by Philip Wylie
Miss Li laughed. "Perfect! For a scientist."
Faith said, "And you?"
Ben chuckled, sipped coffee and let the cool air that eddied from some silent but potent source flow over him, gratefully. Finally he said, "As for me, I am a good scientist only when at work. As of now--digesting filet and a lot of other delicious things--I feel more inclined to the poetic view than the physical. Sunrises and sunsets, even though explicable, always have a mystical effect on me. And I never inquire why I feel any mystical sensation, unless I'm in a lab. They're too rare and valuable to analyze."
"Me, too!" Faith nodded. "Sometimes when I watch the sunset, I'm almost angry with education. I wish I didn't know about the diffraction of light and the rotation of the earth and so on! It must have been far more fun to be alive when everybody didn't know everything!"
"Everything?" Miss Li murmured.
"Too damned much, anyhow."
"Oh, yes!" The Chinese girl agreed with that. She was looking at something that had caught her interest.
Another girl--as different and, in her way, as lovely as Lodi Li--appeared, briefly.
A Negress. Tall, tawny-skinned, lithe, and striding, almost--yet with feral smoothness. In white shorts and sneakers, with a white halter, carrying a tennis racket which made Ben realize he'd been dimly aware of the thonk of tennis balls ever since they'd come out on the terrace for coffee. The girl's black hair was wavy and long and worn now in a pony tail. She looked toward the house and raised her tennis racket. "Hello, Faith! Evening, people!" She laughed in saying that--calling it, really, over green lawn and the hedges silently busy pushing out their shadows.
"Hi, Connie!" Faith's response was warm and clear and, otherwise, unexplained.
Lodi Li had murmured something when the dark girl had appeared, but Ben hadn't caught it.
Now, Faith said, "There's the first star."
Ben looked up in the darkling azure where overhead, and only overhead, the smoggy mist of the heat wave had not faded the sky's blueness. He was on the point of correcting the word "star" to "planet" and decided it would be too damned exact. Too Brookhaven. He nodded. They sat in silence and peace.
By and by Lodi Li stood up. "If you two will forgive me, I'm going to my--" she smiled at Faith--" very elegant rooms. They gave me a farewell party up in Maine last night. And I packed afterward. And then I started driving. So--"
"You mean, you didn't sleep at all?" Faith exclaimed.
Lodi Li nodded. "Not any. So--"
"Lord! You must tell me how you managed not to show a trace of it!" "That's easy! I managed by telling myself, the whole afternoon and so far this evening, that I'd soon be asleep!"
"Zen!" Faith cried, pleased and not mocking.
"Yogi," the Chinese girl chuckled. "But it doesn't work endlessly. If you'll forgive me--?"
When she'd gone, the two people on the terrace were quiet for so long that each began to wonder, in the deepening dusk, if the other had dozed off. But just before Faith rose to make a close inspection, Ben, seeing the preliminary movement, said, lazily,
"What's that giant rockslide that looks fresh-blasted, down below Sachem's Watch? You quarry limestone here?"
"Papa's Panic Palace," Faith answered--sharply, he thought. "Hasn't he told you about it, by now?"
"Panic Palace?" he repeated. "No." He sounded puzzled and then, not. "You mean--?"
Faith nodded and he saw that clearly, because just as her bright head moved, she turned on lights which, though wan and indirect, momentarily almost hurt his dark-accustomed eyes. "He'll take you on the grand tour tomorrow, that's for sure. However, I'd rather talk about almost anything else in the world than that! It's so dull, and so interminable. I'd even rather talk about Antarctica. "
He grinned. "Okay. Let's."
From Antarctica their conversation fled the world over, but rested mainly upon themselves and their agreements and differences on more subjects than either would have guessed they could or would summon in an hour or two of random talk at twilight, subjects that ranged from sleeping "raw" (they both did, they found) to junk jewelry (neither one liked it, as a rule), and from French cigarettes (another point of mutual distaste) to horseback riding (she did; he didn't).
