Frameshift

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Finally, she could take no more of it. It was only 8:40—awfully early to end a date that had begun at 7:30—but she had to get out of there.

  “Excuse me,” said Molly. “I’ve—I think the pesto sauce is disagreeing with me. I don’t feel very well. I think I should go home.”

  Rudy looked concerned. “I’m sorry,” he said. He signaled for the waiter. “Here, we’ll get going; I’ll take you back to your place.”

  “No,” said Molly. “No, thank you. I—I’ll walk home. I’m sure a little walk will help my digestion.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, really, I’ll be fine. You’re sweet to offer, though.” She took her wallet out of her little purse. “With tax and tip, my share should be about fifteen dollars,” she said, putting that amount on the tablecloth.

  Rudy looked disappointed, but at least his concern for her health was genuine enough to have banished the Penthouse Forum commentary from his mind. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  Molly forced a smile. “Me, too,” she said.

  “I’ll call you,” said Rudy.

  Molly nodded and hurried out of the restaurant.

  The night air was warm and pleasant. She started walking without really thinking about where she was heading. All she knew was that she didn’t want to go back to her apartment. Not on a Friday night; it was too lonely, too empty.

  She was on University Avenue, which, not surprisingly, ended up taking her to the campus. She passed many couples (some straight, some gay) going the other way, and picked up clearly sexual thoughts from those who unavoidably entered her zone—but that was fine, since the thoughts weren’t about her. She came to Doe Library and decided to go in. The pesto sauce was in fact making her intestines grumble a bit, so a trip to the washroom might indeed be in order.

  After she finished, she went up to the main floor. The library was mostly empty. Who wanted to be studying on a Friday night, after all, especially this early in the academic year?

  “’Evening, Professor Bond,” said a librarian sitting at an information desk. He was a lanky, middle-aged man.

  “Hi, Pablo. Not many people here tonight.”

  Pablo nodded and smiled. “True. Still, we’ve got our regulars. The night watchman is here, as usual.” He jerked a thumb at an oak table some distance away. A handsome man in his early thirties with a round face and chocolate hair sat hunched over a book.

  “Night watchman?” said Molly.

  “Doc Tardivel,” said Pablo, “from LBL. Been coming in here most nights lately and stays right up to closing. Keeps sending me back to the stacks for various journals.”

  Molly glanced at the fellow again. She didn’t know the name and didn’t recall ever seeing him around the campus. She left Pablo and ambled into the main reading room. The copies of many current journals were stored in a wooden shelving unit that happened to be close to the table this Tardivel fellow was using. Molly made her way over to the unit and began looking for a recent issue of Developmental Psychology or Cognition to while away an hour or two with. She crouched down to go through the piles of journals on the bottommost shelf, her slacks pulling tight as she did so.

  A thought impinged upon her consciousness, like the lighting of a feather on naked skin—but it was unintelligible.

  The journals were out of chronological order. She worked her way through the pile, reshuffling them so that the most recent issues were on top.

  Another thought fluttered against her consciousness. And suddenly she realized the cause for her difficulty in reading it. The thought was in French; Molly recognized the mental sound of the language.

  She found last month’s copy of DP, straightened up, and scanned the room for a place to sit. There were plenty of empty chairs, of course, but, well…

  French.

  The guy thought in French.

  And a foxy guy he was, too.

  Molly sat down next to him and opened her journal. He looked up, a slightly surprised expression on his face. She smiled at him and then, without really thinking about it, said, “Nice night.”

  He smiled back. “It sure is.”

  Molly’s heart pounded. He was still thinking in French. She’d known foreigners before, but all of them had switched to thinking in English when speaking that language. “Oooh, what a lovely accent!” said Molly. “Are you French?”

  “French-Canadian,” said Pierre. “From Montreal.”

  “Are you an exchange student?” asked Molly, knowing full well from what Pablo had said that he was not.

  “No, no,” he said. “I’m a postdoc at LBL.”

