《ur》(13)

Robbie wanted to check the Red Sox. Wesley felt it was a waste of time, but Don came down on the kid's side, so Wesley agreed. The two of them checked the sports pages for October in ten different Urs, plugging in dates from 1918 to 2009.

"This is depressing," Robbie said after the tenth try. Don Allman agreed.

"Why?" Wesley asked. "They win lots of times."

"But there's no rhyme or reason to it," Robbie said.

"And no curse," Don said. "They always win just enough to avoid it. Which is sort of boring."

"What curse?" Wesley was mystified.

Don opened his mouth to explain, then sighed. "Never mind," he said. "It would take too long, and you wouldn't get it, anyway."

"Look on the bright side," Robbie said. "The Yankees are always there, so it isn't all luck."

"Yeah," Don said glumly. "The military-industrial complex of the sporting world."

"Soh-ree. Does anyone want that last slice?"

Don and Wes shook their heads. Robbie scarfed it and said, "Why not peek at the Big Casino, before we all decide we're nuts and check ourselves into CentralState?"

"What Big Casino might that be, Yoda?" Don asked.

"The JFK assassination," Robbie said. "Mr. Tollman says that was the seminal event of the twentieth century, even more important than the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. I thought seminal events usually happened in bed, but hey, I came to college to learn. Mr. Tollman's in the History Department."

"I know who Hugh Tollman is," Don said. "He's a goddam commie, and he never laughs at my jokes."

"But he could be right about the Kennedy assassination," Wesley said. "Let's look."

They pursued the John-Kennedy-in-Dallas thread until nearly eleven o'clock, while college students hooted unnoticed below them, on their way to and from the local beerpits. They checked over seventy versions of the New York Times for November 23rd, 1963, and although the story was never the same, one fact seemed undeniable to all of them: whether he missed Kennedy, wounded Kennedy, or killed Kennedy, it was always Lee Harvey Oswald, and he always acted alone.

"The Warren Report was right," Don said. "For once the bureaucracy did its job. I'm gobsmacked."

In some Urs, that day in November had passed with no assassination stories, either attempted or successful. Sometimes Kennedy decided not to visit Dallas after all. Sometimes he did, and his motorcade was uneventful; he arrived at the Dallas Trade Mart, gave his hundred-dollar-a-plate luncheon speech ("God, things were cheap back in the day, weren't they?" Robbie remarked), and flew off into the sunset.

This was the case in Ur 88,416. Wesley began to plug in more dates from that Ur. What he saw filled him with awe and horror and wonder and sorrow. In Ur 88,416, Kennedy had seen the folly of Vietnam and had pulled out over the vehement objections of Robert McNamara, his Secretary of Defense. McNamara quit and was replaced by a man named Bruce Palmer, who resigned his rank of U.S. Army general to take the job. The civil rights turmoil was milder than when Lyndon Johnson was President, and there were almost no riots in the American cities - partly because in Ur 88,416, Martin Luther King wasn't assassinated in Memphis or anywhere else.

In this Ur, JFK was elected for a second term. In 1968, Edmund Muskie of Maine won the Presidency in a landslide over Nelson Rockefeller. By then the outgoing President was hardly able to walk without the aid of crutches, and said his first priority was going to be major back surgery.

Robbie ignored that and fixed on a story that had to do with Kennedy's last White House party. The Beatles had played, but the concert ended early when drummer Pete Best suffered a seizure and had to be taken to Washington DC Hospital.

"Holy shit," Don whispered. "What happened to Ringo?"

"Guys," Wesley said, yawning, "I have to go to bed. I'm dying here."

"Check one more," Robbie said. "4,121,989. It's my birthday. Gotta be lucky."

But it wasn't. When Wesley selected the Ur and added a date - January 20, 1973 - not quite at random, what came up instead of ENJOY YOUR SELECTION was this: NO TIMES THIS UR AFTER NOVEMBER 19, 1962.

"Oh my God," Wesley said, and clapped a hand to his mouth. "Dear sweet God."

"What?" Robbie asked. "What is it?"

"I think I know," Don said. He tried to take the pink Kindle.

Wesley, who guessed he had gone pale (but probably not as pale as he felt inside), put a hand over Don's. "No," he said. "I don't think I can bear it."

"Bear what?" Robbie nearly shouted.

"Didn't Hugh Tollman cover the Cuban Missile Crisis?" Don asked. "Or didn't you get that far yet?"

"What missile crisis? Was it something to do with Castro?"

Don was looking at Wesley. "I don't really want to see, either," he said, "but I won't sleep tonight unless I make sure, and I don't think you will, either."

"Okay," Wesley said, and thought - not for the first time, either - that curiosity rather than rage was the true bane of the human spirit. "You'll have to do it, though. My hands are trembling too much."

Don filled in the fields for NOVEMBER 19, 1962. The Kindle told him to enjoy his selection, but he didn't. None of them did. The headlines were stark and huge: