The Teleportation Accident

by Ned Beauman

  ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘how did that get up there?’

  ‘I don’t know, son,’ his father said.

  As was their deferential habit when they came to an unfamiliar place, they had got down off their bicycles to wheel them on foot. The ground here was sticky and there was a sweet smell in the air, like walking under a mulberry tree in late summer, except there were no trees by the side of the road. He must have been twelve or thirteen by then and they had already been through so many small towns on their way to Tiny Lustre that Bailey had gone from treating each one like an exciting new frontier to treating each one like some friend of your uncle’s to whom you might be introduced at a family function — you knew that you were probably never going to see them again and that they were therefore not worth any investment of your finite curiosity. This particular town was called Scarborough, and they only had to walk a short distance further up Main Street before they saw that something ghastly had happened here.

  Splintered wood and broken glass and torn awnings; human shapes lying on porches, unmoving, covered by sheets, or in one case not even a sheet but an old patchwork quilt; a horse thrown head first through the window of a saloon, its back legs still weakly kicking like a dog in a dream; an overturned cart with blood and hair stuck to one of its wheels; from all directions, the sound of whimpering or crying; and that insistent sickly odour, getting stronger and stronger as they walked. At the north end of the town was some sort of factory, and up there the disarray was at its worst, with nurses and firemen and policemen running back and forth among gawpers like themselves. Bailey thought at first that a tornado must have scrambled the town, but then his father stopped a man in a butcher’s apron to ask what had happened, and they found out about the accident.

  The factory was the Scarborough Ginger Ale Company bottling plant, the town’s biggest employer, and beyond it was a branch of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. About an hour ago, a circus train from the Mockton-Piney Circus, heading east towards Florence, had made an emergency stop to check an overheated axle bearing on one of the flatcars. The driver of an empty Atlantic Coast Line train behind it had missed the signal posted by the brakeman — he must have been drunk or asleep, but no one would ever know now because he was dead — and had sped straight into the back of the circus train. The caboose and the rear four sleeping cars had all been pulverised, and the car that held the circus’s elderly performing elephant had snapped off its couplings and rolled south down the incline into one of the Scarborough Ginger Ale Company’s half-a-million-gallon steel storage tanks. The tank had burst and sent a mighty wave of ginger syrup rushing like an apocalypse down Main Street, high enough to sweep that Model T Ford on to the roof of that bank. So far they’d counted more than thirty dead and more than a hundred injured, too many to fit in the town’s hospital. As the man said this, Bailey caught sight of a headless body being taken out of the bottling plant in a green wheelbarrow, basted in its own gore, the tips of its fingers dragging on the ground. All Bailey could think about was that as they’d gone past Florence he’d been begging his father to let them take a train, just a slow, unpopular rural train, just once.

  ‘ “When many a great shipwreck has come to pass,” ’ said his father softly after the man in the butcher’s apron had moved on, “ ‘the great sea is wont to cast hither and thither benches, ribs, yards, prow, masts and swimming oars, so that along all the coasts of the lands floating stern-pieces are seen, giving warning to mortals.” Carry on, son, please.’

  ‘ “Even so,” ’ said Bailey, ‘ “if you suppose that the first-beginnings of a certain kind are limited, then scattered through all time they must needs be tossed hither and thither by the tides of matter, setting towards every side, so that never can they be driven together and come together in union, nor stay fixed in union, nor take increase and grow.” ’ His father had been teaching him Lucretius for two years now, and he knew most of the first two books of the Cyril Bailey translation of De Rerum Natura off by heart. Soon he would be ready for Walt Whitman and William James.

  ‘Exactly right.’

  ‘Those poor people,’ said Bailey.

  ‘Poor people?’ repeated his father, and straight away Bailey knew he’d made a mistake. He still made mistakes so often. ‘There was a much bigger train wreck in Washington just a few months ago. Are the men and women here worse off than the men and women there?’

  ‘No, Dad.’

