A minor diversion down another road less traveled. A two part trail with time for tea.
[Neil Young \\ The Needle and the Damage Done]
Copper Canyon
Part I: fight or flight
He checked his rearview mirror again. Nothing. But he was sure he was being followed; he could feel it in his gut and that was all he needed to know. He made it to his house on East Summit Street and pulled into the garage, hitting the button and closing the overhead door even before he turned off his truck’s motor. He went inside and showered, then made a reservation at the Marriott in the French Quarter for tomorrow night, staying four nights, then he called Quintana on one of his burner phones.
“I’m blown.”
“Too bad. So, the truck goes to New Orleans as planned?”
“Yes. I’ll put the product and other stuff you requested under the seat.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Bueno. The boy will be there in an hour.”
He hung up and powered-off the phone, then went to the bathroom and shaved his head and then his face, even trimming his eyebrows unrecognizably short. He grabbed his go bag and waited for the courier to show up.
Once the truck was gone and headed to New Orleans he called an über to pick him up at Barbaro’s and then strapped a huge prosthetic stage belly around his waist and slipped out the side door, putting his ragged old go bag over his shoulder and now walking with a cane, hunched over and limping like an old man. He passed a black Ford Explorer parked down the block from his house, two DEA agents looking at his house through binoculars. He limped past the Ford and made it to the pick up just in time.
The über took him to a large self storage complex just west of Lackland Air Force Base and he went to his unit and opened the door. His motorcycle, a new BMW R1250GS, was already packed and fueled, and he had fifty thousand dollars stashed inside the foam seat, and another 300,000 in Mexican pesos in the tank bag. He unhooked the battery charger and started the motor, and while the engine warmed he changed into a one piece riding suit after he discarded the fake latex belly. With that done, he locked the unit before he drove out onto Highway 90, westbound for Del Rio and the Mexican border.
The sun was still up on this hot September evening as he approached Uvalde, Texas, and he stopped at the Whataburger on the east side of town, then he topped off the bike’s fuel tank, paying cash now for everything before continuing on to Del Rio. He filled up the tank again before crossing, uneventfully, into Mexico. He found a quiet looking inn on the south side of town and put the cover over the bike before he set the alarm, and once in the little room he didn’t even bother to get out of his riding gear; he just flopped down in the bed and promptly fell into a deep sleep.
He spent three days making his way to Chihuahua, and once there he found a mechanic to change the oil and the filters, then, after another night in a sleepy little inn he turned west into the mountains, not quite sure where he was going but confident he’d know the right place when he got there.
+++++
He stumbled into the village of Batopilas on his seventh night in Mexico, and he was by then beyond exhausted. He pulled into a very upscale looking lodge and inquired about a long term stay.
“How long did you have in mind?” the proprietor asked.
“I’m a writer,” the man lied, “and I’m looking for someplace quiet to spend a few months.”
“We have two casitas for rent by the week, but soon it will be the off season and I am sure we could work something out.”
“Sounds good. Now, how about tonight?”
“Of course. I’ll just need your passport. Will you be paying cash, in dollars?”
“If you prefer, certainly.” He handed over his passport, one of two bogus passports he had with him.
“Ah, Dr. Eugene Smith, of Duluth, Minnesota?”
“Yes,” he lied.
“Are you a physician?”
“I am, yes. General surgery.”
“And you are writing about surgery?”
“No, I’m writing a novel about the Gulf War. I was in Iraq.”
“I see. Well, unlike Iraq it is quiet here, that much I can assure you.”
“Perfect. And is there a bank in town?”
“Yes. There are two, and in addition to the dining room we have here at the lodge, there are several restaurants in town. And of course breakfast is included with your room.”
“Internet?”
“Just here in the main building. We have a computer, but it uses a dial up modem, I’m afraid. The canyon walls are too steep for satellite coverage, and out village is still too small for other services. Here are the instructions, and the computer is in that room,” the proprietor added.
“Alright.”
“Will you need help with your luggage this evening?”
“No, I’ve got it.” He paid cash for a week’s stay then returned to the bike and carried his bags to his room, and then he showered and changed into lite summer street clothes before returning to the bike. He pulled the seat off and removed the tool kit stored inside the seat and while he checked his tire pressures he also removed his stockpiled cash and put the lead foil packets inside his tank bag before setting off down the street to find a restaurant. Every muscle in his body ached, but his ass most of all.
After dinner he fired off an email to Quintana from the restaurant’s computer, and then returned to his room to wait for the firestorm.
He woke in the middle of the night with gut ripping cramps accompanied with a spiking fever and chills, and he knew he’d picked up a nasty GI bug. And then he realized he’d not remembered to pick up any Ciprofloxacin before he left Texas. He shrugged, knowing there wasn’t a lot he could do right now, so he concentrated on drinking bottled water between bouts on the toilet until 0600, when the front desk supposedly opened. By 0530 there was blood in his stool and he groaned: he was going to need antibiotics and this tiny little village couldn’t possibly have a doctor – or a pharmacy.
“The closest clinic is in Guachochi,” the proprietress advised, “at the Mission Hospital.” She handed over a bottle of bismuth subsalicylate with a smile, and he popped the top and took a long slug right there at the desk.
“How far is it?” the man groaned as his gut did another barrel roll.
“Are you on a motorcycle?”
He nodded. “Yup. Lucky me.”
“It will take all day, I’m afraid, but if you leave soon you will avoid the rains.”
“Rains?”
“Yes, but there may be some snow at higher elevations.”
His eyes wide open now, he had to confront the reality that he wasn’t back in Texas anymore, and that there wasn’t a pharmacy just down the street across from a well-stocked supermarket, and that he had for all intents and purposes run from that life with the DEA and probably the FBI hot on his tail – but at least here he was a free man. “Alright,” he sighed. “Do you have a hotel safe? I want to leave a few things if you do.”
“Of course,” the woman said. “I’ll have some rehydration fluid ready for you.”
“Thanks.”
He went to his room and put his riding suit back on, then put his dollars in a small Pelican case and locked it before heading back up to the desk. The woman gave him a bottle of ORF, or oral rehydration fluid, and she gave him a couple of packets of the mix to add to bottled water as he crossed the mountains.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he said as he walked out to his bike. He put his helmet on and fired up the engine, then entered the clinic’s address into the GPS as he stretched – but no…he ran for the restroom off the lobby and made it just in time.
+++++
He pulled into the clinic parking lot a little before eight that evening, and he was shaking now, and he knew he was borderline hypothermic. The bike’s engine heat, and the heated grips on the handlebars, had been the only thing between him and death for the past two hours. Snow in September? In fucking Mexico? Well, mountains are mountains no matter where you find them, but having to stop every half hour to shit on the side of the road had only added insult to injury – and now he was near the end of his rope.
He just got the bike on the side-stand and made his way through blowing sleet to the clinic entrance and passed out just inside the door.
+++++
He felt the stinging pinch of the IV, heard the calm, reassuring voice of a physician giving orders to a nurse and he relaxed – until he remembered he was in Mexico and these people were speaking English! Had the DEA caught up to him?
He grimaced and opened his eyes, and he saw a youngish American girl drawing blood from a stick in his right arm and another, even younger girl looking at his EKG, then this girl turned and looked at him.
“Oh, you’re up!”
“Where am I?”
“Guachochi. At the Tarahumara Mission Hospital, and I’m Dr. McKinnon.”
“Shouldn’t you be, oh, I don’t know, in Glasgow, maybe?”
She smiled. “Med school in Mexico City, my public service commitment here,” she shrugged.
“UTMB Galveston,” he smiled.
“You’re a doc? Where at?”
“Minnesota. Taking a year off to do some riding.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice suddenly dull, flat, and comprehending. “Well, your core temp was 95.6 so I put some heat packs under your arms and I’m running Cipro wide open. You should be good to go in the morning.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s your specialty?”
“General surgery?”
“Really? I’ve got a kid with a hot belly and no cutter. Think you can do an appendix?”
“When? Now?”
“You should be hot to trot in an hour,” she said, knocking his knee with her clipboard. “And look at it this way…you do me a favor and I’ll do one for you.”
“You got a gas passer?”
“A nurse practitioner. Well, kind of.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’ll figure it out.”
He shook his head and looked at his watch; he’d been out for several hours – but he really was feeling a lot better. He shivered once and the nurse draped a hot blanket over him and he fell into a deep sleep…again.
+++++
The overhead lights weren’t the best but the instruments were clean and the OR was spotless, and he stood over the eight year boy and checked off his landmarks for the incision, making a few dots with a marker on the boy’s belly before he swabbed betadine over the site.
Patty McKinnon had taped hot packs to his axial pits and inside his thighs and at least he wasn’t shaking now, so when the anesthetist, a girl from San Diego named Debbie Surtees, gave him the go ahead he made his incision and dissected muscle to expose the kid’s appendix, and forty five minutes later he closed the incision and just made it back to his bed before he passed out. Again.
He woke in the middle of the night and saw two bags of antibiotics and a bag of platelets running. “What the Hell?” he wondered.
McKinnon came in an hour later and when she saw he was awake she pulled up a chair. “Your white count is in the basement, Dr. – uh – Smith. And your right nut is as hard as a golf ball. Some of the cord, too.”
“Fuck.”
“My surgeon will be here tomorrow, and we should do an orchiectomy first thing in the morning.”
“All my stuff is over in Batopilas…”
“At the Lodge?”
“Yeah.”
“I know Martin. I’ll have ‘em put your stuff in storage ‘til we can run over and pick it up.”
“We?”
“You won’t be riding that bike for a while, if you know what I mean.”
“We?”
“Yeah. We’ll treat you here, and you can work off your bill with the rest of the indentured servants working here.”
“I’ve got to be in Creel tomorrow morning.”
“That isn’t going to happen.”
“You have internet here?”
“If you don’t mind me asking, which cartel got to you? Sinaloa?”
He nodded.
“Quintana?” she sighed.
“That’s right. How’d you know?”
She chuckled. “Half the docs working in Mexico these days got sucked into their fentanyl operations. There used to be a shortage of doctors down here. No more.”
He nodded, if only because he’d already figured as much.
“I can get in touch with him if you like, but I’ll need to know your name, I think.”
“Trinity. Just tell him Trinity. He’ll know who you’re talking about.”
She looked away and shook her head. “Sooner or later you’re gonna have to trust someone.”
“I’m not there yet.”
“How long you been on the run?”
“A week.”
“Shit. No wonder…”
“Did you run an AFP?”
“Not yet. Our tech has to get supplies from Creel to run that one.”
“Sorry…it’s just a lot to wrap my head around.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I thought I felt something down there, like a burn, a pulled muscle kind of thing.”
“Probably the cord. We can decide on chemo after we look at the histology, but retroperitoneal radiation is probably warranted.”
“Uh-huh. Where? Not here, I assume?”
“No, not here. We do limited chemo, but I do mean limited.”
“So? Where?”
“I assume going home is out of the question?”
“Yup.”
“You could go to Creel, but…”
“Yeah…but no buts, please. Say no more. What about Mexico City?”
“Oh, yeah, of course, but there’s a good medical school in Chihuahua and the hospital has a decent radiology department.”
“What would you do, Patty?”
“I’d wait until I had the pathology report, ‘Gene.’”
He grinned. “You know, I was thinking when this blows over about heading over to someplace like Sudan or Ethiopia, joining MSF and maybe working over there.”
“Why?”
“Something about practicing medicine in the states, I guess. When I joined the group I was working with I was told we were a volume business, that the aim was to spend just enough time with patient to get a handle on the exact medical problem, then get ‘em in and out of surgery as fast as possible. I guess within a year I felt like I was flipping burgers at MickeyDs. I didn’t know my patients, not at all. It was like go into the OR and see a patch of skin already draped, get in and get out and go to the next OR for the next case, then off to the office for exams before heading back to the hospital to finish my paperwork. Pretty soon I realized I couldn’t even remember one patient’s name from the last couple of years.”
“Flipping burgers,” McKinnon sighed, shaky her head in disbelief. “That’s good. I’ll have to remember that one.”
He looked out a little window and nodded. “I think I felt useless.”
“Do you have any idea how many times you say ‘I’ when you’re talking?”
He turned and looked at her. “What…a little too much narcissism for your taste?”
“Just curious,” she shrugged, “but was someone holding a gun to your head when you decided not to get to know your patients?”
“Yeah. The office manager was, and the partners sure were…”
“Really. My-my. So, it’s off to Africa you go where, guess what, you won’t speak the language so there’ll be no way in hell you’ll ever get to know anyone…”
“And I sure won’t be part of another volume enterprise, will I?”
“What’s that got to do with medicine? You were treating sick people, right? I mean, isn’t that the point?”
“I don’t know that there is a point anymore.”
“Ah. The heart of the matter. You’ve lost your way.”
He looked away again and sucked in a deep breath, but finally he nodded his head just a little.
“So…you think you’ll find your way back by going to deepest, darkest Africa? Sound about right?”
“I don’t know what I’ll find…”
“Yeah? But isn’t that the point?”
“What?”
“The point, Gene? To find yourself?”
“You make it sound so…trite…?”
“Hey, if the shoe fits…”
“You like kicking people when they’re down, don’t you?”
“Like it? No, not really, but sometimes people listen when they’re face down in the mud. And who knows, if they’re lucky maybe they’ll even listen to themselves.”
His eyes blinked a few times and he nodded. “Anything else, Doc? Any more words of wisdom?”
She hooked up a syringe in his line and shot in something. “Get some sleep, okay? We’ll operate first thing in the morning.”
“What about my things?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
His eyes suddenly felt full and very heavy, and later, sometime in the dark he felt gloved hands running a catheter. More strange voices came and went and at one point someone drew blood, then he was aware of being lifted onto an operating table and then the strangest thing of all; he seemed to be aware of a mask sliding down over his mouth and nose – followed by an all consuming darkness that was not at all enjoyable…
+++++
“Well, Dr. Frankenstein, it lives,” he heard someone say and he managed to open his eyes.
“McKinnon? That you?”
“Yes, it is, Dr. Harwell. Can you rate your pain for me?”
‘She knows my name,’ the scared little voice inside Gene Harwell’s head screamed. ‘What else does she know?’ He strolled along her razor’s edge, with ambivalence on one side of the blade and utter fear on the other, all while trying to think of how to reply to this simplest question.
“Let’s just say I’m still deep in the land of I don’t give a flying fuck, and let’s leave it at that.”
“Okay, we’ll call it a nice, fat zero. Know where you are, by any chance?”
“In the wonderful land of Oz, and I’m about to pull back the curtain.”
“Memory intact. Sense of humor sucks,” she wrote out loud on her chart. “Know who the president is?”
“Snidely Whiplash, esquire.”
“Good one. I’d never have thought of that. Think you could handle some water?”
“If it comes out of a bottle, maybe.”
“Good situational awareness, too. Okay, five by five, Harwell.”
“You got a path report yet, smart ass?”
“Diffuse seminoma and teratoma in the left testes, no cells in the cord so no radiation needed.”
He felt a roaring surge of relief and then a few tears running down his face, so he cleared his throat before he spoke. “Thanks, McKinnon.”
“No problemo, Gene. Oh, Quintana is okay with things, he says to just lay low here for a while and he’ll be in touch. Martin is bringing your stuff over tomorrow.”
“How long you going to keep me here?”
“You could go home today, but…”
“…but no home to go to. I got that.”
“I’ve got a spare room at my place if you want to bunk out there for a while. There are plenty of places to rent around here, too. Like three, maybe four.”
“Ah. So, any port in a storm, huh?”
“How’s the pain now?”
“I’m feeling it now. Versed is wearing off.”
She picked up a syringe from a bedside tray and hooked it up to his IV and sent a little morphine down his line. “That’ll take the edge off for a while. You have any trouble taking Oxy?”
“Yeah. I don’t take it, period. You got naproxen?”
“Sure.”
“That’ll do.”
“You want me to get my spare bedroom cleaned up?”
He nodded her way, then grinned: “Yeah. That’ll do.”
+++++
He started easy, riding a few miles around local roads, then a few mining trails, but his groin still hurt when he pushed too hard. He worked three weekends at the hospital before he decided he’d had enough domesticity in his life. It wasn’t that McKinnon was hard to take, either; in fact, the opposite was true. She was bright as hell but should have gone into psychiatry, not general medicine, but her constant psychoanalyzing had grown stuffy and was often downright obtuse. Even after a couple of weeks with her she seemed to alternate between voracious horniness and bouts of moodily introspective analysis and he never felt like he belonged.
Probably because he didn’t. And maybe they both knew it.
But he’d liked Batopilas, and something about the place still seemed to pull at him. Maybe it was the steep-walled, tree-lined valley, or how the town was clinging precariously to a ledge just above the edge of the river, or even how the tiny village was defined by narrow cobbled lanes and red-tiled roofs, everything surrounded by overhanging trees and the roar of the rushing water just below. He wondered what it would feel like to stay in a village like that one and write and to call a place like that home. Maybe he could open up a little clinic there, too…
Yet when he told McKinnon he was leaving she seemed to come undone.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he told her. “I haven’t been here a month…”
“But I’ve had this feeling for you since the moment I saw you,” she said, coming on hard. “Look, I don’t want you to go.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, I get that and yeah, I like you too. I’ve enjoyed spending time with you…”
“Then stay!”
“And what happens when I decide to head to Africa? What then?”
“We both go.”
“Simple as that, huh? You just pack up and head out?”
“Yeah. Simple as that. I’ve looked into it, I know what we’d have to do and we’d be a perfect team. Medicine and surgery…I mean, they’d love to have us!”
“Patty, doesn’t it bother you that I don’t love you?”
“No, not really. You’re a guy and guys are like that. I do know that we fit together, that we’d be a good team…”
“And what about you? What about love?” he asked.
And she shrugged. “We haven’t been together long enough for that, Gene, not really, but yeah, when I’m around you I’m happy. And it’s like I can’t imagine being happy unless I’m around you, and I don’t know what you call that…”
“Infatuation, maybe?”
“But I’m not a teenager, Gene,” she said, and perhaps a little too defiantly – like maybe she had ‘daddy issues.’ Still, he had Quintana to worry about, because if he bolted on the cartel now he might as well hang it up. He knew too much and they’d never let him go without an understanding of some kind.
So he stayed. He understood that, really, without Quintana’s blessing he had to stay put for the time being. And by that point he’d also recognized that McKinnon and Quintana had a bond of some kind. Like maybe she’d gotten him out of a tough spot before, and he owed her. Big time. At least…that’s what it felt like. On the other hand, he had money in banks down here, and a lot of it. He was safely out of reach from both the DEA and the FBI. He had a roof over his head and McKinnon was fun to hang around with.
And he was finding that even after a couple of weeks he missed medicine. His Spanish, after living in San Antonio for almost ten years, was already more than passable – but now he was quickly improving in this immersive setting – and so he was able to talk to his patients – without the commercial restraints imposed by corporate medicine. And he liked working that way – finally. It was what he’d always imagined medicine would be like. Or…should be like, he reminded himself.
He liked riding around the mountains but he also recognized he was living in a really hostile environment, too. At medium elevations vast fields of poppies were growing every he went, and at lower elevations marijuana cultivation was in full swing. And – everywhere he went he ran into armed guards, in many cases just kids with AK-47s and itchy trigger fingers. Rival clans were staking claims and some were encroaching on other clan’s grows, with turf wars the obvious result, and that made him think about his role in this house of cards.
There wouldn’t be cartels without users and all this semi-clandestine production was aimed at supplying the North American market. With almost two thirds of the people in the United States and Canada now being regular users of marijuana, and with domestic cultivation for all intents and purposes illegal, the cartels had been handed a market so insatiably vast it was almost beyond comprehension. It was no wonder the cartels were paying lobbyists in the U.S. to keep these products illegal, yet the handwriting was on the wall. U.S. tobacco companies had been buying up land in Northern California for decades, and why? Because it was prime land for marijuana cultivation. Not to mention federal taxes on marijuana related products could crush federal budget deficits. But it would severely limit the profitability of the cartels, so…
But riding these hills was dangerous now. Kidnappings were more frequent, and some kids had been known gun down bikers just to take their motorcycles for a joyride. And there were often no repercussions because the cartels owned cops. The only reason he could ride around the area was simple enough to understand: he was under the protection of a capo, one of the Sinaloa cartel’s commanders. He was therefore quite untouchable, so he rode around and kids with Ak-47s waved at him as he passed – though he usually stopped and talked with them, too. He learned about what they did, about their command structure, and he listened as they talked about their gripes – and their hopes and dreams. He found that a bunch of these kids were working while they were sick as hell, so he started loading up his saddlebags with medical supplies and he started taking care of the kids out there.
People in the smaller villages along his route heard about that, too.
So when he rode through these hamlets people waved him down. He learned that most of these people didn’t trust doctors, or hospitals, but for some reason they trusted him, and probably because he’d treated their kids. And pretty soon he was treating people along a vast network of tiny villages along dirt roads in the boondocks, and the administrators at the Mission Hospital grew quite interested in his successes. When he ran across a case he couldn’t fix out on the road he put the patient on the back of his bike and took them to the hospital, and he fixed ‘em there.
And pretty soon he began to feel the one thing he’d been missing in his life: purpose.
So he lived with McKinnon and soon enough weeks turned into months, and months into a year, and still, at least three days a week he hopped on his bike and rode off into the boonies. He worked weekends in the OR, usually three to four surgeries a day, some days more, rarely less. He stopped caring about McKinnon’s perceived flaws and he started listening to her hopes and dreams, and her fears. He started caring for her, too.
He found her ovarian cancer and he did the procedure. He nursed her through chemo, and he held her hand as she regained her health. They took walks together, short walks in the beginning but longer ones as she got stronger, and her hopes and dreams turned into quiet talks about a future together, just the two of them. Maybe here in Mexico or maybe somewhere in Africa…it didn’t matter to her as long as they were together.
So on a Friday night in April one of the Jesuits at the mission said the words people say when they promise to stay together until death do they part, and standing there in the candlelight surrounded by his new life, Gene Harwood felt something he’d never really expected to feel after he left his home, and his country. He felt happy, and that even came as a surprise to the DEA agents who’d had him under surveillance for two months.
Another short segment as the arc progresses from mind to screen. Cardamom tea after a long day of CT scans and the intrusions of random unwanted needles. It feels good to write.
[ Yes \\ South Side of the Sky \\ acoustic ]
Chapter 62.4
They heard screams. At least two people screaming, and Callahan looked at Eisenstadt – both now clearly confused.
“Where’s that coming from?” he asked.
Eisenstadt canted her head as if trying to fix the location, then she started for Harry’s bedroom. Harry clambered from the piano into his wheelchair and followed, getting to his bedroom in time to see some sort of commotion in his bathroom – and then, yes, there it was. Fresh sea ice everywhere, all over the slate floor and in the shower, too…which was where Deborah and Liz were now…but he saw there was also a little girl in the shower and she was still screaming hysterically.
Eisenstadt handed a towel to Liz and then turned her attention to the girl, and as Harry rolled into the bathroom Liz saw him and literally flew into his lap. She was quaking now and clearly terrified so he held her close until she calmed a little, still keeping an eye on Deborah and the little girl – both now standing under the shower’s steaming spray. Then he recognized her: she was the same little girl he’d encountered on the Titanic, but something was different about her now.
She’d seemed nonplused when he ran into her, but now she was anything but. Now she was close to the edge.
He turned to Liz and stroked her hair. “Liz…where were you? Can you tell me what happened?”
He felt her shake her head against the skin of his neck, heard her quiet sobs as she came down, so he held her closer still.
“Oh Harry,” she whispered in his ear, “don’t ever let me go… Promise me, you’ll never let me go.”
“I’m here, kiddo,” he whispered as he stroked the back of her head. “It’s okay…I’m here.”
She squeezed him – and hard – then she palpably relaxed just a little…but a moment later he heard her snoring and her arms fell from his side. Her skin was still quite cool and her clothes were damp, but he was also virtually trapped in his wheelchair and the confinement he felt was now crushing, almost demoralizing.
But the little girl’s cries had as quickly stopped, too, and now it appeared she too was sound asleep. Deborah could see Harry’s predicament and so she toweled the girl off, then shook her head and stripped her clothes off so she could completely dry her off. With that done Eisenstadt muscled her to Harry’s bed and got her covered, then the two of them got Liz dried off and in bed, too.
“Is that the same girl you saw on Titanic?” Deborah asked.
And Harry nodded. “Yeah, but she almost appears younger.”
Eisenstadt shook her head and sighed. “Why is she here?”
“I sincerely hope you don’t think I know the answer to that one, Kiddo.”
Which only made Deborah laugh – at least a little. “Harry, can you imagine? A few minutes ago this child was on the Titanic…and now…here she is?”
“Hey. Better here than there.”
“Perhaps. But…perhaps not. We must understand why she is here, Harald.”
“Did she say anything to you in there?” he asked, nodding his head in the direction of the head.
“No, not really. She babbled on about the president. Something she had to tell the president.”
“Clinton? Now that’s a good one.”
“Harald, she said she needed to see the president.”
“Okay, let’s go to the White House with a crazy naked kid and see…”
“Harald. You can stop now.”
“Have you noticed? When you’re getting your dander up you call me Harald…”
“I do not.”
“Uh-huh, whatever you say, Slick.” He crossed his arms over his lap and grinned at her. “Well, they obviously need sleep – and you obviously need another scotch, so…” Callahan sighed as she ambled off to the kitchen.
She poured two more while he put a heavy log on the fire and sat on the hearth, and yup, she came right back to his side and put her head on his shoulder.
“Thank you, Harald,” she said, giving him a little elbow in the ribs.
“You’re welcome, Doc.” He looked at his watch and growled then: “Well, we missed it.”
“Shit happens,” Eisenstadt said, and for some reason Callahan thought that was about the funniest thing he’d ever heard in his life.
+++++
When it was time to get Liz up they went to the bedroom and the little girl was gone. Just gone, like she’d never been there and everything else was simple imagination…except her wet clothes were still in the bathroom. Deborah took them to the washing machine and put them on with a small load of Harry’s things, and when she came back into the room Liz was sitting up in bed – and now wondering what she was doing in Harry’s room.
“Do you remember anything?” Harry asked.
She looked away and shook her head. “I’m not sure what’s going on, Harry, but it’s like I know some kind of memory is there – but I just can’t reach it.”
“Been there, done that,” Harry sighed. “Deb? You better get the rest of your things packed. Liz? Can you make it up to the house?”
“Can I borrow your bathrobe?” she asked carefully, holding the sheets up to cover her breasts.
“Oh, right…uh, whoa…yeah. I’ll go put on some coffee…” Callahan said as he rolled out of his room. Liz looked at Eisenstadt and they both laughed.
+++++
Harry slept all the way back out to Sea Ranch after he and the doc dropped off the girls, and he woke with a start when they pulled up to the driveway. The doc got Harry’s wheelchair set up and helped him settle in, then he pushed Harry up to the house. DD had finished cleaning up the mess in Harry’s bathroom and just for kicks she’d cleaned the house too, again – but she watched him carefully as he rolled through the living room and out onto the deck.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this,” she said to the doc as he came in behind Harry.
“He didn’t say a word coming back. Just fell asleep.”
“You think he’s depressed?”
“With a capitol fucking D, babe. I’ll take him into work with me tomorrow. He’s got the appointment for his leg, remember?”
“Has he had anything to eat?”
The doc shook his head. “Nope. Zero interest. He hardly ate the other night, and even Bennett said something to me about it.”
“You thinking anti-depressants?”
“You know me. I hate that shit; it ain’t right to go fucking around with the brain. He needs to get back to work, feel invested in life again.”
“I think I’ll fix a carbonara. He usually eats that.”
“Good idea,” said the doc.
“You go talk with him, see what’s up.”
“I better pour a couple of fingers, ya know?”
“Those two have been putting it down. Maybe we ought to slow that down a little?”
“Really? Harry? Drinking scotch?”
“Two bottles in four days.”
“Shit. Better make that two Cokes, okay?” Watson sighed as he turned and walked out to the deck, and he stood beside Callahan and watched him for a few moments…
“I’m not sure I can do this, Doc,” Callahan finally said.
“Do…what, Harry?”
“I’m not sure I can do ‘alone’ anymore, ya know? It was easier in the city, but out here? The only company out here is the wind and the waves, maybe a passing gull.”
“Don’t forget the sea lions.”
“Thanks, Doc, I needed that.”
“So, what are your options. You were talking about music, spending more time in the studio, working on youth programs. What happened to all that?”
“I can’t do it, Doc. Not by myself.”
“Hm-m. Maybe, Harry, that’s exactly what you need right now. Ever consider that?”
Callahan shook his head. “I’ve done ‘alone’ Doc. For most of my life, I think.”
“What about Deborah?”
“What about her?”
“You know, Harry, here you are talking about not wanting to be alone, yet when she got out of the car at the airport she came up to you and it was like some kind of a wall came up. I’ve never seen anyone in my life that wanted a kiss more than she did, while you for all intents and purposes turned into a glacier. Cold and hard, fracturing and falling into the sea. What on earth was going through your mind right then?”
“Fujiko. June. And even my boy.”
“Ah. The ghosts of Christmases Past.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“Tell me something. Can you see yourself with her?”
“Who? Deborah?”
“Yeah, meathead. Deborah.”
Callahan sighed. “She’s comfortable, Doc…ya know? She fits. So yeah, I could see her with me?”
“You could? Or you can?”
“What’s the difference, Doc?”
“Commitment, for one thing. Trust also comes to mind.”
“Trust?”
“Yeah, trust. As in: can she trust you to be there for the long haul?”
“We started to talk about it, but things went sideways.”
“Oh? What happened?”
“Liz came over.”
“Liz?”
“Yeah. And that’s the hard part, Doc. I think she’s…”
“She’s got a crush on you. Yeah, everyone’s got that, Callahan. She has since she was three. So what? She’s a child. You’re not. And remember that, would you?”
“I promised Cathy, and even Frank, that I’d take care of her.”
“Okay. Fine. Does that mean wedding bells and babies, Harry?”
“No, of course not.”
“Okay. So…what’s the problem?”
“She gets jealous,” Harry said.
“Jealous? Who, Liz?”
“Yeah, but I think even Deborah did, too.”
“You got to set boundaries, Harry. They both need to know where you stand, as in zero ambiguity. Got it?”
Callahan nodded. “Yeah.”
“Say you two,” DD said, coming out on the deck with Cokes and some nachos, “who wants dinner?”
“I’m not real hungry,” Harry sighed.
“Tough shit,” DD snarled. “I got bacon going for a carbonara, so get ready.” She wheeled around and zipped off to the kitchen, leaving Callahan with his mouth hanging open.
“What’s it like living with her, Doc?”
“Oh, like living with any other hurricane, Harry. She’s a force of nature, so you either get out of her way or get used to the wind.”
+++++
He called Eisenstadt after dinner. After DD cleaned up her colossal mess and folded his laundry.
She picked up the phone and right away he could feel the pain in her voice. “I’m sorry,” he said straight away.
“Sorry for what?”
“For the way I was at the airport. I’m really sorry.”
“How was the drive back to the house?”
“I slept. How ‘bout you? Did you sleep on the plane?”
“No. Liz and I talked the entire trip. About you.”
“Oh, no…”
“Oh, yes. And do you know what was said?”
“Uh…”
“She’s afraid for you, Harry. Afraid you will live your life by yourself.”
…
“And she’s afraid she’s to blame.”
“To blame? How so?”
“She loves you, Harry. Like a daughter loves her father, she loves you. And she wants to see you happy.”
“What about you, Deborah?”
“I’ve told you how I feel, Harry. Nothing has changed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure!” she barked. “Yes, I love you, you silly man. I could hardly breathe when we walked away from the car. And I could not handle the thought of you all alone out there…”
“When can you come back?”
“Come back? To visit, or to…”
“Deb, come back if you’re going to stay, but only if you plan to stay. Otherwise, I’m not sure I could stand the pain.”
They came to a long pause, a space where neither knew what to say, but Harry knew what she was waiting for.
“I love you, Kid,” he finally said, and he could feel her release from across the continent.
“I love you too, Meathead.”
They laughed for the longest time after that, and Harry slept well that night. So well he never noticed the blues gathered by his bed with their instruments.
Standing inside a rabbit hole…what must that be like? And is there an event horizon between the real and the unreal? What kind of gravity would pull you hardest there? How would it feel to meet the White Queen, or the Red?
Alas, dear reader, time for tea. Tea for two, I dare say. Or will it be three?
Only time will tell.
[Herb Alpert \\ This Guy’s In Love With You]
Chapter 62.3
After DD and the doc left, Callahan stoked the fire while Eisenstadt poured two glasses of scotch, and he checked his watch, wanting to take in the pulsar again. He regarded Eisenstadt as she came back into the living room, still not sure what to think of this woman. With her Coke bottle eyeglasses on she looked decidedly frumpy and bookish, yet with them off she had a pleasant, easy going demeanor he found…decidedly – comfortable. Sure, she was five years older than he was, but in the great scheme of things that hardly mattered…
And then he caught himself. ‘Why am I even thinking of this stranger in these terms?’
And only one thing came to mind, really.
‘Because I really dislike being alone. Especially now that I’m not going to work every day.’
And, he had to admit now, seeing Sam Bennett in his current state had shaken him up.
So…he sat on the hearth with his back to the fire and he wasn’t at all unhappy when she came and sat right beside him again.
“How you doin’?” he asked as she slid in close, handing over a tumbler.
And she leaned into him, put her head on his shoulder. “I feel better now.”
“Oh?” he said. “So I’m not the only one feeling this way?”
“I like the way I feel with you, Harry. Comfortable, like somehow we belong.”
He nodded. “It seems funny that we have a history. Copenhagen and all that…”
“I am not too old for you?” she wondered aloud.
He smiled. “As long as you don’t want babies I think we’ll be okay.”
“Dear God. Babies. I would never have been a good mother.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“I was too focused on my studies, and I hardly could manage being a wife, let alone a mother. Now, of course, all that has changed. I’ve been teaching for twenty years and I hate to say it, but I think that enough is enough.”
“What are your plans?”
“I hadn’t really made any, as strange as that may sound. I have my place in Cambridge, and I have a small cottage out on the Cape that I go to when it is warm enough, but all-in-all I’ve led a quiet life since Anders passed. Teaching has been enough for me, I think.”
“And now?”
“I like the way my head feels – right here beside you,” she said as she rubbed her head on his shoulder. “I think I might enjoy this a little too much.”
There came a knock on the front door and Liz announced herself before she made her way to the living room, and when she found Harry and Deborah sitting by the fire she grinned. “Fix me a scotch, Harry?” she asked.
“Got ID?” he growled.
“Oh, c’mon Harry! I’m nineteen! I can handle it!”
“You know,” Callahan grinned, “I think your twenty-first birthday will be memorable for a bunch of reasons, and maybe chief among them getting snockered, but I made a promise to your mom…”
“I know, I know. And here he is, ladies and gentlemen. I give you Harry Callahan! Protector of ladies’ virtue everywhere!”
“That’s me,” Harry sighed. “So? Did you come down to check out the pulsar, or my liquor cabinet?”
“No, I wanted to tell you I’m flying back to Boston with you, Professor Eisenstadt.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Harry said, and Deborah nodded in agreement.
“I really should get my degree, one way or another, but a Harvard degree…”
“I agree,” Eisenstadt said. “You are off to a good start, but it is only that. You must finish what you begin.”
Liz nodded. “So, what time is the doc coming down to pick us up?”
Callahan looked at his watch. “Six hours. The pulsar should kick off in a half hour. Are you packed?”
“Yup. Would you guys mind if I hang around and watch the light show from here?”
“Not at all,” Deborah said, standing and going over to the kitchen. She returned a minute later with a tumbler of something and handed it to Liz.
“It’s ginger ale, Harry,” Eisenstadt grinned.
Harry shook his head. “You two are going to make it real hard for me not to play the asshole.”
Liz took a sip then wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Geez, why do you even drink stuff that tastes like that? That’s revolting! It’s like battery acid with a little Tabasco thrown in for good measure.”
“See,” Harry sighed, holding up his hands, “I was just trying to protect you for the vices of old age.”
Liz put the drink down and and went to the piano; she started playing random notes but these efforts soon began to coalesce around a theme…
“Where have I heard that?” Harry mumbled – just under his breath.
“It’s what you began playing last night, just before…”
But now when Harry looked at Liz she was completely entranced, and for some reason he recognized what was happening to her – and what she was playing…
“Someone or something has linked up to her,” Harry whispered. “She’s being fed these notes. Did I look like this?”
Eisenstadt nodded, then out of curiosity she turned and looked behind and yes, there it was. The pink sphere. “Be very still now, Harry,” she barely whispered, “but the sphere has returned. The pink one.”
“Swell.”
The sphere was absolutely tiny now, no larger than an aspirin tablet, but it was bright – and spinning madly. It remained fixed near the ceiling, apparently locked into communicating with Liz and unconcerned with anything else going on in the room, so Deborah stood and walked across the living room until she was standing directly under the glowing orb. She walked to the hall closet and picked out a broom and returned, then held the bristled end up and inserted the straw ends into the sphere…
And there was no reaction at all, none whatsoever.
And when she removed the broom the bristles appeared completely undisturbed.
“That cannot be?” she muttered, so she pushed the bristles back up and all the way through the sphere this time, and again the bristles appeared untouched. She swatted at the sphere with the bristled end and the sphere didn’t budge, so she flipped the broom and swatted the sphere with wooden handle – and the broomstick passed right through the sphere – and neither the sphere nor the broom reacted at all.
Eisenstadt looked at Harry and shrugged.
Though Harry, for his part, picked up his glass and drained it.
Eisenstadt came back to the hearth and sat by him once again. “It is as if it isn’t really here,” she whispered.
“Could it be some kind of projection? Maybe like a hologram?”
“Possibly. But there is another possibility, and one that disturbs me even more. There are theories concerning the possible existence of parallel dimensions, but what if there was a way for elements of one dimension to intrude on another?”
“I’m just curious,” Harry sighed, “but when you were growing up, did you eat your porridge with a slide rule?”
“Only on schooldays.”
“Figures.”
The sphere began moving now, and once again it slipped silently to the piano, hovering just above the closed cover.
“Help me up, would you?” he asked Deborah, and once he had his walker underhand he slid over to the piano and pulled up the cover, exposing the various bridges and dampers – and the soundboard – and the sphere reacted immediately by spinning up to an even greater velocity.
Then Liz started playing the last movement of the Fourth, music she had seen only once – so Callahan really knew she had to be receiving instructions as she played…
…and then Harry realized she was playing his mother’s original score, the original phrasing unedited by von Karajan, and he stepped back from the piano in time to see Liz’s body shimmer in the air for a moment – and then disappear.
Harry looked up and watched the sphere – now spinning so fast it was hardly visible – and then he turned to Deborah. “I think we’re going to need a shitload of towels,” he grumbled.
A fairly brief snippet here. Maybe one cup of tea on the tea-meter?
[Paul McCartney \\ Every Night]
Chapter 62.2
He woke up with a start, sat up and looked around the room – not really knowing where he was – or where he’d been.
Callahan recognized his bedroom and for some reason he felt a surge of relief, then he realized he was sweating profusely and terribly thirsty. “And why do I feel so disoriented?” he growled at his shaking hands.
He swung his leg out of bed and pulled the wheelchair close, then swung himself onto the seat – very nearly missing the seat and just saving his ass from another fall – and he grumbled all the way into the head, peeling off his soaked t-shirt and tossing it into the hamper as he passed. Then he positioned himself before the countertop and hoisted his body up to brace and turn on the shower– and that’s when he saw the markings.
He saw a bunch of puncture woulds, and each looked like a site where a large bore needle had been inserted…and then he noticed that the injection sites – if that’s what they were – were grouped in threes, and that these groupings formed perfect equilateral triangles. And he could see at least five groupings like that on his torso. He shook his head, not at all sure what might have caused these as he started to look at his leg.
He washed up and brushed his teeth in the shower, but something on the insides of his gums didn’t feel right so he just rinsed with mouthwash and sighed. Something was seriously wrong, but he still had no idea what that something was, or even what it might be.
He hopped out of the shower and dried off, then unfolded his walker and made it to the dresser in his bedroom. There was a mirror there as well, and he saw more of the same triangular groupings under his arms, but he just couldn’t see his back, nor the backside of his leg. ‘Gotta call the doc,’ he sighed, thinking he might have picked up the measles.
Then he remembered Deborah…Eisenstadt.
He pulled on his usual SFPD gym shorts and put a sweatshirt on over his t-shirt, then he got into his wheelchair and rolled into Lloyd’s old bedroom…and he found she was still asleep. He reached over and gave her a nudge and she woke with a start, and he could see enough to realize she too was covered in sweat.
She sat up and immediately grabbed her head. “Oh, God! I have a headache!” she cried.
And yet Callahan could already see several of the triangular groups on her upper arms.
“What are you staring at?” Deborah said when she saw Callahan.
“Those marks, on your arm,” Callahan said. “I hate to ask, but I need you to check my back.”
“What?”
“Here, look at my arms,” he said, holding his arms out.
“You have the same marks, too?”
“Yup. A bunch of ‘em, from my shoulders right on down my leg.”
She rolled out of bed and came around to his back and he leaned forward in his chair enough for her to pull up his shirts…then…
“Yes, there are six groups of three on your back,” she said. “In a simple rectangular pattern, too.”
“They look like puncture wounds, right?” he added. “Yet I don’t feel anything. You?”
“No. Nothing.”
