Mirage (Oregon Files 9)

“I hate to be the one to say this,” Max Hanley said with a resigned shake of his bulldog head, “but Mark might not be wrong.”

“Excuse me?”

“At the turn of the twentieth century, the only way to reach the Aral Sea was by caravan, probably using camels rather than horses. It’s a thousand miles from any navigable water, and we’re talking about a ship that weighed a couple hundred tons and was not designed to be easily broken down. Anyone know the pack load of the average Asian double-humper camel? Can’t be

more than a few hundred pounds. A bit more, using carts. How many trips would it take? How many animals? It would be easier, and cheaper, for our fictitious Russian guy to build a boat right there on the Aral rather than lug one in. But here’s the kicker: Where would they reassemble it? You’d need a dry dock or a large shipyard, and I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that you won’t find either anywhere in the region as early as 1902.”

Eddie chimed in immediately. “She could have been used on the Black Sea for years and only later transported to the Aral.”

“That window slams closed after the Russian Revolution,” Max countered. “No more rich men and, therefore, no more rich men’s toys. Mark can double-check, but I doubt the facilities I mentioned were around in 1917 either.” He looked at each Corporation partner in turn. “I think Murph’s idea is screwy too, but it can’t be dismissed out of hand.”

Juan nodded but was far from convinced. “Murph, anything in your research into Tesla indicating he was working on teleportation?”

This time, it was Mark’s turn to look frustrated. “Nikola Tesla is such a shadowy figure, especially in his later years when he became destitute, that there’s no way of ever knowing what he actually worked on. There’s talk of death rays and earthquake machines and mind control. It’s impossible to know what was true and what’s speculation.”

“Who would know?”

“Glad you asked.” Mark waved his gloved hands through the air, pushing aside the picture of the Marguerite and the insurance information and bringing up the head shot of an older, balding man fitting the stereotype of the absentminded professor. In the photo, he wore a tweed jacket and large black-framed eyeglasses. His features were weak and his expression bemused. His comb-over seemed to be his only concession to vanity. “This is Professor Wesley Tennyson, a theoretical physicist formerly with MIT. He retired to Vermont five years ago. He’s the author of the definitive Tesla biography, The Genius of Serbia.

“Eric and I have hacked into this guy’s life every way possible. Since leaving MIT, he’s basically gone into hiding. He has no phone number listed, no e-mail account, and just a P.O. box address, though we did track down an actual address for him in Vermont’s capital city, Montpelier. By modern standards, he’s off the grid.”

“Why are you telling us this?”

Eric replied, “It’s our excuse for why we haven’t actually questioned him.”

Cabrillo leaned back in his ergonomic chair, lacing his fingers behind his stubbled head. “So the dynamic duo failed.”

“Using technology to find a Luddite is like trying to catch a moth with an anvil,” Mark countered.

Max chuckled when Juan couldn’t come up with a suitable rejoinder.

“Looks like someone’s going to Vermont,” he said, looking at the Chairman. “Be sure to bring back some maple syrup.”

“Oh, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream,” Eric added. “Hux loves their Cherry Garcia.”

Juan looked around the room. “I think Vermont is famous for granite too. Anyone want some of that?” He got no takers. “Okay, so I’ll head north. Mark and Eric, I want you two to find a more plausible explanation for how that ship ended up in the Aral Sea. Max, you came up with a good point about a dry dock or shipyard. Pore through whatever archives you can and see if there’s any mention of either of those on the Aral. To be safe, cover from 1902 until they started the irrigation work that eventually drained the lake. Also, Max, when are we finished provisioning the ship?”

Max had slipped on a pair of cheater glasses and now peered over their top with a look of mock disdain. “You want to pursue what could be the greatest scientific discovery since man started making fire and you’re asking me about provisions? Are you that dismissive of the idea?”

“Quite frankly, yes. Linda’s waiting for us. What’s our ETA in Bermuda?”

Max pulled off his glasses and studied Juan. He waited a beat and finally said, “When Nikola Tesla started his studies, he had no peer. Nothing was off-limits because, well, because the nascent field of electricity was so new, no one knew there even were limits. A lot of modern scientists stop themselves from looking into certain things because they have the preconceived notions, based on those who came before them, that some things are simply impossible. The thing is, Tesla had no such limitations because he was the first. He was the pioneer who would set the limits. Who’s to say he didn’t investigate teleportation and death rays and earthquake machines? And just because he never published his findings doesn’t mean he wasn’t successful.” He looked down the table to Mark and Eric. “Who was the guy who said teleportation was impossible?”

“Werner Heisenberg,” they said in perfect sync, and then both added, “The Heisenberg uncertainty principle.”

“Right. You can know the location of a subatomic particle or its spin, but not both.” Max made it sound like a question, and when he got a pair of nods from the resident geniuses, he went on. “This came out decades after the time frame we’re talking about. Tesla didn’t know the uncertainty principle, so he wouldn’t have been constrained in his thinking.”

“But Max,” Juan said, “the principle still stands, whether it had been discovered or not. For example, no one went faster than light before Einstein proved you couldn’t do it, and no one’s done it since.”

Hanley had laid a logic trap, and Cabrillo had walked right into it. Max pounced, “A couple months ago you got a telephone call from a computer based on quantum entanglement that relies on subatomic particles communicating with one another at a speed faster than light. Impossible, you just said, and yet your call happened. All I’m saying is that when it comes to technology, yesterday’s impossibility is tomorrow’s IPO. Go to Vermont, keep an open mind, and Murph, Stoney, and I will come up with an alternative theory that fits your gestalt.”

“Gestalt?” Cabrillo smirked.

“Word-of-the-day toilet paper,” Max chuckled, “don’t mock it. Just to keep things in perspective, your cell phone has more computing capacity than the lunar lander that put men on the moon. And both of those things were considered impossible less than ten years before they were invented.”

“Fine, consider my mind open. Getting back to my original question, when is the ship’s provisioning over?”

“Ten tonight. We’re waiting for a shipment from a liquor wholesaler, and the flight from Anchorage with our king crab legs lands at Newark at eight thirty.”