Timescape. Part 16

Cathy had wandered out to the Patio, announcing that the rain had pa.s.sed, unnoticed in the tension of the living room. A stretched, artificial good humor seemed to tighten the throats of Peterson and Renfrew as they talked. Their words became clipped and slightly higher in tone. Marjorie's rushed sentences wove between theirs in a kind of birdlike counterpoint.

Peterson was describing the immense paperwork boondoggie surrounding the saving of the Sumatran and Javan species of rhinoceros. TheWorld Council had decided to redirect money for the Javan die-back into isolating the rhino. Ecoinventory had dictated that as part of the stabilization plan, aimed at saving spedes. The one species in excess was, of course, humans. The Council's policies had been applauded by the environmental types, politely not mentioning that in the zero-sum game of resources, this meant less available land and money for people.

"Matter of choices," Peterson said distantly, swirling the amber fluid in his gla.s.s. Wise nods.Greg Markham said to Marjorie Renfrew, "No, no, forget that scene between Cathy and Ian.

Means nothing. We're all edgy lately."

They were standing on the patio, at the edge of the orange glow from inside.

"But scientists are less emotional, I thought, and to have them at each other ..."

"First, Peterson's not a sdentist. Second, all that about suppressing emotion is mostly a convenient legend. When Newton and Hooke were having their famous dispute over who discovered the inverse 2 o o square law, I'm sure they were livid with rage. But R took two weeks to get a letter back and forth. Newton had time to consider his reply. Kept the discussion on a high plane, y'see. These days, if a scientist writes a leRer, he publishes the d.a.m.n thing. The interaction time is very low and the tempers flare higher. Still ...""You don't [hink that explains the irritability of the times?" Marjorie observed shrewdly."Nothere's something more, a feeling . '.." Greg . shook his head. "Oh rat'sa.s.s, I should stick to phys-ics. Even there, of course, we don't really know much that's basic."'"Really? Why?""Well, take the bare fact that all electrons have the same ma.s.s and charge. So do their antiparticles, the positrons. Why? You can talk about fields and vacuum fluctuations and so on, but I like the old Wheeler idea--they have the same ma.s.s because they're all the same particle."Marjorie smiled. "How can that be?""There's only one electron in the universe, see. An electron lxaveling backwards in time looks like Rs an-tiparticle, the posion. So you bounce one elecon back and forth through time. Make everything out of that one particle dogs and dinosaurs, stones and stars.""But why would it travel back in time?"

"Tachyon collision? I don't know." Greg's levity evaporated. "My point is, the foundation of everything is shaky. Even logic itself has holes in,it. Theories are based on pictures of the world--human oiCtures." He looked upward and Marjorie's eyes fol-wed. Constellations hung like blazing chandeliers.A distant airplane droned. A green light winked at its tail. "I rather like the old, certain things," she began shyly."So we can have archaic and eat it, too?" Greg asked impishly. "Nonsense! We have to go on. Let's get back inside."

3 o o Gregory Ben ford Markham went to the window and gazed up at the clearing skies. "Makes you wonder what sort of clouds dropped this water, doesn't it?" he mused, half to himself. His head turned, looking idly around the yard, and suddenly stopped. "Say, who're they?"John Renfrew came over to the window and peered out into the gloom. "Who--I say, they're into our garage!"Markham turned from the window, thinking of the man at the bus stop the other day. "What've you got in there?"Renfrew hesitated, studying the shadowy figures who now had the garage door swtmg open. "Tools, old things, I---""Food!" Marjorie exclaimed. My preserves, some are stored there. And tinned things."'ffhat's what they're after," Markham said decisively."The squatters down the way," Renfrew mutteredto himself. "Call the police, Marjorie."

"Oh m" she said, unmoving.

"Go on." John gave her a push."I'll do it," Jan said briskly. She ran into the hall."Let's head 'em off," Markham said. He picked upa poker from the harth almost casually."No," John said, "the p?lice will--""These guys'11 be long gone by that time,"

Markham said. He strode quickly to the front door and opened it. "Let's go!""They may be armed," Peterson's voice called after him.Markham sprinted out the door and onto the lawn. Renfrew followed."'ey!" a voice from .the garage cried. "Scarper!"

"Come on!" Markham called.He ran towards the dark maw of the open garage.