“I woke up covered in sweat, and so did you. Is your headache…?”
“It’s gone. Completely. So…perhaps this was a circulatory event? Did you have a headache?”
“Not that I noticed,” he sighed, “but I feel like I’ve gone ten rounds with Mohammed Ali.”
“Who is this?”
He shook his head. “Not important.” He saw the same marks running down her legs and not one showed any sign of bleeding – or any evidence of other mishap, for that matter – and he thought it looked like these sites had been created by a machine of some sort. “What else could account for this kind of precision…?” he whispered.
“The sphere,” Eisenstadt said. “The angry blue sphere. I feel certain it has something to do with this…entity.”
“Did you see something?”
“I feel as if I should, but Harry, this is very strange. I feel a memory is there but that somehow it has been, or is somehow being suppressed.”
“I hate to say it, but yeah, it’s like a missing hole in my memory. I know something is there, but I just can’t find it.”
“This is nothing new, I’m afraid. There was a conference recently where I teach…”
“MIT, right?”
“Yes. This conference concerned the psychopathologies of the so-called UFO abductee, and I attended a few of the sessions, those that concerned specific references to time dilation, but many of the psychiatrists attending did not want to generalize these phenomena. While some could trace an etiology back to some sort of underlying schizoaffective disorder…”
“Uh, Doc, sorry, but you’re going to need to tone it down a notch…”
“Ah, yes. Well, some physicians present did not feel comfortable about calling the abduction phenomenon a medical, or even a psychiatric condition.”
“Which means?”
“These physicians have concluded some of these events are grounded in reality.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I know. I feel the same way, Harry, but…” And here she paused, perhaps gathering her thoughts. “What is the last thing you remember from last night?”
“We were on the deck and Sagittarius started…” he said, his voice suddenly a flat monotone.
“And?”
“And…then I woke up?”
“Just so. It is the same with me. Something has happened. To us, I mean.”
Callahan felt heavy, almost like he was coming out of a trance, then he heard the front door open, followed by DDs almost adolescent “Yoo-hoo! Anyone home?”
“Is the doc with you?” Harry replied.
“Yessiree-Bob, you betcha!”
“Oh dear God,” Callahan moaned. “She must’ve gotten laid last night…”
Deborah tried not to laugh but DD walked into the room just then and when she saw Harry with his shirt askew a prudish eyebrow arched high. “Well, well, well,” she sighed, “did somebody not have enough fun last night?”
“Come take a look at this,” Harry snarled, and as DD knew that tone she snapped to.
“What am I looking…oh shit, Harry! What the hell did that?”
“They’re all over Deborah, too,” Harry growled. “Where’s the doc?”
And then, as if right on cue: “Holy shit!” Doc Watson barked. “Where’d all this water come from?”
+++++
Delgetti and Sam Bennett walked up to the door and Callahan was there waiting for them.
“Shit, Harry,” Captain Bennett grumbled as he smacked Callahan’s leg, “I like the look, but why not get a peg-leg?”
“Because I might be tempted to kick your ass!” Callahan replied with a smile. “Howya doin’, Cap?”
“I keep forgetting how far it is out here,” Del added as he took Harry’s hand. “Harry? How’s it hangin’?”
“To my knee, shipmate. You look kinda thirsty, but I may have something out back to take care of that.”
He led Captain Bennett through his house but it was obvious his old captain’s legs were bothering him…then they reached the stairs to head down to the patio where everything was set up.
“Harry? I’m not sure I can make it down those stairs…” Sam sighed.
“Well Hell, Cap…I know I can’t but I’ve got a spare chair. Why don’t you take this one. I just got it and it’s got a motor and it’ll go just fast enough to get you into trouble.”
“I don’t know, Harry. I just don’t know.”
Harry looked up at Delgetti and grinned. “Del, why don’t you run down and grab a couple of brews.”
“Sure, Harry…” his old friend nodded, understanding the moment all too well.
“Harry? I’m not doing so good, ya know?”
“It’s hard without Elaine, I guess?”
Sam broke down when he heard that. “Oh Harry, you have no idea…but now, livin’ in a home? That’s what it is, Harry, ya know? Just a fuckin’ warehouse for old geezers waitin’ to shuffle off, ya know?”
“Sam…?”
“And don’t you spout off about getting a hobby or making new friends. Ain’t no friends left, Harry, except you guys. Hell, if Delgetti didn’t come down on weekends the only people I talk to all week are the aides who drop by to see if I’ve shit myself.”
“Is it as bad as that?” Callahan asked, shocked at the change he saw in Bennett.
“It’s fuckin’ worse, Harry. There ain’t nothing worse than bein’ alone, not now, not at this stage.”
“Not how you thought things would turn out, is it?”
Bennett looked away. “We used to look at you, at all those women you had coming and going and we used to worry about how you’d end up, and now here I sit. I think that’s called irony, Harry, and it fucking sucks. The big one.”
“So…have you thought about photography?” Callahan said jokingly.
“Yeah, maybe we could go down to the valley and shoot porn.”
“There ya go. Pop wood and you wouldn’t even need a tripod.”
They laughed and Del came up with a beer for his captain, and Harry asked DD to find his spare wheelchair.
“I’m gonna let Sam use this one today,” he said when he saw the question in her eyes.
It took a few minutes but they got Bennett down the outside path and out to the grill and Sam just couldn’t resist; he strapped on an apron and started tossing ribeyes on the fire, suddenly back in his element. Callahan looked at his captain and grinned.
“It’s the simple things, Harry,” Delgetti said, coming up beside his old wheelchair. “I haven’t been able to get him interested in anything, but look at him now. Maybe all any of us want is to be useful, you know?”
“I do, as a matter of fact.”
“Sorry man. I freaked out when I heard about the leg. What are you gonna do now?”
“Music. That’s all I’ve got left, Del.”
“Hear that. Can I grab you an Oly?”
“Only I you’re joining me,” Callahan smiled…just as Deborah Eisenstadt came over, with two fresh bottles – the bottles sweating now that they were out of the ice. She passed them over and made her way back to Bennett.
“Who’s the, uh, new girl?” Delgetti asked.
“She’s some kind of physics professor at MIT…”
“Yeah, she looks like it, too.”
Callahan laughed. “Ah, she’s alright. Good company, anyway.”
“She’s stayin’ out here with you?”
“Staying in Lloyd’s old room. She came out with Liz…”
“Liz? Is she here? Man, I’d love to see her!”
“Yeah, she’s around here somewhere.”
“Physics professor, huh?” Delgetti grinned. “Cute legs, but Harry, ain’t she a little too stringy for you?”
“Del! I haven’t been home a week! I wasn’t exactly expecting to get laid anytime soon, ya know?”
Everyone on the patio stopped talking.
Everyone turned and looked at Callahan.
“Oops,” Harry whispered, and he saw that Captain Bennett was glowering at him. “Well, all’s right in the world, I’d say.”
“Yeah,” Delgetti sighed, “you still got a raging case of foot in mouth disease, Harry.”
+++++
Harry played the piano after dinner, and Liz danced with Sam for a while and the sight got to both Del and Callahan. Eisenstadt even danced with Bennett, at least until he put his hands on her butt – but everyone laughs at old men when they do stuff like that and tonight was no exception to the rule, and soon enough all the guests were loading into cars and heading south, leaving DD and Eisenstadt to load the dishwasher while Harry and the doc cleared tables and carried stuff up to the kitchen.
“So,” Doc said after the hard part was wrapped-up, “what about those puncture wounds. They still not itching?”
“I hadn’t thought of them ‘til you mentioned it, Doc,” Harry said. “But no…”
“Then they used sterile fields. Did you notice any kind of residue on your arms or torso?”
“Residue?”
“Like some kind of antiseptic. Betadine, or something like that?”
“No, nothing, nothing at all,” Deborah said. “And that is odd, isn’t it?”
“Odd, yes,” Doc Watson sighed. “And it means whoever did this has some serious understanding of the human biome.” He shook his head, clearly perplexed. “I’m just curious, Harry, but what aren’t you telling me?”
Callahan looked at Eisenstadt but she simply shrugged.
So…Callahan told DD and the Doc about going back in time to visit his mother as she played the closing notes of the Fourth, then about finding himself on the Titanic just as she slammed into the iceberg…
“Are you saying that’s where all that water came from?” the doc cried. “No way, man!”
“Yeah. Way, man. Then we went out to look at the pulsar and the next thing I know I’m in bed. With these triangles all over my fat ass.”
“Harry!” DD cried. “You do not have a fat ass!”
The doc rolled his eyes.
“You’re still leaving out something, Harry,” Eisenstadt sighed. “Again.”
“I am?”
“The spheres, Harry. You haven’t mentioned the spheres.”
Callahan nodded and took a deep breath, then he told them about their encounter with the blues and the single pink sphere…
…and when he finished DD was incredulous while the doc seemed curiously unphased.
“You both saw these things, these spheres?” he asked.
“We did,” Deborah replied, “and I am not so sure these are simple mechanical devices. I think they may be some kind of transport mechanism…”
“Honey?” DD sighed, “maybe we’d better have some of the good stuff?”
Doc went to the kitchen and poured four shots of Drambuie and carried them back out, and he found Harry struggling to get a fire going but decided against helping. It took a while, but Harry worked his magic and soon a nice fire was blazing away in the fireplace. Deborah went and sat beside Harry on the stone hearth, and DD noticed how close she sat to him. The doc did too.
“A transport mechanism, you said?” the doc repeated.
“One of the blue spheres definitely seemed to react to our actions,” Deborah said as she nodded. “That one seemed more hostile, until the pink one intervened.”
“And they came after these events with your mother and the ship?” the doc asked. “What happened to set this off?”
And Harry nodded. “I was playing something…it was just coming to me, at least I thought it was, but now I’m not so sure.”
“What do you mean?” Deborah asked.
“You said, what, those doodling notes I was playing…”
“Had form and structure,” Deborah said.
“And…harmony,” Harry added.
“Yes! Harmonic structure…like the sound itself…”
“Is the gateway she mentioned,” Callahan sighed. “And the harmonic structure is bound up within those last few notes.”
“You mean,” the doc interjected, “that the last notes you discovered open up…”
“Something the spheres do not want us to play around with,” Deborah said, looking down at Harry’s fingers. “Harry, you hold the key. You know that now, don’t you?”
Callahan shook his head. “Can’t use it. No way.”
She leaned into him. “Good for you, Harry. Don’t tempt the fates.”
“I can’t tell whether you’re making fun of me or not,” he grinned.
“I’m proud of you, I think. It’s the right decision. Nobody should…” she started to say, but then she thought of that Old Man. Because what was he if not a time traveler?
“Nobody should what?” DD asked.
“Tempt the fates,” Callahan repeated…but he too was thinking about Lloyd and the Old Man…and of a looming battle between father and son.
First, a little housekeeping. Please note that the previously posted chapter 62 (actually 62.1thru 62.3) was actually supposed to be chapter 61 etc., so unless I’m totally lost now, with this post we’re actually up to the real chapter 62. Actually speaking, anyway, this is the actual 62.1, and the last 62.1 was actually supposed to be 61.1, and if you’re not actually confused yet, don’t worry because I’m actually confused enough for both of us.
Is it just me, or does it seem like Prince Vlad has a really bad case of projectile dysfunction? Maybe he should take lessons from Will Smith?
Okay…I’ll shut up now.
But, alas, if not for music matters, I’d have nothing else to say.
(King Crimson\\ I Talk To The Wind – Duo Version)
Chapter 62.1 (actually…)
It is four in the morning and Callahan can’t sleep. Everything he tries to think about, every distraction he comes upon always takes him back to the same point in time – to what caused his mother to die – because she had – obviously – chosen death. And now that Liz and Deborah Eisenstadt were here – and picking at all the old scabs covering this wound – he was beginning to feel very uneasy about all the other unknown events surrounding her passing.
His mother had been fighting what he’d always regarded a rearguard action against encroaching dementia, but what if he’d been wrong about that all along? ‘And not just me,’ he thought, ‘all of us. But me and Dad most of all.’
The single most important manifestation of her dementia, of her presumed psychosis, had been the repeated appearance of the “Old Man,” only now Callahan knew the Old Man was real. And not just real, but more than likely a time traveler. And if that was the case just what had the Old Man been doing to her? What outcome had he been trying to shape?
So…he’d realized that she hadn’t been some kind of garden variety schizophrenic after all? Maybe the Old Man had become more like her own personal tormenter, and maybe as his appearances became more and more frequent she’d grown depressed and felt undermined by his constant, unwanted intrusions? ‘I mean…who wouldn’t,’ he sighed as he sat at the piano, his fingers playing random notes in the deeper registers. “I know I wouldn’t be able to handle something insidious like…” he grumbled.
“What couldn’t you handle,” Eisenstadt said, padding into the living room in her bathrobe and fuzzy pink slippers.
“The things my mother had to put up with,” he replied, his hands never leaving the keyboard.
“What are you playing? It’s beautiful.”
“Playing? I wasn’t…I’m not – playing anything.”
“You could have fooled me. There was structure and melody, and an almost melancholic longing in these notes.”
He closed his eyes and started playing again, only now he was very much aware that specific notes were coming to him. He straightened up and addressed the keyboard and opened his mind and time seemed to dissolve as he played now, and he could just hear the crashing surf below and then a cool breeze flowing through the room…
“Harald?”
“Mom? Is that you?”
Another passing breeze and then faint laughter, like children on a distant playground.
“What are you trying to tell me?”
His eyes closed, he reached out through the music, the notes pulling them together through space and time.
“I can…I think I can hear you now…”
He could hear her grand old Bösendorfer now, hear her playing and he knew he was hearing her in the compound, at Avi’s house.
He opened his eyes and it was like he was flying through cloud, his eyes watering as he crossed gulfs of cold hard time…
…and then… she was there…and she was…
…playing the Fourth. And yes, there was von Karajan, staring in disbelief as she played, and von Karajan wept in astonished understanding as her music was carried along on the breeze…
Callahan was behind and above his mother now, looking down on her as she scored this crucial last fragment of her final concerto, at the music he now know so well, and he watched as she made her way into the final passage.
But no, this was different. She…no…this wasn’t the music von Karajan had given him.
He moved closer, looked at her penciled notes on the sheet music and he could see the harmonic interplay take shape in the air above the piano.
He moved closer still and she turned and looked into his eyes. “Do you understand now, Harald?” she said to him. “Do you see where I am taking this?”
“I think so, Mom.”
“We can never do this again, so you must understand the harmonic structure, now, before you leave…”
He pointed to a section of notes. “I’ve never seen anything like this, Mom. What is it?”
“This is the key, Harald. This is the gateway, and you must now become the keeper. Sit beside me now and play the notes with me, form the chord in your mind. Do you see it now?”
“Yes. Yes, I do,” he said as he played.
“Then go now. Go, but Harald, you must never come back here. Promise me, now, that you will never…!”
“But Mom, I…”
“I know, I know. But Harald, you must guard what you have learned here because this will become very dangerous for you. Now…promise me…before they come for us!”
“Alright Mom, I promise,” he cried as he reached out for her…
…but she was receding now, disappearing inside the cold embrace of the same dense white cloud, yet even now she was reaching out for him and he saw her calling out a name. He strained to hear what she was saying then he recoiled in disbelief as he found himself tumbling through a black void, surrounded by shimmering blue fingers of dancing electricity…
And when he landed in a dazed heap he looked around he felt a damp wooden floor underhand and this place was very cold. Very, very cold. And when he raised his head and looked around it looked like he was laying inside a wooden bucket of some sort, and he felt ice cold condensation rolling down the planked walls of the bucket…
Then he felt a small hand on his shoulder, and he heard a little girl’s voice whispering close to his ear.
“You’d better stand up now,” the ticklish little voice said. “This is the bad part.”
He looked up, saw a little girl standing beside him and he took her offered hand and tried to stand – and suddenly he realized he was standing on two legs now.
But there were two men standing in the bucket too, and one of them was rubbing his hands as if to ward off the cold…
Then the little girl tugged at his shirtsleeve. “Could you pick me up, please. I want to watch.”
“Watch? Watch what?” he said as he lifted her up to his waist, and she pointed out into the mist.
“There. If you look real hard you can just about see it now.”
He turned and realized he was high above the foredeck of a large ship steaming through the night, but just then one of the men by his side crossed himself…
“Sweet Jesus,” the man said as he picked up the cold brass growler by his hand.
Harry turned and looked at the little girl as sudden understanding turned to panic. “Where are we?” he muttered.
“Iceberg!” the lookout cried into the growler. “Iceberg, dead ahead!”
“Don’t worry,” the little girl sighed, “it only hurts for just a little bit, but it’ll be over soon.”
Callahan watched as the iceberg came out of the mist and he knew there wasn’t anything he could do so he simply gave way to the moment and held on. The Titanic grazed the spur just beneath the waterline and shattered fragments of ice rained down on the deck, and he turned in time to see officers running into the wheelhouse to close the watertight bulkheads and now everything felt just like a nightmare.
“But it’s not,” the little girl said.
“It’s not what?”
“A nightmare. But don’t worry. No one will believe you, so it doesn’t matter.”
He swallowed hard but in the next instant he started falling again, and a billion years later – or was it just a second? – he was on the floor in the living room of his house and he felt like he was drowning in freezing water.
He heard screaming and when he looked up he saw a blinking owl, then the owl was by his side, helping him into his wheelchair and that’s when he realized his house was awash in seawater, and that the floor of his living room was covered in shattered fragments of ice…
“My God, Harry!” Eisenstadt cried. “What has happened? Where were you?”
“What do you mean…where was I? I was right here!”
“No! No, you’ve been gone for several minutes?”
“Gone?”
“Oh God! Harry! Do you know what this means?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Harry! You left this time! You…traveled in time – just like the Old Man Liz mentioned!”
“No…no way…”
“The music, Harry! This music! The Fourth is the key!”
“Where did all this ice come from?” Callahan asked as he surveyed the wreckage around his chair.
“It must come from your movement through time…”
“I was on the Titanic. With a little girl.”
Eisenstadt stepped back from him as she stared at the ice in disbelief. “The Shift. You experienced the Shift.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Aubuchon Shift, Harry. You’ve found the gateway…to the Shift!”
“The…gateway,” he repeated – but his eye had been drawn to a shimmering blue sphere that at first appeared to be smaller than a golf ball hovering near the ceiling. “What is that?” Callahan said, pointing at the ceiling.
Eisenstadt turned and looked up at the sphere. “Have you seen anything like this before,” she whispered.
“No Ma’am, I can’t say that I have.”
“Do you have any idea what…?”
“No Ma’am, I sure don’t, but I think I’m going to a gun store first thing in the morning.”
“You know, I’m not sure that will help matters.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right…but I’ll sure feel a lot better than I do right now.”
Another sphere appeared, then another. The first sphere started spinning rapidly, and it grew brighter the faster it moved.
“Harald? Is it my imagination, or does that one seem angry?”
“It’s your imagination,” Callahan growled – as two more spheres arrived. “Definitely your imagination.”
Another sphere arrived, but this one a subdued pink color, and the spinning blue sphere simply disappeared. Moments later the the other spheres began leaving, and soon only Harry and Eisenstadt remained in the room – facing the pink sphere and not at all sure what to do next.
“I’d do just about anything to have my leg back right now,” Callahan whispered to Eisenstadt. “You think we should offer it a glass of scotch?”
Which caused the pink sphere to silently drift across the room towards Callahan. He guessed it was about a foot in diameter – yet as it came closer it also seemed to be growing in size – but then the sphere drifted by his face and moved across the living room, finally settling above the Bösendorfer. It hovered there, then began – apparently – to examine the instrument in minute detail.
Callahan turned to Eisenstadt. “I think I could use another scotch. How ‘bout you? And maybe a towel?”
She shook her head, her eyes focused on the sphere as it drifted around and then settled under the piano. It moved to the keyboard a minute later and it appeared to take great interest here, lingering over the keyboard for several minutes, then the sphere drifted across the room and it spun up for a few seconds – then disappeared.
“Well…fuck,” Callahan muttered.
“Harry, you are a man of few words, but at least they are well considered.”
“Right, if you say so, Doc. Now, if you don’t mind…? I need a really big scotch, so if you wouldn’t mind…?”
She turned to Harry and grew quite serious: “Harry? You mentioned the Titanic. Where else did you go? Did you talk to anyone else?”
“No scotch, huh?”
“Oh, alright, alright, I see I have created a monster. Now…start talking, and leave nothing out!”
He looked at his piano while Eisenstadt went to refill his tumbler and grab a towel, and after she returned he looked at the last dying embers in the fireplace…
“I talked with my mother…”
“You spoke to her? You actually interacted?”
He nodded. “And she told me not to come back again. Made me promise, as a matter of fact.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“When I was leaving,” he nodded, “she said ‘Dana Goodman.’”
“That’s all?”
“Yup. I couldn’t hear her real good, but I’m pretty sure that’s what she said.”
“Goodman…Goodman…?” Eisenstadt repeated. “Where have I…”
“You mentioned her earlier, Doc. When you were talking about Claire…”
“Yes! Claire Aubuchon! She was a passenger on the Titanic, just a little girl at the time, but she was there…”
Callahan grinned. “Yup. I met her.”
“You what?”
“I met her, up in the, oh, hell, what do you call it…like a crow’s nest…where the guys standing watch were stationed…”
“And Claire was there? With you?”
Callahan nodded. “Yeah, and I got the impression this wasn’t her first time there.”
“You were a detective, correct? Can you find this Dana Goodman?”
Callahan shrugged. “I’m not sure how much access to information I still have right now. I’m retired, but actually retired cops have a fair amount of residual power. I can still carry the badge and the gun but I’m not sure how much computer access I have.”
“This might be a good time to find out, Harald.”
“Call me Harry, okay Doc? My mom called me that, and I never really liked it.”
“Okay, Harry. Tell me…do you have a computer?”
“No…well, there might still be a couple up in the studio.”
“Internet?”
Callahan shrugged. “I don’t know if everything is still hooked up.”
“Would Liz know?”
Harry shook his head. “My, uh, my son hooked all that stuff up.”
“Oh. I see. Well, perhaps we should go see…”
They heard someone in the kitchen…opening a cabinet door and taking a glass down from a shelf. Then the refrigerator door opening, followed by the hissing sound of a large bottle of Coke being opened. Then they heard the sound of liquid pouring into a glass – and Harry looked at Eisenstadt and both shrugged.
And then the Old Man walked out of the kitchen, and Callahan saw he was still wearing the same loden cape, still carrying the same ornately carved cane as the other times he’d seen him, only now he walked with an easy familiarity over to the sofa and sat down heavily.
“I do miss Coca-Cola,” the Old Man sighed after he took a long pull from his glass.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Callahan growled.
“Oh, nothing, Pops. Just a sign of the times. So, how’s the leg?”
“It sucks. Why?”
“You ever figure out who shot you?”
Callahan shook his head.
“Wanna know?” the Old Man asked.
“Not really.”
“Okay, Pops…”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
The Old Man smiled. “Oh, no reason. Just a sign of the times.”
“What the Hell does that mean?”
The Old Man shrugged. “So, tell me about the sphere?”
“The sphere?” Callahan snarled. “What are you talking about?”
“The sphere that just left. What color was it?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Pops, listen. Just take my word for it…I need to know.”
“There were several blue ones,” Eisenstadt cried in exasperation, “and then a pink one appeared.”
“What did she do?”
“She?” Callahan growled. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”
“It seemed to study the piano,” Eisenstadt replied calmly, ignoring Harry’s sudden, inexplicable reticence.
“That’s all?”
“Yes. Then it left,” Eisenstadt added.
The Old Man put his glass on the cocktail table and sighed. “Well then,” he said, “as much as I’d really like to stay and shoot the shit, I must be going.”
“Of course,” Harry said, almost baring his teeth, “please…go.”
The Old Man stood and then he looked at Harry’s missing leg and shook his head. “Sorry the leg is still bothering you,” he said, then he tapped his cane on the floor twice and disappeared.
Eisenstadt looked at the spot where the Old Man had just been sitting, then she looked over at Callahan. “What was that all about?”
“I’m not sure,” he sighed as he toweled his face dry, then he wheeled over to the cocktail table and looked at the glass. “Could you see if there are any plastic bags in the kitchen? Like maybe a baggie or something like that? And a paper towel?”
“Alright.”
She came back a moment later with both and he took the paper towel and picked up the glass, obviously checking for fingerprints as he held it up to the light. After rotating the glass and holding it up at various angles he carefully placed the glass into the plastic bag and sealed it.
“Are you going to check for fingerprints?” She asked.
“I am, yes, but I think I know who he is now.”
“Pops? He called you Pops, did he not…?”
“Yup. And Lloyd used to call me that, at least when he was happy he did.”
“That is your son?”
Callahan nodded.
“What happened to him, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Oh, not much. He killed a musician and then disappeared.”
“Ah. A nice, well adjusted boy…”
“He was indeed. He was his mother’s son.” Callahan grimaced and then looked away, out into the night. “Could you push me out onto the deck, please?”
“Of course.”
He looked at his watch and nodded. “It’s about time, I reckon,” he said as she pushed him out into the wind.
He locked the wheels and stood up, holding onto the rail to steady up for a moment, then he searched the southern horizon for Sagittarius…
“There it is,” Callahan said, pointing to the steam coming from the teapot, then he looked at Eisenstadt…who was shivering now as cool breezes off the sea settled over her. Without thinking he put his arm around her and pulled her close – just as the first burst of light pierced the night.
The blue sphere stopped spinning just then – as it moved in slowly towards Callahan.
So…anyone wanna talk about Will Smith at the Oscars? Good, nor do I. Music, however, always matters.
(Sting \\ Russians v.2022)
Chapter 62.3
Callahan and Eisenstadt were sitting in the living room; the fireplace in the heart of his house was blazing away – sending flickering shadows of amber ghosts in desperate flight all around the room. Callahan was nursing his second Diet Coke of the evening, yet after taking one last sip he shuddered and put the glass down. “This stuff tastes like pure unadulterated panther piss,” he growled.
She smiled. “Do you have any single malt?”
“Doubtful. I used to keep some here for guests, so if there is any it’ll be over in the cabinet above the ‘fridge.”
Deborah went over and checked the cabinet, and he heard her gasp as she took in the choice. “Oh my. Someone very interesting has been stocking your liquor cabinet, Harry.”
“Doc likes his scotch. Probably him, if you get my drift. You into that stuff?”
“I am. Would you like to have a snort?”
“Sure. What the hell…anything beats this stuff.”
She came back a moment later with two glasses of caramel colored liquor and handed one to Callahan. He took a tentative sniff then a sip, and he nodded. “Pretty good. What is it?”
“Aberlour. A decent 16 year old. Very smooth, don’t you think.”
He shrugged. “If you say so. Never been into it.”
“Oh, it’s just something to take the edge off, I think. Sit in front of the fireplace and think about the day, kind of look back…”
“Look back. Yeah, I like that.”
“I know you don’t want to do it, Mr. Callahan…”
“Oh, come on, it’s been what? – four days now…so you can call me Harry, and I promise I won’t bite.”
“Alright…Harry. What is that? Short for Harold?”
“Harald, with an ‘a’.”
“So, so the Danish spelling…from your mother’s side, I assume?”
“Yup.”
“Did her mother, your grandmother, play the piano?”
“Yes. I think she played at the concert level. Quite accomplished, at least that’s what Mom told me, but she passed away when my mother was still pretty young.”
“Do you think your mother, well, that she traveled when she played?”
“I’m not sure, Doc. She’d play and there were times I just saw her sitting there, almost like she was catatonic. All I can remember is that it really scared my dad and me when she got like that. It was spooky, but, well, have you been around many mental cases?”
“Only in faculty meetings,” Eisenstadt said, smiling wistfully. “Sorry. No, but please, do go on…”
Callahan nodded absent-mindedly. “I’ve seen a few. Jumpers. People in emotional shock. But in a way most people who set out to murder someone, well, they’re usually emotional basket cases, in one way or another…”
“That’s right. You were a homicide detective, were you not?”
“Yeah, for most of my time in the department I was in CID…uh, that’s the Criminal Investigations Division. When most cops first go into the division they usually get assigned to thebunko, or the theft and fraud division, but some go to vice. You do well there and you get assigned to homicide. It’s supposed to be a big deal but looking back on it I kind of wish I’d stayed on the street…”
“Oh? Why is that?”
Callahan sighed and looked into the fireplace, at glowing embers under burning logs. “Being a cop…well…it’s like living in a sewer. People who do stuff, commit crimes, they’re like all the people who just don’t fit in, ya know? They’re the people on the outside looking in. Usually not real bright, some just plain broken…”
“Makes sense. If you’re reasonably intelligent you find it’s rather easy to make a good living…”
Callahan smiled, then he nodded. “Until you run into a stockbroker or a physician with tons of money and then you realize he committed the murder. Or the well-off old lady who takes in and kills an old man for his Social Security checks. There’s just a screw loose, Doc. I don’t know how else to say it. You can look ‘em in the eye and see it. Something wrong, something off way down deep, maybe something that happened to ‘em a long time ago, but they really just don’t fit in…”
“You saw a lot of bad things, didn’t you?”
He nodded, but for a while he couldn’t take his eyes off the embers. Then he held up his glass of scotch and looked at the fire through the liquid…
“Do you have nightmares about such things?”
Callahan nodded again, more slowly now, and he found himself back in San Paulo. Looking into Jennifer Spencer’s demon-haunted eyes. “Painting a carousel,” he muttered, his mind going round and round…
“What? What did you say?”
Harry shook himself back into the moment. “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about a case.” He chuckled as an ember snapped and popped and he watched as a fragment arced through the air, landing on the slate floor. “A nut case, as a matter of fact. I have a self-portrait of her hanging in the bedroom.”
“The one with the eyes?” Eisenstadt asked.
And then Callahan frowned. “I have a hard time getting her out of my mind.”
“Why her?”
“She was broken, ya know? Damaged goods. But in a way she was so easy to love.”
“And you loved her?”
He nodded. “For a while.” He looked at the ember on the floor, a soft glowing red thing that was about to fade away, and he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We were just too far apart, I guess. Close, but not touching.”
“Sounds painful.”
He shook his head again and smiled. “It’s amazing how many cops end up marrying people they meet on a call. You know, like a girl comes home from work and finds her place has been broken into and here comes the cop, and there it is. Something sparks. Or someone is in an accident and the cop pulls them from the wreckage, and some kind of connection is made. A good connection. We’re there when people are at their most exposed, their most vulnerable, and we’re often the only ones around that don’t take advantage of them. Not like all the repair shops or contractors and insurance agents they have to deal with in the aftermath, let alone all the other scammers. Sometimes we’re the only one there who’ll tell ‘em with a straight face what’s going on and what comes next. I liked to think that what I did was to simply go out and find the truth, and that maybe the truth would be some kind of comfort, or that maybe the truth would actually turn out to help someone.”
“And…was it?”
“As I said, I liked to think that…”
“But now you’re not sure?”
Callahan leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “There’s something going on out there, something happening. Frank and I, well, more like a bunch of us, I think, uh, we stumbled on something. At first we thought it was like some kind of rot eating away inside…”
“Inside? What are you talking about, Harry?”
But Callahan shook his head again. “Frank and I, we couldn’t be sure, but it was like maybe police departments were being undermined, maybe even compromised, but from the inside out. Penetrated, at least in the beginning? Then…subverted?”
“By whom?”
“That’s the problem, Deborah. Whenever it was like we were getting close to…hell…that’s not right. We never got close to an answer. I don’t think we even got close to asking the right questions, and whenever we tried it’s like we were attacked from every angle. Drug dealers. Low life scum. Then from the inside, by rogue cops. And then cops working with dealers. So we gave up, and I mean we publicly gave up and yet…no one seemed to care in the least, especially no one in city government…”
“And so you think they were in on it, right?”
“Maybe, maybe not. The thing is, it felt pervasive. Like it was everywhere, like law enforcement at every level was being compromised.”
“Was?”
Callahan shrugged. “Yeah. And I assume it still is.”
“So, why were you in Israel?”
“I used to think I knew the answer to that one, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Oh?”
“Did you know Avi Rosenthal?”
She shook her head. “Was he related to Saul?”
“Yeah, his brother. I still don’t know the whole story, but he was – apparently – married to my mom before the war, but I think that was a marriage of convenience. Then about twenty, twenty-five years ago he basically took Mom back to Israel. They lived in a government compound outside of Tel Aviv; that’s where Mom was when she died.”
“What did this Avi Rosenthal do?”
“I’m not real sure, but I think it had something to do with their version of the CIA.”
“The Mossad? Really?”
Callahan shrugged. “Maybe. He was a physicist but got involved in planning. War plans. At least he let on once that was what he was working on.”
Eisenstadt sighed, her mind working overtime now: “Do you think there’s any possibility that he knew about this thing your mother did? This manipulation of time?”
“If he knew he didn’t let on.”
“If he worked with Mossad he wouldn’t.”
Callahan looked at her carefully then, trying to get a read on where she was going with this line of questioning: “So, what are you thinking?” he finally asked.
“Harry, I am at heart a physicist. I look at complex systems and try to understand why they behave the way they do…”
“Okay. So, you look worried right now. Why?”
“I have two fears, really. The first concerns this thing that you taught Liz. This remote viewing thing you do. It is a curiosity, yet one with an immense potential to wreak havoc. Yet what most concerns me is that we somehow extend this ability and that we actually are able to travel back in time. Now…what if this Avi Rosenthal knew of your mother’s ability? Then what? Well, if he worked for Mossad we have to assume that the Israelis know of this generally and have since been working to extend your mother’s ability to utilize remote viewing into actual time travel. Yet I lived and taught there for almost twenty years and never heard even a whisper about such a project.”
“Okay. That’s one fear. What’s the other?”
“This I have a more difficult time understanding. It is little more than a feeling right now, a feeling with no basis in reason.”
“Alright. So, fire away.”
“It concerns this thing in the sky. This pulsing light. And to me it is a question of timing, and because of what we were just talking about at dinner. What did you say to your friend, the doctor? That this pulsing might not be a natural phenomenon, that it might be a signal? And if this is so, it might quite possibly be a warning of some kind? And here we are, the three of us – and quite possibly the Israelis too – working on some kind of practical ability to move through time. So, my second fear is exactly this: what if this warning is no coincidence?”
“Swell…”
“Yes. Just so. But there is another point to consider. If your mother knew of this ability before the war, what if others learned of her ability? Perhaps very unscrupulous people, perhaps, for instance, scientists working for or inside the Third Reich…?”
Callahan shuddered. “That would explain Israel’s interest, wouldn’t it? The Nazis could manipulate time, and…”
She nodded: “Just so, yes. And now let me add one more piece to the puzzle…”
“Oh, no…”
“Oh, yes. There was talk, before the outbreak of the war, of a kind of “shift” that had to do with time displacement. It was, and by rumor only, called the Aubuchon Shift. From what I have been able to uncover, there was a Claire Aubuchon involved with the Manhattan Project. She lived in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the war, and she worked with a physicist at Berkeley named Ted Sealy. They were working on how the blast waves from atomic bomb detonations would impact the wings of the delivery aircraft, the B-29; in other words, they were working on both the physical effects and the acoustic dynamics of a large blast wave. And Harry, this is the crucial point here, she was working on harmonic properties and their impact on structures and then she supposedly came upon some kind of “shift” and then she quite literally dropped out of sight. Years later she marries a man named Ben E Goodman with all kinds of degrees in medicine and physics yet I cannot find out anything about this Dr. Goodman. No academic records, no work records, nothing…”
“Goodman? Did you say Ben Goodman?”
“Yes? Why?”
“My contact within the Mossad these days is Colonel Benjamin Goodman.”
“Interesting. Does he, by any chance, have a daughter?”
“Yup. Didi. Didi Goodman.”
Eisenstadt shook her head. “This Claire Aubuchon had a daughter. Dana Goodman is her name. She lives in Los Angeles.”
“You think they’re related, don’t you?”
“Possibly. Or…something worse.”
“Worse? What could be worse?”
“That they are copies. Copies of this Claire Aubuchon. And this is what troubles me, Harry. This Aubuchon was a passenger on the Titanic yet she had a child in the 1950s? Is that so? Is that even possible?”
“So…you think she was actually traveling?”
“I have no idea, but this husband of hers, this man with no discernible background, has a baby with her when she is far too old to do such a thing? No, Harald, there are far too many unanswered questions here, questions that make no sense, and then you tell me of this other Goodman in Israel…”
“She’s been handling my finances for a long time.”
“What?”
“His daughter knows where everything is. Everything.”
“You must act now to secure what you have. And Harald. There is something else I must tell you.”
“Yes? Well, fire away…”
“My father, in Copenhagen, was your grandfather’s best friend.”
“My grandfather?”
“Aaron. Aaron Schwarzwald.”
“Seriously? Now isn’t that…”
“A coincidence?”
“A coincidence, yes.”
“I am not so sure I believe in such things anymore, Harald. The odds that Liz would look me up in Cambridge and then bring me to your house defies statistical interpretation…”
“Meaning what?”
“I have no idea, only that something most unusual is taking place.”
“Unusual, how?”
“It is like we are being guided…”
“Funny, I didn’t take you as the religious type…”
“And I am not, Harald. Yet perhaps there are people guiding us, or shaping events so that we come together…”
“So, people with god-like powers?”
“Perhaps it seems that way to us, but to me this implies people who have mastered the observation of people across lifetimes…”
“You mean time travelers, don’t you?”
She nodded. “Yes, I suppose I do. This also means that you and I may hold some sort of special place in this scheme, that you and I coming together is part of a plan.”
Callahan sighed and held up his glass. “I think I’m going to need another one of these,” he said.
“Ah, you see? This is a most useful creation, this scotch. Sit back and go over the day, or perhaps even a lifetime…”
“Lifetimes.”
“Just so, yes. We must start with your mother, Harald. That is the first road we must take.”
“You know Robert Frost?”
“The poet? No, not really. Why?”
Callahan looked at his empty glass and twirled the last remaining drops in slow circles, looking at one drop as it collided and reformed in ways both unpredictable and reassuringly familiar. “I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
“And this means what, Harry?”
“That we have been acting in very predictable ways, and if we’re going to survive this thing then we’re going to have to start taking the road less traveled.”
“We need to be unpredictable? Is that what you’re saying?”
He nodded, and then he tossed the last remaining drops of scotch onto the fire. “Yes. Just so.”
Back to Harry. Again. Sorry about The Otter and The Fox, but sometimes stories just come and they beg to be put to the page and who am I to resist? So…I spent a day putting pen to paper (well, you know what I mean, right?) while tinkering with this next segment of 88.
So, a little music to go along with your tea? Aber natürlich, meine Damen und Herren! Vielleicht ein bisschen Nachtmusik?
(Where Do The Children Play \\ Cat Stevens)
Chapter 62.2
Callahan had approved of Cathy Bullitt’s final architectural renderings for Harry’s rambling Sea Ranch Studios well before her passing, though construction had been delayed pending final approval by the dreaded and reviled California Coastal Commission. Harry’s property holdings at Sea Ranch included four residential lots; the original lot he purchased overlooking the sea at the end of a cul-de-sac, where the main house was built, and this was the house conceived to take in sweeping views of the sea and the rocks below. Because Sea Ranch was a residential community, turning the main house into a large recording studio had proven a legal impossibility, yet Cathy’s work-around was simplicity itself. She designed three new residences, each with a dedicated recording studio attached, and each new residence was only casually linked to the others by discreet walkways that wound around and through the rocks and scrubby pines on the sloping site.
Her original plans for the Callahan House looked, in plan view, or from overhead, like a series of irregularly sized hexagons, each drifting down the gently sloping hill towards the cliffs overlooking the sea. She chose her building materials with great care, executing the design with extensive use western red cedar and redwood inside and out. Each hexagonal roof gently sloped seaward, and each roof was clad in standing seamed copper. Walkways and patios around the main house were originally fashioned from flagstone and discrete exterior moonlighting bathed the walks and patios and even the surrounding trees with a cool blue-green ambiance at night.
And the new residence-studios followed these simple motifs. Copper roofs, redwood and cedar construction mimicking the hexagonal original, sweeping walls of glass to absorb the views and to bring a sense of their surroundings inside each structure. And the same lighted flagstone walkways linked each studio into a semi-inclusive whole, with the routes of their meandering ways dictated by existing trees and rock outcroppings. The residences varied in size, ranging from a single very simple two bedroom affair to an extremely large six bedroom residence with a music studio large enough to handle large ensemble groups, including a small orchestra, in the same session.
Harry had been using the first studio, the one built into his original residence, for years. Lloyd and Tod Bright had both used this studio, so had the grunge rock band Bright, and this before Harry was shot and lost his leg. Cathy had designed this original studio with modest additional accommodations, enough to handle a small entourage, but this soon proved a hindrance. Construction had already begun on the first residence/studio before Harry fled to Switzerland, and DD had seen this project through to completion. She’d put work off work on the remaining residence/studios until uncertainty surrounding Harry’s future began to resolve, but one of her first actions after Harry returned was to get these additional projects moving again. Harry wanted his Sea Ranch Studios to fully come alive, and he envisioned summer music camps taking shape and somehow turning the area into a haven for artists, but particularly for young musicians. DD had her marching orders and construction was soon in full swing.
