The idea brought McCoy up short. What could he possibly ask himself? Could he have a romance with Tonia that would ever work? That had been the question he’d answered, but what should he have asked? Could he ever have any romance that would ever work? At this time in his life, perhaps he already knew the answer to that too. When he had—
The door to the waiting room slid open with a whoosh. Beyond it stood Dr. Golec, president of the university. Tall and lean, she had long, striking white hair that reached down to her lower back. Spectacles rested on the bridge of her nose, and McCoy wondered if she wore them for cause or as an affectation. “Gentlemen,” she said with measured formality, “we are prepared to begin our ceremony.”
“That’s our cue,” McCoy said, standing. Together, he and Spock followed Golec out of the waiting room, up a flight of stairs, and over to the left wing of the stage. Out on the unlighted rostrum stood a podium bathed in the bright white of a spotlight. Behind it stood a row of chairs just visible to McCoy and doubtless unseen by the audience. Spock and McCoy were placed in the center of a line with the deans of the university’s various colleges and the senior members of the Science Advisory Board. Together, they walked out on stage and, facing the audience, took their seats in the darkness behind the podium. Spock and McCoy sat just to the left of center stage.
Once they’d all sat down, the lights came up, revealing everybody on stage, and the audience applauded. As they did, Dr. Golec paced to the podium. When the clapping died down, she addressed the assemblage. “Faculty and students of the University of Alpha Centauri, members of the Science Advisory Board, fellow scientists, respected guests, and Zee-Magnees honorees, welcome.” Again, people applauded.
McCoy peered out at the audience. Somewhere out there sat Tonia, he knew. He had to admit that he felt wounded by her unwillingness to see him after the ceremony, but he truly understood her disinclination to do so. For that, he clearly had nobody to blame but himself.
Looking out from the rostrum, McCoy could make out the faces of the people in the first couple of rows, the rest indistinct because of the lights focused on the stage. He saw Joanna, beaming, and beside her, Jim. He saw Jabilo M’Benga and Christine Chapel and others. He could not see Tonia.
Fifty
1954
Well after midnight, beneath the silvern rays of the full moon, it took five minutes of knocking, but finally the door opened.
“Leonard,” Lynn said. At first, he didn’t seem to see her. He looked terrible, his features drawn, his eyes bloodshot, his hair an uncombed mess. She’d known she would wake him, but she noticed that he wore the same clothes as he had yesterday before she’d left for Atlanta, and their rumpled appearance betrayed that he’d been sleeping in them—if he’d slept at all. The dark circles beneath his eyes suggested that he hadn’t. “Leonard,” she said again.
“Oh my God,” he said quietly, as though in a trance. For a moment, she didn’t think that he recognized her, and then at last his eyes widened. “Oh my God,” he said again, crying it out this time, his voice echoing down the street and through the empty commons. He lurched out of the doorway and pulled her forcibly into his arms. She sent her hands around his back and held him just as tightly. “Lynn, Lynn, Lynn,” he said, as though he could not believe that she’d returned.
After a few seconds, she felt Leonard begin to tremble and realized that he was crying. “It’s all right,” Lynn said. She stroked her hand along his back, trying to soothe him. “It’s all right. I’m safe.”
They stood like that for half a minute, a minute, longer. His arms around her remained firm, unyielding, protective. At last, though, his weeping eased and then stopped. She pulled back from him and looked up into his face. He stared back, glassy-eyed. “I can’t believe you’re okay,” he said, his voice a rough imitation of itself.
“I am though,” she said. “Can we go inside?” She felt chilled. Leonard nodded and started inside, but then Lynn remembered something. “Oh,” she said. “I’ll be right there.” She hurried back down the stone path and out to the street, where she opened the driver’s door of her truck. Leaning in across the seat, she pulled out a small cardboard box, the size of a couple of hardcover books stacked up. It contained the small bottles of medication that she’d gone down to Atlanta to get in the first place. She carried the box back to the house, where Leonard, still standing in the doorway, peered at it as though he had no idea what it might contain. “Audie’s medicine,” she said. She handed it to him, then stepped past and went inside.
