A Touch of Infinity (17 page)

“It happened,” Goldman said. “The mind of God? We don't even know our own minds. There is nothing in the past we can change. In the future? Perhaps we can change the future—a little.”

10

UFO

“You never read in bed,” Mr. Nutley said to his wife.

“I used to, you remember,” Mrs. Nutley replied. “But then I found it was sufficient simply to lie here and compose my thoughts. To get my head together, as the kids say.”

“I envy you. You never have any trouble sleeping.”

“Oh, I do. At times. To be perfectly honest,” she added, “I think women fuss less than men.”

“I don't fuss about it,” Mr. Nutley protested, putting aside his copy of
The New Yorker
magazine and switching off his bedside light. “I just find it damned unpleasant. I'm not an insomniac. I just get a notion and it keeps running around in my head.”

“Do you have a notion tonight?”

“I find Ralph Thompson a pain in the ass, if you can call that a notion.”

“That's certainly not enough to keep you awake. I must say I've always found him pleasant enough—for a neighbor. We could do worse, you know.”

“I suppose so.”

“Why are you so provoked about him?” Mrs. Nutley asked, pulling the covers closer to her chin against the chill of the bedroom.

“Because I never know whether he's putting me on or not. I find writers and artists insufferable, and he's the most insufferable of the lot. The fact that I drag my butt into the city every day and do an honest day's work makes me what he refers to as a member of the Establishment and an object of what I am certain he regards as his sense of humor.”

“Well, you are upset,” said Mrs. Nutley.

“I am not upset. Why is it that I must wait at least an hour before I can think of the proper witty rejoinder to the needling of a horse's ass?”

“Because you are a thoughtful and honest person, and I am thankful that you are. What did he say?”

“The way he said it,” Mr. Nutley replied. “A kind of a cross between a leer and a snicker. He said he saw a flying saucer come sailing out of the sunset and settle down in the little valley across the hill.”

“Indeed! That isn't even witty. You probably fell into his trap and insisted that there was no such thing as a flying saucer.”

“I am going to sleep,” said Mr. Nutley. He turned over, stretched, wriggled into the bedclothes, and relapsed into silence. After a minute or so he asked Mrs. Nutley whether she was still awake.

“Quite awake.”

“Well, I said to him, why didn't you go down there and look at it if you knew where it landed? He told me he doesn't trespass on millionaires' property.”

“Does he really think we're millionaires?”

“A man who sees flying saucers can think anything. What's got into this country? No one saw flying saucers when I was a kid. No one was mugged when I was a kid. No one took dope when I was a kid. I put it to you—did you ever hear of a flying saucer when you were a kid?”

“Maybe there were no flying saucers when we were kids,” Mrs. Nutley suggested.

“Of course there weren't.”

“No. I mean that perhaps there were none then, but there are now.”

“Nonsense.”

“Well, it doesn't have to be nonsense,” Mrs. Nutley said gently. “All sorts of people see them.”

“Which proves only that the world is filled with kooks. Tell me something, if there is such a silly thing as a flying saucer, what the devil is it up to?”

“Curiosity.”

“Just what does that mean?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Nutley, “we are curious, they are curious. Why not?”

“Because that kind of thinking is exactly what's wrong with the world today. Wild guesses with no foundation. Do you know that yesterday the Dow dropped ten points because someone made a wild guess and put it on the tape? If people like yourself were more in touch with the world and what goes on in the world, we'd all be better off.”

“What do you mean by people like myself?”

“People who don't know one damn thing about the world as it really is.”

“Like myself?” Mrs. Nutley asked gently. She rarely lost her temper.

“Well, what do you do all day out here in the suburbs or exurbs or whatever it is sixty miles from New York?”

“I keep busy,” she replied mildly.

“It's just not enough to keep busy.” Mr. Nutley was off on one of his instructive speeches, which, as Mrs. Nutley reflected, came about once every two weeks, when he had a particularly bad bout of insomnia. “A person must justify his existence.”

