Timescape (43 page)

Transmissions from the pilot were garbled. There seem to have been seizures of both pilot and copilot in the moments before the crash.

Witnesses said the plane appeared to explode as it struck the trees. There were no survivors. This latest in a series of airline disasters has–"

Jesus! His palms were sweating. He pressed the buzzer for the nurse.

She did not come at once. He held the button down and shouted "Nurse!"

She came in hurriedly, leaving the door open.

"What's the matter now? Why, you haven't even touched your broth."

"Damn the broth. What day is this? Is it Wednesday?"

"Yes, it is. But are you–"

"I want a phone. Why isn't there a phone in here?"

"It was taken out so you wouldn't be disturbed."

"Well, get it back."

"I don't know if I'm supposed to do that ..."

"What's going on here?" The first nurse bustled in again.

"Sister, Mr. Peterson is asking for a phone in here."

"Oh no, we don't need that. Don't want you to be disturbed, do we?"

"I'm being disturbed now," he shouted. "Get me a phone!"

"Now, now, Mr. Peterson, we can't have that ..."

"Listen, you stupid cunt," he said clearly and tensely, "I want a phone in here right now or I'll have you fired!"

There was a shocked silence and the two women backed from the room, eyeing him warily. He lay back, shaking. Through the door, which they had left open, he could hear moaning.

Presently an orderly brought in a phone and plugged it in. Peterson took a sip of water and brought the rising nausea. He dialed his secretary's number.

SEPTEMBER 25, 1963

Gordon was walking down the hallway, on his way back to the lab, when he overheard the remark. Two full professors were talking in low voices.

"–and as Pauli said, it isn't even wrong!" one finished as Gordon approached. They saw him and instantly fell silent. Gordon knew the story.

Pauli was a prominent, highly critical physicist in the first half of the century. He had remarked, about a scientific paper, "This work is so bad it's not even wrong."

Meaning, it began and ended in midair; it was so badly formulated it could not be tested. Gordon knew instantly they were talking about him.

The
Life
article had done its work. When he reached the end of the hallway there was more murmured talk behind him and then a final bark of laughter.

Penny brought home a copy of
National Enquirer
and left it out for him to see when he came in late. On the front page was a headline, NUCLEAR

CALL FROM OUTER SPACE and beneath it, Prominent Scientists Contact Other World. There were two photographs of Saul and Gordon, evidently by the
Life
photographer. Gordon threw it in the trash without reading it.

At the beginning of classes there was a party for the physical sciences faculty, to mark the opening of the new Institute for Geophysics building.

The staff sterilized the bowl of a fountain on the lawn outside. Hugh Bradnet and Harold Urey filled it with a potent mix of vodka and fruit juices. Gordon had thrown his invitation away with the usual university news notices; Penny discovered it and insisted they go. He wanted to get some rest, but her nagging made him pull on his lightest jacket and, for the first time, skip wearing a tie. In California such details were unimportant. Penny sported a floppy tan straw hat–"For dress-up," she said. Behind it she could hide a fraction of her face. This sense of added mystery rekindled in him an interest in her. He realized that he had been going through the motions these last few weeks, saddled with lecture preparations and spending most of his time with the NMR rig. This knowledge shocked him. The zest of their beginnings was seeping away.

The abrasions between them were rubbing off the cosmetic illusions.

He spoke to several members of the Physics Department, but struck up no interesting conversations. Penny found some literary types but he was un-moored, wandering from one knot of academics to another. The English Department people already seemed drunk, quoting modern poets and ancient movies. There were bright, airy people there he'd never seen, goy princes, blond and unbearably self-assured, the sort of people who had refrigerators full of yogurt and champagne. He saw a visitor from Berkeley in the crowd, tall and well dressed, a Nobel winner of some years back.

Gordon had met him before. He wedged himself into the crescent of people around the man and, when the Nobel laureate's eyes shifted to him, he nodded. The eyes passed on. No nod, nothing. Gordon stood, plastic cup in hand, glassy smile on his face. The eyes came by again. No pause, no flicker of recognition. Gordon backed out of the chattering crescent, face reddening. Maybe he didn't recognize me, Gordon thought, walking away. He got himself another cup of the vodka. On the other hand, maybe he did.

