IT WAS FIVE DAYS before D’Agosta took Pendergast up on a standing invitation and returned to the Riverside Drive mansion for afternoon tea. Everything looked the same; everyone acted the same: Mrs. Trask opened the front door with the usual blandishments, and as D’Agosta approached the library entrance, he saw Pendergast seated in his usual chair by the fire. The harpsichord bench held a neat stack of densely notated music, Constance’s newly polished stiletto lying atop like a paperweight, both music and weapon awaiting the recovery of their mistress. Yet for D’Agosta, everything had changed. His venture into the nineteenth century had given him a new and much darker worldview that no ordinary far-off vacation could have. Ever since returning, after a joyful, awkward reunion with Laura, he felt unsteady—like a sailor just back in port, still encumbered with sea legs. He found himself waking in the middle of the night, sitting up and drawing in a lungful of breath, just to make sure the air was reassuringly clean, without the constant background odors of coal smoke, tallow, and manure.
As he stepped in, Pendergast looked up at him, then gestured languidly toward a chair. “Vincent, my friend, so good of you to come—at last.”
“Sorry,” D’Agosta said as he came over and sat down. “I had a lot of fancy footwork to do, after going missing for two weeks.”
“Everything all right downtown?”
“It is now.”
“And how is Laura?”
“Fine, thanks.” This, in fact, had been the other, marvelous, side effect of his strange journey: one that had brought his life back into balance. The longer he was away, the longer he was missing—with everyone thinking the worst, with an ever-widening search turning up nothing—the more anxious she became. Her imagination (she’d told him) had run wild; crazy scenarios had gone through her mind: he’d decided to just chuck it all and go back to Moose Jaw, Canada, to write another book. He’d run off to Ibiza with some sidepiece he’d been hiding from her. After a week with no news, her scenarios had grown morbid: suicide; a Turkish prison; murdered by the mob, his body joining Jimmy Hoffa’s.
When he’d told her the bizarre reality, she had listened quietly. When he asked if she believed him, she’d responded, “Nothing that happens when you partner with Pendergast would ever surprise me.” And she added, “It doesn’t matter now, Vinnie. I have you back. I learned the hard way that’s all I care about.”
When D’Agosta had first arrived at the library, Proctor had been standing by the door, a study in taciturnity, and that odd guy in the wheelchair he’d seen briefly on their return was parked on the far side of Pendergast, in half darkness, sipping hot cocoa. His name was Mime, some sort of computer maven Pendergast occasionally consulted with, and who’d helped Proctor fix the machine. D’Agosta had never met him before, but Pendergast had spoken of him several times, and on one occasion explained that thalidomide embryopathy had left him with malformed legs and one nearly useless hand. But nature had bestowed the gift of transcendental intelligence to that otherwise compromised body. From an early age, he’d shunned the company of others and devoted himself to mathematics, cryptography, engineering, and computer programming. Apparently, once Proctor finally convinced Mime to leave his sanctuary in River Pointe, Ohio, via private medical jet, the hardest part of repairing the machine was already done. Mime had succeeded brilliantly.
But now, as D’Agosta sipped his tea, he could see that Mime, for all his alleged reclusiveness, loved to talk and relished an audience. In front of the fire, he proudly recounted the steps he’d taken to render the device not only workable, but improved. As he talked, Proctor eased himself into a wing chair near the library entrance to listen.
“… The most difficult part was the downtime,” Mime was telling them. “It took me two days—well, closer to three—to understand the basic functionality. That was some righteous, righteous shit! After that, I spent ages waiting on him.” Here, an eye was cast toward Proctor. “The dude took, like, forever to get the parts.”
“Try acquiring a palladium bolometer and a unimetric thermopile … at three o’clock in the morning,” Proctor replied. He did not seem to hold Mime’s genius in high regard. D’Agosta could only imagine the long hours they must have spent together—Mime giving the orders, Proctor doing the work.
“Pendergast, my man, don’t get me wrong: Wild Bill Hickok here is an ace when it comes to cleaning guns and sharpening knives … But ask him to do some delicate soldering?” He shook his head, pale and bald save for a few blond hairs laid flat across the dome. “Sweet sister Sadie.”
“You have to admit,” Pendergast observed gently, “that Proctor turned your instructions into reality. And he provided you with invaluable information on how the machine initially worked.”
Mime appeared ready to object, then changed his mind and took a swig of cocoa.
“Thanks to the two of you,” Pendergast continued, “one using his mind, the other his hands—we are safely back home. And for that, we’ll be eternally grateful.”
