She stared at me for a very long moment, consulted Esau with eyes only, then turned to Jen and quietly advised her, "Better tell him." She gave me a final sober, sorrowing sweep of the eyes as she walked away.
Esau said, in that strangely ponderous speech, "Yes, Jennifer, I'm afraid you must tell him." He showed me a sympathetic look, placed an untouched glass of wine in my hand, and hurried after Laura.
I said to Jennifer, 'Tell him, then."
She was all torn up inside. "I—I really—I need to know more about you, Ashton. This is—oh damn!—can I really trust you?"
I told her, "I believe you have to."
"Give me a cigarette," she commanded irritably.
I did so, and one to myself, lit them both, gently urged, '"tell him, Jen."
She took a deep pull at the cigarette, exhaled the smoke in a burst toward the tinted glass dome, eyed me up and down—said, very quietly, "It's a previously unknown form of radiant energy."
"What is?"
"What do you mean, what is. The thing you mentioned, the strange energy. It is a previously unknown form of radiant energy."
I tasted Esau's wine and asked her, "Previous to what?"
She replied, almost angrily, "Previous to its discovery, here, on this mountain, a few months ago."
"How was it discovered?"
She just glared at me.
"Isaac," I guessed, though it was a fairly well-educated guess.
She nodded the troubled head.
I asked her, "Is it something in the earth around here or... ?" I lifted my gaze to the dome.
She replied, "No, it's nothing in the earth. The source is extraterrestrial."
I said, "That does not exactly pinpoint anything, does it."
She raised her shoulders and dropped them, turned away from me, took another pull at the cigarette.
I took another pull at the wine and said, "Well, damn it, make up your mind. Am I nice, or not."
Those shoulders began to quiver. She turned back to me with a suppressed giggle, said, "You do give great foot."
I said, "Thanks."
"And I guess you really are very nice."
"Thanks again. So tell the nice man, Jen. What the hell is going on, here? And why is it suddenly so important that I be told about it?"
She sobered abruptly, said, "I suppose Laura thinks it could be dangerous for you."
"Laura is exactly right," I said. "And it is getting more dangerous by the second. I am in imminent danger of exploding all over you. What the hell are we talking about?"
"Ashton...this is terribly important. And terribly delicate. We have to be very careful...well, you've already seen the results of the official reaction. We simply cannot let global politics take this over. That is why Isaac went into hiding." She raised both arms in a sweep of the room. "All of these people are in hiding, too. They are friends of Isaac. And they are all working with Isaac in an attempt to understand this ..what is happening here."
I asked, softly, "What is happening here, Jen?"
She replied, "Palomar Mountain is being irradiated from a point in space and..."
I said, "A point in space?"
"Yes. Not deep space, either. Local space."
"From within the solar system," I suggested.
"Yes. It is being experienced as a beam. Well, as two beams. One appears to be targeted here, on Palomar. The other target is in Russia."
I decided I already knew where, in Russia. "Caucasus Mountains," I ventured.
"At Zelunchukskaya, yes, their version of Palomar."
I said, "The obvious significance of that, then..."
She said, "Yes. The beams are obviously intelligently directed."
I asked, "Why? By whom?"
"That is what we are hoping to determine," she replied quietly.
"And how do you go about doing that?" I wondered aloud.
"The answer," she said, "may be in the beams themselves."
But it was not in the cards for me to get any closer to that answer, myself, right away.
The room was beginning to tilt. Something was wrong with my eyes. I looked at Jennifer, then into Esau's wineglass, noted that I had emptied it, began making the connection just as the room began fairly spinning around me.
The gathering of scintillating scientists were now gathering around me, and some were reaching out to me, supporting me, keeping me from spinning off to wherever the rest of the room was going. I groaned, "Damn it, Jen..."
"It's okay," she told me in a very soothing manner. And that was the last sound I heard before I spun off into cosmos.
Chapter Twelve: In the Eyes Of...