He could make out a man stooped over, picking up a carton. Two others were carrying things. They hes, 3 o !

itated as Markham came down on them. He raised the poker and called out towards the house, "Hey, John! Got your gun?"The men unfroze. Two bolted down the drive.

Greg charged forward and got between them and the gThate. He swung the poker. It made a loud swoosh.e men stopped. They backed away, looking at the hedges to each side of the yard.Renfrew ran at the third man. The dark figure sidestepped and slipped past him. At that 'moment Cathy Wickham came down the steps of the porch.

Renfrew slipped on the wet gra.s.s. "Christ!" The man picked up speed, looking back at Renfrew. Cathy Wickham, trying to make out the shadows on the lawn, stopped dead in the path. The figure smashed into her. They sprawled on the stones.Markham swung the poker back and forth in front of him. The men seemed paralyzed by the sound of it. In the gloom they could not tell how close it came.

Markham could not judge the distance either. Ignorant armies clash by night, he thought giddily. Should he charge them?"Your friend's bought his," he called out clearly.

They both turned to look. The yellow rectangle of the doorway sent a blade of light out onto the glistening lawn. In the beam John Renfrew yanked the fallen man to his feet and said 'q/V-hat're you--"Markham stepped quietly forward and swung the poker crack into the nearest man's leg."Awrrr!" The struck man collapsed. His partner saw Markham rearing up out of the shadows and backed away. Suddenly he turned and ran diagonally across the lawn. Markham tried to keep both men in sight. Two down, one to go."Look out, Greg, he's got a knife!" Cathy Wickham shouted.The man turned, transfixed by the yellow light in the center of the lawn. Metal glinted in his hand.

"Naw, you just leave off," he said roughly.Markham walked towards him. Swoosh, swoosh.

0 2 Gregory Ben fordThe sound 'caught the man's attention. Ian Peterson came trotting forward. "Let him go," he called to Markham."h.e.l.l no!" Markham answered with gusto."No point in riskingre""We've got 'era," Markham insisted.'qhat one's getting away!" Cathy Wickham cried.

The man lying in the drive had moved at a crouch towards the gate. As she spoke he ran with a limp to the gate and vaulted over it."d.a.m.n.' Markham said with chagrin. "Should've covered him.""No need for melodramatics," Peterson called mildly. "The police will be here shortly." Markham glanced back at Renfrew."Eric!" the man with the knife shouted. "Switch!"

Abruptly, before Markham could understand the signal, the two men moved. Renfrew's captive wrenched away from him and dashed back towards the garage. Markham followed. The man ran into the dark of the garage. Markham hesitated. He could see nothing. Suddenly the man reappeared, a shadow.

Markham could make out that he had something long in his hand. Markham backed away warily. He saw the man with the knife moving. towards the gate.

An elementary maneuver to distract him. The shadow stepped further into the light and swung a rake at Markham's head. Markham ducked and jumped backward. "Christ, somebody--" Both men suddenly ran for the gate. One turned and threw the rake directly at Markham. He dodged, aside. "b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

he shouted and hurled the poker after them into the darkness. He listened to their footsteps fade away."No use going after them," Renfrew said at his side.Cathy Wickham agreed, "Leave them to the police, Greg.""Yeah, okay," he mumbled.They trailed back into the house. There was amo- 3 o 3ment of silence and then everyone began chattering about the incident. Markham noted that those who had stayed inside and watched from the door had a different view of the details. They thought Renfrew had subdued his man, when in fact the fellow had simply been waiting for a proper opening for escape.

The relativity of experience, Markham thought. He was still puffing from the exertion, adrenahn singing in From the distance came the two-tone hooting of a siren."The police," Peterson said swiftly. "Late, as usual.

Look, I'm going to cut and run before they get here.

I'don't want to have to answer questions for the rest of the night. You fellows are the heroes, anyway.

Thanks for the drinks and goodbye, everyone."He le hastily. Markham watched him go. He reflected on the fact that their first unthinking response had been to a.s.sume the shadowy figures were thieves. There was no hesitation, no one suggesting it was some mistake, people who'd got the wrong house. Twenty years ago that might have been the case. Now ...The others, standing in the center of the living room, drank a toast to each other. The siren drew nearer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

JULY, 1963.