When the phone summoned her, he sat alone watching the stars overhead, and trying to find the planet, but failing, as it had already descended into the murk that rode above this heavily-populated and largely-industrialized portion of New England.
Faith reappeared finally, but did not resume her lounging seat. "It was Kit. He won his bet. He's going home and says he'll show up in the morning. Want to know something?"
"What?"
"I'm pretty sure Kit made that bet and took that long swim on purpose." She saw he failed to comprehend. "I mean, so you and I could have this evening together. He's nice, a lot of ways. See?"
"Yes. Guess I do. I'll remember that degree of niceness. And I appreciate it, too!"
She smiled gently. "I hope. But the appreciation hour's over. I'm going in. Letters to write--then, bed."
She came nearer. He had risen and he had the sudden thought that she expected, or hoped, he'd kiss her good night. Like a pretty tot offering herself, hesitantly, to a new-met but approved-of uncle. Maybe. He held out his long arm, its long-fingered hand.
When she'd gone, he thought a stroll in the gardens would be appropriate.
Thought that until, stepping from the air-conditioned outdoor area of the terrace, he rediscovered the heat of the dark. Ninety-five degrees, he guessed; and like hitting a good line of an opposing football team. It virtually halted him, nearly threw him back for a loss. So he went to his room . . . and, at last, to sleep.
CHAPTER 3
At 4: 15 A.M. on that hot end-of-July Friday a phone rang in the bedroom of the President of the United States. He woke instantly. Lights went on automatically with the phone's jangle. The President saw--indeed, already knew from the sound--it was not the red phone. The dreadful one. The phone that was the last thing he looked at every night, and the first subject of his nightly prayer, a reverent entreaty that the red instrument would never ring. This was the less-loud but still-portentous green phone.
"The President"--he had to clear his throat--"speaking."
"Ralph Hager, here." His Secretary of State--and, as the President knew, the phone he held would also be connected with others: his Chief of Staff, the Missile Center Commander, General Torrence, the Vice-President.
"Yes, Ralph?"
"Sorry about waking you. But it's pretty bad." The Secretary of State seemed to have trouble with words, as if he'd been drinking. But President Conner knew it wasn't that. If Hager had lost his seemingly indestructible poise, this crisis call was more serious even than those other, often-appalling night alarms he and his predecessors had so often received. As they had done in their time, Conner now tried for an initial easement.
"I suppose," he said, rubbing an eye with his free hand, then using it to rake his now-white hair, "Costa Rica has just tested a neutron bomb?"
The chuckle of the listening men ran from hollow to admiring. The Secretary of State then put it bluntly: "A so-called 'volunteer' army is crossing the borders of Hungary into Yugoslavia. With Tito gone the Reds have apparently been setting this up for years."
"What's the NATO reaction?"
"To wait for word from you. Because this one's tough! Moscow and Peking have sent a joint ultimatum to London, Paris, and us. If NATO, or anybody, tries to prevent this 'liberation' of Yugoslavia, Grovsky's threat is to use two shots on two cities. Wipe out Paris and London. Of course, both capitals are frantic. We have two hours--less about ten minutes, now--to decide."
The President did not know he had stood up. Did not know he was breaking out in sweat. All he knew was that he had to concentrate his whole being-brain, heart, soul, and body--on this sudden and not wholly foreseen situation. He thought for a moment.
"Okay," he said to the breathing men who waited. Said that, because it was a r
elaxed response. He added, "Get Moscow and Peking right away. Tell them we have to have six hours. Say that I'm taking a secret rest-up and can't be reached except by helicopter--better yet!--by horseback. A couple of times in my first years, you'll all recall, I did put myself in such a position! Just to establish it. In case we ever needed to gain time. We do now, God knows!"
General Eade McClung, Chief of Staff, said in his deep, roaring tone, "We won't get six hours, Mr. President."
"No. But we'll get four. Better than two."
Another voice entered the discussion, light, effete, not at all indicative of the mind that was its master: the voice of Purdy Smythe, Intelligence Coordinator: "It is possible, Mr. President--"
"Oh, 'morning, Purd!"
