Einstein's Secret

by Irving Belateche

  I had to stop him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Fifteen minutes later, I was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, headed back to Cumberland. There was even less traffic than before and the darkness was thicker. So thick that it looked like I was on the road to nowhere. The lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” reverberated through my head.

  Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality?

  I was caught in a vortex and there was only one way of escape. Sealing the wormhole. I hoped that Clavin had called Weldon and told him what the note said. But even if he had, I couldn’t be sure how Weldon would react.

  My thoughts then turned to detonating an explosion to seal the wormhole. Again, my skills weren’t suited to the task at hand. For example, my first thought was dynamite, as if I were Wile E. Coyote battling the Road Runner.

  Eventually I hit on the idea of using the natural gas from Weldon’s kitchen stove. I could use a hose to run the gas into the basement. But if you were aiming for an uncontrolled explosion, that was it. And I’d have to get through the wormhole first before igniting the gas.

  I also considered sealing the wormhole from the Charlottesville side, after I went through. That came with its own set of problems. If the Dorothy Theorem worked, and I returned to the right time—the start of the fall semester, with me as an adjunct professor—it’d be tough to gather bomb-making materials without arousing suspicion. And even if I managed to pull that off and detonated the explosion, the entire university would go on high alert for a possible terrorist attack. SWAT teams would swarm the campus, followed by the FBI and Homeland Security, and they’d ultimately get their man. Me.

  One of the service plazas was fast approaching, so I turned to a more immediate problem. Getting another car. I’d hit Cumberland after dawn, and in the light of day, the Cumberland Police would have no trouble spotting the car that had killed a defenseless child.

  I slowed down as I advanced on the plaza. The restaurant and the gas station were closed and the parking lot was empty. If I wanted another car, I’d have to pull off the turnpike and scour the streets of whatever small town I found myself in. And that’s what I planned to do.

  Meanwhile, I focused on my own history. I had to keep it alive because I’d soon need it for the Dorothy Theorem. I concentrated on the day I’d headed to the faculty orientation in Charlottesville. The day I’d met Eddie. The day I’d met Laura. I wanted to return before Eddie had taken me down to the Caves and sucked me into the vortex. Before I’d gotten fired. I needed to feel the excitement of starting my new job again. The excitement of that fresh start.

  It worked. I got lost in that world, and before I knew it, I noticed the dark of night had given way to the ghostly light before dawn. I was now close enough to Cumberland to change cars.

  I pulled off at the next exit and entered the small town of Plattville. The main streets of the tiny downtown were still fairly empty at that hour. There were a few delivery trucks doing their rounds, and I considered stealing one, but rejected that idea. A truck would be too unwieldy.

  The edge of town gave way to a used-car lot, a miniature golf course, and some restaurants, all shuttered for the night. Then I made it to a residential neighborhood with blocks of single-family homes. I parked my car at the end of one block, got out, and walked down the street, checking all the cars parked along the curb. No one had been kind enough to leave keys in the ignition.

  I walked down three more blocks, but came up empty-handed. Maybe the delivery truck was the best option after all. I turned around and headed back toward my car, but using a different route so I could peer into another set of cars. Still no luck.

  As I headed back to the turnpike, with the thought that I’d try one more town, a larger one, before entering Cumberland, I passed the used-car lot and an image suddenly popped into my head. I’m sure it came from thousands of hours of media consumption. It was an image that’d been replayed so many times on so many TV shows that it was probably part of the collective unconscious.

  A block past the used-car lot, I parked, got out of my car, and walked back to the lot. If that image was going to pay off, there was no need to check all the cars. Either my sudden inspiration was the policy at this car lot or it wasn’t.

  There were four cars right next to the entrance. I stepped up to the closest one and reached for the door. It opened. I bent down and flipped over the floor mat. Sure enough, there were the car keys.

  I slid into the car, keyed the ignition, and drove off the lot.

  By the time someone reported this crime, I’d be gone from the fifties. Hopefully. I checked the gas gauge and found I was good on that front.

  Back on the turnpike, I calculated that I was less than an hour away from the Weldon estate. If I went with the plan to use natural gas for the explosion, I still had to stop for matches and materials for making a fuse so I could delay igniting the gas until I’d gone through the wormhole.

  My exit came up quickly, and soon I was speeding down Route 220, then Route 68 into Cumberland. Early-morning commuters had finally joined me on the road, and seeing them repopulate the world convinced me to put the kibosh on stopping again for anything. I’d look for matches and fuse-making materials at the Weldon estate.

  As I drove through Cumberland, more traffic began to fill the streets, including a police cruiser approaching from the other direction. There was no doubt that the officers inside would check me out as they passed. Not only did passing drivers in the fifties acknowledge each other, but also these officers would be on the lookout for the drive-in killer.

  As the cruiser passed, the officers looked right at me. Was the fear that rippled through me obvious on my smiling face?

  They didn’t return my smile.

  I checked my side-view mirror and saw their brake lights blink on behind me. They were slowing down.

  I was ready to floor it.

  But their brake lights blinked off.

  I located the cruiser in my rearview mirror, and watched to see if they were going to pull a U-turn.