GORDON SAW THAT HE WOULD HAVE TO SPEND A LOT.

of the summer working with Cooper. The candidacy exam had been a blow. Cooper took weeks to recover his self-confidence. Gordon finally had to sit him down and give him a Dutch uncle talk. They decided on a routine. Cooper would study fundamentals each morning, to prepare for a second try at the exam. Afternoons and evenings he would take data. By autumn he would have enough to a.n.a.lyze in detail. By that time, with coaching from Gordon, Co9per could take the exam again with some confidence..With luck, winter would find him with most of his thesis data complete.Cooper listened, nodded, said little. At times he seemed moody. His new data came out smooth, unblemished: no signals..Gordon felt a letdown whenever he looked over Cooper's lab books and saw the bland, ordinary curves. Could the effect come and go like that? Why?

How? Or was Cooper simply discarding all the reso- TIMESCAPE.nances which didn't fit his thesis? If you were d.a.m.ned certain you weren't 'looking for something, there was a very good chance you wouldn't see it.But Cooper kept everything in his notebooks, as a ood experimenter should. The books were messyut they were always complete. Gordon thumbedthrough them daily, looking for unexplained blank spots or scratched-out entries. Nothing seemed wrong.Still, he remembered the physicists in the 1930s who had bombarded substances with neutrons. They had carefully rigged their Geiger counters so that, once the neutron barrage stopped, the counters shut off, too--to avoid some sources of experimental error.

If they had left the counters on they would have discovered that some substances emitted high-energy particles for a long time afterward--artificially induced radioactivity. By being careful they missed the unexpected, and lost a n.o.bel prize.

The July issue of Physics Today carried a piece in the Search and Discovery section dealing with spontaneous resonance. There was a sample of the data, taken from the Physical Review Letters paper. Lakin was quoted extensively. The effect, he said, "promises to show us a new kind of interaction which can occur in Type III-V compounds such as indium antimonideand perhaps in all compounds, if the experiments are sensitive enough to pick up this effect." There was no mention of the apparent correlations between the times when the spontaneous resonances appeared.Gordon decided to attack the "spontaneous res6-nance"

phenomenon afresh. The message idea made sense to him--at least, something was there but the rebuffs from his colleagues could not be ignored.

Okay, maybe they were right. Maybe a series of bizarre coincidences led him to believe there were coded words in the scope traces. In that case, what was the explanation? Lakin was afraid the concentra- 3 o 6 Gregory Ben fordtion on the message idea would obscure the true problem. Okay, say Lakin was right. Say they were all right. What other explanation was possible?He worked for several weeks on alternatives. The theory governing Cooper's original experiment was not particularly deep; Gordon labored through it, pondering the a.s.sumptions, redoing the integrals, checking each step. Some fresh ideas cropped up. He studied each one in turn, running it to ground with equations and order-of-magnitude estimates. The earlier theory dropped some mathematical terms; he investigated them, looking for ways they could suddenly stop being negligible and upset the theory.

Nothing 'seemed to fit his needs. He reread the original papers, hoping for an offhand clue. Pake, Korringa, Overhauser, Feher, Clark ... the papers were cla.s.sics, una.s.sailable. There were no visible escape hatches from the canonical theory.He Was pursuing a calculation at his desk, waiting for Cooper to show up for a conference, when his telephone rang. "Dr. Bernstein?" the voice of the department secretary asked.'qJm," he said, distracted."Professor Tulare would like to see you.""Oh, okay." Tulare was Chairman. "When, Joyce?"

"Now, if it's convenient."When Joyce ushered him into the long, spare room, the chairman was reading what Gordon recognized as a personnel folder. Events soon confirmed that it was his."Briefly," Tulare said, "I have to tell you that yourMerit Increase has been, uh, subject to controversy."

"I thought it was a standard thing. I mean---"

"Ordinarily, it is. The department meets only to consider promotions from a.s.sistant Professor to a.s.sociate Professor--that is, getting tenure or froma.s.sociate Professor to full Professor."'Uh huh.""A Merit Increase, as in your case, from a.s.sistant Professor Step II to a.s.sistant Professor, Step HI, does 3 o ?

not require the entire depaitment vote. We usually ask the senioY men in the candidate's group--in your case, the spin resonance and solid state grouptogive an opinion. I am afraid ...""Lakin vetoed it, huh?"Tulare looked up in alarm. "I did not say that."

