Equilateral: A Novel Part 6

The courier from London delivers a week-old issue of the Times, and in the paper's ill.u.s.trated section a long article by the Cairo correspondent confirms the Equilateral's progress. Based on an interview conducted by telegraph, he seconds Thayer's a.s.sertion that it will be done on schedule. Although flawed by several risible inaccuracies, the article properly reiterates what interplanetary communication promises for the ordinary man: the wisdom of an ancient race, its inventions and technologies, the opening of a vast new market.

Articles like this one have become familiar in newspaper supplements for a decade, as have sketches of the Equilateral, whose base now stretches eight columns across the page and is decorated with dunes, camels, and fanciful palm trees. (Not a single palm has yet been encountered on the plain.) At the top of the figure, like corks, bob four cameos of "Sandy" Thayer, Sir Harry, Ballard, and Miss Keaton, to her astonishment and embarra.s.sment.

"This is uncalled-for," she cries.

Thayer is stooped over the newspaper, which has been laid out on a drafting table. He doesn't immediately reply. After a while he looks up. "What's that?"

"My picture. I'm hardly a Concession panjandrum. I'm your personal secretary."

"That's all right," he says. He hasn't noticed the drawing. Now he studies it for a few solemn moments and raises his gaze to her. It's been a long while since her face was held in such steady regard, by him or by any man. His eyes return to the page. He p.r.o.nounces, "It's a handsome likeness."

"I don't recall sitting for it. They must have spied on me aboard ship or when you addressed Parliament."

"Newspapermen," he declares. "The article is very foolish. They repeatedly say 'men from Mars,' even though I've told them time and again that, whoever built the ca.n.a.ls and whoever observes the Equilateral, they're anything but men. They can't be, for they haven't evolved from the same organisms that men have." He reads on. "But I can't say I'm not pleased. Sir Harry will be pleased. This will be useful in raising support for Line CD."

Although Miss Keaton has long avoided the merest flutter of vanity, she can't help but be gratified by the sketch. It must have been done years ago, for the woman in the image is not the desert-dried spinster who encounters her in the mirror every morning. Miss Keaton glows now, against her will, for the caress of Thayer's close observation still lingers on her cheek.

This moment of female weakness leads to another, a few hours later, when the secretary looks up from her correspondence to watch as Bint pours water from a brown clay pitcher into a basin, one hand steadying the pitcher at its wide bottom. The girl performs this task with complete, cosmic stillness, like a statue that may have been unearthed from beneath the sands, yet she's as supple as a cat and as fecund as the Nile. Thayer burns for her, of course.

From long experience the secretary recognizes that Thayer's attentions regarding Bint are ephemeral and predictable, of no greater weight than those she's observed him direct, before they came to Egypt, toward other females. A shopgirl. A singer. Some kitchen girl, not unlike Bint, except that she was Irish: lithe, apple-cheeked, bright-eyed, with a giggle that carried throughout his drafty, many-winged manor in Cambridgeshire, where Miss Keaton shared his study. A parade of kitchen girls.

Thayer romances these creatures discreetly but without shame. He never speaks of them to Miss Keaton, even when it's clear that he's arrived from an a.s.signation. Maintaining his accounts, she's aware of the gifts the girls receive, the pins, the hats, the necklaces, the wraps, and even the pair of Pekinese bestowed on an actress at the Gaiety. She senses that not a single affair has ended unhappily, with expectations unmet.

She wonders what trifle Thayer will find to purchase for Bint, out here in the Western Desert. She amuses herself with the thought before recognizing that it's the very irrelevance of pins and hats that lies at the core of his interest in the girl. He can never know what will please this strange, silent young woman from an anonymous Egyptian village, her mind sparking with references, a.s.sumptions, and personal histories that can't be fathomed, but he can study her and draw conclusions. This is what he likes to do. What he discovers will never be proven wrong, yet she will take the gift and may not even understand it's a gift.

