Timescape. Part 23

"Gordon, I don't think we know enough yet to---"

"Okay, I agree, basically. Most of my data is a jumble.

Fragments. Pieces of sentences. Formulas. But there is a consistent feel to it."Her voice took on the precise, professional clarity he remembered from graduate school. "First the data, Gordon. Then we indulge in some theory, maybe.""Yeah, right." He knew better than to argue with her on the philosophy of experimental phys!cs..She had rather rigid views."I promise you, I start up tomorrow."

"Okay, but it could fade bY then. I meanN"

"Don't kvetch, Gordon. Tomorrow we start again."

It came less than three hours later, shortly after noon on Tuesday, November 6. Names, dates. The spreading bloom. The phrases describing this were c.lip.ped and tense. Parts were garbled. Letters were missing.

One long pa.s.sage, though, related how the experiments had begun and who was involved. These sentences were longer and more relaxed and almost conversational, as though someone were simply sending what came into his head.

wWITH MARKHAM GoNE AND b.l.o.o.d.y DUMB RENFREW CARRYING ON THERE'S NO FUTURE IN OUR LI'I'I'LE PLAN NO.

PAST EITHER I SUPPOSE THE LANGUAGE CAN'T DEAL WITH IT.

BUT THE THING SHOULD HAVE WORKED.

There came a scramble of nome. The long pa.s.sage disappeared and did not returrr The terse biological information reappeared. There were missing words. The noise was rising like a tossing sea. Through the last staccato sentences there ran an unstated sense of desperation.

Penny saw something different in his face when he came into the kitchen. Her raised eyebrows asked a question.

4 2 a Gregory Ben ford"I got it today." He surprised himself at the easy,blank way he could say it."Got what?"'qThe answer, for Chrissake.""Oh. Oh."Gordn handed her a Xerox copy of his lab notebook.

"So it really is the way you thought?""Apparently." There. was a quiet a.s.surance in him now. He felt no pressing need to say anything about the result, no tension, not even a hint of the manic elation he had expected. The facts were there at lastand they could speak for themselves.

"My G.o.d, Gordon."

''yeah. My G.o.d, indeed."There was a moment of Silence between them. She put the Xerox page on the kitchen table and turned back to deboning a chicken. "Well, that should take care of your promotion.""It sure as h.e.l.l should," Gordon said with some relish."And maybes" she gave him a sidelong iook--"maybe you'll be worth living with again." The sentence had started out all right but by the end a bittertone came into it. Gordon pursed his lips, irked.

"You haven't made it any easier."

"There are limits, Gordon."

'qJh huh."''I'm not your G.o.ddam little wifey.""Yes, you made that brilliantly clear some time ago."She sniffed, lips pressed so tight they grew pale, and wiped her hands on a paper towel. Penny reached over and clicked on the radio. It began playing a Chubby Checker tune. Gordon stepped forward and turned it off. She looked at him, saying nothing.

Gordon picked up the Xeroxed page and put it in his jacket pocket, carefully folding it beforehand.He said, "I think I'll go do some reading."

''You do that," she said.

TIMESCAPE.

All through the afternoon of November 7 the noise level rose. It blotted out the signal most of the time. Gordon got a few words here and there, and a very dear RA 18 5 36 DEC 30 29.2, and that was all. The coordinates made sense now. Up ahead in the future they would have a precise fix on where they would seem to be in the sr. The solar apex was an average of the. sun's mo-.

tion. Thirty-five years from now the earth would be in a location near the average motion. Gordon felt a certain relaxing in him as he wfiched the jittering noise. All the pieces fit now. Zinnes could confirm at least part of it.

Now the question was how to present the data, how to build an airtight case that couldn't be dismissed out of hand. A straightforward paper in The Physical Review?

That would be the standard approach. The lead time on Phys Rev was at least nine months, though. He could publish in Physical Rev/ew Letters, but letters had to be short. How could he pack in all the experimental detail, plus the messages? Gordon smiled ruefully Here he had an enormous result and he was dithering over how to present it. s...o...b..z.