  “Oh, so you must know Burian Klimus.” Molly feigned a shudder. “There’s a cold character.”

  Pierre laughed. “That he is.”

  “I’m Molly Bond,” said Molly. “I’m an associate professor in the psych department.”

  “Enchanté,” said Pierre. “I’m Pierre Tardivel.” He paused. “Psychology, eh? I’ve always been interested in that.”

  “Wow,” said Molly softly.

  “Wow?”

  “You really do that. Canadians, I mean. You really say ‘eh.’”

  Pierre seemed to blush a little. “We also say ‘You’re welcome.’”

  “What?”

  “Out here, if you say ‘Thank you’ to someone, they all seem to reply ‘Uh-huh.’ We say ‘You’re welcome.’”

  Molly laughed. “Touché,” she said. And then she touched her hand to her mouth. “Hey—I guess I know some French after all.”

  Pierre smiled. It was a very nice smile indeed.

  “So,” said Molly, looking around at the musty shelves of books, “you come here often?”

  Pierre nodded. There were lots of thoughts on the surface of his mind, but to Molly’s delight she could make sense out of none of them. And French—French was such a beautiful language, it was almost like soft background music rather than the irritating noise of most people’s articulated thoughts.

  Before she had really considered it all the way through, the words were out. “Would you like to get a cup of coffee?” she said. And then, as if the suggestion needed some justification, added, “There’s a great cappuccino place on Bancroft.”

  Pierre had an odd look on his face, a mixture of disbelief and pleasant surprise at his unexpected good fortune. “That would be nice,” he said.

  Yes, thought Molly. It would indeed.

  They talked for hours, the background accompaniment of Pierre’s French thoughts never intrusive. He might be as big a pig as most other men, but Molly doubted that. Pierre seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say, listening attentively. And he had a wonderful sense of humor; Molly couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed anyone’s company so much.

  Molly had heard it said that French men—both Canadian and European French—had a different attitude toward women than American men did. They were more relaxed around them, less likely to be on all the time, less inclined to be constantly trying to prove themselves. Molly had only half believed it. She harbored a suspicion that their apparently blasé attitude toward female nudity was some vast conspiracy: “Keep a poker face, and they’ll wave their tits right in front of you!” But Pierre really did seem to be interested in her mind and her work—and that was a bigger turn-on for Molly than any macho display.

  Suddenly it was midnight and the café was closing.

  “My God,” she said. “Where did the time go?”

  “It went,” said Pierre, “into the past—and I enjoyed every moment of it.” He shook his head. “I haven’t taken a break like this for weeks.” His eyes met hers. “Merci beaucoup.”

  Molly smiled.

  “At this time of night, surely you should be escorted safely to your car or home,” said Pierre. “May I walk you there?”

  Molly smiled again. “That would be nice. I live just a few blocks from here.” They left the café. Pierre walked with his hands clasped behind his back. Molly wondered if he was going to try t
o hold her hand, but he didn’t.

  “I really need to see more of this area,” said Pierre. “I’ve been thinking about going over to San Francisco tomorrow, do a little sight-seeing.”

  “Would you like company?”

  They had arrived at the entrance to her apartment building. “I’d love that,” said Pierre. “Thank you.”

  There was a moment of silence. Molly was thinking, well, of course, we’d have to meet up again in the morning, unless—the thought, or maybe just the nighttime breeze, made her shiver—unless he spent the night. But what Pierre was thinking was a complete mystery. “Perhaps we could meet for brunch at eleven,” he said.

  “Sure. That place right across the street is great,” Molly said, pointing.

  She wondered if he was going to kiss her. It was exciting not knowing what he was thinking of doing. The moment stretched. He didn’t make his move—and that was exciting, too.

  “Till tomorrow, then,” he said. “Au revoir.”

  Molly went inside. She was grinning from ear to ear.

