14

In this version of Suavidad Beach—where perhaps Ed Harkenbach had never been on the run from mysterious government agents and had never been homeless in the canyon and had never visited Jeffy on his front porch—the economy was evidently in a recession. Even for April, with rain-sodden clouds lowering toward release, few tourists were afoot on Forest Avenue or Pacific Coast Highway, where most of the shops and galleries were located. Some storefronts were without tenants, the windows papered over, while in the version of the town from which he and Amity had come, not enough retail space existed to satisfy the demand.

As they passed through town, Jeffy surveyed everything with more suspicion than curiosity, with more anxiety than suspicion.

Quantum physics, on which most technological advances had been based for decades, predicted the existence of an infinite number of parallel universes side by side, each invisible to the others and yet all subtly affecting one another, somehow sharing a destiny so complex and strange as to defy understanding. There might be worlds where the United States had never existed, where no European power settled this continent, perhaps where an Aztec culture of violent gods and slavery and human sacrifice flourished through the centuries, spreading northward.

Clearly, he and Amity were in a world much like the one they had left, but even such a place as this might harbor surprises more ominous than bad weather and an economic recession.

Was this version of America a stable democracy, or might it be teetering on the brink of tyranny? In less than ten minutes, he saw a man, a woman, and then another man dressed all in black fatigue-style garments made of soft pajama-like fabric. Each wore a black, knitted seaman's cap. This outfit appeared too strange to be just a fashion trend. Although they didn't travel in a group, they looked like members of a cult, one with fascist tendencies.

He wanted to be out of here. He wanted to be home.

"Stay close," he advised Amity, and he took her hand, which seemed terribly small and fragile.

The day was cool, but the chills that raked through him had nothing to do with the air temperature.

Overhung by the massive crowns of mature phoenix palms, the library stood on Oleander Street, adjacent to the city hall. The handsome Spanish Revival building featured a roof of dark slate instead of orange barrel tiles. On the ridgeline perched thirteen large crows like the living totems of some clan of malicious wizards that had taken over the library for the storage of their ancient volumes of dark, forbidden knowledge. The birds craned their necks and worked their beaks without a shriek or caw, as if casting silent curses on all who dared enter the building under them.

Inside, the librarian at the main desk was a severe-looking woman with a shock of kinky white hair, vaguely reminiscent of Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein, although less appealing, her eyes squinted and her lips compressed as though she took offense at everything upon which her attention fell. Jeffy had never seen her in the library of his and Amity's world. The woman didn't greet them, didn't seem aware of them. Grimly, she paged through one of the books in a tall stack, scowling as though searching for paper-devouring silverfish. Abruptly she slammed it shut, grunting with satisfaction, as if she found one of the critters and squashed it with pleasure.

The facility included more aisles of books than some libraries offered these days, as well as a computer alcove with four public-access workstations. The place was not as brightly lighted as the library in the Suavidad Beach from which Jeffy and Amity had come. Pale dust bunnies gathered in some corners, and a thin film of dust dulled the computer. The faintest scent of mildew ebbed and flowed in the still air, as if essential maintenance had been deferred in chambers adjacent to this one.

Jeffy and Amity seemed to be the only patrons at the moment. They sat side by side at a computer and googled Edwin Harkenbach, whose middle name proved to be Marsten.

In the internet sea, data relating to Ed didn't amount to a mere island; it was a small continent. Bow-tied Dr. Harkenbach, sixty-four, was a theoretical physicist with three PhDs. He had written twenty-six books and over five hundred articles, had delivered almost four hundred major speeches, and received scores of awards for teaching, writing, and research.

Bewildered by the volume of material on his subject, Jeffy resorted to Wikipedia for a thumbnail biography, where he discovered that the prolific Harkenbach, always highly visible in the field of physics and in academia, had abruptly lowered his public profile four years earlier. No new books or articles had appeared since then, and he had made only a few appearances at conferences.

"I bet that's when he started work on the project," Amity whispered as she took Snowball from a jacket pocket and cupped him in her hands.

"What project?"

"The key to everything project."

Jeffy nodded. "About that time, he must've gotten busy spending all those billions."

The mouse's head popped up between Amity's crossed thumbs. He looked left and right, nose twitching, intrigued by the library.