"But you meant it.""I will not discuss individual comments." Tulare.

looked' worried for a moment and then sat back, studying the tip of his pencil as though a solution lay there. "However, you realize the ... events ... of the last few months have not inspired a great deal ofconfidence in your fellow faculty members.""So I had guessed."Tulare began a series of reflections on scientific credibility, keeping the discussion safely vague. Gordon listened, hoping there would be something in it he could learn from. Tulare was not the standard administrator sort, in love with his own voice, and this little lecture was more a defense mechanism than an oration. Despite his earlier bravado, Gordon began to feel a sinking sensation steal into his legs. This was serious. A Merit Increase was routine; only really questionable cases had trouble. The big test was the leap from a.s.sistant Professor to a.s.sociate Professor, which spelled tenure. Gordon had started out as a.s.sistant Professor I and been advanced to II within a year, which was speedy; most faculty spent two years at each step. Once he reached a.s.sistant III he could be promoted to a.s.sociate I, although the typical route was to go to a.s.sistant IV before making the jump to tenure. But now he wasn't going to make the standard step from II to III on schedule. That didn't bode well for his prospects when he came up for tenure review.A coldness had reached up from his legs into his chest when Tulare said, "Of course, you have to be careful of what you do in any field, Gordon," and discussed the necessary wariness a scientist had to have, the quality of being skeptical about his own 3 o e findings. Then, incredibly, Tulare launched into a recital of the story of Einstein and the notebook for writing down thoughts, ending in the line, "So Einstein said, 'I doubt it. I have only had two or three good ideas in my life.'" Tulare slapped the desk with genuine mirth, relieved at being able to turn a difficult interview into something lighter. "So you see, Gordon--not every idea is a good one."Gordon made a weak smile. He had tod that story to Boyle and the Carroways and they had sat there and laughed. Undoubtedly they had heard it before.

They were simply humoring a junior faculty member who must have appeared to be a buffoon.He stood up. His legs were strangely weak. He found that he was breathing quickly, but there was no discernible cause. Gordon murmured something to Tulare and turned away. He knew he should be most concerned about the Merit Increase but for the moment all he could think of was the Carroways and their smiles and his own vast stupidity.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

JUlY 7, 1963 DURING THE SUMMER THE RHYTHM OF THEIR DAYS.

changed. Penny began to sleep later and Gordon found himself waking before her. He resolved that he would sock to his Canadian Air Force exercise program religiously, and the best time to do it was in the early hours,. on the deserted stretches of lArmdansea Beach. He never liked doing them at home, particularly if Penny was there. He liked going down to the white sands which had been cleaned by the night Odes and working his way through the exercises as the sunlight brimmed above Mount Soledad to the east. Then he would run as far as possible along the beach. Each. cove was a scooped-out world of its own, the shadows shortening as the sun rose. His sheen of sweat cooled in the blue shadows and the thick ocean air had a tangible watery weight as he sucked it in, puffing, legs setting a thump thump thump that came up through the bones, a curious sound in this air, like chunks of wood falling on an oak floor. He had run like this when he was a kid, on s I o the scruffy beaches of New Jersey. His Uncle Herb took him there often, just after his father started with the sickness. When Jersey crowded in summertime, Uncle Herb took him for rides in a yellow Studebaker, out to Long Island. His mother had always spoken of the people who lived out there, of People Who Actually Owned Beach Front Property, as though they were another race. The first time Uncle Herb took him, Gorcon asked if they were going to visit relatives, hoping he had some thread of connection with those mythical folk. Uncle Herb laughed in his quick, barking, not altogether friendly way, and wheezed, "Yeah, I'm going to visit a Mister Gatsby, doncha know," and slapped the side of the big yellow car, mak'mg a solid metallic thump. Gordon had sat with his arm out the window for the whole trip, the summer breeze of their pa.s.sage caressing the black hair on his arm. The hair was more apparent that summer; Gordon compared his to Uncle Herb's and found that he had made remarkable progress in just a year. It took six more years before he understood the enigmatic remark about Gatsby. By the time he had read the book--ignoring the proffered Malamud from his mother--he could no longer remember much about the big houses on Long Island, or whether any of them had a green light on the end of a dock, or any of the other stuff. The beaches there, he remembered, were thin and stony, a bleak margin begrudged by the big inland estates. There wasn't much to do. Children built sand castles which their parents periodically approved, peering into the yellow-blue sun haze over the tops of their paperback books. He remembered thinking that if Long Island was typical, goyische life was dull. By contrast, Uncle Herb took him to some actual prizefights that summer, fights as big and real as he'd ever thought life could be. Thump thump his legs pounded on, and before him he saw again the white square of the ring, the two figUres dancing and punching, a hea.d jerking back when hit, the ref waltzing around the men, i Ishouts and whistles and a hot, close, salty smell from the liquid crowd. "Didja see that guy Alberts in the fifth round," Uncle Herb said at the intermission, "feet like sandbags? Like a guy looking for a collar b.u.t.ton he dropped. Sheesh!" And after the decision: "Those refs! Giving him two rounds, using what for eyes? I wouldn't want to go on hunting trips with them." Thump thump thump and the salty smell of the crowd went away and Gordon was running into a rising sun, the tang in his nostrils was a sa breeze thousands of miles from Long Island and he was throwing his fists out as he ran, uppercuts and cross punches and jabs with their own rhythm, his feet connected to his fists, panting hard, a face muddy and formless in front of him, now resolving into Lakin as Gordon wondered at it the same instant that he gave it two of his best, a fake and a belly punch and then the jab, fast and easy, then some more as he thought about Lakin and began to self-consciously erase the swimming face, but held it for three quick jabs, his knuckles sailing through the milky image and the head rocking back one, two, three times thump thump thump yeah Uncle Herb taking him laces that whole long summer while his father was anging on, keeping the boy's mind occupied-- Gordon threw two more punches at the air, aiming at he didn't know what--mind filled yeah with fights and beaches and books while his father said nothing, smiled when you talked to him, never complained, just crawled away from everyone to die, the way they did it in the Bernstein family, just quietly, no fuss, n.o.body beating the drum for you, not for a'

