HERE?
Here? That made no sense to him.
No.
DEST?
He tried to enter
Cairo
. But it repeated DEST? Then, after a delay: LAT/LONG?
He was getting spooked. What the hell was happening, anyhow? What were the local numbers? He shrugged. Punched in approximations. Latitude 41°40’N, longitude 79°03’W.
It gave him more blanks. Wanted him to narrow the target area. He added additional digits.
DATE?
He shrugged. Tomorrow? Why not? He entered October 24, 2018.
TIME?
What the hell? Get there for a late lunch. Three o’clock was as good as anything. He inserted it, checked P.M.
RESET DEFAULT?
Why not? Yes.
HERE?
Yes.
The screen read: READY.
A large black button was marked GO. He pressed it.
The lights dimmed and went out.
The sofa went away. The flo or tilted and turned to grass. Lights came back on, and he fell on his face and began rolling downhill.
CHAPTER 3
Physics tells us what is impossible, no matter what we spend. Engineering tells us what is possible, and how much it will cost.
—WALTER F. CUIRLE, NOTEBOOKS
SHEL
bounced through a patch of brambles, picked up some thorns, and crashed into a tree. Overhead, a tangle of branches filtered sunlight. Birds sang, but other than that, the world was silent.
Sunlight.
He checked his watch. It said 2:35 A.M.
Where the hell was he?
In a bunch of trees. In the middle of the day. No. More like morning. The ground was still wet.
He picked himself up, struggling to maintain his balance on a grassy slope. A squirrel peeked at him from behind some shrubbery. It was
cold
. He was out here with no sweater or jacket. He began shivering. And not entirely from the temperature.
He couldn’t see more than a hundred feet in any direction. The Q-pod lay on the ground. He picked it up and looked at it. The display read RETURN?
He fished through his pockets for his cell phone. But he apparently didn’t have it. That happens when you don’t know you’re going out.
“Anybody here?” he said. Then he tried again. Louder. “Hello! Anyone here? Help!”
The squirrel scrambled up a tree trunk.
The Q-pod was too big to put into his trouser pockets, so he simply held on to it. And, picking a direction at random, he began to walk.
HE
kept going over what had happened, how he had come back from the show and had been trying various combinations on the Q-pod. And suddenly he’d been
here
. He hadn’t awakened here. The place had simply shown up. As if he’d stepped out of his den into this forest. Into the sunlight.
He hadn’t been drinking. So the only thing that made sense was that he’d suffered a stroke of some sort, or a mental episode. He’d blacked out, gone amnesiac, gotten into his car, and driven out here.
Wherever
here
was.
But that was ridiculous. He had no history of anything like that.
And where was the car?
He listened for the sound of traffic. But heard nothing other than birds. And wind.
The walking got his circulation going, which helped a little. He arrived at a brook. It was too wide to jump, and the last thing he needed was to get his feet wet. He turned right and walked along the bank.
He’d gone about a mile when he arrived at a place where someone had recently been camping. By then he was seriously cold. He looked at the charred wood. Maybe he should try to start a fire. But he had no matches. Never carried them. And how the hell did you start a fire without matches? Boy Scouts made a big deal of igniting a blaze by rubbing pieces of wood together. He’d been a Scout at one time, but Shel had never attempted to make a fire with a couple of sticks. Neither had anybody else. Except Tommie Barker, who’d always been a show-off.
He kept walking.
After a while, he parted company with the brook. The sun was rising higher in the branches, and he heard the sound of a plane. It passed overhead and droned on and droned on and finally began to fade. Moments later he came on a half-buried plow that looked as if it had been out there for a century. A fence appeared, and he followed it, but saw no buildings anywhere, no cows, no plowed fields, nothing.
Finally, he heard a car.
It was ahead somewhere, its sound receding. He broke out of the woods and stood at the side of a highway. The car was climbing a hill. It reached the summit and slowly dropped out of sight.
The road was a two-lane. A stretch about a mile long was visible. Over the hill in one direction, around a curve in the other. He wrapped his arms around himself and waited.
A
pickup appeared. Coming around the curve. Shel waved. Please.
The pickup slowed while the driver looked his way. Thought about it. And elected to keep going. Their eyes met as the truck bounced past. The driver was bearded, with white hair, probably in his sixties. Shel watched it start up the hill. Two more vehicles passed, one going each way, before a Prince electric came over the rise and pulled off the road in front of him. Two guys were inside, both in work clothes. Each looked about twenty.
“Where you headed, pal?” asked the driver.
He had no idea. “Any town with a restaurant.”
The right-side door opened and the passenger looked back. “Sheffield’s about four miles ahead.” He nodded toward the curve. “Hop in.” He scrunched over to make room.
Gratefully, Shel climbed in and pulled the door shut. He closed his eyes momentarily as a wave of warm air engulfed him.
“You okay?” the passenger said. “You look half-f rozen.”
“Yes. Thanks. It’s cold out there.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Broke down.”
“Not the best weather for it.”
THEY
left him at a Chevron station with a convenience store that served hot dogs. And good coffee. But they didn’t have a public phone. Probably nobody had a public phone anymore.
The only resource he had was the few bills folded into a pocket. About thirty bucks. He didn’t have his wallet with him, so he had no credit cards, no identification, nothing.
“You all right, mister?” It was the clerk, an older, gray-haired woman, who doubled as a waitress. She looked at him with concern as she refilled his cup.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m good. Umm, where am I?”
“You mean where are we located?”
“Yes. Please. I’ve gotten lost.”
“You’re in the Allegheny National Forest.”
