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“Okay. The lattice is stable. I’m going to begin shaping the magnetic fields. Ten seconds until portal generation.”
He glanced at Pendergast, who nodded his understanding.
“Careful of the light,” Ferenc told him.
The original machine, he knew, had been full of sound and fury, shuddering and groaning with effort, especially when overdriven during its last few uses. Beyond the low humming and a smooth whirring of gears, this new device couldn’t have been more different. Ferenc counted down the seconds. Three, two, one…
The empty space above the green-painted circle shimmered briefly—and then, as it had done in all the tests, a circle of blinding light appeared, with what looked like a vertical pool of agitated water within. It enlarged before stabilizing.
“Step into and through the circle,” Ferenc said, careful not to stare at it himself.
Pendergast—after the briefest of hesitations—stepped forward.
The secondary humming leapt in volume. Quickly, Ferenc looked over his instrumentation. There had been a spike in the magnetic field, but already it was receding. He should have expected that, in fact. The circle of light, which had distorted slightly as Pendergast passed through it, stabilized again, then dimmed somewhat. Beyond the agitated surface, Ferenc glimpsed a brick wall, some trash, and a wedge of sky.
Ferenc returned his attention to the control panel. Everything was nominal.
“Status?”
“All stable,” said Proctor.
“Power down to maintenance level.”
Slowly, Ferenc dialed back his own power assemblies in reverse order, and then—after a brief set of diagnostics turned up no issues—lowered it to baseline power. The unit would have to be held in station-keeping mode 24/7 in order for Pendergast to return at will. This was one of the many risks involved—if the machine somehow failed while he was away, they might be unable to dial it back to the same spot in the same universe—and Pendergast would be lost forever.
The humming sounds faded, and the portal of light became hazy and transparent, almost invisible.
Pendergast had vanished.
Ferenc let out a long, slow breath. He glanced around the makeshift lab, as if to reassure himself that the device had, in fact, worked—and that Pendergast was now in another, parallel timeline, close by yet infinitely far away. Of course, there was no way of knowing for sure what had happened. Maybe he was a pile of steaming meat in that alleyway. But the greatest chance for failure had come and gone without a hitch—without even a test. He felt a surge of triumph.
“Fuckin’ A,yeah!” he cried, punching the air.
He glanced over at Proctor. The man stood at the console, expressionless as a stone. Then he pointed toward the shabby briefcase sitting in a corner.
“Your payment,” he said.
Ferenc, still tingling from the experience of the last quarter hour, walked over and picked it up.
“As Mr. Pendergast explained to you,” Proctor said, “we will continue to require your services while the machine is operational.”
“Right,” Ferenc replied. He barely heard. He had opened the briefcase and was now staring at half a million dollars in cash.
45
June 8
Thursday
COLDMOON’S CELL RANG ATten minutes to seven. He had just sat down at the breakfast table in his tiny Ninety-First Street apartment, a mug of burnt coffee in his hand and a bowl of Corn Pops in front of him. With a muttered curse he reached for his phone, but the expression on his face changed quickly when he saw the call was from Block.
Even before he could say anything, Block blurted out: “The shirt and headdress are fake.”
“Whoa, hold on.” He fumbled with the phone, putting down the coffee cup. “Okay. Let’s have it.”
“They’re both fake. No question about it,” came the breathless voice. “The headdress feathers aren’t quite the same, and the beadwork has small but absolutely unmistakable differences. There are several light stains on the original that aren’t on the forgery. As for the shirt, the quillwork doesn’t match.”
“You’re sure?”