Page 103 of The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

Ferenc, who’d done nothing to arrest the fall, clucked in sympathy. “That must have hurt.”

He waited a moment longer, checking the machine’s operation, then setting it to dial back remotely to station-keeping mode in five minutes. He glanced up at the clock, took note of the time. Then he pulled off the white lab coat that had covered his clothes, checked his pockets, and gingerly circled the wavering circle of brilliant light, eyes averted, until he stood directly in front of it. “Geronimo,” he whispered.

He stepped through the circle, his image rippling slightly before first growing faint, and then disappearing altogether.

65

December 26, 1880

Wednesday

FERENC STAGGERED, EXPERIENCING THEsensation of falling that occurs in dreams. Just as he was bracing for a violent impact, he felt a hard, cobbled surface materialize under his feet. He swayed, regaining his balance, and looked around. He was in a crooked, filthy alley, the brick walls pasted over with vintage advertisements in script straight out of a Civil War broadsheet. Except the ads weren’t vintage at all—they looked brand new, the glue so fresh he could practically smell the horse collagen…if it wasn’t for another, stronger horsey odor invading his senses. He stumbled forward, out of the alley and into a big open square.

He looked first left, then right. The square was busy with traffic made up entirely of horse carriages. The air was hazy with coal smoke.

He’d prepared himself for this, of course—looked at pictures while figuring out how to dress, making sure he was ready both mentally and emotionally for the shock of going back in time—but in fact, looking around, he realized nothing could have truly prepared him for the reality. It was like a movie set, only noisier, dirtier—and endless. He stood still a moment, taking deep breaths, slowing his heart and letting the realization sink in. He’d done it.

“Fuckin’A!” he whooped, pumping his fist in exultation.

A woman in a bustle, walking past with two young children, stopped to glare at him in shock and horror.

“Excuse me,” he said, adding “ma’am” as he turned quickly away. Damn it, he had to be careful, say as little as possible, not attract any attention. He converted the fist-pumping gesture into a vigorous rubbing of his arms and shoulders, as if warding off a fit of shivering. In truth, itwascold—colder than a witch’s tit. He’d forgotten that, in the 1880 he had arrived in, it was December rather than June.

Enough of this: he could reflect on this amazing journey, and its sights and sounds, once he was safely back home. He took a moment to get his bearings and then, ducking his head, he started making his way south on Broadway, careful to blend in with the crowds whenever possible.

They shouldn’t have been so goddamned secretive; they should have trusted him more. They must have known that, in the course of rebuilding the machine, he’d learn its function. Proctor knew it was his pushy inquisitiveness, in part, that got Ferenc thrown out of the Rover project: but, Jesus Christ, all good scientists were curious. Every single time the subject got around to what exactly Pendergast planned to do with the machine, the man shifted the conversation elsewhere. Ferenc had voiced his concerns about its ethics, and Pendergast had ignored him. They had kept him in the dark, treating him like a child, ignoring his concerns—so it was only natural he would hide a miniature voice-activated recorder with SSD storage in the guts of the machine. The morality, the safety protocols of science, practically demanded it.

Fucking Proctor. He hated the stone-faced bastard. The man had actually threatened to kill him. This after he’d done the impossible—and in a mere two weeks at that. After that threat Ferenc lost any last vestiges of scientific misgivings—and he covertly removed his recording device, for review in his rooms later that evening.

Of course, by that time he’d already finalized a plan…but he still wanted to find out whether there was something he didn’t know about, something weird or dangerous waiting back in that particular parallel timeline, something hewouldn’t like—which was perhaps what they’d been keeping from him. And to think, once he had listened to enough of their taped conversation, he realized it was nothing more than ancestral bullshit! Just some drama about saving a girl and killing a doctor. To use a device of this power and potential on such a trivial thing was a crime. Pendergast’s mission sounded like a ten-cent bodice ripper, when—with a machine like that at hand—billions could be made, worlds changed, history remade.