At this, Mime beamed. Proctor, meanwhile, remained expressionless—but, though he couldn’t be sure, D’Agosta thought the man’s chest swelled slightly with pride.
“How’s Constance doing?” D’Agosta said, taking the opportunity to change the subject.
“Steady improvement, thanks. She has a remarkably strong constitution. Another fifteen minutes’ delay in 1881, and …” He shook his head. “A massive transfusion was required—six units of packed red blood cells in under an hour. Not to mention surgery and an infusion of antibiotics to address a severe laceration in the peritoneal cavity.”
“Six units?” D’Agosta echoed.
“In under an hour.”
“Jesus.” Six units for someone as petite as Constance … He could only shake his head. “What about the kids—Binky and Joe?”
“No doubt she would have liked more time to say goodbye to her family. But it’s done now, and for the best. During those last weeks, she prepared matters carefully, set everything up for them to be well taken care of. The mansion is in their name, as is a considerable fortune. Féline and Mary will be able to make sure their education and needs are all taken care of. No doubt Murphy will prove an able surrogate father figure. And Leng is dying or dead by now—if not due to the collapse of the mansion, then thanks to the poison Constance administered.”
There was a brief silence before Mime returned to what, D’Agosta assumed, he’d been pressing Pendergast about when he first entered. “Look, you’ve got to stop dancing around the question: what to do about that machine. You keep putting it off. Do you realize what it’s now capable of? You’ve hardly scratched the surface! You just make the call, and then watch the unbelievably fantastic stuff I can do with it.”
“Perhaps I should make a call and get the plane ready to take you back to Ohio,” Pendergast replied dryly.
Mime slapped the armrest of his wheelchair. “Don’t be coy! You know what I’m talking about. I did more than fix it—I enhanced it. Not only can it now be run by a single person, but it’s far more than before—thanks to yours truly! What do you say to that?”
“The potential for catastrophe exceeds my imagination.”
“Only in the wrong hands,” Mime said. “Or hand. You got burnt by it—but that doesn’t have to happen. Think of its capacity for helping mankind. If I can find a way to take that sucker far enough into the future, we could get our hands on all kinds of breakthroughs: microgrids running off cold fusion, graphene, antiviral and antitumor medicine—just think of it!”
This was met with a quiet scoff from Proctor and a shaking of the head.
“The potential for disaster is even more tremendous,” Pendergast replied after a brief silence. “In fact, I challenge you to think of a single technological advancement that, ultimately, wasn’t also turned against humanity. Nuclear power—the bomb. Genetics—euthanasia. The internet—well, I’ve made my point.”
“I could name a hundred advances that made our lives better,” Mime said, looking from Pendergast to Proctor and back again. “Twinkies, for one. But I sense you’re toying with me, Secret Agent Man.”
“In what way?”
“You’re conflicted. And my guess is, until you make up your mind, you’re going to lock that thing away. You’ll avoid answering my questions. But I’m sure with time you’ll come around to my point of view. You’ll see the potential there for human advancement. That machine is too powerful for you not to use it. No one person can make such an important decision.”
Mime stopped. D’Agosta, looking at Pendergast, couldn’t tell whether his silence was an affirmation … or the opposite.
Mime sighed—with his high, breathy voice, it sounded almost like a penny whistle. “Look. Now that it’s working, at least give me time to study it. I’ve made the necessary repairs and then some, but it’s like I told you—whoever first designed that thing was, like, the Mozart of silicon. I was too busy at first to reverse engineer the core—and anyway, its processors were practically the only things still functional, thank God—but, man, some serious twenty-second-century thinking went into designing it. If I—”
Pendergast raised a hand to stanch the flow of words. “Mime! You saved us; thank you; it would be remiss of me not to allow you that. But you’ll understand if I simply need time to think about the implications. I won’t destroy the machine, I promise you. But I’m not going to let it be used again without extremely careful thought and planning.”
“Okay, okay! Charles H. Babbage on a stick, you’re throwing me crumbs here!” Mime rolled his wheelchair back and forth for a minute in silent annoyance. “I guess I’ll take what I can get.”
“You may, in the meantime, continue to examine it—as long as you promise not to use it.”
“Oh, I’ll just use it once or twice. You know, make a few trips back to 1983, so I can take care of Johnny Williford—the bully who kept putting baking soda in my Cream of Wheat at lunch break.”
This was met by a frosty silence.
“That’s a joke! Didn’t I agree I’d just study it? Of course I won’t turn it on. Jesus, has everybody lost their sense of humor here?”
And then he laughed—but he laughed alone.