John Hawks - The Traveler

“You want help?” Mitchell asked.

“Stay here. Dr. Richardson and I are going to go inside. If there’s trouble, I’ll call you on my cell phone.”

The sense of detachment that had protected Richardson when Boone was beating Pius Romero had disappeared during the ride out to Queens. The neurologist felt tired and scared. He wanted to run away from the three men, but he knew that would be useless. Shivering from the cold, he followed Boone across the street. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

Boone stood on the sidewalk and gazed up at a light coming from a third-floor window. “I don’t know. First I have to assess the problem.”

“I hate violence, Mr. Boone.”

“So do I.”

“You almost killed that young man.”

“I didn’t even come close.” Puffs of white breath came out of Boone’s mouth as he talked. “You need to study history, Doctor. All great changes are based on pain and destruction.”

The two men walked down the driveway to the back door of the house. Boone stood on the porch and touched the door frame with the tips of his fingers. All of a sudden, he took one step back and kicked just above the knob. There was a cracking sound and the door flew open. Richardson followed him inside.

The house was very warm and smelled harsh and foul, like someone had spilled a bottle of ammonia. The two men passed through the dark kitchen, and Richardson accidentally stepped on a water dish. Creatures were moving around the kitchen and on the counters. Boone flicked on the switch for the overhead light.

“Cats,” Boone said, almost spitting out the word. “I hate cats. You can’t teach them anything.”

There were four cats in the kitchen and two more in the hallway. They moved quietly on soft paws as the inner layer of their eyes reflected the dim light and turned gold and pink and dark green. Their tails curved up like little question marks while their whiskers tasted the air.

“There’s a light upstairs,” Boone said. “Let’s see who’s home.” Single file, they climbed up the wooden stairs to the third floor. Boone opened a door and they entered an attic that had been turned into a laboratory. There were tables and chemical glassware. A spectrograph. Microscopes and a Bunsen burner.

An old man sat in a wicker chair with a white Persian cat on his lap. He was clean-shaven and neatly dressed, and wore bifocal eyeglasses tilted downward on the end of his nose. He didn’t seem surprised by the intrusion.

“Good evening, gentlemen.” The man spoke very precisely, enunciating each syllable. “I knew that you’d show up here eventually. In fact, I predicted it. Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.”

Boone watched the old man as if he were about to run away. “I’m Nathan Boone. What’s your name?”

“Lundquist. Dr. Jonathan Lundquist. If you’re the police, you can leave right now. I haven’t done anything illegal. There’s no law against 3B3 because the government doesn’t know that it exists.”

A tortoiseshell cat tried to rub against Boone’s leg, but he kicked it away. “We’re not policemen.”

Dr. Lundquist looked surprised. “Then you must be-yes, of course-you work for the Brethren.”

Boone looked like he was going to slip on his black leather glove and break the old man’s nose. Richardson shook his head slightly. No need for that. He walked over to the old man and sat down on a folding chair. “I’m Dr. Phillip Richardson, a research neurologist with Yale University.”

Lundquist looked pleased to be meeting another scientist. “And now you’re working for the Evergreen Foundation.”

“Yes. On a special project.”

“Many years ago, I applied for a grant from the foundation, but they didn’t even answer my letter. That was before I learned about the Travelers from renegade Web sites on the Internet.” Lundquist laughed softly. “I thought it was best if I worked on my own. No forms to fill out. No one looking over my shoulder.”

“Were you trying to duplicate the Traveler’s experience?”

“It’s much more than that, Doctor. I was trying to answer some fundamental questions.” Lundquist stopped stroking the Persian cat and it jumped off his lap. “A few years ago I was at Princeton, teaching organic chemistry…” He glanced at Richardson. “I had a respectable career, but nothing flashy. I was always interested in the big picture. Not just chemistry but other areas of science. So one afternoon I went to a graduate seminar in the physics department about something called brane theory.

“Physicists have a serious problem these days. The concepts that explain the universe, such as Einstein’s theory of general relativity, aren’t compatible with the subatomic world of quantum mechanics. Some physicists have gotten around this contradiction with string theory, the idea that everything is composed of tiny subatomic objects that are vibrating in multidimensional space. The math makes sense, but the strings are so small that you can’t prove much experimentally.

“Brane theory goes large and tries to give a cosmological explanation. ‘Brane’ is short for ‘membrane.’ The theorists believe that our perceivable universe is confined to a sort of membrane of space and time. The usual analogy is that our galaxy is like pond scum-a thin layer of existence floating on a much larger bulk of something. All matter, including our own bodies, is trapped in our brane, but gravity can leak off into the bulk or subtly influence our own physical phenomenon. Other branes, other dimensions, other realms-use any word you wish-can be very near to us, but we would be totally unaware of them. That’s because neither light nor sound nor radioactivity can break free of its own particular dimension.”

A black cat approached Lundquist and he scratched behind the animal’s ears. “That’s the theory at least, in a very simplified form. And I had the theory in my mind when I went to hear a lecture in New York given by a monk from Tibet. I’m sitting there, listening to him talk about the six different realms of Buddhist cosmology, and I realize that he’s describing the branes-the different dimensions and the barriers that separate them. But there’s one crucial difference: my associates at Princeton can’t conceive of going to these different places. For a Traveler, it’s quite possible. The body can’t do it, but the Light within us can.”

Lundquist leaned back in his chair and smiled at his guests. “This connection between spirituality and physics made me view science in a new way. Right now we’re smashing atoms and ripping apart chromosomes. We’re going to the bottom of the ocean and looking up into space. But we’re not really investigating the region within our skull except in the most superficial way. People are using MRI machines and CAT scans to view the brain, but it’s all very small and physiological. No one seems to realize how immense consciousness really is. It ties us to the rest of the universe.”

Richardson glanced around the room and saw a tabby cat sitting on a leather folder crammed with sheets of stained paper. Trying not to alarm Lundquist, he stood up and took a few steps toward the table. “So you started your experiment?”

“Yes. First, at Princeton. Then I retired and moved here to save money. Remember, I’m a chemist, not a physicist. So I decided to search for a substance that would break our Light free of our body.”

“And you came up with a formula…”

“It’s not a cake recipe.” Lundquist sounded annoyed. “3B3 is a living thing. A new strain of bacterium. When you swallow the liquid solution, it’s absorbed into your nervous system.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“I’ve taken it dozens of times. And I can still remember to take out my garbage cans on Thursday and pay my electric bill.”