"Good booze, eh?" a man said at his elbow. "Try to say 'spectroscopy'

three times, real fast." Gordon tried the exercise, and failed. The man turned out to be named Book, and indeed, he did look bookish. He was from General Atomic and proved to be far friendlier than the university people. They stood under a sign that proclaimed, IF YOU CAN READ

THIS, THANK A TEACHER. None of Book's levity penetrated Gordon's mood. Vodka, however, began to relieve the world of its awful concreteness. He began to see the point in goys drinking so much. Book went off somewhere and Gordon drifted into conversation with a visiting particle physicist, Steingruber. Both of them shared a deepening appreciation for the vodka. They began to discuss the ageless topic, women. Gordon made several pronouncements about Penny. In a curious way he did not quite understand, Gordon inverted their roles, so that Penny had been the sexual student initiated into the adult world by himself the sophisticate from New York. Steingruber accepted this as only reasonable. Gordon came to see that Steingruber was indeed a fine fellow, capable of profound insight. They had another drink together. Steingruber pointed to a blond standing a short distance away and asked, "What is your opinion of that one there?" Gordon peered at her and pronounced,

"Pretty cheap looking. Yeah." Steingruber looked at Gordon sharply.

"She's my wife." In a moment, before Gordon could frame a suitable reply, he was gone.

Lakin came by, smiling amiably. He was with Bernard Carroway. "I have heard that you are repeating Cooper's experiment," Lakin said without preamble.

"Who did you hear that from?"

"I could see for myself."

Gordon took his time. He had a swallow from his cup and discovered it was empty. Then he looked at Lakin. "Fuck off," he said very clearly. Then he walked away.

He found Penny in a crowd gathered around Marcuse. "The newly appointed Communist-in-Residence?" Gordon asked when he was introduced. To his surprise, Marcuse laughed. A black woman graduate student standing nearby did not think anything was amusing. It developed that her name was Angela and that the revolution was not going to be brought about by people at cocktail parties; this was all Gordon could get out of the conversation, or at least all he could remember. He took Penny's hand and wandered away.

Jonas Salk was off in a corner. Gordon debated trying to meet him.

Maybe he could find out how Salk felt about Sabin–who had really developed the vaccine? An interesting question, indeed. "A parable of science," Gordon muttered to himself. "What?" Penny asked. He steered her instead toward a pack of physicists. Some nagging voice within bid him to shut up, so he let Penny carry their fraction of the conversation.

People around him seemed distant and vague. He tried to decide if this was due to him or due to them. The eternal relativistic problem. Maybe Marcuse knew the answer. Some Frenchmen asked Gordon about his experiments and he tried to sum up what he believed. It proved surprisingly difficult. The odd thickness of his tongue had gone away, but there remained the problem of what he himself thought was true. The Frenchmen asked about Saul. Gordon sidestepped the question. He tried to keep discussion focused on the results of his experiments.

"As Newton said, 'I frame no hypotheses'–at least, not yet. Ask me only about data." He went off in search of more vodka, but the fountain bowl was empty. Sadly, he took the last of the crackers and pt. When he returned, Penny was standing a little distance away from the Frenchmen, staring out at the view of La Jolla and the satiny glow of the sea. The Frenchmen were speaking French. Penny seemed angry. He tugged at her and she came along, glancing back.

She insisted on driving them home, though Gordon could see no reason why he should not. Going past the beach clubs and rambling private homes, Penny said, "Those bastards," with sudden vehemence.

"Huh? What?"

She grimaced. "After you wandered off they said you were a bungler."

Gordon frowned. "They said that to you?"

"No, silly. They started speaking French. They assumed that of course no American understands another language."

"Oh."

"They called you a fake. A fraud."

"Oh."

"They said everybody was saying that about you."

"Everybody?"

"Yeah," she said sourly.

OCTOBER 7, 1963

It came up out of the noise suddenly. One minute the scope showed hash and Gordon was tinkering with a new band-pass filter, a recent circuit he'd breadboarded to cut through the noise. Then, abruptly, the NMR curves began to warp and change. He stared at the scope, unmoving.

It was 11 p.m.

He brought his hand up to his lips, as if to mask a cry. The jiggling lines went on. It occurred to Gordon that he might be hallucinating. He bit his finger. No, the ragged lines remained. Quickly, suppressing his excitement beneath the urge to be precise, he began to take data.

