Page 91 of The Paradox Club

“Just like you.”

“Who knows how far back it goes in the family. My grandfather was on a fishing trip on this lake in the teens, before the Paradox Club was founded, before anyone knew about untethered foreign objects. He felt drawn to this place. Years later, he told his son, my father, that he didn’t understand it—he just knew he had to stay connected to this tiny, remote island. So, he bought it. For years he came here every summer for a couple of weeks, pitched a tent, and fished. His wife didn’t understand, but eventually he took his son along. My father felt the same pull his father felt and one night, after a lightning storm, he crawled out of the tent and walked over to that circle of trees—the place where he had always felt most at peace on the island. Sitting in the middle of the circle was a book—The Descent of Man.”

“By Charles Darwin,” said Vivian.

“Yes. Charles Darwin. Only in this book, the author’s name was spelled with a double n. D-A-R-W-I-N-N.”

“Was that the first UFO to appear on the island?”

“The first that I know of. But the island has been here for thousands of years and chances are most UFOs are never recognized because they’re just chunks of rock or bits of sticks or clumps of grass. My grandfather took the book to the librarian at his alma mater, Princeton, who referred him to a book collector named Morris Parrish just when Parrish and Albert Einstein were talking about founding the Paradox Club. That’s how he ended up being a founding member.”

“But the Darwinn book wasn’t the last UFO to appear here?”

“No,” said Harry. “After that night, my grandfather decided to build a cabin on the island. He even convinced my grandmother to come up once in a while. She was the one who found the next UFO.”

“Another book?”

“Gatsby the Great.”

“Didn’t the club used to use that book to test potential members?” asked Vivian.

“Yes,” said Harry. “By that time my grandparents were both members. My grandfather had intuition when it came to UFOs and what he called ‘thin places’—spots like the island that sometimes rubbed up against other universes. But my grandmother was actually a physicist, if only an amateur. She understood the science as well as anyone at the time. And she insisted they deposit Gatsby the Great at the club, where it could be protected.”

“And the book by Charles Darwinn with a double n?”

“In my library in Madison,” said Harry. “My grandfather never told his wife about that one, and it passed down to his son and eventually to me.”

“Did you ever find a UFO in the circle of trees?”

“Just one.”

“Where is it?”

“Right now, it’s here on the island.”

When she pressed him, Harry told Vivian the exact location of the UFO he had discovered on a restless night when he was sixteen.

MONTAG 5 IN TROUBLE

“Idiot!” Pilgrim 3 shouted into the phone. “You incompetent buffoon!”

“It can still work,” said Montag 5. Pilgrim 3 willed her rage to radiate through the phone. If they weren’t separated by seven hundred miles, she would throttle him.

“It’s not your job to tell me what will and won’t work,” spat Pilgrim 3. “It was your job to bring me the radio and the girl!”

“But when you first sent us you just wanted the radio and I have that,” said Montag 5.

“The situation changed,” said Pilgrim 3.

“It changed because of me,” said Montag 5. “Because I figured out the girl was Tess Maxwell.”

“Are you seriously trying to paint yourself as the hero in this scenario?”

“No, it’s just that—”

“Keep driving west,” said Pilgrim 3. “I need ten minutes to decide how to deal with your incompetence. I’ll call you back then.”

Pilgrim 3 pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil and begin to do math. Not Harry Maxwell math—there were few people on earth who could perform Harry’s calculations, and Pilgrim 3 wasn’t one of them. No, this was simple addition. Her plan wouldn’t work without the radio. She had held out hope for years that it would turn up and when it had, right before the deadline, she took that as a sign. If Harry Maxwell had proved anything it was that the radio had powers beyond any other UFO, that it retained a link to its universe of origin and that link could be exploited to create a portal. She definitely needed the radio. And if she had the girl? If she had the girl, she couldn’t possibly fail.