Second Floor of the Natural Sciences Building, August 9, 1897, 2:30 p.m.

Dr. Werner’s laboratory was a dusty and ill-lit room, mostly full of books. There were shelves of them, stacked badly, and scattered among the books were clipped-together chunks of a manuscript the doctor kept meaning to write about the structure of the atom. On balance it didn’t look like a physics laboratory at all: not with the bad light and the cages of rats, a whole wall full of them. The doctor also had a habit of collecting things that his naturalist friends gave him and displaying them in jars of preservative. His laboratory was decorated exactly the way he wanted it.

Right now, Albert was sitting on a cleared-off space on a table in the middle of the room (he’d had to push aside some electrical equipment whose function the doctor alone knew) and Dr. Werner was listening to his heart with a stethoscope.

“Just some routine tests. The procedure is completely safe, but we wouldn’t want you to get hurt, would we?” His ironic tone was quite obvious.

Albert just sat there with a horrified expression.

Dr. Werner removed the stethoscope and smiled. “It’s been a long time, Commander.”

Still no response from Albert.

“What? Is something the matter?”

“Franz, I’m sorry!” he burst out. He covered his face.

“I’m not. Not at all. They told me you were court-martialed for cowardice in battle,” Dr. Werner said, as if making small talk. “That’s appropriate, isn’t it?”

“I swear, I’m going to call this whole thing off! I didn’t know the doctor was going to be you!”

Dr. Werner fell into a chair with a satisfied sigh. “Oh, it’s just too wonderful.”

Albert looked defiant. “You’re going to kill me now, aren’t you? All right, get it over with.”

“No. Not now. When you land in my lap like this, it’s more proof that a just God rules the universe. This is going to take planning.” He became very still. The rats rustled in their cages. “I’m going to make you feel the way I felt in 1870.”

Albert looked mortified. “Franz, I really am sorry. It was wrong.”

“Then you should have told them I was still alive!”

Heidelberg Prison, August 9, 1897, 1:45 p.m.

The jailer was making conversation while he led Dr. Werner through the prison cells. It should have been a disturbing experience for a gentleman such as him, the sunken faces, the cries, and that all-pervasive smell. But the doctor followed along with equanimity, listening politely. Prison was far, far less gruesome than some of the sights he had seen earlier in his life, in the Franco-Prussian War.

“He’s really a very well-behaved prisoner,” the jailer was saying. “When the word came down that you needed a volunteer for your experiment, and that he would be pardoned for his contribution, we immediately thought of him.” He stopped at one of the barred alcoves. “Here we are.”

Dr. Werner stopped abruptly, mouth open. There was his volunteer, sitting on the edge of his cot, chin in his hand and looking gloomy. Their eyes met and the prisoner went pale.

“No.”

“If there’s something wrong we can go with another man,” the jailer said.

Dr. Werner’s mind was racing. He had to choose exactly the right words because he could not, could not allow the prison to replace this man with somebody else. Not when oh, good God, it was Albert who was going to be his volunteer!

“I think … I think he will do just fine,” he said. That was an understatement if there ever was one. “It’s only that … you said he used to be a commander? I am amazed something like this could happen to somebody so high up.”

The jailer gave a curious look to Albert, then to Dr. Werner. “Do you two know each other? I can’t let you go on if you do. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

Albert started to say something, then closed his mouth. Typical of him. He’d been a coward before, and he still was now. He was too afraid of the gallows to back out of the experiment even now – afraid enough to put himself on the doctor’s mercy. This was going to be precious.

“I’ve never seen this man before in my life,” Dr. Werner said flatly.

Heidelberg University Square, August 12, 1897, 10:00 a.m.

Albert, the convict, was having serious second thoughts about the deal he’d worked out with the court. The constable kept trying to get him to climb onto the stage, but he dithered, and the other man was getting quite frustrated with him.

“Do you want to do this or not, man?”

“I – I don’t know.” Albert tugged his hair. It was queer-looking for a man this tall and sturdily built, with red hair and ruddy cheeks, to be acting so distraught. He didn’t move, which was what the constable wanted him to do.

