Phases of Gravity

by Dan Simmons

  "Yes, yes," said the host, nodding his head emphatically.

  "Praise be to Jesus," said his wife.

  "We can't trust science to answer our questions," said Gavin. "The human intellect is just too fallible."

  "How true, how true," said the host.

  "Praise Jesus," said his wife, "God's truth be made known."

  "Amen," said Baedecker and turned off the television.

  It was just after dinner, during the last minutes of twilight, when the others entered the clearing. The first two were boys—young men of college age, Baedecker realized—carrying obviously heavy backpacks with aluminum tripods lashed atop them. They ignored Baedecker and the others and hurried to dump their packs and set up the tripods. From the packs they removed foam padding and two sixteen-millimeter movie cameras. "God, I hope there's enough light left," said the overweight one in shorts.

  "There should be," said the other one, a tall redhead with a wisp of beard. "This Tri-X is fast enough if he gets here pretty quick." They concentrated on attaching their cameras to tripods and focusing on the section of trail from which they had just emerged. High overhead a hawk circled on the last of the day's thermals and let out a lazy screech. A final ray of sunlight caught its wings for a few seconds and then the evening twilight was absolute.

  "Wonder what's going on," said Gavin. He scraped out the last of his beef stew and licked the spoon clean. "I chose this old Cimarron Creek approach to the mountain because hardly anyone ever uses it anymore."

  "They'd better get their shot pretty soon," said Maggie. "It's getting dark."

  "Anyone want S'mores?" asked Deedee.

  There was pale movement in the gloom under the fir trees and a man appeared, bent under a long load, moving slowly but surely up the last few yards of trail into the clearing. This man also appeared to be of college age but seemed older than the two bent behind their cameras: he was dressed in a sweat-soaked blue cotton shirt, torn khaki shorts, and solid hiking boots. On his back he carried an oversized blue climbing pack with nylon webbing attached to a long, cylindrical burden wrapped in red-and-yellow sailcloth. The poles must have been fourteen feet long, extending six feet beyond the small man's bent shoulder and dragging in the dust an equal distance behind him. The man's brown hair was long and parted in the middle, hanging down in damp folds to curl in along his sharp cheekbones. As he came closer, Baedecker noticed the deep-set eyes, the sharp nose, and the short beard. The man's posture and obvious exhaustion added to Baedecker's feeling that he was watching an actor reenacting Christ's final journey up the hill to Golgotha.

  "Great, Lude, we're gettin' it!" shouted the redheaded boy. "Come on, Maria, before the light's gone! Hurry!" A young woman emerged from the darkening trail. She had short, dark hair, a long, thin face, and was wearing shorts and a halter top that seemed several sizes too large for her. She was carrying a large pack. She moved forward quickly as the bearded hiker dropped to one knee in the meadow, loosened shoulder straps, and lowered the cloth-covered poles to the ground. Baedecker heard the sound of metal striking metal. For a second the man appeared too exhausted to rise or sit; he remained on one knee, head bowed so that his hair covered his face, one arm resting on his other knee. Then the girl named Maria came forward and touched the back of his head gently.

  "Great, we got it," shouted the heavyset boy. "Come on, we gotta get all this shit set up." The two boys and the girl went about setting up camp while the bearded man remained kneeling.

  "How odd," said Maggie.

  "Some sort of documentary," said Gavin.

  "I wonder what it's about," said Maggie.

  "Marshmallows," said Deedee. "Let's whittle some marshmallow-roasting sticks before it gets too dark to find them." Tom Jr. rolled his eyes and turned his face to the dark woods.

  "I'll help," said Baedecker and rose, stretching the cramp out of his muscles. Above the ridgeline to the east, a few faint stars were visible. It was getting cold quickly now. On the far side of the meadow, the two men and the young woman had erected two small tents and were busy gathering firewood in the dark. Farther out, barely visible in the gloom, the one called Lude sat cross-legged and silent in the tall grass.

  Baedecker had arrived in Denver at five-thirty in the afternoon on a Wednesday. He knew that Tom Gavin had his office in Denver but lived in Boulder, twenty miles closer to the foothills.

  Baedecker found a gas station and called Tom's home number. Deedee answered, was excited to heart that he had arrived, would not hear of Baedecker staying at a hotel, and suggested that he catch Tom before he left work. She gave him the phone number and address.

