Page 47 of The Paradox Club

“If that’s Tess Maxwell—” said Pilgrim 3.

“It can’t be,” said Nemo 7, desperate to somehow keep the attention off the young woman in Vivian Harbottle’s house. “It’s just someone getting in the way of our retrieving that radio. But Montag 5 has an idea of how we can—”

“Forget about the radio,” said Pilgrim 3. “That is, don’t forget about it. The radio is still important. But if Tess Maxwell is in that house, she’s much more important.”

“But how can we be sure that it is Tess Maxwell?” said Nemo 7. “It’s probably just a coincidence. Christ, the woman was nervous—I’m not even sure she gave us her real name.”

“It’s her,” said Pilgrim 3. “I can feel it.”

“You want us to take her?” said Montag 5, sounding almost eager.

“Listen,” said Nemo 7. “It’s great that you can feel from over a thousand miles away that some random woman is Tess Maxwell. But now Montag 5 is talking about kidnapping. Boosting an old radio is one thing. Probably nobody would even believe the lady if she reported it stolen. But kidnapping is a federal offense.”

“It sounds like you’re not willing to support an effort that is for the good of the club,” said Pilgrim 3.

“Is it for the good of the club or for the good of Pilgrim 3?” said Nemo 7.

“You’ve never questioned the difference before.”

Nemo 7 knew he was treading on thin ice. If Pilgrim 3 or Montag 5 suspected he was a mole for Calvin 4, he’d be sitting on the curb while Montag 5 drove off with the girl and the radio. But he had to do something.

“You’ve never asked me to commit a federal offense before. Not to mention this would be a major violation of club rules.”

“The club rules state that all artifacts should be retrieved and placed in the vault,” said Pilgrim 3 calmly. Just as Pilgrim 3 said this, the front door of the house opened and the young woman, now dressed in leggings and a baggy sweatshirt, pulled a black rolling suitcase onto the porch. Nemo 7 saw what she did next but hoped Montag 5 didn’t notice.

“She might be on the move,” said Montag 5. “She just put a suitcase on the front porch and went back inside.”

“If she leaves, we can divide and conquer,” said Nemo 7. “I’ll follow the girl and Montag 5 can deal with the radio.”

“She did something odd when she closed the front door,” said Montag 5, ignoring Nemo 7’s suggestion.

Nemo 7 felt hope draining out of him. He couldn’t stand up to Montag 5 in a physical confrontation. He’d just have to hope an opportunity to do the right thing without violence presented itself.

“What did she do?” asked Pilgrim 3.

“She tapped the doorknob three times with her finger.”

“That’s her!” shouted Pilgrim 3. “Take her. Take her and bring her to me.”

TESS AND HARRY ON THE DOCK

“If there are an infinite number of universes,” said Tess, “does that mean there is one where my hair doesn’t get tangled all the time and I get good grades in Spanish?” She wanted to ask if there was a universe where she didn’t hear the voices, but she had not confessed the presence of those voices to her father. Still, she liked to think that somewhere, in some parallel plane of existence, there lived a happy, untroubled Tess.

“Not necessarily,” said her father. “Just because there is infinite variety in the universes doesn’t mean that all possibilities exist.”

“But why not? It seems like it should mean exactly that. That anything is possible.”

“Anything is possible, but that doesn’t mean every possibility exists. Consider the willow oak.”

“Why should I consider the willow oak?”

“Because I’m going to use it as an example of how infinite variety doesn’t mean the existence of all possibilities. Now a fully mature willow oak can have as many as a million leaves. And the tree can live for over a hundred years, so that’s more than a hundred million leaves. Each leaf has its own pattern of veins. Each leaf buds and drops from the tree at a specific moment in time. After falling from the tree each leaf might blow away to any of millions of specific spots or be eaten or partially eaten by any of millions of individual insects or be carried away by a bird to countless locations. And there are tens of millions of these trees alive at any given moment—and each one has an arrangement of limbs, a specific height, a pattern of roots, and so on. It’s easy to imagine an infinite number of universes that only differ in almost unnoticeable variations of this one species.”

“That’s pretty boring,” said Tess. “All those universes and the only difference is a leaf drops five minutes earlier in one universe than another.”

“It may seem boring to you, but the truth doesn’t have to be fascinating.”

“But even if there are millions of possibilities for millions of leaves and so on, that doesn’t have to mean infinity, does it? I mean a finite number, no matter how big, times another finite number, no matter how big, is still a finite number.”