The consensus seemed to be about a gallon of water a day, which seemed like a lot if you weren’t staggering across a desert. Eight of those big five-gallon jugs. Then one thousand five hundred calories of food a day, which would be easier. A couple of boxes of energy bars. A bottle of bourbon to keep from going insane. Maybe two. And a really good book.
And what about air? The only data points he had were that Herman was still alive and the water jug hadn’t evaporated. Presumably a small turtle could last a long time on the air inside a loaf pan. A human could last for hours on a proportional amount. Only hours. So the water would be moot.
In fact, he could do the experiment without any of that, assuming it would take only minutes. If the minutes dragged on into hours, he could always call it quits and disconnect the fuel cell.
If that didn’t work, call 911.
He’d been visualizing himself inside a metal cube, a gargantuan loaf pan like a clean Dumpster. But any sufficiently old car would do. Anything made before the Fossil Fuel Users Tax would have a mostly metal shell.
Mostly might not do it, though. His Mazda, for instance, had only a spidery titanium frame sunk inside a plastic aero-form. Technically, that would be a Faraday cage. But he wanted to be wrapped in metal.
Denny Peposi. Dopey Denny, Matt’s main connection for recreational drugs. He had a 1956 Ford Thunderbird in his garage. The radio only played recordings of appropriately ancient music, and there were yellowed magazines from 1956 scattered on the backseat. He drove it around the block once a week, and maybe once a year bought enough gasoline to take out a girl he wanted to impress. Otherwise, it just sat there, a perfect Faraday cage with seats of soft Mexican leather. And all the Elvis Presley you would ever want to hear. Or was it Buddy Holly and the Beetles back then?
He was sure he could talk Denny into letting him sit in it, and take a video of him. “Watch! I’m going to make this car disappear.” And then reappear forty days later.
But where would it appear? Matt looked at the machine on his way to refill his jelly glass. It had moved northeast a millimeter. If it moved northeast far enough, it would be in Boston Harbor. Or the North Atlantic. Wise to take some precautions about that possibility. Matt swam like a brick.
Which is how Matt wound up, the next morning, in a bad part of Boston, going from pawn shop to pawn shop looking for a wetsuit and a snorkel. He finally found both, at a place full of shabby sports relics. They cost more than half his cash reserves, but the man agreed, with a puzzled look, that he would refund 75 percent if Matt brought them back unused before the end of January. “In case the diving trip falls through,” he said. At a military surplus store he bought an emergency raft that inflated if you pulled a lanyard. He saved the receipt.
He also got a proper cable with alligator clip to neatly solder onto the machine’s chassis, so it would look good in the pictures, and a used high-speed camera, so he would be able to review the moments of the car’s next disappearance and reappearance in slow motion. Unless it reappeared in Boston Harbor, or off the coast of Spain.
6
Dopey Denny lived in a large three-story Victorian in Back Bay. He swung open the door and gave Matt a big hug. Three hundred pounds of dope dealer, understandably stoned at nine in the evening. “Dr. Einstein, I presume?” He was wearing a black robe with glittering astrological symbols, tied with a silver rope. Barefoot in January.
“Hi, Denny.” Matt looked over the big man’s shoulder. “Louise home?”
“Ah, no. No. She moved on. How you doin’ with what’s-her-name?”
“Kara. She moved on, too.”
“Ain’t it a bitch. Want a drink?”
Came here to do science, not socialize, but why not? “Sure. What you got?”
“Got it all.” He took Matt by the elbow and dragged him toward the kitchen. Matt hauled along the duffel bag with all his time-machine stuff in it.
The kitchen was all chrome and tile and looked like no one had ever cooked a meal in it. “I’m doin’ Heineken with a whisky chaser. Or is it whisky with a Heineken chaser?”
“You have one and I’ll have the other.” Matt took a seat at the kitchen table, a spare, elegant Swedish thing. There was a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Glenmorangie on it and one crystal glass. Denny produced another glass and got two Heinekens from a huge metal refrigerator that seemed to have nothing in it but beer and wine. He should use that for the time machine. It would be cold, but he wouldn’t die of thirst.
Denny tried to twist the bottles open, then remembered that wouldn’t work with the imported beer, and crashed through a drawer until he found an opener.
He put the beers down and poured Matt a generous amount of whisky, and himself a little more generous one. He sat down on the delicate chair with exaggerated caution. “So you say you need the T-Bird. But just to sit in it?”
“Basically, yeah.” Matt took a sip of the whisky and one of the beer. “Then it should disappear, and then come back.”
He nodded slowly. “Like those guys who made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Way back when.”
“I don’t know anything about that. This isn’t magic … Well, hell, maybe it is magic. I don’t know what the hell it is.”
“Not gonna hurt the car.”
“No way. It just goes, like, somewhere sideways in space. Hell, I’m gonna be in it. I wouldn’t do that if there was any danger, would I?” Matt resisted the impulse to slug back the whole glass. That might communicate uncertainty.
Denny took a vial out of his shirt pocket and tapped out a small pile of white powder, then produced a little cocktail straw and sniffed it up. He shook all over, like a big dog. “Ah! Want some?”
“No, thanks. Haven’t done it in years. Are you sure you can—”
“Sure, sure. It’s not cocaine; it’s a DD beta for alertness.” He shook again, grinning. “God damn! Cuts to the chase.”
This was just great. The sole witness to a scientific revolution stoned on an untried drug. Fortunately, all he had to do was push a button.
Which was all Matt had to do, as well. He took another sip from each reagent. “How long have you been taking it?”
“Got it last night. Right up your alley, man; work till dawn.”
“Maybe later. After it’s not a beta.” He laughed. “You’re a fucking wild man, Denny.”
“Hey, it’s a job. Somebody has to do it.”
Matt unzipped the duffel bag and brought out the camera. “You know how to work this?”
“Yeah, sure. Point an’ shoot.”
“Right. But I want to make sure the time function’s on, the clock down in the right-hand corner.” He toggled the switch until CLOCK came up, and selected it. “See?”
Denny took the camera. “No sweat.” He held it up and looked at Matt through the point-and-shoot viewfinder. “Just push this big button?”
“Right. It’ll be on a tripod, set for video, already aimed. Just start it when I tell you to, and if I disappear, leave it running till I come back.” Maybe in a taxi.
Denny looked at the back of the camera. “No picture?”
“No, use the viewfinder. That’s to save power. Don’t know how long till I come back.” He heard his voice quaver. He really didn’t know whether he’d be back.
He pushed the glass away. “Better not drink any more. Change in the bathroom?”
Denny waved an arm back the way they’d come. “Mi casa, su casa.” Matt picked up the duffel and went down the hall.
The bathroom was Italian tile with gold-plated hardware and a shower curtain by Salvador Dalí. Ornately framed nude paintings. Matt unzipped the duffel and laid out his gear. Stripped and threw his clothes back into the bag. Wallet and keys and change in a plastic bag, which he would carry into the uncertain future.