Einstein's Secret Page 12

  She shook her head. “I’m visiting a friend.”

  “Invite him in here,” said a woman’s voice from inside the carrel.

  Synchronicity was hard at work again. It had put Laura right in my path, even though she didn’t have a carrel down here. It was the vortex of Einstein’s secret, attracting everything it needed into its powerful orbit, changing facts and history as it pleased.

  Laura motioned for me to enter the carrel, then introduced me to Mila, a lanky brunette with a gracious smile. “Jacob was a good friend of Alex’s from college. We met at Alex’s memorial service.”

  The permutations zipped through my mind. Laura had met me at the memorial, so Alex had already been murdered. I’d traveled to the right era, but had arrived a little too late.

  “I’m sorry,” Mila said. “He was a great guy.”

  And I didn’t come back early enough to save him. “It’s still hard to believe he’s gone,” I said.

  There was an awkward silence until Mila filled it with the question that I’d been dreading. “Hey, how’d you get in here?”

  “I came down with Eddie, and I got lost on the way back from the bathroom.” Hopefully, I hadn’t flubbed it and Eddie still had a carrel down here.

  “Well, you took a wrong turn,” Mila said. “Three, in fact.”

  “Can you set me back on course?” Now that I’d avoided one pitfall, I was ready to get out.

  “Go left, then take the second right.”

  “Thanks.” I started toward the door.

  “Can I talk to you for a second?” Laura asked.

  Apparently, synchronicity wasn’t going to let up. “Sure.”

  She stepped out into the tunnel and I followed. Once we were out of earshot of Mila, Laura spoke. “Why are you here?”

  “I told you. Eddie invited me.”

  “I don’t mean down here. Why’d you come back to UVA?”

  Come back? Again, I had to quickly calculate the permutations. She wouldn’t have asked me this unless I’d already left town after the memorial.

  “I—ah—I’m interviewing for a job,” I said. Stupid! I didn’t even know if there was an opening.

  “What job?”

  “There’s an opening in the School of Education, to help administer a Science Foundation grant.” At least I didn’t say a job in the history department, her area of expertise.

  “That’s kind of what you do at USC.”

  “But better.” I smiled, trying to act confident with my lies.

  “Why did Eddie bring you down to the Caves?” She was relentless.

  “Are you interrogating me?”

  “Not exactly. But when I saw you, I…” Her aggressiveness was dissipating. “Well, I’m not sure how to put it. It kind of fit in.”

  “I’m not following you.” But I was following. It did fit in. The question was: How the hell did she know it fit in?

  “Of course, you’re not following me,” she said. “I need to explain a couple of things first. I have a class in thirty minutes. How about we meet at Greenley’s after that?”

  “Sure.” If she had a class, that meant she’d decided to go to law school after all. “What class?”

  “5055. It’s an introductory survey course.” I tried not to let her see my shock. She wasn’t going to law school. She was teaching one of the courses I was supposed to teach. But she wasn’t filling in for me. “You’re filling in for Alex.”

  She lowered her eyes. “Yeah. Not the way I wanted to get an appointment. But there you have it.” Her lip quivered a bit, betraying the guilt she felt for landing her dream job through someone else’s tragedy.

  Laura hadn’t killed for the job. Van Doran had done the killing for her.

  “Let’s say four o’clock,” she said.

  “See you then.”

  She headed back to Mila’s carrel, and I was left, once again, with the task of finding the trap door. Why didn’t synchronicity help out with some of these more practical matters?

  A few minutes later, it did help out. I turned down a tunnel and saw those carved slots in the wall. I hurried over to them, climbed up, and pushed the trap door open.

  *

  Before stepping out of Grace Hall, I picked up a campus paper from a stack by the door and checked the date. September 15.

  So I’d traveled into the future this time. Not by much. It was a couple of weeks after my visit to Clavin in the hospital. The academic year had started, and I’d already been fired from my appointment.

  No—that wasn’t right. In this version of history, Laura had landed the coveted faculty appointment. So I probably hadn’t flown out to UVA for an interview. Instead, I’d flown out for Alex’s memorial.

  The small trails blazing into history were drastically changing facts. I was tempted to call myself in L.A. and ask myself a boatload of questions to find out exactly just how much had changed.

  But I resisted and stepped outside. The fresh air felt good, and the normalcy of the campus was calming. I asked a passing student for the time, and found I still had a few hours before my meeting with Laura. So there was plenty of time to research other changes. Primarily Einstein’s murder. Was that a fact now? If it was, that meant I’d have to resurrect both Alex and Einstein. And Clavin. Did Einstein’s secret even still exist as a historical fact? It was possible that it had all changed.

  I pulled out Alex’s iPhone to start the search, but the SIM card didn’t work, which made sense considering it was nine months after Alex’s death.

  So my task was to get to a computer. I considered going to Eddie’s, but teaming up with him again seemed more than stupid. The first time I’d teamed up with him, it had ended with Alex dead. The second time, with Einstein dead. Maybe the key was to avoid Eddie completely.