Bernstein thump thump thump the beach sand now warming under his feet, sweat trickling into his eyes, stinging, blurring the morning, his throat raw. Jesus, he had run a long way. The cliffs were high here. He had slogged past Scripps pier and down to Black's Beach, a long deserted stretch below the Torrey Pines Park. He was running in shadow now and as he brushed the sweat from his eyes he suddenly saw 3 I ;t that he was about to stumble on something. He leaped, thinking it was a sleeping dog, ran on by reflex and looked back. A couple. Legs akimbo. Woman's heels pointed at the sky. The whites of four eyes.

Jesus he thought, but somehow it didn't disturb him that much. The idea was logical: lonely beach, h.o.r.n.y couple, beautiful sunrise, salty smell. But it did mean he had to run even farther. Give them time to finish their thump thump thump. Certainly it was a better vision to end a run with than Lakin's creamy face, Gordon thought muzzily. Lakin was a problem he couldn't solve and maybe, he saw, that was why he was running so far, wearing himself out so a real fist wouldn't smack into a real face. Maybe, yeah, and maybe not. He had Uncle Herb's contempt for too much a.n.a.lysis. One way to be a potzer was to worry about things like that too much, yeah. Gordon smiled and licked his lips and threw two more punches, slicing the forgiving air.

Saul Shriffer called in mid-July. He had finished up the observations of 99 Hercules, using the Green Bank radio telescope. Results were negative. No coherent signal rose up out of the interstellar sputter.

Gordon suggested using higher frequencies and narrower bandwidths. Saul said he had tried some.

Without more to show for their efforts, though, he wasn't going to be able to get any more time on the instrument. Conventional research projects had precedence.

They talked for a few minutes about alternatives, but there weren't any. The Cavendish group had turned down Saul's request for telescope time.

Saul said a few rea.s.suring things, and Gordon mechanically agreed. When Saul hung up Gordon felt an unexpected letdown. He saw that, without admitting it to himself, he had been pinning hope on the radio-listening idea. That evening, when he met Penny for dinner at Buzzy's, he did not mention the call. The next day he wrote Saul a letter asking that TIMESCAPE.he not publish any summary of the radio search.

Let's wait until something positive comes along, he argued. But more than that, Gordon wanted to keep quiet. Maybe it would all go away. Maybe it would be forgotten.

