Lakin came by, smiling amiably. He was with Bernard Carroway. “I have heard that you are repeating Cooper’s experiment,” Lakin said without preamble.
“Who did you hear that from?”
“I could see for myself.”
Gordon took his time. He had a swallow from his cup and discovered it was empty. Then he looked at Lakin. “Fuck off,” he said very clearly. Then he walked away.
He found Penny in a crowd gathered around Marcuse. “The newly appointed Communist-in-Residence?” Gordon asked when he was introduced. To his surprise, Marcuse laughed. A black woman graduate student standing nearby did not think anything was amusing. It developed that her name was Angela and that the revolution was not going to be brought about by people at cocktail parties; this was all Gordon could get out of the conversation, or at least all he could remember. He took Penny’s hand and wandered away.
Jonas Salk was off in a corner. Gordon debated trying to meet him. Maybe he could find out how Salk felt about Sabin—who had really developed the vaccine? An interesting question, indeed. “A parable of science,” Gordon muttered to himself. “What?” Penny asked. He steered her instead toward a pack of physicists. Some nagging voice within bid him to shut up, so he let Penny carry their fraction of the conversation. People around him seemed distant and vague. He tried to decide if this was due to him or due to them. The eternal relativistic problem. Maybe Marcuse knew the answer. Some Frenchmen asked Gordon about his experiments and he tried to sum up what he believed. It proved surprisingly difficult. The odd thickness of his tongue had gone away, but there remained the problem of what he himself thought was true. The Frenchmen asked about Saul. Gordon sidestepped the question. He tried to keep discussion focused on the results of his experiments. “As Newton said, ‘I frame no hypotheses’—at least, not yet. Ask me only about data.” He went off in search of more vodka, but the fountain bowl was empty. Sadly, he took the last of the crackers and pâté. When he returned, Penny was standing a little distance away from the Frenchmen, staring out at the view of La Jolla and the satiny glow of the sea. The Frenchmen were speaking French. Penny seemed angry. He tugged at her and she came along, glancing back.
She insisted on driving them home, though Gordon could see no reason why he should not. Going past the beach clubs and rambling private homes, Penny said, “Those bastards”, with sudden vehemence.
“Huh? What?”
She grimaced. “After you wandered off they said you were a bungler.”
Gordon frowned. “They said that to you?”
“No, silly. They started speaking French. They assumed that of course no American understands another language.
“Oh.”
“They called you a fake. A fraud.”
“Oh.”
“They said everybody was saying that about you.”
“Everybody?”
“Yeah,” she said sourly.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
OCTOBER 7, 1963
IT CAME UP OUT OF THE NOISE, SUDDENLY. ONE MINute the scope showed hash and Gordon was tinkering with a new band-pass filter, a recent circuit he’d breadboarded to cut through the noise. Then, abruptly, the NMR curves began to warp and change. He stared at the scope, unmoving. It was 11 p.m.
He brought his hand up to his lips, as if to mask a cry. The jiggling lines went on. It occurred to Gordon that he might be hallucinating. He bit his finger. No, the ragged lines remained. Quickly, suppressing his excitement beneath the urge to be precise, he began to take data.
ACTION OF ULTRAVIOAMSLDUZ SUNEYDUFK OM CHAINS APPEARS TO RETARD DIFFUSION IN SURFACE LAYERS OF AMSUWLDOP BUT GROWTH RA 18 5 36 DEC 30 29.2
RA 18 5 FGDUEL 30 29.2
RA 18 5 36 DEC 30 29.2
EFFECTS DIATOM ENZYME INHIBITED B NETWORK CHAIN REPRO ATTEMPT TO CONTACT YOU WITH T CHYONIC BEAM WREDOPRL AL POINT SOURCE CAN VERIFY RA 18 5 3MCDU DEC 30 29.2RDUTFKIGLP ASLDURMFU CAMBRIDOLR CAMBRIDG DIATOM BLOOM GHTUPDM ASANATH DEC 30 29.2 THIS VIOLATES NO CAUSAL POSTULATE UNDER WHEELER-FEYNMAN FORMULATION AS LONG AS FEEDBACK IN CAUSAL LOOP PERMITS EXPERIMENT TO CONTINUE IMPERATIVE YOU PERFORM EXPTS TO CHECK MOLECULAR CHAIN XCDEURDL 18 5 36 DEC 30 29.2 TIME DIFFERENTIAL AUSMP
• • •
“Claudia? Is that you?” It was the first time he had ever called her by her first name. “Yes, yes, is this Gordon?”