Bint looks up and catches Miss Keaton's eye and the older woman smiles in candid admiration at her poise and elemental beauty. Bint's gaze in return is sharply alert; the alertness unsettles her. Miss Keaton feels something move in her face, a kind of tidal tugging. The secretary's smile fades, or becomes more complicated: part grimace, part frown, part grin. The new gesture is richer than she intends. It betrays her with a meaning, or a series of meanings, beyond admiration. They extend toward grief. She can't stifle it. The wounded smile expresses what she can't articulate to herself, yet in the girl's profound dark eyes Miss Keaton recognizes the warming glimmers of compa.s.sion. Perhaps even pity.

That evening, alone in his tent, Thayer reads the article more than once, and again he studies the small rendering of Miss Keaton, admiring the anonymous artist's talent. His touch is light but expressive, a rare balance of qualities for a newspaper ill.u.s.trator. Thayer knows, as a principle of planetary astronomy, that the skilled hand may capture what lies beyond the eye's perceptive capacity: minute differences in shading, patterns and then meaning in apparently unrelated features, developments in progress, the past hidden beneath the static visage of the present, sometimes even the future. The artist may excavate from the observation of shifting, disparate, hardly glimpsable lineaments the most profound elements of beauty.

Dee had first come to his observatory in Kent in a hired trap, her expression direct, her eyes clear, with references that attested to her computational prowess. He had known her brother at Cambridge, a big-lunged sculler now a broker or lawyer in the City. When he met the young woman they did not speak of the brother, but only of objects millions of miles away, planets, stars, and nebulae. These were things they could know but never touch. She was prodigiously informed.

He puts down the Times. Under the lamp he observes that in the desert atmosphere the paper has already started to decay and its ink has begun to sublimate off the page, blurring the article's ill.u.s.trations as well as the type. By morning the image will be gone completely.

Twenty-Two.

The excavations' years of strife and disappointment are suddenly punctuated on May the sixteenth with news that Side AC has been completed, the pitch laid, and that the men, after receiving chits for their extra wages, will be dispatched to aid the crews on Sides AB and BC. Thayer knew that progress was being made, he saw the map being filled in every day, but the side's completion startles and delights him. The surprise derives not from lack of confidence in the Equilateral, for which he has had ample cause, than from doubt in the progress of time, so mired has he been in these unyielding sands. Just as he struggled in opposition to the fellahin's prejudices and the desert's austerities, so did he begin to imagine that time strains against the bulwarks of a static existence. But the final closing of the gaps in the side proves that time flows forward, inundating everything in its path. After the boy who brought the report departs, Thayer drums at his desk in satisfaction. He feels the need to embrace someone; the absence of someone to embrace produces a sudden ache in counterpoint to the joy that has flooded his being.

When Ballard comes by the next morning, the astronomer insists they ride out along the side. Flanked by a Nubian detachment, they set off in a caravan of camels and arabas on the packed dirt track. The track runs parallel to the excavated side, the level ridge where the removed sand has been banked, and the main petroleum line, stretching from the southern horizon to an unseen place precisely thirty degrees east of due north. Thayer is gratified by the care taken by the men in removing and packing the debris, which rises forty feet above the track. About fifteen miles out, the caravan stops at a place where their advance party has established a shaded observation pavilion on the top of the ridge. The men have carved steps up the steep slope and laid them with planks. In his excitement Thayer bounds the first several steps two at a time, before realizing that he barely has the strength. One of the porters has to take him by the arm, in a moment that Thayer will not recall.

There it is, the paved line beneath them, a great black oily river. Between the two ridges of debris across the five miles' width of the side, the line extends left and right. A string is plucked in his heart. The Equilateral is real. It will be completed. All Europe is watching-if not literally, then at least through the dispatches of its correspondents, which even when they confuse the astronomical and engineering details never slight the grandeur and n.o.bility of the enterprise. Photographs have been widely circulated. The consuls have cabled the reality of the undertaking to their governments.

The neatly paved ditch reradiates the heat of the sun. Djinnis and houris dance in the troubled air above it.