When Penny went board surfing at Scripps Beach, Gordon sat on the sand and watched. He had been doing a lot of that recently--sitting, thinkin'g, letting others play out the summer. He liked running on the beach and knew he should try riding the waves, now that he had someone to teach him, but something held him back. He watched the La Jolla ladies work on their expensive tans, and came to know the types: People who worked outdoors were pale behind the knees, whereas beach loungers were a uniform chocolate, a consummation carefully arrived at.Penny came out of the tumbling waters, board perched on a hip, straggly hair dripping. She sagged down beside him, wrung out her hair, flicked a glance at his set expression. "Okay," she said finally,"time to 'fess up.""Fess who?""Fess Parker. Gordon, come on. You're doing your zombie imitation."Gordon had always prided himself on getting right to the point; now he found himself rummaging for something to say. "Y'know ... I've been looking through the journals in the library. Astronomy journals, I mean. Mercury, Scientific American, Science News. Most of them are flat out ignoring Saul's PR work. Even if they mention it, they don't reproduce the picture. And not a one gave the Hercules coordinates.""Publish them yourself."Gordon shook his head. "Won't do any good."

'qhen did you start feeling so inadequate?""At ten," Gordon said, hoping for some way to de- ! 4 flect this conversation, "when I began to suspect I wasn't Mozart."

"I was that American myth, the 98-pound weakling.

Those Charles Atlas ads, remember. When I went to the beach, bullies didn't kick sand in my face they'd kick me in the face. Eliminate the middle man.""Uh huh." She studied him, face compressed.

"You know that was the first thing you've told meabout the Saul business in, what, a month?"He shrugged.''You never tell me anything anymore.""I don't want to get you so involved that people will ask you about it. So you'll have to defend me to friends." He paused. "Or deal with cranks.""Gordon, I'd rather know what's going on. Really.

If I'm to talk to UCLJ people I can't very well gloss over it."He shrugged again. "Big deal. I might be leavingUCLJ anyway.""What?"So he told her about not getting the Merit Increase.

"Look," he concluded, 'qeing appointed an a.s.sistant Professor is always risky. You may have to move on if things don't work out. I outlined all that to you.

We talked it over.""Well, sure, eventually ..." She stared off toward La Jolla Point, face blank. "I mean, in the long run, if you didn't publish ...""I've published," he murmured in a half-breath, defensively."Then why?""The business with Lakin. I can't do research in agroup with two guys I like, Feher and Schultz, and * one I rub the wrong way, Lakin. Personalities arc ""I thought scientists rose above mere squabbling.

You told me that once.""This is more than a squabble, can't you see that?"

3 I 5.'"Lakin is kind of out of the old school. Skeptical.

Thinks I'm try'mg to deliberately make trouble for him." He ticked off motivations on his fingers. "Getting older and feeling a little shaky, maybe. h.e.l.l, I dunno. But I can't work in a group dominated by a guy like that. I've told you that before.""Ah." Her voice had a brittle edge. "So, in effect,we talked that one out, too?""Oh, Christ.""I'm glad you're conferring with me on all these problems. On your problems.""Look--" he spread his hands, a wide gesture- "I don't know what I'll do. I was just talking."'"It'll mean leaving La Jolla. Leaving California, where I lived all my life? If that comes up, give mea few minutes to mull it over, okay?""Sure. Sure.""You can still stay on here, though? It's your choice?""Yeah. We'll decide it together.""Good. Fair and square? Open? No holding yourself aloof?""One man, one vote."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"One person, one vote."

"Zappo."Gordon lay down and opened a wrinkled Time magazine against the hovering sun. He tried to dismiss the boiling alternatives in his head and concentrate on a piece in the Science section on the planned Apollo moon shots. He made progress slowly; a decade of reading the close-packed language of physics had robbed him of speed. On the other hand, it did make him more conscious of style. He was gradually coming to feel that the breezy simplicities of Time hid more than they revealed. He was mulling this point when a shadow fell over him."Thought I recognized you," a gruff man's voice said.

3 I Gordon blinked up into the hazy sunshine. It was Cliff, in a bathing suit and carrying a sixpack of beer.

Gordon became very still. "I thought you lived in northern California."

"Hey! Cliffie!" Penny had rolled over and seen him. "Whacha doin' here?" She sat up.

Cliff squatted on the sand, eyeing Gordon. "Jest walkin' along. My day off. Got a job in Oceanside."

"And you saw us here?" Penny said happily.

"How long have you been down this way? You should've called me."

"Yes," Gordon said dryly, "a remarkable coincidence."

"Little over a week. Got me a job in two days flat."

Cliff hunkered down, not sitting on the sand but resting with the beer in both hands between his legs and his b.u.t.tocks only an inch from the beach. Gordon remembered seeing j.a.panese perched like that for hours, in a movie somewhere. It was a curious pose, as though Cliff did not wish to commit himself to fully sitting with them.