  They didn’t, and my fear slowly ebbed away.

  I reached the outskirts of Cumberland and braced myself for passing by the drive-in. It was just up ahead. After reading Einstein’s confession, I now knew that I’d contributed to the new history by killing my own father. The new history was just as efficient as Van Doran when it came to getting rid of loose ends. And just as brutal.

  I glanced back at the rearview mirror, and my heart started thumping at a thousand beats per minute.

  There was a police cruiser behind me.

  I suspected it was the same one I’d just passed, which meant the officers had recognized me. Probably from a description given by that mom at the drive-in. I white-knuckled the steering wheel so hard that I felt blood pulsing through my hands.

  The cruiser didn’t have its lights on yet, and I wondered if that meant there was still some doubt in the officers’ minds. As I drove by the empty drive-in, I couldn’t help but feel that this was where my trip would end.

  When I glanced back at the rearview mirror, the cruiser was even closer.

  I was ready to floor it and get the hell out of Maryland. I’d head to Charlottesville and travel back to the present from that side.

  The cruiser pulled into the drive-in. I looked back over my shoulder, and this time I caught a glimpse of a couple officers and two police cruisers parked on the other side of the concession stand.

  I understood what was going on. The police were doing more investigating under the light of day, and the officers behind me were joining them.

  My heart was still beating wildly, so I tried to will it to slow down. I needed to think straight. Weldon’s estate was coming up and I couldn’t just pull over onto the side of the road. Not with the police so close by. If the officers noticed, they’d investigate.

  So I drove past the estate, looking for a place to pull over on that side. After a mile or so, I parked the ca
r on the shoulder as close to the woods as I could. The car was still plenty visible, but I didn’t want to drive any further in search of better place to hide it. The longer it took to hike back to Weldon’s, the more time Van Doran had to wipe out the history I was clinging to.

  Before I took off for the mansion, I searched the car for matches or anything else that could help with a makeshift explosion. The glove compartment was empty, but I found a road flare in the trunk. I grabbed it, thinking that it’d be useful as bomb-making material, though I’d have to figure out how.

  Twenty minutes later, I was trudging through the woods up to the back of Weldon’s house, planning my next move. If Clavin hadn’t called Weldon and told him about the note, there was no chance of getting Weldon on my side. And if he wasn’t on my side, I couldn’t very well go about the business of piping natural gas into the basement.

  So my default plan was to subdue Weldon with Van Doran’s gun, which I still had, then tie him up and get on with sealing the wormhole.

  I opened the French doors, stepped inside, and stood stock-still, listening.

  The house was deathly quiet. Unnaturally so.

  After a minute or so of that unnerving silence, I made my way through the house, down the hallways, toward the kitchen. I stopped when I saw the light in the study was on. Was Weldon in there, anxiously waiting for Clavin to return from Princeton?

  I pulled out Van Doran’s gun, ready to rush the study. But inches from the doorway, I put the gun back in my pocket, opting to see first if Clavin had called Weldon.

  I stepped into the room. “Mr. Weld—”

  Weldon was sprawled out on the floor, his skull bashed in. Blood had already pooled over a wide area of the hardwood floor. The elegant sculpture of the golden tiger lay in the sea of blood.

  It wasn’t hard to figure out that Clavin had told Weldon—and that Weldon had done the right thing. He’d tried to stop Van Doran.

  It was time to seal the bridge.

  As I hurried to the kitchen to check on the gas stove, I thought of a glitch in my plan. I’d be sealing the bridge with Van Doran on the wrong side of it. I’d have to wait for his return. But I couldn’t wait. I was sure he’d get the confession this time. And we both couldn’t end up with it. Only one history could survive.

  And that’s when a huge piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. A piece of history that I’d forgotten. A fact from the correct history.

  History had recorded that Van Doran disappeared right after Einstein’s death, and that no one had ever found out what happened to him. That’s because he gets stranded on the other side of the bridge, if I can seal it tonight.

  But I had to get through it first.

  I stepped into the kitchen and heard a door shut somewhere in the house. Was Van Doran still here? That didn’t seem possible. But if he was, I wouldn’t allow him to use the wormhole. That was paramount. I went down into the basement.

  As I stood there in the dark, a horrible thought dawned on me.

  Does Van Doran disappear tonight because I kill him?

  The nausea and dread that I’d felt earlier in the night once more found its way into my soul. This man had gone rampaging through history, murdering others, but was I ready to stop him by committing murder myself?

  His victims would be resurrected if I fixed everything. Alex would live. Eddie would live. Clavin would live a long life and so would Weldon. But Van Doran would die tonight, murdered at my hands, and he’d stay murdered—or, as history would record it, disappeared.

  I pulled out my gun and waited in the dark, unsure if I could kill Van Doran in cold blood.

  The seconds went by and the house was quiet. Then I heard a scream, a kind of wail, and I knew what had just happened.

  I ran out of the basement, through the house, and into the study. Clavin was collapsed on a chair, and tears were sliding down his face.

  “We can bring him back to life,” I said. “This is another history. It doesn’t have to exist.”