Penny carried knives and forks to the table; Gordon brought the plates. The slatted blinds let in yellow swords of sun. She moved gracefully in this light, her face pensive..They ate silently for a moment, both hungry. "I thought about your experiments today," she beganhesitantly.

'Yes?"uI don't understand them. To think of time that way...""I don't see how it can make sense, either. It's a fac}, though.""And facts rule."roWell, sure. I kind of feel we're looking at this the 4 3 o wrong way, though. s.p.a.ce-time must not work the way physicists think."She nodded and pushed potatoes around her plate, still pensive. "Thomas Wolfe. 'Time, dark time, secret time, forever flowing like a river.' I rememberthat from The Web and the Rock.""Haven't read it.""I looked up a Dobson poem today, thinking about you." She took a paper from her books and handed it to him.Time goes, you say? Ah, no!Alas) time stays, we go.He laughed. "Yeah, something like that." He cut into a frankfurter with enthusiasm."Do you think people like Lakin are going to keep on questioning your work?"He chewed judiciously. "Well; in the best sense, I hope they do. Every result in science has to stand up to criticism every day. Results have to be checked and rethought.""No, I meant--""I know, are they going to try to cut me off at the knees. I hope so." He gr'mned. "If they push things further than legitimate scientific skepticism, they'llhave just that much farther to fall."

"Well, I hope not."

''Why?""Because "her voice broke "it'll be hard onyou, and I can't take what it does to you any more."

"Honey...""I can't. You've been tight as a drum all summer and fall. And when I try to deal with it, I can't getthrough to you and I start snapping at you and ..."

"Honey...""Things get so impossible. I just ..."

"G.o.d, I know. It runs away with me."

She said quietly, "And me ...""I start thinking about a problem and other things, * other people, they just seem to get in the way."

TIMESCAPE."It's been my fault, too. I want a lot out of this, outof us, so much, and I'm not getting it."

"We've been clawing at each other."

She sighed. "Yeah.""I ... I think the physics stuff isn't going to be 'so bad from now on.""That... that's what I hope. I mean, these last few days, they've been different. Better. It feels like a year ago, really. You're relaxed, I'm not bugging you all the time to... I feel better about us. For the first time in ages.""Yeah. Me, too." He smiled tentatively.They ate in a comfortable silence. In the moist sunset glow Penny swirled her gla.s.s of white wine and gazed at the ceiling, thinking. Gordon knew they had made an unspoken pledge.Penny began to smile, her eyes hazed. She sipped more of the amber wine and plunged a fork into .a frankfurter. Holding it aloft with a wise smile, she turned it this way and that, studying it critically.

"Yours is bigger than this," she said judicially.Gordon nodded solemnly. "Maybe. That's, what, about .thirty centimeters? Yeah, I can beat that.""In matters of this kind, the preferred unit systemis inches. It's sort of traditional.""So it is?"Not that I'm a purist, you understand.""Oh no, I wouldn't think that."

He awoke with an arm that had gone to sleep. He gently rolled her head off his bicep and lay still, feeling the tingling ebb away. Outside, the balmy fall night had descended. He sat up slowly and she snug- ed to him, murmuring. He studied the rounded uckles of her curved spine, k.n.o.bbed hills amid the brown sweep of skin. He thought of time that could flow and loop back on itself, unlike any river, and his eyes foliowed the narrowing of her back. Then came the flaring into hips, a complex of smooth surfaces 4 .' Gregory Ben forddescending to' the ripe swelling below, the tan fading into a startling pure white. Drowsy, she had solemnly informed him that Lawrence had called his a pillar of blood, a phrase that struck her as grotesque. But on the other hand, she added, it was sort of like that, wasn't it? "All in pursuit of la pet.i.te mort," she murmured, and slid into sleep. Gordon knew she had been right about the tension between them. It was seeping away now. He saw that he had loved her all along, but there had been so much in the way ...He heard a distant siren. Something made him slowly untangle himself from her. He moved across the cold floor to the window. He could see people walking along La Jolla Boulevard under a bleached neon glow. A motorcyde cop raced by. The police here were jackbooted and militar with eggsh.e.l.l helmets, goggles, their square faces a frozen blank, like actors in a futuristic antidpation, a B-grade black and white.