The final paperwork consummating Callahan’s retirement from the Police Department was officially tendered after his departure for Davos, and with that accomplished Callahan officially consigned that part of his life to the past. Captain Sam Bennett was still living in Santa Cruz and Callahan had long made it a point to visit with his oldest friend at least a couple of times a year, but after his return DD informed Harry that Bennett was residing in an assisted living facility after his wife passed. Harry called Delgetti and Carl Stanton when he learned of that, and they vowed to get together with their captain soon.
Liz temporarily opened her house after she returned from Boston; this was Frank and Cathy’s original place located next door to Harry’s. Curiously, Deborah Eisenstadt stayed in Lloyd’s old bedroom for the rest of her week there – while the three of them gathered around Harry – and his ornate Bösendorfer – in the piano room that was perched above the rocks and the breaking surf below. She was entranced by the sea everywhere she looked and made it clear she never wanted to leave. And it was around Harry’s piano that they gathered and began to play with time, and while blissfully unaware of the consequences, they began playing with the very fabric of the universe, with the music of the spheres that Imogen Schwarzwald had only glimpsed within her Fourth Piano Concerto.
+++++
“You say you have von Karajan’s notes?” Eisenstadt said after Harry finished playing the first movement.
“I do, yes,” Callahan said – reluctantly.
“What do they…?” she started to ask, but then she stopped and collected her thoughts for a moment. “You mentioned you received these notes, and the score, directly from von Karajan, did you not?”
“Yes. I visited him in Salzburg not long before he passed. That was several years ago, but I still remember the afternoon quite well.”
“And you spoke of the Fourth Concerto with him?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You said your mother had just finished playing this piece when she passed. Did he tell you about the circumstances surrounding her passing?”
Harry thought back to the afternoon and sighed. “You know, I’m not sure whether he did, or if it was Avi who told me about that.”
“Did von Karajan seem evasive at all? When he talked to you about the Fourth?”
“Hard to say. He was in a lot of pain, but yes, he seemed, well, it felt like he was leaving something out, something like a painful memory.”
“I am not so sure I would trust what he said, Harry,” Eisenstadt sighed. “Many accused him ofbeing active in party politics during the war…”
“Party? What, uh, and which war?”
“You don’t know?” Eisenstadt replied. “Harry, von Karajan registered as a Nazi, though he was declared a mitläufer during the denazification hearings after the war.”
“A…what?”
“A mitläufer, a fellow traveler, or perhaps simply an opportunist; yes, that is the better choice here. He chose not simply to stay in Germany during the war, but to actively work there. He conducted the official state orchestra and at all manner of state functions. He profited from the Nazi regime, Harry.”
“Okay. So he was declared an opportunist. Does that disqualify the importance of his work on the Fourth?”
“No, of course not. I am, however saying we might take his recollections as a place to start our investigations, and that we need to look into this matter further.”
“What…matter?” Harry asked, now feeling a little uncomfortable about where this talk was headed.
Liz Bullitt, just then sitting beside Deborah, wanted to warn the Old Owl to go easy on Callahan, that any talk of his mother was to go down a trail fraught with all manner of hidden dangers.
“Your mother’s death, Harry,” Eisenstadt continued, looking him hard in the eye. “We must consider this an open question.”
“What do you mean?” Harry said.
“Right now? Only that we, the three of us, need to go back and examine this moment.”
“You mean…?”
“I do. And I think I understand how difficult this will be for you, but Harry – I have a feeling. What do you call the word? A hunch? Isn’t that what you Americans say? A nagging suspicion – that all is not as it should be.”
“With what?” Harry growled.
“With the very last movement of her Fourth, with the last moments of her life. What if your mother stumbled upon something, something dangerous, and what if van Karajan saw and understood that? Perhaps he changed something before the work was performed? To protect her, perhaps…”
“Or to protect all of us,” Liz whispered.
“Just so,” Eisenstadt sighed. “That is what I am most afraid of, Harry. I think that there is a harmonic structure within everything, and quite possibly your mother came upon a key to our understanding of this structure.”
“There’s only one way we can find out, Harry,” Liz added. “You know where all this happened, who was there and even when. You’re the only person who can take us back to the moment – to the moment she originally played those final parts of her original score.”
Harry was sitting quietly behind the Bösendorfer’s keyboard, and now he looked down and took a deep breath, but his hands remained crossed on his lap. Lost in thought, he knew what was being asked of him, and even knew how to get there, but there was something else bothering him.
“Have you ever considered,” he mumbled, “that if playing that music killed her, that it might, no…that’s not quite right, is it? If we find our way into that music, and if we play that music as you suggest, that it will – not might, but will – kill us all?”
“If she played the music and it killed her,” Eisenstadt thought out loud, “why wasn’t von Karajan also killed?”
“Maybe proximity?” Liz said. “Proximity to the vibrations of the chord? When it was played?”
“If that’s true,” Callahan sighed, “then won’t whoever plays the music, well, you know, die?”
Eisenstadt shrugged. “We have too many questions as it is, Harry. Now we must have answers. Answers that only your mother can provide.”
The doorbell rang and Harry heard a key in the door…
“That’s got to be DD,” he said. “Liz, can you give me a hand here?” he said as pulled himself closer to his wheelchair.
“Yeah, got it,” she said, and she helped Harry get settled in his chair just as DD and the Doc came in.
“Hope we didn’t interrupt anything important,” DD said, now carrying bags of groceries into the kitchen. “And Harry, I’ve got a list of people that are coming tomorrow. Just a few old hands from the Cathouse and a few cops you might remember.”
“You have friends…from a cathouse?” Eisenstadt asked with an arched eyebrow. “Really?”
“Oh yeah,” Callahan grinned, “we go way back. Free mustache rides guaranteed, too.”
Liz shook her head. “Oh, Harry…really?” she said as she pushed him into the living room.
“Oh,” DD added, “I’ve got one of those motorized wheelchairs coming first thing in the morning, so be here. They’ll go over charging the batteries and all that while they set it up.”
“Any word from the prosthetics lab?”
“Appointment on Monday, in Palo Alto,” the Doc said. “First I could get, and I had to pull some strings, too.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Harry nodded.
“You been watching that shit in Sagittarius?” Doc asked.
“Yeah. Same thing four nights running.”
“Spooky, man. Heard some talking heads last night yakking on and on about it. Calling it some kind of periodic pulsar. Some astronomer in Japan is calling it a magneto-star.” The Doc put his bags of groceries in the kitchen then came out to the living room. “Oh, excuse me. I didn’t know you two were over here,” he said to Liz and the Owl. “Sorry for the expletives.”
“You must be kidding,” the Owl hooted. “After an a few hours with Harry my vocabulary is wilting under the load.”
The Doc chuckled at that. “You should hear us in the OR. The scrub nurses tell the smuttiest jokes…”
“Oh sure they do, Doc,” Harry sighed. “Like the one about…”
“No, Harry, not here!” Doc cried.
Everyone laughed.
“So,” Harry asked DD as she came into the living room with a bowl of freshly peeled shrimp, “who on earth did you find from the department to come out here?”
“Oh, that’s a surprise,” she shot back. “So, Professor Eisenstadt, are you still returning Sunday?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. I must earn a living, one way or another.”
“Well, unless you’ve made other plans, we’ll get you down to the airport,” DD added.
“Oh, I can not ask you to do that. There must be…”
“No, there’s not,” the Doc countered. “It’s either us or you’ll have to use your thumb.”
“I see. Well, in that case, I’m most grateful.”
“What time’s your flight?”
“Noon, I think.”
“Okay, we’ll pick you up at 0630. Harry? Wanna ride in with us?”
“Sure, Doc.”
DD then came back with plates for everyone and bowls full of cocktail and remoulade sauces. “Okay everyone…dig in. Harry? Want an Oly?”
“No, I want you to sit down and relax. You’re making me tired just watching you run around!”
“I’ve got to go fix a Diet Coke. You wanna beer or not?”
“Diet Coke for me too, then.”
A hush fell over the house.
“Did you say Diet Coke, Harry?” the Doc asked.
“I did. Yes.”
The Doc then came over and felt Callahan’s forehead. “You feeling okay, Harry?”
“And the horse you rode in on, Doc,” Callahan muttered. “DD…this is a good remoulade. How’d you make it?”
“Oh, you like it?”
“Yeah, better than the cocktail sauce.”
“Cup of mayonnaise, two tablespoons of coarse French mustard, equal parts finely diced celery and onion. Oh, and a dash of Tabasco, too.”
“Damn, Harry,” the Doc groaned, “and now you’re asking for recipes? And drinking Diet Coke? We better check your testosterone levels, and pretty fucking soon…”
Liz laughed at that. “Yeah, Doc, you fuckin’ tell ‘em!”
“Oh, shit. There I go with the expletives again.”
“I hate to ask,” the Owl said, “but could one of you start a fire? I’m getting chilly now…”
“I’ll get it,” Liz said. “What was that you used to say, Harry? The coldest winter I ever endured was the summer I spent in San Francisco?”
“Ain’t that the truth?” DD sighed. “Beginning to feel like we’re gonna have another foggy night.”
“I hope not,” Eisenstadt said. “I’d finally like to see that pulsing star.”
“You haven’t seen it yet?” the Doc asked.
“I have great difficulty staying up so late these days, and when I get back to Boston I will have to contend with light pollution as well.”
“Perfect night for tomato bisque and grilled cheese sammies,” Liz said.
“Yeah,” Harry added. “Sounds good.”
“So,” the Doc asked Harry, “you working on a new piece?”
“Who…me? No, no, I was just trying to play Tom Lehrer’s Vatican Rag.”
“No shit? Man, I haven’t heard that one in ages. Can you play it?”
“No, no…I couldn’t remember the words, so really, what’s the point?”
“True. So, what do you make of this pulsing star theory, Harry?”
“Me? Hell, I got no idea, Doc. It seems pretty regular, ya know? Like you could almost set your watch by it, and that’s the weird thing, at least to me.”
“Yeah,” the Doc sighed. “One of the gas-passers I work with in the OR is an amateur astronomer. He thinks it’s a signal of some sort.”
Eisenstadt looked up at that. “Possible, but not likely, though that would depend on the possible trajectory of the light path.”
“What do you mean?” the Doc asked.
“If it is indeed a natural phenomenon associated, say with a pulsar or other magneto-star, the light would be omnidirectional. If, on the other hand, it is a signal of one kind or another that would assume a more focused beam of light directed along a path with a known recipient, or recipients. The implications of this, needless to say, would be staggering.”
“Oh, I agree. It would be staggering, alright…but that alone doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”
“Of course not. The problem,” Eisenstadt added, “will be trying to figure out if the light is omnidirectional or a more focused beam…”
“What about the type of light, say try a spectroscopic analysis? What that prove or disprove one hypothesis or the other?”
“If it was coherent light, possibly, yes,” she replied. “And by that I mean a singular correlation between packets of energy.”
The Doc shrugged. “You lost me, Dr. Eisenstadt.”
“The light would need to come from a non-variable light source, such as you might find emitted by laser, or possibly even a phased maser. But the energy required to emit such a signal over astronomical distances is not insignificant, Doctor. As a frame of reference, I doubt if all the power generated on this planet would be sufficient.”
“Shit,” the Doc sighed.
“Just so. Shit,” Eisenstadt smiled. “You might tap into or somehow focus the light of a star, but the resources involved to construct such a device again implies energy technologies several orders of magnitude greater than what we have envisioned here. Of more immediate and practical interest is how far away this light source is from our solar system; only then should we consider the type of light.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“If the source is local, say within 100 parsecs, that might be grounds for further inquiry. If, on the other hand, the light comes from a globular cluster in the Sagittarius Group that implies the light is ancient, say eight to fifteen thousand years old. For an artificial light source to be focused on our planet, and to arrive just now…well, the odds defy the need for further comment or investigation.”
“If it was somehow, what would that imply?”
“That this alleged civilization knew enough about the complex gravitational and tidal interactions within planetary groups in the entire galaxy to make precise predictions of stellar drift. In other words, their scientists would have had to take into account not only where we were thousands of years ago, but where we would be when the signal arrived. Such computational power in inconceivable, Doctor.”
Callahan had been listening to this exchange but just then something occurred to him: “Unless of course they were time travelers,” he said.
And Eisenstadt turned her owl’s eyes to Callahan and they blinked rapidly as another set of confounding thoughts cascaded through her mind. “If so, why not just come and tell us? Why bother with signaling us?”
“I can think of at least two reasons,” the Doc sighed. “The first is the simplest. We’d need to be technologically advanced enough to give a damn, to act on what we found.”
“And the second?” Eisenstadt said, her eyes narrowing a bit.
“That there’s an internal conflict within that civilization.”
“What do you mean?” she replied.
“Well, that perhaps there are factional differences. One group wants to send the signal and the other doesn’t…”
“Or,” Callahan said, “that this civilization wants to signal us but they don’t want another group to know that they’ve done so.”
“Another group?” the Doc posited. “Or another civilization?”
“And if that was the case,” Callahan said as he looked down and studied his hands, “then the signal is a warning.”
Eisenstadt smiled – yet inside she was torn. “All of this is of course assuming that your little green men are behind sending such a telegram to us in the first place.”
But Callahan looked at Liz, and both nodded.
Because the means to get to an answer might be waiting for them just a few feet away, in notes on sheets of music penned by his mother thirty years ago.
A wee tale for the change of seasons, maybe a little bit of allegory tossed into the mix.
(Ripples \\ Genesis)
The Otter and The Fox
Looking back on the events of the past summer, as the old man was wont to do from time to time these days, he found himself wandering down among the stacks in the deeper recesses of memory. Such musings were not at all uncommon and in a way he took a simple but curious comfort from these outings, and while many of these excursions were good for a smile others were not so pleasant. And as is true enough for us all, there were more than a few that brought a tear to his eye.
He was a meticulous old man and this was no doubt due to his upbringing. His father had been an aviator in the Great War, as the first big war of the twentieth-century was called, which was the one that happened before historians came up with the clever idea of numbering our wars. By the time the second big war rolled around his father was an admiral in the American Navy and he was still, nominally at least, an aviator. When the old man thought about his father it was usually when he folded his laundry or brushed his teeth, because his father had been very meticulous when teaching his son how to do those two most important things. Briefs had to be folded just so, socks in another manner altogether. Shirts were never folded; no, they were picked up from the laundry and immediately placed on wooden hangers and hung in the appropriate closet, and with an inch between hangers. The rod in his father’s various closets had always been marked at one inch intervals but, his father added when he passed along such wisdom his son, if you didn’t have a ruler you could use two fingers placed side by side to approximate the distance. Slacks needed three inches – or four fingers when you had small finger – like the father’s son had in those days.
His father never explained why these things were so. No explanations were necessary where his father was concerned.
The old man’s mother was an even more curious creature. Her father had some modest successes as an Episcopal priest, her mother much more success as a poet who also taught literature at a woman’s college in Western Massachusetts, which was, coincidentally and speaking in approximate terms, where her father and mother met. His mother seemed to exist on another plane, at least as far as this marriage was concerned. Her father seemed to wrestle with his demons during every waking moment, these demons coming to him in the form of bourbon whiskey and very young prostitutes. Her mother, on the other hand, was a saintly wraith who spent her every waking moment either preparing lectures for her students or writing poetry. This might explain her success as a teacher and a poet, and perhaps her father’s demonic proclivities as well, but suffice to say that the old man’s mother passed along a somewhat eclectic crop of incidental talents. She was, after all, an artiste.
By the time the old man graduated from high school he had lived in Manila, Honolulu, Annapolis, Honolulu again, and finally San Diego. He went to college in 1960 at the University of California Los Angeles and he studied both architecture and engineering. While there he learned to sail and he learned to fly small single engine airplanes, and on a dare once he went sky-diving. He did not repeat that mistake. He finally learned to ski and loved the snow and the mountains all of which in no way accounted for his decision to attend the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. He rented a room in a little house a block off the drag owned by two women who spent a lot of time together, usually around a potter’s wheel or at their kiln off the little one car garage out back. Among other things, they taught him about the joys of making guacamole, and their cheese enchiladas were beyond heavenly. He finally figured out what their secret ingredient was, too. Love. pure and simple – with maybe just a pinch of cilantro.
He was doing an internship over summer vacation in ’66; he was picking up a book at the architecture library and had just started back for his car when the gunshots started raining down on the South Mall. He saw a girl running for the door he had just entered to and when he turned to open the door for her he watched as the side of her head exploded into a misty rain of blood and bone. He pulled her in, pulled her to cover and he held her while she died in his arms.
He called his father a few hours later and he cried.
And his father told him to be a man, that real men didn’t cry at times like this.
The girls made him cheese enchiladas and fresh guacamole later that evening, and they helped him keep it together by teaching him all about the medicinal properties of Jose Cuervo tequila, thick wedges of juicy green limes and a whole shitload of salt. He had to admit sometime during the night that tequila was really very evil stuff and best left to others.
He graduated from the school a year later and moved to Seattle – because he missed the sea and wanted to live close to the mountains. He figured it was either Seattle or somewhere in Norway, and at least Seattle was close to La Jolla, where his parents were bunking out now that his old man had retired his flag.
The late-60s was an interesting period on the West Coast generally and while Seattle was no different it wasn’t exactly Berkeley or Haight-Ashbury, either. The “wood-butcher” school of incoherent architecture was taking off about that time, with untrained urban-anarchists retreating to the Cascades to build houses in the woods that more often than not looked like a cross between a submarine and a pile of melted candles. Maybe this period was a revolt against the revolting ranch-style houses of the period, and maybe that was a good thing, too. It got people thinking outside of the box for once, and maybe it all had something to do with Tolkien and Middle Earth, or maybe it was all the talk about Don Juan and his “magic mushrooms” which were floating around the edges of the scene just then. Well, hell, psychedelics were all the rage around Portland and Seattle in those days, so what harm could a few mushrooms be…?
He didn’t have a job lined up but that didn’t stop him. He went from firm to firm, talking to partners and dropping off copies of his portfolio and it didn’t take all that long; within a couple of weeks he had several interviews lined-up. He’d always wanted to concentrate on residential architecture and that proved a point in his favor. Most firms like to work on big projects, and for all the obvious reasons, but they usually keep a couple of Birkenstock-wearing creative types in a dark corner to work on residential commissions, and that’s exactly where C. Llewelyn Sumner found himself working in the fall of 1967. He rented a little two bedroom bungalow in the North Queen Anne neighborhood because it was an easy bus ride to work, and he set up a drafting table in the spare bedroom and bought just enough cookware to make cheese enchiladas and guacamole because, really, what else did you need?
C. Llewelyn Sumner wasn’t an ugly specimen, he was in fact fairly representative of genus Homo Americanus. Neither tall nor short, skinny or fat, his mother had always bought his clothes “off the rack” – and most frequently from the nearest JCPenney – and this was by the late 60s a habit fairly well ingrained in Sumner. He typically wore Perma-Pressed slacks the color of peat-moss, neither brown nor maroon but trapped someplace in between, and he invariably wore madras shirt sleeved shirts, once again of the ‘never needs ironing’ variety. And yes, he wore Hush-Puppies, though he never wore them with white socks – because his father had him taught proper sock etiquette from a very early age. When Sumner went to work he always slipped on a tan corduroy sport coat before he left his little bungalow – just because. Once at his drafting table the coat disappeared until it was time to return home.
Perhaps because of his mother’s contributions to his being, he possessed a rather florid artistic sensibility. His first designs were intricately rendered prairie-ranch style houses, sprawling hipped-roof affairs with four foot roof overhangs and vast expanses of glass the defining characteristics of this early period of his work, and as they were unusual yet very attractive he gained a following. The firm was therefore happy with his work, too, if only because nothing breeds success quite like a steady cash flow.
After a year at the firm one of the senior partners asked him to join a group the coming weekend on a kind of client interview. About all he knew going into the weekend was that the client (and his wife) were fabulously wealthy and that they wanted a very serious new house to be the focal point on a little island in the San Juans they’d just bought. They would be departing from Bellingham early on Saturday morning, and this presented a minor problem for C. Llewelyn Sumner, as he had no car, and actually had very little interest in them.
Yet the only automobile that did interest him was the little Porsche 911, but the prices were just a little out of his reach. Still, he went to a local dealer and kicked a few tires until a salesman approached. Sumner told the salesman what his proposed budget was and the salesman took him over to look at one of newer versions of the model, the 911E. It wasn’t an “S” model but it was a Porsche, and the price was right on the bleeding edge of doable, so the next day after work he picked up a tangerine colored 911 and drove home with a big, fat smile on his face. His neighbors were envious. Girls started looking at him as he drove to work. He found he was happy, or at least happier than he had been in quite a while, and he thought it odd that purchasing a car could do that to a person.
So he woke up extra early that Saturday and made the hours long drive up to Bellingham; everyone hopped on the client’s sailboat and they took off for the Sucia Island group. The client was a bigger than life character who was considered something “big in the timber biz” and he had a bunch of money, too, and mentioned that more than once that morning. His wife was charming, articulate, and obviously loved her husband – in fact she doted on him constantly. When they arrived at the client’s island a small but very substantial pier had already been put in place, and power had already been run to the island – “at great expense!” added the rich man – and two wells for water were up and running. A small bulldozer was working on clearing a roadway from the pier to the proposed building site, and as this was a Saturday, Sumner knew with overtime rates being paid to the operator that the client was obviously in a hurry to get things done.
So, the four of them walked the quarter mile to the site and Sumner looked at all the various views – of Mount Baker to the east and the Olympics to the southwest and it was hard to say which was the more dramatic. From a designers perspective the setup was almost surreal…unobstructed views…and not a single neighbor…just the sea and a few other islands sprinkled in the area, and most of those were wilderness preserves. Sumner pulled out a compass and a notepad and got to work taking notes, and an hour later the group was on the way back to Bellingham.
And it was kind of funny. On the trip back, Sumner had the impression that Mrs. Client was hitting on him just a little and besides feeling a little awkwardhe just carried on trimming sails and thinking about the island site. He drove back to his bungalow full of ideas and so jazzed was he that he went straight to his drafting table and got to work, drawing all through the night and into Sunday morning. When he arrived at work on Monday morning the partner involved asked Sumner if he had any ideas and Sumner just unrolled the floor plan and several elevations and let his drawings answer the question. The partner involved was flabbergasted at Sumner’s productive capacity and immediately called the Client and his Wife and they rushed down to the office. Sumner set about producing a rendering of the house sitting among the pines on the island, and he had that ready to go just before the Clients arrived.
Client was thunderstruck, almost speechless when he saw the first rendering, and Mrs. Client was moved to tears. She proclaimed Sumner a genius, and with that accomplished the Clients signed on the dotted line, turning over the design and construction oversight to the firm for a more than generous commission. And by all appearances every one of the firm’s partners was more than pleased with Sumner’s work to date and by unanimous decision he was made a junior partner on the spot.
C. Llewelyn Sumner decided he needed a house of his own, but he had run into a problem by choosing to live in Seattle. Seattle is itself a fairly diffuse concept, with the major suburbs spreading across the sound to Bainbridge Island and Bremerton, inland to Bellevue and Redmond, and north to Everett and even as far north as Bellingham. Boeing was the beating heart of the area, the aircraft manufacturer having facilities spread all over the area, and new companies were relocating to Seattle as the commercial aviation sector boomed with the success of the 707 and 747 models.
So while Sumner was now confronted with the very simple problem of where to live, he had to admit he liked living close to downtown. He liked living in a city that felt like a community, and the Queen Anne neighborhood fit the bill. But he was going to have to work on the island site several days a week and for weeks at a time and that meant three hours a day in the car just to get the Bellingham and back, and he’d need to rent a launch to run out to the island and back… And that didn’t sound all that good or even fun.
So he mentioned the problem at work, and one of the other new hires chimed in with an oddball suggestion.
“Buy a boat,” a girl named Tracy said. “Take it up there and anchor off the island, and drive home when you need a change of clothes.”
“A boat?” said C. Llewelyn Sumner.
“Sure. I do. I keep mine down at Shilshole,” she added.
“You live on a boat?” he repeated, incredulous now and with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Yeah. Why don’t you come down after work and I’ll show you around.”
“You live on a boat?” he said again, mystified and now shaking his head.
“Chuck, just stop it, okay?”
His face was a blank until he realized she’d called him ‘Chuck.’ “What did you call me?” he growled.
“Chuck. You know, your first name is Charles, so I just thought…”
“Don’t you dare call me that ever again,” he snarled, now red-faced and trembling.
“Sure thing, Charles.”
“My name is Llewelyn.”
“Sorry, but I can’t say that one with a straight face,” Tracy said, breaking into an impish little smile.
“Try!” Llewelyn said as he turned and stormed back to his table.
He worked on the foundation plans for the rest of the day and as he was packing up to leave Tracy came over to his table and blocked him in.
“Hey, what’s up, Chuck.”
He ignored her as he rolled up his drawings.
“I’m just curious, Chuck, but have you ever been, you know, like…laid?”
He turned and looked at this red-hair-freckle-faced girl like she was a contagion, but he decided against a reply and just shook his head, then he pushed his way past her and made for the parking lot. She, of course, followed. She was having too much fun to realize she was poking at a sleeping bear with a sharp stick.
“Come on, Chuck! Buy me dinner and I’ll show you my…boat…”
When he got to his car he stepped inside and put his things away then drove home, and she did not follow him, though he’d halfway expected she might. When he was getting out of his car his next door neighbor said hello, and that they were headed to the boat show, and that piqued Sumner’s interest. “Where’s it at?”
“Oh, down at Lake Union. Mainly sailboats this time of year. You wanna go with us?”
He made up his mind right then and there. “Would you mind?”
“No, no, hop on in. Plenty of room.”
It was only a few minutes away and soon enough he was walking around amongst a few dozen manufacturers displays, including an interesting boat from Finland, a chunky double ender with a huge pilot house, and he’d never seen anything like it down in LA.
“What is this?” he asked the representative.
“Well, it’s not really in production yet, but the people back in Finland are trying to put together a consortium to build this design as a production boat.”
“Mind if I take a look down below?”
“No, no, that’s why we’re here. Help yourself, and I’ll be right here if you have any questions.”
“Thanks,” he said as he climbed aboard. Teak decks, huge airy pilot house, easy to get on and off – he thought as he walked around the deck. Then he went below…
“Oh sweet Jesus,” he said as he went from the pilot house down to the galley, and he turned right around and walked back over to the rep. “Is this boat for sale?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“How much?”
The rep handed over a flyer with the vessel’s details and drawings on it, and a price was listed down at the bottom of the page.
“How much do you want for a deposit?” Sumner asked.
“You want to buy it now? You haven’t even been out on her?”
Sumner shook his head. “Would ten percent down be alright,” he asked as he pulled out his checkbook.
“Suits me,” the rep said, shaking his head. “Let’s get started on the paperwork.”
Sumner would take delivery after the show ended, in ten days. He bought some basic gear for cooking and cleaning, including a little inflatable boat called a Zodiac that he’d seen on a Jacques Cousteau TV special. And it was at this point he realized he was going to need some help moving the boat off Lake Union through the locks, before he could even think about the trip north to Bellingham. The next morning he talked to the firm’s partner he’d sailed with on the Client’s yacht and of course he recommended that he talk to…Tracy.
So, when he picked up the boat from the dealer on Lake Union he did so with a little red-headed fire-plug of a girl by his side, and the funniest part of that whole thing was she hung around off and on for a few years, more like a kid sister than a girlfriend, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying on her part. But, oh yes, they moved the boat up to Bellingham and he put the boat in a marina there and her big brother came up to drive them back down to Seattle. She’d come around from time to time after that and sometimes they’d go out to dinner or to a movie and whenever her friends asked if the tall guy was her boyfriend she’d just shrug and dance coyly around the edges of their assumptions, you know, like a ‘…wouldn’t you like to know?…’ kind of coy.
A few years later Boeing discontinued their SST project and it seemed, taken with the ongoing social miasma of Vietnam and all the other breathless disappointments of the late sixties, that the world was coming to an end…and who knows, maybe it was. Boeing laid off thousands and shit always rolls downhill. Other businesses either drastically cut back their payrolls or simply shuttered their doors and closed up shop, including the firm where C. Llewelyn Sumner worked. So, he thought, maybe just one world was ending, and another was beginning?
But by the time Sumner packed up his things and left the firm he had several important commissions to his credit, and while it was a risky move he decided to strike out on his own. Tracy asked to come with him but he just couldn’t afford a partner yet and he told her so. The best he could do, he told her, was to let her set up as an independent in his office until things improved, but instead she chose to head down to San Francisco and check out conditions there. They left on friendly terms but both were a little disconcerted by the change.
He’d not been allowed to make copies of the works he had produced while at the firm, and that was a blow – yet in a way those designs resided in the most secure space imaginable, in his mind. But then the old firm went into receivership and the assets liquidated. He purchased his originals from the administrator for a song, and he felt a little better about matters.
He opened his office in a tiny house on Seaview Avenue, out near Shilshole marina, and the tiny house sat in what was now in a commercially zoned district and had, for a while, been a bicycle shop. The office was cold and damp, sitting as it was just yards from the rocky shoreline, of he kept a wood stove going almost year round, and he loved the juxtaposition of the damp and the dry.On on the strength of all his earlier commissions at the firm he’d built a following, and a cult like following blossomed after an article about his work appeared in a nationally circulated magazine dedicated to architecture and interior design. A local photographer who expressed a deep admiration for his work asked to shoot his favorite projects and to co-produce a book with him if he’d write a bit about each. After the book came out, clients came to him from as far away as Montana and Colorado, and as the economy improved after the war wound down his business took off.
It wasn’t too many years later that one of the partners at the old firm came by looking for work, but by then Tracy was back and she was on his payroll, who along with a secretary-bookkeeper was all he could afford. But that was the nature of the business, and everyone knew it. Business was cyclical and architects lived to prosper during good times but had to be ready to hunker down when things inevitably slowed.
He still lived on a boat, but he had upgraded to a 43 foot Nauticat, having a small office with a drafting table installed as she was being built in Finland. There was more room now for people and things but he continued to lead a spare life on his own, and he was really a rather frugal person.Tracy lived a few slips away but she understood that C. Llewelyn Sumner had decided long ago that his would be a celibate’s life. He saw life through his parent’s eyes, his father’s most of all, and what he saw was endless cycles of violence and suffering. And then one night he told Tracy he couldn’t stand the idea of bringing children into such a world, and he told her about all those murders under the noonday sun in Austin and how there really weren’t any answers to be had for those who sought comfort in knowledge. Human beings could be lovely people, he said, but there was pointless savagery lurking just under the skin.
“What about you?” she asked him one night as they took their long evening walk on a nearby beach. “Would you wish now that your parents had never conceived you? That you’d never been born or lived to take a single breath?”
And he had to think about that one for a minute.
“You know…I’m here. I’m alive, and I can appreciate that for what it is. The universe came together in a moment and made me, and one day I’ll go back into the universe. What’s different is that somehow, for some reason I’m aware of the universe, aware of existing, and it’s a beautiful thing to be alive, to be cognizant of beauty and to create beautiful things, but when I look around I see so many terrible things. It’s hard to find a balance between the two. So hard that sometimes I feel any kind of balance is impossible.”
“And you do know you didn’t answer my question, right?”
“I’m here. I like being alive. So no, I wouldn’t wish that. I’m glad they decided to have a child.”
“And you don’t think a child of your own would feel the same way?”
“That’s hard to say, Tracy. The world I see coming doesn’t look like this one.”
“Because you’re a pessimist?”
“No, I’m not sure that I am, not here in this moment, anyway. But the future looks grim to me.”
“What do you think the future looked like to your parents?”
“Limitless,” C. Llewelyn Sumner said. “Endless, bright possibilities.”
“Chuck, you’re so full of shit.”
He chuckled at her sarcasm. “I learned it all from you, kid.”
“Gee, thanks,” she sighed. They walked further from the marina on drying sand, and as the tide went out more and more sand appeared. “Maybe you should get a dog. Just go down to the pound and pick one, maybe one they’re getting ready to put down. You know, save a life, make a new friend?”
“What brought that on?”
“Oh, just look at this beach! Imagine throwing a tennis ball and letting a dog run after it. Imagine the joy, the companionship.”
“But you’re not talking about a dog, Tracy. You’re talking about having a baby, about the joy and companionship having a baby would bring to your life.”
She nodded. “I know,” she whispered. “I’ve always wanted to have a baby with you. From the first time I laid eyes on you.”
“That explains it!” he snarked.
“Yup, sure does.”
“So? Where do we stand?” he sighed.
“Give me a baby, Chuck. Marry me if you want, or don’t. I won’t make any demands on you one way or the other. I’d just like to have a part of you, ya know?”
“It’s not right to bring a kid into the world without a father.”
“What’s right or wrong about it, Chuck? If you want to be a father let’s do it that way. If you don’t, let me do it the other way, the right way or the wrong.”
“Could I at least think about it, or did you just want to drop trou right here and do it right here on the beach?”
So of course she had to sing a few bars of Why Don’t We Do It In The Road and that made him smile a little, but he was kind of being serious, too.
“Right now, you mean?” she asked. “Right here, right now?”
“Isn’t that what you want, Trace?”
She nodded. “Yeah, but what about you?”
“I’d like you to be happy, Trace. Maybe more than anything else in the world.”
She took his hand and they turned to walk back to the marina, but it was the way he said it that hit home. The whole ‘I’d like you to be happy’ thing meant there was nothing in the world that could make him happy, but that didn’t matter, not really.
She’d been right all the time about him, too. He didn’t know the first thing about making love. No one had ever taught him a thing about it and he’d never done anything about it. Maybe he’d been with someone before and maybe he hadn’t; she didn’t want to know because that didn’t matter at all. Not now.
She continued to work at his office for a month or so, but then one day she came in and said she was off to Arkansas to work for a firm there, and almost without a word she packed up her things and she came up to him after her little car was loaded and she kissed him once, rubbed his cheek with her open hand while she looked him in the eye, and then she was gone.
Well and truly gone. And he knew it just then, that he’d never see her again. He could feel it, a dull pain somewhere smack dab in the middle of nowhere. When he went down to the marina that night after work her little sailboat was still there, but now there was a For Sale sign on it, and a broker’s number to call if interested. He sighed as he walked over to his boat and once he was inside he looked around and for the first time in his life he couldn’t hear a thing. He was surrounded by pure silence for the first time in forever and he couldn’t even hear his beating heart and everything was suddenly so unnerving and he didn’t know what to do now.
And it was like that after she left. Silence, everywhere.
Clients came and he listened. He sat at his drafting table and he turned out one miracle of design after another. Architects came from Germany and Holland and Japan to study his designs, and two more monographs dedicated to his work were published – one in German and the other in Japanese. He started to dress better, better suited to his station in life, anyway, and as the years passeddraftsmen came and studied with him for a year or two and then they moved on but there was never another Tracy.
He went to his father’s funeral, then his mother’s, and he inherited some money after the dust settled and he decided to build a house of his own across the sound near Port Townsend. He was beginning to slow down now, and his hands were bothering him more and more. He decided to keep his little office down by the water going for another year or two, but time had taken a toll. He was tired of the grind. Of selling his work, of trying to convince people that he was the best architect for their needs.
And one morning he looked in the mirror and he saw his father looking back at him. Or someone who looked like his father. “But that someone is me,” he realized, and for some reason that made him uncomfortable.
Because he knew his father had been incapable of love. And once he’d as much as said so. He didn’t believe in it, he said. It was all about the heat of the moment, just like war, but this thing called love was about creation, not destruction, and so we’d simply dressed up our animal instincts along the way, dressed them to suit the heat of the moment. And as he looked at the old men in his mirror he thought then that his father had probably been right all along. There was no such thing as love…there couldn’t be, because love just didn’t make any sense at all.
‘But,’ he wondered just then, ‘did life really make sense without love?’
‘What about that girl in Austin?’ he recalled. ‘I watched her die. I saw her death. I reached out that door and pulled her to safety, and I held her while she died. Did she ever love anyone? Did she even get the chance to love anyone?’
And he reached into the mirror, pulled the old man he saw there closer until he could really look into his eyes.
“Who are you, old man? Do I know you? Did I ever really know you?”
They turned away from each other just then, and they walked away in callous disregard – one for the other.
Soon enough he was spending more and more time across the sound over in Port Townsend. His new house had been a success, a complete statement of everything he’d ever considered important as an architect. He loved the spaces within, loved the way he managed to bring the outside inside. He loved the way the house blended in to the surrounding forests and mountains. He loved everything about his design, and about the reality his vision had brought to life.
And one day, when he was over at his tiny old office he was sitting at his drafting table after talking to a new, well a prospectively new client, when two teenagers came in the door, the two teenagers followed by an older gentleman – who somehow, for some reason, seemed a bit familiar.
Then he recognized the older man. He was Tracy’s older brother.
And then he looked at the teenagers. Twins, a boy and a girl.
And as they walked up to him his mouth began to feel dry, his heart to beat a little faster.
“May I help you?” he asked them.
“We need your help,” the older man said.
“Indeed? How may I help you?”
“You designed a house years ago for my parents, a very large place out on one of the Sucia Islands.”
“Oh yes, the Clarendon house. Of course.”
But then he realized something he’d missed once upon a time. Something important.
Tracy. Her name. Was Tracy Clarendon.
“The house burned down over the winter. No one was out there, no one was hurt, but my dad is gone now and my mother wants to rebuild the house.”
“I see,” C. Llewelyn Sumner said. “So, how can I be of service?”
“Mother would like you to come up and see if the site needs work, if the foundation can be reused, and the contractor we’ll be using needs several sets of the original plans. She’d like you to supervise the work again, if that’s alright with you.”
“You’re Tracy’s brother, aren’t you?” C. Llewelyn Sumner said, out of the blue.
The man looked away for a moment, then he stepped forward and held out his hand. “Yes. Yes I am. I didn’t think you’d remember me. I’m Forbes, by the way.”
“Yes, yes, of course I remember,” C. Llewelyn Sumner said as he shook the man’s hand. “How nice to see you again.”
“Yes. Nice.”
“And these are your children, I take it?”
And Forbes Clarendon shook his head just a little as he searched for the words he’d rehearsed on the drive down. “No, sir. They’re yours.”
And yes, there was some kind of recognition between all concerned inside this moment. C. Llewelyn Sumner knew that what Tracy’s brother had said was true. When he looked at the boy he saw the same eyes he’d seen in a mirror not so long ago.
“Yes, I think I knew that,” he said to the boy. “And how is your mother?”
Forbes cleared his throat then, and he looked away once again before he decided to answer the question. “She passed away last year. Cancer. The kids have been staying with me the past year and a half.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “It’s what she wanted.”
“Understandable,” C. Llewelyn Sumner said, and to him perhaps it really was. “The last I heard she’d moved to Arkansas.”
Forbes Clarendon shook his head. “No. She went out to the island.”
“So she…never left?”
Again, Forbes simply shook his head.
“Then I’m a little confused,” Sumner said. “Why now?”
“I wanted to meet you,” the teenaged boy said. “I wanted to know you, who my father was.”
“Alright. So, what would you like to know?”
“Why didn’t you want us?” his daughter asked.
And C. Llewelyn Sumner looked away, looked for just the right words he needed to address the moment. “When your mother left,” he began, “she didn’t tell me she was pregnant. She simply told me she’d found a better job in Arkansas and then, well, she just left…”
“So…you never knew?”
“About you?” Sumner said to his children. “No, I’m afraid today is the first I’ve heard about you.”
“That’s not exactly what Mom said,” the girl, his daughter, said. “She…”
“I think your mother probably wanted to protect me,” C. Llewelyn Sumner said, “from you. From what she thought was my indifference. And I suppose, in a way, she may have been thinking about protecting you.”
“So…what do you feel right now?” his daughter asked.
“Confused. Maybe a little hollow inside, like I’ve missed out on so many things, and, well, I think I’ve lost my bearings a little. And I’m afraid I feel a little sorry for your mother. She never trusted my feelings, never trusted me enough to come and tell me what she had done.”
“I understand,” Forbes said, his voice gentle and full of understanding, “this must all come as quite a surprise…”
“Again, I’m simply confused. If Tracy wanted you isolated from me,” he said to his children, “why the change of heart?”
“Because I can’t take care of them any longer,” Forbes said, “and Mother is no longer in a position to help?”
C. Llewelyn Sumner shook his head. “Okay. So. What are you asking?”
“We wanted to ask and see if you could take them now,” Forbes said.
“I see. What about the house on the island?”
“As I said, Mother would like you to rebuild it.”
“Is she not well?”
“Alzheimer’s,” Forbes whispered. “But it’s early stage.”
“I see,” Sumner sighed, now knowing the house was probably a ruse. “Well then, perhaps the four of us should go have a bite to eat and talk about all this.”
“Talk about what?” his son said. “Either you want us or you don’t!”
“I think I know how you feel,” C. Llewelyn Sumner nodded. “And, well, maybe it’s as simple as you say, but first I’d like to know what you want. I’d like to know how both of you feel about all this, because if moving in with me is the last thing in the world you want…”
“This isn’t their decision,” Forbes stated, interrupting Sumner. “Look. I’ve lost my job. I’m about to lose my house – and I simply won’t be able to take care of them any longer. And with the house on the island gone…?”
“So, if you’ll pardon my asking,” Sumner said to Forbes, “what are your plans?”
Tracy’s brother shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m kind of at the end of my rope, if you know what I mean.”
“Well then, as I’ve not eaten since breakfast I’m rather hungry, so I hope you’ll be able to join me,” Sumner said as he moved towards the front door. “I usually just hop across the street to the Boathouse, if that’s alright with you?”