“Right. I’ve been running parallel with you. Were you people on last night?”
“What?”
“Were you running last night?” “I… no, I don’t… my student was making some measurements. I believed he finished about 6 o’clock.”
“Shit.”
“What? I’m sorry, I don’t believe I can hear you correctly—”
“Sorry, never mind. I, ah, I was running last night around 11 p.m. and I got some anomalous resonance effects.”
“I see. Well, that would be 2 a.m. here.”
“Oh yes. Of course.”
“How long did the effect last?”
“Over two hours.”
“Well, let me see, the student should be in soon; it is a little after eight. Gordon, you are up at 5 a.m.?”
“Ah, yes. I was waiting for you to get in.”
“Have you slept?”
“No, I… I was seeing if there was any more of the—the effect.”
“Gordon, go to sleep. I will talk to the student. We will run some experiments today. But you get some sleep.”
“Sure, sure.”
“I promise you we will do the measurements. But get some sleep, eh?”
“Good. Good. That’s all I want.”
• • •
“Gordon, Mrs. Evelstein, she brought over the Life magazine. Why didn’t you tell me? There was my son’s name, big as life—as Life!—and he doesn’t tell me. Weeks ago, it was, and—”
“Mom, look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I—”
“And the National Enquirer thing, she had that, too. That one I didn’t like so good.”
He breathed sourly into the telephone receiver. What time was it? Christ, 5 p.m. What was the Zinnes group getting?
“Look, Mom, I was asleep, I—”
“Asleep? At this hour?”
“I was working in the lab overnight.”
“You shouldn’t, you’ll ruin your health.”
“I’m okay.”
“But I wanted to say, about the Life, it was such a surprise—”
“Mom, I’ve got to go back to sleep. I’m worn out.”
“Well, all right. I wanted to hear your voice again, though, Gordon. I don’t hear your voice so much any more.”
“I know, Mom. Look, I’ll call you in a few days.”
“All right, Gordon.”
He hung up and went back to sleep.
• • •
The Zinnes group found nothing. Gordon could not pick up the signal again. He kept checking as the week wore on. On Friday there was a department Colloquium on plasma physics, given by Norman Rostoker. Gordon went and sat well in the back. Rostoker’s first slide was:
Seven Phases of the Thermonuclear Fusion Program
I Exultation
II Confusion
III Disenchantment
IV Search for the Guilty
V Punishment of the Innocent
VI Distinction for the Uninvolved
VII Burying the Bodies/Scattering the Ashes
The audience laughed. Gordon did, too. He wondered at which stage he was. But no, the whole message thing wasn’t a directed research project, it was a discovery. The fact that he was the only person in the world who believed it made no difference. “Search for the Guilty,” though, seemed to fit. He thought about it for a moment and then, in the middle of Rostoker’s talk, fell asleep.
• • •
He answered the call from Ramsey’s office and found Ramsey in the lab. The chemist had broken down the interweaving chain into a plausible configuration. Phosphorous, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon. It made sense. What was more, it fit into a cla
ss that resembled the pesticides. More sophisticated, yes—but a clear lineal descendant. Gordon smiled, still sleepy from the Colloquium. “Good work,” he murmured. Ramsey beamed. On his way out Gordon passed through the glass forest of the laboratory. He had come to enjoy its rhythms. The biologists down the hall had pens of animals for their tests and Gordon wandered down that way, feeling obscurely happy. On a cart in the hallway there were trays. In them were heaps of gutted brown hamsters, like burst potatoes. Life in the service of life. He walked away quickly.