He crossed Fortieth Street with a crowd reeking of sweat despite the chill. He’d done his best to dress the part, with a flannel lumberjack shirt of red-and-black plaid from L.L.Bean, black cargo pants, and Doc Martens lace-up leather boots in the original style, 1460. Even so, he noticed he was on the receiving end of more than one sidelong glance, as if he’d just gotten off the boat from Timbuktu or something. He paused a moment to scuff up his boots, rub a little horseshit on them to take the shine off. He probably could have used a little more research on the clothing. But that didn’t matter—he’d researched what counted most.

Ferenc had always been paranoid and secretive by nature, and years spent working on scientific projects both classified and otherwise had only exacerbated that tendency. But it wasn’t paranoia that told him Proctor was a major problem. He’d despised the man from the start—with his terse, Zen-like irony, his tougher-than-thou Special Forces manner, his lack of respect for Ferenc’s genius:You have a reputation for being meddlesome, difficult, and prickly. But that little speech he’d made yesterday, after Pendergast traveled back here for the main event, had surprised and alarmed him.Step out of line and you’ll vanish. Just like that.Ferenc didn’t know what Pendergast had planned after this little sortie of his was finished, but he was now convinced Proctor meant to tie up the loose ends…including him.

When it’s done, you won’t say a single word about it. To anybody.

During the last week, as the machine underwent its final tests and appeared functional, he’d had an idea. A rather brilliant one, actually, that could quickly be put in place. He was working almost full-time in the lab, anyway; he had the parts he needed; and an extra hour here and there on top of all the moonlighting didn’t matter.

Proctor had frightened him—but also angered him. Ferenc had decided to use that anger before he had the chance to lose his nerve. And it had worked perfectly. He had refilled his current prescription for bihydrodiozipene nasal spray, used for severe migraine auras, and the order had gone unremarked. He’d greatly concentrated the spray before placing it in an atomizer bulb and valve, which he’d planted behind Proctor’s control panel during that day’s preliminary checklist. The machine’s stuttering, accomplished by a clever but harmless misalignment, created the pretext to run it at 100 percent. And then—from his own control panel—he’d sprayed a nice, thick cloud of sleepy-bye all over Proctor as he stood at the far end. The man would be out for at least five but probably more like ten hours. What Ferenc needed to do would take three or four at the max, and he’d be back in the twenty-first century, out of that creepy house…and gone, baby, gone. Proctor could cram that extra quarter million up his ass—with Special Force—because compared to what Ferenc would bring back with him, the $250,000 they were paying him for “maintenance” was chicken feed.

Christ, it was cold.

When he got to Thirty-Sixth Street, he paused to look ahead at Herald Square. There they were, on the right, exactly where they should be: three spheres of golden brass—at present quite dull and tarnished—suspended on a bar above a shop front half a block ahead.

Ferenc had to stop himself from pumping a fist again in triumph.

The one problem that had really stumped him was, ironically, what should have been the most trivial: money. For his scheme to work, he needed a hundred dollars, give or take.

A hundred dollars in 1880s currency.

Under normal circumstances, he could have headed downtown and bought the old money from a dealer in rare coins. But he couldn’t just head downtown—Proctor would have had issues with him exercising such a freedom. Neither could he purchase the old money by mail, like he had some of the equipment and his extra dose of migraine medication: it would have been spotted and his intentions instantly revealed. How could such a simple thing be such an impediment?

The answer came to him as he was browsing the internet, researching the other elements of his plan: the approach, the transaction, the return. He’d been looking at an old photograph of Broadway in 1881…and there it was, right in front of him. A pawnshop.

As soon as he saw that, he knew he had the answer. Ten more minutes of scrolling confirmed it. In the 1880s, China was a mysterious and exotic place. The few Chinese artifacts that made their way to America—jade, in particular—were rare and highly coveted.

As it happened, Pendergast’s endless display cases circling the reception hall had more than their share of jade objects: Ferenc had seen them. Size, he learned, mattered less than the delicacy and complexity of the carving, as well as the hue of the mineral itself. And so it had been the work of sixty seconds—with Pendergast off on his strange trip and Proctor in the back kitchen with Mrs. Trask—for Ferenc to slip one of the cases open, pocket two small but highly figured ornaments of cicadas and lotus flowers, rearrange the rest of the “Jades of the Six Ceremonial Periods” display so it looked untouched, and slide the case closed.

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