After the short walk they were all were taken out to the skinny little patio right over the water and it was still rather sunny and warm, so after everyone was seated he looked over at the marina and he could just about see the slip where these two children had been conceived, and in his mind’s eye he felt Tracy walking beside him on the beach. Then he felt the moment when things had turned serious between them, and he remembered their moment with a smile.
He shook himself back into the present and turned his smile at Forbes. “So, what have you been doing to make a living?”
“I worked at Boeing,” he said – and that was really all he needed to say. Working at Boeing was like living on the flanks of an active volcano…you just never knew when…only that it would.
“So no retirement, just severance?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you do electrical work?”
Forbes nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
“I know a couple of contractors that’re hiring, if you’re interested.”
“I appreciate it, but I couldn’t commute from Bellingham…”
“Of course not.” Sumner turned to his children then. “You know, someone is going to have to make some introductions. Assuming, of course, you have names…”
“I’m Charles,” the boy said grumpily.
“Elizabeth,” the girl said, extending her right hand with a smile.
Sumner sighed. “Okay, so a handshake it is. And I’m assuming you’re 17 years old now? And that makes you, what, getting ready to start your senior year?”
“Yeah,” Charles said. “And that means I’m not going to be able to play football this year…”
“Oh?” Sumner said. “Why’s that?”
“Weren’t you listening? Newsflash, pops, but we’re losing our home.”
Sumner looked at Forbes. “What’s the situation with the house?”
“I’m underwater on three months, and back taxes. About fifteen large, I reckon.”
“And your mom can’t help?”
“She can’t, and her guardian won’t authorize it.”
“So, Charles, I think I know where you stand, but Elizabeth, what about you? Where would like to stay?”
She shook her head. “Uh, I must’ve missed something, but, well, what’s the choice here?”
Sumner shrugged. “Seems pretty simple to me. You guys can either come and stay with me at my place over in Port Townsend or I can see if your Uncle’s situation is reparable. If it is then I assume you could stay there and finish out high school where you’re at.”
“Look,” Forbes interrupted, “I can’t ask you to do that…”
“And you haven’t, have you? As far as I can tell, I’ve contributed exactly nothing to my children’s lives…”
“What would you like?” Elizabeth blurted out.
“Well, thank you for asking, Elizabeth. Frankly, I’d like to get to know you both, and also I’d be more than happy to do what I can to help you along your way. If that means helping out your uncle then so be it. But right now I’m most concerned about what would make you happiest.”
And Elizabeth turned to her brother then. “See. I told you he’d be like this,” she whispered.
“Charles?” Sumner asked. “What about you? What about next year?”
“I’m trying for a scholarship at UW.”
“Football? What, wide receiver or DB?”
“Both, I think.”
“Forbes, what do you think? Has he got a shot?”
“Yes, he’s pretty good, and his coaches think so too.”
“Okay, so football is a priority,” Sumner said, and Charles visibly relaxed. “Elizabeth? That leaves you? What do you want to do?”
She looked at her brother then, and her uncle, then she sighed. “I’d like to know you better. I’d like to live with you next year.”
Charles stiffened again.
Sumner leaned back in his chair and nodded. “Forbes? Scribble down the address of the house, would you? I’ve got to go make a call, if you’ll excuse me for a moment.” When he had the address he went to the desk and called his attorney, told her what he had in mind and to work out the numbers, then he went back to the table – just as their meals came.
“So, Elizabeth, what about you? College in the cards for you?”
She nodded. “Yes, then veterinary medicine.”
“Oh?”
“She’s been into animals her whole life,” Forbes added. “She’s been…”
“I can talk to, ya know?” she growled, leaning away from her uncle.
“You remind me of your grandmother, my mom,” Sumner smiled.
“Oh, is she…”
“No, I’m sorry, but she passed a couple of years ago, but you would’ve like her.”
“That’s just so unfair,” she said, settling back in her chair. “So many…”
“Yes, but we can’t live back there, can we?” Sumner said. “All we can do is face tomorrow head on, and let’s live it like we mean it.”
“Okay,” she said, “you’re right.”
“So, vet school?”
“I’ve been working as a vet tech after school, Saturdays and summers, too…”
“Have a dog yet?”
“We did, when we were little, but not the past couple of years. Besides, I want a horse – no, really, I want a bunch of horses…”
“Interesting. I’ve got about eleven acres out at my place. No barn, but those aren’t hard to do.”
“You mean it, really?”
“Why not? As long as I don’t have to take care of them…”
She almost flew into his arms then, and when she whispered “Oh, Daddy,” into his neck a couple of times he felt his world spinning round and round and out of control. About the time they were finishing up their desserts the hostess brought him a note and he nodded. “Well, okay Forbes, we just have a few papers to sign at the office then you can head back to your house.”
“What did you do?” Tracy’s brother asked.
“You’re caught up now, Forbes, through the end of the year, anyway. Charles, the choice is yours, but this is pretty good Bread Pudding, and I’m not leavin’ ’til I finish!”
+++++
Elizabeth moved in with him a few weeks later. He designed a barn and fenced in some pasture and bought her a mare, and while all this was going on he returned to the island to survey the damage to the original house. The concrete foundation had been damaged and neglected since fire crews left the scene, and Mrs. Clarendon moved to an assisted living facility, so she’d never move back to the island. The decision was made to clear out the remnants of the old house and sell the island, and Sumner was sorry to see the house end up like it had.
He made one last trip to the island after the remaining demolition was complete, and he took Elizabeth with him – if only to listen to her memories about growing up on the island, with Tracy. He realized he’d made a tremendous mistake by not committing to Tracy, and the sense of loss had, at times, begun to feel a little like a personal calamity. Elizabeth came to him kind of like a little miracle, yet he couldn’t help but think of her as a kind of consolation prize. He’d missed out on the Grand Prize when he’d shuffled away from marriage and commitment and all that, but Elizabeth was his daughter. He moved quickly from the realm of obligatory feelings to knowing real love when he saw her, and he hoped in time she would feel that way too.
When football season rolled around he made it a point to go to all of his son’s games and yes, he was talented. Maybe something would become of it, but love came harder between the two of them. His son approached warily, not quite sure who his father was. Charles decided later that year he wanted to go to Michigan State and when he was awarded a football scholarship back there that all but cemented their future relationship. Distance would take care of that.
Elizabeth went to the University of California at Davis, and just like that, after a whirlwind year of indecipherable emotions and roller coaster turmoils, they were gone. And so as quickly as they came to him they disappeared. Now, however, he had a horse to deal with.
And one afternoon he rode the horse down to the shore, more just to watch the water than anything else, and to wonder about the nature of such things. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, all the predictably unpredictable things that went along with those four words. How almost all of them had escaped him, how close he came to never knowing what that life was all about.
He heard a commotion down on the rocky beach and he tied off the horse then picked his way down through the brushy scree to the water’s edge and he saw an otter and a fox locked in mortal combat, their bodies intertwined in a whirling dance of death, and he watched them, fascinated. Why? Why do this? Why fight like this, knowing it might only lead to your own demise?
And he watched in awe of whatever had compelled this struggle.
And soon it was over. The otter emerged victorious – yet as it pulled itself away from the dead fox Sumner could see that its wounds were severe, indeed, the otter appeared to have been mortally wounded. She limped off a few feet and then fell over into nothingness, and he walked down to their bodies if for no other reason than to bury them. When that was done he heard a gentle mewing and went to investigate, and he found what he assumed was the dead fox’s pup curled up amongst the rocks. He stood tall and looked around, hoping to find signs of the other parent…
And then he heard distant cries up the beach and went to investigate, and he found that the otter had left a pup behind.
So…they had fought to protect their young, and they had…but at what cost? How senseless, he thought, were such outcomes? Yet…how inevitable.
C. Llewelyn Sumner didn’t really know what else to do, so he gathered some grass and lay the pups side by side on this little makeshift bed and he clambered up through the scree to Elizabeth’s horse and he carried them back to his house. He made sure they were warm and he heated some milk in a saucepan and he helped them along by dipping the tip of his little finger into the milk and letting them lick away, and it worked.
“Now what do I do?”
And she came to him then, as she did from time to time. Tracy came and they spoke for a while. About what he must do now, because everything was there, everything he needed to know. Later that evening he rubbed the little pups when they cried. “It’s alright,” he told them as he fed them both, “I’m here now. Everything will be fine so just go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Admirers of his work still came calling, and even long after his practice wound down people still came to see the builder and his dreams. He had always worked to bring the outside inside, so these visitors weren’t exactly surprised when they found C. Llewelyn Sumner sitting in the sun on his deck – with a fox curled up on his lap or an otter sleeping on his shoulder. They found, in fact, that the sight rather suited such a lonely man.
A few revisions needed to bring this story up to date, and I think you’ll soon see the reason why. About 120 pages typed so not especially short, and perhaps worth a fresh spot of tea. Enjoy.
(The Hollies \\ On A Carousel)
The Deep End of Your Dreams
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein
17 April, 1912
She stood at the rail, looking down into the sea.
New York lay somewhere ahead, not quite another day ahead, and now the ship of dreams lay somewhere down there, down there in the belly of the beast. Dead and gone now for a day, gone to a past drifting from her reach. Her father was, she assumed, still aboard, still down there in the darkness. Waiting for her, she just had to think.
She was alone now. Seven years old and all alone in the world. And yet, for some reason she was not frightened. Maybe because little things like death had never bothered her. How do you fear that which you do not know? How do you see past the moment when the moment never passes?
No, her ship of dreams had grazed ice and then the sea had risen up and taken everything she thought she understood – and only then did the moment pass. Only then did time exceed her reach. And now that the moment had passed she looked around at her new world and what she thought she saw only frightened her. Everything was gone, her father chief among those things – and she had watched it all slip beneath the sea. Gone, everything she had ever known slipped away, disappeared in an instant as the ship pointed to the heavens before she broke in half and just slipped away. Nothing remained but the panic of getting to the boats, of the voices calling out in the misty night and how they had slowly grown silent. And maybe she listened to her father’s voice calling out, but she would never know. Maybe then, as the moment finally passed and time began for her, maybe she finally understood her father wasn’t going to be by her side.
She’d watched him standing behind that other rail, their eyes locked-on one another’s as the distance between them grew ever wider, and she’d tried to follow him as he moved aft – as the great ship settled by the bow. Amidst all the moaning and tears of the women around her, she’d watched in silence as the Titanic began her final journey, yet even then she’d turned inward, tried to cling to the moment, tried to keep time standing still.
Adrift in a lifeboat watching the black eye of the sea she settled on the reflection of a star overhead. ‘Nothing lasts,’ she heard, and then she realized the star sing was singing to her.
‘Nothing lasts forever.’
‘Not even love.’
+++++
“Not even love,” she said to the black water now – far below and racing from the moment.
“What was that you said?” she heard a man ask, and she turned to look but was afraid to look into a star.
She shrugged at the voice but she didn’t know what to say.
“Are you alone, child?” a kindly old man asked. He seemed short and fat, but then she realized it was his topcoat. Yet as she stared at the man’s face she smiled, for she had never seen such a colossal mustache in her life and the man looked like a blubbery walrus.
She nodded to his question, and she tried not to laugh.
“Marie! Come here this instant!”
A maid of some sort scurried to the old man’s side. “Sir?”
“Find Mrs Wilkinson, would you? And bring a blanket from our stateroom.”
“Yes, sir,” the cowed girl said, before curtsying and scurrying away.
The old man turned back to the little girl, his face now a contorted grimace of concern. “Were your parents aboard the Titanic?”
She nodded her head again. “My father was.”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She died, two years ago.”
“You have no other family?”
She shook her head.
“Well, confound it all,” the old man said, his eyes watering. “What’s to become of you?”
That did it. Something inside her broke and she started to cry – and the sight tore into the old man like nothing he’d ever experienced before. He knelt and held on to her as if she was his own daughter…and he did so until Marie, the maid, returned with a blanket.
“The Missus will be here shortly, sir,” the girl said, frowning at the sight of the old man down on his knees like that. It was all, she thought, just so – undignified!
And when Emily Wilkinson twaddled up, blathering on about the chill in the air, Rupert Wilkinson stood and turned to his wife: “See here, Emily…it’s April, and this is the North Atlantic. It’s supposed to be chilly out here!”
“This is not chilly, Rupert. It’s positively arctic and what are you doing on your knees!”
“Blast you, woman!” he said, pointing off the starboard rail. “That’s Long Island over there, not the North Pole! Pull yourself together, woman!”
And so, of course, Emily huffed up. “You wanted to see me about something?”
So Rupert huffed up too. “Yes. This girl is off the Titanic and she’s all alone. I mean, all alone in the world. What are we going to do about that?”
The old woman looked at the girl – and then her heart melted too. “Oh, you poor dear,” she said, then one eyebrow arched up and she looked at her husband of thirty years. “And just what do you have in mind now, Rupert Wilkinson?”
“If she’s alone is it not our duty to help.”
“OUR duty? How did you come to THAT conclusion?”
“Do you see anyone stepping forward to help the girl right now?”
“Surely there will be someone for her in New York?” Emily said, her voice on edge now. She was used to her husband’s larkish misadventures, but this was altogether something else again. “Darling, what’s your name?”
“Claire. Claire Aubuchon.”
“Are you from France?” Rupert asked.
Claire shook her head. “No, but Daddy worked there.”
“And what did your father do?”
“I don’t know exactly, but he worked in the embassy. We live so close he can walk.”
“Well, I know Phil Knox, so we’ll get to the bottom of this in short order.”
“Who’s Phil Knox?” Emily asked.
“He’s the Secretary of State,” Claire replied, though her chiding tone was perhaps a little condescending.
“He sure is,” Rupert said, and not a little impressed. “And do you know what your father did in Paris?”
“No, not exactly,” Claire said. “It was a secret.”
“Oh, indeed,” Rupert sighed, “I see. Well, we need to find you some new clothes. Emily? Would you and Marie be so kind as to take Miss Claire to the dressmaker’s? Perhaps they could find something more becoming for her arrival? I think I’ll head up to the wireless office, see if I have any new messages…”
+++++
After a night at the Waldorf, the Wilkinson entourage boarded the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Fast Express – after receiving assurances from Cunard that they would indeed have space on the Lusitania’s next sailing for Cherbourg. And Rupert had decided to carry little Claire to Washington, if only to guarantee her well-being while he sorted things out.
Claire had reverted to type in the absence of her father; she had, in other words, pulled out a book and opened it to the page where she had last left off, and Rupert watched her every movement now, fascinated by the little creature’s intellectual dexterity. At times she appeared listlessly dull and flat, but then he would watch her eyes. They were full of curiosity, sweeping here and there and always taking everything in, and as he’d seen her reading last night he wondered what interested her.
“I don’t recognize that script,” he said, looking at the book’s cover. “What are you reading.”
“It’s called Resurrection. It’s in Russian.”
“You read Russian?”
“Yes.”
“English, too, I assume? Anything else?”
“French and German. I learned French first.”
“You can read all those languages?”
She nodded her head as she looked up from the book. “My father could read and write seven languages, but he didn’t count Latin.”
“Oh? Can you speak Latin?”
“Of course. But not as well as my Father.”
“That book there…? Who’s it by?”
“Tolstoy.”
“I’m not sure I know the man. Is he famous?”
“I think so.”
“Well, don’t let me disturb you,” Rupert said, and when her eyes dropped back to the book he looked to Emily – who had watched the exchange with something approaching pure wonder in her eyes.
Emily had been to college and studied literature – though that had been decades ago – yet she grasped that the girl’s intellect must be truly staggering, if, that is, she wasn’t simply exaggerating. Watching her now, the girl turned a page, on average, in less than twenty seconds – which was shocking enough for a seven year old – but she was reading in Tolstoy’s native language, not her own.
“Claire,” she asked, hating to interrupt her again, “I’ve not read that work. What’s it about?”
“About man’s search for redemption, though, from what I can tell so far, most of the events are allegorical in nature.”
“Allegorical? For what?”
“Political and social injustice, the nature of corruption.”
“Do those things mean anything to you?”
“Of course.”
Emily smiled, though she was now shocked beyond belief. “Did you and your father read a lot, together?”
“Every night.”
“And what about your mother? What did she do?”
“She taught music, but she wrote music all the time, too.”
“Oh? What kind of music?”
“Symphonies, though she wrote chamber music too.”
“What about you? Do you play?”
Claire nodded her head again. “The piano, and I’m learning the violin.”
“Do you write music, as well?”
“Of course.”
Emily looked at her husband, her eyes taking in his apparent shock, then she looked at the girl again. “Claire? Would you like to live with Rupert and myself?”
The girl studied them both for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know you. I think the better question might be, do you want me to live with you? And even then I’d want to know why?”
“To take care of you,” Rupert said.
“To help you with your reading and music,” Emily added. “Would that interest you?”
“Would I have any brothers or sisters?”
“Both, but they are all already on their own, so you wouldn’t live with them in the usual sense.”
“Where would I live?”
“In Philadelphia,” Rupert replied. “I manage a law firm there, but I travel a lot. Would that interest you?”
“What? Travel, or to live in Philadelphia?”
“Both, I suppose.”
She closed the book and folded her hands on her lap, then she looked out the window into the passing landscape. A long sigh slipped from her lips, but she saw Rupert’s expression in the reflection as she watched his movements inside the glass, and she saw the man’s eyes were full of hope.
“I think I would miss Paris,” she said at last.
“We have a small villa outside of Paris,” Emily said hopefully. “That’s where we were going when…”
Claire smiled. “Oh? Where?”
“Near Chartres,” Rupert said. “Have you been to the cathedral there?”
She nodded her head carelessly, like the question was beneath contempt.
“What did you think of it?”
“I like the vaulting behind the altar. It’s like the web of creation came to life.”
He nodded. “We are going to retire there soon, in two more years. Would you like to live there?”
“Yes. Could I still go to Paris?”
“Yes, of course. As often as you like.”
“But for the next two years I’d live in Philadelphia?”
“That’s right. But who knows, you might enjoy that too. In fact, we’ll be stopping in Philadelphia in just a few minutes. We’re already in the north part of the city right now…”
Claire looked out the window for the next several minutes, clearly unimpressed as mile after mile of dowdy, red brick buildings slipped by. “Will we be able to see Independence Hall from the train?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“I’d like to see that. My father took me to the house where Thomas Jefferson lived when he was ambassador to France. He told me how much Jefferson shaped the French Revolution.”
“Did he? And what did you think of that?”
“I would have liked to know Jefferson.”
“So would I.”
She turned and looked at the old man again, nodding her head as she thought things through. “Are we going to talk to Secretary Knox? About me?”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to live with you?”
“Yes, if you think you’d like that.”
She closed her eyes, nodded her head once again, then resumed looking out the window – wondering about life and what waited ahead.
+++++
She walked up the boarding ramp to the Lusitania’s promenade deck, following Rupert now, and she had to admit she liked the burly, grandfatherly ways of the fat old man. She reminded him of Tolstoy’s Count Ilya Rostov, the compassionately careless patriarch in War and Peace, and that wasn’t an altogether bad thing to be, she told herself, as long as wealth wasn’t too important. She’d read enough about money to understand the implications of being poor, yet she’d read enough to understand that money could be a poison, too. Rupert seemed wealthy – yet kind of careless, too – like Count Ilya.
She followed him and was surprised to find she had her own stateroom, and that Emily had arranged to have a piano placed in sitting area. She assumed she’d have to play for them, and that bothered her a little – yet she had to admit she’d missed playing since she and her father left Paris.
She’d enjoyed Washington, the cherry blossoms along the Potomac most of all, and her few hours in the Secretary’s office – in Foggy Bottom, as Rupert called it – had been pleasant enough. Once she told Secretary Know she’d be happy to live with the Wilkinsons things had sailed along smoothly enough, though after Rupert said he’d handle all the paperwork she’d felt a little like a puppy.
Yet their brief return to Philadelphia had been promising. Emily had taken her to one bookstore after another, and now she had, literally, a steamer trunk full of unread books to fill the days ahead, and all sorts of new clothes, too. Her father had never attached much importance to such things, so she’d watched Emily as she was lead from one store to the next, the old woman going on and on about which designers were promising and which were doddering incompetents, and at times she wondered about the woman’s sanity.
Another maid had been engaged, a younger girl, perhaps fifteen, who would do, as far as she could tell, nothing but keep her own clothes in order and make sure she was suitably dressed for meals. The girl’s name was Edith, and at first blush she seemed quite simple.
So, after the Wilkinsons’ belongings were unpacked, the maids Marie and Edith came in to get her things settled, so she sat behind the piano and began playing a Debussy prélude, La cathédrale engloutie, the soft, measured notes filling the stateroom with a deep blue melancholy. As she fell deeper inside the music she closed her eyes and let the music take her deeper and deeper into the despair she’d denied for the last two weeks, and when, minutes later, she fell away from the keyboard she saw Emily and Rupert watching her from the corridor outside her room, the maids almost in tears…
She stood and pushed herself away from the instrument, then she walked out onto the promenade deck and made her way forward – as tugs pushed the ship away from the city.
She felt the ship accelerate into the East River, the open sea ahead now – again – then she felt Rupert by her side, standing – silently – beside her as sea-borne breezes lifted her hair.
“That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” he whispered.
She turned and looked at him, tried to read the emotions playing across his face. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry? Whatever for?”
She looked at the denial in his eyes and wondered where that came from, then she looked ahead.
“Will we pass where the Titanic went down?”
“I don’t know, Claire.”
“I’d like to…see that place again.”
He nodded. “I think I understand.”
She reached over and took his hand. “Thank you, Rupert.”
“Of course.” He sighed as he looked into her eyes, then he made up his mind. “Do you think, maybe one day, you could call me ‘Father?’”
She leaned into the old man, let him hug her for the longest time. “Yes,” she finally said.
Then she heard his tears, and so she smiled.
Chapter 2
In time – seven more years, to be precise – she knew her place in her odd, new family, the Wilkinson family. Her nearest sibling – in age, anyway – was a boisterous jock named Elizabeth. Liz rode horses with a western saddle and rowed crew, both unheard of predispositions in 1919, and she was big-boned and coarse-humored, too. Liz had started college the year before, at Penn, though she frequently snuck home so Claire could help with her homework.
Her oldest sibling, her brother Charles, had become something of an adonis to her. Chuck, as she called him, was tall and possessed a firm intellect, and he was scrupulously fair-minded. Yet even at seven years old she had a kind of crush on him, and when she looked at him she thought of him in a special way. Chuck was completely unlike Rupert in every way, too, so much so she wondered if Rupert was his father, and in time Chuck became Claire’s protector – both at home and when he picked her up at school. When the war broke out in Europe, in 1914, he’d wanted to run off to England and enlist, but Rupert had prevailed on him… “Finish college first! Who knows, maybe we won’t be sucked into this war…”
That was, however, not to be.
By the time America formally entered the war, in 1917, Chuck was in the Navy, an officer, and already had his eye on a career in politics.
Rupert was devastated.
And after seven years the fly in Claire’s ointment was her sister Amanda. Amanda was a devious, manipulative creature who enjoyed breaking things – then blaming the latest calamity on someone else, though usually on Claire. This might have been a serious issue had not both Rupert and Chuck seen through Amanda’s intentions, and in time it seemed plain to Claire that there was something seriously wrong with Amanda. Yet Amanda’s cause was not hampered in any way by her looks. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, Amanda was regarded as one of the brightest lights in Mainline Society, and would-be suitors came calling for her on a nauseatingly regular basis – which bothered Claire not in the least, but which, in the end, crushed the big-boned Elizabeth. Amanda was about a year younger than Chuck and so was blissfully out of the picture by this point in time, yet when she drifted by on weekends discord followed in her wake as naturally as gusting winds precede a summer afternoon’s thunderstorm. So when Claire felt the coming of Amanda’s treacherous laughter, she generally kept out of the rain by losing herself among the books in their father’s library.
Which was the safest place in this new world, in this place called Philadelphia.
Rupert’s promise to move to Chartres was as empty as most of the empty promises he made. “Exigent entreaties” designed to forestall meaningful conversations were always to blame, and Claire had read enough to understand the man’s various shortcomings. He was of a type common in literature, a quiet sort of con-man, affable and generous to a fault, but a con-man, and not so unusually The Law was his stock in trade. Anyone could tell Rupert was addicted to making money, scads and scads of money, but he seemed to have little inclination to happiness. He read little else beyond the latest financial news, and in the end he had little interest in Claire’s accomplishments on the piano. Perhaps not so unusually, by the time Claire turned twelve the fat old man had developed a somewhat unhealthy interest in Claire’s body.
Yet oddly enough, Emily, her mother, saw through these machinations and kept him away after the sun went down, and in time Claire learned that Rupert had visited his unhealthy appetites on Amanda often enough to be of some concern socially. A hasty trip to Sweden had been arranged to take care of one such problem, and all the attendant complications that came with such an undesired event.
Because Rupert was one of those men. His appetites were severe, his sense of propriety impaired by proximity – and far too often by bourbon – and while he could have had affairs with any number of available women, he chose, far too often, to take out his lustful inclinations on Amanda. And soon enough Claire saw through her sister’s actions and intentions, understood where her grief came from, yet the distance between them remained insurmountable. In time she learned, as well, that one of the unforeseen complications after her sister’s Swedish misadventure was that she was barren: Amanda would never have children – and this was considered a Dark Family Secret. Perhaps the Darkest.
1919 saw the winding down of the war, and Chuck’s return from the North Atlantic became a cause for celebration – if only for a short time. He had two more years to fulfill his commitment to the Navy, and as he did not want his father to intervene he planned to finish his stint then gather his wits about him and move on to graduate school – ah! – before running for congress. That was the plan, anyway.
Yet Chuck was coming home for Christmas, and that was miracle enough for them all. The future would, or so it seemed at the time, have to wait for the present to catch up to the past.
+++++
The dream came to her that year, on the night before Christmas. And perhaps no creatures were stirring…
She was on the boat deck and her father was lifting her up off the deck, placing her in the lifeboat; there was an explosion and one of the great red funnels collapsed in on itself – and then everyone was in the water. A vice of pinpricks held her firm and she wanted to struggle and break free of the water but she felt a hand grasping her ankle, pulling her down. She stuck her head beneath the waves and saw her father trying to pull himself back to the surface and she knew if she didn’t kick free of him he would pull her down too…
So…she did…
And she watched his limpid, questioning eyes as he slipped into the yawning darkness, falling away, fading into the night…
And she bolted upright in bed, drenched in salt water.
When Chuck heard her screams he ran to her; Rupert and Emily were not far behind.
+++++
Everyone first assumed Amanda had poured a bucket of seawater on her while she slept, but Amanda wasn’t in her room. She wasn’t, as it happened, even in the house. She had slipped out with an old boyfriend and was, at the time, in a nearby stable and most passionately involved. When she tried to sneak back into the house before dawn she was met by her family, all but Claire and Emily, anyway, and they all wanted to know why she had done such a thing…
“Done what?” Amanda wanted to know.
“You poured buckets of seawater on your sister Claire!” Rupert fairly shouted.
“I did no such thing!” Amanda countered. “I was with Langston all night!”
“You what?” Chuck seethed, and too late Amanda realized what she’d just admitted. Her father stormed from the kitchen, leaving Chuck standing there aghast. “What have you done now?”
But Amanda held her ground. “I am not a child, and I did no such thing!”
“Claire’s bed is awash in sea water. Go to her room, you can still smell the sea! If you didn’t do this, can you explain to me what happened?”
“Show me!” Amanda almost shouted, and Chuck led her up the back stairway to Claire’s room. Marie and Edith were just now stripping the bed and Amanda could see that easily two to maybe three gallons of seawater had been deposited on her sister’s bed. Worse still, her room, indeed, the hallway outside Claire’s room smelled just like a briny seashore, and so she walked into the room, held the sheets to her face. “It IS seawater…” she whispered.
“I told you that, did I not?” Chuck growled. “Where did you find it this time of year? Did you two go down to the shore?”
“What?”
“Did you take the train to the shore?”
“No! I told you I had nothing to do with this!”
“Amanda, this is no longer funny. You simply must own up to these pranks of yours.”
“I’m telling you, Charles, for the last time – I had nothing to do with this…!”
Then he too turned and stormed away from the scene of her latest crime.
Amanda stood in the room, Marie and Edith staring at her now, shaking with unrepentant sorrow for the poor lost soul. Then she spied a fleck of something on the oak floor and bent to see what it was…
“Seaweed…?” she sighed, after bringing the ragged green scrap to her nose. “But…how could this be?”
+++++
Some semblance of normalcy had returned by the time luncheon was served, and by that time the family had gathered around the Christmas tree in the library and exchanged their simple gifts. Claire seemed none the worse for her ordeal, yet she paid not the slightest attention to Amanda until her sister leaned close after dessert and spoke to her.
“Claire, I didn’t do that to you,” Amanda pleaded. “Please believe me…”
Yet Claire had a faraway look in her eyes; faraway and preternaturally calm. “I was dreaming of the sea,” she said quietly. “Then I was drowning, screaming…”
“You were dreaming?”
“Yes. That’s right. I was on the Titanic again, but the ship turned on it’s side and I was thrown into the water – by my father…”
Everyone was looking at her now, and even Chuck seemed disturbed by what she’d just said. “You were in the water?” he asked. “By the Titanic? And then you woke up?”
“Yes. I was about to drown…”
Chuck looked at his father – who only shook his head, the expression on his face studiously dour beyond anyone’s remembrance.
“Were you under the water, in the sea,” Rupert asked then.
“Yes,” she said. “It was quite dark.”
“And your father was with you?” Rupert added.
“He was under me, trying to pull himself back up to the surface.”
“I found this on the floor in her room,” Amanda said defiantly, tossing the bit of seaweed on the table in front of her father’s place. He picked it up and turned it over in the midday light, then he handed the piece to Chuck. “What do you make of this, son?”
Chuck turned it over in the light, too, then the blood drained out of his face. “This is a deep water kelp, Father, of a kind we most often see around the Grand Banks. I’ve never heard of it being found along our shores.”
Rupert looked from his son to Claire, who was looking at Amanda now.
“I don’t think it was a dream, Amanda,” Claire said, “and I don’t think you threw water on me.”
“But where do you think you were, Claire?” Emily asked.
“I was in the sea, with my father.”
“And with the Titanic? In 1912?” Chuck asked, and when she nodded her head he crossed his arms and sighed. “That’s not possible. You know that, don’t you, Claire.”
She continued nodding. “Yes, I know. Nevertheless, it happened.”
“Has anything like this happened to you before?” her brother asked.
She shook her head, then her head canted sideways a little. “I’ve seen father in my dreams, but not like this.”
“So, this was different? In what way?”
She turned and looked at him. “I don’t know how else to describe it, Charles, but this wasn’t a dream. I was there. I felt it happen…I felt him grab me, and it felt like he would never let me go again.”
+++++
Three days later they rode down to the Navy Yard and saw Charles onto his ship, then Rupert took the rest of the family to lunch at an old downtown eatery. Amanda was still seething about her mistreatment, while Liz seemed most unsure of herself once again now that Charles was off to sea again, and Claire felt a ripple in the currents that steered this little family – like at some point over the last week Charles had assumed leadership of the clan. It was subtle, but it was there.
And no one talked about her dream – or whatever it was. The wet bed and puddled water on the hardwood floors were evidence enough that something out of the ordinary had happened, but no one was willing to make the leap that Claire implied was needed to believe her version of events. And in truth, Claire had to admit she didn’t want to believe those things had happened.
Because, on the one hand, she knew she’d never left her bed. Simple enough. Yet she instinctively understood that she had been in the North Atlantic, if only for a few minutes – and the proof of that assertion lay in the watery residue everyone had seen in her bedroom.
What else could it be?
“Claire? What are you thinking about?” Rupert asked.
“How much I’ll miss Charles,” she said, telling only half the truth.
“Me too,” Liz added.
“It must be the uniform,” Rupert sighed.
“I can’t believe they’re sending that ship back to France,” Emily added. “Why do they need to do that?”
“They’re escorting troop ships, in case some U-Boat commander hasn’t gotten word yet.”
Emily shook her head, turned away from her mother’s fears. “Must we keep coming to this dreadful old place, Rupert?”
“Dreadful? What’s dreadful about it?”
“The food is rancid and the service inferior,” she said – just as their waiter walked up to the table. If the old man had heard her he was doing a fine job pretending he hadn’t, and after he took their orders he disappeared into the kitchen. “Check your food for broken glass and rat droppings,” she added a little too ruefully.
“Emily…really…” Rupert whispered, but he was looking at Claire just then. Looking at the fear in her eyes. “Claire…? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Charles. There’s something wrong with his ship…”
“What? What do you mean?”
“There’s a fire on his ship. I see it. Right now.”
Rupert’s arched eyebrow was all the others needed to see. He was beyond skeptical now, almost to the point where he wanted to seek out professional help for the little girl. “Bah,” he growled as he turned to Emily and began talking about arrangements for getting the girls back to school next week. Their meals came and everyone ate in silence – everyone, that is, but Claire. She kept looking towards the windows at the front of the restaurant, her mind’s eye filling with images of burning men and flooding compartments –
Then without warning she stood and ran to the window, and Rupert watched her go with a growing sense of anger flooding his own mind’s eye…until he heard fire trucks rolling by on the street. Then crowds of people were running down towards the Navy Yard. He stood and walked to the windows and stood by Claire’s side.
“Down there,” she said, pointing.
Rupert saw boiling clouds of black smoke coming from the Navy Yard, roiled orange flames just visible above the buildings blocking their view of the grounds.
“Good Lord,” he whispered. “Claire, please go back to the table. I need to go see what’s happened.”
“Father?” she said, and as it was so infrequent that she addressed him as such, he turned and looked at her.
“Yes?”
“Don’t go.”
“What?”
“If you leave this place right now you’ll die.”
“What? What are you saying, Claire?” he said, fascinated by the faraway look in her eyes.
“The fire is spreading rapidly now. You won’t be safe.”
“Claire, to the table with you, now. Wait with your mother for my return.”
She turned to look at him as he left the building, but she had already seen the horse-drawn pumper unit that would run him down and kill him. She had seen the horses in a dream last night, just as she’d seen this raging fire. Hundreds of people would die in the next hour, but Charles would not be among them. No, he would escape immediate injury, then lead battalions of fire-fighters in a heroic charge to prevent the spreading fire from spilling over into an ordnance depot. Days from now he would be hailed as the hero of the Navy Yard fire; his future in politics would be assured.
And Rupert would be gone.
As she sat at the table, she looked at her sisters and wondered how Amanda would react to the news.
Chapter 3
She was halfway through her senior year at Radcliffe the first time the bottom fell out of the stock market, and the short-lived panic that gripped the nation seemed to ripple across campus for days and days. When things finally settled down, Claire, like most of the people in the country, realized divisions that existed within the world only increased during the uncertainty. Poor people on the sidelines began lining up at soup kitchens and wealthy people continued getting wealthy, in other words, and as a result the Wilkinson family suffered not at all. Indeed, as Charles would soon point out, the family’s fortunes had increased markedly, thanks to some timely advice he received prior to these events.
Yet Claire seemed not at all interested in her brother’s financial wizardry, perhaps because money had always eluded her understanding. She had, and only for the first time, become interested in the world beyond music during her second term at Radcliffe. She had her first opportunity to study advanced mathematics, which led her deeper into the realms of physics and chemistry. In other words, when the country began to convulse, as stock markets crashed in 1929, she was herself immersed in the study of high energy physics – at least until news of the world beyond academia intruded on her studies.
She began to read about the effects of the crash spreading not only across the country, but around the world, after she enrolled in a required history course, and what piqued her interest most occurred when her professor talked about implications of wartime reparations imposed on the German state after the war in Europe concluded. He talked about how cycles of reinvestment, particularly between American and German banks, would soon grind to a halt – and with devastating consequence. The ruinous inflation that had visited the Weimar Republic in the early twenties would return, her professor warned, and when that happened there would be trouble. Real trouble. And that trouble was already spreading.
Because there were violent opposition parties in Germany now, most problematically the National Socialists – who were, ironically, anything but socialist. He mentioned of Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, which had taken power in 1921 by forming a tight alliance between fascists and existing corporate power structures in the Italian state, and he cautioned that German industrial might – when incorporated into a fascist regime – would prove ruinous to the aims of the League of Nations. If liquidity in the financial markets dried up, as it surely would in a crisis of this magnitude, there would be war in Europe again, and soon. Within ten years, he claimed at the conclusion of one lecture.
And Claire thought about this professor’s claims as she walked away from class that afternoon. What would another war mean, she wondered – both to her family and to the broaderfuture of humanity? For weeks she thought of little else, and when she went home for Thanksgiving she sat one evening with Charles and they talked about what she’d learned in class. They sat alone, in her father’s old library where she’d spent so much time in hiding, and they talked for hours and hours.
“The things your professor talked about,” he said at one point, “the collapse of reinvestment markets and increasing demands for reparations, is already happening. Inflation is already becoming a real concern in greater Germany.”
“So, hyper-inflation could lead to the rise of this populist, people’s party? This Hitler everyone is talking about? You think that’s inevitable, too?”
Charles sighed and shook his head. “Not inevitable, Claire, but certainly more than likely. I’m only a junior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but I’m getting the same briefings President Hoover gets, and the specter of European inflation has the President spooked. He’s practically begging the French and the British to relax terms of the Versailles treaty, but as their banks begin to lose liquidity they’re demanding that their governments increase German reparations. It’s insane, by the way, but this Mussolini in Italy is eating it up, pumping money into the National Socialist Party in Munich. If Hoover can’t reverse this trend, I’d say your professor is absolutely correct.”
“Actions have consequences,” she thought, not quite aware she was speaking.
“You’re damn right they do!”
“What do you think I should do now?” she asked.
“Regarding?”
“After graduation.”
“What are your options?”
“Get married, I guess, or go to graduate school.”
“In what? Physics? Do they even let women into those programs?”
She looked away, shrugged noncommittally. “It’s not impossible. My advisor wants me to at least try, and he told me there’d be no problem about my getting into Harvard, but he thinks Princeton is where the real action is at.”
“What kind of action?”
“The physics of high temperature reactions.”
“And…what are you not telling me?” he said as he saw the look in her eyes
“Theoretically, there are weapons applications. There’s a physicist over in Germany, Heisenberg, who is a leader in this field.”
“Weapons? What kind of weapons?”
“Possibly – bombs. It’s a long way off, and even the physics is questionable.”
“But you’re studying this stuff?”
“No, not really; it’s more like I’m learning the theory behind what’s beginning to take shape. The real work, if it gets that far, will be happening at places like Princeton, Chicago and out at Berkeley.”
“Why don’t you go to California? Weather’s nicer, and that would give me an excuse to visit you out there. And…you’ll be far away from all this mess in Europe.”
“That’s kind of what I’ve been thinking.”
“Well, let me know when you get in. We’ll go out together and get you settled.”
“What happened to that Cartwright girl? Not rich enough for you?”
Charles turned red. “Oh, her family is wealthy enough, but her old man is a staunch Hoover supporter. He’d murder Stephanie if she married a Democrat.”
“Father would murder you for running as a Democrat.”
Charles laughed just a little as the thought played out across his face. “Yup, he would’ve. Do you ever miss him? I mean, I know he wasn’t really…”
“Oh, I miss him. And yes, he was. I was seven years old when the ship went down; I can barely remember my other father now.”
“Do you remember that dream? The one…?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still have – dreams – like that?”
She turned away.
“Claire? It’s not like you to keep things from me.”
“The Navy Yard fire. I saw that coming, Charles, and I saw Rupert’s death, too. I tried to tell him, but…”
“He shut you down. He never believed in all that stuff…”
“Do you?”
“I believe what I saw. Amanda does, too. But Mother and Liz? I think they’ll always be more inclined to believe you’re a witch of some sort,” he said with a wink, and she smiled. And then they both laughed, nervous little laughs full of the fear of unknown consequences.
“Well, we’d better go see how that bird is cooking,” he said after that.
“I hope you’ve learned how to carve; after last year’s debacle…”
“Ouch…say no more…anyway, it’s your turn this year…”
But no, it wasn’t.
By Christmas it was clear to them all that the coming recession would be deep and prolonged, and Charles talked with Claire about that man named Hitler.
In July after being admitted to the University of California, she and Charles planned to take the train across the country to California, where he thought they might buy her a rambling bungalow on a hill overlooking the bay.
California…
The very name and the implied reinvention of her life sounded so intensely romantic even then, like something out of the Spanish poetry of Carolina Coronado – which she had adored while at Radcliffe. She found a book of Coronado’s poems to take with her on the journey as she packed her things, full of impossible dreams that all seemed so happy when she remembered the time years later.
+++++
After a night and a day crossing to Chicago, she and Charles finally boarded Union Pacific’s Overland and they settled into the rooms of their Pullman car for this next leg of the journey. A porter brought them cups of beef broth before the train left the ornate station, yet Claire could see the effects of the Crash on the platform below the train: children begging for pennies, indifferent business men walking past with not even a glance, and then the station restaurant advertising soup for a penny, hamburgers for two cents, forgotten men sitting by the entrance – hoping for a handout while they slowly withered away.
“It’s awful out there,” she said to Charles as they looked at the shattered landscape, this evolving land of broken dreams. “It’s even worse here than it was in Pittsburgh, and I never thought I’d see anything like that in my life.”
“You should hear what we’re being told about conditions in Germany.”
“Why isn’t more about this in the papers?”
“Oh, I suspect we’ve got problems of our own. Enough so that the powers that be assume we wouldn’t be interested enough to give a damn.”