  Clavin didn’t say anything for a few seconds. With wet and fearful eyes, he stared at Weldon’s lifeless body. Then he looked at me, and a steely cold took over his demeanor. “Tell me what I need to do.”

  *

  Henry Clavin and I didn’t use natural gas or my pilfered road flare to execute Einstein’s final wish. There were plenty of flammable liquids in the house, so we made small “bombs” by dumping the liquid into four empty paint cans.

  We placed those cans into a metal trashcan, which we set up against the basement wall. Then we filled the trashcan with gasoline and created a fuse from rags.

  After I was safely through the wormhole, Clavin would use the fuse to ignite the gas, which would heat the paint cans until they exploded.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” he said, after I told him about everything that had transpired because of the bridge. “How can we really know what the old history—the real history—is?”

  “I’m not sure we can,” I said, and I wasn’t. But from everything I’d seen over the previous few days, and from what Einstein had written, I hoped we could preserve most of that old history. “None of this quite fits together in a way that we’ll ever understand.”

  “That’s what worried Professor Einstein.”

  “Time travel is messy.”

  Clavin smiled for the first time. “I heard him say that, too. On the last weekend he was here.”

  “He was right.”

  With everything set, I had one thing left to do. Focus on that day in August, the day before I’d driven to Rockville and met Henry Clavin for the first time.

  I pictured myself rushing across the UVA campus, past pristine lawns, and heading up the steps of Old Cabell Hall. Eddie suddenly approached me and wanted me to skip orientation. He pulled out his copy of Fame—

  Here, my mind started to wander. Probably because of the gas fumes wafting through the basement. Instead of sticking to that day, I saw my copy of Fame magazine in a box of magazines at a yard sale. I saw Alex stepping out of the elevator in hospital scrubs. I saw Van Doran shooting Einstein. I saw my stolen car speeding through the drive-in and smashing into my dad.

  My thoughts were too scattered to make a run for the wall.

  I saw Clavin and Ruth Meyer at Princeton Hospital, and then I saw the synchronicity of the hospital rooms I’d been in. Clavin’s, Laura’s, and Einstein’s.

  Then I latched onto the fleeting image of Laura.

  I saw her trekking up Jackson Hill to Gray’s Cabin and then I saw her on the day we first met. In the Iliad Bookstore. It was the same day that I hoped to return to. I walked in to pick up the packet of handouts for my class.

  Laura didn’t look up, but I could still see she was beautiful. She was concentrating on her book, and her short red hair fell over one of her cheeks.

  I walked up to the counter.

  She looked up, revealing hazel eyes.

  I told her what class I was teaching, and her jaw tightened in anger.

  She looked me over and then called me the lucky winner.

  I joked about Alex, which made her grin.

  That night, we hiked up Jackson Hill and looked over the dark valley. We talked about her future and mine.

  She was the woman I hoped to get to know during my tenure in Charlottesville.

  I ran into the wall and was immediately engulfed in the heat of the white ocean. I ran until the oxygen began to disappear and the whiteness became infinite. I stumbled down and felt the cool stone floor.

  The ocean started to dissipate and gave way to the carrel around me—and, more importantly, what was in the carrel.

  Alex’s desk and bookshelves. And his books and files.

  I was back.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I made my way through the Caves, up through the trap door, and into Grace Hall. Before I exited the building, I grabbed a campus paper from a stack by the entrance and checked the date.

  The Dorothy Theorem had worked. I’d
come back to the right day. If all was back to normal, or close to it, Alex would be in New York, and I hadn’t yet been fired from my new job.

  Outside, I asked a student the time. His answer told me what I had to do next. Talk to Eddie. At this point in the day, Eddie had already approached me with his copy of Fame, but he hadn’t yet told me about Clavin’s resurrection.

  My car was exactly where I’d parked it the last time I’d lived through this day. So getting to Eddie was going to be easy. But deciding what to say to him wasn’t. My goal was to stop him from researching Einstein’s secret any further. I wanted to make sure there was no chance of changing history again.

  I could’ve counted on the wormhole being sealed to stop the changes, but I wasn’t ready to. Not yet. I’d count on that only when I was sure the changes had stopped.

  As I drove to Eddie’s place, I realized that our roles would be reversed. Instead of him trying to convince me to drive up to Rockville, I had to convince him not to. I had to convince him that he’d already done his job. That he’d already talked me into pursuing his lead, and that his lead had paid off.

  And there was only one way to prove that.

  I knocked on Eddie’s door. When he answered, he raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I thought I’d have to do a little more lobbying to get you to help me.”

  “I’m a sucker when it comes to Einstein’s secret.”

  “Then you’ve come to the right place.” He motioned me inside.

  I sat on the couch and asked him the same question he’d asked me the first time around. “Henry Clavin—How much do you know about him?”

  He laughed. “That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

  I repressed the overwhelming impulse to jump right into the topic of bridges and wormholes. My twelve-year odyssey was now over and Eddie had played a major role. I badly wanted to describe to him how Einstein’s final night had really played out, even if I sounded insane.

  But I didn’t jump into it. It was only when Eddie invited me to the Caves, where he said he had something to show me, that I started to open up.