Phases of Gravity (14 page)

"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.

Gavin said, "The lady asked if she'd come to the right house to find the famous astronaut Richard E. Baedecker. I said sho' 'nuff."

Later, while Tom and Deedee watched television, Baedecker and Maggie took a walk down the Pearl Street Mall. Baedecker had come to Boulder once before—a five-day visit in 1969 when their team of eight rookie astronauts had studied geology there and used the university's Fiske Planetarium for astrogation exercises—and the mall had not existed then. Pearl Street, in the heart of old Boulder, had been just another dusty, heavily trafficked western street, populated with drugstores, discount clothing stores, and family restaurants. Now it had been turned into a four-block walking mall, shaded by trees, landscaped with rolling hills and flowers, and bordered by expensive little shops where the cheapest thing one could buy was a single-dip Häagen-Dazs ice cream cone for $1.50. In the two blocks Baedecker and Maggie had already walked, they had passed five street musicians, a chanting Hare Krishna group, a four-person juggling act, a lone tightrope walker stringing his wire between two kiosks, and an ethereal young man wearing only a burlap robe and a gold pyramid on his head.

"Why did you come?" Baedecker asked.

Maggie looked at him, and Baedecker felt a strange sensation, as if a cool hand had suddenly cusped the back of his neck. "You called me," she said.

Baedecker stopped. Nearby a man was playing a violin with more enthusiasm than skill. His violin case lay open on the ground with two dollar bills and three quarters in it. "I called to see how you were," Baedecker said. "How Scott was when you saw him last. I just wanted to make sure you got back from India all right. When the girl at the dorm said that you were still visiting your family, I decided not to leave a message. How did you know it was me? How on earth did you find me?"

Maggie smiled, and there was a hint of mischief in her green eyes. "No mystery, Richard. One, I knew it was you. Two, I called your company in St. Louis. They told me you'd recently resigned and moved away, but no one seemed to know where you'd gone until I talked to Teresa in Mr. Prescott's office. She found the emergency forwarding address you'd left. I had the weekend off. Here I am."

Baedecker blinked. "Why?"

Maggie sat on a low redwood bench, and Baedecker sat down next to her. A breeze rustled the leaves above them and set lamplight and shadow dancing across them both. Half a block away there was a burst of applause as the tightrope walker did something interesting. "I wanted to see how your search was going," she said.

Baedecker stared blankly at her. "What search?" he asked.

As if in answer, Maggie unbuttoned the top two buttons of her white dress. She lifted a necklace in the dim light and it took Baedecker a few seconds to recognize the Saint Christopher's medal he had given her in Poona. It was the medal his father had given him in 1952 on the day Baedecker had left for the Marine Corps. It was the medal he had taken to the moon and back. Baedecker shook his head. "No," he said, "you didn't understand."

"Yes, I did," said Maggie.

"No," said Baedecker. "You admitted that you made a mistake following Scott to India. You're making a bigger mistake now."

"I didn't follow Scott to India," said Maggie. "I went to India to see how he was doing because I believed that he was passionately involved in asking questions that I happen to think are important." She paused. "I was wrong. He wasn't interested in asking questions, only in finding answers."

"What's the difference?" asked Baedecker. He felt the conversation slipping out of his control, dropping away from him like an aircraft that had reached stall speed.

"The difference is that Scott took the line of least resistance," said Maggie. "Like most people, he found it too uncomfortable to be out in the open, unsheltered by some shadow of authority. So when the questions got too hard, he settled for easy answers."

Baedecker shook his head again. "This is gobbledygook," he said. "You've got things all mixed up. You have me mixed up with somebody else, Maggie. I'm just a middle-aged guy who's tired of his job and just well-off enough to take a few months of unearned vacation."

"Bullshit," said Maggie. "Remember our conversation in Benares? About places of power?"

Baedecker laughed. "Right," he said. He pointed to two young men in ragged shorts who had just passed, weaving their skateboards through the crowd. Behind them came a runner in tight shorts and a self-conscious pride in his body as evident as the sweat that glistened on his tanned skin. Stepping out of his way was a pack of surly-looking teenagers with purple mohawks. "I'm getting closer, aren't I?" he said.

Maggie shrugged. "Maybe this weekend," she said. "Mountains have always been fairly reliable as places of power."

"And if I don't come down off what's-its-name . . . off Uncompahgre Peak with a couple of stone tablets, then you'll go back to Boston on Monday and get on with your education?" asked Baedecker.

"We'll see," said Maggie.

"Look, Maggie, I think we have to . . ." began Baedecker.

"Hey, look, that guy's sitting on a chair up there on his wire," she said. "It looks like he's doing magic tricks. Come on, let's go watch." She tugged Baedecker to his feet. "I'll buy you a chocolate cone after."

"So you like tightrope walkers and tricks?" he asked.

"I like magic," said Maggie and pulled him along with her.

"Six-six-six is the mark of the beast," said Deedee. "It's on my Sears charge card."

"What?" said Baedecker. The campfire had burned down to embers. It was quite cold out. Baedecker had pulled on a wool sweater and his old nylon flight jacket. Maggie huddled next to him in a bulky goosedown coat. The campfire across the meadow had gone out some time earlier, the four young people had gone to their tents, and Tommy had stumbled back and silently crawled into the tent he would be sharing with Baedecker.

"Revelation thirteen: sixteen, seventeen," said Deedee. "And he causes all small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no

man might buy or sell, save that he has the MARK, or the name of the beast, or the number of a man: and his number is six hundred, threescore and six.'"

"On your Sears card?" asked Maggie.

"Not only there, but on their monthly statements also," said Deedee. Her voice was low, soft, serious.