  C h a p t e r

  8

  Pierre and Molly’s relationship had been building nicely. He had been to Molly’s apartment three times now, but she had yet to see his place. Tonight was the night, though: A&E was showing another Cracker made-for-TV movie with Robbie Coltrane, and they both loved that series. But Molly only had a thirteen-inch TV, and Pierre had a twenty-seven-inch set—you needed a decent size to properly follow a hockey game.

  He’d cleaned up some, gathering the socks and underwear from the living-room floor, getting the newspapers off his green-and-orange couch, and doing what he considered to be a decent job of dusting—wiping the sleeve of the Montreal Canadiens jersey he was wearing across the top of the TV and stereo cabinet.

  They ordered a La Val’s pizza during the final commercial break, and, after the movie was over, they chatted about it while waiting for the pizza to arrive. Molly loved the use of psychology in Cracker; Coltrane’s character, Fitz, was a forensic psychologist who worked with the Manchester police.

  “He is an amazing fellow,” agreed Pierre.

  “And,” said Molly, “he’s sexy.”

  “Who?” asked Pierre, puzzled. “Not Fitz?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he’s a hundred pounds overweight, an alcoholic, a compulsive gambler, and he smokes like a chimney.”

  “But that mind,” said Molly. “That intensity.”

  “He’s going to end up in a hospital with a heart attack.”

  “I know,” sighed Molly. “I hope he has decent health insurance.”

  “Britain is like Canada—socialized medicine.”

  “‘Socialized’ is kind of an ugly word here,” said Molly. “But I must say the idea of universal health care is appealing. It’s too bad Hillary didn’t get her way.” A pause. “I guess it was a shock for you to have to start paying for your health insurance.”

  “I’m sure it will be. I haven’t got around to it yet.”

  Molly’s jaw dropped. “You don’t have any health insurance?”

  “Well…no.”

  “Are you covered under the faculty-association group plan?”

  “No. I’m not faculty, after all; I’m just a postdoc.”

  “Gee, Pierre, you really should have some medical insurance. What would you do if you were in an accident?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that, I guess. I’m so used to the Canadian system, which covered me automatically, that I hadn’t thought about having to actually do something to get insurance.”

  “Are you still covered under the Canadian plan?”

  “It’s actually a provincial plan—the Québec plan. But I won’t meet the residency requirements this year, which means, no, I’m not really covered.”

  “You better do something soon. You could be wiped out financially if you had an accident.”

  “Can you recommend somebody?”

  “Me? I have no idea. I’m under the faculty-association plan. That’s with Sequoia Health, I think. But for individual insurance, I haven’t a clue who’s got the best rates. I’ve seen ads for a company called Bay Area Health, and another called—oh, what is it?—Condor, I think.”

  “I’ll call them up.”

  “Tomorrow. Do it tomorrow. I had an uncle who broke his leg once and had to be put in traction. He didn’t have any insurance, and the total bill was thirty-five thousand dollars. He had to sell his house to pay for it.”

  Pierre patted her hand. “All right already. I’ll do it first thing.”

  Their pizza arrived. Pierre carried the box to the dining-room table and opened it up. Molly ate her pieces directly from the box, but Pierre liked his to be burn-the-roof-of-your-mouth hot, so he nuked each of his slices for thirty seconds before eating them. The kitchen smelled of cheese and pepperoni, plus an aroma of slightly moist cardboard coming from the box.

  After she’d finished her third slice, Molly asked, out of the blue, “What do you think about kids?”

  Pierre helped himself to a fourth piece. “I like them.”

  “Me, too,” said Molly. “I’ve always wanted to be a mother.”

  Pierre nodded, not knowing exactly what he was supposed to say.

  “I mean,” continued Molly, “getting my Ph.D. took a lot of time and, well, I never met the right person.”

  “That happens sometimes,” said Pierre, smiling.

  Molly nibbled at her pizza. “Oh, yes. ’Course, it’s hardly an insurmountable problem—not having a husband, I mean. I have lots of friends who are single moms. Sure, for most of them that wasn’t the way they planned it, but they’re doing fine. In fact, I…”

  “What?”