“You’re kidding.” He wasn’t sure where that was, but he knew it wasn’t near Philadelphia. “This
is
Pennsylvania, right?”
“Sure.”
A large wall clock, the kind you get at a discount store, showed 11:45. His watch read a quarter after four. “Miss,” he said, “could you do me a favor?”
“Sure. What do you need?”
“Access to a phone. I need to make a long-distance call. I’ll pay for it.”
“Hold on a second.” She left. The classified section of a newspaper lay on an adjoining table. He reached for it and checked the date. They’d gone to the show Tuesday evening. It was now Wednesday morning. He’d lost almost eight hours.
My God.
She came back and handed him a cell phone. He thanked her.
“It’s okay,” she said.
HE
set his watch to the correct time and called Dave.
“You’re
where
?”
he asked.
“The Allegheny National Forest.”
“What the hell are you doing out there?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I guess.”
“Can you come get me?”
“Sure. Where are you, exactly?”
“Hold on.” He asked the clerk.
“Sheffield,” she said. “On Route Six.”
He relayed the information. Dave said okay. Then:
“Your car break down, Shel?”
“No.”
“So why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“I don’t know what happened.” He was angry, and the emotion had crept into his voice. The clerk was watching him, and he didn’t want to say anything that would alarm her.
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“You mean you don’t remember anything?”
“Not since I got home last night.”
“Shel, you should check into a hospital.”
“I feel fine. Could you—?”
“Sure. But, look, I’ve got a class coming up. Two classes, really. I can get somebody to cover for the afternoon. But if you can hang on, the twelve o’clock class is ready to start. I can take off right after that.
”
“Okay. I’ll be here.”
“I’ll get there as quickly as I can.”
He called Linda. “I’m sorry I didn’t show up this morning. My alarm didn’t go off, and I was dead tired after—”
“Who is this?”
she said.
“Shel.”
There was a long pause. Then she hung up.
He tried again. “Linda—”
“Look, whoever you are, please stop. I don’t have time for games.”
And she hung up again.
THE
clerk came over periodically to see how he was doing. He asked how late they were open.
“Till eight,” she said. “When will your ride be here?”
“He’s coming from Philly.”
Her face showed sympathy. “That’ll be four, five hours, probably.”
“I know.” It occurred to him that Dave would be rushing around. Not a good idea. It wasn’t as if Shel would be going anywhere. He should call again and tell him to take his time.
“Here’s the phone,” said the waitress.
But all he got was Dave’s voice mail.
He gave the phone back. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to wait in here.”
“Sure.” She smiled. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Her name was Marilyn. When he got home, he’d send her a box of chocolates.
DAVE
arrived at about five thirty. “I called Les before I left the office,” he said, as they pulled out of the Chevron station and headed southeast on U.S. 6. Les was Shel’s next-door neighbor, the guy who ran the pharmacy. “He tells me your car is in the garage.”
“Yeah. Okay. By the way, I tried to call you. Ask you to take your time. All I got was your voice mail.”
Dave felt his pockets and came up empty. “I must have left it in my desk. I don’t take it with me into the classroom.” He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what happened. Because I came right from the room.” He shrugged. “No problem.” They were behind a tractor-trailer. Dave watched for his chance, pulled out, and passed. “Shel, you really have no idea what happened?”
“I was working at the house. Then I was out where you found me.”
“And that’s all?”
“Yes.”
“What’ve you got there?” Dave was looking at the Q-pod.
Shel shrugged. “Don’t know. Something my father had.”
Dave shook his head. “You need to see a doctor, Shel.”
“I guess.”
On the long ride home, the conversation concentrated on brain tumors and amnesia and various neuroses, of which neither of them knew anything, but it didn’t slow Dave’s theorizing. After all, what else could it be? Shel squirmed the entire trip. “But even if I’ve got a tumor or something,” he said, “how did I get way the hell out here? Walk?”
They had just connected with the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Har risburg, when he realized he didn’t have his keys. He’d have to break into the house.
IT
was dark when they stopped at a roadside diner. While they ate, Shel figured it out. The Q-pod induced some sort of mental disruption. That would explain why his father wanted them destroyed. It was a weapon! Though that still didn’t explain how he’d gotten to the Allegheny National Forest.
Dave shook his head. It still didn’t make sense. “I think it has to do with the pressure you’ve been under. It’s your father’s disappearance, Shel. It’s been eating at you. It can’t be a coincidence that this happens just after you lose him.”
“How did I get out there?”
“Maybe you caught a bus. Rode a taxi, for that matter.”
Finally, desperate to change the subject, Shel asked about Helen Suchenko.
“She’s pretty nice, isn’t she?” Dave said.
“Yeah. She looks like a heartbreaker.”
“She’s a doctor.”
“Really? Ummm—” He hesitated. “You introduced her as an old friend. How
good
an old friend, exactly?”
Dave smiled. “No problem,” he said, with a touch of jauntiness. “Nothing serious between us.”
Shel thought he detected a reluctance in the answer. “You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
HE
delivered Shel to his front door shortly before eleven. The outside lights came on as they pulled into the driveway. First thing they did was check the garage. The Toyota
was
there, just as Les had said.
Shel sighed. “Now we get to break in.” He looked helplessly at the house. “I keep an extra key at the office, but I have no way of getting in there, either.”
“Why don’t you stay at my place tonight?”
“That doesn’t really work.” He thought he saw movement in one of the windows. A face drawing back. “Wait. What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
But it was gone now. “I thought I saw somebody inside.”
“Are you serious?”
“Right there. In the dining room.”
Dave went over and looked in. “Don’t see anything.”