  Gavin's evangelical organization was called Apogee and was headquartered on the second floor of a three-story bank building on East Colfax Avenue several miles from downtown Denver. Baedecker parked his car in the lot and followed posters and signs saying ONE WAY with upwardly pointing fingers and JESUS IS THE ANSWER and WHERE WILL YOU BE WHEN THE RAPTURE COMES?

  The office was large and staffed with several young people who were dressed and groomed conservatively even to Baedecker's out-of-date eye. "Can I help you, sir?" asked a young man in a white shirt and dark tie. It was very hot in the room—either they had no air-conditioning or it was not working—but the young man's collar was buttoned, the tie firmly knotted.

  "I'm here to see Tom Gavin," said Baedecker. "I think he's expecting . . ."

  "Dick!" Gavin came into sight from behind a partition. Baedecker had time to confirm how fit and trim his old crewmate looked and to extend his hand before Gavin threw his arms around him in a hug. Baedecker raised one hand in surprise. He remembered Tom Gavin as being anything but a physical person. Baedecker could not even remember seeing Tom hug his wife in public. "Dick, you're looking great," said Gavin, squeezing Baedecker's upper arms. "By gosh, it's good to see you."

  "Good to see you, Tom," said Baedecker, feeling pleased and a bit trapped at the same time. Gavin gave him another hug and led the way into his office, a cluttered cubicle formed by four partitions. Office sounds filled the warm air. Somewhere a young woman was laughing. One wall of Gavin's office was covered with framed photographs: a Saturn V rocket spotlighted at night on its mobile launch pad, the Peregrine command module with the bright limb of the moon beneath it, a group portrait of the crew in their spacesuits, a shot of the LM Discovery beginning its descent, and an autographed picture of Richard Nixon shaking Tom's hand in a Rose Garden ceremony. Baedecker knew the photographs well; duplicates or near duplicates had hung on the wall of his own office and den for twelve years. Missing from Gavin's collection was only one of NASA's standard photos from the mission—a color print blown up from a picture taken from the lunar rover's video camera of Baedecker and Dave Muldorff, indistinguishable in their bulky spacesuits, saluting the American flag with the white hills of Marius Crater in the background.

  "Talk to me," said Gavin. "Tell me what's going on in your life, Dick."

  Baedecker spoke for a minute, telling Gavin about his old job in St. Louis and his departure. He did not explain the reasons for leaving. He was not sure if he knew all the reasons.

  "So you're looking for work?" asked Gavin.

  "Not right now," said Baedecker. "I'm just traveling. I have enough money saved to be a bum for a few months. Then I'll have to look for something. I have a few offers." He neglected to say that none of the offers interested him at all.

  "Sounds great," said Gavin. A framed poster over his desk read SURRENDERING YOUR LIFE TO JESUS IS THE GREATEST VICTORY YOU CAN EVER WIN. "How's Joan? Do you keep in touch at all?"

  "I saw her in Boston last March," said Baedecker. "She seems very happy."

  "Great," said Gavin. "What about Scott? Still at . . . where was it? Boston University?"

  "Not right now," said Baedecker. He paused, debating whether to tell Gavin about his son's conversion to the teachings of the Indian "Master." "Scott's spending a semester off, traveling and studying in India," he said.

  "India, wow," sa
id Gavin. He was smiling, relaxed, his expression open and affectionate, but in the deep-set, dark eyes Baedecker thought he saw the same cold reservoirs of reserve he could recall from their first meeting more than two decades earlier at Edwards. They had been competitors then. Baedecker did not know what they were now.

  "So tell me about this," said Baedecker. "About Apogee."

  Gavin grinned and began speaking in a low, firm voice. It was a voice much more used to public speaking and storytelling than the one Baedecker remembered from the mission days. It had been a standing joke that Tom liked to answer in words of one syllable or less. At the time, Dave Muldorff had been nicknamed "Rockford" because of a supposed similarity to a television detective played by James Garner, and for a while the other pilots and ground crew had called Gavin "Coop" because of his laconic "yeps" and "nopes." Tom had not been amused, and the nickname did not stick.

  Now Gavin spoke of his years after the lunar mission, of leaving NASA shortly after Baedecker did, of the unsuccessful pharmaceutical distributorship in California. "I was making money hand over fist, we had a big house in Sacramento and a beach house north of San Francisco, Deedee could buy anything she wanted, but I just wasn't happy . . . do you know what I mean, Dick? I just wasn't happy."