"'Morning, sir." Reluctantly, it seemed, the Coordinator obeyed some standing recent presidential order: "I mean, Dave. Certain information makes us wonder, here at Intelligence, if this time they really mean to pull the plug."
"The stuff you sent over yesterday? Subs sneaking around? The presumed 'wreck'
the Navy just located off Boston, near one already on their charts? The new wreck? Have they looked it over?"
"No, Mr. Presi--Dave. The Navy feels that even an undersea approach might--
well--"
"Detonate it? Providing it's what they fear?"
Smythe breathed a relieved, "Exactly." David Conner, President of the United States, caught on fast, Smythe thought--and that, from a man as eclectically educated, as traveled, as accomplished in fifty diverse ways, was a great compliment.
The President then spoke to all his auditors. "Right, gentlemen. Try for a six-hour delay. Get the London-Paris latest reactions. Remind Moscow and Peking we are ready and--if we must be--willing. Say that Yugoslavia recently chose, in a free, UN-supervised election, to side with the West, and the West stands for that freedom of determination, with or without London and Paris. Say I am adamant, but willing to confer--given six hours, not two. You'll know the distribution of other essential calls. Alert the retaliatory and defense system. And for the love of God, you who will talk to the Reds--sound calm!
Lazy. Even bored! The way you're panting over your phones now is not how to do it! If Grovsky in Moscow, or any of his top men--or if Tsin-tsu in Peking-wants to talk to me, put them through . . . after you've arranged a longer stretch of time."
Admiral Boone's worried voice came then. "You, Mr. President, and Mrs. Conner, and the children ought, I think, to fly at once for the Maryland post. I mean--if this thing warmed up--"
The President said, "Fooie! I'm going down stairs for some breakfast. I'm hungry!" And he hung up, grinning at the faint sounds of dismay he'd overheard.
His grin faded the moment he set down the phone. It had been the best he could do. Was it good enough? It had always worked before.
Threat, counterthreat, compromise, and--usually--some slight retreat of the free world that, as time passed, showed itself to be greater than it had first appeared. . . .
CHAPTER 4
Ben woke in the predawn hours surprised that he had already slept deeply. He had not expected that. Undressing alone in his guest chambers, he'd anticipated a night of nervous insomnia. One small question had altered his insight and even battered his basic concept of himself. . . .
Why didn't you ever ask me to marry you?
Faith had meant that . . . almost. Faith had meant, anyhow, that her engagement to Kit Barlow was not the whelming joy an engagement ought to be. She had meant she found him--Ben Bernman--attractive . . . at least, interesting.
With that he had realized how his feelings for her had grown, unknown by him, like the crystals that create a complex beauty inside a geode. Feelings that had begun with his first, startled grunt as he'd brushed snowflakes from the face of an unconscious woman and seen in the steady beam of a flashlight that she was beautiful. Feelings that had become clear and sharp and urgent . . . but stifled . . . in the weeks he'd seen her during her convalescence in the hospital on Long Island. Feelings that had exploded into his awareness only when she'd asked that strange question . . . asked it lightly yet with an undertone of urgency, or of--perhaps--irony; even bitterness.
Then he had known, of a sudden, and known in the next flash of thought that it was too late to know, to count, to matter. Known--or at least presumed-that Faith's words rose from her version of represented reaction. Not love necessarily of him, but an expression of the small and uneven affection she held for Barlow. So he thought.
Still, being honest--scientific as well--and a kind of brave gambler where his person and destiny were concerned, Ben wished he had asked her . . . wished he'd had the insight earlier, because it might have led him to ask . . . wished he'd taken the chance even though the outcome would have been . . . what? The yet-more-brutal thing of Faith's disillusionment in being engaged, or promised, or whatever, to a Jew, with all that signified? A love affair, maybe, broken off eventually? The mere idea stirred him to a degree he'd never experienced.
Or would she just have laughed at him, supposing he had known he loved her and said so? Worse, would she have tried to play up to such a statement and then gently let him down . . . because she would have felt she owed him the (accidental) debt of her life?