In New York the cops were soft, their uniforms a worn, neighborhood blue. The siren shrieked. A police car flashed by. Buildings, palms, turning heads, shops and signsall pulsed red in response to the revolving hysterical light atop the streaking car. Fragments of red ricocheted from store windows. Kinetic confusion swept by, wailing, its mechanical mouth announcing tumult. The Doppler death of this shriek stirred pedestrians, filling their steps with new energy. Heads piv-oted to seek the crime or fire that had drawn the bulletlike car. Gordon thought of the messages and the thin thread of desperation that ran through them. A siren.

It had come in speckled dabs, impulses, light reflected from random waves, visions from far across a river. It should be answered. For scientific reasons, yes, but for more than that.

"Uh, you busy?"It was Cooper. 'slo, come on in." Gordon pushed the pile of papers he was grading to the corner of his desk. Then he leaned back in his chair and put his feet aup on top of them. He clasped his hands behind hisneck, elbows' out, and grinned. "What can I do foryou?""Well, I'm gonna take my exam again in threeweeks, y'know. What do I say about those interrup-tions? I mean, Lakin and the others came down onme like a s.h.i.tload of bricks last time.""Right. If I were you, I would ignore the point.""But I can't. They'll cream me again.""I'll take care of them.""Huh? How?""I'll have a little work of my own to present, bythat time." ."Well, I dunno ... Getting Lakin off my back isnontrivial. You saw the Way he "* 'qAnny do you say 'nontrivial'? Why not qard' or'difficult'?"''Well, you know, it's physics talk ...""Yes, 'physics tall.' We have a lot of jargon likethat. I wonder if sometimes it doesn't disguisethings, rather than making them clearer."Cooper gavd Gordon an odd look. "I guess.""Don't look so uncertain," Gordon said jovially.''You're home free. I'm going to save your a.s.s.""Uh, okay." Cooper moved uncertainly to thedoor. "If you say so ..."

-."See you on the ramparts," Gordon said by way of dismissal.

He was about a quarter of the way through the first draft of his paper for Science when there was a knock on his door. He had decided on Science because it was big and prestigious and got things into print fairly quickly. They carried long articles, so he could tell the whole thing in one piece, stacking up the evidence in a pile so high no one could knock it down.

He had already checked with Claudia Zinnes. She would publish a letter in the same issue, confirming some of his observations.

4 3 a "h.e.l.lo. Can we come in?" It was the twins, first-year graduate students.'Vell, look, I'm pretty busy--""It's your office hours.""It is? Oh yes. Well, what did you want?",/ou graded some of our problems wrong," one of them said. The flat statement took Gordon aback. He was used to a little more humility from students.

"Oh?" he countered."Yeah. Look--" One of them began to write rapidly on Gordon's blackboard, covering up some notes Gordon had put there while he was outlining his pa-per. Gordon tried to follow the argument the twinwas making. "Careful of that stuff I have written there." The twin frowned at Gordon's intruding lines.

"Okay6" he said democratically, and began to write around them. Gordon focused his attention on the rapid-fire sentences about Bessel's functions and boundary conditions on the electric field. It took him five minutes to straighten out the twin's misconception.

All through it he was never sure which one of the twins he was talking to. They were virtually carbon copies. As soon as one finished the other would leap to the attack with a new objection, usually phrased in a cryptic few words. Gordon found them exceptionally tiring. After ten more minutes, during which they began to interrogate him about his research and how much money a research a.s.sistant made, he finally got rid of them by pleading a headache.