  ‘Is there any reason why we should feel any more pity for the men and women here just because we happened to be near by when it happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What fallacy would that be?’

  ‘Propinquitous Conceit.’

  ‘Exactly right. And what fallacy did the people of Scarborough commit?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I expect most of them thought that just because something like this had never happened before, they didn’t need to worry that it would ever happen, and so they didn’t need to take precautions.’

  ‘Inductive Normalism.’

  ‘Exactly right.’

  They watched the rescuers work for a few minutes longer. The activity was so disciplined and repetitive by now that it was almost as if this factory had been deliberately adapted for some new and unspeakable purpose — as if all these people would go home at five and come back tomorrow at nine and carry on working here until they retired.

  ‘Dad?’ Bailey said hesitantly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did They do this? Did They think we might have been on one of those trains?’

  ‘I don’t think so, son,’ his father said. ‘Remember, They want us alive.’ And as they turned to leave Bailey heard yet again the squeak of the green wheelbarrow…

  Moving like a clockwork automaton, Bailey approached the crowd of CalTech students so he could hear what they were saying about the car on the roof of Dabney Hall.

  ‘They must have lifted it up there with a crane,’ someone suggested.

  ‘Where would they get a crane that tall?’

  ‘Maybe they had a teleportation machine.’

  Bailey glanced with suspicion at the originator of this last remark, but he saw that the boy had been joking — he didn’t know anything.

  ‘You’re all dumb-asses,’ someone else said. ‘They took it to pieces, lugged it all up the utility staircase, and put it back together. There’s no other way to do it.’

  ‘That would have taken all night.’

  ‘Anything worth doing takes all night. Don’t you remember when they bricked up that door in Page and then painted it over like it was never there?’

  ‘Where would they even get a car like that? It must be fifty years old.’

  So it was just another student prank, thought Bailey. The boys here loved pranks — once, before his death, Marsh had decreed that they must wear jackets and ties for evening meals, and that night they had all arrived for dinner in jackets and ties but no trousers or shoes. He should have known, of course, but for a moment the car on the roof had seemed to him like some sort of malevolent lesion in time. It had been a long while since anything had reminded him of that day. By now some of the students had noticed Bailey standing there, so he nodded at them curtly and walked on towards Throop Hall. On his way past the front desk, Mrs Stiles waved to him. ‘Oh, Professor Bailey, I’ve been calling your lab.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that, Mrs Stiles, I was at the Gorge Auditorium.’

  ‘How are the rehearsals coming along?’

  ‘Very well, I think. Was it anything urgent?’

  ‘There’s somebody here to see you.’

  Bailey couldn’t see anyone waiting. ‘Who?’

  ‘An old coloured woman. She just went to powder her nose. She says she’s a family friend.’

  That wasn’t possible. ‘Did she give her name?’

  ‘Lucy,’ said Mrs Stiles.

  Bailey stared at her.

  ‘Lucy,’ said his mother again from the doorway. ‘Mrs Phenscot
wants to talk to you about tomorrow’s luncheon. She’s in the orchid house.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Lucy.

  She put down the knife with which she had been boning a chicken and went to wash her hands. It was only then that Bailey’s mother noticed Bailey’s father sitting on a stool by the kitchen window.

  ‘Tom,’ she said sharply, coming forward into the kitchen. ‘I didn’t know you were down here.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, Lucy and Franklin and I were just having a little tongue wag — weren’t we, son?’

  Bailey didn’t look up from his toy steam engine. He was inside the train as well as above it and the great black oven beside him was its coal furnace. With Lucy gone he would have to stoke it himself. His mother waited until the cook had gone out and then said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t do this.’

  ‘Do what?’ his father said.

  ‘All these “discussions” with Lucy.’

  ‘I treasure our discussions.’

  She tutted incredulously. ‘I grew up with her, Tom, I love her as much as anyone, but we both know the only reason you keep coming down here is so you don’t have to talk to my father. I’m sorry you think he’s so unbearable.’