  I still had my faculty ID card, so I headed over to Alderman Library. The card got me into the library—all I had to do was flash it in front of the security guard—but it wasn’t going to get me onto a computer terminal. I was no longer a faculty member. If I tried to log in, the system wouldn’t recognize my ID number.

  Fortunately, the library offered one-day guest passes. I went to the service desk, filled out a form—which probably blazed its own trail into history—then found an available terminal and went to work.

  First up was Einstein. It didn’t take more than thirty seconds to discover that a new history had established itself. Over sixty years ago, Einstein had disappeared without a trace. There was no mention of murder. I read through a number of biographical summaries of Einstein’s life, and they all contained the same information. The great scientist had mysteriously vanished. And, of course, this was fodder for one of the great eccentricities of American culture.

  Conspiracy theories.

  And I found a ton of them. Everything from alien abduction to government-sanctioned murder.

  I waded through the craziness, trying to separate fact from fiction, but it was impossible. In the end, when it came to this version of history, there was only one fact that I was sure was real. I had witnessed that fact myself.

  Van Doran had murdered Einstein.

  I did find a quote from Ruth Meyer, Einstein’s personal assistant, which hinted at this truth. She had told authorities that Einstein had left for a two-day private conference and never returned. She was right. That “conference” was the visit to Weldon’s estate.

  Next, I moved on to something that I wasn’t too keen on checking. I still clung to the hope that, even with all the other changes, the key component that defined the old history had somehow remained intact. The pit of my stomach tightened as I searched the Trenton Evening Times for the article that had launched my twelve-year quest. The article where Nurse Ander had said that Einstein’s last words in German might be the same words he’d written on those pages next to his bed.

  The article didn’t exist. Which meant Einstein had never written that confession. Which meant there was no secret.

  But just to confirm that the new history ha
d wiped out all traces of the secret, I also searched for the Fame article. It no longer existed either.

  The secret, the key to understanding everything and fixing anything, was gone. Just like Mr. Gregory Van Doran wanted.

  But I was still here. He hadn’t gotten rid of me. Yet. And he wouldn’t even have to get rid of me if my doubts grew. I had to cling to the correct history whether the facts still existed or not. I had to fight the doubts about which history was the correct history. I had to fight reconstructed memories.

  Alex had started me on the quest, and he was dead.

  No… Alex had not started me on the quest.

  Or had he?

  It was the Trenton Evening Times. It was Fame magazine. I had to remember those facts.

  But doubt slid in among those facts. There was no article quoting Nurse Ander. Einstein clearly hadn’t died in Princeton Hospital.

  Was Alex why I’d pursued Einstein’s confession? Had he gone back in time and started me down this path?

  I suddenly had a clear memory of that.

  During my sophomore year, when I’d ventured out to that yard sale in search of a lamp for my dorm room, he’d come with me. He was the one who’d led me over to that box of magazines, the box that had yielded the Fame magazine.

  Right then, in Alderman Library, in front of that computer terminal, I saw that memory clearly, not aware in the least that I might be a victim of a reconstructed memory.

  You see, how could I be aware? It was just as possible that my other memory of that yard sale, the one without Alex, the one where I’d discovered the magazine on my own, could’ve been the reconstructed memory.

  My next move was to check and see if Einstein’s “disappearance” had sent ripples throughout this new history. I leapt from one well-known event to another, skimming broad swaths of history after Einstein’s disappearance. The Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis, Gore v. Bush, 9/11, the Iraq War, the election of Obama.

  I couldn’t find one change in any of those major events.

  Then I checked for changes in the corner of history that I knew so well, the history of science, sticking to the period after Einstein’s disappearance. I went through everything from the Mercury space program to the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope to the emergence of string theory. Nothing had changed.

  The only parts of history that had changed dealt with Einstein’s confession—and, as I was beginning to understand, with the lives of those involved in that confession. Einstein, Clavin, Eddie, Van Doran, Weldon, Alex, and me.

  And that confession now existed in only one place. At the intersection of those lives.

  Then I realized that someone else’s life might be involved. Laura’s life. She’d said that seeing me “fit in” with something. I had a hunch it fit in with Einstein. For her sake, I hoped it didn’t.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I arrived at Greenley’s early. The patrons were boisterous, and I took that to mean the excitement of the new semester was still in play.

  I ordered my coffee, found a seat in the back, and pondered how changes in history could be so isolated.

  Of course, I didn’t come up with an answer, but this phenomenon did kill off another time-travel trope. There was no huge “butterfly effect” to time travel. If one event changed, it didn’t have millions of repercussions. And that must’ve somehow been connected to synchronicity. Time travel affected only those who came into contact with that one event.

  As I was trying to wrap my head around that and figure out exactly what that meant, Laura, coffee in hand, sat down in front of me.

  “You never told me why Eddie invited you down to the Caves,” she said, starting right back in with the interrogation.

  “Einstein,” I said, deciding not to hedge my answers unless I had to get into time travel. “He wanted to show me a document that might help with my research.”

  “I thought you said you were abandoning that?”

  I must’ve have told her that during my visit here for Alex’s memorial service. Exactly how much had I told her?

  “I tried to give it up,” I said. “But that didn’t work out so well.”