That, plus three significant glances at his watch, got them out the door. As he was closing it, another voice called, 'Wait a sec! Dr. Bernstein!"Gordon reluctantly opened it. The man from UPI stepped partway in. "I know you don't want to be bothered, Professor--""Right. So why are you bothering me?" '"Because Professor Ramsey blew the story to me,just now- That's why.""What story?""About you and those chain molecules. Where a 5you got the .picture in the first place. How you wanted it kept secret. I've got it all, the works."- The man beamed at him."Why did Ramsey tell you?""I worked out some of it. He didn't paper over the seams in his story very well. Not a very good liar, Ramsey.""I suppose not.""He wasn't going to tell me anything. But I remembered that thing you were involved in'a while back."Gordon said with sudden fatigue, "Saul Shriffer."

. ''yeah, he's the guy. Me, I put two and two together.

I went to see Ramsey for some more back-grounding and in the middle of it I popped him with that one.""And he babbled like a brook.""You got it."Gordon sagged into his chair. He sat there, slumped. down, staring at the man from United Press International."Well?" the man said. He took out a notebook.

"You going to tell me, Professor?""I don't appreciate being grilled.""Sorry if I offended you, Professor. I'm not grillingyou. I just did'a little sniffing around and--"

"Oka35 okay, I'm sensitive about that.""It's going to come out sometime, you know. The Ramsey-Hussinger thing hasn't got any real attention in the papers so far, I know- But it's going to be important.

People are going to hear about it. Your part could be valuable."In a dreamy 'way Gordon began to laugh softly.

"Could be valuable . ." he said, and laughed again.The man frowned. "He6 look, you are going to tell me, aren't you?"Gordon felt an odd, seeping tiredness in himself.

He sighed.. "I ... I suppose I am."

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO.

GORDON HAD NOT REALIZED THE LIGHTS WOULD BE.so bright. There were banks of lamps to both sides of the small platform, to make his face shadow-free. A TV camera snout peered at him, an unwinking Cyclops.

There were some chemists in the audience, and nearly all the Physics Department. The department draftsman had labored until midnight to get all the charts drawn. Gordon had found the staff a great help in hustling things together for this. He was beginning to realize that the hostility he had felt from them all was an illusion, a product of his own doubts. The last few days had been a revelation. Department members hailed him in the hall listened intently to his descriptions of his data, and visited the lab.He looked around for Penny. There--near the back, in a pink dress. She smiled wanly at his hand wave. The press men were murmuring to each other and finding seats. The TV crewmen were in place and a woman with a microphone gave last-minute a $ 7 instructions. Gordon counted the crowd. Incredibly, it was larger han the number who turned out for Maria Mayer's n.o.bel conference. But then, this one had a day or two of lead time. The UPI man got his exclusive story--picked up by the other wire services and then the University had stepped in and set up this dog and pony show.Gordon riffled through his notes with damp fingers.

He had not really wanted any of th(s. The feel of it seemed somehow wrong to him--science carried on in public, science elbowing for time on the 6 o'clock news, science as a commodity. The momentum of it was irnmense. In the end there would remain the article in Science, where his results had to meet their tests, where no amount of bias for oragainst him could tip the scales--"Dr. Bernstein? We're ready."He wiped his brow one last time. "Okay, shoot." A green light winked on.He looked into the camera and tried to smile.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE.

.1998.

PETERSON PULLED THE CAR INTO THE BRICK GARAGE.and hauled out the suitcases. Puffing, he set them outside, on the path to the farmhouse. The garage doors locked with a rea.s.suring clank. A biting wind was blowing off the North Sea, sweeping cleanly across the flat East Anglian landscape. He pulled up the collar of his sheepskin jacket.No sign of movement from the house. Probably no one had heard the cat's quiet purr. He decided to take a walk round, to survey and stretch his legs. His head buzzed. He needed the air. He had stayed in a Cambridge hotel overnight, when the sudden sinking feeling came over him again. He slept through most of the morning, and came down expecting lunch. The hotel was deserted. So were the streets outside. There were signs of life in the houses nearby, chimney smoke and an orange glow of lamps. Peterson did not stop to inquire. He drove out of a bleak and empty Cambridge and up through the flat, somber fen country.

a 3 oHe rubbed his hands together, more in satisfaction than to keep them warm. For a while there, when the illness first struck him again outside London, he had thought he would never make R this far. The roads had been clogged on the way from London, and then, next day, north of Cambridge, strangely empty.