  ‘I don’t see why—’

  ‘In fact, no, I’m not sorry you think he’s so unbearable. I don’t care what you think of him. I’m only sorry you take such pleasure in being rude to my family. Do you think I like apologising for you all the time?’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, you know I don’t mean to offend your daddy any more than necessary. I come down here to talk to Lucy because I like talking to Lucy. Have you ever discussed God with her?’

  ‘No, Tom, as it happens I haven’t ever discussed God with the cook.’

  ‘You know she believes in everything? I mean it. Everything. African deities, Red Indian spirits, Catholic saints — they’re all the same to her.’

  ‘And that’s fascinating to you?’

  ‘Yes. Because she doesn’t see any contradiction. The priests on Hispaniola taught her grandparents that there’s one god and all different kinds of angels. It’s a sort of cheerful, omnivorous credulity.’

  ‘It sounds like a child’s religion.’ His mother took off her glasses and folded them up, which was how she showed she was resigned to seeing a tiresome conversation through to its end. Bailey wondered what it would feel like to run the wheels of his steam engine over the raw flesh of Lucy’s chicken.

  ‘It does have a child’s honesty. The other religions dissemble. Everything that’s in Lucy’s faith is in your parents’ Catholicism too, sweetheart. The difference is that your parents’ Catholicism has to suppress the parts it doesn’t like. Lucy told me that back on Hispaniola her grandparents used to sacrifice livestock, and every so often, if things got desperate, someone might sacrifice a cripple. Her family didn’t take part, she says, but it happened. Don’t you think that’s in Catholicism? All that bloodshed? But it’s hidden. Not very well hidden, though — you’ve seen that crucifix they have on the wall that frightens Franklin so much. And who knows what goes on in that chapel of theirs?’

  ‘Nothing “goes on” in there. That’s where I was christened.’

  ‘Then why won’t they let me inside?’

  ‘You’re an atheist. It’s the family chapel and no atheist has ever set foot in there before. You know that. You’re lucky they even let you into their house. Especially when you behave like this.’

  ‘No atheist? What about you?’

  ‘Tom…’

  ‘You’re not telling me you’ve changed your mind again? That you believe in their god after all? Next you’ll decide you want to let them put him through that initiation ritual.’

  ‘Confirmation is not an initiation ritual.’

  ‘Confirmation is bullying our son into joining their cult when he’s still too young to understand why he might not want to.’

  ‘Our son is right here and when you talk like that you probably scare him a lot more than that trinket on the wall. I don’t want to have this argument again.’

  ‘Come along, sweetheart, you promised me. You’re going to help me make sure they don’t put him through that. You’re going to talk to your mother about it. Why don’t you go now? She’s always in a good mood when she’s with her orchids.’

  That was three weeks before his mother disappeared and his father took him away in the middle of the night…

  ‘Are you all right, Professor Bailey?’ said Mrs Stiles.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Stiles, but I don’t have any family friends named Lucy and I won’t have time to see her today.’

  Bailey turned and strode away as fast as he could without quite breaking into a jog. He’d come here to pick up some typing from one of the girls but instead he carried on until he was out of Mrs Stiles’s range of vision and positioned himself behind a pillar so that he could observe whoever came out of the women’s bathroom near the reception desk. And then, sure enough, there she was, this shadow out of time. She was old, now, of course, probably almost seventy, walking with a stick, but she didn’t look all that different. Hurrying out of Throop Hall by the doors at the other end, he tried to pretend to himself that he hadn’t seen her, but this was a rupture in his history far harder to deny than that Model T on the roof of Dabney Hall. Some sort of storage tank had been broken open in his head and now he couldn’t seem to stop the memories from gushing through him.

  ‘Professor Bailey? Might I importune you very briefly?’

  Bailey stopped. Why could he not be left alone today? The intervention here was from a blond man with an English accent who seemed to have been waiting there for him beside the steps up to the door of the Obediah Laboratories. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘My name is Rupert Rackenham. I live over in Venice Beach and I’m an old Berlin friend of Adele, your assistant. I’ve been given a freelance commission to write about you for the Daily Telegraph in London. They’ve heard you’re very eminent in your field. I’d hoped to set up an appointment in advance but the lady at Throop Hall told me she’s been instructed not to pass on any messages of that kind.’

