Nobel shook his head. “Nothing that I can think of. I suppose it’s possible Captain Vincent erased my own memories for this very purpose, so I would not have the ability to tell you.”
“Possibly,” Matt said. His mind began to whirl.
“What are you thinking?” Jia said.
Matt shifted in his chair. “Nothing, really. Except I wonder if someone else could have done something to the dynamite? Changed it somehow, to make it work the way the captain wanted? Or at least appear to work.”
“You mean he hired someone else besides Nobel?” Jia asked.
“No,” Matt said. “I’m thinking maybe someone could have changed it without Nobel or Captain Vincent knowing. Someone from the outside.”
“They would have had to be extremely sneaky,” Nobel said. “The dynamite was never out of my sight.”
Yes, Matt thought to himself. They would have to be pretty much invisible.
He glanced at Jia. She was frowning at him like she knew he was cooking up some harebrained idea. And he was. He was cooking up what was possibly his most harebrained idea yet.
“Your brother, Emil,” Matt said. “When did he die, exactly?”
“September 3, 1864,” Nobel said.
“And you boarded the Vermillion how long after?”
“I can’t say precisely. A few months, perhaps.”
Matt nodded. He could work with estimates. It was dark now. Through the window, Matt could see the twinkling lights of the jumbled city. Matt thanked Mr. Nobel and said that he and Jia should be on their way, but Marta wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted that they stay the night and would not accept no for an answer.
Matt looked to Jia. She was bleary-eyed. Her entire body sagged. She looked like she could fall asleep standing up.
With all that had happened, Matt knew he should be exhausted, too, but he wasn’t. Every cell in his body seemed to be alert and energized, ready for action. He knew he wouldn’t be able to rest. There was too much to do.
Nobel fixed them a meal of potatoes and sausages and greens. Matt didn’t realize how hungry he was until he started eating, and then it was like he couldn’t stop. Disassembling himself took a lot of energy, apparently.
They didn’t talk very much as they ate, though Marta looked at Matt with such a piercing gaze, he had a feeling she knew exactly what he was about to do. It was possible, he realized, that she knew everything that was about to happen even more than he did.
After dinner, Nobel showed Matt and Jia to a room where they could sleep. Jia yawned and flopped down on the bed, her eyes drooping. She fell asleep within seconds.
Matt immediately prepared to leave. He hated to leave Jia behind. He knew she would be furious with him, but this was a mission only he could perform, and he had to do it now, before it was too late.
He turned, ready to dissolve himself, but came face-to-face with Marta. She was standing in the doorway, staring at him with her ghostly eyes. Matt put a finger to his lips. She mimicked him, and then he disappeared.
26Self-Destruct
He traveled back to September 3, 1864, the day Emil Nobel died in the explosion. As Matt suspected, it had been no accident. Brocco had set their stores of nitroglycerin on fire, causing it to heat above the temperature required for stability.
Nobel, brooding over his brother’s death, moved to Paris, and a few months later, Captain Vincent appeared with his promises to save Emil. Nobel boarded the Vermillion and commenced his work for Captain Vincent. Matt, traveling through the time tapestry, watched him try different chemical combinations, different materials.
Every day, Captain Vincent ran his experiments. He experimented on people who they picked up at different times, and sometimes animals, whatever Brocco and Wiley were willing to bring on board—mice and rats, dogs, cats, and chickens. They, too, had time tapestries. It seemed all living things did. Matt could tell that Santiago, Captain Vincent’s pet rat, did not like this one bit, especially when they experimented on the rats. Captain Vincent didn’t seem to care about the feelings of the rat. Only the time tapestries. He wanted to destroy them completely, but at the end of each experiment, no matter how he burned, sliced, or shredded the time tapestries, some semblance of it still remained. The creature might disappear from sight, but they could also reappear at random, which was not at all what the captain wanted. He wanted complete erasure. Total nonexistence. This, Matt realized, was what Captain Vincent had done to the two people whose time tapestry remains he held. Somehow, he’d managed to erase them. Or so it seemed. But what if it wasn’t what it seemed? What if there were other forces at play?
At night, while Nobel and the rest of the ship slept, Matt, still invisible in his disassembled state, slipped into the cabin where Nobel slept with all the stores of dynamite. He moved around the dynamite, spilling his cells over and around it. What he was about to do would either be the most brilliant thing he’d ever done, or the most idiotic.
Here goes nothing, he thought to himself.
Matt poured himself into the piles of dynamite, infusing his separated cells into all the nitroglycerin. It felt cold and hot at the same time. It was disorienting at first. His cells went a bit berserk, like eggs thrown on a hot frying pan. They seemed to sizzle and pop, and he did feel like maybe he was burning, but he didn’t die. At least he didn’t think he did. He remained aware and himself. And here he waited.
The next morning, Captain Vincent requested more experiments. Nobel wearily brought his crate of dynamite to the deck of the ship. Matt moved with it. His senses were a bit dulled. He couldn’t see much in this state, his cells all separated amongst the several sticks of dynamite, but he could tell that Brocco