As Leonard closed the front door, Lynn flopped down on the sofa. “I’m exhausted,” she said. Leonard set the box down on a shelf, beside some books, then sat down next to her on the sofa.
“I can’t believe you’re all right,” he said. “What…?” He seemed not only overwhelmed by her return, but distant, as though he thought he might be dreaming.
“I made it down to Atlanta in good time yesterday,” Lynn said, not really wanting to think about all that had happened, but knowing that she must tell Leonard. “I followed the directions you wrote down for me and drove directly to the medicine company. I asked to speak with Mister Kane and I showed him the letter you gave me for him. He read it, asked me to wait, then came back and handed me the box. When I went back out to the truck, I opened it and checked the labels on all the bottles to make sure they were filled with the right medicine for Audie.” Lynn paused, struck hard by the thought that Mr. Kane, who’d been so attentive and helpful yesterday, had no doubt perished just a few hours after she’d left him.
“You were going to go to the movies,” Leonard said. His shock at seeing her seemed to be fading, his focus returning. “Go to the movies and stay in the city overnight.”
“I know,” Lynn said, still amazed at how such a simple thing as choosing whether or not to take in a movie had been the difference between living and dying. “But the drive had been so easy that by the time I’d arrived in Atlanta, I’d already decided that I’d head back to Hayden rather than finding a hotel. But I still thought I would go and see Between Two Seas. I even asked Mister Kane if he knew where it was playing, and he gave me directions to the theater. But when I got there…” Lynn felt an ache in her temples and knew that she’d suddenly reached the verge of tears.
“When you got there…?” Leonard prompted her.
Lynn took a long, slow breath, trying to calm herself. When she’d tamed her emotions, at least for the moment, she continued. “When I got to the theater, I discovered that I didn’t want to see the movie without you,” she said. She attempted to smile, but the expression felt out of place just now. “In a way,” she said, no longer able to keep herself from crying, “you saved my life.”
“Oh, Lynn,” Leonard said, and he moved forward on the sofa, once more taking her into his arms. She began to sob, her body shuddering with the effort. Leonard rocked her gently back and forth, whispering into her ear that everything was going to be all right. The warmth of his body, the strength of his arms, enveloped her, made her feel safe. In some ways, she herself could not believe that she’d finally come back to Hayden.
“It was terrible,” she at last managed to say when her tears had slowed. She sat back on the sofa, her physical and emotional fatigue beginning to take its toll on her. She wanted to tell Leonard of her long night on the road, but couldn’t help thinking of what had happened to the place where she had been just yesterday, to the people she had seen there. “I got back on the road and started to drive back toward Hayden, and everything was fine until…”
“Until the bomb was dropped on Atlanta,” Leonard said, his voice echoing the anguish coursing through her.
Lynn shook her head. “I didn’t see it or anything,” she told him. “I guess I was too far away already. But all of a sudden, more and more cars appeared on the road, a lot of them packed up like the people driving them were going on a trip or moving. After a while, there got to be so many cars that the whole road was filled, so that nobody could possibl
y travel in the opposite direction. Not that anybody was trying to.”
“I tried to,” Leonard said. “As soon as I heard on television what happened, I got in my car to try to come find you.” Even amid her despair at all that had happened in the last twelve hours, it touched Lynn very deeply that Leonard had gone searching for her. “With all the traffic coming north, I couldn’t get very far.”
Lynn nodded. “The road got jammed and everything slowed down,” she said. “I asked somebody in the car next to me where everybody was going.” She recalled all too clearly the stricken expression of the woman with whom she’d spoken. The woman told her what had befallen the people of Atlanta, though her words seemed too incredible to believe. Lynn had asked somebody else then, who confirmed that Georgia’s capital had been attacked with a devastating weapon that had virtually obliterated it.
“That must have been horrible for you,” Leonard said.
