Paul Levinson: The Chronology Protection Case

“It’s crazy,” Janny said. “Doc says it’s less than one in ten thousand. Some rare allergy to the shot the medic gave her. It wasn’t his fault. It somehow brings out an asthma attack hours later. Fifty percent fatality.”

“And Lauren—Dr. Goldring—was in the unlucky part of the curve.”

Janny nodded.

“I don’t believe this,” I said, shaking my head.

“I know,” Janny said. “Helluva coincidence. Physicist and his wife, also a physicist, both dying like that.”

“Maybe it’s not a coincidence,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Janny said.

“I don’t know what I mean,” I said.

“Is Lauren—is the body—still here? I’d like to have a look at her.”

“Help yourself,” Janny gestured inside the house.

I can’t say Lauren looked at peace in death. I could almost still see her lips quivering, straining to tell me something, though they were as sealed as the deadest night now. I had an urge to kiss her face. I’d known her all of two days, wanted as many times to kiss her. Now I never would.

I was aware of Janny standing beside me.

“I’m going home now,” I said.

“Sure,” Janny said. “The captain says he’d like to talk to you tomorrow morning. Just to wrap this whole mess up. Bad karma.”

Yeah, karma, like in Fritz Capra’s Tao of Physics. Like in two entities crossing each other’s paths and then never more touching each other’s destinies. Like me and this soul with the soft, still lips. Except I had no power to influence Lauren, to make things better for her any more. And the truth is, I hadn’t done much for her when she was alive.

I was awake all night. I logged on to a few more fringy physics lists with my computer and did more reading. Finally it was light outside. I thought about calling Stephen Hawking. He was where? California? Cambridge, England? I wasn’t sure. I knew he’d be able to talk to me if I could reach him—I’d seen a video of him talking through a special device—but he’d probably think I was crazy when I told him what I had to say. So I called Jack Donovan instead. He was an other friend who owed me. I had lots of friends like that in the city. Jack was a science reporter for Newsday , and I’d come through for him with off-the-record background on murder investigations in my bailiwick lots of times. I hoped he’d come through for me now. I was starting to get worried. He had lots of connections in the field—he could talk to scientists who’d shy away from me, my being in the department and all.

It was seven in the morning. I expected to get his answering machine, but I got him. I told him my story.

“OK,” he said. “Why don’t you go see the captain at the precinct, and then come over to see me? I’ll do some checking around in the meantime.”

I did what Jack said. I kept strictly to the facts with the captain—no suppositions, no chronological or any other protection schemes—and he took it all in with his customary frown. “Damn shame,” he muttered. “Nice lady like that. They oughta take that sedative off the market. Damn drug companies are too greedy. ”

“Right,” I said.

“You look exhausted,” he said. “You oughta take the rest of the day off.”

“More or less what I had in mind,” I said, and left for Jack’s.

I thought my office was high-tech, but Jack’s Hempstead newsroom looked like something well into the next century. Computer screens everywhere you looked, sounds of modems chirping on and off like the patter of tiny raindrops.

Jack looked concerned. “You’re not going to like this,” he said.

“What else is new?” I said. “Try me.”

“Well, you were right about my having better entree to these physicists than you. I did a lot of checking,” Jack said. “There were six people working actively in conjunction with Ian on this project. A few more, of course, if you take into account the usual complement of graduate student assistants. But outside of that, the project was sealed up pretty tightly—not by the government or any agency, but by the researchers themselves. Sometimes they do that when the research gets really flaky—like they don’t want anyone to know what they’re really doing until they’re sure they have a reliable effect. You wouldn’t believe some of the wild things people have been getting into in the past few years—especially the physicists—now that they have the Internet to yammer at each other.”

“I’m tired, Jack. Please get to the point.”

“Well, four of the seven—that includes Ian Goldring—are now dead. One had a heart attack—the day after his doctor told him his cholesterol was in the bottom 10 percent. I guess that’s not so strange. Another fell off his roof—he was cleaning out his gutters—and severed his carotid artery on a sharp piece of flagstone that was sticking up on his walk. He bled to death before anyone found him. Another was struck by a car—DOA. And then there’s Ian. I could write a story on this even without your conjecture—”

“Please don’t,” I said.

“It’s a weird situation, all right. Four out of seven dying like that—and also Goldring’s wife.”

“How are the spouses of the other fatalities?” I asked.

“All OK,” Jack said. “But none are physicists. None knew anything at all about their husbands’ work—all of the dead were men. Lauren Goldring is the only one who had any idea what her husband was up to.”

“She wasn’t sure,” I said. “But I think she figured it out just before she died.”

“Maybe they all picked up some virus at a conference they attended—something which threw off their sense of balance, caused their heart rate to speed up,” Sam Abrahmson, Jack’s editor, strolled by and jumped in. Clearly he’d been listening on the periphery of our conversation. “That could explain the two accidents and the heart attack,” he added. “Maybe even the sedative death.”

“But not the drive-by shooting of Goldring,” I said.

“No,” Abrahmson admitted. “But it could be an interesting story anyway. Think about it,” he said to Jack and strolled away.

I looked at Jack. “Please, I’m begging you. If I’m right—”

“It’s likely something completely different,” Jack said. “Some completely different hidden variable.”

Hidden variables. I’d been reading about them all night. “What about the other three? Have you been able to get in touch with them?” I asked.

“Nope,” Jack said. “Hays and Strauss refused to talk to me about it. Both had their secretaries tell me they were aware of some of the deaths, had decided not to do any more work on the local wormhole project, had no plans to publish what they’d already done, didn’t want to talk to me about it or hear from me again. Each claimed to be involved now in something completely different.”

“Does that sound to you like the usual behavior of research scientists?” I asked.

“No,” Jack said. “The ones I know eat up publicity, and they’d hang on to a project like this for decades, like a dog worrying a bone.”

I nodded. “And the third physicist?”

“Fenwick? She’s in a small plane somewhere in the outback of Australia. I couldn’t reach her at all.”

“Call me immediately if you hear the plane crashes,” I said. I really meant “when” not “if,” but I didn’t want Jack to think I was even more far gone than I was. “Please try to hold off on any story for now,” I said and made to leave.

“I’ll do what I can,” Jack said. “Try to get some rest. I think there’s something going on here all right, but not what you think.”

The drive back to Westchester was harrowing. Two cars nearly side-swiped me, and one big-ass truck stopped so suddenly in front of me that I had all I could do to swerve out of crashing into it and becoming an instant Long Island Expressway pancake.