"... BUT THEN I SAID, 'In that frame of reference, the perihelion of Mercury would have precessed in the opposite direction.' "

The face that belonged to the buzzing voice was decorated with a wide smile and a flash of defiant life in a shriveled body huddled within the confines of a supportive chair.

Of the four men present, one had told the story and another now erupted in laughter.

A third frowned and pondered the anecdote, and the fourth... was not a man.

"Dat is a great story!" The second fellow laughed, a haggard presence with a flying cloud of chalky hair, a mustache like a hanging horsehair brush, and a chopping German accent.

To the casual observer, the man who was not a man may have been amused -- it was difficult to tell. Despite a face painted gold, as the face of a jester would be, there was painful poor entertainment in the bullion cheeks and the yellow eyes. He wore a hat brim with no hat, not even a plume, as if to shield those yellow eyes from the single source of light above their heads, and he was dealing very slick gaming cards to the gathering.

"Quite amusing, Dr. Hawking," the bullion one said. Now he shifted slightly and looked to his right. "You see, Sir Isaac, the joke depends on an understanding of the relativistic curvature of space-time. If two non-inertial reference frames are in relative motion--"

Puffing up his nobleman's pride, Professor of Mathematics and Knight of the Realm Sir Isaac Newton challenged the off-putting birdlike eyes of their dealer.

"Do not patronize me, sir," he said. "I invented physics. The day the apple fell on my head was the most momentous day in the history of science."

He resisted the urge to tell them that he had been on the edge of comprehending the story when they denied him the chance to think by their overexplaining. He would never do such to his students.

Across from him, the little debilitated scientist struggled physically in his mobile chair and buzzed, "Not the apple story again."

Sir Isaac's lips fell open. He stared, and his mind hammered. He couldn't speak.

"That story is generally believed to be apocryphal," the metal-leaf one said bluntly, without the slightest courtesy.

Sir Isaac felt his chest constrict. "How dare you!"

The old man with the flying hair tapped his hand of slippery cards. "Perhaps we should return to the game." He shifted on an elbow and looked at Hawking. "Let's see.... You raised Mr. Data four, which means the bet is seven to me."

"The bet is ten!" Sir Isaac roared. "Can't you do simple arithmetic?"

Genius. Where?

They were playing with the cards and chips piled before them upon a round table covered with soft green fabric. There wasn't a single candle sconce on any wall to provide a sense of balance in the room. Only that light from above, which Sir Isaac reasoned must be mirrored sunlight.

How can they chortle at the past? Shall I chortle at the findings of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler -- even though I corrected their conclusions? Can any true scientist guffaw at the work of those who struggled before?

At once he paused, caught on this vague sense of future. Somehow he understood that these men around him were from his future, yet the understanding failed to shock him. These men talked about the future and the past arbitrarily, as though one did not stand invariably upon the bulwark of the other. Stephen Hawking could never be sitting in such a sophisticated contraption, with a mechanism holding his cards for him, had others not leaned on canes or been pulled in carts before him, compelled to find better ways.

Time again, future and present... How could these seem so liquid?

Feeling out of place, Sir Isaac regarded the others and fingered a ringlet of his chest-length tumble of curls. The others wore no wigs to hide their heads. And he was the only man here wearing appropriate scholars'-meeting attire. The others had no breeches or overcoats, no cravats, and there wasn't a sword or cane in sight. Perhaps these were their bedclothes.

Cloud-haired Einstein pushed a count of chips out to the center of the table.

Impatiently Sir Isaac matched the bet. "I don't know why I'm here in the first place," he muttered.

He had never been taught this game, but somehow he knew how to play it and was impelled to do so against his will. Certainly there were better things to do, more suitable subjects for four intelligent men to discuss than chips and folds, calls and bluffs. After all, he was warden of the mint. A professor at Cambridge University. A member of Parliament. A knight. And still these men had asked nothing about the binomial theorem or the method of fluxions as the basis of calculus, and they had laughed at his codification of the quantitative laws of universal dynamics.

They had laughed.

Was the future so smug? How could those who made use of a science chortle at those who revealed the science to mankind?