“It was,” Lynn said, though she realized it had not been anywhere near as horrible for her as it had been for the people of Atlanta. “I couldn’t keep driving,” she said. “I pulled off to the side of the road for a while and just…” For a time, she’d just sat in her truck, quaking. “When I finally began driving again, the road was completely filled with cars, making everybody move really slowly. There were people walking alongside the road too, and sometimes they were going faster than the cars.” She stopped talking for a moment and sighed heavily. “It took me all this time to get back to Hayden,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you, but I just had to see you.”
“I know,” Leonard said, reaching forward to hold her hands. “I’m so glad you did. I wasn’t really sleeping anyway.”
“How’s everybody in town?” Lynn asked.
“People are shaken pretty badly,” Leonard said. “Pru Glaston knew you’d gone down to Atlanta, of course, so she was worried about you and also still worried about Audie.”
“Because if I didn’t get the medicine…” she said, not needing to complete the thought.
“But I told her that you’d gotten the phenytoin and were on the road back to Hayden,” Leonard said. “I told her you’d called to tell me you were all right. I didn’t want her to worry, and I just figured I’d have to find someplace else to get Audie’s medication.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” Lynn said. “I just didn’t want to stop driving. I just wanted to get home. I never thought it would take this long.”
“I understand,” Leonard said. “I’m just so glad you’re back.”
“Me too,” she said. “I feel safe again.”
“We’ve been lucky here so far,” Leonard said. “The prevailing winds over Atlanta are blowing toward the east and the southeast. It doesn’t appear that we’re going to get any fallout here.”
“Any what?” Lynn asked. She’d never heard the word before.
“The, uh, bomb that fell on Atlanta essentially poisoned the air,” Leonard explained. “If that air blew over Hayden, people here might get very sick.”
“Oh, no,” Lynn said. “Then people in Georgia are going to get sick?”
“I’m afraid so,” Leonard said. “But according to the news reports, a lot of people are leaving the area. You saw that tonight.”
“Yeah,” Lynn said. Her head hurt, and she closed her eyes.
When she opened them, she lay on the sofa, and Leonard stood over her, pulling a blanket across her body and up to her chin. She wanted to speak to him, but she couldn’t find the energy within her to do so. She closed her eyes again and drifted back to sleep.
After McCoy had gotten out of the car, he reached back in for the small, flat box. He removed its top and emptied it into his hand, then tucked the contents into the pocket of his slacks. Then he picked up the paper bag he’d brought with him and walked to the side door, where he knew Lynn would be in her kitchen, preparing supper for the two of them. As he knocked, he saw her inside through the gauzy white curtains that covered the window in the top half of the door.
“Come on in,” Lynn called. McCoy reached for the knob and stepped inside. The delicious aromas of her cooking reached him immediately.
“It sure smells good in here,” he said, breathing the scents in deeply.
“You always say that,” Lynn said, standing at the stove, stirring a wooden spoon around in a pot.
“It’s always true,” McCoy said. He put the bag down on the kitchen table, between the two place settings Lynn had already set for them.
“What’ve you got there?” she asked, looking back over her shoulder.
McCoy reached into the bag and, with a flourish, pulled out the bottle he’d asked Ashby Robinson—the son of Turner, from whom he’d inherited the general store—to order for him a couple of days ago. “I got us a bottle of champagne,” he said.
“Champagne?” Lynn asked. “Fancy. Are we celebrating something?”
Fully aware that they would indeed be celebrating soon, McCoy opted for coyness. “You never know,” he said.
Of late, nobody in town—nobody in the country—had felt much like rejoicing. A little more than a month ago, Atlanta had been bombed out of existence in a frightening display of Nazi capabilities. At the same time, the atomic device dropped on the city of Boston had failed to detonate, sparing at least sixty-five thousand people from death, and another one hundred forty thousand from injury. McCoy could only surmise that the defective bomb had been retrieved and now aided American scientists in their own quest to create an atomic weapon—a quest that must have begun far later and met with far less success than the Manhattan Engineering District had in the twentieth-century timeline that his presence had not corrupted.