“It’s either onto the stage and whatever awaits you, or back to prison and get in line for the gallows,” he cried. “I haven’t got all day.”

Albert found himself unable to speak. He didn’t dare reveal the real reason he was unsure about this, or they’d never allow him to participate and he’d be hanged for sure. But maybe the experiment was a fate worse than death. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, and especially damned if he said anything.

“I don’t trust him!” he burst out finally.

Heidelberg University Square, August 12, 1897, 9:55 a.m.

Three of the workmen were having a difficult time with Dr. Werner’s power amplifier. They stood around the thing, which looked something like a filigree pepper shaker, and tried different angles to pick it up without shattering it to pieces.

“Excuse me, dear fellows.” The doctor pushed past some power cables and approached them. “I apologize for interrupting like this, but I need to make a last-minute adjustment.”

They hopped out of the way with the alacrity of people who were being paid quite a lot to do this job. Dr. Werner knelt by the device, not caring that he risked dragging the tails of his frock coat in the dirt. He delicately changed the settings of a few knobs. Then he pushed himself up, hands on his knees, and dusted himself off.

“Very well. Carry on, then.”

Heidelberg University Square, August 12, 1897, 10:04 a.m.

It was hot. Morning light hit the trees on the edge of the street up with an ambery gleam through the heavy, motionless air. People crowded together in the square despite the heat, accidentally elbowing each other in most unladylike and ungentlemanlike ways, and some enterprising boys had even climbed up onto the rooftops to see. Practically everybody in the city of Heidelberg (and quite a few people had traveled in from other cities to see this, too) wanted to see the celebrated Dr. Werner and one of his physics experiments.

The experiment was running a few minutes late. The doctor was already on stage, but around him workmen were still hauling things up and setting connections. The audience was getting restless. They didn’t understand what the machinery was all for and they’d already been waiting here an hour. The one thing they did understand was the wire mesh cage directly behind the doctor, as big as a man. It had to be for something.

Dr. Werner seemed totally unaffected by the heat and the crowd’s impatience. He was an affable man in a rather out-of-date frock coat, veering towards forty-five. His unimpressive appearance belied his amazing accomplishments. He’d looked inside atoms, built new weapons for the Kaiser, lectured in England and given interesting ideas to a promising young graduate student by the name of Ernest Rutherford. He had a civil Pour le Mérite.
He clapped his hands, and the crowd went silent.

“Thank you all for honoring this demonstration with your attention,” he said. “Lately I have been doing research, with the help of the university, into the nature of teleportation, that is, the moving of objects over great distances. This procedure is completely safe – I have done the same experiment many times on rats and never so much as harmed a fur on their head. I was going to do this first public demonstration myself, but the university has managed to convince me otherwise, since, indeed, it has never been done on a human being before.”

The people gathered in the square were all ears. Somewhere a baby cried.

“They have provided me with a volunteer.”

That was the cue for a pair of police officers to lead a man in prison drab up onto the stage. He looked extremely nervous, sweating too much even for this weather.

“He assuredly will survive the demonstration. When he does, he will receive a full pardon in honor of his contributions to science.”

Somehow the volunteer didn’t seem very voluntary at all. Dr. Werner, on the other hand, was enjoying himself thoroughly. Public demonstrations of science were nine parts theater anyway, and he was building up to the big reveal.

“I am going to move this man across the square. He will step into the cage here,” he indicated it with a flourish, “and when I activate the apparatus, he will move to that spot there.” He pointed to an area at the back of the square that had been kept onlooker free with ropes.

He turned to the convict. “Are you ready?”

The man didn’t answer. He gave the doctor a stony look.

The policemen conducted him into the cage. Dr. Werner pushed a button. Not one of those heavy, sparking levers it took both hands to throw down that you’d see in magic shows. Just a button, painted black, hardly noticeable. Theater, at times, took subtlety.

The volunteer seemed to have changed his mind at the last minute about being a volunteer. He lifted his arm as if to ward something off.

“Wait!”

He vanished.

There was a rustle as everybody in the square turned around in a half circle. They eyed the roped-off place where the convict was supposed to appear and waited. The seconds passed by. Seconds passed into minutes.

One of the ladies in the crowd screamed and fainted.