He had seen overturned lorries and burning barns north of Bury St. Edmunds. By Stowmarket a gang tried to hail him down. They had axes and hoes. He had ploughed straight through them, sending'bodies into the air like bowling pins.But here thefarm lay quiet beneath the rolling gray clouds of East Anglia. Ranks of leafless trees marked the field boundaries. Black blobs hung in the latticework of bare twigs, rooks' nests framed against the sky. He tramped through the western field, legs weak, the black mud sticking to his boots. To his right, cows stood patiently by a gate, their breath steaming in the air, waiting to be led home to their shed. The harvest had been cut two weeks ago---he'd ordered that. The fields stood wide and empty now.

Let them lie; there was time.He circled round through the sugar beet acres to the old stone house. It looked deceptively run down.

The only visible new note was a gla.s.s conservatory jutting to the south. The panes had cross-hatchings of wire imbedded, quite secure. Years ago, when he'd first begun, he'd decided on a system totally buried, completely isolated. The greenhouse had filtered water and fertilizers. Water tanks under the northern field held a year's supply. The greenhouse could produce a reasonable supply of vegetables for a long time. That, and the stores buried under the house and barn, would provide ample backup.He had hired it done, of course, using laborers from distant towns. He'd had the vast coal bin filled from Cambridge, rather than nearby Dereham. The mines in the fields and along the one road--capable of being armed either on command or by the detection system--he'd had a mercenary install. Peterson 4 a o had arranged that the man be hired on some Padtic operation soon after, and he had not returned. The electronic watchdogs that dotted the farm he had brought in from California and hired a technical type from London to do up. Thus no one person knew the extent of the operation.Only his uncle knew it all, and he was the grimly silent sort. b.l.o.o.d.y boring company, though. For a moment he regretted not bringing Sarah. But she would be the high-strung type out here, unable to bear the sameness of the long days. Of all the women he'd had in the pastyear, Marjorie Renfrew .w. as the one most likely to fit in. She knew something ot farming and had turned out to be unexpectedly l.u.s.ty.

She had seen the need in him when he stumbled in last night and had met it with an instinctive pa.s.sion.

Beyond that, though, he couldn't imagine living with her for even a week. She would talk and bustle about, fretting, alternately criticizing and mothering him.No, the only companions he could imagine for what lay ahead were men. He thought of Greg Markham. There was someone you could have trusted not to trip and shoot you in the back in a deer hunt or run away from an adder. Intelligent conversation and companionable silence. Judgment and a certain perspective.Still, it was going to be difficult without a wo .m,a..

He probably should have spent more time on mar, not dwelled in Sarah's b.u.t.terfly crowd. No matter how the world struggled out of the present muck, with hard times att.i.tudes would change. There would be no more of what the social science lot called "free s.e.xuality," which to Peterson was simply getting what he'd always thought the world owed anybody. Women, Women of all kinds and shapes and flavors. As people they varied, of course, but as tickets to a side of life beyond the brittle intellect, they were remarkably alike, sisters sharing the same magic. He had tried to understand his own att.i.tude 4 a !

in terms of psychological theory, but had come away convinced the simple flat fact of living went beyond those categories. No convenient ideas worked. It wasn't ego-enforcing or disguised aggression.