"The Sears card shouldn't be a problem unless you carry it on your forehead, should it?" asked Baedecker.

Gavin leaned forward and threw two twigs on the fire. Sparks rose and mingled with the stars. "It's really not funny, Dick," he said. "Revelation has been amazingly accurate in predicting events leading up to the beginning of the tribulations era. The code six-six-six is used frequently by computers . . . and on Visa and MasterCard accounts as well. The Bible says that the Antichrist will be the leader of a ten-nation confederation in Europe. Well, it might be coincidence, but the big computer in the Common Market Administration Building in Brussels is called 'the beast' by some of its programmers. It takes up three floors."

"So what?" said Baedecker. "The NASA centers at Huntsville and Houston used more computer space back in '71. It just meant that computers were clumsier then, took up more room, not the coming of an Antichrist."

"Yes," said Gavin, "but that was before the UPC was developed."

"UPC?" asked Maggie. She shivered and shifted a little closer to Baedecker as a cold wind came up.

"Universal Product Code," said Gavin. "Those stripes on all the packages you buy. Like at the supermarket . . . the laser scanner reads the code and the computer records the item price."

"I shop at a little corner market in Boston," said Maggie. "I don't think they even have an electric cash register."

"They will have one," said Gavin. He was smiling, but his lips formed only a thin line. "By 1994 the UPC scanners will be in use everywhere . . . at least in this country."

Baedecker rubbed his eyes and coughed as the smoke drifted his way. "Yes, Tom," he said, "but the scanner reads the price markings on my cans of soup and packages of Tater Tots, not on my forehead."

"Laser tattoos," said Gavin. "Professor R. Keith Farrell of Washington State University developed a laser tattoo gun several years ago for registering fish. It's fast—takes less than a microsecond—is painless, and can be invisible except to UV laser scanners. Social security checks already carry an F or an H under their computer coding. It almost certainly stands for 'forehead or hand.' The next step will be for the government to begin marking social security recipients themselves for fast identification and coding."

"That would be handy to get back into rock concerts," said Maggie.

Deedee leaned forward into the red light of the dying campfire. Her voice was soft. "'If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they rest no day or night, who worship the beast and image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.'" Deedee smiled shyly. "Revelation fourteen: nine to eleven."

"Gosh," said Maggie and there was admiration in her voice, "how do you memorize all that? I couldn't memorize the first two stanzas of Thanatopsis in high school."

Gavin reached across and took Deedee's hand. "Maybe an easier verse to memorize is John three: sixteen, seventeen," he said. "'I find no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.'"

A few heavy raindrops hissed in the fire. Baedecker looked up to see the stars gone, the sky above as dark as the black canyon walls. "Damn," he said, "I wanted to sleep outside tonight."

Baedecker lay in the small tent and thought about his divorce. It was a topic he rarely tried to bring to mind; the memories were as blurred and painful as those of the two months he had spent in the hospital after crashing an F-104 in 1962. He rolled over, but the rough ground poked at him through the sleeping bag and thin foam pad. Tommy Jr. snored next to him. The boy smelled of wine and pot. Outside, a few raindrops pattered on the tent, and the Cimarron River, no wider than a stream, made gurgling sounds thirty feet away.

Baedecker's divorce had been finalized in August of 1986, only two weeks before their twenty-eighth wedding anniversary. Baedecker had flown to Boston for the formalities, coming a day early to stay at Carl Bumbry's house. He had forgotten that Carl's wife had been a closer friend to Joan than Carl had been to him. The next night was spent at the Holiday Inn in Cambridge.

Two hours before going to court, Baedecker dressed in his best three-piece summer suit. Joan liked the suit, had helped him pick it out two years earlier. A few minutes before it was time to leave, Baedecker realized that he knew precisely what dress Joan would wear to the divorce proceedings. She would not have bought a new one, because she would never wear it again. She would not wear her favorite white dress or the more formal green suit. Only the purple cotton dress would be light enough and formal enough for her on this day. And Baedecker had always disliked the color purple.

Baedecker immediately changed into tennis shorts, a blue T-shirt, and tennis shoes. He put his sweat-stained wristband on and threw the racquet and a canister of balls in the backseat of his rented car. Before going into court, he called Carl Bumbry and arranged for a four-thirty game at Carl's club immediately following the divorce action.

Joan wore the purple dress. Baedecker spoke to her before and after the brief ceremony but later could remember nothing of what they said to each other. He did remember the score of the tennis match—Carl had won 6-0, 6-3, 6-4—and Baedecker could recall vividly details of play from each set. After the match Baedecker showered, changed clothes, tossed his clothes into his old military flight bag, and drove north to Maine.

He went alone to Monhegan Island, he realized later, because Joan had always wanted to go there. Long before they had moved to Boston, even back during the hot, Houston days, Joan had been intrigued by the thought of spending time on the little island off the coast of Maine. They had never found the time.

For Baedecker, the image that stuck in his mind was of his arrival after an hour's boat-ride on the Laura B. The little boat had entered a thick fog bank a mile or two from the coast and water was beaded along the ship's wires and lines. People had quit conversing; even the youngsters playing near the bow had stopped their shouts and horseplay. The last ten minutes of the ride had been made in silence. Then they passed the two breakwaters of broken concrete slabs and moved into the harbor. Gray-shingled houses and dripping piers shifted in and out of existence as the fog curled, lifted, and settled again. Gulls wheeled and dived above the wake of the boat, their cries ripping the silence into sharp-edged fragments. Baedecker had been standing near the port rail, alone, when he noticed the people standing on the dock. At first he could not be sure they were people; they stood so straight and still. Then the fog lifted and he could make out the