ACTION OF ULTRAVIOAMSLDUZ SUNEYDUFK OM CHAINS

APPEARS TO RETARD DIFFUSION IN SURFACE LAYERS OF

AMSUWLDOP BUT GROWTH

RA 18 5 36 DEC 30 29.2

RA 18 5 FCDUEL 30 29.2

RA 18 5 36 DEC 30 29.2

EFFECTS DIATOM ENZYME INHIBITED B NETWORK CHAIN

RE-PRO ATTEMPT TO CONTACT YOU WITH TACHYONIC BEAM

WREDOPRL AL 'IINT SOURCE CAN VERIFY RA 18 5 3MCDU

DEC 30 29.2 RDUTFKIGLP ASLDURMFU CAMBRIDOLR '

CAMBRIDG DIATOM BLOOM GHTI3PDM ASANATH DEC 30 29.2

THIS VIOLATES NO CAUSAL POSTULATE UNDER

WHEELER-FEYNMAN FORMULATION AS LONG AS FEEDBACK IN

CAUSAL LOOP PERMITS EXPERIMENT TO CONTINUE IMPERATIVE

YOU PEUrOR EXPTS TO CHECC MOLECULAR CHAIN XCDEURDL 18 5

36 DEC 30 29.2 TE DIFFERENTIAL AUSMP

"Claudia? Is that you?" It was the first time he had ever called her by her first name.

"Yes, yes, is this Gordon?"

"Right. I've been running parallel with you. Were you people on last night?"

"What?"

"Were you running last night?"

"I... no, I don't... my student was making some measurements. I believed he finished about 6 o'clock."

"Shit."

"What? I'm sorry. I don't believe I can hear you correctly–"

"Sorry, never mind. I, ah, I was running last night around 11 p.m. and I got some anomalous resonance effects."

"I see. Well, that would be 2 a.m. here."

"Oh yes. Of course."

"How long did the effect last?"

"Over two hours."

"Well, let me see, the student should be in soon; it is a little after eight.

Gordon, you are up.at 5 a.m.?"

"Ah, yes. I was waiting for you to get in."

"Have you slept?"

"No, I ... I was seeing if there was any more of the...the effect."

"Gordon, go to sleep. I will talk to the student. We will run some experiments today. But you get some sleep."

"Sure, Sure."

"I promise you we will do the measurements. But get some sleep, eh?"

"Good. Good. That's all I want."

"Gordon, Mrs. Evelstein, she brought over the
Life
magazine. Why didn't you tell me? There was my son 's name, big as life–as
Life
!–and he doesn't tell me. Weeks ago, it was, and–"

"Mom, look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I—"

"And the
National Enquirer
thing, she had that, too. That one I didn't like so good."

He breathed sourly into the telephone receiver. What time was it?

Christ, 5 p.m. What was the Zinnes group getting?

"Look, Mom, I was asleep, I–"

"Asleep? At this hour?"

"I was working in the lab overnight."

"You shouldn't, you'll ruin your health."

"I'm okay."

"But I wanted to say, about the
Life
, it was such a surprise."

"Mom, I've got to go back to sleep. I'm worn out."

"Well, all right. I wanted to hear your voice again, though, Gordon. I don't hear your voice so much any more."

"I know, Mom. Look, I'll call you in a few days."

"All right, Gordon."

He hung up and went back to sleep.

The Zinnes group found nothing. Gordon could not pick up the signal again. He kept checking as the week wore on. On Friday there was a department Colloquium on plasma physics, given by Norman Rostoker.

Gordon went and sat well in the back. Rostoker's first slide was: Seven Phases of the Thermonuclear Fusion Program

I Exultation

II Confusion

III Disenchantment

IV Search for the Guilty

V Punishment of the Innocent

VI Distinction for the Uninvolved

VII Burying the Bodies/Scattering the Ashes

The audience laughed. Gordon did, too. He wondered at which stage he was. But no, the whole message thing wasn't a directed research project, it was a discovery. The fact that he was the only person in the world who believed it made no difference. "Search for the Guilty," though, seemed to fit. He thought about it for a moment and then, in the middle of Rostoker's talk, fell asleep.

He answered the call from Ramsey's office and found Ramsey in the lab.

The chemist had broken down the interweaving chain into a plausible configuration. Phosphorous, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon. It made sense.