The man there looked like a lawyer, a successful one, all Armani and Rolex with a haircut that must have cost more than Matthew made in a month. He rose and shook hands from across the scarred table.

“Matthew, I am Calvin Langham, of Langham, Langham, and Cruise.” He glanced at the officer, and she left. He sat back down, and so did Matthew.

He looked at him appraisingly. “You’re innocent, aren’t you?”

“I am, yes. Are you, what, going to represent me?”

“You wouldn’t want me to. I’m a corporate lawyer.” He leaned back and nodded. “This is peculiar. A little while ago a messenger brought to my firm an envelope with two cashier’s checks and instructions. One check was for me, and it more than covered the expense of my coming across town. The other was one million dollars, to apply toward your bail. Which, I just found out, is exactly one million dollars. You don’t look like a murderer and a car thief.”

“I’m neither.”

“When I showed the check to the judge, she accepted it, and said that after the arraignment today she would release you on your own recognizance, not to leave the Boston area. From her remarks, I take it she assumed the check was mob money.”

“But I don’t know anybody like that.”

“Nobody?”

“I guess the man who died, Dennis Peposi—the cop who talked to me said he was connected to organized crime.”

“Was he?”

“Probably, now that I think of it . . . He dealt drugs and had to get them from somewhere. I didn’t think he was a Boy Scout, but I knew him for years, and he never dropped a hint about that kind of connection.”

Langham shook his head. “Better watch your back. Maybe they bought your way out so they can get to you.”

“But I don’t know anything. Don’t have anything.”

“They don’t know that. All they know is the police think you killed one of them. The mob.”

“Jesus. I should stay in jail.”

“Personally, I wouldn’t advise that. It’s a high-crime area.” He took a folded-over piece of paper from a pocket and handed it to Matt. “The courier left a message. Don’t read it aloud.”

It said, Get in the car and go.

Who knew about the car? “This messenger. Did he look like me?”

“Somewhat. I didn’t get a good look at him. When I opened the envelope and came back down to the receptionist’s place, he was gone. She played back a security camera that showed the back of his head, and he was your size, long hair.”

Matt wondered. Could he have come back from the future to rescue himself? Maybe in some future, he learns how to reverse and control the process, and comes back in a Gцdelian closed loop—reappearing a week ago, making a million on the stock market, and then . . .

“What time did this guy show up at your office?”

“Not long after we opened. I’d say 9:30.”

So he could leave before Matt got here. Just before. Which would short-circuit the paradox; they wouldn’t both be in the here and now at the same time and space.

Or maybe it was just a Mafia trap. “How seriously would you take the mob thing?”

“Do you know anyone else with a million dollars? Someone who would just drop it off and not hang around for an explanation?”

“No . . . no, I guess not. My department at MIT, but I’m not exactly a hero there. What do you think I should do?”

“I think, as I said, I would watch my back.” Langham picked up his leather portfolio and stood, looking at his watch. “The arraignment will be pretty soon. The court will appoint you a lawyer, but that’s pro forma; you probably won’t even meet him or her. Just plead not guilty. The judge has your bail.”

“I can just walk away from a murder charge?”

“They can’t charge you with murder just because you were in the victim’s car. Immobile car, I understand. You’re pleading not guilty to grand theft auto.”

“Which is true. I didn’t steal the car.”

“It’s also irrelevant. You’ll be free to go once you sign some papers.” They shook hands and he left.

Matt spent a few minutes leafing through a worn copy of Time, catching up a little on what happened two weeks before, and the blond officer came back. “This is pretty quick,” she said. “You know somebody?”

“Somebody knows me, evidently. The lawyer says a stranger made my bail.”

“Before you even knew how much it was?” Matt shrugged. “Judge said she’d take you first.”

The judge was a white-haired lady with a weary expression, sitting behind a desk piled with paper. She picked up a sheet. “This is an arraignment on the warrant initial presentment. Matthew Fuller, you are accused of grand theft auto, the vehicle in question being a . . . 1956? A 1956 Ford Thunderbird belonging to the late Dennis Peposi. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty. I—”

She brought a gavel down. “Your bail has been arranged. The trial date is tentatively set for March 1. You’re free to go, but you cannot leave the Commonwealth of Massachusetts without first notifying this court.” She looked up at him for the first time. “We’re serious about that. You’re a material witness in a homicide investigation. Don’t leave town, or you might find yourself back here.” She looked past him, at the man guarding the door. “Next.”

The blond officer took him back to the room with the Timemagazine and told him to wait. There were no stories about time travel in the magazine, its name notwithstanding.

She came back in a few minutes. “Here are your things.” She put the wetsuit and snorkel on the table, and the plastic bag with his wallet and keys. “Those coveralls are city property. I’ll leave you alone while you change.”

Go out on the street in the dead of winter wearing a wetsuit and a smile? Evidently.

Cambridge is a college town, though, and Matthew looked young enough for his attire to be part of a fraternity prank or a lost drunken wager. People either stared or looked right through him as he hurried the two blocks down to the Gap. The wetsuit was cold, but its rubber bootlets gave him good traction on the ice.

Get in the car and go.He bought jeans and a warm flannel shirt, shoes and socks and a lined anorak. Where would the car be?

He went back to the police station and asked the sergeant at the front desk. The sergeant typed and moused around on an ancient computer.

“You can’t have it yet. It’s evidence, grand theft auto.”

He evidently didn’t know the gory details. “I don’t want to take it. I just need some stuff from work that’s on the front seat.”

He stared at Matt for a long moment. What, did he expect a bribe? Matt started for his wallet.

“You go talk to Sergeant Roman.” He scribbled on a yellow Post-it note. “He’s in charge of the vehicle pound in Somerville; that’s where it is. Maybe he’ll let you take your stuff; maybe he won’t.”

“Thanks.” Matt didn’t recognize the address, but he could look it up.

He got on the Red Line but went past Somerville to his own stop. He walked home on the lookout for Mafia goons, but saw only a bundled-up jogger who might have been sexy underneath the shapeless coverall, and an old woman in an orange jumpsuit walking two tiny dogs.

He was shivering by the time he let himself in. The apartment was stifling hot, which for a change was welcome. He put the kettle on for tea and sipped a glass of warm red wine.

He spent the rest of the day and part of the next collecting and organizing every scrap of data about the device, and made a clear copy of his mathematical analysis of it all. He put it in a neat binder and boxed it up with the cheap cell that had traveled with the machine in the first experiment, and the crystal from the camera that had recorded its going and returning. Then a long description of what had happened from the time he knocked on Denny’s door.

He addressed the box to Dr. Marsh and rode down to MIT so he could send it via campus mail. That would delay delivery for two or three days.