• • •
His telephone rang at 6 p.m., as he was putting papers and books in his briefcase for the weekend. The physics building was nearly deserted and the ringing echoed.
“Gordon, this is Claudia Zinnes,”
“Oh, hello. Have you—?”
“We have something. Interruptions.” She went on to describe them.
“Look, ah, do me a favor? Try to break them down into patterns. I mean, I know it’s late and it’s, what, 9 o’clock there, but if you—”
“I think I understand you.”
Exhaling: “See if it fits Morse code.”
A quiet laugh. “I’ll see, Gordon.”
He asked her to call him at home and gave her the number.
• • •
“I told you last week” Penny said. “We’re going Air Cal to Oakland Saturday morning at ten, out of Lindbergh.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“Oh, crap. I told you.”
“Penny, I have a lot to do this weekend. A lot to think about.”
“Think about it in Oakland.”
“No, I can’t, you can tell your parents we—”
The telephone rang.
“Claudia?”
“Gordon? I checked and, and, you were right,”
A sudden hot dizzyness swarmed over him. “What does it say?”
“Those astronomical coordinates you told me about. That’s all I have. They go on for pages.”
“Great. That’s just great.”
“What is it, Gordon?”
“I don’t know.”
They spoke for a few more moments. Claudia would keep their experiment running constantly. Signal strength seemed to come and go irregularly. Gordon listened, nodded, agreed. But his mind was not on the details. Instead, an odd sensation had begun to creep up through his legs and into his chest. He put down the telephone after saying good night and felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. It was real. All along he had reserved a certain possibility that he was a potzer, that the experiment was wrong, that he was finding books in babbling brooks, as Penny once joked about it. But now he knew: someone was trying to reach him.
“Gordon? Gordon, what is it?”
“Zinnes. New York.” He looked up, dazed. “They found it.”
She kissed him and together they did a little jig. No potzer, he. Gordon lurched around the living room, barking jubilantly ha and right! After a moment he felt dizzy and sat down. He was suddenly tired. Scratch one hypothesis, mark up one fact. But what should he do next?
“Penny, you’re right—we go to Oakland.”
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
1998
A BABBLE OF CONVERSATION MET PETERSON AS HE opened the front door. Through the entrance to the drawing room, across the stone hallway, he could see people talking rapidly. A burst of laughter, glasses clinking, a sugary swelling of the new Latin rhythms.
He paused only an instant. Without looking to either side he crossed the black and white squares of marble and went up the wide curved staircase. It was generally true that people would not intercept you if you passed by quickly, not letting anyone catch your eyes. It was perfectly reasonable that he should be there, after all; it was his town house. A guest would assume he and Sarah together were putting on this bloody party which he had forgotten, and that Peterson was tending to some domestic chore upstairs.
He moved silently on the deep carpet and crossed the landing. The hall bathroom door showed a crack of light at the floor; probably someone inside. He would be in the bedroom long enough for it to clear, but he should keep in mind the flow of traffic to and fro when he made his exit. He would have to go out the way he came in; to reach the rear exit through the kitchen he would have to pass through the party.
