CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
When Winnie and Mama arrived home that evening, Scott was waiting for them on the stoop. He had a bundle of equipment next to him, including wood and chicken wire, which Winnie recognized as the disassembled remnants of their Faraday cage.
“Now isn’t the best time,” Mama said briskly. She jutted her chin at the pile of materials. “What’s that?”
“Something I’m working on for class. Professor Schulde’ll be late tonight—staff meeting—but he said I could use the lab, and I was hoping to get started on this.”
“Oh. All right—but Winnie needs to rest.”
Mama unlocked the front door, and Winnie and Scott followed her inside.
Scott gave Winnie a meaningful look and gentle nudge while Mama’s back was turned.
“I’m not tired,” Winnie lied. “Can’t I please help Scott in the lab for a bit before dinner?”
Mama frowned. “Winnie—”
“Please?”
She sighed, then shook her head and cracked a reluctant smile. “I suppose I do remember being your age. Just don’t tire yourself out too much, all right?” She fixed Scott with a stern look. “I’m thinking she ‘helps’ by sitting down there and chatting while you work.”
Scott grinned. “More than fair.”
As soon as Mama turned away and headed upstairs, his grin faded.
“Let’s head down to the lab,” Scott said softly. “We have a lot to talk about.”
They certainly did.
Even though Winnie still felt a flutter of anxiety about touching Father’s things without permission, she rolled his upholstered chair over to the lab bench and sank down into it. Her head throbbed, and she felt like crying. Not even about anything in particular. Just about everything—from the sheer exhaustion of it all. She felt like a sad old pencil sharpened down to the nub, beyond any practical purpose.
“Hawthorn showed up at school today. He says I have one day to turn over my double.”
Scott squinted at her suspiciously.
“You’re thinking of turning yourself in. Aren’t you?”
“He threatened you. He threatened Mama and Winnie’s father. He showed up with officers, so I’d know he means business and has government backup. Obviously, I don’t want to give myself over to him. But I will, if we can’t come up with a better plan.” She gestured to the cage he’d begun to reconstruct. “You obviously mean to try our experiment again. You should know that if it works, and I vanish, Hawthorn will make good on his threats.”
The fate of her Scott still hung in the balance. But if she ran away now, what would happen to Mama and this Scott? How could she leave them in such danger?
“I’m not afraid of Hawthorn,” Scott said harshly.
“Well, thanks—that terrifies me! You should be afraid of Hawthorn. He already killed James. What are you going to do—tell the police? You really think they would believe you over him? He has military officers at his beck and call.”
“Hawthorn isn’t petty—he’s practical. Ruthlessly so. If—when—our experiment works, well, then I’ve witnessed a successful attempt to travel between worlds. Hell, I’m the one who designed the experiment. I’ll be valuable to him. There won’t be any reason for him to want me behind bars.”
Winnie thought for a moment. It wasn’t exactly a guarantee that everyone in her wake would be all right—but it wasn’t the certain doom she’d been afraid of either.
“What about Mama, though?”
“I’ve been working for Dr. Schulde for three years now, so I’ve known Mrs. Schulde for that long. Winnie, I promise you she’s a woman who knows how to look after herself. And Dr. Schulde will do anything to protect her.”
“But not knowing what’s going on puts them at risk. We could just tell them everything. There haven’t been any weird occurrences since Winnie . . . now that she’s gone. I could stay. We could all work together, figure out what to do about Hawthorn, and keep each other safe.”
Scott walked around the lab bench and crouched down in front of her. He took both her hands in his.
“Do you really think you staying here makes your mother safer?”
No. She knew it didn’t. Her being there made Mama another piece of leverage for Hawthorn.
She shook her head.
“I need you to leave. I don’t know how else to say this. I look at you, and I see her. I need you safe . . . but I also need you gone. Winnie, I’m begging you—please, just try.”
When she met his eyes, staring up at her own so intensely, she knew.
She loved him.
And not because she looked at him and saw her Scott.
The feeling didn’t replace what she felt for her own Scott either, but lived in uneasy cohabitation with it in her heart.
She didn’t want to leave him.
She didn’t want to leave Mama. How could she, when she had no idea what might be waiting for her on the other side?
But she could see the suffering naked on his face. She’d done that to him, and he was begging her to go.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll try.”
Scott stood back up. “Good,” he said firmly, and gave his wet cheeks an impatient swipe. “We’d better get to work.”
