Hawking's Hallway

by Neal Shusterman

She had never known Vince to be surprised by anything.

  “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” said the elderly Nick.

  “I am not seeing this,” said Zak. “Tell me I’m not seeing this.”

  Little Nicky just stared, and shook his head.

  “What are you all talking about?” said the clean-shaven man.

  “Why don’t I show you?” said Petula. Then she pulled out her phone, snapped a picture, and held it out for him to see.

  “Very funny,” he said. “Why are you showing me a photo of Nikola Tesla?”

  She could see in his eyes the moment that he caught on.

  And in the other room, once more, the baby began to cry.

  Throughout history, facial hair has been both the most convenient and the most convincing disguise. Even the still-evolving science of facial recognition has been thrown off track by the well-placed beard, mustache, and muttonchops—hiding firm jawlines, distinctive lips, and striking cheekbones.

  Over the centuries, beards, mustaches, and elaborate sideburns have gone in and out of style. At various times, in various places, some societies prized facial hair as a symbol of strength and maturity. (Although nothing quite explains the nineteenth-century neck beard, a look embraced by both Horace Greeley and Henry David Thoreau.)

  Nowadays, various forms of facial hair happened to be in fashion. So Nick Slate’s older selves all had some form of it—and it had disguised the truth from everybody, including themselves.

  Until now.

  This changed everything.

  Petula considered herself a loyal Acceleratus, but this trumped all loyalties. Now she understood that Nick’s connection to the inventor went far beyond just finding the stuff in his attic.

  She held the baby until he stopped crying, and paced, trying to think. Atomic Lanes was not all that far away, which meant that Ms. Planck would be there in minutes. Should Petula tell her about this? The moment she had that thought, the Doomcatcher in her pocket started to vibrate. But she didn’t need that contraption to tell her it was a bad idea.

  At this point, all Ms. Planck knew was that the globe was here. Who said she needed to know anything else?

  Petula looked to her prisoners, then pulled out her birthday-suiter. “You’re going to go away for twenty minutes,” she told them. “When you come back, you’ll find your clothes in the closet.”

  “Wait,” said Zak. “What about our clothes?”

  She didn’t have time for further explanation. She quickly zapped Zak and the three Nicks. They vanished, but their clothes remained. Then she put the baby down on the sofa and zapped him too.

  She gathered all their clothes, threw them into the closet as she had promised, and moved all the chairs into the kitchen so that when they reappeared they would no longer be bound to them. Of course, they would fall to the floor, as if the chairs had been kicked out from underneath them, but them’s the breaks.

  Vince watched all this, still a bit stunned by Petula’s sudden change of heart. He was the only one left, and he wasn’t sure why.

  “Uh, I think you forgot me,” he said.

  “I didn’t forget you,” she told him.

  Then he realized, and began to despair. “You’re keeping me here so you can give my battery to the Accelerati, aren’t you?”

  She looked at him for a moment like she might be considering it, but then she said, “Once I give them the globe, your battery will be the only thing they need, and I do not want to be responsible for killing you again.”

  Then she grabbed the globe, stood next to him, and fiddled with the controls.

  “No, wait!” he said.

  Too late. She hit the green button.

  They immediately found themselves on some rocky terrain, far, far away, with half of a coffee table and a circular piece of the floor.

  Luckily the teleportation field hadn’t been set any wider, or there would’ve been another house missing from the neighborhood.

  Petula kicked Vince’s chair over. He fell over backward, backpack and all. He thought the jolt might disconnect him, but it didn’t.

  Always prepared, she tossed him a Swiss Army knife, which landed on his chest. “Use this to cut the cable ties,” she told him.

  “You’re just going to leave me here?”

  “If you stay in Colorado Springs,” Petula said, “they’ll eventually find you and take the battery. But they won’t find you here.” Then she looked at the globe. “So I’m guessing the button with the exclamation point will take me back.”

