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Horatius holding the bridge of unfettered science& And the authorities had
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been following every move, all the way from the beginning. If he had bothered
to stop and look and think, it had been staring him in the face. Perhaps if he
had come
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environment, he would have read the signs& But no, he was old enough to know
the way the world worked. Didn't he spend enough time telling others? There
could be no excuse.
Sam was watching him, and as always seemed to read the thoughts. "It wasn't
only you, Theo," he said. "We were all blind. Over-enthusiasm can be
intoxicating. It sweeps away reason and caution. I was as much a victim too
me who always warned everybody else about being carried away by their
delusions."
Jantowitz dismissed it with a wave and a weary shake of his head. "What they
do with me now is no matter. But these two here& " he gestured at Dave and
Sarah, "these young peoples, that is the tragedy. They should be gone while
they have the chance. I tell them the words, yes, but is not the same thing as
making them.
Now is no chance."
"Theo, quit blaming yourself," Dave told him. "We all had the same chance. We
were there too. We saw what Hugh saw. You told us the same as you told Hugh.
He listened, and we argued. That's the only difference. It's thanks to you
that he got out. And he'll do just fine there. Think more about that."
Jantowitz stared at him, wanting to believe it. "You think he will be okay? He
will make out, yes?"
Dave nodded emphatically. "Professionally, he's practically an international
sensation there already I know, because I talked to Cormack, who's in touch
with Rauth. He's got Nobel laureates filing applications to meet him. And as
for personally, he couldn't do better than Yvonne. I only met her for those
few minutes after I got to the hotel. But what a lady! You don't have to worry
about
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fine."
"I only got a glimpse of her," Sarah put in. "And yet I got the feeling
straightaway that she and I could have been really good friends. Isn't it
strange how you can pick up such strong impressions in a few seconds."
Sam stared thoughtfully into the distance. "He knew from the beginning ever
since the first time he ever used the machine. I wonder what it was that was
drawing him her, that whole world, or the set of possible futures that it led
to.
Perhaps you responded to something similar."
Sarah's eyes came back to rest on him. "You've always said it was due to
communication across the Multiverse, haven't you, Sam?" she said.
"Inspiration, intuition the strange hunches that people get."
"Exactly." Sam smiled and nodded.
She thought back. "Do you remember that city that I told you I used to dream
about the one that I was convinced really existed somewhere? I knew, somehow,
that all the different places I saw were part of the same place."
"Yes."
"That was it. I knew it the moment I walked out of Grand Central. And Carol
grew up in New York. The connection was there all the time. The QUADAR just
amplifies the effect."
"That was what it was originally meant to do," Sam reminded her.
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Voices sounded outside. They stopped talking. A few moments later, one of the
guards opened the door and stepped in. Calom was outside with a drawn
automatic. "These people are wanted for interrogation," Calom said to the
guards. "Would you bring them, please?"
"You heard," the guard said to the four occupants. "Everybody on your feet.
Up."
They rose and moved to the door. The other guard stood aside to let them pass,
while Calom moved ahead to lead the way. He met Sarah's eyes for an instant
and looked away expressionlessly. She chided herself for imagining at one time
that she had made some land of contact with him; that the beginnings of some
feeling approaching human had flickered behind that impervious exterior.
Delusion, she told herself. All delusion.
They walked past olive-green partition walls and featureless doors with
numbers stenciled on them in black. Calom opened a larger door that formed the
end of the corridor. "Wait here," he told the two guards.
Chapter Forty-four
Dave thought that the Wallis part of himself would have possessed enough
information to make more sense of the situation than this. Throughout the
flight from London, he had absorbed the exhilaration of the newly resident
side to his personality at the freedom of the world in which he found himself,
his fascination with the different values and attitudes that prevailed here,
the delight he experienced on coming into New York City. At the same time, he
had been conscious of a worldlier, somehow more mature awareness that was
seeing all these things. As he adjusted to the strangeness, the composite
personality that was forming warmed to the idea of making the condition
permanent.
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Then had come the meeting in the lobby, here at the Kennedy, with Matthew and
Yvonne. And then, at last, he'd come face-to-face with the other self of the
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