“That’s awful, Charles. Just awful. A few years ago…all these people hard at work. And now, look at them. Reduced to begging for food, begging for their survival.”
“You took Tilleman’s economic geography class. You know the score. This is just dialectical materialism playing out before your eyes. Systemic imbalances seeking distributive realignment…”
“Don’t blather on with that jargon, Charles. Look out the window, look at the reality behind your textbook analyses, look at the toll in human suffering, the real cost behind all these economic rationalizations. This isn’t some kind of distributive realignment; this is suffering. Needless suffering. ”
“And it’s the same story it’s always been, Claire. The same processes that have been going on for thousands of years, and with each iteration we improve, we progress.”
“But the cost…?”
“One generation is sacrificed, the next three or four benefit, then comes the next realignment, the next round of suffering…”
“What? And then what? Another Golden Age after the sacrifice?”
“We either progress or we stagnate. We take chances, or we wither – and die.”
“Is all this really so simple?”
“No, of course not. That’s why there are political parties always fighting it out over what the road to progress looks like. Now we have trade unions fighting it out with capital…but who knows what tomorrow will look like…?”
The train jerked and billowing clouds of black smoke filled the platform, then cinders were raining down on the panhandling children as the huge steam engine chuffed away from the station. A boy standing on the bricks below their window looked up at her, and she watched as black dust settled on his brow – and then she waved at the boy, and tried to smile.
He turned and walked away, and she wondered what it must be like to be so hungry you had no energy left for even a simple gesture – and then she wondered why the boy reminded her of her father. Her real father.
+++++
Wyoming was the same, but darkness was coming on and most children were gone from the platforms they glided past in the night. Yet she saw squalid encampments outside each little town the train passed through, the same scarecrow children she’d seen in each big city they stopped in, and their porter brought them drinks while she looked down on each passing scene of suffering.
But hadn’t the Titanic been the same? The “unsinkable” Titanic? A few first class passengers cloistered above the many hundreds of steerage class passengers jammed into the tight spaces below the huge ship’s waterline? She wondered what had become of those people? Had they drowned with the rats that fled from the icy water as it swept through the cargo hold? Had they not even made it to the boat deck? Did those people ever make it to the boat deck, so to speak; did they ever really have a chance? Or did wealth conspire to keep them down with the rats, waiting to drown?
They had a dinner of roast beef and creamed spinach, with a fat round Yorkshire pudding fresh out of the oven rounding out the feast, yet she found she had no appetite for such things that night and only picked at her food.
“You should eat your dinner, Claire,” Charles said softly, as always aware of her passing moods. “They simply throw away whatever’s left.”
She nodded her head and picked at her spinach a while longer, then she gave up and pushed the plate away.
“So, have you decided to join an order?” he asked. “Steal away into the night, fall into a life of splendid isolation and moral contemplation?”
She smiled at her brother, this strange man who was really anything but. “What about you? How are you going to weather the storm?”
He looked away for a moment, lost in thought, then he turned back to her. “I’ve applied to the Department of State for a posting to Germany.”
She tried to hide her surprise, but failed: “You…what? You’re turning your back on politics?”
“For the time being, yes.”
“Why Germany?”
“Berlin is the fulcrum, the pivot point of history right now. I want to be there. I want to watch what happens, if only so I can better understand the forces shaping our world right now.”
“And then what?”
“Someday I’ll return, perhaps run for the Senate.”
“And then…for president?”
He smiled. “You’re being presumptuous, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No, just making plans.”
The train slowed for the next station and she looked at the platform as it stopped, and she saw another boy standing down there, standing under a gaslight. Moths circled the light, and they circled the boy’s face too, but he ignored them – and looked directly into Claire’s eyes.
“Who is that?” Charles asked.
“He looks like my father, when he was young. He was in Chicago, too.”
“What? The same boy?”
“Yes.”
“He must be traveling on this train…”
“He isn’t.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he isn’t.”
Charles watched Claire just now, suddenly very aware of everything she said and did. She was in that place again, that place he found her in the night of the dream – yet now she was simply staring at this strange boy standing on the platform below.
She reached out to him, but the glass window kept them apart, then Charles watched as the boy reached out for her too, just as the train began pulling away from the station…but then she turned to her brother.
And he’d never seen such fear in his life. Fear, locked in her eyes, like a moth caught in the glare of an open flame. She swallowed, hard, as she looked at her brother, and she began to breathe more deeply, a little quicker, too.
“Claire? What is it?”
She stood and ran from the table, and he quickly followed.
+++++
She was standing with the lookouts in the crystal cold night, and she watched the reflections of stars on the mirror smooth sea while she tried to ignore the cold.
“Oh my God…” the lookout sighed, then he turned for the bell and began ringing it, then he was on the growler, shouting for whoever was standing watch in the wheelhouse.
“Iceberg, dead ahead!” the seaman yelled, and she turned and looked at the slowly building pandemonium as the ship began to turn. She turned too and looked at the approaching berg, willing the ship to turn, faster, even as she knew how this was going to end – again. But no, something was different this time.
The ship simply didn’t turn at all, and the seaman by her side – was the little boy down on the platform.
And the bow of the great ship slammed into the iceberg, a frontal collision of such colossal force that the bow simply crushed inward – then fell away. Their lookout tower tore away too, and they fell on top of the wheelhouse just as an avalanche of ice rained down over the foredeck and the bridge.
Oh, God, it hurts!” she screamed, then she felt someone shaking her, and lights coming on in the darkness.
She opened her eyes, saw Charles and the Pullman porter standing over – shock and fear in their eyes. She looked at her hands and found they were covered in blood, and her berth was awash in briny ice.
Chapter 4
Charles stared at Claire’s berth, the porter by his side aghast at the sight. Seawater was running from the mattress onto the rolling floor of the compartment, while fist-sized chunks of ice continued to rain down from the ceiling – then he looked up and saw the vortex. Shimmering blue, like a metallic-tornadic sphere was embedded within the woodwork, and it made not a sound even as more and more ice showered out of the gyre, hitting Claire’s hands as she tried to protect herself.
“What’s goin’ on in there?” the porter cried, his eyes wide with fear.
“Must be something wrong with the air conditioning,” Charles said, reaching in and pulling Claire from the compartment.
“They ain’t no air conditioning in this car, mister.”
“Then where’s this ice coming from?”
The old man stuck his head in the compartment and looked around. “I don’t know…I just don’t know, sir. Beats the devil out of me…ain’t never seen nothin’ like it…”
“Is it snowing out there?” Charles said, pointing at the window.
“No, sir, it sure ain’t. Why does…it smells like the ocean in there…now you tell me – what’s goin’ on in there…?”
Charles bundled Claire in his robe and helped her to his compartment, and he grabbed a washcloth and tried to staunch the flow of blood coming from a shallow laceration on her scalp, then he heard the porter run to the end of the car, perhaps summoning the conductor.
And sure enough a gaggle of men appeared a few minutes later, inspecting the car generally then making a thorough inspection of Claire’s compartment – before coming by Charles’ compartment to check on her condition.
“We’re sure sorry about this, Congressman. We can’t find anything that might have caused this. Do you have any idea what might have happened, Ma’am?”
“No sir, I don’t.”
“Well, we’ll be coming to Salt Lake City soon enough, if we need to summon a doctor…”
“Thank you.” Charles said. “I’ll keep an eye on her and let you know, but I think it likely we will have to. This is a deep cut.”
“Yessir,” the conductor said, looking at her scalp, then he shook his head and left, talking to his men as they walked to the vestibule.
“What happened, Claire?” he said when he was sure they were alone again.
Her breathing was strange now, deep ragged gulps followed by brief, shallow sighs. “I’m so cold,” she hissed, cold vapor trailing her words.
“It’s warm in here, Claire. What are you feeling now?”
“Water. Cold water. Icy pinpricks…all over my body…”
“What do you see?”
“The ship…the bow’s been torn off by the impact, ice is falling on us…”
“Us? Who’s with you…your father?”
“No, the boy is with me now, he’s speaking to me…”
“What is he saying?”
“‘Change course, now. Change your heading.’”
“Your heading?”
Her eyes flickered, then opened, and she finally seemed somewhat aware of her surroundings in the sleeper… “Where am I?” she asked.
“You’re safe now, on the train, with me.”
“The train?”
“Yes. We’re nearing Salt Lake, and you took a nasty blow to the head…”
“A blow? What…?”
“Ice. Your berth is full of seawater, too. More than the last time, I think.”
Her breathing became shallow and fast, and she looked around Charles’ compartment – the mahogany walls and the brass fittings seemed jarring to her. “We fell, the lookout tower with us still in it, we fell on the wheelhouse, then ice started falling…”
“What do you think the boy meant? Change course…?”
“He shouted a warning to the wheelhouse but they didn’t react, they never saw the ice coming, and the ship just plowed into the berg.”
“They never saw…? You mean they…?”
“I don’t think there was anyone there, Charles. The ship felt empty, like we were the only two people onboard…”
There came a light tapping on the door, and Charles found the porter standing in the narrow corridor with an arm full of towels. “Thought you might be needin’ these, Congressman.”
“Thanks. Is there any alcohol onboard, anything I could use to clean this wound?”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll go see. Might be somethin’ in the kitchen…” the old man said as he scurried away, then Charles turned to Claire again. “You say you were alone, with the boy?”
“I’m not sure. It feels so far away right now. Not so real anymore…”
“That ice was real enough, Claire. The cut on your head is, too.”
“I could have done that to – myself,” she said, beginning to cry. “I could have scratched myself in my sleep…?”
“What? How? What are you saying? Do you want to go look at all the ice in your compartment? There must be twenty pounds of it on your berth…and I saw it falling from something in the ceiling?”
“Something? What do you mean, something?”
“I don’t know what it was, but it looked like a blue sphere spinning round and round.”
“Blue…? I saw something blue…just before the ship hit…”
And as suddenly she entered a trancelike state; her body grew rigid and her eyes settled into a blank stare…
“Claire?”
Nothing. He could see she was barely breathing now, too, so he shook her. Gently at first, then with more urgency – and still he felt nothing but the same vacant stare…until he noticed the room was suffused inside a shimmering blue glow…
He looked around, saw he was on the deck of a ship, and that it was very cold out…
Then he heard someone overhead shouting “Iceberg, dead ahead!” and he turned, saw the looming mountain of ice not a few hundred yards ahead. He felt Claire at his feet and looked down, but another man was leaning over her now, leaning over a lifeboat and a seven year old girl, and he didn’t need to ask the man’s name.
Moments later he felt the berg ripping into the ship’s hull once again, and he wondered what it was going to feel like to die in these icy waters…
Chapter Five
Her hands hurt; of that much she was sure. She looked at her fingers, and the joints in her hands now came to her as the roots of a gnarled oak might – as if pushing up through the dry grass of late summer.
“Can this be me,” she gulped, the sight tearing at her mastery of the moment. “These can’t be my hands…can they?”
Yet, when she moved her fingers she felt overwhelming pain, and that searing sense of immediacy pushed aside all other awareness of the moment. She had been on the ship one moment, yet seconds later she had been with Charles in a train – but now…this? She was in a small compartment, at least it looked somewhat like a sleeping compartment, yet she was certain this was no train, and certainly not the ship she’d been on with her father. She sensed no movement here, nothing at all save for a distant hum, and the vaguest impression that air was being pumped into this small space.
Then, she felt more than heard a faint hissing sound – and as she watched a doorway slid open.
A man. She saw a man – in a wheelchair. He seemed familiar too, yet not quite – then she saw a naval officer was pushing the wheelchair, and, oddly enough, he looked familiar to her as well. She remembered the patch on his shoulder…
“Doctor Aubuchon?” the old man in the wheelchair said, his voice rheumy, tired and full of deep sorrow. “Claire? Is it you?”
“Do I…do we know one another, sir?” she asked, now completely taken aback by the man in the chair, and then the naval officer coughed gently before he looked away – as if she had said something embarrassingly untoward to the man.
“Claire? It’s me…Franklin?”
“Franklin?”
“Roosevelt? You don’t recall anything?”
She drifted for a moment, reaching for a lost memory, then: “You were the president, weren’t you? I remember something about that now.” She paused and looked around the room again. “Where are we?”
The old man wheeled himself over to a porthole on the near wall, but there were no dogs on this port to keep the raging sea from pouring in, just a smooth oval glass perhaps a foot wide, at most nine inches tall. She followed the old man, this President Roosevelt, to the window and looked out…
…and fell away when she saw a planet spread out below. The surface that arced away beneath this ship, or whatever it was, was a mottled sea of flowing tans and mauves, and there was a vast ring encircling the orb, the sandy ring casting an immense, oblate shadow on the pulsing world below.
“What is this?” she gasped, “Saturn?”
“Yes, that’s right – or so they tell me – but I’m still not sure I believe them.”
“Them? Who’s…”
She then felt an inrushing, overwhelming pressure gripping her skin, the unexpected force pushing in from every direction – yet within the pressure she felt entombed in pure, icy silence.
Then she saw the mountain. A vast horn in twilight, dark gray rock in swirling streaks of mist, and she saw an Old Man watching her – seemingly from within the mist. His eyes were glowing with anger, and the old man was looking right at her.
“Where have you been?” the old man asked. “I was expecting you hours ago…”
Yet she didn’t recognize the man, and before she knew what was happening she felt a new relentless pressure on her skin again, then she was standing beside lookouts overlooking a vast deck – and she saw the iceberg, heard the forlorn cry: “Iceberg, dead ahead! Mister Lightoller…”
But this time the rudder bit into the sea and held; the great ship leaned perilously to starboard and then, suddenly, it seemed immediately clear to her that the ship was going to miss the iceberg entirely this time. She leaned with the ship and looked down into the sea, and she could see the great white spur beneath the rail as they passed– and again, she knew they’d escaped this time – that somehow the Titanic had escaped her certain fate, that somehow History had come undone…
She was breathing deeply now, and one of the men standing watch heard her and turned to face the sound of her fear.
“‘Ere now, lass, what be the likes of you standing up ‘ere now, and in your night clothes and all, eh…?”
She looked down at her hands and bare feet – and recognized her seven-year-old-self, then she felt the biting cold air nipping at her arms and legs…
“Did we miss it?” she asked, not really sure what to make of this disrupted night just now.
“Looks like it, Missy. Now, it’s best we get you back to your stateroom…”
One of the lookouts called out and an officer from the wheelhouse came for her, then a steward walked her back to her father’s stateroom…
The kind-faced man knocked on the stateroom door and she heard her father rousing, then coming to the door – yet when the door opened she saw someone else. Someone she’d never seen before, yet even so this other man smiled when he saw her standing there.
“Claire, have you been out exploring again? And…look at you – with no shoes again?”
“She was up with the lookouts, sir,” the steward said. “Don’t quite know how she got there, but the Captain asked that you try to keep her with you after hours.”
“Of course, of course,” the man said sternly, looking down at her with scarcely concealed scorn in his eyes. “I’ll see to that.”
And she wondered who he was, and why he was here. And – where was her father?
The man held out his hand and without knowing why she took it, and she let him guide her into the stateroom. When the door closed she turned to the man and stared – then: “Where’s my father?”
“Your father? Claire? Don’t you remember?”
“Remember? Remember what?” She said, but she felt the words more than she understood their meaning, and she fought to accept what little she understood of this new place – even as she struggled to find her way inside the moment.
“Who are you?” she said after a long moment studying the man’s oddly recognizable features.
“I’m your grandfather, Claire. I came for you – for the funeral. You don’t remember?”
She shook her head slowly… “No-o-o,” she sighed, then she thought about all she’d seen in the last few minutes and she intuitively understood she needed to keep these things to herself – lest the people here think there was something wrong with her. “I think I should go to bed now, Grandfather.”
“Right. Well, yes, but I think you need a hot bath first,” he said as he went to ring a bell for the maid. “Don’t you think so, too?”
“Yes, you’re correct, Grandfather.”
He turned and looked at her again – but shook his head after a moment – as if he had been confused by something. “Are you sure you’re alright,” he asked.
She nodded her head. “Yes, Grandfather,” but in the next instant she was standing in a vast mist – only now the air smelled strange. Like oil…burning oil – only sharper – and her eyes started to burn, then came water. A moment later she heard an immense whining roar building in the near distance, and suddenly bright lights split the night so she turned from her quivering shadow and faced the glare, recoiled from the sight of a great winged machine hurtling down a concrete road of some sort, then she fell away when the machine leapt into the sky. Acrid smoke fell on her and she watched in horror as the thing rose from the earth and disappeared in the deepening gloom.
“I’ve lost my mind,” she sighed. “I’ve gone crazy. This is what it means to be mad…to see things such as this that have never existed…”
She closed her eyes and shook her head, tried to squeeze all these twisted images from her mind…then she felt the swaying motion again, the clickety-clack–clickety-clack of the rails below and she opened her eyes again…
Charles was staring at her now, sniffing at the stuffy air in the compartment.
“What is that smell?” he asked. “Like something burning…?”
She shook her head as echoes of a man named Roosevelt danced in her mind’s eye, then she remembered the naval officer standing behind the president. A patch on his shoulder? She could see it now, more clearly than she imagined possible.
Something about time? Project TimeShadow…but whatever could that mean?
Yet…why did all that sound so familiar?
Chapter Six
She sat in the close compartment, rubbing the loose skin under her eyes while looking out the window at a vast, snow-covered prairie rolling by in the darkness. Her eyes felt like molten pools deep within the earth, and she felt a line of perspiration beading on her forehead.
‘Oh, God no,’ she thought, ‘I can’t get sick now. Not now…’
She shook her head, leaned back and palpated the glands in her neck – but they felt soft and small so she relaxed and picked up the sheaf of papers and found her place – again – then dove back into the text, rereading an exploration of transuranic radiochemical fractionation presented only a few months ago in Naturwissenschaften, a journal of physics and chemistry published in Germany. It hadn’t taken Oppenheimer’s team at Berkeley more than a few days to grasp the importance of Hahn and Meitner’s breakthrough, yet it turned out that several groups of physicists around the United States and Canada had made the same observation – and in roughly the same time-frame. Now varied groups of engineers, chemists and physicists were en route to Washington to meet with the president.
She almost didn’t hear the soft knock on her compartment’s door but she looked up and shook her head, then rubbed her eyes again before speaking: “Yes?” she said to the darkness.
And then a kindly faced old porter stuck his head in the door. “Doctor Aubuchon? Doctor Oppenheimer would like to speak with you, down in his compartment. He says, if you don’t mind.”
“What time is it?” Claire asked.
“Not quite six, Ma’am.”
“Morning? Or afternoon?”
“It’s five-forty-three in the morning, Ma’am.”
“Right,” she sighed, adding: “I need a glass of water” – then fishing for a bottle of aspirin from her purse as the porter slipped away. She looked the monograph, and her notes, then she downed the tablets before she walked down the swaying corridor to Robert’s compartment.
The door was standing wide open, and her brother Charles stood anxiously when he saw her eyes. He helped her into the chair then closed the door on his way out, never saying a word to her.
“I think you look worse than I feel,” Oppenheimer sighed. “I’d kill for an aspirin right now.”
She nodded, pulled the bottle from her purse and passed it over, wanting more than anything else in the world to pour ice water into her burning eyes.
“You’re rubbing your eyes again,” Robert chided. “Getting episcleritis. Knock it off, and I mean right now. I can’t have you going blind right now…”
“I hear you.”
“So? Any new conclusions?”
“We may have underestimated the forces involved. The energy released could be cataclysmic.”
Oppenheimer nodded his head slowly. “That’s my take, too.”
“Have you heard from Werner?”
“Heisenberg? No. But I don’t expect the Reich will let this kind of free exchange of ideas continue. The implications of this work are creating shockwaves throughout the community.”
What did Bohr have to say about it?”
“I think he’s terrified, Claire.”
“So, he confirmed? What about Schwarzwald?”
Oppenheimer nodded his head. “Yes, her conclusion as well.”
“What are you reading now?” she asked, looking at the colorful book on the little table under the window.
“This? Oh, the Bhagavad Gita,” he said, passing the book over to her.
She opened the heavy book and looked over a page or two, then passed it back. “You read Sanskrit?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head as she looked him in the eye: “Why?”
“I get the impression, reading this now, that these events have been foretold.”
She smiled, then looked out the window again and noted the the prairie was shading from gray to purple, and she wondered what he meant. “Foretold?”
“Eternal recurrence…something like that. Have you read Jung?”
She shook her head, then looked at him again. “Something about archetypes, I recall.”
“Precisely,” he said. “You should try to get some sleep. We’ll be in Chicago around noon.”
“Straight to D.C. from there?”
He nodded. “We should be there tomorrow morning.”
“Have you met him before?”
“Who? Roosevelt?”
“Yes.”
“Only in passing. Why?”
“Oh, something that happened years ago.”
“Something? Like what?”
“I’m not sure, but I recall seeing him on a ship – and yet he seemed to know me.”
He looked at her for the longest while, then opened the book on his lap and began reading aloud; moments later she felt herself falling…
+++++
He looked younger…of that much she was certain. He had looked pale and used up when she’d seen him on the strange ship, but now he seemed stronger – and very sharply focused. When she walked into the conference room he looked up at her briefly, but she saw no recognition in his eyes, nothing at all to indicate they’d ever met before, and his attention had soon shifted to something Harry Hopkins was whispering in his ear.
But it was him. It was the Roosevelt she’d seen on the ship, and now – here he was. And here she was. In the same room, looking right at him, and everything about him seemed so utterly familiar. She watched the way his hands moved – soft yet decisive – and the way his eyes seemed to focus on every detail in the room…like as soon as someone entered he made an inventory of their characteristics. A Navy captain stood behind him, a man named Carlton, and he was talking to Hopkins just now – but the captain was looking at her much more frequently as they talked, like he knew something she didn’t.
Then her brother Charles walked up to the officer and the two shook hands – and that seemed to answer one question – for the moment, anyway, then Oppenheimer walked into the room. She watched Roosevelt look up – nothing dismissive in his eyes now – and she watched Oppenheimer work his way around the room to his place at the table – by her right side. Directly across from Roosevelt, she noticed.
Eye-to-eye. Man-to-man. As equals.
So, she thought, the president wants to look him in the eye. Wants to see beyond the truth of the moment.
Then three more men walked into the room – three men she recognized from newspaper articles, and she watched them as they walked up to her brother and the Navy captain, then as they shook hands with the president – before moving off to the shadows where Hopkins lurked.
Presently the naval officer, the Captain Carlton, called the room to order, and everyone’s attention focused on Roosevelt – who coughed once, his eyes bright and almost wet, before he looked up from a stack of papers on the table in front of him.
“Good morning,” the president said, and there arose a chorus of well wishes from those around the table. “I’ve read and reread the various synopses given to me by the Navy, and I’ve called this meeting to see what the scientific consensus is about the threat posed by these findings. Dr Oppenheimer? Care to get this show on the road?”
Robert laughed, then looked over at Claire. “If you don’t mind, Mr President, I’d prefer that my associate, Dr Aubuchon, run through our initial observations.”
“Very well.”
Claire cleared her throat and was about to speak when Roosevelt coughed again, this time a ragged, rheumy fit, and she watched as his face turned at first red, then faintly blue. A steward poured ice water and Hopkins was by the president’s side in an instant, helping him take the glass in hand. Looks were exchanged around the table as a bottle of cough medicine was produced.
“Damn bugs!” Roosevelt grumbled between spoonfuls of medicine. He put his hands out on the edge of the table – as if steadying himself against a storm-tossed sea – then he looked at Claire and smiled. “Tell me, Doctor Aubuchon, as succinctly as you can…can a bomb be made using the theories and techniques posited in this paper?”
“That remains to be seen, Mr President, but the possibility is real. The techniques presented, those to stream off and produce isotopes from raw ores, simply do not exist at this time. These are issues related to electrical and mechanical engineering, not simply matters of theoretical physics, and one of the first items that springs to mind is the vast scale needed to produce even measurable quantities of refined uranium. To produce a fission bomb of the sort being characterized would require an industrial operation that simply exists nowhere in the world.”
“Presently, you mean? Explain.”
“Well, sir, imagine a trainload of ore, uranium ore. Perhaps fifty hopper cars worth of raw ore. With optimal efficiencies, and by that I mean utilizing efficiencies of extraction that, again, simply do not exist anywhere on earth today, we might be able to prepare a sample size of, well, sir, a kilogram of the necessary isotope to conduct preliminary experiments.”
“Alright. Say we lick that problem. How much ore would be needed to produce a bomb?”
Oppenheimer broke in just then. “Mr President, we simply won’t know the answer to that question until we can produce enough of the necessary isotope.”
“And?” the president sighed, “just how much time do you think you’d need to get to that point?”
“We’re just not sure, Mr. President,” Oppenheimer replied, his voice cool and steady.
“And what about the ore we might need?”
“Perhaps a hundred thousand metric tons, Mr President,” one of the naval officers standing in the shadows said.
“Oh. Is THAT all?” Roosevelt said, his splitting into that famously broad grin of his. “Where can we lay our hands on that much ore, Captain Henry?”
“Canada, sir.”
The President turned and looked at the captain, then at another man standing by Hopkins. “Dr Kirby, is it your belief that the machinery to accomplish this is feasible? On the necessary scale?”
“Sir, we’ve never tried to regulate currents with this degree of precision, but yes, it’s possible. Assuming we can deliver a prototype for testing within a few months, get our testing done, then ramp up production…well…yes sir. We can do it.”
Roosevelt leaned back and looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then daubed his eyes with a handkerchief. “What are we talking about here, Dr Aubuchon? What kind of bomb?”
“Mr President, I don’t think we have a frame of reference here. There’s never been anything like this, not in human history. We are talking about a vast, almost primeval power, sir. The power that fuels the universe.”
“Theoretically, Dr Aubuchon. How big?”
“Mr President,” Oppenheimer broke in once again, “once again, we simply don’t know, but initial projections are staggering. Certainly one such device, a small one, would be enough to destroy a large city.”
“Alright, Robert. Now, one last question. How long will it take the Germans to get there?”
Oppenheimer looked down, then shook his head slowly. “There are few sources available to the Germans outside of Africa, but they’ll need to overcome an even more important barrier, sir.”
“And that is?”
“Werner Heisenberg.”
“Meaning?”
“There isn’t a more ethical scientist in Germany, Mr President. Perhaps in the world.”
“I see. And what if Mr Hitler decides to kill this ethical scientist, Dr Oppenheimer? What then?”
“Then we’d better be further along than the Germans, sir.”
+++++
She went from the meeting to her brother’s house in Chevy Chase and rested, but only for a few hours. She and her brother, as well as Dr Oppenheimer, were to dine with the President and Mrs Roosevelt this evening, and her brother asserted it was necessary for her to ‘look presentable’ for the occasion…
“No, you may not wear that nasty old cardigan tonight!” he’d almost shouted at her. “It’s covered in chalk, let alone smells like it hasn’t been cleaned since 1919!”
“No doubt it hasn’t,” Claire sighed. “And it doesn’t – ‘stink,’ nor do I?”
“Well, it smells like a wet goat.”
She’s just left it at that. “Does Anne have something I can borrow?” she asked. Charles’ wife had impeccable taste, and ‘just oodles and oodles of time to go shopping.’
“You two are hardly the same size, you know, but I’ll ask. Have you considered that she’s not at all happy about not being invited to dinner tonight?”
“No, not really. I’d assume most of the things under discussion would be somewhat classified. Does she have the necessary clearance?”
Charles turned and stormed out of her room, grumbling as he thundered down the stairs – leaving Claire to wonder about her brother’s sanity one more time. She took off her sweater and dropped onto the bed, and was soon fast asleep – again. She felt urgent hands shaking her awake some time later, saw the sun was now close to the horizon and that a heavy snow was falling. She rolled over and saw Charles standing by the bed, looking at her with concern in his eyes.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yes…why?”
“I’ve been shaking you for ages. I wasn’t even sure you were breathing.”
She sat up slowly, yawning as she did. “How long was I out?”
“About three hours.”
“Do I have time to shower?”
“Well, you won’t be allowed in the White House smelling the way you do right now, so I’d hop to it.”
“I do not smell, Charles.”
“Oh, okay. I must assume my nose is broken then. Perhaps you can explain that to the Golden Retriever outside your door. You know, the one who’s been trying to burrow under the door for the past half hour.” She stood and promptly passed out, falling to the floor like a sack of rocks. She felt Charles’ hands lifting her, helping her to the side of the bed. “You’re burning up, Claire. How long have you felt like this?”
“Night before last, I think. If you have a couple of aspirin handy, I’ll be alright.”
“Can you handle some orange juice?”
“Yes, that’d be nice.”
“Alright, I’ll get that going – if you think you can handle getting to the shower.”
“Help me up, would you?”
He helped her to the bathroom, and when he was sure she was steady on her feet he left her to it; when she came out a few minutes later she found some of Anne’s things laid out on her bed and she dressed, then, looking out the window at the heavy snow falling, she dried her hair with a fresh towel. Charles knocked on the door a few minutes after that, asked if she was ready to go, and he took her arm when she walked out to him.
“Thanks, big brother,” she sighed.
“Your welcome, little sister,” he said, taking her hand in his.
The Navy had sent a courier to take them to the White House, and as they arrived at the portico she saw Oppenheimer and a turtle-faced man get out of a sedan together, and the two naval officers who’d spoken at the conference earlier were with them, too. “Who’s that with Robert?”
“Leo Szilard.”
“The Hungarian?”
“Yes. He’s at Columbia now, I think. Einstein’s shadow, I think they call him.”
“So I’ve heard. We’re not the only one’s invited tonight, I see.”
“I think the guest list has expanded somewhat since we left this afternoon. Einstein will be here, and I heard Thomas Mann may be, as well.”
“The writer? Why him?”
“He’s been helping get academics out of Germany, and has come to be seen as a kind of father figure for the exile community.”
“But with…”
“He has clearance, Claire. He hates Hitler, and he has the president’s ear, so be nice. Okay?”
She shook her head as Marines came to open their doors, and she took Charles’ arm and walked with him into the White House.
After so many years in California, walking from a minor blizzard into the stuffy heat of the old building’s radiator heat was a shock, and almost instantly she broke out into a cold sweat. Charles, of course, noticed immediately.
“Your face is the color of a plum…what’s going on with you?”
“It’s the heat, I think. As soon as we hit this air I felt like I was going to melt – from the inside out.”
“You’re starting to perspire again.”
“I think I’m going to be sick…”
A steward helped her to the nearest restroom, then a physician was summoned – and she soon found herself in one of the upstairs bedrooms, laid out like a fish on a monger’s scale. Panting now, she tried to close her eyes again – but as soon as she did she was back on the ship.
And Roosevelt was with her again, looking out the thick glass port-light by her side. Looking out at Saturn’s rings, and she was quailing before the implications of this place. The walls were bright red, and somewhat distorted – like the floors sloped up. Regardless of whether she turned to the left or the right, like she was inside some sort of vast, toroidal ringlike structure.
Then she felt an eyelid being forced apart between two soft fingers, a bright light shining in the middle of her skull, making her turn away – or trying to, at least.
“Ah, good. You’re still with us,” a man’s soothing voice said…then she felt a thermometer sliding between her lips. “Under the tongue, if you can,” the voice said.
She sat just in silence, her eyes darting around the bedroom, echoes of red fighting for her attention. Fingers on her wrist, she saw the physician counting as he watched the motion of her breath, then he pulled out the glass thermometer and looked at the scale.
“That can’t be right,” he murmured.
“What is it?”
“Ninety five-two.”
“Wouldn’t that account for the heat I felt?”
“It might, but then again, you’d probably feel rotten. More that you can imagine.”
“What makes you think I don’t?”
The physician was shaking the thermometer down again, then he placed it in a vial of alcohol for a moment before he wiped it down. “Let’s try this again,” he added, slipping it under her tongue a second time.
She listened to a clock ticking in the distance, then the gurgling of hot water flowing through the radiator across the room – and she could almost imagine blood flowing through her veins as another wave of heat washed across the room. In an instant she was standing beside Roosevelt on the toroidal floor.
“I’ll never tire of looking at this,” he sighed – then she noticed he was standing now. No wheelchair. No hint of disability – at all.
Then an overwhelming wave of ammonia catching her unawares, her eyes parting again, that noxious light shining on the back of her skull.
“You passed out again,” the physician said, “and now your temperature is ninety four-three.”
“What do you think’s wrong with me?”
“I’m not quite sure, but the rather annoying thing is that you and the president are experiencing the exact same symptoms. He has – all afternoon, too.”
“I need to speak with him, right away…”
“I’m not sure that’s possible, Doctor Aubuchon.”
“It’s important. I need to ask him something.”
But the door to the room opened, and she saw him in his chair out in the hallway, looking on with concern in his eyes, then he was wheeling himself into the room, right up to her bedside.
“Leave us, doctor,” Roosevelt said, and the physician put his things away in his little black bag and left the room, closing the door as he went.
“You were there again,” Roosevelt said, reaching out now – and this time taking her hand.
His skin felt so familiar, so shockingly intimate and familiar. “What were we doing there?”
The president shook his head and sighed. “I don’t know, but whatever else it may be, it’s real. Your presence here confirms that.”
“This morning, when I walked in the conference room, did you recognize me?”
“No, not right away. When you spoke I began to feel…something like an echo, of meeting you before. Something far away, something washing over me like a memory of tomorrow. Like something that hasn’t happened yet – but has somewhere else.”
“Some other time, you mean? Something that hasn’t happened yet, but how could that be?”
“Something, or someone, related to this morning’s conference? Something is being manipulated?”
“Time?” she said. “But…how?”
“How isn’t as important as why right at this moment, Doctor. If we’d simply shared a delusion, the how of this might be interesting – from a psychiatrist’s point of view – but understanding the why of things will be vital going forward. At least from a politician’s standpoint, I might add.”
“The why of things? Is that important?”
Roosevelt tried not to laugh, but failed – though he caught himself before he started coughing again. “The why is always the most important point to consider, young lady. Why do we need to consider making bombs out of uranium? Why do we need to go to war with Germany? How is a question for engineers and economists; why is my purview right now, and with events in Asia and Eastern Europe spiraling out of control right now, the answer to why you and I are sharing this vision is suddenly the most crucial thing I can think of.”
“The first time I saw you…well, it was almost ten years ago.”
“What?” Roosevelt said, suddenly exasperated. “When was this?”
“My brother and I were headed west. I was on my way to Berkeley, to begin graduate school, and I felt myself phasing in and out of time, experiencing different outcomes to events that had happened long before. My father’s death, the sinking of the Titanic…”
“The Titanic? Why, of all…”
“I was onboard, sir, the night she went down.”
“Good God. Why didn’t I read that in your dossier?”
She shrugged. “The night of our first encounter, she missed the iceberg. And I learned my father had passed away some two weeks before, not on that night…”
“So…time had been altered, and in more ways that one?”
“Yes.”
“And then you met me, for the first time?”
She nodded her head slowly. “By that window…looking out…”
“At those rings.”
“Yessir.”
“The walls on that ship…what color are they?”
“Red, sir.”
Roosevelt looked at her, trying to come to terms with these revelations, then a sudden thought came to him: “I say, you’re looking much better now. Do you feel up to going downstairs?”
She nodded her head again. “Yes, I think so.”
“Good. Let’s give it a try, shall we?”
+++++
Sitting on the train, heading back to California a few days later, she thought about that encounter, and the evening that followed, for hour after hour as the train crossed the country. About the various discussions around the table, the palpable excitement surrounding the road ahead. Entire new industries would have to be created almost overnight…precision electro-magnets capable of streaming off isotopes in electron streams. A vast new transport infra-structure to carry ores from Canada and Brazil, and in wartime.
Yes, war. Roosevelt had made it abundantly clear that war with both Germany and Japan, and possibly Russia, now appeared inevitable. The United States would have to fight two well armed adversaries on opposite sides of the earth, or risk being swallowed by an imploding wall of totalitarianism. It was as simple as that.
The last resort, Roosevelt said, might very well be the fission bomb under discussion – but then he’d asked: “What then? What happen if we succeed? If we win this war, how in God’s name do we maintain the unstable peace that must surely follow? What happens after we finally open Pandora’s box?”
When they’d first made it down to the room, a large ballroom where both cocktails and heated arguments were being consumed in unhealthy quantities, people were just shuffling off to a dining room, but Roosevelt had mysteriously disappeared again. Charles and Oppenheimer saw her coming through a doorway and both rushed to her side.
“Ah,” Oppenheimer said casually, “you didn’t die, I take it?”
Charles shook his head as he walked up to her, rolling his eyes. “You look better, the color of a tangerine now. Better than that plum-red you were sporting…”
“And I feel better, too. Thanks for asking.”
“We’ve taken the liberty of putting you next to Ben Goodman…”
“Benny Goodman? The…musician?”
“No, dear,” Oppenheimer sighed, as if he was talking to a child. “Ben Goodman, the physician. The physician who held your wrist and took your temperature when you were upstairs. He seems to think you need to go to the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
“Yes. Oddly enough, he thinks both you and Franklin have pneumonia.”
“Bosh. I have no such thing. I’ve not coughed in days.”
“Indeed. You must remind me…where did you take your medical diploma?”
Ignoring Robert, she turned to Charles. “Now, where am I sitting?”
“Follow me,” her brother said, and when they gained the table a dapper looking man stood and held out her chair.
“Well, you’re looking better,” Goodman said. “How’re you feeling? Still flushed?”
She smiled and sat, and Charles sat between her and Oppenheimer. “Aspirin seems to do the trick for me,” she said. “Do you have any idea whatever it is I’ve gotten hold of.”
“No, not at all. Well, all I can tell you is drink plenty of water tonight. They tend to over-salt the food here,” Goodman said, frowning.
“You come here often, I take it?”
“I seem to have taken up residence here – rather against my will, I might add.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, it seems I’ve become the President’s Personal Physician, or some such blather. That’s what’s on the door to my office, anyway. Are you Charles’ wife?”
“Sister.”
“Indeed? Splendid!”
She looked at Goodman and smiled. “Truly? Why is that splendid?”
“Yes indeed. Take a look around, would you? There are three females in attendance, one is serving food this evening, and one of them is Mrs Roosevelt. You’re the third, and I’m sitting next to you. So, yes. I think that’s very splendid indeed!”
“I see. You’re not married, I take it?”
“No, but the night is young.”
Claire grinned while she tried not to shake her head.
She nodded her head, smiled a little smile, though feeling not at all triumphant. “Yes. Isn’t that the bee’s knees?”
“Are you working on all this uranium stuff?”
“I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course. It’s just that I am, so I naturally assumed…”
“You are?”
“Yes. Well, you see, I’d been working on establishing new protocols for radiation exposure, primarily for use with or during diagnostic imaging, when Szilard tapped me to help out. When I’m not working here, I’m stationed at the Navy Yard.”
“Oh? You’re in the Navy?”
“Yes, and sorry…no uniform tonight. I was off duty, until Harry called me in to check on the President.”
“Harry?”
“Ah, you’re not into politics, I take it? Harry Hopkins. He’s been with Franklin since day one. The New Deal is his baby, if you didn’t know. Harry is one of those Progressive Optimists you read about in the Times.”
She shrugged again. “If you say so.”
“Not interested, I take it?”
She shook her head gently, though she smiled at Goodman.
“Oh dear,” he sighed, “I may fall in love with you before we get to our salads. Where are you working?”
“Berkeley.”
“Yes, of course. How stupid of me. You did say you were working with Robert.”
“Where did you go to school, Doctor?”
“Annapolis, then Georgetown. I began working with x-ray imaging devices when I did my internship, and I’ve been fascinated by the devices ever since.”
“And how did you get roped into being the President’s physician?”
“Harry was out at the Yard and he had a bad cold. I ended up seeing him and that was that.”
“Chance, then?”
“Yes. Bad luck.”
She smiled when he grinned again, and she looked at his eyes a little longer this time. Kind, gentle, and deeply inquisitive. A scientist’s eyes, in other words. “So, radiological dosing? You’ll be working on this so-called uranium project, I take it?”
“Yes. So I’d imagine we’ll see each other from time to time?”
“Would you like that?”
“Yes, you know, I rather think I would.”
She felt her face flushing again, felt a few beads forming on her forehead, then she felt a glass of ice-water being thrust into her hand. “Drink it down, and take some ice into your mouth, roll it around…”
And without asking she did so, then she felt him grasp her wrist, begin counting-off her pulse while he watched her face and neck. “You know, even as sick as you are, you have the most enchanted eyes I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Enchanting, I think perhaps you meant to say?”
“No, enchanted. Like you’ve seen wild, magic things already. Like there’s little that makes you afraid.”
She could feel Charles looking at her, listening to this conversation, and she tried her best to ignore his eyes burning into the back of her skull, then she took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair. “You know, I’ve felt better.”
“I’d like to run you over to Georgetown, if you don’t mind.”
“Perhaps after dinner, Dr Goodman,” she heard her brother say – then she was wrapped in warm blankets of deep sleep, adrift on a sunless sea.
Chapter Seven
14 November, 1943
The sea breeze was shedding her veneer of autumn as easily as winter’s breath came on, and Claire stood at the rail looking out over the Atlantic as the great ship steamed to the southeast. Even from this modest height – and she guessed she was about thirty feet or so above the water’s surface – the sense of speed as the Iowa knifed through the sea was absolutely palpable. And it looked as though the destroyers and even the nearby cruiser were working hard to keep up with the immense battleship, for indeed they were. Now, on their second day at sea, the small convoy was carrying the president to Morocco; from there the gathering of diplomats and soldiers would fly with him to Tehran, where a meeting between the all the president’s men and both Churchill and Stalin was scheduled to take place.
