Forgive me. There must exist such an entity as a “microscopic black hole.”

It was idle musing at the time. An innocent time! Now I am forced to revisit the idea in a much more desperate frame of mind. Do these gateways exist? And might they be our salvation?

It sounds absurd, yet the more aggressively I attack the mathematics the more I am convinced the idea is sound. If they exist, they must not be obvious in their behavior for good reason. Although a macro black hole would pull into it anything that crosses its horizon, it would not be as easy to engage the operation of a micro black hole. One must take into account the difference in mass between

I can barely write for shaking. The mass differential is a problem. I have been working intensely on pinning down the play of forces.

Beyond these difficulties there is also the question of where such a thing would lead. I have my theories, but there is no knowing absolutely until the deed is done. Like Moses, I must believe there is a promised land.

Nothing could be worse than what Isaac

No. These gateways cannot be common—no more than black holes are common in the heavens. I would have little hope that one would chance to be nearby if it were not for one factor: In the vicinity of such holes one might expect to see extraordinary good or evil. The influence from the fifth dimension and from other universes might seep through as cold seeps through a crack in the window. And surely, if there was one place on earth that could be defined as evil beyond the pale of mortal experience, it is this place, Auschwitz.

“So what do you think? Huh?” Denton was too impatient to wait for Dave to speak on his own.

Dave Banks didn’t answer. He was still glued to the pages of the Kobinski translation. Dave was an electrical engineer, sci-fi fanatic, and Denton’s ex–college roommate. Until today, Denton hadn’t seen him since graduation even though they’d both ended up in LA years ago. Dave had never quite forgiven Denton for sleeping with his girlfriend.

Which was totally unfair. Dave hadn’t even been serious about that girl, and anyway, it wasn’t as if Denton had set out to seduce her; it just happened. Some people held a grudge. Others nursed it until it grew up, graduated from college, and retired.

Unfortunately, Denton’s researcher, Loretta, had zero ability at science and all his current friends were wanna-be actors and models who thought black hole was either a psychedelic or sexual term. So Dave Banks was Denton’s only alternative to reading a book. And Denton was a social animal. He learned by picking brains and soaking up atmosphere, not by any activity as numbingly solitary as reading.

Dave looked up from the Kobinski pages, his small eyes glittering. “Interesting.”

“How so?”

Dave tilted his head thoughtfully. “Got another beer?”

Denton wanted to scream with impatience. Instead, he went to the kitchen of his condo to fetch a Corona.

The dining room was open to the living room, and beyond the tastefully decorated “conversational space” (he’d used his mother’s decorator—a real flamer) Denton could see that the sun was setting. The skyscrapers of Century City glowed all around them.

He still appreciated the million-dollar view. He appreciated it more knowing Dave was right on his heels and lived in a crappy apartment in West Hollywood.

It was like old times, the two of them leaning against the kitchen cabinets tossing back longnecks. The déjà vu was strong because Dave had never quite left 1989. He still wore the same ragged jeans and tacky sloganed T-shirts. His thin red hair was still in a long braid down his back, ever ready for his beloved medieval fairs.

“What, exactly, do you want from me?”

“I want your opinion on this black hole thing.”

“I’m not a physicist.”

“Yeah, I know, Dave.” Denton rolled his eyes. “But you took a couple semesters of physics. Aced them, if I recall.”

Dave raised his eyebrows as if to say, Yeah, so what?, but the geek in him was pleased. He had a vain streak when it came to his intellectual prowess. Which, Denton was willing to admit, was considerably greater than his own. But then, he didn’t run around with a hairstyle that had gone out in the year 1500, either.

Dave pinched his nostrils with two fingers. “What I want to know is how you got into this?”

“I told you. I’m working on a series of articles about vanishings.”

“Yeah, but how did you find this?” Dave had brought the stapled pages into the kitchen and he waved them with something like awe. “I mean, this is, like, a relic. How come no one’s ever found this before?”

“Someone has.”

Denton told him about Schwartz. Naturally, he modified the bit about how he’d seen the letter to Zurich, said he’d eyed it on the rabbi’s desk instead of opening his mail. He didn’t need Dave to give him that look, that “I’ve got your number” look.

Denton hated that look.

When he was done explaining, Dave flipped to the translation. “Well, if you’re asking me about the math, forget it. Those equations and stuff in the margins? Way beyond me.”

“But what do you think of the idea, though? See, the thing is,” Denton’s voice got higher with excitement, “what if people do disappear? And what if these black holes are the reason why? The ‘smoking gun,’ as it were. Right? Because it does seem that there are places where disappearances are more likely to happen, like the Bermuda Triangle or Stonehenge or something. So—”

“Stonehenge? I never heard anything about people disappearing at Stonehenge.”

“Whatever. You know what I mean. So what if that’s because these places, these vortexes, are where the black holes are?”

Dave was giving him a blank look.

“Okay, never mind. Just… what do you think of the idea of miniature black holes? From a physics point of view?”

Dave leaned back against the counter, taking his sweet time. “There are all sorts of bizarro things at the subatomic level, and they’re still finding new stuff all the time. I mean it’s not like, you know, expecting to find Bigfoot in LA. Quite the contrary.”

Denton’s grin widened. “Great! So let’s say these things exist; what—”

“I didn’t say that. I said it was possible.”

Well, yeah. But that was about as credible as anything ever got in Denton’s line of work. He found himself thinking that Dave was annoyingly binah—all logic, no creativity. The thought surprised him. He’d picked up more from Kobinski than he’d thought.

“Okay. It’s possible. But what I still don’t get is how a person could go through a black hole if it’s the size of, say, an atom.”

Dave shrugged. “A particle at a time would be my guess. Pretty messy.”

“Kobinski didn’t think so! He talked about using it as an escape route.”

“Um, yeah, and he was in Auschwitz. I’d say he was probably a little stressed; wouldn’t you?” Dave sounded peeved. He hated to be contradicted.

“There were eyewitnesses!”

“So? Even if there was a hole, and even if he did go through it, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a string of platelets when he got to the other side.”

Denton supposed that was true. But like the official report of the Why Knot Now incident, it didn’t feel right. And it wasn’t very satisfying, either. Talk about a bad ending.

So Denton went around the problem. “Let’s just say for grins that you could go through a teensy-tiny black hole and survive. Where would you end up? Kobinski says he has a theory, but he doesn’t say what it is.”

Dave sighed a god-give-him-patience sigh. “This is totally cliché sci-fi. Don’t you watch Star Trek?”

Denton shook his head, feeling pop-culturally challenged.