“By making money. You always tell me that we have enough money.”

“I never mentioned money. The point is that when the kids went away to college and you decided to go back and get a doctorate in plant biology, I was all for it. Wasn't I?”

“Indeed you were. You were very understanding.”

“That's not the point. The point is that two years have gone by since you got that degree and you do absolutely nothing about it. You spend your days here and you just let them slide by.”

“Now you're angry at me,” said Mrs. Nutley.

“I am not angry.”

“I do try to keep busy. I work in the garden. I collect specimens.”

“You have a gardener. I pay him one hundred and ten dollars a week. You have a cook. You have a maid. I was reading an article in the
Sunday Observer
about the aimless life of the upper-middle-class woman.”

“Yes, I read the article,” said Mrs. Nutley.

“You never let me get to the point, do you?” Mr. Nutley said testily. “We were talking about flying saucers, which you are ready to accept as a fact.”

“But now we're talking about something else, aren't we? You're provoked because I don't find a job in some university as a plant biologist and prove that I have a function in life. But then we'd never see each other, would we? And I am fond of you.”

“Did I say one word about you getting a job in some university? As a matter of fact, there are four colleges within twenty miles of here, any one of which would be delighted to have you.”

“That's a matter of surmise. And I do love my home.”

“Then you accept boredom. You accept a dull, senseless existence. You accept—”

“You know you mustn't get worked up at this time of the night,” Mrs. Nutley said mildly. “It makes it so much harder for you to get to sleep. Wouldn't you like a nice warm glass of milk?”

“Why do you never let me finish any thought?”

“I think I'll bring you the milk. You know it always lets you sleep.”

Mrs. Nutley got out of bed, turned on her bedside light, put on her robe, and went down to the kitchen. There she heated a pan of milk. From a jar in the cupboard she took a tiny packet of Seconal and dropped the powder into a glass. She added the hot milk and stirred. Then she returned to the bedroom. Her husband drank the milk and she watched approvingly.

“You do put magic into hot milk,” Mr. Nutley said. “It's not getting to sleep that makes me cranky.”

“Of course.”

“It's just that I think of you all alone all day out here—”

“But I do love this old place so.”

She waited until his breathing became soft and regular. “Poor dear,” she said, sighing. She waited ten minutes more. Then she got out of bed, pulled on old denims, walking boots, shirt and sweater, and moved silently down the stairs and out of the house.

She crossed the gardens to the potting shed, the moon so bright that she never had to use the flashlight hooked to her belt. In the potting shed was the rucksack, filled with the plant specimens she had collected and catalogued over the past three weeks. They were so appreciative of the care with which she catalogued each specimen and the way she wrapped them in wet moss and the way she always left the fungi for the very last day, so they would be fresh and pungent, that she would be left with a warm glow that lasted for days. Not that she wasn't paid properly and sufficiently for her work. Mr. Nutley was absolutely right. A person with a skill should be paid for the skill, and she had an old handbag half full of little diamonds nestling in the drawer of her dressing table. Of course, diamonds were as common in their place as pebbles were here, so she had no guilts about being overpaid.

She slung the rucksack onto her shoulders, left the potting shed, and took the path over the hill into the tiny hidden valley behind it, where the flying saucer lay comfortably hidden from the eyes of the cynical doubters. She walked with a long, easy stride for a woman of fifty, but then outdoor work tended to keep her in good condition, and she couldn't help thinking how beneficial it would be for Mr. Nutley if he could only spend his time out of doors in the country instead of in a stuffy city office.

11

Cephes 5

The Third Officer (in training, which meant that he was merely the aide to the regular third officer) walked through the corridor of the great interstellar ship toward the meditation room. Although he had spent four years studying the eleven classes of interstellar ships, the reality was new, awesome, and infinitely more complex—the more so since this was a Class Two ship, entirely self-sustaining and with an indefinite cruising range. Unlike other interstellar ships, it was named not for the planet of its origin but for the planet of its destination,
Cephes
5, and like all medical ships, it carried clearance for any port in the galaxy.

