Or he could smash the machine and stay here, where at least some parts of the world were still familiar.

No. Whoever the man behind the curtain was, he was dangerous. That had to be the last time Matt would risk setting foot in that chapel.

“What was Jesus like?” Martha asked as they hurried across campus.

“Scary,” Matthew said. “I mean, he looked like all the pictures. But he can hurt you. Do anything he wants.”

“Why would He hurt you?”

“Power. Making sure I feared him.”

“Why would He do that? Everyone knows He’s all-powerful. ”

“Yeah, well, we have to talk about that.” They got to the cottage and Matthew checked his watch. “We have about fifty minutes.” He unlocked the door and went straight to the cupboard. “Give me the bag, please.” He put the cheese and bread in it, and a stoppered bottle of water. An unopened bottle of MIT wine.

“Professor? What are you doing?”

“This will all be clear later, Martha,” he said, knowing it wouldn’t be. “I have to run downtown, down to the bank, but you can stay here.”

“No, I’ll come with you.” She took the bag back. “But I don’t understand.”

“I don’t quite have it all figured out myself,” he said. “We used to call it ‘flying by the seat of your pants.’ ”

“Well, that sounds . . . it doesn’t sound nice.”

He led her out of the door and locked it behind them. “We used to have flying machines, all right? ‘Flying by the seat of your pants’ meant propelling one of those machines by instinct.”

“All right. Now I’m totallyconfused.”

“I’m just not sure what’s going to happen next. I think . . . well, I know. I can’t stay here. I’ll have to leave. Jump into the next future.”

“That’s what Jesus said to you?”

“Yeah. In a way. So I have to be prepared. I don’t know what it’s going to be like a couple of thousand years from now, in New Mexico, so I—”

“That’s a place? One of the Godless states?”

“Right. That’s where they calculated I’d wind up next.” After a few moments of silence, she said, “I can’t go with you.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

“No, I mean I should. But I’m afraid.”

“You couldn’t come back. Being a graduate assistant doesn’t require throwing your life away.”

“I think I would have to,” she said slowly, “if your life were in danger.”

Matt laughed. “I hereby relieve you of the responsibility. ”

“You can’t, Professor. I swore to God and Jesus that I would stay by you, and serve you.”

“Well, I don’t know about God, but the Jesus I saw and talked to was no more holy than that bird there.” He pointed at a mockingbird that was scolding something. “Less. It was just a product of technology”—she winced at the word—“that was old when I was born. A holographic projection; a moving hologram.”

“Holy gram?”

He wrestled with the robe and extracted his wallet and showed her the MIT card with the three-dimensional picture. “Like this, but moving and talking.”

She stared at it and, like the dean, tried to push a finger into the card.

“Somewhere there’s an actor made up to look like the historical Jesus. He watches me on a camera—you know what a camera is?”

“Sure. My Bible has pictures in it.”

“Well, he watches from a distant location and makes appropriate responses to what his audience does and says.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” she said, hurt and reluctance in her voice. “Why wouldn’t they just use the actor? ”

“He’d be vulnerable. This Jesus can’t be stabbed or shot or crucified. And he can do things that look like miracles.”

“How do you know they aren’t miracles?”

“Because I know how they’re done. I mean, I couldn’t duplicate them without help, but the science behind them is clear enough, simple enough.”

“They could still be miracles, though. Even though you could do some science that looked the same. Like turning water into wine; you could do something like that with a powder. I saw that when I was a child.”

“Phenolphthalein. Big deal.” They were walking up Charity, approaching Mass Ave. The intersection was a hopeless knot of people and animals and carts, so they cut diagonally across what used to be a parking lot, and was now a crowded, crazy quilt of merchants displaying their wares on makeshift tables or arranged on blankets.

“Look. Do you know Occam’s Razor?”

“I do. Basically it says the simplest explanation is usually the right one.”

“So there you are. You don’t need to invoke miracles.”

She looked genuinely perplexed. “But you have someone who looks like Jesus, who says He is Jesus, and He performs miracles—I would say that Occam’s Razor says that He isJesus.”

“Oh . . . Jesus.” The bank was half a block away, and there was a line out onto the sidewalk. Matt really had to pee, and they were passing a public toilet. “Look, I’d love to continue this argument, but nature calls.”

“Nature what?”

“I mean . . .” He gestured toward the toilet door.

“Oh, you have to go do. I’ll get us a place in that line.”

The latrine was dark, just a small skylight, but it had pretty good ventilation, and didn’t quite reek.

It had a piss-tube like the ones at MIT. He went through the complicated business of holding his robe out of the way and unzipping his jeans one-handed, and gratefully let fly.

“What’s that?” someone said in the murk. He could see two men sitting on toilets, and one was pointing at his dick. “He’s not cut!”

Well, that was beyond irony. The only Jew in Boston, and he was attracting attention because his parents had been New Reform and didn’t believe in circumcision.

“Can you explain that?” said a voice with the gravel of authority.

“I’m sorry,” Matt said inanely. “Where I come from—”

“He’s a spy from Gomorrah!” came a high-pitched voice. “Got to be!”

“No! I’m a professor at MIT!”

“You wait until I’m finished here,” said the authority voice. “I’m a policeman. We can talk to MIT.”

“Okay—I’ll wait outside.” Matt almost caught himself in the zipper, fleeing.

“Wait! I command you to wait! In the name of the Lord!”

Matt ran clumsily down the street, clomping in sandals, and was breathing hard when he came up to Martha, a couple of yards from the bank entrance. “Give me . . . the bag,” he wheezed, and pulled at it.

She resisted instinctively. “Professor? What—” A black-robed policeman with a staff had covered half the distance from the latrine.

“The safe. Have to—” He pulled it free and staggered through the door.

The clerk in front of the vault looked up with a quizzical smile. Matt strode up and reached into the bag and put the pistol straight into his face. “Drop it!”he yelled to the guard by the vault door, “or I’ll shoot him, I swear to God!”

The lone guard had a pump shotgun. He set it on the floor and stood with his hands up. Outside, someone yelled, “Stop that man! He’s a heathen spy!”

“Up!” Matt shouted. “Up! Into the vault!”

“All right,” the clerk said, almost falling over backward as he stood. Matt jammed the pistol’s muzzle into the man’s temple and started walking him toward the big enclosure, the largest Faraday cage on the block.

Martha ran to his side. “Professor?”

“Stay away, Martha. Everything inside the vault is going to go.”

Once he was inside the metal walls, he shoved the clerk back out, and kept the gun on him while he reached into the bag for the time machine. “Get out, Martha!”

There was a loud bangand a bullet whined, ricocheting around inside the vault. The cop from the latrine was at the door, holding his staff like a rifle.

Martha stood in front of Matt with her arms spread wide. “Put that down! He’s a holy man!”

Everybody else, now including Matt, was flat on the floor as the cop swung left and right, trying to get a clear shot past Martha. He fired, and a bullet spanged off the floor and a couple of walls.