office.
“Okay,” the smaller officer said. “If he gets in touch with you, or if you find out what happened, we’d appreciate it if you’d let us know.”
The officers went outside and walked around the perimeter of the house. They asked Jerry to open the garage door, and they looked at the Skylark. “Is that the only car he has?” they asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Shel.
“It is strange,” said the partner. “Do you know anybody who’d want to harm him?”
“Not that I know of,” said Shel.
“Okay. If we turn up anything, we’ll get back to you.”
They got into their cruiser and drove away.
THEIR father maintained an office in back. Books were everywhere, mostly dealing with the joy of physics, the sheer ecstasy of the quantum world, the absolute unadulterated rapture of zero, and happy times with the gravitational constant.
Several volumes Shel hadn’t seen before were piled on a desk. Petrarch’s Canzoniere, The Divine Comedy, and The Decameron. He lifted the covers. All were in Italian. Also on the desk were two software packages: How to Learn Italian at Home and Speak Italian Like a Native.
Michael Shelborne had no facility with Italian. He’d picked up a little when they’d visited Rome and southern Italy years ago. But he had just enough to say “hello” and “good-bye” and, as he liked to joke, “You got a boyfriend?”
On a side table he found a copy of John Lewis’s memoir, Walking with the Wind.
The walls held more family pictures, of him and Mom from their salad days. There was one of the four of them together, taken with Shel in his mother’s lap, while Jerry stood cradling a baseball bat. And there was a picture of Clemmie, a cat they’d owned years ago.
Piled on a table were plaques and framed certificates recognizing his accomplishments. Thank you from Parker Electronics. Appreciation from Deercroft Oversight. Montgomery County Man of the Year. There was a team picture of last year’s Phillies. (Dad, like Shel, was a loyal fan.) Centered over the printer was a portrait of Galileo, gazing soulfully at his telescope. His father’s hero.
Shel tried the cell phone again. It rang, a few notes from Beethoven’s Fifth. The phone was in the desk. He pulled the drawers open. Picked it up. Saw no record of calls other than the ones to him and to Jerry.
IT made no sense. Jerry went upstairs, and Shel could hear him walking around, opening doors.
“Shel.” Jerry came out onto the stairway landing. “Did you see these robes?”
“What robes?”
“In the closet. Come on up here a minute.” Jerry went back into one of the spare bedrooms. “Look at this.”
Several robes hung side by side. They were the only clothes in the closet. Jerry took one out. It wasn’t really a bathrobe. “It’s more like a toga,” said Shel.
It was dark scarlet, made of coarse material. Jerry laid it on the bed and took down another one. Mud brown, this time. Again, a rough fabric. “It’s what you might wear onstage,” he said. “You ever know Dad to be interested in acting?”
“Dad? I can’t imagine it.”
There were six of them. And, on the floor of the closet, three pairs of sandals. “I don’t recall ever seeing him wear these, either,” said Jerry.
Shel took a closer look. “They’ve been used,” he said.
“WHAT do we do now?” asked Shel.
Jerry looked more annoyed than worried. He took a deep breath. Exhaled slowly. “Give up and go home,” he said. “And wait to hear what’s happened.”
Shel stared at the house, at the big empty windows, at the chimney, at the front deck where he’d spent so many quiet summer evenings. The place was full of memories, of jigsaw puzzles and card games and essays that had to be written for next morning’s class. Of old friends and girls he’d loved for a summer.
It had all gone away. The house felt strange. It had become a place he’d never known.
CHAPTER 2
One now finds scholarly analyses of time travel in serious scientific journals, written by eminent theoretical physicists. . . . Why the change? Because we physicists have realized that the nature of time is too important an issue to be left solely in the hands of science fiction writers.
—KIP THORNE, QUOTED IN PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE BY MICHIO KAKU
NEXT day, the police called Shel and asked him to meet them at Michael’s home, where they interviewed him for an hour. Had he heard from his father? Had anything like this ever happened before? Could Shel provide a list of friends and associates? Did his father have any enemies that he knew of? Had anyone ever threatened him?