With his mind in a furnace of retrospection, of premises cast down as quickly as they were devised, Ben had anticipated a restless night. Yet he'd slept from about eleven until now. And now, his watch said in chimed code, was close to daybreak. He lay still, wondering what alarm had roused him, and then why he felt his awakening had been caused by alarm.
The hot dark outdoors was silent.
Not even a rooster crowed anywhere yet.
Was someone in danger? Had there been some devilish calamity at Brookhaven?
Had some stealthy hand tried his door? Why did he feel, for an instant, a cold surge of fear that, as he examined it, became baseless?
Ben didn't believe in telepathy. Didn't believe in the possibility that he, or anyone, might catch a winging wash of dread like this, that grew in intensity minute by minute on waves of unknown lengths from random epicenters. No physicist had detected any electromagnetic pulse related to such phenomena--hence, none existed, in all likelihood.
Since his nameless dread ebbed as rapidly as he searched for its source, Ben gave a mental shrug and shut his eyes again. It was a long time afterward when he would recall that just before he fell asleep, for a second time, his mind did fix momentarily on the hazardous circumstances in which modern men had lived, decade after decade: the madness of civilization that had reached a peak at which it could eradicate itself. But that fear, almost a generation old, was not then connected by the physicist with his awakening or its sensed cause: an undefined anxiety.
When he opened his eyes again, it was light. He thought he heard splashing sounds beyond his curtained glass wall and wondered, hopefully, if it was raining. He rose, donned a dressing gown, and drew the traverse curtains.
Vance Farr was swimming in the moat, his short, sturdy body in easy motion.
Moat . . . or pool. Or whatever they called it. Farr's red hair was darkened by the water, and his face, square, solid, amiable, turned toward the watching man with every other stroke. Its blue, open eyes must have seen the curtain draw, for Farr stopped swimming, began treading water, and beckoned. When Ben smiled, nodded, Farr grinned back and waited. In a matter of a minute Ben stepped outside. The flagstone rim of the moat was already hot on his bare feet. Farr waved.
"Hi!" Ben felt cheerful. Liked Farr.
The tycoon had an astonishingly versatile brain. He was genial and congenial.
Thinking about him, as Ben often had done, he'd felt Farr did not quite fit the big-business mold. He was too imaginative and too learned. Too unconcentrated. Above all else, too observant. For it had always seemed to Ben that Farr was the most noticing man he'd ever met.
Ben's greeting brought a challenge from the swimming man: "I always go clear around the place, mornings, if I have time." Farr
chuckled, spit water, and added, "And if the moat has water in it and the water doesn't happen to be frozen."
"How far is a lap?"
Vance replied as only he would, "Nineteen hundred and sixty-two yards and three inches--outside dimension. Bit over a mile. But I've done about a third of it. Game?"
Ben nodded. "Race you." He dived.
It wasn't a fair race, Ben realized, after they'd covered a hundred yards. The older man had energy and endless courage but he couldn't keep up with a competitor who was not only a foot taller but an ex-water-polo player and one, besides, who took a workout daily in the water--the pool inside the apartment where he lived, or on one of Long Island's beaches.
There, Ben now reflected, slowing down to keep even with Farr, this very Friday, some of his Brookhaven colleagues would beyond doubt soon be ranged along an Atlantic-facing beach and, certainly, talking physics or math while they drew diagrams in the sand. As he swam--almost languidly, for him--Ben recalled a scalding afternoon in August, two summers ago, when Kleinschmidt had suddenly hit on a new concept that explained how and why low-energy particles failed to obey the laws of parity that the other particles followed precisely.
Sitting on the sand, drawing diagrams and scribbling equations in it, while the girls accompanying the men watched, bored but unable to stop the demonstration.
And, Ben mused on, at noon this very day Kleinschmidt and whoever else was hanging around the labs at Columbia University would hold their immemorial "Chinese lunch"--the weekly meal-and-brains gathering that might continue a noon session through dinner or even far into the night. Even all night, if what was "started" over the soups, the dumplings, proved sufficiently interesting.