I dreamed that I'd finally gotten my wish and not only saw a flying saucer but was actually aboard one. It looked suspiciously like Holden Summerfield's glass bubble room, though, and every member of the crew scintillated with the same constrained excitement noted in his guests at the gathering. Holden himself was aboard. I think he was an admiral, or whatever corresponds to admiral in the inter-galactic fleet, because his white uniform was resplendent with radiant stars. He was a forty-eight-star admiral, and that's a lot more rank than anyone down here ever saw. I noticed for the first time, in that dream, how closely Holden resembled C. Aubrey Smith—but that probably would mean nothing to you unless you're an old-movie buff like me.
Esau was the command pilot but he was wearing a really weird uniform made of goat skins—and I kept asking him, "Are you Esau or are you Jacob?" but he kept ignoring the question and dunking ambrosia in wine and trying to get me to share it with him. I was having none of that—we all know that ambrosia makes you immortal and I was not about to go for that until someone told me where we were headed.
I am a bit embarrassed to relate the rest of the dream because it got highly erotic. I will just say, here, that Laura was involved, clad only in her long shiny hair but grown considerably longer so that it was pulled up through her thighs like a loin cloth, on between humongous breasts and tied with a pretty denim bow behind her neck. There was something even stranger about Laura, though—some vague problem having to do with what lay beneath all that hair, suffice it to say that I was having trouble with a connection. There was a deep sorrow in her eyes, probably because of that, and she kept murmuring over and over, "She should have told you."
The dream was so vivid that I had trouble making the transition to the waking state. I was lying on a hospital bed in a brightly sunlit room, Laura was bending over me in a white smock, and I had her hair in both my hands. She laughed softly and asked me, "Are you awake? Do you know where you are?"
I replied, with a mouth full of mush, "Hell, I'm sorry, kid, but I just can't find it."
She laughed again, freed her hair from my grasp, and told me, "Well whatever you're looking for, you won't find it in there. I'll have you know I brush my hair a hundred strokes every morning and every night."
It all came back to me, then. I shoved her away from me, I guess a bit too forcefully, and sat bolt upright on the bed. She sort of hit the wall and gave a little shriek. Two guys came running in from somewhere and gave me a hard but somewhat undecided look.
"It's okay, it's okay," Laura assured them. "He just awoke with a bit of confusion. Let's get some food in here, now. And coffee, right away."
"No ambrosia," I added thickly.
The guys grinned and went back out.
Laura stood at the wall, arms folded across that magnificent chest, and said, "You'll have to forgive my bedside manner. I do have an M.D. but I haven't really practiced it."
"Don't worry about it," I growled. "You'll probably grow up to be a pretty good doctor some day." My head was booming, hangover style. I held it in both hands to keep it from falling off my shoulders and asked her, "What did you people give me? How'd you get this jackhammer in here between my ears?"
She said, "Sorry about the headache. It will pass soon, once we get some food into you. You're going to be just fine."
I said, "I was just fine last night when I
walked in here."
"That wasn't last night," she informed me.
I glanced at my bare wrist, cast about for my watch, located it on the bedside table, succeeded in focusing one eye on the tiny day/date display. Damn. It was Monday already.
"What happened to Sunday?" I asked her.
"Sorry, we had to check you out thoroughly. That's what happened to Sunday."
An Indian woman came in with a tray, placed it beside me and withdrew without looking directly at me. I realized only then that I was totally naked. The tray had coffee, two cups, cream and sugar—silver service. I repositioned the sheet about me and swung my legs over the side of the bed. That was a mistake. I hung onto the bed for dear life while Laura poured the coffee. She held the cup to my lips for a couple of sips.
"Bathroom," I croaked.
"Are you nauseous?" she inquired, properly concerned about that, as she helped me to my feet.
"Piss call," I replied.
She laughed softly and steered me into the proper direction, suggested, "A shower could help."
I reached back for the coffee and carried it with me to the bathroom, gaining stability as I went and not the least embarrassed about my nakedness, hard-on and all.