Because the investigators could construct no easy explanation for the robes—there were six—they removed them. They also boxed everything that had been on top of the desk, including his index cards and the Rolodex. Even the pens went away.
A day later, Thursday, the Inquirer got the story. EMINENT PHYSICIST MISSING, read the headline. There was no mention of the locked doors and windows.
The FBI arrived Friday with a search warrant. “Strictly routine,” they told him. “But your father did some consultation work for the government, so naturally we’re interested.” Had Shel ever noticed any unusual strangers talking to his father? (That description fit at least half of those with whom his father routinely dealt.) Had he noticed people with foreign accents? They asked about the robes. Had he ever seen his father wearing one? Did Shel know what they were used for? Was it possible his father had been living some sort of double life? Was he gay? Did he belong to a secret society of some sort? They showed him photos and asked whether any of the faces were familiar.
Meantime, calls came in from friends and relatives. “Sorry to hear about your dad.” “Everything’ll be all right.” “Let us know if there’s anything we can do.”
Nobody ever knows what to say at such times. In some ways, this was even more difficult than it would have been had his father died. His old friend Dave Dryden admitted there simply were no words.
Dave was a big, easygoing guy who’d been around since they were kids. While Shel had played baseball on the high-school team, Dave, who even then was almost six-four, had been strictly debating and chess team. Still, there’d been a chemistry between them, and they’d kept the friendship alive when most of the other people from that era had drifted apart. When Shel had arrived at a point at which he needed to talk to somebody, he automatically reached out to Dave.
Friday evening, they met at Lenny Pound’s Bar and Grill. Dave was the biggest guy in the place, with red hair and green eyes. He moved with the fluidity of a natural athlete and, moreover, was left-handed. He taught languages and classics at Penn. “A wasted life,” Shel had told him. “You could have played for the Phillies.”
Dave was fascinated by the appearance of the FBI. “What kind of project was your father involved in?”
Shel shrugged. “No idea. He never talked about it.”
“You mean he figured you couldn’t handle the math?”
“Probably.”
Lenny’s was usually loud on Friday nights, and this was no exception. You had to project if you wanted to be heard. It wasn’t the place Shel would have chosen for a quiet talk, but they’d gotten into the habit of going there because it drew a lot of women. The sound system was banging away, and the level of conversation was at about a thousand decibels.
There wasn’t much to be said, though. Nobody had reported any progress on the s
earch. The FBI had been interested in the locked doors, but they’d concluded that, whatever had happened, Shel’s father had been a party to it.
Eventually, by unstated mutual agreement, they changed the subject: “Shel, are you still going to the show next week?”
He’d forgotten. They were members of the Devil’s Disciples, a group of theater devotees. Shel enjoyed live theater, but that wasn’t why he belonged to the group. Membership in the Disciples, for reasons he did not understand, drew an inordinate number of attractive young women. Tuesday night they’d be seeing Arms and the Man. Shel had never seen a play by Shaw that he hadn’t liked. But this didn’t seem like the right time. “I think I’ll pass, Dave.”
Dave showed disapproval. “You can’t really do anything to help, Shel. I don’t think it’s a good idea to sit around in your apartment all night.”
THE Saturday morning media turned up with details of the disappearance, primarily that there seemed no way Michael Shelborne could have gotten out of the house. Within hours, online news had found a deranged physicist who talked about quantum flux and how the government had a secret project that could lead to someone simply stepping into another dimension. “If indeed that’s what happened,” he said, speaking on Wide-Scope, “we’ll probably never see him again.”
When questioned further, he said that the experimentation, if it was in fact taking place, could lead to a space-time discontinuity.
“Is that dangerous?” asked the interviewer.
The physicist chuckled. “We could lose New Jersey,” he said, with dead seriousness.
The story translated into headlines. It led every news show and went national. Another rumor surfaced that Shelborne had been working on an invisibility device. The networks brought more physicists in, or maybe pretend physicists, and asked whether invisibility was possible. The answer was a resounding yes. Which led to off-the-wall questions about the kind of society we’d live in if people could make themselves, or their cars, invisible.
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