Suzy’s lips tightened, just a fraction. She felt a pang of inexplicable jealousy. She scolded herself, I mustn’t be jealous of figments of his imagination.
“And what a pot of gold had invariably awaited me there!” Alec affirmed, now lost in the world of yesteryear.
He didn’t tell her that this strange period in his life, lasting no more than a few months, coincided with his incipient maturity, perhaps stimulated by the hormones that demanded some strange metamorphosis in his body. In his inner worlds, as he called them, he and Sandra had crossed galaxies, traversed eons of time, cringed frozen, terrified, while suspended over the green slime of the primordial earth, only to return with more questions than he had before. Only in those days, Sandra was there to answer many of his questions.
Now, Sandra was gone.
Alec could recall virtually all the details of his experiences under Sandra’s tutelage. What he experienced became indelibly etched on his young mind.
“You must understand, Su, that the inner-world I had seemingly created for myself was as real as anything I had ever experienced with my five physical senses. In fact, those very same senses seemed infinitely more acute, sharpened to diamond hardness, honed to perfection in the worlds where no mundane distractions diluted their effectiveness.”
He took a deep breath. There seemed an eerie silence around them, as though nature herself was listening to the secrets of the inner worlds.
“Yet, as far as Sandra was concerned, there is one other trait that set her apart from all the other characters I had played, or played with, or indeed had created in my imagination. For surely, in spite of the palpable reality of my inner worlds, it must have been just imagination.” He smiled sadly. “What else? You do not scale Mt. Everest and conquer the North Pole in the same day, indeed, within the same hour or two…”
His voice grew quiet, hardly above a whisper.
“What really set her apart from all the other imaginary characters was, or had been, that she alone had not succumbed to my will. She had not appeared at my bidding, had not acted in a manner that in any way implied that I was, or had been, the creator of her presence. If anything, I’d felt subjected to her will, her desires, her bidding…”
He couldn’t tell her, not his dear, dear Suzy, that he recalled making himself available to Sandra’s every whim. Or so it had seemed at the time. And what was equally as strange was that this indelible impression that Sandra left on his awareness has been etched on his mind after only a few months. She’d come, she’d conquered, and she was gone. All in his dreams. Or daydreams. No matter. She was more real to him, even now, than any other experience that ever touched his awareness.
“And when I finally began to understand the possible reasons for her presence, she bid me her final farewell.”
His mind retreated into a realm he’d once called his own. What an incredible farewell it had been. He was no longer talking to Suzy. He was reliving the experience he would carry for the rest of his life.
“We both hovered among an infinity of stars. Suspended, weightless… The black velvet of outer space, as wide and as deep as my inner senses would reveal to me, surrounded us on all sides. Then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, she merged into me, imbued me with the presence of her utterly overpowering intensity; melted into my beingness. It was as though her own individuality was no more, as though her very sense of being became my own. But she did not die: quite the contrary. From that day, from that strangest of all my experiences, I became one with her, joined into a single amalgam, into a precious alloy that could never be set apart.”
The rest he couldn’t share, not even with Suzy. He closed his eyes…
Even as he became aware of Sandra losing her individuality within his, from that day on he remained convinced that, should he die, he in turn would lose his individuality within her. Like an evolving vortex—a partnership of being and becoming. Like two peas in a single pod. For of one thing Alec was as sure as of day being followed by night: Sandra was immortal. She also seemed to be all-knowing, omnipresent, or at least present wheresoever Alec found himself in any of the inner or outer worlds. Somehow, at some level of perception, she was with him, an inseparable part of his own being.
“Alec? Alec, come back…” Suzy was shaking his arm. “Alec!”
His eyes opened slowly. He smiled at his love.
“Don’t worry, darling. All this happened more than ten years ago, when I was just stepping on the road toward manhood.”
In a way, one could say that Sandra, a girl, a woman, an incredibly beautiful Princess, made him a man. In another way, she was none of these, yet, she was all of them at the same time.
As fate would have it, at about that same time, Alec had also met Suzy.
Both blondes, both beautiful, but that is where the likeness ended. Even as Sandra conquered and ruled his inner worlds, Suzy was the supreme queen of his passion. Suzy was as physically enchanting as Sandra was adept at sating his more esoteric needs.
Ten years...
Although Alec had not given up his imaginary travels for some years, Sandra had never again appeared in them. And yet, in a strange way, he’d always held a deep conviction that she was here, and there, and wherever he went, with him. Perhaps she really was one with him. Though in what way, by what blending of atoms or subatomic particles, he couldn’t explain.
“So you see, Pet, she is not a woman of whom you can be jealous.”
“Who, me?” She managed to convey innocence mixed with absolute denial. “Jealous?” She was almost convincing.
Alec held Suzy closer to his chest. “There is a school of thought that within every man there is an anima, even as an animus is in every woman. They are one, only my anima became personalized in my imagination....”
Suzy looked up at him. This time there was no doubt in her eyes. No doubt at all.
“I suppose,” he added ponderously, “you might think of her as the feminine part of my own self. As part of me. Whatever part Sandra plays in my life, it is as much at your disposal as any other aspect of my being. Do you believe me?”