Penny burbled on, but Gordon was not listening.

He studied Cliff's sun-baked ease and looked for something behind the eyes, something that explained this improbable coincidence. He did not believe it for an instant, of course. Cliff knew that Penny surfed and that this was the nearest good beach. The only interesting question was whether Penny had known this was going to happen as well.

There was no sign between them, no small inepli-.

cable smiles, no gestures, no false notes that Gordon could see. But that was just it--he wasn't good at that sort of thing. And as he watched them talking with their slow and easy grace they seemed so alike, so familiar from a thousand movies and cigarette ads, and so strange. Gordon sat, white as the under-belly of a fish in comparison, a flabby dirty alabaster with black swirls of hair. He felt a slow flush of emotion, a wash of feeling he could not quite name. He a i 7 did not know if this was some elaborate, cute game they were playing, but if it was--Gordon surged up, lurched to his feet. Penny watched him. Her lips parted in surprise at his stony expression. He struggled for the words, for something to fill the ground between knowledge and suspicion, something just right, and finally mumbled,"Don't, don't mind me.""He)5 sport, I--""Goy games." Gordon waved a hand in dismissal, face hot. It had come out more bitter than he planned."Gordon, come on, really--" Penny began, but he turned away and broke into a trot: The rhythm picked him up instantly. He heard her (oice, raised above the crunch of breakers, but it was thin and fad-ing as she called to him. Okay, he thought, no Great Gatsby finish, but it got me out of that, that--Not ending the sentence, not wanting to think about any of it any more, he ran toward the distant carved hills.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.' .'.

AUGUST 6, 1963.

"I'M THINKING OF GOING INTO INDUSTRY," HE SAID.to Penny one evening over supper. They had shared their small talk already, in what had become a thin ritual. Gordon refused to discuss the meeting on the beach, refused to have Cliff over for a drink, and felt his withdrawal would, ultimately, settle the matter.

Only dimly did it occur to him that the refusals were the cause of the curiously stale conversations they now had together.'A/hat's that mean?""Work in a company research lab. GE, Bell Labs--" He launched into an advertis.e.m.e.nt for the virtues of working where results counted, where ideas evolved swiftly into hardware. He did not, in fact, believe the industrial labs were superior to university groups, but they did have an-aura. Things got done faster there. Helpers and technicians abounded.

Salaries were higher. Then too, he enjoyed the unavoidable smugness of the scientist, who knew he could always have a life beyond academe. Not a ! omerely a job, but a pursuit. Genuine research, and for decent pay, tob. Maybe something beyond the laboratory, as well--look at Herb York with his consulting on "defense posture" and the cloudy theories of disarmament.

The government could use some clear sci-ent'ffic thinking there, he argued."Gordon, this is just plain old bulls.h.i.t."

"Huh?" It stalled him for a moment."You don't want to go work for a compa. ny."

"I'm thinking very seriously--"''You want to be a professor. Do research. Have students. Give lectures. You lap it up."

"I do?""Of course you do. When everything's going okay you get up humming in the morning and you're humming when you come home at night."''You overestimate the pleasures of the job/"I'm not estimating at all. I see what professoring does to you.""Uh." His momentum blunted, he ruefully admitted to himself that she knew him pretty well."So instead of talking up some temporary escape hatch like industry, you ought to be doing something.""Like what?""Something different. Move your x's and y's and z's around. Try--""Another approach," he finished for her.

"Exactly. Thinking about problems from a different angle is--" She broke off, hesitated, then plunged ahead. "Gordon, I could tell what was going on there with Cliff. I could rea.s.sure you and do a whole routine, but I'm not sure any more that you'd believeme.".

"Remember this," she said firmly. ''You don't ownme, Gordon. We're not even married, for Chrissake."

"Is that what's bothering you?"

"Bothering me? G.o.d, it's you that's--"

3 2 o " 'cause if it is, maybe we ought to talk about that and see ifm""Gordon, wait. When we started out, moved in together, we agreed we were going to try it out, that's all.""Sure. Sure." He nodded vigorously, his food for-otten "But I'm willing, if it's making you play g * .games like this thing wth Cliff--and that was really childish, Penny, arranging that meeting, just childish--I'm willing to talk about it, you know, ah, getting--"Penny held out her hand, palm toward him. "No.