  She looked away. “No, nothing.”

  Pierre’s curiosity was aroused. “Tell me.”

  Molly considered for a time, then: “I did something pretty stupid—oh, six years ago now, I guess it was.”

  Pierre raised his eyebrows.

  “I was twenty-five, and, well, frankly, I’d given up any hope of finding a man I could have a long-term relationship with.” She raised a hand. “I know twenty-five sounds young, but I was already six years older than my mom was when she’d had me, and—well, I don’t want to go into the reasons right now, but I’d been having a terrible time with guys, and I didn’t see that that was likely to ever change. But I did want to have a child, and so I…well, I picked up some men—four or five different one-night stands.” She held up a hand again, as if feeling a need to make it all seem somewhat less sordid. “They were all medical students; I was trying to choose carefully. Each time I did it was at the right point in my cycle; I was hoping to get pregnant off one of them. I wasn’t looking for a husband, you understand—just for, well, just for some sperm.”

  Pierre had his head tilted to one side. He clearly didn’t know how to respond.

  Molly shrugged. “Anyway, it didn’t work; I didn’t get pregnant.” She looked at the ceiling for a few moments, and drew in breath. “What I got instead was gonorrhea.” She exhaled noisily. “I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t get AIDS. God, it was a stupid thing to do.”

  Pierre’s face must have shown his shock; they’d slept together several times now.

  “Don’t worry,” said Molly, seeing his expression. “I’m completely over it, thank God. I had all the follow-up tests after the penicillin treatment. I’m totally clean. Like I said, it was a stupid thing to do, but—well, I did want a baby.”

  “Why’d you stop?”

  Molly looked at the floor. Her voice was small. “The gonorrhea scarred my fallopian tubes. I can’t get pregnant the normal way anymore; if I’m ever going to do it, it’ll have to be via in vitro fertilization, and, well, that costs money. Around ten grand per attempt, last time I looked. My health insurance doesn’t cover it, since the blocked tubes weren’t a congenital condition. But I’ve been saving up.”

  “Oh,” said Pierre.

  “I—ah, I thought you should know…” She tr
ailed off, and then shrugged again. “I am sorry.”

  Pierre looked at his slice of pizza, now growing cold. He absently picked a green pepper off it; they were only supposed to be on half, but a stray one had ended up on one of his slices. “I would never say it’s for the best,” said Pierre, “but I guess I’m old-fashioned enough to think a child should have both a mother and a father.”

  Molly did meet his eyes, and held them. “My thought exactly,” she said.

  At two o’clock in the afternoon, Pierre entered the Human Genome Center office—and found to his surprise that a party was going on. Joan Dawson’s usual supply of home-baked goodies hadn’t been enough; someone had gone out and bought bags of nachos and cheesies, and several bottles of champagne.

  As soon as Pierre entered, one of the other geneticists—Donna Yamashita, it was—handed him a glass. “What’s all the excitement about?” asked Pierre over the noise.

  “They finally got what they wanted from Hapless Hannah,” said Yamashita, grinning.

  “Who’s Hapless Hannah?” asked Pierre, but Yamashita had already moved away to greet someone else. Pierre walked over to Joan’s desk. She had a dark liquid in her champagne glass. Probably diet cola; as a diabetic, she wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol. “What’s happening?” said Pierre. “Who is Hapless Hannah?”

  Joan smiled her kindly smile. “That’s the Neanderthal skeleton on loan from the Hebrew University at Givat Ram. Dr. Klimus has been trying to extract DNA from the bone for months, and today he finally finished getting a complete set.”

  The old man himself had moved nearer—and for once there was a smile on his broad, liver-spotted face. “That’s right,” he said, his voice cold and dry. He glanced sideways at a chubby man Pierre recognized as a UCB paleontologist. “Now that we have Neanderthal DNA, we can do some real science about human origins, instead of just making wild guesses.”

  “That’s wonderful,” replied Pierre above the din of people milling about the small office. “How old was the bone?”