She nodded. Alec breathed a sight of relief, although his conclusion was not quite accurate. He rationalized his feeling this way, but, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was a physicist, that he was totally committed to scientific research, he would simply have said that it was Suzy who ruled his heart.
There was one other thing he couldn’t tell her. For some inexplicable reason he felt that Sandra, the Sandra within him, was a source of quite incredible power. A power that was neutral, amoral, and, in equally as strange way, at his disposal. Only he had no idea how to use it, let alone how to control it. Yet, it seemed, it was a power that demanded recognition.
Yes, he nodded to himself. Suzy ruled his heart, but Sandra, Princess Sandra, ruled his soul.
A week later Alec left for Caltech.
He was hoping to leave youthful fancies behind.
***
2
Alexander Baldwin Ph.D.
From the synchrocyclotron at Columbia University to the monster atom-smasher at Waxahachie in Texas, was a long journey. During the intervening years, the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which measured some four miles around, dominated the field of nuclear physics. Finally the Superconducting Super Collider, the SSC, at Waxahachie, was built to measure more than fifty miles in diameter. “Don’t mess with Texas” is the saying down South. Texas likes to be big. The biggest—if at all possible. Well, Alec had no intention of messing with Texas or with the SSC. An opportunity to peek at the installation was all he could hope for.
And as he discovered later, there was a great deal to peek in on.
Already, after only a few years in the field, Alec found that there were many approaches in the advancement of research. Some, perhaps one could put Texans in this category, appeared to measure success in size. Others counted the number of years; still others stressed the degree of intensity.
In physical terms, the SSC was the biggest but measured in years, in experience, it was a mere baby. No one knew for certain what doors it might open, what secrets of science it might unveil. After all, in terms of duration ‘modern’ physics may be said to have begun around 430 B.C., when Democritus of Abdera declared that ‘Nothing exists except atoms and empty space: everything else is opinion.’
Perhaps. Opinions vary.
Alec thought that if we chose to measure the generations of knowledge by intensity, then we would have to pay homage to a group of people who formed part of the Manhattan Project. While their objective could be described as ignominious––the building of the atom bomb––it brought together the créme de la créme of scientific minds of the time. Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, after whom the Fermilab was later named, John von Neuman, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman, Eugene Winger.... Some called this group the greatest gathering of intellects since ancient Greece.
Other scientists assigned value to larger chunks of history.
There were those who called the XVII century the age of genius. Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, William Harvey, Christiaan Huygens, Baron von Leibniz, Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Francis Bacon, John Locke... the list seemed endless, a roster seldom if ever surpassed in any century of intellectual endeavour. Alec smiled at the thought of where he might have been today if it weren’t for those men. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, he thought. Without them we are nothing.
Alec always relied on intensity. He found that time is flexible, while intensity is like a pebble thrown into a pond. It creates concentric waves, ever increasing, ever bearing fruit in the field of human progress. The consequences of greatness leave their indelible mark on humanity as a whole.
Yes––intensity was always affecting time, while time might leave no mark on humanity at all. Like the stagnation of the Dark Ages.
But science was only one factor that stirred Alec’s hunger.
Though he would never admit it to his colleagues, the experiences of his early teens were also firmly anchored in his subconscious. While he fully accepted the limitations imposed by the material world, he refused to prejudge the physical reality as the only reality. Somewhere, there was a bridge waiting to be discovered, perhaps crossed. It was a bridge only for the daring, for the stout of heart. But, he felt certain in his own heart that, when discovered, it would be a real, solid, scientific bridge. A bridge that would justify his choice of profession, and would somehow, someway, integrate it with the demands of his psyche.
He didn’t expect it to be easy.
For the next few months, Alec tried to lose himself in his work. Researching a thesis was not something that could be carried out on a part time basis. It demanded full effort, total concentration and commitment. His great advantage over the other researchers was his relative maturity. Perhaps due to being a single child, Alec had been forced to spend a lot of his early years in the company of adults. This alone advanced his mental development well ahead of his biological years. As for the usual hormonal interferences—and powerful interferences they had been—he discharged them, so to speak, during the three intervening years between his sexual awakening and moving in with Suzy. At McGill he found les girls as exiting as would any virile young man. His reasonably athletic physique was generally regarded as attractive. His academic standing belied his somewhat scatterbrained appearance with the signature mop of disorderly hair hanging over his rugged features. He’d tasted the forbidden fruit and found it interesting, stimulating, but not overwhelming. For a while he experimented with the different aspects of the feminine mystique, until he discovered, to his utter amazement, that not one of his passing romances came even close to the enchantment that Suzy radiated. It was a moment of such powerful epiphany that he called her that same day and asked her to marry him.
She refused. He remembered that day, as that same evening, and extending well into the night, an electrical storm raged over Montreal with unprecedented fury. Next morning, the meteorologists were at a loss to explain the heavy storm, that didn’t deposit a single drop of precipitation.
She’d said that she would never marry a man she couldn’t trust. He recalled the conversation. He recalled most things that concerned Suzy. Even when he was with other girls.