  And although Vince did not like the idea of being stranded, he liked the idea of being permanently dead even less. “Yeah,” he said. “But the second you get there, jump to the side. Otherwise you’ll fall through a hole into the basement and break your other arm.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” she told him. Then she hit the button and vanished.

  It took a couple of minutes for Vince to cut himself free, and when he did, he stood up and examined his surroundings.

  He was on a cliff above a rugged shoreline. He could hear heavy surf pounding the rocks below. It was chilly, but he no longer had sensitivity to cold. He couldn’t be sure of where he was, but he had an idea.

  Because around him were penguins. Lots and lots of penguins.

  When Ms. Planck arrived, Petula was standing in the living room holding the globe crooked in her good arm.

  There was a hole in the floor and part of the coffee table was missing.

  “I kind of tried it out,” Petula said. “It’s a teleporter.”

  “We already suspected that,” Ms. Planck told her as she took the globe away. “This confirms it.” Then she looked around. “What about the time machine?”

  “I believe they were trying to build one using the globe and that telephone thingy.”

  Ms. Planck instructed one of the other Accelerati to take the phone.

  “Excellent work, Petula,” she said. “I’m very proud of you. And Edison will be, as well.”

  Then they all left together in Planck’s pearlescent Bentley.

  Approximately eight minutes later, Mitch Murló arrived to find the front door of Vince’s house ajar. Fearing the worst, he went inside.

  “Hello?” he said. “Where is everybody?”

  He checked the bedrooms, but nobody was there either.

  When he returned to the living room, to his surprise he found Zak and several of the Nicks, as if they had just appeared out of nowhere.

  “Oh, there you are,” Mitch said. “Uh…how come you’re all naked?”

  Lightning strikes were on the rise again. And commercial airline pilots were once more having to “fly by braille,” which is what they’d come to call flying without the standard avionics telemetry.

  People were already beginning to adapt to the static buildup in the atmosphere. After all, it had happened once before and the world had survived. So it was easy to assume that the world would come through again, with minimal casualties. The charge was a nuisance, certainly, but nothing more. In another week, folks assumed, the energy would discharge somewhere on the planet, frying electronics and blowing out light bulbs, as it had in Colorado Springs.

  In fact, casinos in Las Vegas were already taking bets on which area would be struck. The odds-on favorite was Oslo, Norway, although no one could figure out why.

  However, the bulk of humanity was missing some crucial information: none but a handful knew that the only reason the first lifesaving discharge had occurred was that Tesla’s machine in Nick’s attic had made it happen. Without it, the entire world would have been fried. Nothing but the cockroaches would have survived, and even that was questionable.

  So the planet was blindly heading toward that same destiny once more. And this time, it seemed, only the Accelerati could save it.

  Luckily for life on Earth, saving the world was a better business proposition for the Accelerati than letting it be destroyed—because certainly, if more money were to be made from global extinction, the Acce
lerati would have been all over that instead.

  Thomas Edison, Nick realized, was an extremely important ally to have when their goals were the same. The conflict would come exactly five minutes after the next discharge. That’s when Edison’s goal of serving the world would shift to making the world serve Edison.

  Now that Nick was back in Edison’s mansion, where everything was beset by Victorian order and peacefulness, it was easy for him to forget what was at stake. And as he lay on his bed, looking up at the intricate woodwork of the ceiling, he tried to remind himself why he was here.

  To protect his family and friends from the wrath of the Accelerati, to make sure that the reconstructed machine would take the discharge, and to keep an eye on Edison. Nick had to find a way to either change the old man or, at the very least, distract him long enough to foil whatever plan he had for using the machine.

  Nick’s strategy wasn’t fully formed. It was as incomplete as he was. And he didn’t know if he’d ever be complete again.

  There was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Higgenbotham came in holding a tuxedo. “Dinner is formal tonight, dear. By order of Mr. Edison. Guests will be joining us.”

  A short time earlier, Nick had seen lights go on and silhouettes appear in the windows of the carriage house, where Edison put up short-term visitors.

