"For me, or you?"
"Both of us, I hope. You're outta here." He dropped the box on the table and Matt joined him.
"They ruined some of your stuff," Howard said, taking out the wallet which Argyle had torn apart in front of him. "Your computers seem to be intact. I didn't access anything in them, but I turned them on."
"You have all the data anyway," Matt said, and Howard didn't deny it. "That's fine with me. If somebody else finds the answers in there, so be it. I'd welcome the chance to stop thinking about it." He pawed through the remains of his things. "Where's the marble?"
"Marble? Oh, right. They wanted to keep that. I told them it belonged to you." Howard smiled, and reached into his pocket. He came up with the marble encased in its little wire cage. He held it out to Matt, and Matt knew that if he hadn't mentioned it, Howard would have kept it forever. "Keeping it as a souvenir?"
"Sort of," Matt said, taking it and turning it against the light. It was a superb little agate, red in color, with a swirling imperfection in the center that refracted brilliantly. "It's all that's left of the glorious experiment." "That, and the time machine," Howard reminded him, hopefully.
"Catch?"
"What are the conditions? I can't believe I'm simply being cut loose. I expect this will be more
like parole."
Howard looked uncomfortable.
"You're probably right. They haven't told me anything about that, but I suspect they'll be keeping
an eye on you."
"So that's it, right? I just walk out of here? No releases to sign? No bills to pay for the room and board? No mighty oaths of secrecy to swear?"
"How can they ask for a release when you haven't even been here? As for secrecy, if you start talking about this you will be punished severely; it will make what that monster did to you today seem
mild."
"Killed?"
"I honestly don't know, and very much do not want to know. My opinion? I doubt it. But they
could make you sorry you're alive." "I already am."
MATT was thirsty, and he didn't want any more wine. He realized he'd done more talking in the last few hours than he'd done in the last few... months? Years, even? He stopped, and there was a long silence in the room.
"Most of this is new to me," said Andrea de la Terre.
"I kept meaning to tell you," Howard said, uneasily. "I never could seem to find the right time."
Andrea looked at him skeptically.
"Or how to go about it," she suggested.
"Honey, everything he just said is the truth."
She thought about that. "Okay. But what he said is that you told him you had nothing to do with
his kidnapping and imprisonment. I can believe that's the truth. What I need to hear now is you telling me that you didn't have anything to do with it."
Howard looked hurt. "You don't believe me?" "Howard, I don't know yet, because you have chosen not to tell me anything about it. I want you
to tell me now."
"I had nothing to do with it," Howard said.
Andrea looked at him for a very long moment, then nodded and patted his hand.
"I believe you." She turned to Matt. "Do you?"
"Yes. I still do." He was going to add that it didn't really matter, it was a long time ago, let bygones be bygones, but decided she didn't need to hear any doubt in his voice. He could give Howard that much help. Watching the expression of relief on Howard's face, Matt realized the man really was deeply in love with his movie star girlfriend, just like the tabloid headlines said. For a moment he thought Howard was going to kiss her, but he turned instead to Matt.
"So, Matt, you're back at last. I guess you know what my next question is."
"Should I speak real loud for the NNSA mikes?" Matt asked.
"Doesn't matter much. They're watching me, too. They'll find out what you say."
"All right, then, Albert, or Mister Argyle Socks, or whoever else has this place bugged, I'm sorry
to bring bad news... but I haven't learned anything." Howard looked at Matt blankly. The words didn't seem to have any meaning for him. He said
what people often do when a statement is unacceptable to them:
"What do you mean, you haven't learned anything?"
"I. Haven't. Learned. Anything. You want me to say it again?"
Howard couldn't seem to come up with a response.
"Howard... it was always an iffy thing. I told you I had a... a notion. A hint. A glimmering of something, if you will. I thought it might lead somewhere. It didn't. I'm at a dead end. It was either a fluke, an act of God, a cosmic joke, or something that is just beyond the capacity of my poor, abused brain. I'm through. I give up. I quit."
Matt looked theatrically around the room, and held his arms out, wrists together.
"You hear that, Mr. President? Come on, arrest me again, run me through the wringer. Fuck you all!"
Matt found himself shaking with rage. He knew he had suppressed it for a long time. Maybe it was being near Susan again, the bitterness of the five years without her that had been lost, gone and impossible to get back, and the very strong possibility that he would never get her back at all, and who could blame her? He got himself back under control again quickly, sat back and glanced at Susan, who was smiling strangely at him, then at Howard.
"Well, that's just not good enough, goddamnit. I know you're lying."
Matt couldn't think of anything to say to that.
"Howard," Andrea said, gently, "if he hasn't found the answer, it will have to be good enough."
"No, goddamn it! You lost my warehouse, all my pregnant elephants, the original time machine and all the duplicates, my frozen mammoth, my caveman and my cavewoman, my—"
"Cavewoman?" Matt asked. "You never mentioned any cavewoman."
Howard seemed to realize he had said more than he intended. He really had been shaken up.
"It was none of your business. After we got the mammoth sperm there wasn't any pressure to deal with the rest of it. The woman had no metal objects on her. So I deferred to Rostov, my mammoth expert, who wanted to do the recovery properly. Very, very slowly. Then Rostov came down with pneumonia from working in the cold, and the work was shut down for a while. Then he died, and I was looking for a new mammoth expert when... well, when the whole project vanished."
"A woman," Matt said.
"Probably a woman."
"You should have told me about that."
"I didn't see it was relevant to your work."
"You should have told me."
Never defend yourself. Attack. "Screw that. I'm telling you I think you're lying, and I'm
going—"
"Howard, you owe him an explanation."
He took a moment to calm himself. Andrea was trying to teach him a more forgiving outlook on
things and he was trying to learn. He took a deep breath.
"I didn't tell anybody, because Indian tribes have been raising such an uproar over the remains of what they claim were their ancestors. They have been burying priceless anthropological specimens,
bodies we could learn a lot from, and... well, you get in the habit of secrecy."
"It might have had a bearing on my research."
"How?" "You just don't hamstring a researcher that way. You tell me everything, and you let me decide what's important."
"I don't work for you anymore, Howard," Matt pointed out. "And I don't particularly like being called a liar."
"How do I know you haven't been lying right from the start? We all knew you were hiding something but we could never figure out what it was. I've wondered for a long time if those government people were a bit too heavily invested in their lie detection technology. I've been wondering if you just happen to be so good a liar that the machines can't catch you. I've had it researched, it is possible to fool them."
"My understanding is that psychotics are best at it," Matt said.
Howard was about to reply to that when Susan stood up.
"That's the third time you've called Matt a liar. Get out of my bouse."