  She took a sip of her coffee, and I waited for her next question. But she shifted gears. “This is going to sound kind of weird.”

  “Try me.”

  “Okay… But I need to ease you into it… After the memorial, I was in a fog,” she said. “I hadn’t been close to Alex, but it still hit me hard. No way as hard as it hit you, and some of his students, but hard enough that it was on my mind all the time. That might’ve been because of our hike up Jackson Hill. You said a lot of things up there that made me feel close to Alex, closer than I’d been to him when he was alive.”

  So I’d gone to Jackson Hill with her in this version of history, too. A fact that hadn’t changed, no butterfly effect, and I wondered if that meant anything.

  “After a few weeks, I finally started to get back to normal. I didn’t think about it all the time and the newspapers stopped speculating about the hit-and-run. But I noticed Eddie was acting weird, and unlike Alex, I knew Eddie well. After Alex died, Eddie wasn’t as friendly anymore. He was kind of somber, like he was worried about something. He started to avoid me.

  “Then I heard a rumor that the police had talked to him after the hit-and-run. So I started to wonder if Eddie had been involved in Alex’s death. I know that’s an awful thing to think, but I couldn’t help it. I tried to talk to him a few times, to convince myself that he was the same old Eddie, and that he wasn’t hiding something, but each time I talked to him he found some way to cut the conversation short. That made me more suspicious.

  “So I checked out the rumor, and it turned out that the police had talked to Eddie. It also turned out that some of his other friends thought he’d become more reclusive. So it wasn’t just me. And then Mila told me something strange.

  “Eddie had asked the Cabal if he could transfer carrels. He wanted Alex’s carrel.”

  I tried not to betray that I was spooked. Her description of what was going on with Eddie was also a perfect account of Einstein’s final months. The change in demeanor, the growing somberness, and the suspicion that he was hiding something. The parallel signaled to me that Eddie, this Eddie, like Einstein, knew something about time travel. That’s what he was hiding.

  “Are you saying you think Eddie killed Alex? For his carrel?”

  “No—that’s crazy. But there’s one more thing that I haven’t told you.”

  “What is it?”

  Her eyes went wide and she looked frightened. “I have to show it to you. It’s on Jackson Hill.”

  “How does it tie in with Eddie?”

  “When I asked him to take a look at it, he stopped talking to me altogether. That’s how.”

  *

  We drove out of Charlottesville in her car. The first time I’d driven to Jackson Hill, I’d had only one thing on my mind. Her. Hoping we’d hit it off. This time, I was focused on Van Doran. I kept checking the side-view mirror to see if he was following us.

  “You’re awfully nervous,” she said.

  “I haven’t been getting much sleep lately.”

  “You worried about the job interview?”

  “Among other things.”

  She flashed a sympathetic smile.

  I didn’t want to get into an extended conversation, so I didn’t say anything more. I was worried that I’d contradict something the “other” me had said to her when he’d come to Charlottesville.

  She made some attempts at small talk, but my reticence eventually won the day and she stopped. About thirty minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot at the base of Jackson Hill.

  “We’re going up to Gray’s Cabin,” she said.

  I wasn’t surprised.

  As we hiked up, I racked my brains trying to figure out how Gray’s Cabin could be connected to Eddie, to time travel, or to Einstein’s secret.

/>   Could it be another time-travel portal?

  Laura’s pace up the trail was fast. Much faster than on our last hike. She was focused on her destination, which was fine by me.

  When we reached the cabin, she marched right in without saying a word. But just before I followed her inside, I thought I saw movement in the woods. I told myself it was either my growing paranoia or an animal shuffling by. I should’ve known better.

  Laura flicked on the light, and I took in the cot, the metal plates, the pot, the iron skillet, the wood-burning stove, and the display case. Everything looked exactly as it had before.

  “I don’t know how or when it changed,” she said.

  I scanned the place more carefully, but still didn’t see any changes. Of course, I didn’t know the place as well as she did.

  She headed over to the display case. “Take a look in here.”

  I walked over and did just that. My eyes ticked over Corbin’s books. Thoreau, Emerson, Fuller, and Whitman. Plus the magazine with a write-up on Corbin’s adventure—

  And that’s where I saw the change.

  There was a glossy magazine in there, all right, but it was no longer the Life magazine with Dwight D. Eisenhower on the cover. It was a Fame magazine, the one with a photo of Einstein on the cover, the one I knew so well. And it still teased a story on Einstein, but that story was no longer about his death and how he’d been just a regular Joe. It was about his disappearance.

  I have to read this, right now, I thought. That’s why I’m here. Just as my quest in the old history had been fueled by a clue buried in a Fame magazine, I was sure that this Fame magazine contained a clue in this history.

  But why was this magazine here in Gray’s Cabin? The Life magazine had been here because it contained an article on Corbin Gray.

  I examined the Fame cover more closely and found my answer. One of the three articles teased on the cover was titled “Meet the Mountain Man.”

  “Do you remember what was there before?” Laura asked.

  “It was a Life magazine.”

  “I don’t know when it changed, but it had to be over the last month. I didn’t drop in for most of August because I was busy preparing for classes. But when I hiked up this week, I saw it.”