  That’s all Nick needed—an evening of stodgy bores. Who was Edison entertaining? Nick mused. The heads of other secret societies? Celebrities who had faked their own deaths?

  “Who’s coming?” he asked.

  “Can’t say as I know. He doesn’t tell me these things. All I know is the table will be set for six.” She hung the tuxedo in his closet. “The bow tie is a clip-on, love. I made it easy for you.”

  After Nick dressed, he couldn’t help but admire himself in the mirror. Dressing up like this wasn’t something he had ever enjoyed, but he’d never worn a tuxedo before either. He looked good. Debonair, his mother would have said.

  History can’t be changed.

  He took a deep breath and tried to dispel the melancholy that came with memories of his mother. Is this really so bad? he thought, looking at his reflection again. Dressing up in fancy clothes and being the heir to an electrical dynasty?

  To Nick, those thoughts were the scariest of all. That he might eventually want this more than he wanted to end it.

  Caitlin paced in her room on the second floor of the carriage house, dressed in a gown that some silent-film star must have worn to the Oscars eighty years ago.

  The indignation of having to wear such a thing was trumped only by the indignation of her room being next to Alan Jorgenson’s, whom she could hear through the wall, in his shower, singing show tunes.

  Jorgenson wanted to be the one to present her to Edison, but she was not about to allow that. She would meet Edison on her own, and if she had her way, she’d never even have to shake his hand.

  Caitlin had already been responsible for one man’s death: the jeweler Mr. Svedborg. Had she not cajoled him into telling them the truth about the Accelerati pin she had found, the man would still be alive. But she had never killed anyone intentionally.

  On the other hand, could pulling Edison’s plug really be considered murder? Can you kill a man who should have, by all laws of nature, died nearly a century ago? Disconnecting him from the battery would be righting a wrong.

  With that in mind, while Jorgenson wailed on about the music of the night, Caitlin left the carriage house, crossed to the main house, and rang the bell.

  The door was opened by a British housekeeper with a weird air about her that Caitlin couldn’t put her finger on. The woman escorted her into the drawing room, where Caitlin suspected she might meet Colonel Mustard wielding a lead pipe. But no such luck.

  Instead, an obscenely old man in an odd wheelchair contraption rolled in to greet her.

  “Miss Westfield,” creaked Edison, “a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I must say that Clara Bow’s evening gown becomes you.”

  “Yeah, well, I hope I don’t become it,” Caitlin said.

  The old man offered his hand and Caitlin hesitated, then shook it, trying to hide her disgust at the pasty, skeletal feel of his fingers. Behind him, attached to the back of the wheelchair, was a tall cylindrical object draped by a velvet cozy.

  The battery, she thought. It was much larger than Vince’s. From this angle, she couldn’t see the wires, but she knew they had to be there.

  “You’re a bit early for dinner,” Edison said. “But I’m glad you’re here, so we can talk. We share something in common, you and I.”

  Caitlin couldn’t imagine anything they had in common, so she had to ask, “What’s that?”

  His smile was a cross between that of the Grinch and the mummy of Ramses. “We both share an admiration for Nick Slate.”

  “Nick. Where is he?”

  Edison waved the question away. “Oh, you’ll see him at dinner. And won’t he be surprised to see you!” He rolled his chair back a bit to take a good look at her. “I must admit that when Jorgenson told me you had surrendered to him, I was dubious. But here you are, and I’m grateful that you finally realize I am not your enemy.”

  Caitlin, nearly gagging on the very suggestion, cleared her throat. She took a step closer to him. “At first, I thought Nick was lying when he said you weren’t all that bad. Then I thought he must have been brainwashed.” She took another step closer.

  “And what do you think now?” Edison asked.

  Caitlin wasn’t about to tell him what she really thought. “I think I need to get to know you and decide for myself,” she said.

  “Well,” said Edison, “I may look a bit like the bogeyman, but you’ll find that I am not. Just as Nick has learned.”