"The equilateral is the most visually satisfying, most inspiring geometric figure of them all," Thayer says. "Did you know, Ballard, that the equilateral was the Hitt.i.te symbol of life? Pythagoras connected it to the G.o.ddess of Wisdom. The Christians discovered the Trinity in it. You may see equilateral forms within the Doric portico and in the greatest edifices of the Church. The equal-sided triangle combines the virtues of uniformity with those of variety; it can be rotated three ways and look the same, and turned another three ways and still look the same; it's the component of all regular pyramidal solids, including of course the pyramids of antiquity; it demonstrates a completeness and harmony in itself. The equilateral is the basis for all human art and construction."

"b.l.o.o.d.y difficult to dig, though."

Ballard draws on his cigar while Thayer looks into the trench, his eyes jolted by the contrast between the pitch and the embankment. A petroleum tap, connected to the main line by a spur buried under the ridge, gleams above the side's surface.

The chief engineer adds in a murmur, "And I don't know if it's the truly fundamental figure."

The climb has wearied Ballard perhaps more than it did Thayer. He smokes without pleasure, haggard.

"A case may be made for the primacy of the circle," the astronomer agrees. "While the equilateral is the basis for man's science and man's works, the circle is the only geometric shape that occurs in nature. Drop a pebble in a puddle and it radiates perfectly circular waves; certain microscopic cells are impeccably round; at the other end of the scale, so are stellar cl.u.s.ters like Omega Centauri."

For several minutes Ballard considers the paved side.

At last he says, "I wonder, Sanford. I wonder if we've excavated the wrong figure. The circle wouldn't do either."

"Pardon?"

"The equilateral triangle is an excellent thing, but I can think of an entirely different figure that is much more significant to most men. I speak of the cross. I appreciate that you favor basic geometric figures. I'm an engineer and I depend on them. But it's the cross that unites the world's civilizations. This is the symbol of our Savior's sacrifice, our G.o.d's love, the emblem of our faith. It's the cross, not the equilateral, that would have been the clearest expression of man's best nature to have been transmitted to Mars."

Although he's beginning to feel the effects of the day's heat, Thayer smiles benevolently.

"The cross may not mean to them what it does to us. They may not be aware of the Crucifixion. Did Christ die for their sins, or did the inhabitants of Mars extirpate sin from their racial character eons ago? I don't know. But I suspect that when a good Christian sits down with a Martian emissary, they will find they share the sentiments that we characterize as Christian: generosity, humility, and piety before the transcendent mysteries of the universe." Thayer adds modestly, "We can't rule out the notion that the traits we consider Christian today may be called Martian in the language of the twentieth century. Referring to your neighbor as a good Martian gentleman may prove the highest compliment."

"And what of this lot?"

Frowning, Ballard tips his head at the men who accompanied them to the site: porters, soldiers, drivers, diggers. They mill around the rampart, impatient to return to Point A. Some observe the paved side for the first time. Their hostility to it is barely disguised.

Ballard's anger overflows. "They need the cross! The cross! I want to excavate a cross in the desert-let it extend from Mecca to Medina! That would show the blackguards. Ignite the petroleum an hour before dawn on Easter Sunday. Bask in the glory of the Resurrection!"

Thayer observes Ballard's agitation. The engineer's eyes water and his face is flushed.

"I'm pleased you haven't lost your appet.i.te for the excavations. AB and BC still need to be completed. But first let's go down to the pitch. I want to stand on the surface of the side."

Their dragoman objects: "Effendi, the temperature is more than a hundred degrees. The men are hungry and tired. If I may be permitted to make an observation, Professor, you appear fatigued as well."

But a stairway is cut into the ridge's other slope. As Thayer descends, the rising heat beckons to him like a newly discovered, life-giving star. When he reaches the pitch, just ahead of Ballard, he finds that the surface has baked hard and takes his weight without leaving a mark. The radiation burns through the soles of his boots. Acrid, tarry fumes swirl around him. Thayer stares at the sky, which is as solid as a piece of gla.s.s.