“You mean you don’t trust me? Why on earth not?” He wasn’t really hurt; rather surprised.
“I didn’t say that.”
He couldn’t decide whether she was coy or serious. His mathematical mind worked more in black and white than in shades of gray. Suzy’s mind was multi-hued.
“Yes, you did. You said...”
“I said I could never marry a man I didn’t trust.”
“Well?”
“Well...? How am I supposed to know if I can trust you or not?”
“But... but... don’t you trust me?”
“I don’t know. Should I?”
The funny thing was that he’d never really thought about it. To be quite honest, his relationship with Suzy matured from a youthful infatuation to an almost sisterly relationship, to mad sailing cruises in beguiling moonlight, to.... He really didn’t know where he stood exactly. Suzy was as much a part of his life as eating and drinking. Perhaps, even more so. She was like a fresh breath of spring he inhaled in moments of euphoria.
Did any of this advance him towards marriage?
“I would never break a promise to you.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t. But you also wouldn’t break a promise given to anyone else. Would you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then we cannot take this as the sole postulate for marriage.”
“I never said it was sole...”
“Alexander.” She only used his full name when she was about to say or ask something very important. “Why do you want to marry me?”
“Because I love you, of course.”
“There is no ‘of course’ about it. Many people get married for many more obscure reasons. They are bored, lonely, insecure, afraid, to face the world alone. Are you any of these?”
“I... I don’t think so. Why are you asking me all this? Don’t you want to get married?”
“Frankly... not today.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Alexander!”
“Oh, all right. I’ll do it your way. Tell me what it is and I’ll do it.”
“Let me think about it and I’ll let you know. Give me a couple of weeks.”
Alec spent the next fortnight sitting on pins and needles. It was utterly absurd. Normally he would go to see her; they would dine together, go for a walk, with luck he might get lucky, as they say. He did fairly often. Suzy was no pushover, but she wasn’t a prude. In fact she was disarmingly honest. There was no ‘not tonight, I’ve got a headache’ nonsense about her. If she wanted him she said so. If for whatever reason the atmosphere wasn’t quite right, she was also open about it. Perhaps that is why whenever they did make love, it was always special. Something to be remembered—almost cherished. Suzy was a very special lady.
Finally, after exactly two weeks the telephone rang.
“Let’s move in together,” she said. No ‘hello’, no ‘how are you?’. Just that. A proposal—rather a proposition. He wasn’t sure which.
That was almost three years ago. He’d just turned twenty-one. It was a good time to try something new. They moved in together the next day without actually getting rid of their old places. For some unknown reason, at least unknown to Alec, she wanted it that way. It had to be a different place. A new beginning. Their new place was small, worse than they’ve been used to, but they were together. It lasted three weeks. It was not quite the same as seeing each other on special occasions. No matter how often.
They’d joined forces some six more times, not counting occasional weekends. Once they’d lasted almost four months. It had been then that she’d said that she was considering giving up her own apartment. Alec took her to dinner and got rather tipsy. Someho
w he’d considered it a major victory. For all his previous philandering, Alec had never discovered that women mature much faster than men. A year later she’d told him that finally he’d started acting like a man. That he’d matured. That he was still young wine, but the vintage showed promise.
“And before?”
“Before, my boy, you were a boy.”
And that was that.
The first thing Alec had to do was to get his subject approved. He’d selected the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, because this illustrious university boasted, in his opinion, the top physicist in the world, Dr. Desmond McBride, whose acumen did not stop him from acting, on occasion, like a sour Scotsman––Scot, as he preferred to be called. Dr. McBride never tired of reminding people that it was self-evident that he was a man, whereas the word Scot denoted his affiliation to a Gaelic tribe of Northern Ireland, which migrated to Scotland in the fifth century. Regardless of his heritage, Dr. McBride, McDes as he was called behind his back, dared to talk and write things in scientific papers on subjects that others feared. He did not regard the present advancement of knowledge to be the alpha and omega of human endeavour. Quite the contrary. To many of his equally illustrious colleagues and to anyone who would listen, he also never tired of saying that physics had barely scratched the surface of knowledge.
“Nuts! My boy,” he assured Alec, wrapping one of his arms over Alec’s shoulder, which was about a foot higher than his own. “Nuts to them and to all theirr cohorrts. They wouldn’t rrecognize a quarrk if it were squirrted into theirr nostrrils.”
Professor McBride liked Alec the moment he laid eyes on him. The feeling was mutual. It could have been that they shared an affinity for disheveled mops over their equally high foreheads. It could have also been the seemingly scatterbrained look they shared, no matter how misleading. Alec knew that with the Professor, with McDes, he could dare to go where no man had gone before. Only in the opposite direction to Captain James Kirk. The good Captain had gone outwards. Alec was directing his spaceship inwards. As far in as he could possibly go. He completely ignored the fact that some of the post-docs working at Caltech referred to the Professor not as McDes, but McDeath. The Professor didn’t mince words when he saw mediocrity. He called a spade a spade. And, even in the field of physics, there were many spades around that should have been shoveled away.
Alexander: [Alexander Trilogy Book Two] Page 3