In the Pacific, Peru and much of Chile had now fallen to Japanese forces, though the United States, Canada, and Mexico had so far managed to defend North America from further attacks. In Europe, the war continued, in a struggle McCoy hoped would result in an Allied victory before Germany could produce their next generation of V-2 rockets. For once the range of those rockets increased enough to provide a transatlantic delivery mechanism for their atomic bombs, the United States would have little choice but to surrender.
In the last few days, though, life had begun to return to a more or less normal shape in Hayden. As terrible as the loss of Atlanta and its population had been, the rest of the nation had spent most of the last month bracing for additional attacks within the country’s borders. When after weeks that hadn’t happened, people had finally started to breathe a little easier.
And McCoy himself had moved inexorably toward tonight.
He popped the cork from the champagne and poured glasses for Lynn and himself to have with supper. She had never drunk it before and couldn’t really decide whether or not she liked it. She enjoyed the bubbles, but wasn’t so sure about the taste.
After they’d finished eating supper and cleaning up, they repaired to the parlor. Over the last couple of years, they had found a way to introduce their mutual enjoyment of novels into their friendship: they selected a book of interest to them both, and then one would read aloud to the other. They had initially planned to do that tonight, but as they sat down on the davenport, McCoy finally did what he had decided to do a month ago.
Setting aside the copy of Moby-Dick they had intended to begin tonight, McCoy said, “Lynn, I have something for you.”
“Champagne and a present?” she said. “What did I do to deserve this?”
“You’re just you,” he said, and he reached into his pocket. When he pulled his hand back out, he held it faceup in front of Lynn. In his palm lay the garnet-inlaid gold bracelet that he’d tried to give her on her birthday more than five years ago. She gazed down at it, then peered up at him quizzically. “It’s not a ring,” he told her, “but will you marry me?”
Lynn’s expression seemed to undergo more transitions than McCoy could process. He thought he saw complete surprise, confusion, delight, shock, and finally joy. Lynn virtually launched herself across the davenport and into McC
oy’s arms, not even bothering to take the bracelet. “Yes, yes, yes,” she said. She began kissing his face over and over, until he found her lips with his. They kissed deeply, passionately, as though the years together—but apart—had all been a buildup to this moment.
When at last they pulled back and looked at each other, she took his face in her hands. “Oh, Leonard McCoy, you are full of surprises,” she said.
He smiled at her. “Does that mean you want the bracelet?” he said.
“What do you think?” she said, and she reached for his closed hand. He opened his fingers, uncovering the bracelet. Lynn picked it up and examined it closely. “It’s so beautiful,” she said. She stood up as she unhooked its clasp, then wrapped it around her wrist. “Oh my goodness,” she said, extending her arm to admire it. “Oh my goodness.” She crossed the room to the standing lamp there and held the bracelet up beneath it. “Oh my…” When her voice faded to silence, he thought she’d just been caught up in looking at her new jewelry, but then she peered over at him, the look of confusion he’d seen earlier now returned to her face.
“What is it?” McCoy asked.
“Why now?” she asked him. “After all this time, why now?”
“I don’t know,” he said, though of course he did. When he thought Lynn had been killed, and then she’d shown up on his doorstep, he didn’t know if he’d ever known such profound relief. He’d also known that he did not want to risk losing her again. Marriage wouldn’t necessarily prevent that, wouldn’t safeguard her from all harm, but he felt compelled to make himself her husband. “I guess it just felt right.”
“But it doesn’t feel right,” Lynn said. She looked down at the bracelet and then back over at McCoy. “Believe me, I want it to, but it feels…forced,” she said.
McCoy stood up from the davenport. “Lynn,” he said, “I love you. I think you’ve known that for a long time.”
“I think I have too,” she said. “But that’s what doesn’t feel right. You’ve loved me, but you haven’t wanted to be together. So why all of a sudden?”
Crucible: McCoy Page 64