  Baedecker nodded.

  "And things just weren't good between Deedee and me," Gavin went on. "Oh, the marriage was intact, at least it looked that way to our friends, but the deep part . . . the committed part, that just wasn't there anymore. We both knew it. Then, it was one day in the fall of 1976, a friend invited Deedee and me to a Bible retreat weekend sponsored by his church. That was the beginning. For the first time—even though I'd been raised a Baptist—for the first time I really heard God's Word and realized that it applied to me. After that, Deedee and I received some Christian marriage counseling and things got better. It was during that time when I did a lot of thinking about the . . . well, the message I'd heard, felt really, while orbiting the moon. Even so, it wasn't until spring of '77, April fifth, that I woke up one morning and realized that if I was going to go on living that I had to put all of my faith in Jesus. All of my faith. And I did it . . . that morning . . . I got down on both knees and accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior and Lord. And I haven't been sorry since; Dick. Not one day. Not one minute."

  Baedecker nodded. "So that led to this?" he asked, nodding at the office all around them.

  "Sure did!" Gavin laughed, but his eyes were still intense and unblinking. "Not all at once though. Come on, I'll show you around, introduce you to some of the kids. We've got six people working full-time and another dozen or so volunteers."

  "Working full-time at what?" asked Baedecker.

  Gavin stood up. "Answering phones mostly," he said. "Apogee's a nonprofit company. The kids arrange my speaking trips, coordinate with local groups—usually ministries and Campus Crusade—put out our monthly publication, do some Christian counseling, run a drug rehabilitation program—we have specially trained people for that—and generally work the Lord's will when He shows it to us."

  "Sounds like a busy schedule," said Baedecker. "Sort of like the old days preparing for the mission." Baedecker did not know why he said that; it sounded inane even to him.

  "A lot like the mission," said Gavin, putting an arm around Baedecker. "Same busy schedule. Same sense of commitment. Same need for discipline. Only this mission is a million times more important than our trip to the moon."

  Baedecker nodded and started to follow him out of the office, but Gavin stopped suddenly and turned to face him. "Dick, you're not a Christian, are you?"

  Baedecker felt surprise change to anger. He had been asked that before and the question agitated him by its strange combination of aggressiveness and self-serving provincialism. Yet the answer, as always, eluded him. Baedecker's father had been a lapsed member of the Dutch Reformed Church, his mother an agnostic, if anything. Joan had been a Catholic, so for years, while Scott was growing up, Baedecker had attended Mass each Sunday. For the past decade he had been . . . what had he been? "No," said Baedecker, shielding his anger but returning Gavin's stare, "I'm not a Christian."

  "I didn't think so," said Gavin and squeezed Baedecker's arm again. Gavin smiled. "I'm going to tell you right up front that I'll be praying that you become a Christian," he said. "I mean that with love, Dick. I really do."

  Baedecker nodded and said nothing.

  "Come on," said Gavin. "Let's go introduce you to these wonderful kids."

  After the cooking pots and utensils were washed in water heated over the campfire, Baedecker, Maggie, Gavin, and Tommy walked over to speak to the other campers. The group sat around their campfire and looked up as the others approached.

  "Howdy," said Gavin.

  "Hi," said the redheaded boy. The girl and the overweight young man stared up at the visitors. The one called Lude continued to stare into the fire. Firelight illuminated everyone's faces from below.

  "Going over the pass and plateau to Henson Creek?" asked Gavin.

  "We're going to climb Uncompahgre," said the heavy blond boy in shorts.

  Gavin and the others squatted by the fire. Maggie plucked a strand of grass and chewed it. "That's where we're headed tomorrow," she said. "The map says it's about another nine miles to the south ridge of Uncompahgre. That right?"

  "Yeah," said the bearded redhead. "That's about right."

  Baedecker pointed to the long metal tubing wrapped in sailcloth. "That's quite a load to carry all the way to the mountain," he said.

  "Rogallo," said the girl named Maria.

  "Ahhh," said Tommy, "I shoulda guessed that. Far out."

  "Rogallo," said Gavin. "I see it now."

  "What's a Rogallo?" asked Maggie.

  "A kite," said the blond boy. "A hang glider."

  "What make?" asked Baedecker.