“Why am I here?” she asked the wind. “What possible use could I be to him?”
She turned and saw him in his chair near the rail, perhaps fifty feet away, just under the huge sixteen inch guns of the number two turret. The teak decks were mottled by random hits of spray, the three barrels cast giant, oblate shadows over Roosevelt and the deck under his chair, so that one moment he was alive in early morning sunlight, the next a wraith sheathed in shadow.
“That’s what we are,” she sighed, “the two of us. Sun and shadow, light and dark. Good and evil.”
Once the theoretical nature of their work had borne fruit, she had begun to see the real contours of darkness inside Roosevelt’s Pandora’s Box. And she had begun to see her role in uncovering that uncertain darkness, and until recently she could only guess what would be released when the box was opened. And no, she realized she wasn’t simply a passive receptacle standing idly by while others did the work. She had played a pivotal role unraveling the darkest fire man had ever kindled, and yes, she understood she was more than just a simple bystander, too. She had grown into one of the most important members of the group designing the charge that would induce fission, and now she was helping Sealy and his team as they worked with Boeing on modifications to the B-29s wings. She now realized she would help bring the ultimate irony to humanity’s doorstep: we would harness the power of creation to destroy – and the world would never be the same again.
As she watched Roosevelt, she wondered what he would do with this immense power. Let the world know what we alone possessed, let the Germans and the Japanese understand the consequences of prolonging the war? Or, keep the power a secret? Unleash it on an unsuspecting world without any warning at all?
And she watched Roosevelt more closely now that she understood him better. She had never once considered how much his personal struggle with polio had redefined his character, how much the wounded man’s experience in Warm Springs had altered his patrician’s frame of reference. The entitled Assistant Secretary of the Navy would eventually become the Governor of New York, but only after defeating his own very personal demons. She’d never really known these things about the man, not until the night before, anyway. When they’d sat and talked on this very deck, under the stars.
And he seemed to know each and every star in the night sky, from the origins of their names to their uses as aids to navigation. He loved everything about these big ships too, especially the ability to project force around the world. He’d championed the development of naval aviation – in the First World War of all things – and even submarines. She’d known so little about him when he was first elected, but now – after working with him off and on for four years, she thought of him almost as a father.
Fathers had been in short supply all her life, after all, and though she hardly ever thought about it she knew she had missed out on something important. Charles was Charles, a brother and never anything more, yet Charles had assumed the role of father when she was still quite young. And, as it turned out, he had never really had understood this very basic need. He became a friend – and not a father – and then a sort of career advisor, yet he never expressed any sort of familial love for her – and that was a scar that had never really healed. He cared, true enough, but he had never once expressed anything at all like love for her – not even a brother’s love. Because he wasn’t her brother…not really…and that was the plain unspoken truth between them.
And yet, Roosevelt had immediately seen through all her hastily erected veneers, had seen her need, and he had done so in an instant. At first she put this down to his politician’s instincts, but no, she sensed there was more to him than that. After their first meeting in the White House he had begun writing letters to her, silly, half-affectionate fatherly missives she at first dismissed as the ramblings of a lonely old man – but, again, she had found something else in his words. A need to connect personally with the reality of her work, not only to understand her better, but to better come to terms with what they were building out there in the high New Mexican desert.
And so she wrote to him, too. Long letters about the problems the team faced, little notes about how odd it was being one of the few women out there under the high stars. She was impressed a man so burdened with the many responsibilities of his office, and that he took the time to correspond with her, and often as she wrote to him she would lapse back into the dream, see him standing by that oval window looking out on Saturn’s rings…
‘Why don’t you find a man, get married,’ he wrote once, and she thought about the answer to that question for a long time before she set out to craft a reply.
‘I thought I had, once,’ she wrote to the president. ‘Your physician, Ben Goodman. We spent a few days together in 1939, and I thought we had found something special. Something real and lasting, only then he drifted away. I have no need to go through that again…’
His next letter rocked her world.
‘He speaks of you often,’ Roosevelt wrote, ‘yet I was given to believe you had spurned his advances. Was that not the case?’
And so, when she had boarded the Potomac with Roosevelt a few days before this covert crossing, she was instantly on guard when she saw Goodman walk aboard just ahead of the president. Neither had looked her way; indeed, neither had acknowledged her presence in any way. And as the only female on a US Navy battleship steaming across an ocean full of German U-boats, she had been locked away in the executive officer’s stateroom, apparently for the duration of the crossing – lest she distract the men. Or so she was told…
Then, last night.
Roosevelt had asked that she come to his cabin after dinner. He wanted, the hand delivered note plainly stated, to talk with her about an idea or two.
When she was escorted to his cabin the door opened and she found him tucked into bed, sipping some sort of amber liqueur. “Could I pour you a snort?” Roosevelt asked, grinning.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Drambuie.”
She shrugged, a blank look on her face.
“It’s a liqueur, made from scotch whiskey,” another voice said, and she turned to see Goodman at a writing desk, inside the attached captain’s more utilitarian, in-port cabin.
“I see,” she said, though of course she didn’t. She couldn’t, not just now, because her vision had grown confined and dark, and her thoughts muddied as the currents of time slowed. She had watched Goodman pour her a glass, then turned to the president sitting in his bed. He was smiling, she saw, and looking not at all unlike another grinning Cheshire cat of some ill repute.
She had taken the glass and carried it too her nose, closed her eyes as the honied scent found her, then she took some of the liquid on her tongue and let it settle there. When she opened her eyes Goodman was sitting across from her, his eyes still full of a quiet, lingering empathy.
“Like it?” Goodman asked.
“I do. Yes, very much, as a matter of fact.”
“Well then,” Roosevelt crooned, holding up his glass. “A toast! Here’s to swimmin’ – with bow-legged wimin’…”
Goodman grinned and shook his head, then he too took a sip, his eyes never leaving her’s, not for a single instant.
“I hope you’re not asking me to swim with a bunch of bow-legged women, Mr. President,” she laughed, almost under her breath.
“No, no, not at all, Claire. We were going over some production figures this afternoon when someone asked about your work on the blast dynamics and effects on the airframe. It’s been weeks since I read an update on that work, and I wanted to get your take on the problem.”
“Now, Mr. President?”
“Yes, yes…now.”
“Well, sir, as you know, the basic question is altitude versus the aerodynamic properties of the bomb itself. In other words, how long it will take the warhead to reach the target…”
“Are we still talking about that fused air-burst thing, or a ground impact?”
“For all intents and purposes, Mr President, there won’t be much difference on delta-T. Our current working hypothesis has the aircraft dropping on the target from thirty-one thousand feet. We need to retard the bomb’s velocity in order to allow egress of the aircraft, as even if we can achieve a wing loading in the eighty pounds per square inch range it’s not likely the aircraft will survive.”
“What would an optimal range from detonation look like?”
“Twenty miles, Mr President. A minimum of twenty miles.”
“Parachute?”
“We discarded the idea, sir, after it was demonstrated that anti-aircraft fire might hit the bomb and disable it.”
“And…?”
“We’re looking at an enhanced climb profile that gets the aircraft to thirty-four thousand feet, then the crew would start a shallow dive at full power, make the drop at thirty and continue diving to around twenty-five thousand.”
“And their speed at that point would be?”
“We’re looking at roughly 320.”
“Will that get you to twenty miles?”
“No sir. Not quite – but we’re getting close.”
“So…what’s next?”
“Drag, Mr President. We’re designing the weapon to be as aerodynamically inefficient as possible.”
“Can the wings be further reinforced?”
“Boeing engineers have done about all they can…short of a complete redesign of the nacelles, where they attach to the leading edge of the wing.”
“They’re still the problem?”
“Yessir. My modeling shows that the blast wave will start a series of oscillations on the outboard nacelles, eventually leading to failure of the wing. If they’re less than fifteen miles from detonation you might as well advise the crew it will be a one-way mission. Bailing out would simply expose them to an unprotected dose of intense radiation.”
“And as I mentioned earlier, sir,” Goodman added, “the amount of exposure to the aircrew of this amount and kind of radiation poses unknown risks. The further away they are, the better.”
“So, it looks like we’ve got the means to make the weapon, but it also looks like we may sacrifice the crew if we use it? Is that about the size of it, Dr Aubuchon?”
“No, sir. I still feel quite confident we’ll solve the problem. Probably through a combination of methods, and I still think the engineers have a few tricks up their sleeve. By the way, that wing is a work of art, Mr President. Wing loading, as it stands now, is in the seventy pounds per square inch range, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they can modify the structure to get to a hundred pounds. If they can, and if the aircraft can hit 340 knots in a limited duration dive, then we aren’t going to have a problem.”
“Robert doesn’t share your optimism, Dr Aubuchon. Perhaps you could tell me why?”
“This isn’t his area of expertise, Mr President, and as he hasn’t spent as much time out in Seattle as I have, so he’s not up to speed on the specific range of options available to us.”
“It’s not your area of expertise either, is it, Claire?”
“No, it isn’t, Mr President. But Boeing’s engineers have to work with the numbers I give them, so I’ve learned a lot about this aircraft’s strengths and limitations working with them. The math is simple and straight-forward, I might add.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that, Claire,” Roosevelt said, grinning again. “Well, Ben? Think I could take some sea air this time of night?”
“Yessir, I think that might do us all some good, just remember what the captain said. No smoking out on deck, sir.”
“Bosh! Damn U-boats!”
“I’ll go get Roy, sir. Claire? Would you come with me, please?”
She followed Goodman out into the passageway while Roosevelt’s valet went in the cabin to help dress the president, and they waited for Roosevelt’s naval escort, this time a colonel from the Marines, before heading topsides.
A few chairs had been hastily placed on the main deck, just ahead of the number two turret, and the tiniest sliver of a crescent moon hung above the horizon off to their left. Roosevelt used his shoulders to move from his wheelchair to the deck chair, then huffed and puffed for a moment – getting his wind back as he looked out over the infinite sea.
“By Golly, Claire, there’s nothing like the sea at night. Surrounded by stars, as we were in the beginning. And look at that! Even the moon is cooperating tonight…and just look at Orion, would you!”
Both she and Goodman turned and looked up at The Hunter, his bow drawn through the millennia. “I was out earlier, Mr President,” the Marine said, “and I do believe after your vision settles you’ll see the pink smudge in the scabbard.”
“Really? It’s been years and years since I’ve seen that. Too many years, I think.”
“It’s nice to feel summer air again,” Goodman added. “I’m already dreading winter.”
“Are you indeed?” Roosevelt said. “Maybe it’s time you moved out west. Berkeley, perhaps?”
Goodman looked at the president, not sure what to say.
“Maybe it’s time you settled down, tried to have a family?” Roosevelt added. “Family saved me, of course, though I had very nearly destroyed mine. Losing the use of my legs, finding my way to Georgia, getting involved with those kids…”
“Sir?” Claire said, sounding puzzled.
“Warm Springs. I went down there for the waters. Hot, ninety degree water, waters full of magnesium. It was this ramshackle place, almost beyond repair, the people who came to take the water were as afraid of us polio patients as lepers were in the middle ages. I came to understand discrimination for the first time in my life, as well as despair. Hell, I suppose discrimination and despair are one and the same. But I suppose that goes without saying. Yet in a way now I don’t think one can truly experience hope without first experiencing the deepest despair, but then again I may not have been the first person to have come around to that way of thinking.”
“What happened down there,” she asked. “To change your mind, I mean?”
“I felt so sorry for myself. For the loss of my future, I suppose you might say.” Roosevelt looked away for a moment. “Yet it was the children down there who taught me how to live again, to see beyond my legs. Eleanor helped me purchase the place, and we’ve turned it into a facility for treating children with polio.”
“I had no idea,” Claire said.
“Ben’s been down to help out a time or two, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Mr. President. And it’s been an honor.”
“Indeed. There’s a humility in the suffering of children, I think. Especially when children without hope of a cure. Humanity’s burden, I think it is, too. Every suffering child we let pass into the night is an unconscionable burden on our souls.”
“Yes it is, sir,” Goodman added.
“Anyway, that’s what I was getting at, Ben. You’ll miss out on one of life’s greatest joys if you miss out having children of your own.”
“Perhaps when this all over, Mr President,” Goodman sighed heavily.
“Ben, this will never be over. Don’t you understand that yet?”
“Sir?”
“This war will never be over, Ben. It can’t ever be over. Once the music stops playing, industry will collapse again. We learned that after the First War, if you’ll recall. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy I was charged with demobilizing the Atlantic Fleet, and so we scrapped almost half those vessels in a matter of months. I fought to preserve our submarine fleet, and to increase research on aircraft carriers, and whatever else I could, but both Wilson and Harding were adamant…we didn’t need a peacetime navy. Short-sighted bastards! Of course, mobilizing for war in 1916, and again in 1940, pulled us out of the economic doldrums, yet that may be the one vital lesson lost on most people both in and outside of Washington. Military spending props up the rest of the economy, simple as that.”
“But with these new weapons,” Claire began, “haven’t we made war obsolete?”
“Obsolete? You mean, as in no one would dare attack us now?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And how long before another country has these weapons? A country, perhaps, not quite so friendly to our interests. Remember, today’s friend might not always be so friendly…”
“You mean, Russia?”
“Yes, I suppose I do, but it really doesn’t matter who, Claire. It will happen, and the how or the why won’t matter then. It will happen, and the sword will be poised above all our necks.” Roosevelt’s eyes swept the horizon, then he turned to Claire. “What about you, Claire? Ready for a life of domestic tranquility?”
“I don’t know that I could let go just now, Mr President. I want to see this through.”
“Yes…there’s nothing so vital as having a purpose in life, yet there’s also nothing as important as having your own little sliver of immortality. Children are still our best shot at that, I guess you know?” Roosevelt added, turning to look at Goodman again.
“You’re correct, of course, Mr President.”
“Look at them,” Roosevelt sighed, his word drifting away on the slipstream as he pointed at the night sky. “Not even the stars will last forever. I know you two feel something for one another, and it would do me a world of good to see something nice and decent come from all this uranium nonsense. All I ask is that you think about it, alright? Just think about it, before it’s too late.”
Goodman stood and walked forward, past the number one turret and on to the foredeck, and two ratings walked along behind him – just in case – then Roosevelt turned to Claire. “No time like the present, I always say,” the president whispered. “Roy, I feel I’ve had enough of this air for now. You’d better get me inside.”
She turned away as Roosevelt struggled back into his wheelchair, but she watched his men wrestle his chair inside before turning to look at Goodman. He was leaning on a rail up forward, still looking up at the stars, and she looked at him for the longest while, then she turned and walked aft, back to her cabin.
+++++
She had expected Tehran to be unbearably hot, yet the city was pleasantly cool, almost cold at night. She was with Roosevelt’s group staying at the Soviet embassy, and while Goodman’s room was next to her’s she did not see him once after they settled-in at the embassy. Roosevelt’s intrusion had rattled her, and she neither needed nor wanted some sort of presidential imprimatur attached to any relationship she might have – even if that’s what she called this nascent thing between them.
They’d seen each other, from a distance, anyway, while still on the Iowa, even after one of the escorting destroyers accidentally launched a torpedo at the battleship, but Roosevelt didn’t summon her again. Perhaps Goodman had relayed what had happened, perhaps not, but the evening had unsettled her. Had it him, as well?
And why had she gone back to her cabin? Why had she left him alone up there? What had she felt for him before? Friendship? Or had there been something more? Something beyond gratitude, that he had taken care of her at Georgetown when her “walking pneumonia” very nearly took her out? What of those long walks in the piñon out on the west side of Los Alamos? When they’d talked about California versus Maryland, of perhaps getting married and starting a family.
Yet she’d never once seen the slightest hint of love in his eyes. Empathy? Yes. Compassion? Again, yes. But love for her? Not in the slightest. Yet the first time she saw him around young men, good looking young men, his eyes sparkled – with pure, unbridled lust – and that had settled the matter. Still, she had to admit that lust had never been a powerful draw for her. She’d never had sex, not once, and she’d told herself more than once that if she went through life without experiencing lust that wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.
And she almost believed that, too.
On one of their last walks together in New Mexico she’d asked him about that. About what he felt when he saw attractive young men. “I don’t know,” he’d replied hesitantly, his eyes looking away, his shame apparent. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you seem so full of desire.”
“I do?”
“What do you mean, ‘I do?’ Are you telling me you aren’t homosexual?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I might be…”
“You mean you’ve never…?”
“Good God, no!”
“But you’re attracted to men, right?”
“I don’t know,” he’d said with a sigh. “I suppose it’s possible.”
Yet as hard as she tried to believe him, she knew he was lying. She knew this was so because she could see deceit in his eyes when he spoke, something she’d never expected to see from him. So, when he’d walked away from Roosevelt that night on deck, he’d walked away from her too. From any idea of a future together.
Yet there was something about him that attracted her still. His empathic soul, perhaps. His ability to see into people, to understand them. Yes, it was simply ironic that he couldn’t see into his own soul, or that he was willing to walk away from what he saw about himself, but this only made the tragic flaw all the more intriguing. And unnerving.
So, she’d thought about him that first night in Tehran. She wondered if he might indeed be a good father, a good partner for the rest of their lives. Could she ignore his lustful impulses, could he contain them enough to keep them from destroying their lives? Would it be worthwhile to even live like that? Would she want the central equation of their lives reduced to an ongoing series of evasions?
Yet the very next day, while walking to the British embassy, she’d felt a young man fall in beside her…
“Dr. Aubuchon?” the man asked.
“Yes?”
“My name is Trevor. Trevor Eisenstadt. I’m with the British legation.”
“Ah.”
“If you have some time after the next session, I’d like to talk with you if I could.”
“About?”
“Your work.”
“Indeed. And why would I do that?”
“I’ve asked my minister to have a word with Secretary Hull; he’ll vouch for my status.”
“Alright, Mr Eisenstadt.”
“It’s doctor, if you don’t mind.”
“Ah. And your field of study is, Dr. Eisenstadt?”
“Quantum mechanics.”
“Indeed. Cambridge?”
“Yes, but I’ll explain later,” Eisenstadt said, but without saying another word he veered off and joined another group, and she watched him as they walked on, lost inside the peculiar reality of those two words. Very few physicists were specializing in quantum mechanics, not yet, anyway, so what interest could he have in her work in Los Alamos?
Yet just then she was struck by an even more unsettling realization: she’d seen him before.
On that ship. On that ship with the red walls, the ship where she and Roosevelt stood together, looking out over Saturn’s rings.
Chapter Eight
“Trevor Eisenstadt” tried not to watch as Aubuchon rejoined her group, but he had been waiting for just the right moment, and for a very long time. He rejoined his own group, a covey of diplomats from the British legation, and he listened to their talk of agenda items – mainly how to keep Churchill from being pushed out of the main flow of the conversation between Roosevelt and Stalin – and that was when he felt William Thacker’s eyes boring into his.
“Who was that?” Thacker asked.
“Who? The girl?” Eisenstadt replied. “Claire Aubuchon. I met her once, in D.C., I think. Rather cute, don’t you think?”
He watched as Thacker looked after the girl for a moment, then he continued. “I was thinking I’d try to ask her out – again,” he said, grinning conspiratorially.
“Oh, was she so interesting?” Thacker said, now eying Eisenstadt.
“I’ll never tell,” he said, for indeed, he never would.
“What did she say?”
“I’m going to meet up with her when the afternoon session wraps up. Say, I’d bet you didn’t know she’s Charles Wilkinson’s little sister.”
“Seriously? I hear he’s in the queue for an ambassadorship.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“They’ll probably send him to Oman.”
“Family has too much money for that.”
“Ah,” Thacker sighed. “So that’s where your interest resides, eh, Trevor?”
Eisenstadt grinned, looked sheepishly away.
“You sly dog,” Thacker joshed before he walked quickly to catch up with the ambassador.
Trevor groaned inwardly, then thought of the very first time he’d seen her. How many lifetimes ago had that been? A hundred? A thousand?
And just then, watching her disappear into the main conference room, he had to admit he really didn’t know anymore.
+++++
She listened to the introductory remarks the first morning, tried to make sense of Stalin’s ambiguous statement of greeting, his continued insistence that America and Britain open up a second front as soon as possible, then she listened as Roosevelt thanked Stalin for the sacrifices of the great Russian people. She looked at Churchill from time to time, too; at the old man’s chin resting on his chest, his hooded eyes barely concealing the anger seething away inside. Everyone knew he was being pushed aside, that Roosevelt was, in a very real sense, relegating the United Kingdom to the dustbin of History. Stalin, his wolfish eyes darting here and there, could barely conceal his glee. The sun would soon, his darting glances confirmed, set on the British Empire. Tehran would forever be remembered as the final changing of the guard; Japanese aircraft had put an end to any just claim that Britain had any right to a global empire. The sinking of the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse, on 10 December 1941 off the east coast of Malaya, and just three days into the Pacific war, simply codified Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Those results were cast in stone now, and History’s judgement would be severe.
It was odd, too, Claire thought. Churchill was by far the most astute wartime politician since Napoleon, and yet Napoleon, too, had squandered his empire. Were all empires doomed to rise and fall, she wondered? Was western civilization so doomed, as well? If mankind held firm to its grasp of stoking the fires of religious intolerance, would life on this planet survive the atomic age? Was that what she saw in Churchill’s eyes just now? Communist atheism running headlong into the last vestiges of the Judeo-Christian impulse?
And the Manhattan Project was now teeming with scientists from both Britain and Canada, not to mention all the other European emigres that had fled Hitler’s spreading malignancy. The best, the greatest minds in the world, all gathered under the vast New Mexican sun. Her mind drifted to Santa Fe, to Taos, to the spine of mountains that ran between them…the Sangre de Cristos, the Blood of Christ mountains, snow-capped and brilliant. Her little house in Los Alamos, her casita, looked out on those mountains, and when she took walks in the sharp air her mind always drifted to them, and now, sitting in this faraway land, she found herself thinking about that jagged spine of rocks once again.
How many civilizations had those mountains borne witness to? The various native tribes that came and went on their nomadic wanderings to and from Mesa Verde, then the Spanish? The French, under Napoleon III had tried to push into New Mexico, too. The Republic of Texas had laid claim to the valley for a few decades, and now it called the United States of America home. But yes, empires rose on the mighty roar of their warriors, yet they invariably whispered off the stage as their aspirations faded, with age, into irrelevancy.
Then the words ‘quantum mechanics’ drifted into her mind’s eye, and she saw the man again, in the same waking dream. She closed her eyes and tried to see him now as he was then, standing on that ship.
It was the same ship, wasn’t it?
Her eyes popped open in that instant and her eyes darted around the room again. Yes, there he was, sitting behind Churchill and Anthony Eden – and he was looking directly at her. Why, she wondered, did that not surprise her? And why did he suddenly seem so familiar? And, oh yes! Why had he said those two vexing words? There weren’t a hundred people in the world who knew what those two words, quantum mechanics, really meant, and most of those lived within a few blocks of her – under the gaze of those very same mountains in New Mexico.
She wondered what he knew, too. Wondered if he had heard of the Aubuchon Shift.
Time was like an arrow, or so the saying went. Once loosed, that arrow went on and on, and in one direction only. But what happened before the arrow left the bow? What happened when you tricked time, and made it go backwards? As an arrow might when the bow is drawn?
+++++
Her eyes burned and she rubbed them again, rubbed them until she felt the sclera detach – then she cursed under her breath and stopped.
“When are you ever going to learn?” she heard Charles say, and she looked up at him and grinned sheepishly.
She shrugged, then looked at the note in his hand. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Franklin would like to see you. I think Secretary Hull will be there too.”
“Why him, for God’s sake?”
Charles shrugged. “Hull is always around when the discussion turns to Stalin, or even to Russia generally. Get used to it.”
“He’s too serious,” she sighed. “I don’t like him, Charles.”
He chuckled. “Serious? Cordell? And why wouldn’t he be? He and Acheson have only been charged with creating the post-war political framework of the world.”
“Right. And just what the hell have I got to do with that?”
“Well, there’s been some talk of this shift you discovered…”
“Talk? How…”
“I think that’s the point. There’ve been some very serious discussions about this, I can tell you. The whole paradox thing that Oppenheimer brought up, as I guess you can imagine, shook up a lot of people.”
“Myself included,” Claire didn’t exactly need to add.
“Exactly. Now, I’d suggest you not try to conceal a thing. Answer Hull’s questions directly, but pay attention to Acheson. Dean has the better grasp of scientific matters, so if you see him struggling you’ll need to dumb it down a little.”
“Okay. Is Acheson the one you’ve been working for?”
“Uh-huh. He’s the brains of the outfit, and don’t you forget it. Roosevelt ain’t stupid, and neither is Hull, but Acheson is in another league compared to those guys. He’s smart, and his eyes don’t miss a thing. And don’t even think of lying when he’s in the room.”
“I wasn’t planning on lying, Charles.”
“I know. Now, come on.”
“Do you know a Trevor Eisenstadt?” she blurted.
“With the Brits, right? I’ve heard the name before. Why?”
“He said he wants to have a talk with me.”
Charles visibly stiffened when he heard that, and Claire noticed. “Don’t meet with him unless Hull gives you the go-ahead.”
“He assured me Eden would vouch for him…”
“Doesn’t matter. They’ll be probing, trying to get information on this Shift you’ve run into. My guess is Churchill is directing this contact, but he’ll keep very-very hands-off to avoid any semblance of impropriety. Anyway, you’d better scoot.”
“Is it still cold out?”
“You’d better take a coat, yes.”
She picked up something and walked out into the early morning air, took a deep breath then wrapped the coat around her shoulders as she walked over to Roosevelt’s suite, unnerved by all the Russian guards standing around. ‘Well,’ she thought, ‘it is their embassy…’
An America Marine stood outside the president’s door, and he came to attention as she approached – yet the door magically opened as she arrived, and Carlton, the Navy captain who acted as Roosevelt’s aide, smiled from inside the suite.
“Good morning, Dr Aubuchon,” Carlton said.
“And to you, Russ. Anything new overnight?”
“Nothing major. Some new fuel consumption figures from inside Germany; that’s about it.”
She nodded understanding as she walked inside, noted a fire simmering away in the fireplace as she took off her coat, then watched Carlton point at the ceiling. ‘Yes,’ she sighed inwardly, ‘I caught the signal, Russ. The place is bugged, they’re listening. I get that…’
“Secretary Hull will be right out,” Carlton added as he walked into his makeshift office off this ‘living room,’ and she wondered if Roosevelt would come too. He had looked like death warmed over by the end of yesterday’s sessions, and had reportedly gone straight to bed. The burdens this man carried, she thought, were enough to crush anyone, yet he had carried the weight of the world on his shoulders for years now, and yet he never seemed to flinch under the load. Now all that benign neglect was catching up to him, and that worried her…
Another door opened and Secretary Hull walked into the room – looking more than a little tired – and he came and sat across from her.
“Ah, the fire’s not out yet…good. Franklin slept with the windows open a little last night…too cold for me.”
“Yessir,” she said.
“I’ve a request from Churchill that you be allowed some time with this Eisenstadt fellow. Know anything about him?”
“No sir, not a thing. He approached me on the way to the morning session, asked to speak to me then walked back to his legation.”
“Damned odd,” Hull sighed. “Should have put that request in writing. Damned odd. You haven’t met before?”
“I’m not sure, sir. I might have seen him before, in passing, but I don’t know him, or anything about his work.”
“I see. Well, I don’t need to mention that talk about this shift you’ve discovered will be off-limits.”
“Understood, sir.”
“And the president would like a follow-up ‘contact report’ when you wrap this up. Just make sure Captain Carlton gets it as soon as you’ve written it up. Just the basics, but your impressions about why this contact was initiated, what you think they’re fishing for…that kind of thing.”
“Yessir.”
“Well, you best get at it. I understand he’s waiting for you now,” the Secretary of State added, pointing at the door.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, standing and picking up her coat. Another Marine opened the door now and helped her with her coat, then she stepped out into the courtyard. And there, standing in a swirling sea of autumn leaves was this Trevor Eisenstadt. Not very tall, she thought, and almost too thin, his head a little too big for his frame, as well. As she approached she thought his eyes looked almost owl-like; large and predatory, eyes like a raptor, and she couldn’t decide whether they were darkest amber or dusty-gray.
“So,” she said as she walked up to the man, “quantum mechanics? What’s on your mind?”
“Have you had breakfast?” Eisenstadt said, smiling.
“No, I haven’t, and I’m starving.”
“I’ve found a place, and not too far away – if you think you can stand a walk…?”
“Lead on, kind sir.”
“What do you think of Tehran?”
“It’s cooler than I thought it would be, that much is certain. Have you been to the Grand Bazaar?”
“That’s where we’re headed, as luck would have it. Have you been yet?”
“No, but I wanted to see it before we leave. Is it safe?”
He chuckled. “Don’t bother turning to look, but I think we have about a half dozen of your Marines following us, and God only knows how many Russians.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, I’ve found Tehran quite lovely, and the people wonderful. I shouldn’t mind living here, if it came to that. You’re looking well, by the by. New Mexico agrees with you.”
She was instantly on-guard, now that he’d tipped his hand so obliquely. “You’ve been, I take it?”
“Only to Santa Fe, but that was years ago, before the war. Stayed at the LaFonda. Walking the square in the early morning? Magic.”
“And what were you doing in Santa Fe.”
“Pottery.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Looking for Navaho pottery. For my collection.”
“Ah. Find anything interesting?”
“Quite a bit, actually. Well, here we are…”
He led the way inside a small restaurant just across from a narrow passage that led into one of the Bazaar’s many entrance halls, and the varied scents coming from the small kitchen were almost intoxicating. Breakfast, teas, fruits and mists of exotic spice hung in the air apparent, the heady brew at once compelling and unnerving.
“Do you speak Persian?” he asked.
“You must be joking,” she deadpanned.
“Well then, shall I order for you?” he said, almost laughing.
“No sheep’s eyes, please, but other than that…”
This time he did laugh, openly and for a long time, then he spoke to the proprietress for a moment before leading Claire to a table. “Shouldn’t take long,” he advised, looking out the front door at the gaggle of confused security personnel gathered there, wondering what to do now.
“So,” Claire said, eyeing Eisenstadt as he sat, “quantum mechanics?”
“Yes, sorry. Kind of an odd way to introduce myself, I know. How far along are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“What are you calling it? The shift?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I understand. We’d like you to stop all research on this material. Now.”
“What research?”
“On time dilation and contraction.”
She stared at the man for a long time, not sure who or what he was now, then she simply looked down at her hands. “Oh, is that all?”
“Yes.”
“And who is ‘we’?”
He shrugged. “People who want you to stop, before you get into serious trouble.”
“Trouble? With whom? The Physics Police?”
His eyes turned deadly serious in the next instant. “Yes, something like that.”
It was the way he spoke, the look in his eyes that convinced Claire Aubuchon that this man, if indeed he was a man, was completely serious and on-the-level.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” she asked, her voice conspiratorially quiet. “On that ship?”
He nodded his head only once, an ambiguous gesture that left her feeling even more unsure of the moment.
“Where are you from?”
He grinned, slightly, still looking her in the eye: “Near Cambridge, I should think.”
“Uh-huh, sure. And before that?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Not so far from London. I was born in Kent.”
“When?”
“When? You mean, when was a born? The year?”
She nodded her head, almost knowing what had to come next.
“1866.”
“And let me take a wild guess…on the first of April?”
He smiled broadly now. “Almost. The 21st of September.”
She felt a sudden shift, like her understanding of the universe had quietly slipped from the room. Her father…her father’s date and place of birth…and now, after these 30 years it felt like vast cosmic tumblers were finally slipping into place. This Eisenstadt should be seventy six years old, yet he looked, what? Twenty-five? Thirty?
“And you’re my father, is that what you’re telling me?”
He stared at her now, though he said not a single word.
“That’s not fair, and you know it,” she said as she confronted his silence.
“I know.”
“Can you tell me what this is really all about? Please?”
“I already have. Stop all work on the Shift. You’re endangering everyone on the planet.”
“Because, again, I might upset some sort of Physics Police? Is that what you’re implying?”
“I’m not implying anything, Claire. It’s a warning. Stop, now. While you still can.”
“And?”
“And I’m going to introduce you to my brother this evening. You might fall in love with him. I should warn you, everyone does, sooner or later.”
“You’re telling me to fall in love with this man?”
“I am.”
“And if I don’t?”
Eisenstadt shook his head, then two plates of food arrived and he looked at her reaction to the food. Some things never change, he thought.
Chapter Nine
Eisenstadt’s “brother” was indeed a precocious, lovable bundle of inherent contradictions, and yes, every woman at the closing ceremonial dinner – held, of course, in the British Embassy – was enthralled by him.
His name was Benjamin Levy, and he was not, as it happened, related to Eisenstadt. They were not real brothers, Trevor said. No, they were more like friends.
“I see,” Claire had said. “And let me guess…he was born on the 21st of September, 1866 as well?”
“Yes, of course.”
“In Kent, I take it?”
“Certainly.”
“And he grew up near Cambridge?”
Trevor turned and looked at her then: “My, we’re on a roll tonight.”
“He does seem to be a ladies man.”
“Oh, he is that. Ready to meet him?”
“I’m not sure. Does he know who I am?”
“Oh yes. He’s been looking forward to this evening for some time, I think you could say.”
“Indeed.”
“Yes. Indeed.”
“Well then, I suppose we should get on with it.”
“Yes, tally-ho and all that. Into the fire – into the fight.”
She looked at Benjamin as she and Trevor walked across the room; he was the same height as Trevor, the same general build, too, and more curious still, he had the same general raptor like head – a little too large for his frame and the same peregrine shape. When she closed the distance she saw Benjamin had the same eyes, too…not quite amber, not quite blue…like a color that phased between the two, lost in indecision…
And this Benjamin was talking with Cordell Hull just now, and she wasn’t quite sure why, but that troubled her.
“Ah, here she is now,” the Secretary of State said. “Dr Aubuchon, may I introduce you to Dr Ben Levy. He’s been working on a few of the same problems you have, only up at Cambridge.”
She held out her and and Levy took it. “A pleasure,” she said.
“The pleasure is all mine, dear lady,” and they smiled at one another for a moment, then she turned to Trevor – and saw her brother Charles standing behind them both, now casting a wary eye at Levy.
“Ah, Charles,” Hull said, “are you and Dean finished for the evening?”
“Yessir. We’ve established the framework for the monetary conference, and Mr Acheson floated the idea of Bretton Woods again.”
“Ah. And our friends are still resisting?”
“I think they’re pushing for one of their Black Sea resorts, sir.”
“No doubt. Well, no doubt we’ll see stormy waters ahead. Charles? Have you met Dr Benjamin Levy?”
“No sir, I’ve not had that pleasure.”
“He’s with the Underground Balloon Corps, as luck would have it?”
“Ah,” Charles said, one eyebrow arching. “Well, it is indeed nice to meet you. I’m sure you have some interesting stories to share.”
“Well,” Hull added, “perhaps some other time.” Now both the Secretary of State and Trevor Eisenstadt cornered Charles, and they led him away to a far corner of the room, leaving Benjamin and Claire alone…suddenly – and completely – alone.
“The underground balloon corps? What is that all about?”
“You’ve not heard about us, I take it?” Levy said, now turning his predator’s gaze on her.
“No. Sorry. Should I have?”
“Well, no, as a matter of fact. I’m rather glad you haven’t. We’ve been charged with identifying top scientists working on the German heavy water project…”
“The bomb, you mean…?”
“Yes. And, well, we’re charged with either extracting them, or removing them from the equation.”
“You mean…?”
“I do.”
“So, you’ve penetrated their operations?”
And Levy only smiled, though he blinked rapidly a few times, and the reaction only served to heighten her perception of him. He was indeed a predator, and a dangerous one, at that.
“Your brother as much as told me that we’re to be married. Is that about the size of it?”
And again, only the blinking eyes gave any indication at all that he had even heard her, though now his face grew thoughtful, if a little puzzled. “Did he, now?” Levy said a moment later.
“Yes, he did.”
“Trevor has a…”
“A what? A warped sense of humor?”
“Questionable timing, I think I might have said.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I’d have rather liked the whole courtship ritual to unfold with few such expectations, if you know what I mean.”
And this time it was she who smiled, gently, and now it was she who remained silent.
“But yes,” he added, “I think that’s the general idea.”
“My, but you really do know how to sweep a girl off her feet…”
And Levy laughed now, a boisterous, fun-loving laugh. “Ah, indeed I do.”
“And if you don’t mind me asking, just how long will we be married for? A week? A month or two?”
His eyes turned more serious then, and they turned to meet her own: “1984, I believe. Forty-one years, then I’ll die, but I’ll leave you with two beautiful daughters.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you? I mean…”
“Oh yes. Quite.”
“How could you possibly know that…” she began, then the implications of his words slammed into her – and she fell silent – yet she was aware he was studying her reaction so she turned to face his penetrating stare head-on. “May I ask why? For what purpose have you chosen me?”
“Why, to save the universe, of course,” Levy said, though he began smiling again, but then he took her hand and led her to a table. A table for two, and the only such table in the lavish room. She was being set up she knew then, but by who, or whom, and to what purpose?
Was that why Roosevelt had insisted she attend the conference? Certainly there was no other reason she could fathom, no real reason for her to attend a conference on the structures of post-war Europe. And why arrange this liaison here and now? She looked across the room, saw Charles looking at Roosevelt – and Roosevelt looking directly at her, grinning that sly grin of his.
“Why me?” she whispered, the sound more a plaintive sigh of despair.
“You don’t know?” Levy said, almost as quietly.
She shook her head slowly, unsure of herself again. “No. No, I really don’t.”
“Ah, well, you will soon enough.”
“And…where are we to be married?”
“In New Mexico, I should think, though I don’t suppose we should rush things.”
“I beg your pardon? You’re telling me I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you, but that there’s no need to rush into this thing?”
“Precisely.”
“I see. You do know, don’t you, that this is rather like a bad dream? A very bad dream?”
“And what if I told you it was? What would you think then?”
“That I was mad. Stark, raving mad.”
“Ah, well, there you have it…”
“What? What are you talking about? Are you telling me this is all some sort of wild, paranoid delusion?”
“Why not?”
“Is it? Tell me, and I mean right now! Is this, or is this not real? Am I in a ballroom, in Tehran, in 1943?”
“Oh, yes. This is as real as it gets, Claire; of that you can be most sure.”
+++++
Levy was on the same aircraft with Claire when Roosevelt’s group left Tehran, and the entire group flew on to Cairo, then, after a brief stay in Algiers, on to Morocco. The Iowa and her escorts arrived then, and were waiting just offshore as the aircraft landed, but Roosevelt wanted to linger and visit Casablanca and Marrakech. Hull wouldn’t countenance any more delays, so gigs and launches ferried the group out to the Iowa, and within hours the ships set sail, steaming for Norfolk. Aircraft and submarines ranged ahead, looking for any signs of U-boat activity or other surface threats, but the first two days passed, generally speaking, with little anxiety. Then a lookout spotted a periscope on the second evening, and all hell literally broke loose. The escorting destroyers criss-crossed all around the Iowa, dropping dozens of depth-charges as they passed, and when nothing showed up on sonar the convoy resumed steaming straight for Virginia, only now at the greatest possible speed.
And then, Ben Levy asked to speak with Captain McCrea.
“There is a German surface raider working in the vicinity of Bermuda just now, Captain. I’d recommend heading a bit north, for Boston or Portland.”
“And where did you hear this, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?” the captain asked.
“I’m not sure I’m allowed to say, Captain, but I think either the President or Secretary Hull will vouch for me.”
“The Secretary already has. Any particular course you’d like me to steer?”
“Come right to two nine nine degrees and reduce your speed to sixteen knots. You’ll not need to refuel with this reduction, sir.”
“I see,” the captain said, more than a little incredulous now. “Perhaps you’d like to set a new watch-keeping schedule now, too,” McCrea added, not a little sarcastically.
Levy looked at the captain, understood the position he’d just put the man in and nodded his head. “Sir, a Focke-Wulf 200 C-4 is scheduled to depart San Sebastian at approximately 0430 tomorrow morning. This particular aircraft is equipped with the new FuG 200 Hohentwiel search radar, as well as one Hs-293 anti-shipping missile. There is a strong cold front approaching the area and visibility will be limited. I doubt they’ll fire based on radar returns alone.”
“I assume you work with the OSS?”
“Yessir, something like that.”
“So, what time would this aircraft intercept us on our current track?”
“It should be in the area sometime between 0830 and 0845. We’ll be out of range, by that point, for any allied aircraft to provide cover.”
“Well, why the devil don’t we head for Brazil, or even Argentina?”
“There are at least three large Wolf-packs operating in the area between Bermuda and Barbados, and I can assure you the German High Command is making a maximum effort to get to this ship.”
“You’re full of all kinds of good news, aren’t you, sir,” Captain McCrea said, but the man’s earlier sarcasm was gone now, replaced with something approaching genuine respect.
“Captain, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to meet me on the bridge this evening, call it 2100 hours. I’d recommend you get some sleep now…we may be in for a busy night.”
And with that, Levy walked from the bridge back through officer’s country to his cabin, but he stopped outside Claire’s cabin and knocked lightly on her door.
“Come on in,” he heard her say, and he smiled at the light, carefree sound of her voice, the genuine warmth her words conveyed.
