“Of course.”
“Well, he never came back, God damn him. Just stayed there back in the fucking nineteenth century. If he’d only come back! The way he was supposed to. The way he said he would. He was committed to it! Dr. D, if he had come back with proof, as only he could, why, hell—they’d have given us everything but the Washington Monument.”
“Instead . . .”
“Instead, it was how did we know where Si was? Or McNaughton? Maybe all Si ever did was hole up in the Dakota apartment building for a while—at taxpayers’ expense—going through the motions, lying to us, pretending he was about to make the transition. Then he ducks out one night, shows up at the Project a few days later, and says, Hooray for me, I did it! And we fell for it. In an access of wishful thinking. This senator, this guy got wind of the Project, and for a while it looked like he was going to give us that stupid Golden Fleece award. A Pentagon major general career man saw his third star fading away, and covered his ass fast, said he never had believed us and told us so, the lying son of a bitch. Oh, they came after us good and fast. Even the academics. Prove it, prove it! God, I got sick of that word. And we couldn’t. At our very last board meeting—they shut us down a day and a half later—this wormy little congressman, you remember him, really got on me. Si was supposed to go back and—well, of course you know what Si was supposed to do.”
“Know? I hated it.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry. But the thing is, we had to brief the congressman. Had to. So he knew Si was supposed to go back and . . .” Rube glanced at the old man. “Go back and very slightly alter one past event, and damn it, Dr. D, it was small.”
“Yes, well, let it go, let it go. Alter the past just enough so that Cuba would have become an American possession. Wonderful. As though you could predict the consequences of that. Ridiculous. Ridiculous and almighty dangerous. But go on.”
“This little congressman kept saying stuff like, ‘Major, what’s Cuba now? The fifty-first state? Yuk, yuk. And where’s Fidel these days? Pitching for the Mets?’ ”
Danziger sat grinning at him. “Served you right.”
“Yeah, well, the thing is, we had no proof. No nothin’.”
“What about our Denver man? He made it. And came back.”
“Didn’t help. Never happened either, you see, same as Si. Where’s the proof, where’s the proof? Goddamn bunch of parrots. As for our boy made it to medieval Paris for—what? Ten seconds?—they laughed in our faces at that one. Make a politician look even slightly wrong, and believe me, you have not gained a friend.”
“Yep. Well, Rube”—he began gathering up his hat and folded topcoat from the chair beside him—“that’s that, then. It was great while it last—”
“Wait.”
“Oh, Rube, Rube, Rube. The Project is finished. Forever. Can you possibly wander around it with your flashlight and see it all rebuilt? The Big Floor restored? The School back in business, Oscar Rossoff back, a new batch of candidates arriving? It’s dead! With a stake through its heart.”
“Sure. I know that. But we don’t need the Project.”
“ ‘We’?”
“It’ll be ‘we’ when you find out why.”
“Oh? And if ‘we’ don’t need the Project, what do we need?”
Rube leaned forward over the tabletop, holding Dr. Danziger’s eyes. “Si.”
“Si Morley?”
Rube sat back, nodding. “Yep. Si Morley, the best we ever had. That’s who we need, and that’s all we need. Can you reach him, Dr. D? Can you?”
“Reach him? How? How reach him back in the nineteenth century?”
“I don’t know.” Rube sat looking at him. “I don’t know, damn it! You thought up the whole Project! It was your theory. If anyone can figure out how to reach Si Morley, it has to be you.”
“Rube,” he said gently. “Short of actually going back myself, how could I reach him?”
“You’ve tried going back?”
“Of course. And so have you, I’m certain.”
“More than once. I’d give anything I have or ever will have to be able to do it. Just once. Even for only a minute.” He sat looking across the table at the old man, then said, “It’s funny; you and I made the Project. Made it work. Yet we can’t do it: we need Si.” With his clenched fist he softly, soundlessly pounded the tabletop. “We need Si. You can’t reach him? No way at all?”
The old man looked away, moving a shoulder in almost but not quite a shrug. He looked uncomfortable, frowning a little, arranging his topcoat over one arm, and Rube Prien leaned forward, watching him intently. Then, his voice very soft now, and beginning to smile, Rube Prien said, “Oh, Doctor, Doctor: you can’t quite lie, can you? You don’t really know how. You know you ought to. You’d like to. And you try, but you can’t fool me. You can reach Si Morley!”
“If I can, it won’t help you.” Danziger glanced around the room. “The Project actually succeeded; I’ll always know that. But then the troublemakers took over. You. Esterhazy. And whoever else was behind you, I never did know who: I am an innocent. But the Project is gone now, and if I can’t quite say I’m glad, I’m close.” He stood up, coat over an arm, hat in hand. “I’ll never help you. I like you, Rube, God knows why. But you’d alter the past. In order to alter the present according to your own godlike understanding of what’s best for the rest of us. Well, if there can be an idiot savant, there can be a sane madman. And there are always some around. Quite often brave men in uniform. Patriots. But still the enemy.” He leaned toward Rube, extending his hand. “So I’ll just say goodbye, thanking you for an interesting morning.”
Rube stood up, face genial, shook Dr. Danziger’s extended hand, and said, “Sit down, Dr. D. Because you are going to help me. You’re going to get me in touch with Si Morley because you’ll want to.” He pulled over his attaché case, Dr. Danziger, still standing, watching him. Rube snapped up the two brass fasteners, lifted the lid, and began removing the contents, tossing them to the table before Danziger: a glossy black-and-white photograph of what appeared to be a small-town Main Street; an old newspaper, edges browned; a campaign button; a sheaf of letters clipped together; an envelope with a triangular stamp; a tape cassette; an old book with a loose binding; a rubber-banded coil of black-and-white film. “Look at this stuff, Doctor. The photograph, take a look at that.”
Face and movement reluctant, Dr. Danziger put down his coat and picked up the photograph. “Yes?”
“Well, look at it. A small-town Main Street, right? And taken in the forties, wouldn’t you say? Look at the cars.”
“Yes. There’s a ’42 Plymouth roadster; I once had one.”
“Now look at the movie marquee: can you read it?”
“Of course; I’m not quite—”
“Okay. Read the title of the movie they’re showing.”
Twenty minutes later, Dr. Danziger—standing with a coil of movie film held up to the overhead fluorescent light, examining the frames of the final foot—finished, and tossed the film onto the table with the other things. “All right,” he said irritably, sitting down. “These all say the same thing. In different ways. Events that apparently once happened one way seem now to have happened in another. Where’d you get them?” he asked curiously.