It wasn't a clever cover for some imagined h.o.m.os.e.xuality--he'd had a taste of that when young and found it thin gruel indeed, thanks. It was something beyond the a.n.a.lytical chat level. Women Were part of that world-swallowing he had always sought, a way of keeping oneself sensual but not sfupefied by glut.So in the last year he had tried them a11, pursued every possibility. He had known for a long while that something was coming. The fragile pyramid with him near the top would crumble. He had enioyed what would soon pa.s.s, women and all the rest, and now felt no regrets. When you sail on the t.i.tanic, there's no point in ,going steerage.He wondered, idly, how many of the futurologists had got out. Few, he would guess. Their ethereal scenarios seldom talked about individual responses.

They had looked away uncomfortably on that north-em African field trip. The personal was, compared with the fides of great nations, a bothersome detail.He approached the stone house, noting with ap-proval how ordinary and even shabby it looked.

"You're back, re'lord!"Peterson whirled. A man approached, pushing a bicycle. A man from the village, he noted quickly.

Work trousers, faded jacket, high boots. "Yes, I've come home for good.""Ar, good it is. Safe 'arbor in these days, eh? I've brought yor bacon an' dried beef, I 'as.""Oh. Very good." Peterson accepted the cartons.

"You'll just put them on the account, then?" He kept his voice as matter-of-fact as he could."Well, I was meanin' to speak to the house"--he nodded, pointing at the farmhouse "'bout that."''You can deal with me."

a a 2 "Right. Well, as things is happenin', I'd appreciate payment on the day, y'see.""Well, I see no rea.son why not. We.""And I'd like payment in goods, if you please."'

"Goods?""Money's no good now, is it? Some of yor vegetables, p'haps? Tinned goods is what we'd truly like.""Oh." Peterson tried to judge the man, who was giving him a fixed smile, one that had other interpretations than simple friendliness. "I suppose we can do a bit of that, yes. We don't have many tinned goods, however."''We'd like 'em, though, sir."Was there an edge to his voice? "I'll see what we can do.""rhat'd be fine, sir." The man sketched a brief gesture of touching a forelock, as though he were a retainer and Peterson the squire. Peterson stood still as the man swung onto his bicycle and pedaled off.

There had been enough of parody in the gesture to give the entire conversation a different cast. He watched the man leave the property without looking back. Frowning, he turned towards the house.He went round behind the hedge, avoiding the garden, and crossed the farmyard. From the henhouse came low contented duckings. By the door he sc.r.a.ped his boots on the old iron sc.r.a.per and then tossed them down in the pa.s.sageway just inside the door He slipped on some house shoes and hung up his jacket.The large kitchen was warm and bright. He had put in modem appliances but left the flagged stone floor, worn smooth by centuries of use, and the huge fireplace and the old oak settle. His uncle and aunt sat on either side of the fire in comfortable high-backed wing chairs, as silent and motionless as iron firedogs. In its place at the had of the table, the big round teapot sat under its quilted cosy. Roland, the farmhouse factotum, silently set the plate of scones, 4 abPats of sweet b.u.t.ter, and a dish of homemade straw-erry jam on-the table.

He crossed to the fire to warm his hands. His aunt, seeing him, gave a start."Well, bless my soul, it's Ian!"She leaned forward and tapped her husband on the knee."Henry! Look who's here. It's Ian, come to see us.

Isn't that nice?""He's come to live with us; Dot," his .uncle answered patiently."Oh?" she said, puzzling. "Oh. Where's that pretty gel of yours then, Ian? Where's Angela?"* "Sarah," he corrected automatical "She stayed in London." -S' "Hmm. Pretty gel but flight. Well, let's have tea."

he threw back the rug from her legs.Roland came forward and lifted her to her seat bythe teapot. They all sat round the table. Roland wasa big man, slow-moving. He had been with the fam-ily two decades."Look, Roland, here's Ian, come to visit." Petersonsighed. His aunt had been senile for years; only herhusband and Roland had any continuity in her mind."Ian's come to live with us," his uncle repeated."Where are the children?" she asked. "They'relate."No one reminded her that both sons had drownedin .a. ilin.g. ac..cid,ent some fifteen years before. Theywaltea patiently tor the daily ritual to be completed."Well let's not wait for them." She picked up theheavy teapot and began to pour the strong steamingtea into the striped blue and white farmhouse cups.They ate in silence. Outside, the rain that hadthreatened all day began to fall, tentatively at first,pattering against the windows, then more steadily.Distantly, the cows, disturbed by the drumming ofthe,rin o.n .the,roof of their shed, lowed mournfully.It s rammg,' his uncle volunteered.

