He stopped, as if expecting another protest from Coldmoon. When none came, he glanced at Constance. Then he continued.
“Events in universes parallel to ours don’t always change that dramatically. Physicists believe the universes most like ours are those which run closest to us in the quantum stream of time. According to brane theory, these universes are layered next to each other, like membranes, in higher dimensional space. So close that they sometimes touch, and thus open a window or portal between the two.
“Our elderly engineer managed, using the principles I’ve just described, to create a machine that could open that window and peer through it into another universe, very close to ours, except running at a slightly different timeline. The machine doesn’t see into our future. It’s looking into a universe almost identical to ours, one minute ahead.”
“This is crazy,” said Coldmoon.
“I assure you this is well-established physics that many, if not most, physicists believe in.”
“So what good is it to look one minute in the future?” Coldmoon asked.
“It makes all the difference, as you shall see.”
Coldmoon fell silent, and Pendergast went on. “So: Our elderly scientist built a prototype machine. That extra minute of predictive time would be enough to warn a pilot of catastrophic events. Lightning, extreme turbulence, engine failure. However, the engineer was tired of being laughed at by his colleagues. He needed to make a dramatic demonstration of its power, one that anyone could appreciate. That would be stock trading on Wall Street. It would display where a stock price would be, one minute ahead. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the value of such a device.
“The old man confided in Alicia Rime. He told her he was going to bring his device — which was small enough to fit into a briefcase — to the Seattle headquarters, where he could demonstrate it to the CEO and board of Boeing at a retreat the weekend after Thanksgiving.
“Rime thought it was a crime for Boeing to get a device like that, especially after the way she, and the engineer, had been treated by them. She tried to convince the engineer to keep the machine for himself and not give it to Boeing. She suggested the two of them could quit their jobs and use the machine to make money. But he was adamant: it belonged to Boeing, he had developed it on their time, and so forth. They had a bitter falling-out. She’d come to hate Boeing and — though she had no rights to it — saw the machine as her ticket out. But her elderly acquaintance never gave her the opportunity to examine the device or even get a look at the plans, and by now they were estranged. And he kept the device, and plans, in his safe at all times, or on his person.
“She knew he was planning to take a flight from Portland to Seattle: Northwest Orient 305, carrying the briefcase with the device. She also knew the type of jet that flew that route was a Boeing 727–100. This is a critical pivot in our story, because she had an intimate knowledge of that aircraft as well. For example, its three engines were mounted unusually high on the rear fuselage. It was able to fly at a lower altitude and lower speed without stalling than any other commercial jet. But particularly important, and virtually unique to the 727–100, was the airplane’s aft airstair, and the ability of this stair to be lowered during flight — from a control in the rear that nobody in the cockpit could override. This ability was so secret that it was even kept from many of the crews that flew commercial flights. However, it was not a secret to the engineers at Boeing.
“The board retreat in Seattle was scheduled for November twenty-seventh, 1971—the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The previous Tuesday, Rime contrived to have an altercation with her manager over credit he’d taken for some of her blueprints. As a result, she was told to clear out her desk by the end of the day, which she did, and left. Nobody ever saw her again as Alicia Rime... except the farmer-cum-doctor we met in the backwoods of Washington.”
“How in the world have you figured all this out?” Coldmoon asked.
“The four questions, as you shall see.” Pendergast shifted in his chair, leaning on his elbows and looking at Coldmoon. “Still thinking of going back to bed now, partner?”
51
Gannon finished setting up the lighting and positioning her two camera operators in opposite corners of the mausoleum, where they wouldn’t accidentally film each other. As she looked around, she felt a certain thrill. The interior couldn’t have been better if a Hollywood set designer had created it. The two side walls were lined with marble crypts, each with a door carved with a name and dates, and various short epitaphs in Latin or English. Some doors had been shattered by vandals or age. Several crypts even had bones spilling out of them, and an actual human skull sat on the floor, staring upward, its jaw agape as if in a frozen scream. A skeletal arm hung out of another crypt, with shreds of tendons adhering to the bone, dressed in a decayed sleeve of silk and lace. A gold ring decorated a bony finger. It was a director’s dream. But at the same time it made her uneasy, thinking that these remains had once been people, that this was not just the plaster and paint of a movie set. Why wasn’t there somebody taking care of old vaults like this, before they deteriorated into such a frightful state?
The central area of the crypt was open, and it led to a broad doorway in the rear. The doors that had once hung there had been made of wood. They had evidently rotted and then been smashed and torn off their hinges by vandals, pieces scattered about. Beyond, a staircase led down to a second level, with walls of cut stone blocks and a vaulted stone ceiling, prickled with tiny stalactites of lime, some dripping water. In the reflected lights, she could see more crypts down there, also smashed up by vandals. She shuddered.
Pulling her gaze from the doorway, she turned to Gregor. “Move the fogger over there,” she said. Gregor, a big muscled guy she truly hated, did everything she asked, at least — but only reluctantly and with grudging slowness. Sure enough, with a scowl, he picked up the fog machine. “Where, exactly, do you want it?” he asked in a tone of aggrievement, as if her request had been too vague for him to follow.
“Right in that corner, where it’s out of sight,” she said. She had never been on a set that didn’t have at least one asshole. She never allowed herself to be provoked, even by sexist jerks. This set had more than its share of pricks, but it was balanced by the fun of being in Savannah and the efficiency of Betts and the talent of Moller, both of whom knew exactly what they were doing — fakery or not.
“Gregor,” she said, “set a Lume Cube up against that back wall, low, about three feet off the ground.”
Wordlessly he carried the light over, hooked it to a cable, and turned it on. Gannon eyed it critically. It cast light from below, which gave everything a creepy Lon Chaney look: effective if not overdone.
Betts had been going over Moller’s moves in the next scene. Now, with cameras rolling, Moller came in through the mausoleum door — there was a background spot behind him, raking through the mist — his silver dowsing rod twitching.
“Evil,” he pronounced in a stentorian tone. Then: “There is great evil here...”
His voice dropped to a near whisper at the final words. Once again: effective. She glanced over; her camera operators were nailing it, as usual.
“One, do a slow pan of the crypts,” she murmured into the headset.
Craig did the pan, lingering on the skeleton’s arm and the skull on the floor. Beautiful.