  "Phoenix VI," said the redhead. "You know it?"

  "No," said Baedecker.

  "Going to go off the south ridge?" asked Gavin.

  "Off the summit," said Maria. She glanced sideways at the silent, long-haired man next to her. "It's our gig, Lude's and mine."

  "Off the top," breathed Tommy. "All right."

  The redheaded boy stirred the fire. "We're gettin' it on film for our filmmaking course at C.U. We figure about forty-five minutes after editing. We're gonna enter it . . . you know . . . festivals and stuff. Maybe some sports company or something will want it as a promotional thing."

  "Should be interesting," said Gavin. "But tell me, why are you taking the long way in?"

  "What do you mean?" asked the girl.

  "This old jeep trail down the Cimarron is more than twice as long as the way if you'd driven up Henson Creek Road from Lake City and hiked north," said Gavin.

  "This is the way," said Lude. His voice made the others pause. It was a deep, raspy voice that did not seem to leave his throat. He still had not looked up from the fire. Looking at him, Baedecker could see flames reflected in the deep orbits of the eyes.

  "Well, good luck to you," said Gavin and stood up. "Hope the weather holds." Baedecker and Maggie rose to leave with Gavin, but Tommy remained squatting by the fire.

  "I'm going to stay a few minutes," said the boy. "I want to hear more about the hang glider."

  Gavin paused. "Okay, see you in a while."

  Around their own fire once again, Gavin explained the others' plans to his wife. "Is that safe?" asked Deedee.

  "It's idiocy," said Gavin.

  "Hang gliders can be pretty elegant machines," said Baedecker.

  "They can be murderous," said Gavin. "I knew an Eastern Airlines pilot in California who was killed in one of those things. The guy had twenty-eight years' experience flying, but it didn't help a bit when his kite stalled. He put the nose down to pick up airspeed . . . same thing I'd do, same thing you'd do, Dick. Natural instinct. But that's all wrong in one of those toys. The thing mushed in on him from fifty feet and snapped his neck."

  "And off a mountain,"
said Deedee. She shook her head.

  "A lot of hang glider pilots fly off mountains these days," said Baedecker. "I used to watch them fly at a sandhill called Chat's Dump south of St. Louis."

  "A sandhill or seacoast cliff is one thing," said Gavin. "Uncompahgre Peak is something else. You haven't seen it yet, Dick. Wait till you get a glimpse of it up the canyon tomorrow. Uncompahgre's a big wedding cake of a mountain, shelves and ridges running off it in every which direction."

  "Doesn't sound good for thermals," said Baedecker.

  "It would be a nightmare . . . plus there's almost always a high wind at fourteen thousand feet. It's a three-thousand-foot drop to the plateau, and even that's over ten thousand feet high . . . and most of the plateau is rocks and boulders. It would be insane to fly there."

  "Then why are they doing it?" asked Maggie. Baedecker noticed how green her eyes were in the firelight.

  "Did you see that one fellow's—Lude—his arm?" asked Gavin.

  Maggie and Baedecker looked at each other and shook their heads.

  "Track marks," said Gavin. "He's on something hard."

  From the other campfire across the meadow came a sudden burst of laughter and a blast of music from a tape player. "I hope Tommy comes back over soon," said Deedee.

  "Let's tell ghost stories around the fire," suggested Maggie.

  Gavin shook his head. "No," he said. "Nothing supernatural or demonic. What do you say we sing camp songs?"

  "Great," said Maggie, smiling at Baedecker.

  Gavin and Deedee led them in a round of "Kum Ba Yah" while from across the darkened meadow came laughter and the taped sounds of Billy Idol singing "Eyes without a Face."

  On Thursday evening Baedecker had been in the Gavins' family room, planning the weekend backpacking trip with them, when the front doorbell rang. Gavin had excused himself to answer it, and Baedecker was listening to Deedee tell about the problem with Tommy and his girlfriend when a voice said, "Hello, Richard."

  Baedecker looked up and stared. It was impossible that Maggie Brown was standing there in Tom Gavin's family room but there she was, wearing the same white cotton dress she had worn when they had toured the Taj Mahal together. Her hair was shorter, bleached blonder by sunlight, but the tanned and freckled face was the same, the green eyes were the same. Even the slight, somehow pleasing gap between the front teeth attested to the fact that it was, indeed, Maggie Brown. Baedecker stared.