  ‘She has indeed. I’m afraid I’m much too busy.’ That name, Rupert Rackenham, was familiar to Bailey from somewhere, but even more familiar was that voice: not just the accent but the false, practised, opportunistic charm. And yet he knew he’d never met this man. ‘There is all sorts of interesting work going on at CalTech. Perhaps you could talk to one of my colleagues instead. Dr Carradine, for instance.’

  ‘What does Dr Carradine do?’ said Rackenham.

  ‘He is building a machine for making eel congee out of electric eels that is itself powered by electric eels. An elegant design.’

  ‘I’d much rather talk to you, Professor Bailey. It need only take an hour. The Telegraph will pay for lunch. I’ve cleared it with Dr Millikan. He thinks it will be good publicity for the Institute. We would begin with your family background and then—’

  ‘No. I’m afraid not. Not this year.’ And he tried to hurry on into the Obediah Laboratories, but the Englishman, undiscouraged, put a hand on his shoulder to slow him.

  ‘Don’t touch my son, please,’ said Bailey’s father.

  ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry,’ said the Englishman with a smile, withdrawing his hand not quite straight away. ‘It’s just that I think your son dropped his toy. Wouldn’t want him to lose it. Handsome little object.’

  Bailey felt a cold tickle of embarrassment, knowing that at fifteen he was several years too old now to be carrying around a toy of any sort, and he couldn’t look the Englishman in the eye as he took back his steam engine. Nonetheless, he recognised the Englishman, and the Englishman recognised him, because they had seen each other three times before, in other Wisconsin towns. For their itinerary to intersect more than once with some other traveller’s was not that unusual — there were only a limited number of logical routes, for instance, up the western shore of Lake Michigan. Looking out across the empty planes of this state from his bicycle, Bail
ey had often thought of Lucretius. ‘Space spreads out without bound or limit, immeasurable towards every quarter everywhere. No rest is allowed to the bodies moving through the deep void, but rather plied with unceasing, diverse motion, some when they have dashed together leap back at great space apart, others too are thrust but a short way away from the blow. Many, moreover, wander on through the great void, which have been cast back from the unions of things, nor have they anywhere else availed to be taken into them and link their movements.’ Bailey and his father had not truly linked their movements with the Englishman, but they had wandered on together for a few days, and at first Bailey assumed it was this featherweight acquaintance that the Englishman had taken as a permit for the immediate camaraderie of his demeanour here in the hotel corridor. Only later would he deduce that the Englishman adopted that same demeanour with everyone he met.

  ‘I see we’re in adjacent lodgings,’ said the Englishman. He held out his hand. ‘Bertram Renshaw. Archaeologist.’

  But his father ignored the hand and hurried Bailey into their small double room. After the door was closed he said, ‘Don’t talk to that fellow.’

  ‘Why, Dad?’

  ‘There’s something not right about him.’

  ‘Is he working for Them?’

  ‘He could be. We’d better leave early tomorrow. We’ll double back towards Madison.’

  His father’s criteria for identifying a stranger as an agent of either the Phenscots or the Catholic Church were mysterious to Bailey. Sometimes they wouldn’t even have to encounter a person in multiple towns, as they had the Englishman: just one sighting at a distance would be enough. But this time, Bailey couldn’t disagree with his father. There was indeed something not right about Renshaw. Most likely, his father would have preferred them to make their escape straight away, but for nearly two weeks now he had been wriggling on the hook of an abscessed tooth, and Sheboygan Falls had a good, cheap dentist. So at three o’clock, after setting Bailey his algebra problems for the day, he went out. As usual, Bailey was not to leave the hotel room for any reason, unless his father had not returned within six hours, in which case Bailey was to assume his father had been captured and carry on alone to Tiny Lustre.