“How’re you doing?” he asked when he saw her red eyes, not to mention the swollen, boggy cheeks under them. Her lips were reddish-blue, her nail-beds, too.
“Something about ships and the sea,” she said. “We just don’t get along.”
“The carbon-monoxide concentration in this room is too high. You need to come with me, get some fresh air.”
She nodded, started to stand but toppled over; he caught her and held her close for a long moment, let her pressures catch up for a moment before he led her through the confined walkways to a hatch that opened onto the foredeck. When her face hit the fresh sea air she revived almost instantly, and just then a seaman came by.
“Is she alright, sir,” the young man asked.
“We’ve got some noxious fumes working their way into her cabin. You’d better round up the X-O, and tell the captain he’d better check on the president’s cabin, too.”
The kid ran off and half a dozen men, both officers and ratings, showed up within minutes. Levy told them his concerns and the men took off, and sure enough, Roosevelt was feeling ill, too. Soon, most of the working group was gathered on deck, huffing sea air in great gulps, and soon enough more men carried out chairs and a small table; sandwiches appeared moments later, and pitchers of iced-tea, too.
“This your doing, Mr Levy,” Claire heard, and she turned to see the Captain McCrea walking their way.
“Yessir, ‘fraid so.”
“Well, we found some corrosion in a few pipes in that area, and a few shoddy floor welds, too. Quite possible we’d have had a few fatalities tonight without your intervention.”
“Yessir.”
The captain spun around and walked off, looking like he was about to go chew on some undercooked executive officer for lunch. Work details sprang into action all over the ship, while Claire looked at Benjamin with newfound respect, and now not quite sure what she felt about this kind-hearted stranger with death in his eye.
She turned and leaned into his shoulder just then, and when he put an arm around her she felt weak in the knees for a moment – until she remembered she really had no idea who – let alone what – this stranger really was.
+++++
It seemed most every one of the people in Roosevelt’s working group had surreptitiously found their way to the bridge just before nine that evening, and both Captain McCrea and the X-O were hunched over the chart table when Roosevelt was wheeled onto the bridge. All the servicemen snapped to attention and Claire could tell the President relished this little bit of pomp; nevertheless, he told them all to get back to their duties while Roy wheeled him over to windows that overlooked the foredeck.
“Why can’t I go out, Captain McCrea?” the President asked.
McCrea looked up, shook his head. “Thirty-eight degrees out, Mr President. Sea temp is fifty two, and sea state is, well sir, it’s going to be a rough night.”
“I see, John. Carry-on.”
Levy looked at a bulkhead mounted clock and walked over to the captain. “Any time now, sir.”
“X-O, bring the ship to general quarters, signal all ships: go dark now.”
“Aye, sir.” Moments later klaxons rang and men scrambled to their stations all over the ship, and forty seconds later the X-O announced “All stations manned and ready, Captain. Water-tight doors are set, and the ship is ready for air engagement…”
“Very well,” McCrea said.
Levy walked off the bridge to the radar operators compartment, and he looked at the screen for a moment…
“There he is,” Levy said, and the radar operator snapped to, began firming up the plot. Levy walked back out to the bridge.
“Captain, aircraft bearing zero two two degrees, fifty miles. Best guess is his altitude is ten thousand, possibly in a slight descent.”
“Alright. Radar, keep your reports coming.”
“Aye, sir. Single aircraft is turning in our direction now, still in a shallow dive, now about four-six miles out, speed now one seven zero knots.”
“You think that’s your Focke-Wulf?” McCrea asked Levy.
“Right profile, Captain. There were, are four of them up right now.”
“You think he’s got us?” McCrea asked, trying to ignore the slip.
“Yup.”
“What kind of range does that missile of his have?”
“It’s altitude dependent, sir. Anywhere from two to five kilometers.”
“Any idea how big his warhead is?”
“Roughly 300 kilos of high explosives. Signal your escorts to move in close now, sir. As close as they possibly can – without risking a collision. And let’s you and I go out to the bridge-deck, sir.”
“Alright…”
McCrea led the way, and he looked out into the night sky, saw a line of thunderstorms along the far horizon, the distant clouds silhouetted by flickering lightning.
“How far away?” Levy asked.
“Fifty, maybe seventy miles. Won’t do us a bit of good.”
They watched the cruiser and four destroyers sliding in closer and closer, the cruiser taking up station perhaps fifty yards off their starboard beam, the phosphorescence kicked up in it’s wake almost magnificent…
“Remind me, Mr Levy, just why the hell did I let you talk me into this?” McCrea said, turning to look at the civilian – but Levy was staring straight up into the night sky now…
At something bright blue.
“What the devil is that?” McCrea hissed, suddenly feeling betrayed.
“A friend, sir.”
Whatever IT was, the thing was resolving into a sphere now – yet it was impossible to gauge any idea of it’s size, let alone how far away it was…
“What is that, Benjamin?”
He turned, saw Roosevelt and Hull looking up at the blue sphere – and Claire, too, only she was looking at him, a million questions in her eyes.
He turned back to the sphere, saw its descent was slowing rapidly now, and its motion was apparent to everyone looking at it.
Then the X-O stuck his head out the hatch…
“Captain, zero bearing change, range now thirty five miles and closing.”
“Got it,” McCrea hissed. “Mr Levy?”
“Steady as she goes, Captain.”
McCrea shook his head. “Just how big is that thing, Levy?”
“Now about a mile in diameter. Its altitude is one hundred and ten thousand feet.”
“Jesus,” Hull sighed, “it’s huge. What did you say it was made of?”
“Pure energy, Mr Secretary,” Benjamin said, but he was looking into Claire’s eyes just then, trying to take the measure of her mood. She did not look happy, and he guessed because she had seen into the nature of his lie.
McCrea was looking up at the sphere now, and out of habit he checked his navigational stars: Vega was hovering near the zenith, while Deneb and Altair were down a bit, now to the southeast, but soon enough the sphere commanded all his attention. He held out his clinched fist, tried to measure its relative size against a known object, and just then the sphere was half the size of his extended fist. Then…thirty seconds later the object was as big as his fist…
Then the X-O stuck his head out the hatch again: “Sir, Mr Dawson is requesting weapons free; they want to engage the object overhead…”
“X-O, under no circumstances is anyone to open fire on that object. Make that clear to the C-O of each vessel in the group, and I mean NOW!”
“Aye-aye, Captain.”
“And where is that goddamn airplane!”
“Constant bearing now, Captain, and two-two miles out.”
“Mr Levy?” McCrea said, “I’m getting a little nervous. Why is that?”
Levy smiled, though it was too dark out for McCrea to see. “Me too, Captain.”
“Oh, swell.”
“Ben?” He heard Claire say his name and he opened his arm to her, felt her slip in by his side. He furled his arm around her and pulled her tight.
“It won’t be long now,” Levy sighed, staring at the sphere.
McCrea guessed the object was only a few hundred feet above the gunnery mast now, and he saw the surface of the sphere did indeed look like pure energy…it’s surface was covered with hairy blue – lightning, for want of a better word – and it was still closing fast. “Is this going to hurt when it hits?” McCrea asked.
“No sir,” Levy answered, “though some power systems may be temporarily affected.”
And seconds later the Iowa and her escorts were literally encased within the sphere, and in the next instant all seven ships went cold. The ever-present vibration of the ship’s power plant faded away, and in the same instant all power to every system on the ship simply tripped and fell silent.
McCrea looked up, tried to make out the contours of the sphere – but it was gone now, and no trace of it remained. Then… “What’s with the goddamn stars?”
“What about them?” Roosevelt said.
“Vega was on the zenith less than ten minutes ago; now it’s low on the southern horizon, while Altair and Deneb are higher in ascension. That can’t be.”
Levy hadn’t counted on this happening, hadn’t thought anyone would notice the changes in stellar positions, and he nodded his head. “Spherical aberration of being within the sphere,” he lied. “It ought to change when we re-emerge.”
“X-O? Where’s that aircraft?”
“Sir, all systems are dark now.”
“Well hallelujah and no fucking shit! Any of the ship’s lookouts still at their posts, Commander?”
“Yessir, and no reported sightings.”
“How about helm? We got any rudder authority?”
“Yessir, the auxiliary kicked-in.”
McCrea looked at the escorts and noted that all the other ships were still – more or less – safely abeam and not closing in. “Mr Levy, any idea how long this is gonna last?”
“Thirty, maybe forty minutes.”
“Somebody bring me a sextant,” McCrea grumbled, and within moments a seaman carried over the Plath almost reverentially and handed it to his captain. “Thanks, son.”
“Yessir.”
McCrea grumbled while he walked the transit in the moonless night, trying to zero-in the horizon, and when he was sure he had it on the line he dialed the vernier until the two horizon lines met; when he was sure he had what he needed he walked into the chartroom and pulled out his tables, started reducing the angles.
He soon realized none of the figures he had worked so he walked back out on the bridge-deck and shot almost-as-bright Altair, knowing that with this one higher in the night sky he had to be more careful with his horizons. Again he grumbled and growled, again he thought he got exactly what he needed, and again he walked to the chart-table, working through the tables and the math by candlelight.
The problem, he soon realized, was simple: neither Vega nor Altair were anywhere close to where they ought to be, and then he felt Levy by his side.
“Problem?” Levy said.
“You could say that, yes. Vega and Altair aren’t where they’re supposed to be, and I can’t account for it.”
“No, your sight reduction tables don’t go back that far.”
McCrea felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. “What did you say?”
“They haven’t been at these stellar coordinates in roughly eighty thousand years.”
McCrea didn’t know what to say, so he said – nothing.
“We find it far easier to move through time, Captain. I’m sorry…I should have warned you, but I didn’t count on your familiarity with the stars.”
“We?”
“My group.”
“Is that sphere…your ship?”
“That…? No, it’s more like a tool. Once inside the sphere we slip through time.”
“Uh-huh. And where did the sphere come from?”
“Our ship.”
“And where, Mr Levy, is that?”
And when Benjamin Levy pointed at the sky, Captain John McCrea shook his head. “And if you don’t mind me asking son, just where the hell are you from?”
“New London, sir.”
“Connecticut?”
“Yessir.”
“Uh-huh. Right.”
Levy chuckled. “Can’t say I blame you, sir. I wouldn’t believe me either.”
“How much longer?”
“Maybe ten minutes.”
“Well, let’s get back out there.”
“Yessir, but…could we keep this just between you and me?”
“Not on your fuckin’ life, Mr Levy.”
And Levy laughed, laughed until he couldn’t stop. He laughed as he walked out into the windy bridge-deck, laughed while Roosevelt looked to McCrea for an answer, but then the Captain simply shrugged and looked away in despair.
A few minutes later the sphere seemed to spontaneously reappear, then, as it shot up into the night sky, the Iowa’s systems came back to life. The boilers had to be re-ignited, pressure had to come up again, but diesel generators restored vital systems before that happened.
“Bridge, radar. We’re clear across the board here. No, repeat no radar contacts.”
McCrea shook his head, then looked up into the night sky again again. Vega was back where she was supposed to be; Altair and Deneb were as well. He brought the sextant back out and shot Vega, then Altair, taking his time to double check all his angles. He shot them again, just to make sure, then he retired to the chartroom.
An hour later he had reduced all his new shots, and when he crossed the arcs he looked up and smiled. In the last hour and a half the Iowa had moved perhaps a quarter mile. And what…? Eighty thousand years?
He looked up, saw Levy watching him as he worked.
‘No,’ Captain John McCrea thought, ‘on second thought, I think for once in my life I’ll just keep my mouth shut.’
The X-O walked over to the chart table and looked at this seasoned navigator’s work, then up at his captain. “Orders, Captain?”
“Resume heading of two-nine-nine, speed sixteen knots, and you have the con, X-O. Mr Levy and I are going for a little walk.”
Chapter 10
Claire too had seen the Shift, had seen Vega, Deneb and Altair drop down to the southern horizon, only she make a quick estimate of the change in right ascension and declination and worked through the math – in her head. Judging from these three stars alone, the earth’s relative position in the galaxy had either moved ahead forty thousand years, or retreated more than seventy thousand year. That meant, she guessed, the sphere was a cloud created from one electron, and what? By varying the charge rate the sphere could be made smaller or larger? But how could anyone do that? And what if, as many were beginning to suspect, there were particles smaller than electrons, protons and neutrons. How would that change the calculus of the phenomenon?
‘There’s still so much I don’t know,’ she whispered, her inner voice tinged with frustration, then she thought about Oppenheimer’s warning, his ‘paradox of time.’ If time was a river, a constantly flowing river, and if the flow was disrupted by a traveler venturing into the past, and if the river’s course was thereby altered, then everything that had happened after the alteration would be altered, too.
“So if,” Oppenheimer continued, “one was to go back far enough and teach cave men to make fire millennia before the original event, presumably mankind would be that much further along the curve.”
But then she had said something to the effect that “But what if one went back and prevented man from learning how to make fire, or how to make a wheel? Couldn’t an unscrupulous agent move through time to completely undermine human progress?”
“But why,” Oppenheimer sighed condescendingly, “would anyone want to do something like that?”
“Why is it, Robert,” Albert Einstein said to the assembled group, “that you assume human actions will always be rational, or even benevolent, when all human history is full of direct contradictions of that notion?”
“Because destruction is creative, Albert. It always has been.”
“Yet what if, and one day soon, we take our destructive impulses too far? What then, Robert? What will we have created?”
“Renewal, I should think, Albert.”
“Renewal?” Einstein sighed. “Whose renewal, Robert? Perhaps those Hindu gods of yours? Chamunda, I dare say?”
And what had Benjamin said? “We have to stop now, or else.” What did his ‘or else’ mean? He was implying direct consequences, wasn’t he? So ‘or else’ meant there was someone, somewhere, who would take great offense at her continued work within the Los Alamos group, and her tinkering with the fabric of time…
And she thought just then that ‘someone…somewhere’ was exactly the wrong way of looking at the problem. The real issue would most likely turn around the idea of someone, sometime. The idea that the river of time might be diverted in such a way that people in the future would be somehow negated, and so, perhaps, simply cease to be, had never occurred to her.
So what if Trevor and Benjamin had truly come from New London, Connecticut; if that was true, could Trevor indeed be her father? The idea washed over her for a while: ‘Yes – but only if my father was a time traveler. Or if he still was a time traveler. Yet they are trying to stop the me from working with the Los Alamos group, from studying this phenomenon. Why?’
The only plausible explanation would be to keep their present intact, and yet to do that they couldn’t overtly intervene. To repair that kind of damage would require that they move backwards in time again and to erase the damage done…but how could they – if their present was negated?
Then it hit her. Trevor had said he’d been born in the nineteenth century, and what if that was the truth?
But what about his eyes. And Benjamin’s, too. She’d never seen anything quite like them before, and they were identical. And both their heads were a little “off,” weren’t they. Not shaped quite right.
She shook her head, refused to think through the consequences of these little observations, the cause and effect, any further. She didn’t like where this path was taking her.
Oh no, not at all.
+++++
Levy stood on the bridge, looked out over the stormy seas, at the scudding clouds whipped along by the storm. The Iowa plowed through these towering waves, throwing great white walls of blue water over the foredeck, but the escorting destroyers weren’t have such an easy time now. He watched as one of them, one of the newer Buckley class DEs, struggled up and over a forty foot wave, the little ship’s helmsman obviously fighting to keep the hull from turning sideways to the wind and the waves and broaching, to, in effect, being rolled over. The Iowa could take these seas head-on, and for days if necessary, but these little “tin cans” could be seriously damaged, or lost, in a storm like this one.
But that’s not what Levy was thinking about.
No, and that was because, in the accounts he’d read about the Iowa’s role in the Tehran mission, she had never once diverted towards Portland, Maine. Roosevelt’s convoy had traveled, unmolested, directly to Norfolk, Virginia…so why had he decided to divert north? An extra measure of caution, perhaps? A sense that something wasn’t quite right?
They had known about the German Condors flying out of northern Spain, the Wolf-packs operating in the south- and mid-Atlantic, as well as the raiders patrolling south of Bermuda, but what didn’t they know about? The weather, for one, but then there were all the other ships and submarines on patrol, ships whose activities had never been recorded by history. Each was suddenly a great unknown, and now he wondered if, by altering the Iowa’s course two days before, he had begun to alter the flow of time. If that was true, the assumed outcome of this trip – Roosevelt’s safe return to Washington, D.C., was now in jeopardy.
+++++
Großadmiral Karl Dönitz read through the latest dispatches then looked over the assembled nautical charts; most laid out the approaches to the Straits of Gibraltar, two represented waters around the Azores. Next, he looked at the assumed track of the convoy, then last nights report that a Condor flying out of Spain had developed a positive track on the ships. The convoy had deployed some kind of new electro-magnetic weapon, and the ships had simply disappeared; when news of this development landed on Hitler’s desk that morning, an invective storm had enveloped the entire command hierarchy in Berlin. “One of our maritime patrol aircraft had Roosevelt in its sights, then the ship simply disappeared?! Find this convoy! Find Roosevelt, and kill him!”
Dönitz looked over the dispatch one more time, and once again he plotted the coordinates on the relevant charts, then he looked over his fleet readiness report.
Unencumbered by escorting destroyers, Scharnhorst could, conceivably, make a dash into the North Atlantic and intercept the convoy at the Georges Banks. The weather would be treacherous, but that might work to their benefit. The Condor’s pilot had remarked that the convoy was only making 15-16 knots, a fuel conserving rate, meaning the Iowa’s escorts wouldn’t need to refuel at Bermuda. So, the convoy would be approaching Halifax in bad weather and in a perilously low fuel state. And air cover would be unavailable in such a storm, too.
He picked up the phone on his desk. “I need to speak with Konteradmiral Eric Bey immediately.”
Three hours later, the Scharnhorst left Narvik and slipped quietly through the Vestfjorden – bound for the calm waters of the Georges Bank.
+++++
20 December 1943
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this bad out,” the X-O said as the Iowa’s bow disappeared inside another sixty foot wave. The windshield wipers were working overtime now, having been set at maximum power for more than thirty hours, and the storm hadn’t abated in the least.
Captain McCrea looked at the Indiana, now about a quarter mile off their port quarter, through his ever-present binoculars, and he held his breath as he watched her disappear briefly under a fresh sixty-foot wave. He resumed breathing only when he saw her forward guns break free of all that blue water.
“Signal Indiana to reduce speed to ten knots,” the captain said as he eyed a train of sixty footers bearing down on his ship. “Come left to two-six-zero; let’s take these waves head-on for a while, stop the rolling as best we can, and someone see if Mr Levy can make it up to the bridge now.”
He heard men moving and instantly regretted the order. Most everyone below was strapped into bunks, though out of sheer desperation some tried to use the head. Only the truly insane aboard made their way to one of the ship’s dining rooms, but no matter what was eaten, the half-digested muck soon came right back up. Sending someone to fetch Levy meant a seaman would have to navigate three passageways and two stairways; almost a suicide mission under these conditions. He hoped Levy had his sea legs now…
“Indiana acknowledges ten knots and two-six-zero, Captain.”
“Very well,” McCrea said, glad he’d sent the lighter DEs south to Bermuda; they’d have had a truly evil time in these seas. Now, with less than five hundred miles to go he wanted to breath easy. He wanted to believe the worst was over.
But something was bothering him. Something important. What was he missing?
“X-O, let’s fire up the radar, see if we have any company.”
“Aye, sir.”
The latest radar arrays were enclosed in small domes, structures perhaps 15 feet in diameter. The first convoys to make the Murmansk run lost radar when freezing sea water rendered the radomes inoperable; now almost all naval vessels were operating with enclosed sets, yet even so, the latest were hardly any better when operating in a sea-state like this. Waves and rain conspired to make all but the largest targets hard to acquire, and the ship’s violent motion didn’t much help matters.
“Bridge, radar, I have a large target bearing seven-two degrees, two zero miles. Standby for a speed.”
McCrea and the X-O looked at one another. There was no allied shipped this far north, not in this storm, so it could only be one thing.
“The Brits got Tirpitz, right?” McCrea asked.
“Yessir, but the Scharnhorst is operational, and last I heard the Prinz Eugen was in the Baltic.”
McCrea shook his head. “Signal Indiana, let ‘em know the situation and tell them to come right to two-eight-zero, increase speed to flank. Helm, steady on two-six-zero, increase speed, all ahead full.”
“She has eleven inch guns, right, sir?”
“Yup, but they’re not radar-controlled. In these seas she’d need all the luck in the world to even get close. Tell Indiana to run parallel when she’s five miles off our beam. If Scharnhorst manages to close we’ll give her a broadsides at ten thousand yards.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Is it Scharnhorst, sir?” McCrea heard Levy ask.
“My, my, as I live and breathe…it’s Mr Levy. And what a surprise, he knows the tactical situation, too.”
Levy ignored the sarcasm. “What’s his range, Captain McCrea?”
“About twenty miles.”
“Bridge, radar, now picking up a second target, same range, same bearing, two nine knots.”
“That will be the Prinz Eugen, Captain.”
“No kidding. Gee whiz, my lucky day.”
“What speed can we make?”
“In these seas…twenty-seven? Those ships won’t be seaworthy after this beating, and the Prinz Eugen only has eight inch guns.”
“Both have 12 torpedo tubes, Captain,” Levy added.
“Won’t do them any good…not in these seas.”
Levy walked over to a barometer. “Rising?”
“That’s right, and this storm will clear from the southwest.”
“Air cover?”
McCrea shook his head.
“I see,” Levy sighed – as he left the bridge.
+++++
December, 1988
Naval Air Station, Brunswick, Maine
“Mauler 7-0-4, clear to taxi runway one-niner left, altimeter two-niner niner one, wind one eight seven at twelve.”
“7-0-4 to one niner left,” Lieutenant Noel Stevens replied, then he turned to his co-pilot, a nugget, Lieutenant-j.g. Dan Cox, fresh out of his S-3 course at Jax. “Got the TACAN freqs entered?”
“Yessir.”
“Gimme flaps 10.”
“Ten, aye.”
“Weps? How y’all doin’ back there?”
“Kewl beans, skipper. All checklists complete.”
“Okeedoke.”
“7-0-4,” Brunswick tower said, “taxi short of the runway and hold. P-3 on final.”
“Four, holding short.” Stevens looked at the mottled gray Orion on short final, and he followed it with his eyes all the way to touchdown while he worked his controls and pumped the brakes a few times. “Arm spoilers,” he told Cox. “Set yaw-dampers to stand-by.”
“Got it.”
“7-0-4, clear for take-off. Contact Boston Center 123.3, and good day.”
“Four rolling, one-two-three – three,” Stevens said as he advanced the throttles to the Viking’s pre-set take off power.” The Lockheed accelerated smoothly down the runway and he listened as Cox called out their speeds; he pulled back on the stick at one forty and at three degrees nose up the S-3B climbed gently, quickly gaining speed.
“Boston, Mauler 7-0-4 out of NAS Brunswick. We’re en route to check out a contact south of Halifax. We’ll maintain 500 AGL out of Class B, and 3-3-0 knots.”
“7-0-4, roger. No civilian traffic at this time, clear to depart your discretion.”
Mauler 704 was a Lockheed S-3B, the “Sea Control” variant of the S-3 Viking family, armed with two AGM-84 Harpoon anti-shipping missiles. An unidentified hostile surface contact, most likely a Russian cruiser, had been picked up by an Ohio class SSBN transiting the Georges Bank, and as 7-0-4 was the closest aircraft armed with Harpoons, Stephens and Cox got the call. Flying over the Gulf of Maine at 350 miles per was, generally speaking, great fun, but not when a potential hostile was lurking out there somewhere.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky this morning, and the seas were mirror-calm as the Viking skimmed along a few hundred feet above the surface, and within forty minutes they were in the reported area…
“Weps? Anything?”
“Nothing, skipper. Just some X-band stuff going into Gloucester. Fishing boats, a couple of stinkpots. No vodka burners.”
“Well, fuck,” Stephens said, cutting the power and trimming the aircraft into a gentle climb. “Go ahead and light off the -137. Let’s see what we’re missing…”
Mauler 7-0-4 quickly reached fifteen thousand feet, but that was as high as he dared go out here. They were still well under the track of all trans-Atlantic traffic flying in and out of New York and Boston now, but he didn’t want to get tangled up in that mess.
“Skip? What if that Boomer picked up an Akula?”
“Wrong plant noise.”
“I read something a few weeks ago. The Akula apparently sounds pretty rough running on the surface.”
“Taylor? You shittin’ me? A nuc boat sounding like a diesel cruiser? What are you smoking back there?”
“Hey, I’m just thinkin’ out loud, ya know?”
“And we haven’t got MAD gear on this crate either, let alone any torps,” Stephens added as he reefed the Viking into a tight climbing right turn. He scanned his instruments, then looked up into the sky…
“What the fuck is that?” he said, leveling out the wings, then turning hard to the left.
“What?” Cox said.
Stephens pointed across Cox’s chest, straight up towards space. “That!”
“Looks like some kind of a energy disturbance, like St Elmo’s fire,” Cox said. “It’s descending.”
Stephens leveled the Viking, checked his ECM panel. “Weps? Got anything airborne, maybe flight level five zero, descending?”
“Radar’s clear, skipper.”
“Ah, Portland, Mauler 704, you have any traffic over head, say extreme flight level, like flight level five-zero?”
“7-0-4, only traffic we get up there is Concorde, and none are in the area right now.”
“Okay Portland, we’ve got a large blue sphere descending near this location, and nothing showing up on radar, either. Doesn’t appear to be a conventional aircraft and it looks too slow to be some sort of re-entry vehicle.”
“7-0-4, still negative radar contact.”
“Uh, skipper, that thing’s comin’ on down real fast,” Cox said. “Maybe we should give it some room, ya know?”
“I want to get closer, be right by it when it passes.”
“It’s gonna be close alright…”
“Jesus,” Stephens cried, “look at the size of that thing…”
And in the next instant Mauler 4-0-7 disappeared from air traffic control radars in Halifax, Portland and Boston.
+++++
And in the next instant Stephens fought to regain control of his aircraft…
The Viking had suddenly and without warning entered a violent thunderstorm – he chopped the throttle and trimmed for level flight, fighting to keep his eyes on the panel in the violent motion.
“Where the fuck did THAT come from!” he shouted, trying to make his voice heard over the hail battering his windshield, flipping his radar display to WTX, ranging in on the nearest red cell.
“Skipper, outside air temp just dropped from 55 to 22,” Cox cried, “and we got blowin’ snow out there!”
“Get some bleed air goin’ on the leading edge, pitot and AOA anti-ice set to MAX,” Stephens said, cutting the power even more. “Uh, Portland, 4-0-7, do you read?”
Nothing…not even static.
“Check the breakers, maybe we took some lightning.”
“Checked. Nothin’ tripped.”
“Set COMM1 to scan then set COMM2 to Halifax, and better get the transponder to 7700 and squawk ident.”
“Skipper?” Weps said, his voice wary now, “I got four contacts, 0-3-4 magnetic and sixty miles.”
“Anything else out here?”
“Nada, skipper.”
“Okay,” Stephens sighed, “let’s get out of this crud and see what’s happenin’ down there on the water,” he said, cutting power yet again and trimming for a steeper dive.
Then, over the scanning radio: “Iowa, Iowa, we’re taking fire, repeat, we’re taking fire.”
“Roger, Indiana, come left to 2-0-5 magnetic. We’ll cross behind you, you target the first ship, we’ll fire on the second after we pass.”
“What the fuck?” Stephens said, looking at Cox. “Weps, start calling out range and speed to that first contact…”
“Roger…now 0-2-0 degrees and nine miles.”
“You got the frequency?”
“242.2,” Cox said. “Locked in.”
“Iowa, this is Mauler 7-0-4, what’s your sit-rep, over.”
“Mauler 7-0-4, identify.”
“Uh, 7-0-4, we’re an S-3 out of Brunswick, VS-32, and we got two Harpoons if you need ‘em.”
+++++
McCrea looked at his X-O and shrugged. “Do you know what an S-3 is?”
His X-O shook his head as the Captain walked to the radio room.
“Okay, 7-0-4, this is BB-61 and we’ve got two bad guys on our ass. They’re about four miles behind us, and they’ve bracketed the Indiana twice with surface fire, and we’ve got torpedoes in the water.”
“61, 7-0-4, say again? You are engaged with surface combatants?”
“Affirmative, 7-0-4. Two hostiles firing at us.”
Stephens looked at Cox and shrugged. “Light off the wing cameras. Weps, target vessel three.”
“Targeting. Target acquired.”
“Lock on target.”
“Locked on. Getting some radar bleed now, skipper.”
“Jam him.”
“ECM to active.”
Stephens had his Viking 300 feet above the waves now, heading right for Contact One, whoever this BB61 really was…and then he saw the ship dead ahead…
Then he saw three shells land in the sea on either side of the Iowa – just as his aircraft screamed overhead…
+++++
“And just what the devil was that!” Captain McCrea screamed. “You ever seen anything like that before?”
“No, sir,”
“Get Mr Levy up here, goddamnit! On the double!”
+++++
“Was that the Iowa?” Cox screamed.
“Yup. Weps, ready on one.”
“One ready.”
“One away.”
“Firing one.”
The first Harpoon, the missile hanging outboard of the Viking’s left engine, leapt off the rail in a searing white roar…
+++++
Rear Admiral Eric Bey saw the launch from the Scharnhorst’s bridge, but he had no idea what it was beyond a brilliant white light. Alarms starting sounding when lookouts called an aircraft on the horizon dead ahead, yet Bey couldn’t believe that. No aircraft could possibly be up in this weather, let alone engage in combat operations…
Then he saw the missile streak by, perhaps two hundred meters off his port beam, and he ran out on the bridge-deck and watched it home-in on the Prinz Eugen. His hands on the ice covered rail, he saw the impact…indeed, he could feel the heat moments later…and despite the snow and the wind it took minutes for the his first view of the burning wreckage to emerge from the flames and billowing smoke.
“Radar! Where is that aircraft!” Bey called out, frantic now.
He saw the two battleships still ahead and shook his head…
“Hard right rudder, make your course zero two zero, make smoke and all ahead full!”
+++++
“Skipper?” the Viking’s weapons control officer said calmly. “Aspect change on target three. He’s breaking off, sir.”
“Okay, I see him now,” Stephens said as he flew over the flaming hulk of the Prinz Eugen. “See the flag?” he asked Cox as 7-0-4 flew past the sinking battle-wagon.
“German?”
“NAZI German, as a matter of fact. Weps, safe your weapon.”
“Roger. Harpoon two to safe.”
“Make sure the camera is getting all this,” Stephens said to Cox.
“It’s recording, getting a good image.”
He cut power and trimmed his nose up a little, let more speed bleed off until he knew he needed to drop some flaps. Using the joystick, Cox centered the camera on the Scharnhorst’s stern, the vessel’s name and hailing port clear in the display.
“Scharnhorst?” Cox asked.
“Uh-huh. She went down in ‘44, I think.”
“What? You mean, as in 1944? That we just engaged – and sunk – a German battlewagon that hasn’t existed in fifty years?”
“Yup, that’s what it looks like,” Stephens said, grinning. Let’s get some Mark I eyeballs on those two Navy ships…”
As Stephens reefed the little jet into a tight turn, and now on a reciprocal heading to the US ships, he barely felt the presence of the sphere again – then seconds later Mauler 7-0-4 burst out into radiantly clear skies. He checked the condition of his aircraft, knowing instinctively that the Iowa was gone now, then he checked-in with Brunswick as he changed course back to the base, not quite knowing what waited for him in the days ahead, and not at all sure what they had just experienced. Whatever had happened, he thought, at least it had been more exciting than chasing phantom Russian trawlers…
Chapter 11
Roosevelt was, apparently, taken to a train waiting for him in Portland, and from there he rode to Boston, then on to the White House, while Claire and Ben Levy accompanied Charles back to the Wilkinson home in Philadelphia for a few days rest. They arrived on Christmas eve, just in time for dinner, and the house was decorated just as Claire remembered. A little over the top, as always, but festive and gay.
For there were children roaming the halls once again, and the stairs and hallways echoed with laughter.
Charles had two now, both boisterous boys, while Liz had three – two boys and a very little girl – while poor, barren Amanda had finally given in to her various depressions and learned to eat. When Claire first saw Amanda that evening she could hardly believe her eyes, for the glorious blond-headed dream-boat of Mainline Society had blossomed into something quite unrecognizable. Sullen didn’t begin to describe the look on poor Amanda’s face; no, her’s was the quiet lassitude of broken dreams…too many nighttime visits by Rupert had simply cut the girl loose from mundane things – like reality. She muttered to her demons no matter where she was, no matter who was around to listen.
And as these things so often do, her latest series of outbreaks was attended by Benjamin Levy.
+++++
Amanda was sitting at the piano in the library, staring at sheet music when he walked into the vast, high-ceilinged room. He did not see her sitting there as he walked to one of the shelves and pulled a book down, for she had neither moved nor spoken a single word.
Then he heard a child’s forlorn cry and turned to see Amanda in animated discussion with – no one. She was fully engaged in an argument, the contours of which remained a mystery to him as he listened, though he heard references to unwanted advances and pleas to a doctor…
He watched her for some time, fascinated. He’d heard of schizophrenia, of course, but had never seen evidence of its existence before, and watching this woman rattle on as if fully engaged in a life or death struggle was at once as interesting as it was troubling.
He moved closer to the piano yet the woman didn’t respond to his presence, and he realized he simply didn’t exist to her right now, at least not in the world this woman inhabited. Wherever this woman was, she simply was not in the same place he was.
Then Claire walked into the room, looking first at Ben, then at her sister.
She walked over to the piano and looked at Amanda, then to Benjamin. And at the book in Benjamin’s hand.
Tolstoy’s Resurrection. Now…why had he taken that book from the shelves?
And she could almost remember when books like that one had consumed all her interest – until they didn’t – couldn’t – anymore. Until the overt primacy of the physical world became self apparent, and how after that epiphany she had turned away from literature and music.
Then, hearing Amanda’s words, she fell inside the distant conversation, and her pleas to the demons that haunted her…
And so Claire moved to her sister’s side, sat beside her on the piano bench and put an arm around Amanda’s shoulders.
“Oh, my poor dear,” Claire said, startled at the change she found now, “what’s bothering you this fine Christmas eve?”
And those words seemed to pull Amanda back into the present – for a moment. “Claire? You’re home?”
“Yes, precious, I am.”
“Play for me, would you?”
Claire shook her head, as if she hadn’t quite understood the words. “Play?”
“Yes. Debussy. Remember how you used to sit and play for father?”
“Yes.”
“When you played, he left me alone. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I loved it when you played Debussy most of all. He left me alone for days.”
“I’m sorry, my love. I didn’t know.”
“Did you love me, Claire?”
“Yes, of course. I always have.”
“That’s so sweet of you to say. I wished I was younger when you came to us. That we could have played together. As it was, I was most afraid of you…”
“Afraid? Why?”
“Why? Because you were so much larger than life. Seven years old and reading books even my mother hadn’t, playing Debussy for us all, showing us the way forward, away from all the nightmares in this house.”
“I don’t understand, Amanda.”
“Really? I was so jealous of you…”
“Jealous? But really, it was I who was jealous…of you! You’ve always been the gorgeous one, so charming and full of poise, and I knew I’d never be as beautiful as you…”
And Amanda leaned over, let her head rest on Claire’s shoulder. “And look at me now,” she whispered. “Look at me now, dear sister.”
“I am, dearest. And do you know what? I think you need to come with me, out to New Mexico, and live with me for a while.”
“New Mexico?”
“Yes. Did you know I have a horse there, and mountain trails to ride? Streams to fish, pools to swim in? You’d love it, Amanda. Won’t you think about it? We could have so much fun…”
“Play something for me, Claire.”
“But…I haven’t, not in years.”
“Debussy? Please?”
“The Clair de lune? I might remember that…”
“Yes, please. That was always father’s favorite.”
Claire turned and faced the piano, and though it had been twenty years she played as if it had been only days. She played and played and Amanda wept, gently at first, then openly – as her nightmares came for her in this ancient room…their knives drawn, patiently waiting for just the right moment as they circled.
+++++
While Claire played Ben Levy looked at these two creatures and wondered about the things they had shared. About the things that had pushed them apart once upon a time, and about the tragic, unseen bond that held them so close even now. He thought about what it meant to be human, to be part of a family. About the betrayals you can never forgive, as if the moments that held these two people fast together were tragic moments trapped in memory. He thought about music, human music – and the music of the spheres. Yet all the blood in the universe couldn’t explain what he had just seen…the tears on Amanda’s face the echoes of another little girl’s betrayals, the solace she took from lost chords, notes played by echoes of another little girl – one blissfully unaware of all the other little betrayals that had lay waiting in this kaleidoscope of shadows.
All these hidden emotions were right there in front of him, on two faces hiding as one.
And if he’d ever wondered what it would be like to be betrayed by a father, here was all the evidence one would ever need – in this amber shadowland, lives hiding just out of sight until the fault lines became too hard to ignore. Until that other voice spilled out of the light of day, no longer content to wait for satisfaction.
When Claire finished walking through these conjoined memories she stood abruptly and walked out of the library, while Amanda resumed her dialogue with the dead. Benjamin opened Tolstoy to a bookmark and looked at the words on the page for a moment, then he followed Claire out into the shadows.
He walked to a vast parlor, what was being called a living room these days, and he stared at the Christmas tree set up before a huge expanse of diamond-paned leaded-glass windows. The house, he saw, was some sort of approximation of a Tudor mansion, with reddish brick augmented by blackish-brown timbers and sharply arced doors separating one room from another, all set-off by a huge stone fireplace along a far wall. The Christmas tree was a good twelve feet tall, and he saw an infinite number of amber reflections set amongst the green needles, reflections of other lights long gone, reflections of memories patiently waiting to be reexamined.
There were even stockings set on the mantle, he saw, and he remembered a time when such things had meant something to him. A life he’d never known, of course, yet attractive in the way borrowed memories often are.
Presents under the tree, countless expectations wrapped in endless anticipation. So much happiness, so many memories waiting to be made, wanting to be made.
What if it all disappeared tomorrow, he asked himself? What if I make another mistake? I very nearly cost Roosevelt his life, and Claire’s. What if McCrea hadn’t turned on the radar? What if Scharnhorst had crept up on them unawares? What if the Iowa had perished in those cold, storm-tossed seas? And Claire, too? If she had been lost, then what?
He had to admit now he was starting to feel something for her. Nothing like attraction, though not really, but perhaps more like admiration, even a grudging respect. Hers was a towering intellect, beyond anything these people had ever encountered, yet she seemed, if not unaware then perhaps simply careless about the implications of her strength of mind. So few minds reached her state of development, anywhere, yet when such power arose the universe took note. There were a handful of such minds on earth now, and that might soon become a problem. If they succeeded in detonating their device the universe would take note, and then he’d have to decide what to do.
If they came he’d have to go back once again, go back to that night of drifting icebergs and frantic pleading. Outcomes would have to be altered once again, destinies sent in new directions. He’d have to kill her this time, before she started changing outcomes again, before he fell in love with her – again. And most of all, before their daughter rose from the ashes and destroyed them all.
Again.
+++++
He sat across from Claire – and Amanda – his eyes trained on the gently passing landscape on the far side of the glass. They were on the Southwest Chief, now about halfway between Chicago and Lamy, New Mexico, and Claire was reading a report from Boeing engineers detailing reinforcements made to the outboard engine nacelles on three B-29s that had just come off the line; simulated blasts had rendered catastrophic damage to all three test aircraft and she was vexed now – because they had ignored her suggestion that they use either a heavier gauge steel, or consider an even stronger, though experimental, laminated metal…
Amanda was staring at her reflection in the window, talking to a man who looked suspiciously like her father – and who was holding a knife to her belly, apparently getting ready to slice her open and remove the unborn child from her womb…
Levy saw Amanda tense as she cried out and shook his head, then he turned away in embarrassed despair in search of silence, wondering not only how, but why Claire thought she would be able to take care of this wounded creature. Or why she should? There were hospitals, after all, and Claire would never be able to dedicate the necessary time for the level of care Amanda would require. And…she wasn’t even biologically related! Why wouldn’t Charles or Elizabeth step forward and take over her care…?
‘Does she expect me to care for this poor creature?” Ben sighed inwardly. ‘If so, she will be very disappointed…’ No, he would begin work at 3M after the war. ‘His’ family would move to Minneapolis, and Claire would commence teaching and stop all work on the Shift. She had to. He had explained that to her more than once, and she’d said she understood the implications of continuing, the repercussions such a course of action guaranteed.
He turned and looked at Claire again, still lost in that latest engineering report.
“Anything new?” he asked.
“They used aluminum again. Three aircraft lost.”
“Titanium would be better.”
“Titanium? How so?”
“Have the their metallurgists and engineers look at this formula,” he said, scribbling on the back of an envelope:
“I had no idea you were a misogynist, Mr. Levy,” Claire sighed.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because,” Amanda interjected, “you’re speaking to her like a misogynist asshole, Asshole.”
Claire’s left eyebrow arced sharply, then she tried to stifle the laugh she knew was coming.
“That was a little paternalistic of me, wasn’t it?” Ben sighed.
“A little?” Amanda asked.
