Charlotte groped her way forward, found the passenger seat and slid into it. She heard Mishal get in beside her, but she was looking through Marrity's eyes now as he was led to the back of the other van; he stepped up into the back of it, and as Mishal clanked the gearshift she saw Lepidopt handcuff Marrity's left wrist to a spare-tire bracket against the van's left wall, away from the machine and the bomb. She saw Lepidopt smile and say something, and Marrity's vision moved up and down in a nod. And as she felt the van she was in move slowly forward in a tight curve, Marrity's gaze fell on the cat box in the corner of that van.
That's it, she thought, and she let herself switch to Mishal's viewpoint so she could see where they were going.
The blue helicopter was visible in the south now, pursuing its endless rotating figure eight over the city. "Fourteen minutes till dawn," said Golze.
His wheelchair was stopped on flagstones by the entrance to the clinic building at the foot of the tower. Old Frank Marrity peered at him — the bearded man's face was gray, and sweaty even in the dawn chill, and Marrity wondered if he was putting off taking another shot of morphine in order to stay alert.
I'm in more pain, thought Marrity defiantly, and not just the considerable throbbing ache in my abused leg. After all, I'm going to disappear from here within half an hour, and I don't know whether I'll reappear as a childless married man whose only daughter died nineteen years ago, or as a total stranger — a stranger who might even have other children! I've had enough of offspring, thank you.
Marrity had to step back to make way for an elderly man in a three-piece suit pushing an aluminum walker like, Marrity thought, Sisyphus pushing his boulder. It took nearly a minute for the man to hobble past on his way to the hospital entrance, which was another hundred feet away. Luckily the hospital didn't seem to be very busy yet at this hour.
"You might still get shot, in this fresh time line," Marrity told Golze.
"Go have another drink, hero," said Golze.
Marrity hesitated for a moment, then limped across the grass and the pavement to the car Rascasse sat in.
The driver's-side door was still open, and Rascasse was listening to the radio, which was droning its endless list: "… city bus, green station wagon, motorcycle, white van, white van, red car…"
"I'm just gonna get—" Marrity began.
"Shut up, you idiot," snapped the Rascasse woman as she lurched forward in the seat. "Prime," she said; "was that two white vans or only one? Repeat it please."
"Tierce," said the voice on the radio, "two white vans, the northern one looks newer. The southern one just turned east on Alejo, the other is continuing north on Indian Canyon, toward you."
"Curare," said Rascasse. She adjusted something on the radio, and then went on, "Keep that eastbound van in sight."
"Got it." The radio clicked into silence at last.
Rascasse tapped the horn ring, and the man who had been pacing the street sidewalk came sprinting back to the brown-and-white Chrysler.
"You're looking for a white van," Rascasse told him, "now it's on Alejo, moving east. Take all three cars, and let the helicopter tell you where it is. And capture it and bring it here."
"—the bottle," said Marrity, opening the back door. The rum bottle was still on the backseat, and he picked it up.
"I don't sense any second van," said Rascasse, apparently to herself. "It must be them, and Einstein's time machine as well." She frowned back at him. "Don't take the bottle with you. Drink some here."
Rascasse stepped out of the car and stood up, and apparently caught Golze's eye, for she just raised a thumb and nodded. Marrity noticed that her feet seemed to slide slightly on the asphalt, like the bottom edge of a beaded curtain that just touches the floor.
"Nine minutes till dawn," said Malk, rolling one hand on the steering wheel to glance at his watch. The ridgeline of the Santa Rosa Mountains to their right shone white with the imminent sun.
The van's windows were rolled down, and the breeze cooled Lepidopt's sweaty face. The soles of his bare feet were picking up grit from the van floor.
"Mishal will let us know when he's ready to go," he said. Assuming we can pick up his radio signal, he thought. And even if he does tell me to wait for some kind of report on the singularity, I doubt that'll take long. I suppose Mishal isn't too worried about getting killed here, since this morning's events are slated never to have happened. Probably within this next half hour I'll be doing the astral projection trick, and then — as if that weren't bad enough — jumping right out of 1987.
He thought of his first parachute jump, in 1965, from an old two-engine British Dakota circling over a patch of the Negev desert south of Beersheba — stepping out of the plane into nothing. The rip cord had been pulled automatically; and this time the rip cord would be his own dried finger, which was now under his shirt, taped against his sweaty chest.
He yawned, but not from tiredness.
"You okay back there?" called Malk.
"So far so good," came Marrity's voice from the back of the van.
"Stay away from La Bamba."
"I can't even reach it from here. Okay if I smoke?"
"Sure, fire won't hurt anything."
Malk had been keeping the van in the right lane, and now he said, "Fast boy coming up on the left." He had made a dozen similar remarks on the surrounding traffic during the last twenty minutes. Lepidopt once again braced his bare feet.
Then the white compact in front of them braked sharply and another car was braking right next to Malk's head in the left lane. As Lepidopt levered himself to his feet, he heard a pair of loud pops and saw dust spray from two spots on the asphalt ahead.
The van was shuddering to a halt. In the back of it, Lepidopt placed his bare feet on the gold swastika and leaned forward to press his hands into the handprints in the Chaplin slab.
Marrity was staring at him wide-eyed.
Two car doors slammed outside, and then a man's voice called, "Step out of the van, everybody."
Malk whispered, "Jump, goddammit!" and then said loudly, "We have a bomb aboard that will wreck your cars too. Dead-man switch. Nobody's getting out."
Lepidopt's heart was pounding in his chest. Almost more clearly than he could see the scrawls in the cement slab in front of his eyes, he could see Louis's face, and the boy seemed to be staring at him earnestly, as he had so often in the past.
"One of us will ride with you," said the voice outside.
"Nope," said Malk. "Bomb."
"Then we escort you, two of us behind and one leading. If this isn't acceptable, I advise you to detonate your bomb."
"We'll go with you," said Malk. The car doors slammed again, and then the van was moving forward. After a moment Lepidopt could hear the turn-signal indicator clicking.
"Are you still there?" asked Malk furiously. "Marrity, is he still there?"
"I'm here," said Lepidopt, blinking sweat out of his eyes.
"Doesn't it work? If it—"
"I don't know if it works or not," said Lepidopt. The Chaplin handprints felt as slick as the oiled glass had last night. "I haven't stepped out of my body yet."
"Well step out, man! We're captured!"
"I need to," began Lepidopt. Speaking words was like pushing broken teeth out of his mouth. "Think about it — a little more."
The van sped up, swinging the lightbulb overhead. "Then don't jump," said Malk hoarsely, "listen, scratch that altogether. Just hit the bomb." The van slowed, and again Lepidopt heard the turn signal. "Blow us up, Oren! We can't let these people get hold of Einstein's machine!"
"I'll jump!" shouted Lepidopt angrily. "Or I'll blow us up. But— not this second."