In the Ocean of Night (15 page)

Nigel usually left the ExComm meetings as soon as they formally broke up. Without a firm fix on the Snark’s trajectory, there seemed little to discuss. At one of them Lubkin followed him out of the conference room and into an elevator. Nigel nodded a greeting, distracted. He absently scratched his cheek, which was shadowed by a day’s growth of beard, and the rasp sounded loudly in the elevator.

“You know,” Lubkin said abruptly, “the thing I kind of like about a thing like this, a group effort like this with not many people in on the thing, is the way it makes people fall back on each other.”

“So does gin.”

Lubkin laughed in short, sharp barks. “Man, I’m glad Evers didn’t hear you say that. He’d be angry as a toad with the warts filed off.”

“Oh? Why?”

“He, well, he wants to be sure we got a solid group.” “Then he must be having doubts about me.”

“Naw, I wouldn’t say that. We all sort of feel different about you.”

“Why?”

“Well, you know.” Lubkin looked at him earnestly, as though trying to read something in Nigel’s face. “You were there. At Icarus. You’ve seen some things that, well, nobody else in the human race ever will.”

Nigel paused. He chewed his lip.

“You’ve seen the photos I took. They—”

“It’s not the same. Hell, Nigel—what you did—going into Icarus—may have brought the Snark.”

“That radio burst, you mean?”

“Yeah. Why would a derelict send out an intense signal like that?”

Nigel shrugged, lifting his eyebrows in a faintly comical way that he hoped would break Lubkin’s mood. “Beyond me, I’m afraid.”

The elevator door slid aside. “If it’s beyond you, I’m pretty sure it’s beyond all of us, Nigel.” He shuffled his feet, as though vaguely embarrassed. “Look, I’ve got to run. Give my best to Alexandria, will you? And don’t forget the party, eh?”

“Certainly.”

As Nigel left the building he felt good to be getting away from Lubkin, a man he basically found difficult to like, but who had somehow touched him for a moment in that brief conversation. The look on Lubkin’s face reminded him of other people at NASA who had spoken to him in the past, sometimes buttonholing him in lunch-rooms or corridors, total strangers, really, some of them. They wanted to know an odd point or two about Icarus, or ask a technical question that hadn’t been adequately covered in the reports; or so they said. Some were dry and businesslike, others would leave phrases hanging for long moments as if, acutely conscious of Nigel (who was balancing a tray of food, or waiting to go into a meeting, and still did not want to seem rude), they nonetheless could not let him go. Some would mumble for a moment and then beat a retreat, while others, after a moody phrase or two about a detail, would suddenly boom out jovial phrases, wring his hand and be gone before he could reply. And from those encounters would come the same phrases:
you were there … you’ve seen some things that… the pictures, not the same… not what it was really like… you were there …

Lubkin and the rest truly did respect him and hold him apart, he saw. Nigel could deduce that people felt some aura around him. He ignored it pretty successfully. Now and then the thought would crop up that this must have happened to the early astronauts. He’d gone and read the books from that era; they didn’t teach him much. He retained a vision of Buzz Aldrin withdrawing into depressive-alcoholic binges, divorcing his wife, living alone, securing the doors and windows of his apartment, unplugging the telephone, and drinking, for days at a time, simply drinking and thinking and drinking. Had his own personality picked up a tinge of whatever demon stalked Aldrin? From the subtle weight of expectations people had? …
you’ve been there … touched it
… Well, so he had. And perhaps been changed by it. And changed by what people thought of it.

Some days later Nigel’s home console sigmaed a reminding nudge for him, from its memorex.
CATEGORY
:
ASTRONOMY
,
I
b (Planetary); periodic events, as requested. A partial eclipse of the sun by the moon would be visible from the southern California coast, 2:46
P.M.
Pacific Coast Zone Time, two days in the future. So they delayed lunch and made an elaborate picnic on the back lawn. A casserole of beans, onions, chunky beef and spices; cheese, pale yellow; tomatoes, sliced cucumbers; gazpacho; artichoke frittatas with lime sauce; a sound Pinot Noir; finally, macadamia-nut ice cream. Alexandria ate with gusto. She forked the frittatas between her teeth in precise, squarely cut wafers, leaning back on one stiffened arm, an extended hand buried to the wrist in fresh grass. Her red skirt slid off her raised knees and down, exposing thighs of parallel whiteness to the sun’s sting, a sun already bitten at its edge. This lazy motion, laying bare the ashy white inside of her thighs as though they were a new and secret place, caught at something in his throat. Above them, the moon devoured the sun. She lay back on the grass with a sigh and motioned to him to put on the filmed glasses they’d bought. Nigel rested his head against the firm and rounding earth, feeling it curve away beneath him and roll off toward the horizon. He realized for a moment that he was, indeed, pinned by Mr. Newton to what was in fact a ball, a sphere, and not the misleading flatland men thought themselves to inhabit (and reminded himself that a savage, according to Dr. Johnson, was a person who saw ghosts, but not the law of gravity). Some of the earliest observations of eclipses, he recalled from the memorex, were made from the intellectual fulcrum of ancient Alexandria. There, in Ptolemaic times and after, the great library blending Greece and Rome had stood—until, in some minor scramble of a war, it had burned. He blinked. Darkness gnawed at the sun. Alexandria beside him asked questions and he answered, his words slurred by the Pinot Noir and the muzzy haze of afternoon sunlight. But the warmth ebbed. A chill came across the lawn. The eating above continued, an abiding darkness chewing the center from the sun. It was a partial eclipse. Slowly a curtain drew across the dead but furious matter above, carving the star into a crescent, Nigel saw suddenly, an incomplete circle with horns that yawned open and unconnected, its tips burning bright with mad energy. Something in him turned,
I am dying, Egypt, dying,
it squeezed his throat, and he blinked, blinked to see the chewing everlasting pit that hung above them.