Even now Earth is emerging from the solar glare and Egypt's Western Desert lies within the eyepieces of distant telescopes. Peering through their thin, changeable atmosphere, Thayer's colleagues on Mars wonder whether they're truly observing artificial features on the surface of the third planet. They make sketches and compare them to drawings composed months earlier, before the pale blue-green sphere went behind the sun. As Thayer takes a few tentative steps along the side of Triangle ABC, they dispute whether the regular lines they thought they observed last terrestrial autumn have been extended to form a regular geometric shape. Theories are advanced that these are natural features and the most eminent (and pompous) Martian astronomers have come forth to prove that they're the result of natural geologic or hydrologic processes. Other observers, with keener eyesight and more flexible intelligences, pursue their own happy hypotheses.

The dragoman's concern for the astronomer's durability in the heat proves justified. Ballard returns up the ridge and down to their carriage on his own steam, barely, but Thayer needs to be carried by the porters. He doesn't recall anything of the return to Point A. His only memory is a womanly cry at the end of it, as he's removed from the coach in blankets, shivering.

Now Bint feeds him broth. She speaks to Thayer often, in her own language, in reprimand, he thinks. He doesn't understand what she says, but he hears reproof-also worry, also sorrow. Sometimes she expects a response, as when she asks a question, to judge from her inflection, and then she waits, her eyes wide. Miss Keaton stands by, speechless with fright and impotence.

Throughout this new illness, or relapse-the doctors' diagnosis is ambiguous-Thayer keeps track of the days pa.s.sing. Awareness of the day's date is the single fact he manages to keep in his head. He whispers it to himself when he sleeps and again when he wakes. If Side AC was completed on May the sixteenth, and it's a week since he fell ill, then, as the Earth remains visible progressively later and higher in Mars' western sky, they have hardly more than three weeks before maximum elongation.

Twenty-Three.

Bint has made this journey before, slipping from Thayer's quarters while he sleeps. She's wrapped in a black shawl that has made her even more impervious to sight. She goes quickly from the administrative compound; taking an indirect path, since no direct path is available, she reaches one of Point A's residential quarters, where all the men are fellahin and the Equilateral is no more than a myth or rumor. She stops at the door of a certain crooked mud-brick house, in an alleyway of similarly modest homes. The door opens. Bint knows precisely what to ask for.

She returns from an entirely new direction, never once crossing her previous path. She's been gone for hours, but Thayer hasn't stirred in that time, and Miss Keaton did not look in. When the girl next makes tea, she adds something to the infusion, as she's done before, something colorless and tasteless and sustaining.

The doctors a.s.semble. Thayer sleeps and they're gone and then Thayer sleeps and they've come back. Earth approaches maximum elongation; Thayer feels it in his blood. In one of the flickering interims of dark and light, he frames two whispered questions: "Side AB? Side BC?" The doctors don't respond or speak among themselves or to Miss Keaton. They have each privately confirmed that Thayer's affliction is not malaria; it is indeed Kharga Fever, which often results in loss of vision and sometimes a more complete state of blindness, namely death. Even when Thayer's fever breaks, contrary to the illness's usual course, they remain alarmed.

Yet Ballard arrives at the secretary's bureau one morning in elevated spirits.

"Progress, my dear Miss Keaton, progress!"

She's been looking at the reports. Once Side AC was completed, Ballard added teams to several segments on the rest of the triangle and has spurred the pitch factories into high production. Yet she distrusts the engineer's show of optimism.

"How do you mean?

"Side BC's excavated and the last bit's being paved today and tomorrow. Side AB's coming along too."

"They finished Side BC? It's done?"

"But for the pitch."

"That's excellent news," she says warily.

"We may be completed before maximum elongation; it now seems possible." The engineer removes a sheet of foolscap from a stained, travel-beaten kit bag. "I need your opinion, Miss Keaton. What is this?" he says, holding up the paper to display a familiar geometric figure.

The bureau lamp flickers. Miss Keaton raises her guard. "It appears to be an equilateral triangle, but perhaps it's not."

Ballard insists, "It's b.l.o.o.d.y close."

"I don't think so."

"What's wrong with it? How is it not an equilateral?"

Miss Keaton rests her eyes. She sees a true equilateral cast against the pale black screen on the inside of her eyelids. The triangle's on fire.

