“No, but I saw one flying past us.”
“How are we able to see the stars, if time on them practically stands still?” asked Zef, all innocence.
“That’s absurd,” Haifan replied with a superior smile. “The star doesn’t know that it functions in retarded time, and it burns normally. The light reaches us, and we see it.”
“I don’t know, Haifan. Once I saw a line of cars on 5300 Avenue, in a high-speed lane, you know? Close together, at a speed of seventy. Then there was this sign that they could go to a hundred, and they all accelerated at the sign. And you know what happened? The line spread out.”
“I don’t get your point,” Haifan huffed. But he was too intelligent not to get it. He began to sweat, and his voice grew tight.
“Let me spell it out.” Zef knew he had his opponent by the throat now. “Suppose a square centimeter of star emits a million photons a second. I pulled that number out of a hat—I’m sure you know the right number—but the important thing is this: we see that the star is burning because many photons from it reach us. A second for the star, however, is a million years for us. And a million photons over a million years, that means a photon a year, which is nothing, complete darkness. The star is invisible! And yet, Haifan, you see the star when you look up, am I right?” Zef blew a slow gray bubble from his chewing gum.
Haifan muttered that of course the stars shone. He said that he had to go and wouldn’t be back until the pizza. He even left a few pages of his newspaper. Zef’s victory was crushing. The red comb above his head seemed to glow redder.
“Do you often needle him like that?” asked Gavein, amused.
Zef shook his head and drew in the gray bubble.
“Today was the first time,” he said seriously. “But I’ll do it regularly now. It was because of that bastard that I had to repeat a course. They assigned him to our school once. He doesn’t remember me.”
“And what is the truth, about the stars?”
“No one knows the truth. But he didn’t know that no one knows. In general, people think that space is like a piece of cheese with holes. In the holes, time flows quickly, that is, normally. It’s in the holes that you have the stars and planets. But where you have nothing . . . in the cheese itself, so to speak, time slows. That’s how we can see the stars.”
“So you’re saying that the speed of time depends on how far you are from a mass?” Gavein asked.
Zef nodded, blowing another bubble.
“But in that case something should happen in the regions where time slows down, in the cheese. Take runners at the end of a race, who start walking as they reach the tape. Suddenly there seem to be more of them. They’re packed closer together than when they were running . . .”
“Bunch of brains in Lavath,” Zef grumbled. Clearly he liked to preen no less than Haifan. “You’re right, Dave. Where time slows down, the photons pack together and it’s brighter. What was it like for you at the altitude of minutes, or higher?”
“It was bright, very bright, until the canvas covering us glowed red. Then we had to put on special glasses, so our eyes wouldn’t be damaged.”
“Those sons of bitches put people in canvas planes.” Zef spat. “You must have got one hell of a dose.”
“Dose of what?”
“X-rays, man! It’s not just light out there. Cosmic rays . . . microwaves, the whole bit. Your balls are as good as hard-boiled, Dave.”
“During the flight, they had us lock our hips in these metal boxes. For shielding, I’m sure. The metal was very thick.”
Zef gave Dave a look. “Around your hips, your pelvis, you say? Yeah, those transport guys know what they’re doing. But even so you probably became anemic. Hair fall out?”
“My hair? That started falling out when I was in the cradle. I have no idea where it keeps coming from, on my head . . . Since I’m getting stupider as I get older, maybe the gray matter oozes out through the sweat glands and evaporates, and everybody thinks it’s hair.” Gavein found himself talking like Zef. He was taken with the style, as much as the Tonescus detested it.
Zef picked his nose and regarded his finger.
“My gray matter must be leaving me through the nose, I have so much of this stuff,” he said.
Gavein grimaced. Then he slapped his forehead. “Wait. That’s why the plane flies at night, and why it goes so low during the day. It would burn up otherwise! From the sun.”
“Not bad . . . not bad,” said Zef. “Chop on.”
“Chop on?”
“With your brain. My expression signifies encouragement that you proceed mentally,” Zef translated.
“The planes can’t go too high, or they’ll explode. For that reason time compensation can’t equal more than five years.”
“Wow,” Zef said with admiration. He got up, went to the door, and stuck the ball of snot to the frame. “If Mom didn’t find this in the usual place, she’d pack me off to the psychiatrist for sure. I have to keep up my image of rebel,” he explained. “And they didn’t tell you why the planes aren’t metal?”
“They said that formerly the fuel would explode from the heat. Jet engines now are used only for takeoff. There’s no fuel left, at least not the high-octane stuff, and during the flight the propellers take over. Someone told me they run on steam, but that’s hard to believe.”
Gavein fell silent, puzzling over Zef’s persona of defiant youth, and also over the photons.
“Zef,” he said at last. “You know what this means? The sun must shine in a completely different place from the one in which we see it. Because the light doesn’t arrive right away. Maybe when it’s bright for us, it’s really night in the sky, and vice versa. Do you think?”
“I’ll go further.” Zef was digging in his nose for more of his brain. “Some guys think that the delay might be so great that Earth is wrapped in a bright spiral of day and a dark spiral of night, like two ribbons interwoven. Assuming, of course, that the planet doesn’t move.”
