the tablecloth and back into the bottle. It's not impossible, just highly unlikely. It's probable that if you toss a coin a hundred times it'll come down fifty-fifty heads and tails, but it's also possible it could come down a hundred either way. Things are governed less by rules than gambler's odds.”
Ralph leaned toward him, like a stag locking horns. “I'm no scientist, but I know that Einstein said, ‘God does not play dice with the universe.’ Are you saying he was wrong?”
“That was a statement of faith, not science. Every time it's been tested by experiment, the dice theory has come out ahead. Which means we can't pretend that something isn't happening just by saying it's impossible. Because nothing's impossible!”
Sam's words hung in the air a moment, then Ralph crossed his arms at the wrist and flung them apart. It was the gesture of a man breaking invisible chains.
“No! I don't buy this! I just don't buy it! There has to be some proof, some evidence-at least other people, people I can talk to, somebody else who knew about this so-called experiment.”
Sam's voice was calm and level. “There is no proof, and no evidence. All the people who knew about the experiment, colleagues of mine who weren't involved in it but discussed it with me at the time, now remember nothing. Every trace of it has disappeared. It never happened.”
“So you're telling me there's only your word to support this whole story…?”
“My word-and the fact that someone vanished in this house last night. Someone you saw, spoke to, someone who even brushed past you as she came in the door. You're not going to pretend now that all that never happened, are you?”
Ralph opened his mouth to speak, but seemed to lose heart and instead just sank slowly down onto the edge of the bed, and buried his head in his hands.
“You know something really weird? It's crazy, but it's been bothering me ever since…” He lifted his head to look at Sam, his eyes reddened and pulled down by his fingertips.
“Last night, just for a second when I opened the door to her, that woman, I thought I knew her. It was that sense of deja vu-the way it happens, inexplicably. Something in me said, I know this woman from somewhere. Then I told myself I was imagining it-obviously because I'd heard about her from you, and then that phone call from Joanna's father.”
He paused, his eyebrows knitting in a frown. “I couldn't have seen her before, could I? How would it be possible?”
Sam debated whether to say what was in his mind. He decided they had now gone too far for him not to.
“Joanna- my Joanna-claims to have met you. It sounded pretty much like your meeting with your Joanna- horseback riding, the churchyard, Adam's grave. Except in her case it was three days ago-four now. And in your case it was a year ago.” He paused, then added, “And there didn't seem much chance that you'd be getting married.”
He had leaned forward again as he spoke. Now he sat back.
“That's it, Ralph. The best I can do. What you make of it is up to you.”
Ralph didn't move for some moments, just sat hunched where he was on the edge of his and his wife's untidy, slept-in bed, his hands pressed together and touching his mouth. Eventually he rose very slowly to his feet.
“Where do we go from here?” he said, his voice unsteady.
“I think you should go back to your wife. Be with her.”
“She asked me to bring you over. I said I would. She wants to know what you think about all this.”
Sam got to his feet. “I'll be glad to come with you.”
The other man shot him a hard look. “You stay away from her.”
Sam shrugged. “As you wish. But she's going to wonder why I won't talk to her. Or why you won't let me. And if she doesn't like your story, there's nothing to stop her from calling me. Then what will I say?”
Ralph thought this over. It was true: his wife wasn't the type to be easily fobbed off with excuses.
“Listen to me, Towne…” he began.
“Sam. I think it might be easier if we use first names, don't you?”
“Listen to me, Sam. If you tell her any of the stuff you've just been telling me, ever…I'll break your damn neck. Do you understand me?”
Sam looked at him. Ralph was fit and well built and probably strong enough to do it. He was certainly scared enough to try.
“Don't worry, I'm not going to upset your wife. I have no reason to. I suggest we make a deal, you and I.”
Ralph frowned quizzically. “A deal?”
“I'll come back with you and tell her something-something that makes sense.” He gave a brief, dry laugh. “Not the truth, obviously, because that doesn't. I'll make something up, and say you've given me permission to stay in the house alone for a while to observe the phenomena more closely. What do you say?”
Ralph looked at him, incredulous. “You want to stay here? Alone?”
“That's exactly what I want.”
Ralph stared at him some more. And then a kind of understanding dawned in his face.
“Yes, of course. You and…that woman…I should have guessed from the way you've been talking about her.”
“Can I stay?”
Ralph nodded. “You can stay.”
58
Sam made a brief tour of the rest of the house while Ralph packed a couple more suitcases for his wife and himself. Joanna's parents had insisted on driving down when Joanna had called them before breakfast to tell them what had happened. She was going to go stay with them for a few days; meanwhile Ralph would rent an apartment in Manhattan, then join her on the weekend.
There was nothing much that he hadn't seen already. In the basement kitchen drawers had been yanked open and their contents scattered. Various things, although not everything, had been swept from shelves, and several pots and pans dislodged from where they usually hung. The damage wasn't as bad as in the drawing room, but it still looked as though a tornado had swept through.
Ralph's footsteps sounded on the stairs-coming down, Sam thought, a little faster than necessary. He had insisted that he didn't mind staying alone a few minutes to do his packing. “What can happen in broad daylight?” he'd asked. “This stuff only happens at night-right?”
Sam hadn't disabused him, though in fact there were no rules on the subject. “Phenomena”-to use that sterile, antiseptic term that Sam found increasingly unsatisfactory-occurred any time and any place, in the dark or in full light, below ground or above it.
“Okay, let's go,” Ralph said as Sam joined him in the hall.
“Let me take one of those.” Sam picked up one of the heavy suitcases.
They left the house and found a cab. Twenty minutes later they entered the lobby of the small hotel where Sam had spent time with Joanna's parents in the past. The desk clerk told Ralph that they had already arrived and were upstairs with Joanna.
As they went up in the elevator, Sam felt the same tense, nervous hollowness in his stomach that he'd felt waiting on the steps earlier while Ralph opened up the house. He was sure that Bob and Elizabeth Cross would not recognize him, yet the meeting filled him with apprehension. Nothing, he repeated to himself, could be taken for granted. Logic dictated that Joanna's parents, like the Joanna he was about to see again, would be part of the subtly changed world in which Adam Wyatt had been born not out of the minds of men and women, but out of the genes of his forebears.
Yet, as Sam knew, logic did not rule the universe. Or if it did, it did so in a fashion that remained impenetrable to the human mind. He used the thought to calm himself, to prepare himself with a Zen-like