When she opens her eyes, Ballard says, "I've already been in contact with London about this. The fellahin on Side BC were evidently overzealous in acquiring their extra wages. They went off the surveyed line. They veered northwest toward Side AC, with the connivance of their foremen. This happened about thirty miles from Point C. At the same time, I'm not sure how, they signaled their dodge to the corresponding workers on Side AC, who then turned sharply toward them. They eventually met at a point about eleven miles south of Point C. Call it C-prime, if you like. I'm told they've apparently established a tidy little settlement there."

"d.a.m.n them! This is sabotage!" she cries. "This is mutiny! The entire undertaking depends on the Equilateral's perfect form."

Miss Keaton doesn't know how much connivance there was between the chief engineer and the errant work crews. Perhaps this deceit was to be expected. Every engineer cuts corners. It may be intrinsic to the process of turning abstract ideas-infinite lines extending across boundless planes-into tangible, non-Platonic substance. Yet the Equilateral is like no other engineering project in the history of mankind: its tangible, physical reality is the Platonic.

She says, "It has to be rectified. They need to fill in the misplaced lines right away and excavate the new segments to Point C. There's no time to lose. Hire more fellahin."

"Miss Keaton, I'm afraid that's impossible. We're just a few weeks from maximum elongation."

"It can be done! For years men have been telling us that the Equilateral is impossible, that the funds could not be raised, that the fellahin could not be a.s.sembled and quartered, and that the spades, the water, and the petroleum could not be acquired and transported to the desert. They've been proven wrong on every count. The Equilateral can be completed and the Flare can be ignited-properly and in time!"

Ballard shows her the foolscap again.

"Look at this," he says. "It's a scale representation of a triflingly irregular polygon. The deviation from C to C-prime is a little more than four percent of a line drawn from C to the midpoint of AB. If you resketch it as an isosceles triangle, the angles at the base are just one-point-two-nine degrees less than an equilateral's. At their distance, the observers on Mars won't distinguish the figure from an equilateral triangle any better than you can."

"I can," Miss Keaton insists. "Anyway, it's dim in this room. I'm fatigued. You're not holding the sheet steady."

Ballard says, "Observers on Mars won't enjoy entirely favorable conditions either. Even at maximum elongation, they'll have to contend with the solar glare. They'll have to peer down through our wet, heavy atmosphere. And their telescopes' optical qualities will be limited, just as ours are."

"How can we be certain of that? We know nothing of their instruments. They may have telescopes capable of resolving Point A itself. It's not impossible that they may observe the workers' quarters, the excavation equipment, the water carts-even the ruts in the sand left by the water carts!"

"If they're so far practiced in their telescopic skills, Miss Keaton, they won't have needed us to provide them with an equilateral triangle. Whatever their level of superiority, they'll forgive us our not-quite-equilateral. They'll recognize that we employ lazy, careless workers. They'll draw certain not-inaccurate conclusions about our civilization's immaturity. But they're scientists. They'll find our faults interesting, perhaps as lessons that give them perspective on their own distant, troubled past. Our shortcomings will be the subject of a report to the Mars Astronomical Society. Be at ease. We may yet make some Martian astronomer's career."

"Professor Thayer will be furious. I'm furious. While he's been ill, everything's been overturned-with only weeks to go. The poor man ... This will break his heart."

"I think you're right," Ballard says evenly. "It's a blow. In his fragile condition ..."

"You must reexcavate the sides!"

Ballard again shows her the figure. This time it startles her, bringing color to her cheeks.

"Sir Harry has seen this," he says. "He'll keep it to himself. We needn't tell the press. We needn't tell Professor Thayer. For the purposes of the endeavor, he's achieved what he set out to do. History will recognize him for that. We needn't let a trivial discrepancy spoil his moment of triumph."

"It's not trivial," she declares, but she concedes, through her rage, the insupportability of her position. A little more than 4 percent, 1.3 degrees. And if what's at stake is Thayer's well-being, even his life ...

She shakes her head vehemently, looking away, down at her desk and the useless reports. She neither acknowledges Ballard's departure nor his suggestion.

Twenty-Four.