11
The Tonescus returned, but not all of them: just Gwenda; Haifan, with his newspaper; and Tad. The older Tonescu boy, unusually quiet, sat with his eyes on the tablecloth. The younger one still had not put in an appearance.
“You were right, Haifan. The stars can be seen because, although each one shines in slower time, it is unaware that its time is slower,” said Zef, gloomy. “I’ve thought it over. You win.” He emphasized “win” with a theatrical lowering of his head.
Haifan didn’t answer but sat more comfortably in his chair and spread his newspaper wider.
Zef sent a mischievous wink to Gavein, who was inspecting his pizza. The frozen pizzas came on cardboard trays that stuck to the food. The cardboard could be removed more easily after heating, but bits of it still ended up on one’s plate or even between one’s teeth.
“Awful! The things people do!” Haifan exclaimed. “Listen to this. ‘Today, in the afternoon, a group of children poured gasoline over an eight-year-old boy and set fire to him,’” he read aloud. “‘The boy ran into the road, calling for help. Eyewitnesses say he resembled a torch. It took them a minute to catch him, roll him over, and smother the flames. The child is in critical condition, his name still unknown. The perpetrators fled. We ask all parents in the district to report to the hospital at 5650 Avenue and 5430 Street.’ But that’s near us . . . !”
Gwenda looked at her son with suspicion.
“Tad, if you had a hand in this,” she said. She turned to her husband. “He’s hiding something, I know it.” To her son again: “Look me in the eye!”
The boy started crying. “I didn’t do it. I only held him down.” Tad sniveled. “Then I was sorry, because Aladar screamed so much.” He bawled.
“Aladar!” Gwenda cried.
She tried to strike her son, but Haifan restrained her. Then everything happened very quickly: she fainted; Edda rev
ived her; Leo went to get the truck from the garage, because neither Haifan nor his wife were in any condition to drive; then Haifan began to beat his son but stopped.
Leo, Haifan, Gwenda, and Tad left for the hospital, and suddenly it was very still.
“What was Aladar’s Name?” Gavein asked, for the first time in his life asking what someone’s Significant Name was.
“Flomir,” said Edda.
Flomir meant “from fire.” It was a Name of Element.
“You’ll miss your movie, Zef,” Gavein said. “Your Maslynnaya and Lola Low.”
“Screw them both,” muttered Zef. “Both at the same time . . .”
Silence.
“And you, Dave, is your Name by any chance Aeriel?” Zef asked unexpectedly.
Gavein started. “That’s right,” he said.
“And how long were you at the altitude of seconds?”
“The pilot told us it was about twenty-seven hours.”
“You should get yourself checked, man, for leukemia.”
It was obvious now to Gavein why he had seen so many more planes at high altitude than low. They were simply packed together, like photons arriving from the stars.
12
Leo returned late, alone, and said that Gwenda and Haifan were watching over their burnt child. Tad had been detained by the police.
Pale and disheveled after a sleepless night, Haifan came home on the first morning bus. Aladar had died at sunrise, not regaining consciousness. Gwenda, her nerves shattered, had been admitted to the women’s section of the same hospital.
The mood was funereal. Gavein showed up to eat his macaroni and pizza and immediately left. He preferred to lie on his mattress or on the rug and stare at the ceiling, at a wall, at the telephone that was silent, not clattering once.
He went to see the movie starring Maslynnaya and Lola Low, because that was the only one playing in the neighborhood theaters. Zef was right: both actresses were well endowed. But it was boring: there was nothing to the story.
It’s the same here, no better, he thought sourly. Just as in Lavath, the films are given moronic plots. He had already come to this conclusion about the television fare.
While Gavein was in the theater, Hilgret received a fatal electric shock ironing clothes. She fell unconscious, the cord caught around her, and the current kept passing through her body. The rug caught fire from the iron. Edda returned in time to extinguish the flames but too late to save Hilgret.
When Gavein got back, the body had already been taken to the morgue. There was only a burnt hole in the rug.
“It’s stalking us,” said Edda, becoming hysterical. It lurks out there, waiting for the next victim . . . This, it’s only the beginning.”
“You’re right, Edda,” said Haifan. He had aged overnight. “Sometimes, for years at a time, nothing happens. Peace and contentment. Then suddenly, for no reason, everything is turned upside down, day after day. Our life goes slowly, then it races.”
Like the passage of time itself, Gavein thought. A plane ascends. The pilot thinks he is flying normally, but to the people on the ground he is almost motionless.
The next day, Hanning called to say that Mrs. Dave Throzz could be picked up now, at Port 0-2. He tried to be polite, even correcting himself: “Mrs. Magdalena Throzz.” The port was at the northern end of 2000th Street. Depending on the weather, it was a drive of from fifteen to twenty-five hours.
Gavein made a reservation for a microbus, since he hadn’t bought a car yet. The bus cost him twenty packets.