According to Wikipedia, Harkenbach's wife, Rina, died of cancer when they were both thirty-five, and he never married again. He and Rina had no children, and work evidently became everything to him.

Reading along with her father, Amity said, "He's not really Mr. Spooky. He's more like Mr. Sad."

A megabillion-dollar research project involving an epic quest as exotic as the search for parallel universes would have been a black-budget operation carried out with great secrecy. It wasn't likely that Ed had given a speech or written an article about it.

However, the government would have chosen Ed to lead such an undertaking only if he was profoundly interested in the multiverse theory long before seventy-six billion was dropped on him. He might have written extensively on the subject years before he was given the opportunity to seek a way to access the infinite continuum of worlds.

As Jeffy jumped out of Wikipedia and found a reliable list of Ed Harkenbach's book-length publications at another site, he became aware of movement at the periphery of his vision. He looked up to see another patron, maybe forty feet away, settling in a chair at a long reading table flanked by eight-foot-high rows of bookshelves. Dressed in soft black fatigues, wearing a black knitted cap, the man had taken a newspaper from a nearby rack.

As Amity returned Snowball to a pocket of her denim jacket, she whispered, "That weirdo guy was watching us for like maybe a minute before he sat down. I got a bad feeling about him."

"He's just some harmless kookster," Jeffy said, an expression of hope rather than fact. "We have them back home, too, except they dress different."

Scanning the list of books by Ed Harkenbach, he settled on one published eight years earlier—Infinite Worlds: Parallel Universes and Quantum Reality.

Reading a brief synopsis of it, Jeffy said, "This is it. This is what we need. I wonder if they have a copy of it here."

As he was about to drop off the internet, Amity said, "Wait! One more thing, Dad. Before we figure out what the three buttons mean, the buttons on the key to everything, before we leave this place and go home ... if we can go home ... I want to google her."

"Who?" he asked, but he knew. He knew, and the prospect of such a search both charmed and unnerved him.

Amity's face was as smooth and expressionless as that of a bisque doll, but her blue eyes were pools of longing when she said, "Michelle Melinda Jamison."

"Honey, we're in deep trouble here."

"Yeah. I know. I'm scared."

"I'm scared, too. Finding another version of your mother, one who would want to come with us ... that will never be as easy as you think."

"It might be."

"It won't, honey. And maybe she's married to the me who was mowing the lawn. She's not going to leave one me for the other."

Amity shook her head. "There weren't any womany things back there, in that house. It's just you living alone there."

"Figuring out what those three buttons mean—that's urgent, that's everything."

"I know. But then ... if she's here and she's alone ..."

"Something's wrong with this world," he declared. "We don't want to stay here more than we absolutely have to."

She bit her lip and looked away from him, forlorn and full of yearning.

He loved this child desperately. He would die for her. But such intense love could inspire foolish acts as well as selfless courage.

After a hesitation, he googled Michelle Melinda Jamison.

And there she was. In this parallel reality, she resided in Suavidad Beach. It was the house on Bastoncherry Lane, where she'd lived with Jim Jamison, her dad, before she and Jeffy married.

"We've got to go see her. Daddy, can we go see her, please?"

He hesitated. In spite of all the imaginative fantasy stories by which she had been enthralled and entertained, Amity was too young to be able to understand the many reasons that such a meeting could go wrong or to foresee the regrets it might inspire. Unlike his daughter, Jeffy knew too well the potential heartbreak that could result from a visit to Bastoncherry Lane. However, he was nothing if not a romantic. And he had waited seven years for the miraculous return of Michelle. Although apprehension weighed so heavily on him that he couldn't quite draw a deep breath, he said, "All right. If we can find Ed's book, if we can figure out how to use the key, then we'll see what her situation is."

Her smile was all the reward he ever wanted.

Hissmile wasn't as genuine as Amity's. What he promised her was reckless, a wild-heart imprudence that simultaneously gladdened and disquieted, that was brewed in the cauldron of parental love.

"You're the best," she said.

He wished that he were worthy of those words.

As he and Amity went into the stacks, looking for the science section in which Ed Harkenbach's book might be shelved, they took care not to glance at the man sitting at the table with a newspaper that he wasn't reading.