Page 117 of The Paradox Club

“This could take four or five minutes,” she said, “and I want to be out of the circle in plenty of time. Don’t want to end up like Harry Maxwell did in this universe.”

Pilgrim 3 had laid out the two books and the pendant in an equilateral triangle inside the circle, although Tess had told her that it didn’t matter one iota how the objects were arranged.

“They just need to be inside the circle,” Tess had said. “That’s all that matters.”

“I like symmetry,” Pilgrim 3 had replied.

Tess was happy to allow Pilgrim 3 her symmetry. The important thing was that the UFOs were inside the circle and Pilgrim 3 thought she was in control.

“Start your camera with two minutes to go,” Pilgrim 3 told Anderson Tait. “That’s eight minutes from now. I don’t want you to miss anything.”

Tess overheard this instruction as she passed by Pilgrim 3 and Tait heading toward the circle, and she almost burst out laughing. She managed to disguise her reaction as a coughing fit, but Richard and Vivian, who stood a few feet away from Pilgrim 3, under the watchful eye of Montag 5, could see the smile on her face. Montag 5, fortunately, did as he had been told. He kept his eyes on Richard and Vivian—not that they could go anywhere, but Pilgrim 3 said she didn’t want them dashing for the circle and ruining her moment.

Richard looked at Vivian and said, loud enough for Pilgrim 3 to hear him, “How could we have let this happen?”

“We didn’t have any choice,” said Vivian.

“We didn’t have to give them a ride over here.”

“They had the radio,” said Vivian. “What were we supposed to do?”

“We could have bought guns,” said Richard. “We could have laid in wait.”

“Aren’t you a little old for an ambush?”

“One thing’s for sure,” said Richard, “after this I won’t be president of the Paradox Club.”

“President Pilgrim 3,” said Vivian. “It has a certain ring to it.”

“More of a clang,” said Richard.

Tess was proud of how well Richard and Vivian were playing their parts. Clearly their conversation had at least partially distracted Pilgrim 3 from the events inside the circle. Richard had powered up the generator a few minutes earlier, so thirty seconds after Tess turned the knob on the Philco, the familiar smell of its warming tubes washed her in memories. After a few more seconds, the sound of music faded in. Tess turned up the volume on the radio so that those standing outside the circle could hear it.

Pilgrim 3 actually felt sorry for Calvin 4. All he had in life was his presidency and he was about to lose that. For her, though, the presidency of the Paradox Club was a mere byproduct of the glory to come. Anderson Tait would get the whole alignment, portal, and crossover on video. She would explain the science to him in the car on the way back to Madison and within twenty-four hours he would sell the story to the mainstream media, and she’d be on the cover of every newspaper in the world as the woman who visited another universe. The Paradox Club would not only become her personal dominion, but it would also become the center of the worldwide scientific community. She would be showered with honorary doctorates, she’d visit the White House and Buckingham Palace, she’d pull in a hundred thousand dollars a pop for lecture appearances and would write a book that would top the bestseller list. And all that would be just the beginning.

Still, she found listening to Calvin 4 and Ardan 1 rehash the past few hours and talk about what they might have done to stop her highly amusing. There was nothing they could have done. She would have gotten Montag 5 to build a raft and float her over to the island if it had been necessary. Nothing could have stopped her then and nothing was going to stop her now. In just over eight minutes, she would be the greatest scientist who ever lived.

* * * *

As the music from the radio drifted out from the circle, Richard said, “That’s a Mozart piano concerto. Number twenty-three if I’m not mistaken.”

“You are mistaken,” said Vivian. “It’s number twenty-four.”

“It has a tendency to lose the signal and go to static,” shouted Tess. “I’ll keep it tuned as best I can, but let me know when I have a minute to go, so I can get out of the circle.” She turned the volume slightly higher as the piano played for the first time.

“Do you know this one?” said Richard to Pilgrim 3. “Is it twenty-three or twenty-four?”

“I didn’t come here to talk about Beethoven,” said Pilgrim 3.

“Nobody said anything about Beethoven,” said Richard.

“It’s Mozart,” said Vivian.

“I don’t care,” said Pilgrim 3, showing a flash of anger and, for a few seconds, turning her back to the circle to shout at Richard and Vivian.

Worried about the clouds overhead that might roll across the nearly full moon at any moment, Anderson Tait was attaching an ultrasensitive lens to his high-resolution video camera. He had set up a tripod and mounted the camera facing the circle about thirty feet away, with a wide enough angle to capture anything that happened amid those charred tree trunks. But, in attaching the lens, he had his back to the circle. That didn’t matter, of course, because attaching the lens would take only thirty seconds, and he still had eight minutes until whatever it was that this woman everyone called Pilgrim 3 wanted him to record.

Seeing the way in which they were annoying Pilgrim 3 with their meaningless chatter, Montag 5 stepped closer to Richard and Vivian and grabbed them each by the elbow, gripping hard enough to cause pain. He enjoyed that moment more than any since he had landed on this godforsaken island.