The weather wasn’t that bad, but the ride took twenty-six hours, because other passengers got on or got off en route. It was cheaper this way. Gavein could sleep under any conditions, and whenever he was the only passenger, he stretched out comfortably on a seat.
There were two drivers. Goft (from Gozzafath) had a puffy face and bags under his eyes. He said he was switching to another line of work soon. The second driver, Pat, was as old as Goft, gaunt, toothless, with sunken cheeks and gray skin. On the fingers of his right hand, he had tobacco stains, but he never smoked while he drove. He talked a lot, with a lisp. He talked about his wife and four children, two of whom had light hair, though the parents were both grays. Pat couldn’t get over that misfortune, because those two were his most capable offspring. They had no chance to get a higher education, being whites. The other two were studying engineering. When Pat talked, he leaned toward you, and his breath was fetid. Gavein twisted away from the smell. He found that if he pressed back, deep into his seat, Pat couldn’t follow, restrained by the safety belt. It was even better when Pat drove.
The 0-2 seaport turned out to be an enormous structure with a blank wall of red brick several kilometers long. At the base of the wall was a row of numbered doors. Inside the building went an endless hall, filled with glassed-in cubicles for officials, dozens of rope barriers, kiosks, and little shops.
Limping, Gavein picked his way through the crowds of travelers and waiting families. His feet hurt from being immobile so long. After twenty minutes, he found the right section. The secretary was a red.
That’s all they hire, he thought. But he was wrong: the red woman directed him to the correct person, a black woman. He went with her to the room where they kept the catalogues.
“The file should be here.” She put on her glasses to read the labels on the metal cabinets along the wall. In glasses she looked prettier—more intelligent.
She should keep them on her nose all the time, not in the pocket of her uniform, he thought.
She searched for the right file.
“Here’s transport number 077-12-11-4,” she said. “Hmm. Ah? Four years of compensation.” She looked at him over the paper. “You’re going to be surprised.”
“Something happened?”
“No, but the years go by. She has definitely changed. She might have forgotten you.”
“That’ll be my problem. I’d like to see her, as soon as I can.”
The official nodded: she understood. “Dave, you can call me Anabel, all right?” she said. “I don’t see her name in the register. Ra Mahleiné . . . ?”
“Yes.”
“No one here by that name. There’s no Throzz either.” She went through a sheaf of papers carefully. “No, she’s not here.”
“What does that mean?”
“Dave, there’s another list. Though 324 women embarked, only 238 arrived. They had an epidemic on board.”
He said nothing for a moment. At last he managed to speak. “I won’t believe that until I see the body.” His throat was so tight, he could hardly get the words out.
The official was watching him.
He said, louder, “By law, the bodies must be frozen. But surely a list of the dead exists.” Anything was better than the uncertainty.
“Absolutely. The name will be on one list or another,” she agreed. She went through more papers. “Not here either,” she said after a while. “No Ra Mahleiné, no Mahleiné, no one by the name of Throzz. Perhaps there was some mistake.” She shrugged.
“I’m not leaving until I find out. But . . . that means, doesn’t it, she may still be alive.”
“Did she leave before or after your flight?”
He understood what she was suggesting: Ra Mahleiné might have changed her mind at the last minute. He had trusted his wife completely, not once considering the possibility that she would find someone else. The worm of doubt was planted in Gavein’s head—that was what the black official intended, this woman with wire glasses and the uniform of the maritime transport service.
“She left three weeks after I did,” he said. The worm was feasting, growing fat. “I won’t go until I’ve seen everyone who arrived,” he said, stressing each word.
“Listen, Dave. They’re in quarantine now. Longer than usual because of the epidemic on board. If she’s here, you�
�ll find her. Why don’t you come again, when the quarantine is lifted?” But she stopped, seeing the stony look in Gavein’s eye.
“I’ll wait here. Until this is resolved. I’ll sleep—” He pointed at the floor, which was covered with a thin carpet. It was not much worse than the rug in his room, which he had slept on several times.
“If it’s that important to you. But this will take a while.”
13
At least they didn’t throw him out bodily. He waited in an empty room. He sat, he dozed, sometimes he paced. He tested the cabinets and found they were all locked.
After a few hours Anabel returned, pulling a cart packed with files. Gavein thought to himself that the proud name she had, taken from the name of the Land of her birth, would be of no use to her when she moved to Ayrrah.
“I found the records of your wife’s ship. These are all the passengers.” She pointed to the cardboard box. “And these boxes are for the ships before and after: 077-13 and 077-11. She might have been on them. There is a third possibility: she might have taken a seaplane, her courage failing her. Such persons would not be filed. But I can provide you with a full list of the women who embarked.” She was feeding Gavein’s worm.
“That was a lot of work, Anabel.”
She smiled. Before she left, she showed him again how to use the files.
It was simple: you inserted a card into the slot of the reader, and on the monitor there appeared a black-and-white photograph of the passenger when she embarked from Lavath. Photographs were taken thereafter at three-month intervals to the present. Some folders had fewer prints, ending with a memo that gave the date of death. The photographs were grainy, the image quality poor, the resolution low.
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