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“It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Why a tu
“Belltower,” Tom said. “I don’t know. I didn’t build it, Joyce. I found it.”
“Anybody could have found it?”
“I suppose so.”
“And no one else used it?”
“Someone must have. At least once. Used it and, I guess, abandoned it. But I don’t know that for a fact.”
She shook her head firmly. “I don’t believe it.”
He felt helpless. He had shown her all the evidence he possessed, explained it as calmly as possible—
“No, I mean—I know it’s true. The cards, the money, the watch—maybe somebody could fake all that, but I doubt it. It’s true, Tom, but I don’t believe it. You understand what I’m saying? It’s hard to look at you and tell myself this is a guy from the year 1989.”
“What more can I do?”
“Show me,” Joyce said. “Show me the tu
He walked with her—it wasn’t far—to the building near Tompkins Square.
“This place?” Joyce said. Meaning: a miracle—here? He nodded.
The street was silent and empty. Tom took his watch out of his pocket and checked it: three-fifteen, and he was dizzy with fatigue, already regretting this decision.
Later Tom would decide that the visit to the tu
He was reluctant to take her inside, suddenly certain it was a mistake to have brought her here at all. If he hadn’t been drunk … and then weary beyond resistance …
She tugged his hand. “Show me.”
And there was no plausible way to turn back. He took one more look at the bulk of the building, all those rooms and corridors he had never explored, a single window illuminated in the darkness.
He led her inside. The lobby was vacant, silent except for the buzzing of a defective fluorescent lamp. He grasped the handle of the door that led to the basement.
It wouldn’t turn.
“Trouble?” Joyce inquired.
He nodded, frowning. “It wasn’t locked before. I don’t think it had a lock.” He bent over the mechanism. “This looks new.”
“Somebody installed a new lock?”
“I think so.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Could mean somebody knows I’ve been here. Could mean the janitor found some kids in the basement and decided it was time for new hardware.”
“Is there a janitor?”
He shrugged.
She said, “But somebody must own the building. It’s a matter of record, right? You could look it up at City Hall.”
“I suppose so.” It hadn’t occurred to him. “Might be dangerous. This isn’t a Nancy Drew mystery. I don’t think we should draw attention to ourselves.”
“If we don’t open that door,” Joyce pointed out, “you can never go home again.”
“If we do open it, maybe they’ll put in a better lock next time. Or post a guard.” This was a chilling thought and he couldn’t help looking past her, through the cracked glass of the outer door. But the street was empty.
“Maybe we can open it without being too obvious,” Joyce said.
“We shouldn’t even try. We should get the fuck out of here.”
“Hey, no! I’m not backing out now.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “If this is true … I want to see.”
Tom looked at the lock more closely. Cheap lock. He took out his Visa card and slipped it between the door and the jamb. This worked on television but apparently not in real life; the card bumped into the bolt but failed to move it. “Give me your keys,” he said.
Joyce handed him her key ring.
He tried several of the keys until he found one that slid into the lock. By twisting it until it caught some of the tumblers he was able to edge the bolt fractionally inward; then he forced the card up until the door sprang open an inch.
A gust of cool, dank air spilled through the opening.
He felt the change in Joyce as they descended. She had been cocky and reckless, daring him on; now she was silent, both hands clamped on his arm.
In the first sub-basement he tugged the cord attached to the naked forty-watt bulb overhead—it cast a cheerless pale circle across the floor. “We should have brought a flashlight.”
“We probably should have brought an elephant gun. It’s scary down here.” She frowned at him. “This is real, isn’t it?”
“As real as it gets.”
The second lock, on the wooden door in the lowest sub-basement, had also been replaced. Joyce lit a series of matches while Tom examined the mechanism. Whoever had installed the lock had been in a hurry; the padlock was new and sturdy but the hasp was not. It was attached with three wood screws to the framing of the door; Tom levered the screws out with the edge of a dime and put them in his pocket.
Down into darkness.
They climbed over rubble. Joyce continued striking matches until Tom told her to stop; the fight was too feeble to be useful and he was worried about the flammable debris underfoot. She let the last match flicker out but flinched when the darkness closed over them. She said, “Are you sure—?
But then they were in the tu
Joyce took a few steps forward. Tom hung back.
“It’s really all true,” she said. “My God, Tom! We could walk into the future, couldn’t we? Just stroll a few decades down the road.” She faced him. “Will you take me sometime?” Her cheeks were flushed. She looked fragile and feverish against these blunt white walls.
“I don’t know if I can promise that. We’re playing with something dangerous and we don’t know how it works. I can’t guarantee we’re safe even just standing here. Maybe we’re exposed to radiation. Maybe the air is toxic.”
“None of that stopped you from coming here.”
But that was before, Tom thought. When I had nothing to lose.
She touched the walls—smooth, slightly resilient, utterly seamless. “I wonder who built it? Haven’t you thought about it?”
“Often,” he said. “It must have been here at least ten years. Maybe longer.” Maybe since the Indians occupied Manhattan. Maybe since Wouter van Twiller operated the Bossen Bouwerie in this district. Maybe Wouter had had a tu
“People from the future,” Joyce said. “Or Martians or something like that. It’s like a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode, isn’t it?” She drew a line in the dust with the point of her shoe. “How come it’s broken at this end?”
“I don’t know.”
She said, “Maybe it was hijacked.”
He blinked at the idea. Joyce went on, “The people who are supposed to use it aren’t here. So somebody used it who wasn’t supposed to … maybe fixed it so nobody could find him.”
Tom considered it. “I suppose that’s possible.”
“There must be other tu
This was plausible; he couldn’t formulate a better explanation. “But we don’t really know.”
“Hey,” she said. “Nancy Drew is on the case.”
Maybe, Tom thought, this would turn out all right. He had convinced her to turn around and go back—but then the strange thing happened.
Joyce saw it first.
“Look,” she said. “Tom? What is that?”
He turned where she was pointing, already afraid.
What he saw was only a vague blur of luminescence against the uniform brightness of the tu
Slowly but perceptibly, it was. It was moving toward them.
He guessed it might be a hundred yards away—maybe more.