And, yeah, the shower did help—but not the hard-on, the piss call took care of that, but five minutes beneath a near-scalding spray unkinked the brain and rekindled the circulation. I came out of it beet-red all over and feeling almost human again, pardon the expression. The coffee had cooled so I gulped it down, cinched a towel at the waist and stepped out for a refill. Laura was seated beside the bed, cup poised at pouted lips but nothing happening there, engrossed in some dark mental study.
She looked up as I filled my cup, said, lightly, "Well thank God you've found your modesty."
I clucked my tongue at her and replied, "And you a medical doctor."
'Told you I haven't really practiced," she said soberly. "Truly, Ashton, you're a hell of a turn-on."
I gave no response to that, verbally or otherwise, but returned to the bathroom with my coffee, for a shave. Had to wonder, though, about her obviously mismatched marriage and the possible stresses therefrom; wondered, also, how much of my dream had been pure fantasy and how much...
But I chased that away. It wasn't fair, I knew, to speculate about such matters, not even in the privacy of one's own mind. I felt it okay, though, to relate that whole idea to my observations on Jennifer. Both of these young women apparently possessed a surprising sexual energy, or maybe it was merely a sexual forthrightness, a proper recognition of an entirely natural human process. Call it a good attitude about sex.
Or was that really the case? Did it have something to do with this Bride of Science idea? Was it a healthy attitude or was it downright horniness born of frustration?
In a way, I decided, Laura Summerfield was in about the same sexual boat as Jennifer Harrel. For a bright young female scientist, maybe marriage to a sweet and supportive grandfatherly man was tantamount to remaining a Bride of Science. But who the hell was I to hand down that kind of decision? What did I know about it? Different people marry for different reasons—and different people fall in love with different attributes. So what if a beautiful young woman gets turned on occasionally to an exciting young man? That's not love, it's chemistry. It may take some really rare attributes of the male character to turn that same young woman's thoughts to true love—attributes, perhaps, found only in a truly mature man. So what, then, if he happens to be mature enough to be her grandfather. And whoever said that sex is dead in the rocking chair. I'd known some pretty damn feisty old...
Jennifer had intimated a very strong affection for Isaac, even to the point of suggesting that she would marry him if he were so inclined. I supposed that Isaac and Holden were roughly the same age; ditto for Jennifer and Laura. In Jennifer's case, I'd assumed hero-worship had something to do with it—but what the hell—reflecting on that, I decided there was not a hell of a lot of difference between hero-worship and being in love. Wasn't that what every guy who ever lived really wanted: to be worshiped like a God by his woman?
Laura was fussing with the bed when I finished with the bathroom. Apparently she'd changed the sheets and was now in the process of installing clean pillow slips. I went to the window to orient myself, assuming that this room was somewhere in the Summerfield mansion. It was, off to the side and somewhat below the cantilever. I could see the tinted blue glass of the bubble room; it seemed even more imposing by daylight—and, yeah, not too unlike the popular conception of a flying saucer. I chuckled and turned away from the window, almost colliding with Laura, who apparently had planned on joining me there. We still wound up belly to belly—or belly to towel—and it seemed the only natural thing to place my hands on her shoulders. Her hands found my hips as she inquired, "What's funny?"
"Crazy dream I had," I told her. "Am I a prisoner here?"
She replied, "Of course not. But we would like for you to stay with us for awhile."
"That's nice," I said. "Why?"
"You could become a highly valuable addition to our team."
"You don't even know what position I play."
"I know more about you than you may realize," she replied with a mischievous flare of the eyes.
I asked, "How much do you know about Isaac?"
"Oh, much more than that."
"I've never seen the man. Have I?"
She pursed those ripe lips and replied, "Gosh, I don't know. Have you?"
"Does he look anything like C. Aubrey Smith?"
She laughed. "Who?"
I amended that. "Like Holden."
"Oh no, I wouldn't say so. I know who C. Aubrey Smith is. The very dignified British actor. He was British, wasn't he? You know, come to think of it, Holden does look like him. Not Isaac, though. Isaac looks like, let's see..." Those dark eyes were fairly atwinkle, obviously enjoying the game. "Remember the man who played the older doctor on Ben Casey?"
