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2
He used sturdy generic glassware at the restaurant, but the pitcher holding the iced tea looked like
Waterford to me. A whole lemon bobbed placidly on top, the skin cut to let the flavor seep out. I
choked a couple of glasses with ice, poured, and went back into the living room. Al took a long, deep
swallow of his and closed his eyes gratefully.
“Boy, is that good. Right this minute everything in Al World is good. That dope’s wonderful stuff.
Addictive as hell, of course, but wonderful. It even suppresses the coughing a little. The pain’ll start
creeping in again by midnight, but that should give us enough time to talk this through.” He sipped
again and gave me a look of rueful amusement. “Human things are terrific right to the end, it seems
like. I never would have guessed.”
“Al, what happens to that . . . that hole into the past, if they pull your trailer and build an outlet
store where it was?”
“I don’t know that any more than I know how I can buy the same meat over and over again. What I
think is it’ll disappear. I think it’s as much a freak of nature as Old Faithful, or that weird balancing
rock they’ve got in western Australia, or a river that runs backward at certain phases of the moon.
Things like that are delicate, buddy. A little shift in the earth’s crust, a change in the temperature, a
few sticks of dynamite, and they’re gone.”
“So you don’t think there’ll be . . . I don’t know . . . some kind of cataclysm?” What I was picturing
in my mind was a breach in the cabin of an airliner cruising at thirty-six thousand feet, and
everything being sucked out, including the passengers. I saw that in a movie once.
“I don’t think so, but who can tell? All I know is that there’s nothing I can do about it, either way.
Unless you want me to deed the place over to you, that is. I could do that. Then you could go to the
National Historical Preservation Society and tell them, ‘Hey, guys, you can’t let them put up an
outlet store in the courtyard of the old Worumbo mill. There’s a time tunnel there. I know it’s hard to
believe, but let me show you.’”
For a moment I actually considered this, because Al was probably right: the fissure leading into the
past was almost certainly delicate. For all I knew (or he did), it could pop like a soap bubble if the
Aluminaire was even joggled hard. Then I thought of the federal government discovering they could
send special ops into the past to change whatever they wanted. I didn’t know if that were possible, but
if so, the folks who gave us fun stuff like bio-weapons and computer-guided smart bombs were the
last folks I’d want carrying their various agendas into living, unarmored history.
The minute this idea occurred to me—no, the very second—I knew what Al had in mind. Only the
specifics were missing. I set my iced tea aside and stood up.
“No. Absolutely not. Uh-uh.”
He took this calmly. I could say it was because he was stoned on OxyContin, but I knew better. He
could see I didn’t mean to just walk out no matter what I said. My curiosity (not to mention my
fascination) was probably sticking out like porcupine quills. Because part of me did want to know the
specifics.
“I see I can skip the introductory material and get right down to business,” Al said. “That’s good.
Sit down, Jake, and I’ll let you in on my only reason for not just taking my whole supply of little pink
pills at once.” And when I stayed on my feet: “You know you want to hear this, and what harm? Even
if I could make you do something here in 2011—which I can’t—I couldn’t make you do anything
back there. Once you get back there, Al Templeton’s a four-year-old kid in Bloomington, Indiana,
racing around his backyard in a Lone Ranger mask and still a bit iffy in the old toilet-training
department. So sit down. Like they say in the infomercials, you’re under no obligation.”
Right. On the other hand, my mother would have said the devil’s voice is sweet.