“I’m sorry,” he added, taking the envelope again and writing on the back at an incomprehensible speed. “So, essentially, if one takes refined rutile from raw titanium ore, you reduce it further with a petroleum-derived coke in a fluidized bed reactor at 1000 degrees centigrade. Next, the resulting mixture should be treated with chlorine gas, giving you titanium tetrachloride, as well as a few other other nasty chlorides,” Levy said, grinning manically. “Next, these should be separated by further continuous fractional distillation, then, in a separate reactor, the titanium tetrachloride should be further reduced by liquid magnesium, at, say, 800 to 850 degrees centigrade, and this will ensure complete reduction. The resulting alloy will meet your requirements.”
“Oh? How strong is it?”
“Several orders of magnitude, I should think, than what they’re currently using, and not nearly so heavy.”
She took the envelope and studied it – while Amanda looked at Levy.
“Who are you,” Amanda said at long last.
“Me? Just your average industrial chemist.”
“You’re an asshole,” Amanda said, looking him in the eye, daring him to challenge her.
“Am I?”
“Yes. And I’m not at all sure I trust you.”
“And why should you? You hardly know me?”
“Claire hardly knows you. Why does she trust you?”
“Because she knows me better than you think likely, or even possible.”
“You speak in circles a lot, you know?”
“Occupational hazard, I suppose.”
“Never a straight answer,” Amanda sighed, then she returned to staring at the myriad reflections in the window…waiting for their return…
Chapter 12
The house was odd, he thought. Odd, and tiny.
How had Claire made the adjustment? From that house in Philadelphia – to this?
The entire house – all three bedrooms of it – was quite literally smaller than the library in the Philadelphia house. The walls were bare; not a single picture adorned the walls. There was no paneling on the walls, no library, and just one bathroom a little larger than a telephone booth.
And while Claire had returned to her own bedroom, and put Amanda in a large bedroom near her own, she had put him in a tiny space off the kitchen he assumed had been provided for some sort of domestic help.
And here he had thought she was developing feelings for him…
He lay in his bed that night thinking about this sudden uncomfortable turn of events, wondering if he should simply abort the mission and return to the ship, try to reconcile events that had already been altered with potentially more agreeable outcomes likely in the near future. Still, he knew what they’d say…
‘It’s a good plan…stick with it a little longer…’
Planting dreams…molding the shape of her intellect to help create the best possible outcome…and then she’d stumbled upon the Shift – the worst possible outcome imaginable. All it would take to sunder the current order was one simple ripple in the fabric of time caused by the shift – and then They would come. The people living on earth now thought they knew what true evil was, but no one here had ever met one of Them. The silent ones, the mind readers. Keepers…that’s what they called themselves. No one knew what they kept, unless it was a certain order to the universe.
He thought about that for a moment…
What if someone went back to the very beginning of time, to the moment when the universe came into being? To the moment of inception? What if someone went back and took that cosmic thimble full of matter and put it in a suitcase, then simply made the suitcase disappear? What if all the matter of the universe simply vanished? What then?
The theory said that if the Shift began it would send the universe back to this zero point. Was that what the Keepers sought to prevent? What if the Shift was unstoppable once it started, if the arrow of time became corrupted?
The shift was fundamentally different than the TimeShadows. The spheres could be controlled, and easily, and time travel could take place without distorting the flow of time. Not so with the Shift. The Shift was a one way ticket back to the beginning, and conceivably whatever lurked before the beginning.
Before the beginning?
Is that what the Keepers are guarding?
He sat up in bed and walked out the door to the kitchen, then he stumbled to an open door and he walked out onto the stone patio and looked out at the stars. Was there something beyond, he wondered? Something on the other side of all that blackness? Was that the secret?
He heard someone coming out of the house, walking up behind him – and he stood perfectly still, looking at the pole star, imagining the earth spinning round and round.
Silence. Only the sound of someone breathing.
He turned, saw Amanda standing there, a large knife in her hand, a slash-wound across her belly.
His eyes went wide, he began to feel panic for the first time in his life. “What have you done!” he cried…then she lunged at him, the knife aiming right at his heart.
+++++
Claire heard Amanda walk from her room, heard the door that led to the backyard open. She shook her head and slipped on her jeans and hiking boots, walked through the living room until she saw Amanda in the yard, the knife drawing back. She saw Benjamin standing there with his back to them both, looking, as he seemed to do often, at the stars – and she knew what was going to happen. She started running, and was through the door when Ben started to turn around. She came up from behind Amanda as she lunged, hooked her arm around Amanda’s neck and knocked her to the ground, then she saw the belly wound and thought maybe he had done it.
Ben was kneeling now, applying pressure, but the flow of blood was simply catastrophic. Without thinking he pressed his left temple and waited…
+++++
The scientist’s compound at Los Alamos was, in early 1944, one of the most heavily guarded facilities in the United States. Guards in Jeeps patrolled constantly – both the paved streets and the rugged arroyos that surrounded the compound. Several guards saw the blue sphere that settled over the small house on Sycamore Street, and they raced to investigate.
When they arrived they found blood in the backyard, the back door to the house standing wide open – and no one inside the house.
And no blue sphere.
Thirty four minutes later Harry Hopkins walked into the president’s bedroom and gently shook Roosevelt’s shoulder.
+++++
The room was impossibly small, the walls bright red – and Claire shook her head as the dream…but no, this wasn’t a dream, was it? Amanda was on an operating table and two machines were hovering over her body. Retractors had pulled open and revealed an enormous cavity; the robots were moving so fast she could neither see nor understand what they were doing. Screen flashed as readouts changed, one of the machines hovered over to what looked like a storage device and opened it and then plugged a bag of red fluid – was it blood – into the IV that coursed into Amanda’a arm.
She saw that Ben was beside her, and that they were in a small clean room off the operating room, and that Ben was talking on an intercom of some sort.
“She’s lost too much blood,” she heard him say, and she began to fear the worst. Then she heard him say: “Are you sure?”
He listened for a moment, then keyed codes on some kind of electronic pad. One of the machines stopped what it was doing and went back to the storage unit, pulled out another bag and added that to the IV.
Ben turned to her. “She’ll be alright now,” he said.
“But…she’s dying…”
“She was, yes.”
“What do you mean, she was?”
“She is not dying now. She will be better in about five hours. We can return to the house then.”
“Are you kidding? Look at her!”
But then Claire turned and looked at her sister; now the fourteen inch long gash was simply gone, and her color was improving – right before her eyes.
“What have you done to her?”
“She’ll be better now. In every way.”
“In every way? What do you mean?”
“You will see.”
“Where are we?”
“A hospital.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“You won’t tell me?”
“No. I cannot.”
She turned and looked at Amanda. “Why did she do this?”
“I do not know.”
“What’s wrong with you, Ben? You don’t…you’re not speaking right.”
“I am tired. I must rest.”
And with that he turned and walked from the little room, but the door slid shut behind him as he left, leaving her locked inside the tiny cabin. She looked at Amanda, at the machines working on her, then she too felt tired. A small bed slid out of the wall and she just made it before she passed out.
+++++
She woke and looked around, rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed. Her bed, in her bedroom. In Los Alamos. The hard sunshine pouring in through the window left sharp shadows on the walls, and the sky over the spine of the Sangre de Cristo was the deepest blue she had ever seen…and then she remembered the blood.
Amanda!
Then, she heard knocking on the door. Frantic knocking, then men at the window, looking in. One saw her and tapped on the glass…
“Dr Aubuchon?”
“Yes, just a minute. Let me get dressed, please.”
The man seemed to visibly relax, then he disappeared around the side of the house. She slipped into her jeans and put on a flannel shirt, then walked to Amanda’s room. Her sister was sleeping fitfully so she let her be, then walked to the kitchen, and into Ben’s room.
Gone. The room was empty, and there was no trace of him at all.
She walked to the front door and opened it, saw a half-dozen uniformed and plain-clothes policemen standing there, all looking very agitated.
“Dr Aubuchon?”
“Yes?”
“We’ve been searching for you for hours now!” one of them, apparently an FBI agent, said. “We found blood all over the backyard…”
“I’m so sorry,” Claire began. “My sister fell and cut herself last night. I ran her down to Santa Fe.”
“Officers saw some sort of sphere descend on the house. Do you know anything about that? Some sort of experiment, perhaps?”
She looked at the agent and shrugged. “I wasn’t conducting any experiments.”
“So…everything’s okay here?”
“Yes, and thank you for your concern.”
“Is your sister here, or at the hospital?”
“Here. Back in her bedroom now, sound asleep.”
“There was a lot of blood…what happened to her?”
Claire looked down. “I’m sorry, but she has emotional issues. Hallucinations.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the agent said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“It’s no intrusion, officer. Would you like to check on her, see for yourself?”
“That’s alright, Ma’am. Doctor Oppenheimer would like you to check in with his office as soon as you can.”
She nodded. “Thanks, I will.”
“Well, good day, doctor.”
“And you,” she said, closing the door, then she retreated to the kitchen, to Ben’s room. There was no sign he’d ever been there and she felt gut-punched, almost bereft – because she knew he wouldn’t be back. She walked, head down, into the kitchen – wondering if, after last night, life would ever be the same.
Those machines! Performing surgery! And the red walls…? It had to be that ship…
She put her hands out and steadied herself on the counter, took a few deep breaths, then she saw another agent in the backyard, just standing there, looking up at the sun.
Then she saw the shape of the man’s head, and she just knew.
She went back out to the patio. “Ben?” she asked, and the man turned around.
“No,” the man said.
“Do you know where he is?”
“He failed. He will not be returning.”
“Failed? What did he fail to do?”
“To protect you, and your family.”
“He didn’t fail…”
“That was not your decision to make.”
“Was? May I see him?”
“No. That is no longer possible.”
“I see. And, what happens next?”
“My name is Andrew. I am to be your husband.”
“Well, Andrew, nothing personal, but Ben was going to be my husband. I’d rather like it if that came to pass.”
“I see.”
“Would you mind going back to wherever you just came from and see if you can make that happen?”
“That may no longer be possible.”
“Goodbye, Andrew.”
“Goodbye.”
She watched the man, if that was indeed what it was, walk off into the arroyo, then she returned to the kitchen and made coffee before she scrambled two eggs. When she had cleaned up after, she showered and put on fresh clothes, then went to Amanda’s bedroom again and sat on the edge of the bed.
There was something different about her this morning. She couldn’t put a finger on it, but Amanda definitely looked different. She pulled back the sheets and looked at the wound – and found nothing but smooth, white skin – and no trace of any sort of wound.
“The robots,” she sighed.
“The what?” Amanda groaned.
Claire looked at Amanda, saw the illness in her eyes was gone, replaced by a less malignant confusion. “My, you’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know.”
“Any pain anywhere?”
“Pain? No…not really,” then Amanda seemed to look at Claire for a long time, then: “Claire? Is that you?”
“Yes, of course it’s me. Who did you think…”
“Where am I?”
“What?” Claire sighed, now confused herself. “Where do you think you are?”
“I have no idea…” Amanda quailed, now apparently on the verge of tears.
“You’re at my house, Amanda, in New Mexico…”
“New Mexico? Since when did you have a house out there?”
“For two years now. I work here.”
Amanda sat upright in bed, her eyes searching for something recognizable – but after a moment she gave up, hugged her knees to her chest and started crying. Claire came close and enfolded her sister in her arms.
“Sh-h-h,” Claire whispered in a soothing, maternal way, “it’s alright. I’m here. It’s alright now.”
But Amanda was shaking her head…her confusion abnormally oppressive.
“What’s the last thing you remember,” Claire asked.
“I’m not sure.” Then: “Father, running to a fire. At the Navy Yard.”
And Claire gasped. “Amanda, that was almost twenty years ago. Have you remembered nothing since?”
“What? Twenty…?” she said, trying to stand just now – her knees almost buckling.
“Here, let me help you?” Claire steadied her sister and helped her to the bathroom, but when Amanda saw her reflection in the mirror over the sink she screamed, terrified.
“That’s not me!” she cried. “Oh, please God! Tell me that’s not me! Oh, please…who is that?”
“You should shower now,” Claire said. “Then we’ll get you dressed.” She turned on the water and adjusted the temperature, yet Amanda stood – transfixed – looking into the mirror at the stranger staring back…
Claire led her into the shower and let the spray beat on the back of her sister’s neck, and soon the water brought her back to the present. “Oh my, that feels so good.”
“Just stand there. Relax. I’ve a new toothbrush for you, too.”
“Could I have it, please. My teeth feel like they’re coated in saw-dust.”
“Sure. I’ll be right back.” She went out to the hall closet and found the brush, then she saw a man standing on the patio. “Benjamin?” she whispered.
When he nodded she ran to the door and let him in, then flew into his arms.
Yet he seemed almost inert, spent, and she stepped back, looked into his eyes. “Ben?”
“Yes?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m very tired.”
“Why don’t you take a rest. Amanda’s just now up, and I’ve got her in the shower.”
He nodded. “That should help, but Claire? She’s very fragile now.”
She nodded her head too. “Go rest. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
“Where?”
“Your room?”
“Show me?”
“Show you? You don’t remember?”
“I told you, I’m very tired.”
She helped him to his room off the kitchen, then thought better of it and took him to her room. “Just lay down and rest your eyes. I’ll be right back…”
Then she took a new toothbrush to the shower, and found Amanda staring into the steam-covered mirror again, wiping rivulets of moisture from the silvered glass. “I recognize the eyes,” she said, “but nothing else makes sense. When did this happen to me?”
“What, my dear?”
“How did this happen to me?”
“Amanda, tell me…what do you remember?”
“Twenty three – I’m twenty-three, and I’m going to finish college next year, after spending the year in Sweden.”
“What happened in Sweden, Amanda?”
And Claire watched as her sister looked inside the glass, and she wondered what she saw just then. But, apparently she saw nothing, or nothingness, as Amanda turned to her and shook her head. “Isn’t that odd? I can’t recall a thing about it. Where’s father?”
“He’s not here just now,” Claire whispered.
“And Charles? Where is he?”
“Charles is in Washington just now, Amanda, but he’ll be out to see you soon enough.”
“And mother? Where is she?”
“She’s with father now, dearest.”
“And Elizabeth?”
“At home. At home in Philadelphia.”
“I want to go to Bookbinder’s, for the soup. Will you take me –oh, but you say we’re in New Mexico! How silly of me!”
“How about I fix some eggs and coffee? Would that do?”
“Oh, yes please. I do feel a bit hungry.”
“How many eggs?”
“Oh, you know me…just one, over easy.”
Claire nodded – as she did indeed remember, then, not quite sure what had happened to Amanda over the course of the night, she walked back to the kitchen and lit the stove. A while later Amanda walked out, and Claire was astonished to see that the dress she’d worn the day before hung loosely on her sister’s diminished frame.
“One egg, over easy,” Claire said, putting the plate with the egg on a little table in the kitchen. Amanda ate half, then declared she was full before she had her coffee, black.
“I’ll need to go into work for a little bit,” Claire said, looking ather sister. “You’re looking tired…would you like to take a nap?”
“Ooh, yes please. I’ve never felt so tired.”
When she returned a few hours later Amanda was on the patio out back, laughing gayly as a harried looking Ben Levy tried to keep up with the conversation.
+++++
There was a small kiva in the corner of Claire’s bedroom, and a few pieces of piñon burned and popped away in there, lending the room a smokey scent that was pleasant in the extreme – or so Ben thought. He had never expected to feel the way he did just now, laying on Claire’s bed with her head resting on his lap. He had never known love, not even a mother’s love, but as he ran his fingers through her hair he knew, sitting in the amber light, that the feelings coursing through his veins could only be one thing.
He wondered about miracles of such a life for a moment, as if this is what people meant when they spoke of such things. And the oddest thing of all? They hadn’t said a word in what felt like hours.
There seemed to be no need.
“We’ll need more wood for the fire,” she said now. “I’ll go get some.”
“Show me how?” Ben asked.
“What?”
“How to make the fire work?”
“You’ve never made a fire?”
“No. There is no need where I live.”
“And where is that? The ship?”
“Connecticut.”
“Connecticut? Really? I always thought winters there were somewhat brutal.”
“Not where I lived.”
“And where was that?”
“New London.”
“And when did you move to London?”
“We were older then.”
“You went to school there?”
“Yes.”
“What did you study?”
“Science. Chemistry and physics.”
“Quantum mechanics?”
“Of course.”
“And metallurgy?”
“Yes.”
“Boeing is working on your titanium process; they should have results in a few weeks.”
“If necessary, I can go to Seattle with you.”
Claire looked away then, lost in a thought. “Can you tell me about Amanda? What you treated her with?”
“Treated? You misunderstand. She treated herself.”
“How do you mean?”
“There were replication errors. These were repaired…”
“Replication errors?”
“DNA.”
“And that is?”
Ben blinked, shook his head. “The bacteria in her gut were out of balance. This caused a cascading series of failures in other relevant areas of her internal biome. This sequence has been reversed. She will feel better soon.”
“I see,” Claire lied, not having the slightest idea what he was talking about. “What about these errors in replication?”
“I’m sorry. I misspoke.”
“Ah. So, the emotional problems she’s experienced?”
“There will be consequences, but with counseling they should be manageable.”
“Will she loose weight?”
“Yes. She has lost four kilos already, and her basal metabolic rate…”
“Her – what?”
“The rate at which she burns energy?”
“How did you determine that, Ben?”
“It is not important.”
“Tell me, what is important, Ben?”
“These feelings. The feelings we are experiencing.”
“Oh? Tell me how you feel?”
“How? I think I understand what, not how.”
“What do you feel now.”
“I think it is love.”
“Ah. Have you ever been in love before?”
“I have read about love, I have seen love, but no, I have never personally felt love.”
“How is that possible?”
“That was quite normal where I grew up?”
“Do you think you could love a child, Ben?”
“A child?”
“You said we would have two children. Don’t you know that children need love most of all?”
“Children need love?”
“Affection. Feelings of trust and understanding.”
“How so?”
“Children need to develop in an atmosphere of trust and understanding, tempered with affection. Without these things, children grow emotionally distrustful, even mean.”
The words washed over Ben Levy and he struggled to understand the meaning behind her words. Had she just told him that he was mean, and not trustworthy? Surely that was not love?
She watched his reactions, the reactions of a child, of someone who had not the slightest idea what it meant to be human, and that only made her more curious. It was no longer a question of who he was; it was more now that she didn’t know what he was?
Human? Yes, of course, but he hadn’t been born in the 1800s –
That just couldn’t be. Could it?
“Come with me,” she said. “Let’s get some more wood.”
The only thing she knew just then was that she had to keep him talking. The more tired he became, the more he talked… The more he talked, the less she understood, but that wasn’t important now.
Chapter 13
Roosevelt was in the Oval Office, looking over the FBI’s final report on the matter, reading through it for the third time. The blue sphere had been seen twice over Los Alamos, the report stated plainly enough, yet Aubuchon had denied any knowledge of its reappearance, and that troubled him. It troubled Harry Hopkins too, and Cordell Hull. They had all caught a brief glimpse of the sphere twice on the return voyage; the first when the Condor approached off Spain, the second when that strange aircraft appeared over the Georges Banks and attacked the German battleship.
And now, another sphere – over Aubuchon’s house in Los Alamos? He just didn’t know her well enough to understand what this meant.
So he picked up the telephone on his desk and spoke to the switchboard operator. “Get Harry, would you?”
A few minutes later Hopkins entered the Oval Office. “We have the latest German rail car dispositions you asked for, Mr President. Attacking fuel transport lines seems to be working.”
“Harry? I need to speak with Claire…Dr Aubuchon. And I need to see her eyes when I speak to her.”
Hopkins nodded. “Yessir. I understand.”
“Handled discreetly, of course.”
“Yessir. She’s still in Los Alamos. There are no records she took her sister to a hospital in Santa Fe, by the by.”
Roosevelt looked down at his hands, coughed once. “There are days when I truly hate this job, Harry.”
“What do you think…”
“She’s lying, for one thing, Harry. That means she’s hiding something. And if a person in her position is hiding something, then we’re in trouble. The entire project could be compromised.”
Hopkins pursed his lips, nodded slowly. “Do you want to remove her now, or wait until we can finish a full security review?”
Roosevelt leaned back in his wheelchair and sighed, then shook his head. “We can’t afford a breakdown in security now. Especially not now. Chop her off, bring her in, and anyone else in that house. We need to know who’s been compromised.”
“Her sister Amanda is on the approved list, as is Levy. Those are the only two in the house. At least, as of last night.”
“Have the FBI handle it, but I want it handled discreetly. And I want to talk to her tonight.”
“Yes, Mr President.” Hopkins turned and left the Old Man with his thoughts. He knew that look, after all, well enough – didn’t he? He went to his office and called the director…
+++++
Amanda looked odd the next morning. Clear-eyed and almost emaciated, Claire guessed her sister had lost more than twenty pounds in the last three days – an impossibility, true enough, but the evidence was there, right before her eyes.
“How are you feeling this morning,” she asked Amanda as her bare-footed sister padded into the kitchen.
“Excellent. You?”
“Tired. I was in the lab all night.”
“I know. I heard you come in. Around two, I think.”
“When I start on something I often lose track of time.”
Amanda nodded. “Father was like that,” she sighed, still coming to terms with the passage of so much time, and her absence from the flow. “Charles was too, in school, anyway.”
“He still is.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Who? Father?”
Amanda nodded carefully, slowly, hesitation clear in her movements.
“I didn’t know him the same way you did, Amanda, but my memories of him are of a warm, caring person.”
Amanda smiled, a tenuous, wounded smile – her eyes full of groping hands in dark places. “I’ve seen Ben before, you know?”
“Ben? Before? Where was that?”
“In Sweden. He was the physician who took my baby?”
“What?” Claire felt inrushing pressure when the words registered.
“I couldn’t place him at first, I think, because he hasn’t aged. But it’s him. I remember his voice most of all, but oh yes, Claire, it’s him. Of that I’m sure.”
Claire stared at the stovetop, lost in breaking waves of suddenly inexplicable implications. Ben…Trevor…and who else? Had they been following her all her life? But, to what purpose? Why watch her so closely? And why take a fetus?
“You must be mistaken, Amanda. That’s clearly not possible.”
“Clearly, yes, I agree. Yet he was there. Ask him.”
“Have you?”
“No. I think I’m a little afraid, and I guess I wanted you with me if I do.”
She shook her head, tried to laugh a little. “This must all be a coincidence of some sort, dear sister. Such a thing is simply impossible.”
“Impossible. Yes. I dreamed last night that you were on a ship of some sort, a ship near a strange planet, and that people were talking to you about something called a shift. It was all very real feeling, like we were really there.”
“A shift? Really?”
“That your work has something to do with it. What does that mean, do you think?”
Claire shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“I wonder who he is?”
“Who? Benjamin?”
“Yes. Is it true? You’re going to marry him?”
Claire looked away, embarrassed. “What makes you say that?”
“I’ve heard you two talking, but it’s not like I was snooping around. Is it true?”
“I think, yes, maybe.”
“But why? You don’t love him, do you?”
And Claire shrugged. “I don’t know that it’s as simple as that, Amanda. There are other things I’m considering.”
“Other things?”
But just then Claire turned to Amanda, looked her in the eye. “We’ll talk to him tonight, I promise. About Sweden, about your dream – all of it.”
Amanda took the evasion in stride, met her sister’s gaze on terms at once familiar – yet lonely. Claire’s words felt like a betrayal, and that was not a feeling she remembered coming from her. They looked at one another for a moment longer, then she made up her mind. “I think I should return to Philadelphia, Claire. I’ll only be in your way out here, and you have more important things to take care of.”
“Nonsense. There’s nothing more important to me than you.”
“Could you get me on the next train?”
“Really? You want to go home now? You haven’t seen or done anything, and there’s so much…”
“Yes, I feel homesick, as silly as that must sound. Really, I’d like to go home, back to Pennsylvania.”
“Alright,” Claire said, feeling dejected – and a little relieved. “I’ll call.” She turned and walked inside, leaving Amanda on the patio staring at the Blood of Christ mountains.
+++++
“Where’s Amanda?” Ben asked as he walked into the kitchen.
“On her way home. I got her on the one-thirty Chief.”
“Home? You mean, Philadelphia?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“How…unexpected.”
“Really? I thought you knew everything?”
“Her trip to the ship was not expected.”
“So, the future has been altered once again.”
Be nodded his head. “Yes.”
“Yet, you’re still here?”
“Yes, I’m still here.”
“When are we to marry? Is tomorrow too soon?”
“After the war concludes. If we married sooner it would appear suspicious.”
“Is it – suspicious?”
“What do you mean?”
“Amanda mentioned that you were the physician in Sweden, the man who removed her baby.”
“Indeed?”
“She said there was no mistaking you, or your voice.”
“I see.”
“Is it true?”
“Yes,” Ben sighed, “it’s true. You’ll understand, in time. There’s no frame of reference yet Claire, or I could tell you.”
“Frame of reference? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The reasons why we had to, not to mention the technology involved, but I promise, I’ll tell you someday. Before I die, anyway.”
“And what about Amanda? What about her feelings?”
Ben shrugged. “Turn on the radio.”
“What?”
“Turn on the radio. Now.”
She moved to the living room and turned on the set, then, waiting for the tubes to warm, she asked if he needed anything to eat or drink.
“No. I’m fine.”
As she tuned-in the station in Santa Fe she recoiled in horror. The Chief had derailed near Walsenburg, Colorado, and rescue operations were underway. The scene of the accident was remote, the announcer said, noting it was miles from the nearest major roadway.
“We should go,” Claire said. “I’ll need to be there when they bring her to the hospital.”
“There’s no rush,” Ben said, his face a mask of barely concealed pain.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“She’s gone, Claire.”
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”
“Just that. She is gone.”
She stumbled to her chair and fell into it, hands covering her face. “Gone,” she sobbed. “Amanda? Gone?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You bastard!” Claire screamed. “You did this!”
Ben looked away, then walked over to the little fireplace and started putting piñon on the grate, and soon he had a fire going. When he turned Claire was looking at him, pure malice in her eyes.
“We had no part in anything that happened today, Claire. Amanda simply arrived at a moment in time, the end of a certain chain. It was her time, and there was nothing we could do to alter that.”
“Oh, yes there is.”
“Yes, but to alter that timeline once again could prove disastrous.”
“Once again?”
“Come. Stand with me by the fire.”
“I’m not cold.”
“Nonsense. I’ve never known anyone so cold.”
Her stare turned to icy stone after that, then she left the house. He heard her driving off into the night so he walked out to the patio in time to see her speeding down the canyon towards the highway that led to Santa Fe – and Walsenburg. He sighed again, then returned to his little bedroom off the kitchen.
He was smiling just then, for a million little reasons, when he heard someone knocking at the door. That, he knew, would be the FBI.
Chapter 14
The road was rough, and of course there were thunderstorms just ahead. Albuquerque lay beyond this line of storms, somewhere beyond the lightning, and Claire was smoldering inside.
Stopped by Los Alamos security near the entrance to the highway to Santa Fe, she had finally been stuffed into the back seat of a gray Ford sedan – only to find Levy already in the car. Handcuffed, as it turned out.
Then she was handcuffed, and for the first time in her life she’d wanted to cry. She also didn’t want Ben to see her crying, to afford him the opportunity to see into her fear, so she turned away, looked at her reflection in the glass…
Amanda…gone. How was that even possible? How did the best train in the country derail, without apparent cause, in the middle of nowhere?
When the FBI agent had asked where she was going she’d told him, and after he apologized he told her he hadn’t heard any details about the accident.
“If you don’t mind me askin’, Ma’am, how do you know your sister’s dead?” the agent asked as they passed through Santa Fe.
“He told me,” Claire replied directly, pointing at Ben.
“And, sir, how did you hear this information?”
And he couldn’t very well answer – ‘Gee, I learned of this a thousand years from now,” so he thought for a moment before answering: “On the radio.”
“I didn’t think they did that,” the agent said. “But then again, I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.”
Then Ben looked at Claire’s reflection in the glass – and their eyes met for a moment, yet she turned away.
“You’ll have to ask the people at the station,” Ben added.
“I will,” the agent said, looking at Ben in the rear view mirror.
“Where are we going?” Claire asked the agent, still looking at her reflection.
“To take a ride in an airplane, I guess you could say.”
“I see,” she added, thinking about the people who would want to talk to her after the sphere had been reported over her house. That meant Oak Ridge, or Washington. She thought about the sphere seen here, then the one off the Spanish coast. That one had been clearly observed – by everyone – including the president.
Yes, she was going to be taken to Washington – to see Roosevelt. Because…she had to be under suspicion now. Well, she’d just to have to let Levy talk to them, let them figure out what to do with him – because one way or another she was pretty sure Ben wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.
Slate colored clouds loomed ahead, and she saw lightning in the clouds, too, then fat drops of water hit the windshield. Heavier drops began to beat the Ford’s roof and she closed her eyes, listened to the mysterious rhythm… Why, she wondered, did humans see patterns everywhere? Why? And what pattern did Amanda’s death fit into?
Then the thought hit her: he had chosen not to protect Amanda? Why now, when he had opted to save her the day before? Had she suddenly become so peripheral to the future? Or had her death – now, today, this afternoon – preserved some pre-established order?
Then yet another thought slammed into her: what if Amanda’s trip to the ship had severely altered a timeline? What if her immediate death had become the only way to realign a presumed natural order of time?
Then, another leap of insight. What if…when she’d uprooted Amanda, brought her west from Philadelphia, what if she had altered…but wait…how could she ever know anything like that was true? She couldn’t, not with any certainty. If time was a river, how many tributaries could be generated by just one person. By just one person in the course of a single day? How many ‘what ifs’ could there be?
‘For all intents and purposes, an infinite number.’
Because if just one person confronted an almost infinite number of momentous choices in the course of lifetime, the permutations would literally be very nearly infinite. One would never know, unless they could somehow see into the future, to somehow measure the results of one choice over another.
What crushed her in that moment, what made her feel completely insignificant was the thought that Ben and Trevor – and all the people like them she assumed were working here – had just that ability. If so, there’s was an Olympian vantage, one not so different than what the ancients thought characterized the gods.
She opened her eyes, looked out the window, saw the outskirts of Albuquerque as they emerged from the thunderstorm. The rain-soaked two-lane blacktop was nearly deserted now, and she had seen only a few trucks headed to Santa Fe, while up ahead Albuquerque’s lights were winking on as the sun licked the far horizon. They drove through the city in silence, Ben apparently looking at pedestrians out the Ford’s window, yet now with his arms crossed over his chest, somehow looking very bored while also projecting an image of insecurity.
They drove out onto the tarmac at the Albuquerque Army Air Force Base, right up to a waiting DC-3, and as soon as they were aboard the aircraft the pilots throttled-up and taxied for the runway. It felt to Claire like only minutes passed before they were airborne, headed east over the Sandia Mountains – and into an infinite night.
+++++
More FBI agents met their aircraft at the small Army Air Force base near the Maryland border, and their small convoy made the short drive into the city in total silence. Even more agents were waiting under the White House portico, where both she and Ben were searched before being escorted to Harry Hopkins’ office. She recognized Ben Acheson as she walked into the cramped office, and she saw smoldering malice in the man’s peregrine eyes, then she saw Hopkins was in the room too. And he did not look in the least happy.
“The blue spheres,” Acheson said, pointing at Levy without preamble. “What are they?”
Ben stared at both Hopkins and Acheson for a moment, then shrugged. “In it’s essence, while each mimics a plasma, what you’ve witnessed is but a small electro-magnetic field that resides around a single sub-atomic particle. Power is applied to the field and that regulates the size of the sphere.”
“And why would you do that, Mr Levy?”
“Because the resulting sphere can be manipulated.”
“You mean Time, don’t you, sir? You can manipulate time?”
“No, sir. Not me, personally.”
“Your people, then.”
“That is a true statement, Mr Acheson.”
“Are you human?”
“Human enough.”
“Where are you from?”
“Connecticut, sir.”
“Don’t lie to me, you son of a bitch.”
“I am not, sir. Of that, you may be sure.”
“Alright…one more time. Where are you from?”
“Where did I come from? – would be the question you’re searching for.”
“Then you know exactly what I mean,” Acheson snarled. “Tell me where.”
“‘Where’ isn’t the correct question, sir. ‘When’ is more appropriate. Or – more to the point.”
“When? And just what do you mean by that?”
“My first iteration was created in 1866, sir. This body, the one you’re interacting with, was created in the year 3037. That is from when I come – this time.”
“You expect me to believe…?”
“I’ve told you the truth. Every time you’ve asked me a question, I’ve told you the absolute truth.”
“Well, the president seems to take great stock in you,” Acheson sighed, “though for the life of me I have no idea why.”
Levy only smiled, though he steepled his fingers now, as if measuring the passage of time to a metronome only he could hear.
“You’re a time traveler, then?” Hopkins said, speaking now for he first time, stepping tentatively into the flow.
“Not true, Mr Hopkins. I am – we are – engineers.”
“What kind of engineers?” Acheson snarled, suddenly perturbed again.
“Time, sir,” Levy said – looking from Hopkins to Acheson. “We engineer Time. We try to do so in such a manner that we disrupt certain unwanted imbalances. That we ensure more acceptable outcomes, without disrupting our own existence.”
“And,” Acheson growled, “if I may be permitted to ask, acceptable – to whom? To you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You know…I think I’ll have you shot.”
“That’s quite understandable,” Levy said, smiling again. “I’m sure the Russians would allow you to, though I feel quite certain Mr Churchill may take offense.”
“What have they got to do with any of this?” Acheson said, his eyes narrowing.
“Everything. Absolutely everything.”
“What did you mean when you said you were human enough? Human enough for what? To fool us?”
Claire looked at Ben now, her eyes full of questions. “You say you were born in 1866? The original iteration of you – whatever that means?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Ben said, grinning.
“What was your name? Back in 1866?”
Levy smiled broadly now. “Herbert.”
“Herbert?” Acheson said, his voice unbelieving. “Herbert…what?”
“Herbert George Wells.”
And it was Claire who burst out laughing this time. “You should pick your doppelgänger with more care, next time – Herbert.”
“Oh, I am not he.”
“Iteration?” Hopkins said. “What do you mean when you say that?”
“I am a copy.”
“A copy?” Acheson added. “Of H. G. Wells? Named Ben Levy?”
“Yes. Just so.”
“And you are not completely human?”
“Not a type of human you would recognize.”
Claire turned inward now, afraid of the next question she had to ask. “Who created you, Ben?”
“Our granddaughter, Claire. Though her husband helped. Her name will be Dana. Dana Goodman.”
“Minneapolis, you said.”
“That’s correct. You remember now?”
Claire nodded before she turned away, then she closed her eyes – if only to stop the flow of tears that might not have been hers. But there was no way to tell, really.
So…welcome back my friends – to the show that never ends! Looking back from the here and now, this part of the arc began more than two years ago, so how did time fly by so fast? So many twists and turns along the way, too, both within this evolving set of interlinking tales and within this passing little thing called life. How is one life bent inside the other? Or…is it the other way around? Is there really any way to see the difference, or is this all just a dream within a dream?
(Dream of the Return \\ Pat Metheny Group)
We’ll dive back into the 88th Key slowly for the time being, so no big chapters for a while, and this next bit takes off where we last left off, just after Harry returned from Israel and his rough nite at Trader Vic’s.
Oh, a little sidebar here, but do please check out this link to read a heartfelt poem about the situation in Ukraine. And I send my appreciation to Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm for her work. So many thanks your way.
Chapter 62.1
Callahan sat up in bed and looked at the wheelchair parked next to the bedside, then he looked across the room to the bathroom. With no prosthesis yet and only a pair of wooden crutches on hand, his choice was a simple one. Shoulder his way into the chair or somehow get to his crutches and stump across to the bathroom. It was that – or crawl across the floor. Or just let go and piss the bed.
So, he swung his good leg free of the sheets and got his foot to the floor as he squared his shoulders and pushed his way over to the wheelchair. He made the rapid swing to get aligned in the chair and sighed, for the first time realizing just how much of the real work Ida had been doing for him. But…she was gone now. Both she and Didi, now gone. And with all that accomplished he still had no idea where that left him.
“Getting to the goddamn toilet would help, Callahan!” he muttered to himself. “Unless you really want to take another shower.”
He pushed himself into the bathroom and thanked God Above that DD had the foresight to get handicapped railings installed in here, and he made the transition to the commode and finally let go, the feeling of relief almost overwhelming. A moment later he passed gas – but that was all. Three days and not a single bowel movement; the doc had laid down the law, too…no poop today and it was off to the ER to check for a bowel obstruction.
After he made it back into his chair he rolled over to the sink and somehow washed his hands, then he looked at his bed and sighed. He wasn’t really sleepy and yet he wasn’t awake, either. He was somewhere in between, caught like a fly on fly-paper…alive…but stuck in one place, and he realized now he had been, for months. First in Davos and then in Tel Aviv, and now, again, back inside the old house at Sea Ranch. And, he admitted right then and there, he now felt like he was just waiting to die. A lump of flesh occupying space and time with no purpose left.
He rolled out through the kitchen and into the living room, and then he rolled over to the broad wall of glass that looked out over the Pacific – yet all he saw out there was endless sea. Another sort of nothingness, he realized.
So many ghosts here, he thought as he watched lines of surf break onto the rocks below. He looked around the house and he felt Cathy and Frank all around him, the doc and DD too, and even Lloyd, in a curious way. Yet somehow he felt Fujiko’s presence most of all, Fujiko at the Inn of the Rock Spires. Fujiko dancing in the moonlight as she straddled him, their last union above the surf he now understood was the best, most sublime moment of his life. Love comes to you, and you follow? Wasn’t that from a song?
How odd, how strange it was to sit in the present thinking about the past when all that was left was the future. Would there be no more moments of equal importance? No sublime surrenders in the moonlight? If that was so, what then, really, was the purpose of the time remaining. To simply exist? To breathe in life and then to exhale the growing ambivalence of despair? Over and over, as if nothing else mattered?
“I guess I could just get it over with now,” he said to the darkness, but then he realized all his weapons were gone. Stolen, by his son. Even his Model 29…gone. “Isn’t that just a little too ironic,” he chuckled.
“Oh, I think careless is a better choice of words, Amigo,” he heard Frank say, and he turned to the voice. And there he was, as he once was. Still the same sandy hair, and the same face-splitting grin. Khakis and a gray turtleneck sweater, shoulder holster and his ever-present Colt 1911 snapped in place.
“Hi, Frank. I hate to mention this, but you do know you’re dead, right?”
Bullitt shrugged. “And I hate to break it to you, Amigo, but death is just a state of mind.”
“I see. Good to know. I’ll keep that in mind…”
“You enjoying this?” Frank sighed.
“Enjoying what?”
“Four Suffering Bastards then sitting here in your living room feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Look at me, Frank. Will you? I mean, really…”
“Yeah. You’re half the man you used to be. So what?”
“So what?”
“You’re still a man, ya know? You’re still alive, right? Still breathing in the here and now? What else have you got to complain about?”
“Purpose, Frank. I have no purpose.”
“So? Find one.”
“What? Like maybe run the hurdles in the next Olympics?”
“Don’t be such a fucking asshole, Harry.”
Harry shook his head. “I can’t see…”
“Harry, you never could see the forest because of the trees, because you always let the little shit get in the way. You got to move on now. This is the final sprint to the finish line, Amigo. This is when you got to make it count.”
“What? Make what count?”
Frank sighed and shook his head. “Goddamn, Harry, but you really are one stupid son of a bitch.”
“Now wait just one fucking minute!” Harry cried, but then he turned and looked at Bullitt. Who was just standing there looking down at him, that grin still splitting his face. “But you can’t really be here, can you, Frank?”
“We’re running out of time, Harry.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Come on. I’ve got to show you something.”
Frank got behind Harry’s wheelchair and pushed him over to one of the sliding glass doors that led out to the huge flying deck that wrapped around the rear of the sprawling house, and then he pushed Harry out to the extreme edge, to the railing that looked down on the crashing waves just below.
“Okay, let’s see,” Bullitt said as he looked around the night sky. “Yeah, there it is,” he said, pointing to the south. “See the Milky Way, there? That cloudy line of misty stars?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, follow the stars down until you see a teapot…”
“You mean Sagittarius, right?”
“Right. Exactly. Find the spout then work your way up to the top of the kettle’s lid. That bright star is Kaus Borealis, and just above that star is a large globular cluster…”
“A what?”
“A big ball of stars, literally hundreds of thousands of stars…”
“And you know this how, Frank?”
Bullitt shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, Amigo. It’s called M28 and I want you to just keep looking at it…”
“Looking at it?”
“Yeah. Until the sun comes up.”
“The sun?”
“Yeah, then I want you to call Liz.”
“Call Liz?”
…
“Frank?”
…
“Frank?”
He wheeled around and looked back into the house, but Frank was gone. Again…
“Because he wasn’t ever here, you fucking idiot!” he cried into the darkness.
His despair was total now as meaninglessness piled on like the pounding surf just beneath his chair, and he pulled himself out of the chair, ready to fling himself down onto the rocks below.
Then the night sky lit up and he turned his face to Sagittarius.
Seven quick bright pulses, then a pause. Seven more came to the night, then another pause.
And in all he counted seven such pulses, each followed by a pause, but then the star cluster disappeared inside a staccato series of bursts that lasted for seven minutes and, as it happened, repeating at the same time again and again over the next seven nights.
But by then Liz was back at his house in Sea Ranch, and this time Liz had brought an owl with her.
And now a piano beckoned, her siren’s song undeniable now. Just like the gravity inside a massive globular cluster in Sagittarius, Harry Callahan was now ready to play the music of the spheres.
Adrian Leverkühn Writes 