  She took one step closer. Now she could see the insulated wires running into the back of his tuxedo. She knew that if she was going to do this, she would have to do it quickly. Before he could call for the guards who were probably waiting everywhere in the house.

  She would have to disconnect him and then smash the glass battery, to make sure he wouldn’t be able to come back to life. She already had that covered—there was a fireplace poker only a few yards away, heavy enough, she figured, to break the glass.

  “I understand you’re an artist. I hope you might create something while you’re here.”

  Yeah, thought Caitlin, there are lots of things I could do with the smashed pieces of that battery.

  Edison turned his head and raised his hand to light a cigar—

  Caitlin reached toward the wires to yank them—

  Then a hand grabbed her wrist. Not an old bony one either, but a young, strong hand. Nick’s.

  “Caitlin!” he said. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

  He pulled her away from Edison, holding her wrist just tightly enough to make it clear that he knew exactly what she’d been about to do.

  Like Edison, Nick was dressed in a tuxedo. He looked remarkably good, but it didn’t change the fact that at this moment he was upsetting her plan.

  “I see you’ve met Mr. Edison,” Nick said, finally letting go.

  “Yes,” said Edison, turning to them with his cigar, puffing away. “Another girl claiming to be your girlfriend.”

  If Caitlin hadn’t already been derailed, this would have flung her off the tracks entirely. “Another girl?” she asked Nick.

  Nick shook his head. “Petula,” he told her. “The true love of my life.”

  Caitlin laughed in spite of herself, her feelings more than mixed. She was still furious that Nick had stopped her, but she was thrilled to see him nonetheless, even as she was embarrassed to be caught wearing Clara Bow’s evening gown and was somewhat disgusted by the way that Edison stared at them with an “ah, young love” sort of look in his eyes.

  “So,” said the old man, “she’s who she claims to be.”

  “We’ll see,” said Nick, not quite glaring at her.

  Before he could say anything more, Jorgenson arrived, his
hair still wet and his shirt not fully tucked in. When his eyes lit on Caitlin, he seemed both livid and relieved.

  “I thought we’d lost you,” he said to her. Then he turned to Edison. “Al,” he began magnanimously, “I’d like to present—”

  “Don’t bother,” said Edison, waving him off. “We’ve met.”

  Just then, Mrs. Higgenbotham came in. “Our other guests have arrived. Would you like to join them in the dining room?”

  History is full of painfully awkward meals.

  Take, for instance, the first Thanksgiving, when the American Indians did all the work because the Pilgrims were still fairly useless in this new-to-them world. Contrary to popular belief, there was no turkey served. And how does one convincingly say to one’s new American Indian friends, “My, how tasty is thy eel!”

  And then there was the Donner Party. One could scarcely imagine more awkward dinner conversation.

  Human being was not on the menu at the Edison mansion that night, but that particular combination of dinner guests made for a truly distasteful evening.

  There were Jorgenson and Planck, who hated each other with every fiber of their beings. There were Nick and Caitlin, both of whom seemed to be suffering from indigestion before they even sat down. There was Z, who was clearly anxious upon seeing Caitlin and desperately wanted to ask about Zak, but was unable to in front of the others. And, of course, there was Edison himself, who seemed to take great pleasure in everyone else’s discomfort.

  “I am honored,” Edison said, holding his wineglass toward Nick, “to be breaking bread with the next generation of Accelerati.” Then, nodding toward Planck and Z, he added, “Along with my two highest-ranking officers. Oh, and you too, Alan,” he tossed in dismissively.

  Jorgenson maintained his poise. “The best thing you ever did for me was take me to task, Al,” he said to Edison. “You broke me of my complacency. As evidenced by the fact that I’ve handed you Nick and his friend here. Both of whom, I might add, slipped through the hands of your new Grand Acceleratus.”

  Planck reached out to grab her glass, intentionally displaying her ring in Jorgenson’s direction. “I’ve been busy with more important things than chasing small children,” she said.