He closed the bedroom door and went to the closet. A rank of overcoats effectively concealed the two suitcases from anything short of a spring house-cleaning. He pulled them out. A bit heavy, but manageable. He got them into position by the doorway and then gazed round. Opposite, the three long Georgian windows looked out onto a, series of peaked roofs. Most buildings had dim rows of windows lit; it was the brownout hour, he recalled. Others were black. Zealous conservation, he wondered, or people who had left town already? No matter—he wasn’t going to concern himself with such things any longer. Between the windows were full-length mirrors, framed in brown velvet which was in turn edged in black; Sarah’s latest notion. Peterson hesitated, studying his reflection. Still a bit drawn, white around the eyes, but basically recovered. He had bluffed his way out of the hospital as soon as he felt able to move about. He had gone directly to his office. The Council was in a full crisis state, and no one noticed him clearing certain documents from his files, placing a few last-minute orders by telephone, and giving certain instructions to his solicitor. Sir Martin had him in for an overview conference, and there Peterson saw his preparations were none too soon. The clouds were definitely carrying the bloom material far and wide. The cloud form was slightly different from the ocean form, but they shared the neurojacket effect Kiefer had found only a few days ago. Kiefer’s data were of great use, but effective counter-measures were still a problem for the laboratories. The clouds dumped the stuff wherever they rained. Land plants generally resisted the neurojacket mechanism, but not always. Plant cellulose remained intact, but the more complex portions were vulnerable. Quick tests had turned up a method of cleansing certain plants, to cut off the process before the stuff could diffuse through the plant skin. Washing the harvested crops, in some solutions seemed feasible, and promised a 70 percent success rate. Peterson thought wryly of Laura’s “Oh, the vegetables and everything are perfectly fresh. The finest. They’re brought in from the country each day.” Yes, and that’s where he’d got the damned stuff. In the human digestive tract it played hob with all sorts of metabolic processes—often fatally, if untreated.
No one knew what the more subtle, secondary effects on the food chain might be. There were some decidedly dark projections by the biologists.
What’s more, the cloud mechanism was spreading the bloom faster. Reddish dots were appearing in the North Atlantic now.
With amazing energy Sir Martin was marshaling the Council resources, but even he seemed worried. They were dealing with an exponential process and no one could say where the effect would saturate.
Peterson looked round the room for one last time. Every feature in it was tailored for his habits, from the elegant accord ian-like shoe rack to the artfully arranged bookshelf, with its concealed communications center. A pity to leave it, really. But the whole point was to leave before the rush, and yet have a plausible reason to be absent from the Council for a few days. Recovering at some country hospital would do nicely. Sir Martin had studied him for a long moment when Peterson announced his departure, but that was an unavoidable risk. The two men probably understood each other quite well. A pity things couldn’t have worked out better between them, Peterson thought, and edged open the bedroom door.
A departing back, going down the stairs after a trip to the loo. Peterson waited until the man had vanished across the marble foyer. He shouldered open the door and carried the bags to he head of the stairs. Christ, they were heavy. He’d never allowed for the possibility that he might be ill when he had to make his move.
He went down the stairs with soft thumps, taking the weight solidly and checking his balance before attempting the next step. He had to watch the footing intently. The stairway was
immensely long. He began puffing. Latin music started abruptly, brassy and rich, flooding his ears and throwing off his concentration. Out of the corner of his eye he sensed movement. A man and a woman, approaching from the drawing room. He took the last three steps rapidly and nearly slipped on the slick floor.
“Ian! My, don’t you look the traveler. I thought Sarah said you were in hospital.”
He thought rapidly. Smile, that was it. “I still am, actually,” he began, at the same time walking round the corner to a small tucked-in closet. He had to get the bags out of the way before anyone else came along. “It’s filling up, however, so I thought it best I get out of the public’s way. Go to a suburban place to recuperate, you know.”
“Oh Christ yes,” the man said. “City hospitals are the worst. Can I help you with those?”
“No no, just a few clothes.” He had scooted them into the closet and now closed the door firmly.
“I say, we were looking for a place to, you know, be private for a time.” The woman looked at him expectantly. She was one of Sarah’s friends, one of the sort he could never remember from one time to the next. She turned to gesture upstairs, no doubt thinking he had a thin imagination and needed a diagram. Her eye caught the door of his bedroom, standing open. “Oh, that would be perfect! It has a lock, hasn’t it?”
Peterson felt a cold anger. “I’d rather think there might be—”
“I shouldn’t think we’d be long. You don’t mind, do you? Yes, you do mind. He minds, Jeremy.” She put one foot on the lower stair and looked at the man with her, clearly turning this difficult chap over to him.
Timescape Page 35