Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(90)
Coldmoon stared. It was too realistic to be a television screen, no matter how high the resolution; it was—again, there was no better comparison—like looking through an open window. His eye drifted over the view in wonder, then focused once more on the Times building and its iconic stack of giant screens, including temperature, date, and time.
Date and time. “That’s Times Square right now,” he said, astonished.
After a short silence, Constance said, “No, it isn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“That isn’t Times Square—at least our Times Square. And it’s not now, either.”
“The hell it’s not. The date and time are posted right up on those screens. See? Nine eleven PM.”
Constance slipped out a cell phone and showed its screen to Coldmoon. “It’s nine ten. The Times Square we’re looking at is one minute in the future.”
Coldmoon stared back and forth from her phone to the image. The time on the large screen within the portal changed to 9:12. As it did, Constance’s cell phone changed to 9:11.
“This is the secret to Ellerby’s trading,” Pendergast said. “And Frost’s before that. As you can see, the stock ticker is streaming the price of various stocks—one minute in the future. And only the stocks of major companies are displayed, which explains why Ellerby restricted his trading to Dow Jones Industrials.”
Coldmoon stared at the ticker. Stock symbols and numbers were indeed scrolling past on an endless ribbon, the symbols and numbers just so much gibberish to him. “Um, one minute? That doesn’t seem like much of an advantage.”
“It’s enough to make a modest profit, especially during a volatile market,” said Pendergast. “Which is what Miss Frost had been doing these many years: eking out small but steady gains. But when Ellerby took over the operation, he wasn’t satisfied with small profits. Once he figured out how the machine worked, he was able to build an improved version using updated technology.” He waved a hand at the device. “As you can see, this is not Frost’s modest briefcase machine, but a far more powerful one, capable of seeing deeper into the future.”
Coldmoon could only shake his head again.
Pendergast held up the journal. “If I understand Ellerby’s notes, the Roman numeral II on that dial is the second power setting. That increases the power beyond what Frost, and her friend at Boeing, intended, allowing the device to penetrate into a parallel universe running about an hour in the future. But recall, what we’re seeing isn’t our future. It’s a window into parallel universes exactly like ours, whether one minute or one hour ahead. Knowing what stock prices would be in an hour, and trading on that information, would allow one to make millions. Hundreds of millions.”
“So why are we looking at this view and not something else?” he asked.
“Frost explained that to me,” said Constance. “Shortly after she got the original machine fully functional, she went to Times Square, entered a building on the north end of the intersection, ascended to a height that allowed a good vantage point, and aimed the machine out a window and down Broadway. She focused it, or rather tuned it, to this very scene. After that, wherever she took the machine, she could always use it to observe the parallel Times Square from that same vantage point. As long as the stock ticker ran the current stock prices, and as long as she didn’t focus the machine elsewhere, she could trade on that information.”
“This is too crazy,” Coldmoon muttered. “I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around it.”
“Please do wrap your mind around it,” said Pendergast, “because I intend to increase the power to the higher level.”
“Why?” Coldmoon asked.
“Because that’s what Ellerby did.”
Coldmoon glanced at Constance; she had turned toward Pendergast, an odd expression on her face.
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Coldmoon continued. “We should call in the FBI Evidence Response Team, have them pack this baby up and take it back to Quantico, where it can be examined in a state-of-the-art lab.”
Pendergast raised an eyebrow. “You’d prefer to let our beloved government get their hands on it? Do you really have that much confidence in our political leaders to use this in a wise and beneficent way?”
“Oh.” Coldmoon paused. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“We must do this ourselves,” Pendergast said as he placed his hand on the dial. “I’m convinced this device is key to whoever—or whatever—is plaguing Savannah. If we’re going to understand it—and confront it—we need more information first.”
And he began slowly turning the dial farther.
63
AS PENDERGAST INCREASED THE power, it looked to Coldmoon as if someone had abruptly heaved a stone into still water. The mirror-clear view of Times Square wavered and grew suddenly distorted. The vibration in the room increased, causing an odd, slightly nauseous feeling in Coldmoon’s gut—something below the range of hearing but not below the body’s ability to sense it.
Now the portal flickered and shimmered, images passing by almost more quickly than he could make out: tremendously accelerated in time-lapse, twisting and tangled up in ever-shifting shapes like knots, folding and refolding over each other. Coldmoon saw many Times Squares flash past in the blink of an eye—but he also saw, or thought he saw, bizarre astronomical images of stars and galaxies and nebulae, whirling alien landscapes and twisted black holes, all in furious succession.