He knew how fortunate he was to have been appointed to this ship to complete his training, and at the age of twenty-two he was young and romantic enough to doubt and bless his good fortune constantly.

The ship was only three days out of its last port of call—the port where he had come on board as an officer cadet—and since then he had been occupied constantly with medical examinations, inoculations, briefings, and orientation tours. This was his first free hour, and he very properly sought the meditation room.

It was a long, plain room, with ivory-colored walls and ceiling, and lit by a pleasant golden light. Here and there were stacks of cushions, and perhaps a dozen of the ship's one hundred and twenty crew members were in the room, meditating. Each sat upon one of the thin cushions, legs crossed, body erect, hands folded, eyes cast down in a position that was more or less universal in every planet in the galaxy. The Third Officer selected a pillow and seated himself, crossing his bare legs. He was quite comfortable since he wore only a pair of cotton shorts.

He sought to lose himself in his awareness of himself, as he had learned a long time ago, to still his own wonders and doubts and fears and to immerse himself in the wholeness of the universe, his own self becoming part of an infinitely larger self; yet the process would not work. He was blocked, confused and troubled, his mind shaken and swept from thought to thought, while underneath these rushing thoughts, strange and unpleasant fantasies began to form.

He glanced at the other men and women in the meditation room, but they sat in silence, apparently untroubled by the strange and frightening thoughts that hammered at his mind.

For half an hour or so the Third Officer fought to control his own mind and keep it clear and quiet, then he gave up and left the meditation room; and he realized that he had been in this curious state of mental excitement ever since boarding
Cephes
5, but had only become fully aware of it when he attempted to meditate.

Deciding that it was simply his own eagerness, his own excitement at being assigned to this great, mysterious interstellar cruiser, he went to one of the viewing rooms, sank into a chair, and pressed the button that raised the screen on outer space. The impression was of sitting in the midst of the galaxy, facing a blazing and uncountable array of stars. The Third Officer remembered that on his early training trips the viewing room had been a cure for almost any problem of fear or disquiet. Now it failed him, and his thoughts in the viewing room were as disquieting as they had been in the meditation room.

Puzzled and not untroubled, the Third Officer left the viewing room and sought out the ship's Counsellor. He still had four hours of free time left to him before he began his tour of duty in the engine room, and while he had hoped to devote this time to making the acquaintance of other crew members in the off-duty lounge, he decided now that the first order of importance was to learn why the ship filled him with such a sense of chaos and foreboding.

He knocked at the door of the Counsellor's office, and a voice asked him to enter, which he did gingerly, uncertainly, for he had never before gone to a Counsellor on one of the great galactic ships. The Counsellors were legendary throughout the galaxy, for in a manner of speaking they were the highest rank in all of mankind's table of organization—very old, very wise, and gifted in ways that could only fill a cadet of twenty-two years with awe and respect. On interstellar ships they ranked even above the captain, although it was rare indeed that one of them countermanded a captain's order or interfered in any manner with the operation of the ship. Legend had it that some of the Counsellors were more than two hundred years old, and certainly an age of a century and a half was not uncommon.

Now, as the Third Officer entered the small, simply furnished office, an old man in a blue silk robe turned from the desk where he had been writing and nodded at the Third Officer. He was very old indeed, a black man whose skin was as wrinkled and dry as old brown leather and whose pale yellow eyes looked at the Third Officer with pleasant inquiry. Was it true that the Counsellors were telepaths who could read minds as easily as ordinary men heard sound? the Third Officer wondered.

“Quite true,” the old man said softly. “Be patient, Third Officer. There are more things for you to learn than you imagine.” He pointed to a chair. “Sit down and be comfortable. There are a hundred and twelve years of difference between your age and mine, and while you may think that a matter of little account when you reach my age, it's very impressive at the moment, isn't it?”