-.No one answered. He liked their silence. And a 4 when they spoke, their flat East Anglian vowels slid like balm into his ears, slow and soothing. His childhood nurse had been a Suffolk woman.He finished his tea and went into the library. He fingered the cut gla.s.s decanter, decided against a drink. The steady sound of pouring rain was muted by the heavy oak shutters. They had been well made, concealing a panel of steel. He had turned the place into a fortress. It could withstand a lengthy siege.

The cowsheds and barn were double-walled and connected by tunnels to the house. All doors were double, with heavy bolts. Every room was a miniature amory. He stroked a rifle on the library wall. He checked the chamber; oiled and loaded, as he had ordered.He chose a cigar and dropped into his leather armchair. He picked up a book that lay waiting, a Maugham. He began to read. Roland came in and built a fire. Its rich crackling cut the edge of cold in the room. There would be time later to review the stock of provisions and lay out a dietary plan. No outside water, at least for a while. No more trips into the village. He settled further into the chair, aware that things needed doing, but not for the moment feeling up to it. His limbs were sore and the sudden flashes of weakness still came upon him. Here he was still Peterson of Peters Manor and he let the-sense of that sweep through him, bringing a kind of inner rest. Was it Russell who had said that no man is truly comfortable far from the environment of his childhood? There was some truth in that. But the fellow from the village, just now ... Peterson frowned.

They really couldn't use the bacon any longer; everything would be blighted with the cloud stuff, at least for'a while. The village man probably knew that.

And beneath the yes-m'lord manner there had been a clear threat. He had come to barter security, not bacon.

Give them some tinned food and all would bewell,Peterson moved in the chair restlessly. All his life a a s he had been in motion, he thought. He had moved up from this landed gentry role, through Cambridge, and into the government. He had used each level and then moved on. Sarah, he supposed, was the most recent dear case, not forgetting the Council itself.

They had all helped. The government itself had, of course, followed much the same strategy. Modern economics and the welfare state borrowed heavily on the future.Now he was in a place he could not leave. He had to depend on those around him. And suddenly he was uncomfortably aware that this small, easily managed band in the manor and village were free agents, too. Once society faltered, what became of the ordering that had kept Peters Manor calm and safe?

Peterson sat in the waning light of day and thought, a finger tapping on the arm of his chair. He tried to begin again with his book, but it held no interest for him. Through the window he could see the cut fields that stretched to the horizon. A north wind stirred the crisp outline of the trees. Dusk fell. The fire popped.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR.

NOVEMBER 22, 1963.

GORDON WROTE OUT THE EQUATION IN FULL BEFORE.commenting on it. The yellow chalk squeaked. "So we see that if we integrate Maxwell's equations over the volume, the flux---"Movement at the back of the cla.s.s caught his eye.

He turned. A secretary from the department waved a hand hesitantly at him. 'es?""Dr. Bernstein ! hate to interrupt but we've just heard on the radio that the President has been shot,"

She said it in one long gasp. There was an answering rustle from the cla.s.s. "I thought ... you would want to know," she finished lame13aGordon stood unmoving. Speculations raced through his mind. Then he remembered where he was and firmly put them aside. There was a lecture to finish. "Very well. Thank you." He studied the upturned faces of the cla.s.s. "I think, in view of how much more material there is to cover in this semester...

Until something moreis known, we should goon."

a 4 7 One of the twins said abruptl "Where was he?"