Scott got out his notebook and explained the plan he’d come up with.
“The main problem is figuring out how to make our experiment work in such a small space. Exploding a generator just isn’t an option down here. Even if we were resigned to destroying Dr. Schulde’s lab, it wouldn’t be safe—there’s shrapnel to worry about. So, how do we get a high enough atmospheric charge without blowing anything up? Straightaway, I realized the best way would be to discharge a high-voltage capacitor in water. Capacitors are common and cheap, and if the voltage is high enough, they can give us the discharge we need.”
Winnie nodded. The plan seemed solid so far—not as close to the events of her first trip as their original experiment, but a more elegant experiment design, in its own way.
Still, she needed to make sure it would be safe for her, and more important, for Scott.
“How do we get the capacitor into the water without shocking ourselves?” she asked.
Scott smiled at the question. “Good! Yes, that was the second problem. The safest thing is for it to drop while we’re both in the Faraday cage—but how? We need some mechanism we can set in motion that will give us time to get into the Faraday cage before dropping and discharging the capacitor.
“Well, I thought of all sorts of complicated and difficult things, but then, in the end, I realized I was overthinking it. All we really need is rope and fire. Suspend the capacitor over a bucket of water; light the rope on fire; get into the Faraday cage and wait for the rope to burn through.” He opened up his notebook and pointed at the page. “See?”
Winnie quickly examined the diagram. “I think it’ll work,” she said with relief, not because she was eager to leave him behind, but because this was the exact kind of thinking that would make him invaluable to Hawthorn’s project.
Scott looked pleased with himself, as well he should.
“I did some calculations and figured out what voltage capacitor we need to give the discharge we want.” He pulled a small bundle out of his knapsack and unwrapped it.
The capacitors Winnie was familiar with fit in the palm of a hand, ranging from the size of an aspirin tablet to the top two joints of a pinkie finger. This was by far the largest Winnie had ever seen—a cylinder about six inches long, the size of a fist in circumference. It made her nervous. Winnie had to remind herself they would be safe in the Faraday cage when it discharged.
“You’re sure of your calculations?” Winnie asked.
“I checked them several times.”
But this did nothing to ease her anxiety. They had been so sure before their original attempt at school, and it had gone so wrong . . .
But Scott’s plan was solid and safe.
If the central hypothesis of their experiment was correct, it should work. She should be able to transport home. She had gotten herself here, after all. It made logical sense for her to be able to transport herself back. James had thought she could, and Hawthorn too.
But time travel?
That was a different thing entirely.
“If it works, and I go back in time—do you think maybe it will reverse the things that happened here? Make it like I never came? Just sort of undo it all, and then Winnie—”
“No,” Scott said sharply, “I don’t.” He glanced over at her and must have seen the look on her face, because his tone was softer when he said, “I—I just can’t pretend. She’s gone. We have to accept it.”
“What? You’re the one who told me about time dilation. How is this different? You’re the one who said it meant I could save Scott.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Scott had told her that when she was refusing to try to go home. Winnie remembered it vividly.
“You do think that I’m going to be able to go back and save him, don’t you?”
Scott paused for a long time.
“No,” he said finally, “I don’t. But I do think you can get yourself home.”
Winnie felt the words settle on her. She slumped under the weight of them.
“Are you serious? You lied to me about that too? Jesus, Scott—is there anything you told me that was true?”
He sighed heavily. “Look. When you got here, and you told me it had been just this random thing, I was terrified! I’ve seen all the precautions Hawthorn takes in the lab when we transfer objects. He can be pretty cavalier about risks—obviously—but he has always been very careful about that. You refused to go to Hawthorn, and you were right not to, but you also refused to involve Professor Schulde. And then you were refusing to even let me help you go home! You were saying you wanted to stay!”
“You could have talked to me—”
“I knew that if I didn’t get you on board immediately, Winnie would go to her father, and then it would be out of our hands. So, I lied. And I don’t regret it. It wasn’t even a lie, really. There is time dilation between different realities. But I don’t know how it works, and I don’t think it means you can time-travel.”
“But . . . the Lichtenberg figure . . .”
“Winnie,” he said gently, “Professor Schulde and I do all kinds of experiments down here. That could have happened anytime. I’m sorry. I know you wanted to save him. But sometimes we lose the people we love, and there isn’t any fixing it.”