I said, "Dr. Zorba. He was played by Sam Jaffe."
"Right!" she said triumphantly, making it about a four-syllable word. "Such a dear. Now that is Isaac."
I thought, well shit, so much for exploding theories. I had been sort of toying with the notion that Isaac Donaldson and Holden Summerfield could be one and the same person, that neither of these young ladies was actually married to either. After all, I knew only what I had been told. They could tell me anything, for the sake of cover.
Of course, they could still be doing that.
I asked her, "Who played the title role in the 1930s Hollywood production of Gunga Din?”
She said, "Are we playing trivia now?"
"It's a test," I told her.
"Okay, I give up. I can see him very clearly in my mind, but..."
I said, "Same guy. Sam Jaffe. Many years before Dr. Zorba."
She said, "I'll be darned!"
I said, "Yeah. I'm a little surprised that you know about Zorba or Gunga Din. I mean, even Zorba is going back quite a few years."
"Not on my television," she declared brightly. "I can see him any morning at three o'clock. And I watched Gunga Din on videocassette at my last encampment, just last year. But, gosh—well, you know, I do remember looking at old Gunga and thinking there was something familiar in the eyes, something ..."
Yes, that's what was bothering me. Something in the eyes. I was looking into hers as I asked, "Who is Esau?"
She blinked. "I introduced you Saturday night."
I said. "Yeah. Who is he?”
"He's... well he's part of our team."
"What's he do?"
"At the moment, for us, he is engaged in spectroscopic studies."
"And what are you engaged in?"
"Living waves."
"What?"
"Well...biological energy studies."
"Living waves sounds better," I told her. "Let's stick with that. Find any inside me?"
"You bet I did," she replied soberly.
"Healthy?"
; “Terribly."
"What sort of radiation have I been exposed to?"
She hesitated briefly, then: "That kind, yes."
Her hands had slowly inched along beyond my hips and were now pressing rather insistently against my backside. I was terribly, warmly aware of her growing pressure at my front side. My towel fell away. She nuzzled my ear and whispered, "Jesus, Ashton."
Before I could respond in any way whatever, she pushed her way clear and hurried out of there without a backward look.
I retrieved the towel, tried to make it tent back around me but it would not.
I would, I decided, take that cold shower now.
I just wished that she'd turned back for one more look. I wanted to see again if I'd seen what I thought I saw in those deep, dark eyes.
Something there, yeah, for sure...something in the eyes.
Only then did it register, her final statement before the crazies started: "That kind, yes."
What kind, damn it! We'd been talking about radiation and living waves. That kind!
I decided to take that back to the shower with me, too, with "something in the eyes."
"Living wave" radiation, eh? Fancy that.
Chapter Thirteen: Making Waves
I don't know if I have mentioned, yet, that I am sort of a scientist myself. The largest problem in my life, I guess, is that I am "sort of" many things. Guess I just have too many interests. Never could seem to focus myself into any one career-slot long enough to become expert In it. Then, too, I never really felt the financial pressure—that hungry feeling, as some have expressed it—which sometimes will keep one's nose to a grindstone. I am fortunate—or unfortunate, however it strikes you—to have come into a tidy little trust, funded in my behalf before I was born or even conceived, which takes care of my basic needs 'til death do us part— and I am not really a greedy person, have no particular desire to amass a fortune of my own...so what the hell, I kicked back a long time ago and decided to just let the world come to me as it would.
The navy time was my only long-term commitment to anything—but I was actually set up for that before my birth, too. It's the Ashton family tradition. Each male son in the line is born with a silver anchor up his ass, and he can take it out only upon graduation from Annapolis. Big deal, you may say, poor kid—has to put in four whole years of an otherwise dissolute life at a tuition-free college—not only tuition-free but they give you a salary, to boot, and a guaranteed career job upon graduation.
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