Wallowing in insult, he longed to get up and investigate the optics of that light abovehead to see if it conformed to his theories of spectral colors combining to form white light.

But he couldn't get up. Somehow he was forced from within to continue sitting, playing. Was this a dream?

As he held his cards in cold hands and dealt with the core of his fear that the church was wrong and this might be some sad afterlife, he cleared his throat. "What is the point of playing this ridiculous game?"

Mr. Data matched the bet and said, "Call. When I play poker with my shipmates, I often find that it is a useful forum for exploring different facets of humanity. I was curious to see how three of history's greatest minds would interact in this setting. So far it has proven most illuminating."

The old man looked at his own stack of chips. "And profitable."

Sir Isaac observed the others cannily but found little true brilliance evident here, with the exception of Stephen Hawking. The being called Data tended to explain details too much, and Einstein was obviously German.

Of course, this game they played was disinclined to show brilliance. Had Mr. Data wished to investigate brilliance, why not visit the grounds of Cambridge in 1707?

Apocryphal... Are my publications also apocryphal? How quick the future is to minimize the past. I am disappointed.

He felt distant vibration in the floor and wished to get up, to seek through the surrounding darkness and find the walls. Perhaps if he found a wall, he could discover what was behind it.

Yet he felt compelled to remain here and play this time-wasting game. What force had hold of him? He felt his curiosity begin to stultify. Would God Almighty wish him to sit and grow more stupid by the moment?

"Can we get this over with, please?" he urged. To Hawking he said, "It is your bet."

"I raise fifty," Hawking buzzed.

Mr. Data accommodated the debilitated participant by shoving out chips for him.

Sir Isaac threw his cards to the platform. "Blast! I fold."

The others seemed glad of it.

And he, too, was glad. Now he could sit here and deepen his thinking, rather than be some kind of reliquiae for their entertainment. He was a professor, not a farceur.

"The uncertainty principle will not help you now, Stephen," Einstein said in that halting accent. "All the quantum fluctuations in the universe won't change the cards in your hands. You are bluffing and you will lose."

"Wrong again, Albert," Hawking retorted. The robotic extension that was holding his cards for him slapped them face up on the table.

Four sevens.

Einstein scowled, then sat there and shook as he chuckled inwardly.

Sir Isaac watched as they played, particularly fascinated by Hawking and the mechanisms to which he was attached.

A man with Stephen's affliction in the 1600s, he thought, would have no time for genius. And that is my commonality with him. He was stricken with this debilitation, and its only gift, for all it stole from him, was to give him time to think, to fill the emptiness with light. Time to move from brightness of mind to brilliance. I know the ache to fill such emptiness. When Cambridge was closed during the plague, those many months of sequestered thought allowed me to compose my most momentous theories.... Now we sit together, I from my time and Hawking from another. What would we all be if born in each other's time?

And the old man named Einstein, had he lived in the 1600s, with that shabby demeanor and common clumsiness, would have been unable to find sustenance among the peasant class to which he was obviously born.

Sir Isaac had no doubt where this Mr. Data would be. Hanging from a spit, most like, being put to the torch by a shocked mob who thought he was a piece of bewitched cloisonné.

And who would I be in their time?

The floor began to vibrate. Sir Isaac looked around. He was sure he felt it -- that it was not in his mind, and that he was in no dream. Suddenly the voice of heaven boomed around them, and he felt his hands grow even colder at its sound.

"Red Alert. All personnel report to duty stations. Red Alert. Repeat: Red Alert."

The others paused, but Mr. Data was the only one who did not appear confused. He stood, deposited his cards before him, and said, "We will have to continue this at another time."

Sir Isaac shifted his legs beneath him in preparation to stand. Where would he be expected to wait in this candleless world of vibrating voices and constant questions?

Hope pierced his unease. As long as there were questions, he would be no antiquary. Any scientist had purpose where there was any question.

"End program," Mr. Data said.

Sir Isaac tightened his thighs to stand, his gaze fixed upon the inhuman face of their dealer.

But he felt his own memory begin to dissolve. A touch of panic invaded his mind but found nothing to grasp.

The gold-leaf face grew dark before his eyes. For an instant there were amber lines in the form of a broad grid against the blackness.

Then... only blackness.