“I know that! You think I don’t know that?”
She’d lost enough people in her life to know the ugly truth.
They had both been through a lot, but she was so angry with him! Guilt and rage and grief mixed in one awful soup in her stomach, leaving her completely at a loss about what she should say or do.
“I know it’s hard,” Scott said, “and I know you’re disappointed. That I am sorry for. But we don’t have that much time before Professor Schulde gets home. We need to get the Faraday cage set up, and we need to try our experiment now.”
“No!” Winnie said. “If leaving means losing you forever—if it means losing Mama again—I can’t do it. I won’t!” She could feel the anxious pounding of her heart in her chest. It was more of a declaration than she’d ever dared with her own Scott.
“It’s more important for you to be safe than for you to be here. You’ll grieve, but you’ll get over it.”
“I won’t.”
“Winnie . . .” Scott trailed off and sighed. He looked so exhausted. “We both know what Hawthorn is capable of. You have to do this. You have to try.”
Winnie was tired too, and scared—but she was sick of feeling like prey. She was sick of being lied to, and sick of running.
“Look. Right now,” Winnie said, “Hawthorn has all the cards.”
Scott scoffed. “Don’t I know it. All the cards, all the power—”
“Well, what if we get something on him.”
Scott opened his mouth, but then closed it. He paused, head cocked, considering. “What are you suggesting?”
Winnie thought a moment.
An idea began to form.
“The Manhattan Project—making an atomic bomb—the military cares way more about that than any of Hawthorn’s work, right?” She thought back to how snide Hawthorn had seemed about Fermi—the head of the Manhattan Project—at that party of his. “And Hawthorn resents Fermi for it, doesn’t he?”
Scott nodded. “They’re pretty well-known rivals.”
“Exactly. And Hawthorn is the head of the department, but when the government came calling, it was Fermi they picked for their top project, right? Why do you suppose that is?” Winnie asked.
“Hawthorn pretends he wanted it that way—and multiverse theory has always been his pet subject,” said Scott. “But most people think that Project Nightingale was just a bone the military threw him.”
“So, what if someone broke into Fermi’s office on campus and some of his papers ended up in Hawthorn’s files—if the military found out, it would look like espionage, right? Since it’s a military project? With the history between Fermi and Hawthorn, it would be believable. And they might even think that if James found out about it—maybe that was what got him killed.”
Scott thought about it, and a hopeful smile began to spread on his face. She could tell he was intrigued by the idea.
“That could work, maybe,” he said. “How on earth did you think of it?”
Winnie shrugged. “I got the idea from Hawthorn. If you come up with a story that’s salacious enough, people will want to believe it. Head of Columbia Physics Department Accused of Treason!” Winnie could imagine the headlines now. “Powerful Scientist Undone by Petty Jealousy! The articles will practically write themselves. With a little bit of supporting evidence, I think the military will buy it, and the police too.”
She thought about Muldoon—he hadn’t liked Hawthorn any more than he’d liked her. He would be happy to see the wealthy elite indicted for his student’s murder.
“They just might. I know that at least some of the faculty and students would buy it hook, line, and sinker.”
Winnie smiled. “So, do you think you can get us into Fermi’s office—tonight?”
He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I think I know a way. And there isn’t any special security, other than the regular campus security guards. They’ve talked about putting in new locks around the offices and labs now that we’re doing military work, but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s only been a few months since these projects started, and things on campus happen on university—not military—time.”
Winnie felt a tentative excitement—a feeling she had learned to distrust.
“But if security is that weak,” she asked, “do you really think Fermi will keep sensitive documents on campus—something it would make sense for Hawthorn to steal?”
Scott nodded. “I don’t think anyone on these projects is conscientious enough to transfer their paperwork to headquarters as often as we probably should. I know Hawthorn and Professor Schulde sure don’t. This could work, Winnie,” he said.
“Then I think we should try.”
They were putting their few eggs in an awfully rickety basket. She should be more frightened—Winnie knew that would come later—but for the moment, she was filled with relief. And if they accomplished what she hoped they would on campus tonight, then maybe, just maybe, she could stay.
It might not change the fact that Scott wanted her gone. And she’d have to hide her real self from her double’s parents or risk losing them too.
It wouldn’t be happily ever after, even if they successfully set up Hawthorn.
But maybe—maybe—she could at least be free.