NINE

Alexandria insisted that they go the Lubkins’. The idea somehow caught her interest and brought a glinting life to her eyes. She had always gotten into the spirit of holidays with more zest than he, and now the early weeks of December lifted her mood. Nigel mentioned it to Hufman. The doctor, relying on lab reports, thought she might have reached a stable plateau. Perhaps the drugs were working. The disease might go no further.

As if on cue, Alexandria improved more. She bought a dress that artfully exposed her left breast and found a shirt for Nigel with ruffled black-and-tan sleeves. Nigel felt conspicuous in it when they arrived at the Lubkins’ party, but within half an hour he had knocked back the better part of a bottle of a Chilean red he’d found at the bar. Alexandria was her old self; she took up a corner position in the living room and the guests, mostly JPL-related, gradually accumulated around her. Nigel talked to a few people he knew but somehow the flow of words between mind and tongue never got going. He prowled Lubkin’s home, staring out at the evening fog that seeped uphill toward them through a stand of jacaranda trees. The house was in the new style, worked stone and thin planking, with huge oval windows overlooking the hazy view of Pasadena.

“Say, Nigel, I thought you’d like to know Mr. Ichino.” Nigel turned woodenly. Lubkin’s introduction had come unexpectedly and Nigel was not prepared for the short, intense man who held out a hand. He normally thought that Japanese faces were impassive and unreadable, but this man seemed to radiate a quiet intensity before he’d even said anything.

“Ah, yes”—they shook hands—“I gather you’re to look into the telemetry and computer hookups to Houston.”

“Yes, I shall,” Ichino said. “I have been overseeing the general aspects of the problem so far. I must say your programming for the Snark search pattern was admirable.”

At this last sentence Lubkin stiffened.

“I am sorry,” Ichino said quickly. “I shall not mention such terms again in public.”

Lubkin’s face, drawn and strained, relaxed slightly. He nodded, looked at the two men indecisively for a moment and then murmured something about looking after the drinks and was gone. Ichino compressed his lips to hide a smile. A glance passed between him and Nigel. For an instant there was total communication.

Nigel snickered. “Art has been defined”—he sipped at his wine—“as adroitly working within limitations.”

“Then we are artists,” Mr. Ichino said.

“Only not by choice.”

“Correct.” Mr. Ichino beamed.

“Have you picked up the, ah, object yet?”

“Picked up…?” Mr. Ichino’s walnut-brown forehead wrinkled into a frown. “How could we?”

“Radar. Use Arecibo and the big Goldstone net together.”

“This will work?”

“I calculate that it will.”

“But everyone knows we cannot follow deep space probes with radar.”

“Because they’re too small. Admittedly we’ve never seen the, the thing, so we don’t know its size. But I used the apparent luminosity of its fusion flame and estimated what mass that exhaust was pushing around.”

“It is large?”

“Very. Couldn’t be smaller than a klick or two on a side.”

“Two kilometers? Using Arecibo we could easily—”

“Precisely.”

“You have told Dr. Lubkin of this?”

“No. I rather thought somebody would’ve looked into it by now.”

From the look on Mr. Ichino’s face, Nigel could see quite clearly that the usual Lubkin style was still in force; Lubkin was doing what he was told. Innovation be damned and full speed ahead.

A tray of edibles passed by. Nigel took some violet seascape paste and smeared it on a cracker. He felt suddenly hungry and scooped up a handful of wheatmeats. He asked the waiter after more of the Chilean red. Ichino was partway through a delicately phrased recital of what was happening in the Snark search—apparently, damned little—when the red arrived. Nigel allowed an ample quantity to slosh into his glass and gestured expansively: “Let’s move round a bit, shall we?”

Ichino followed quietly, ice tinkling in his watery drink. Nigel ducked down a hallway, nudged open a door that was ajar. The family rec room. He peered around at the usual furniture netting, console desk and sim-sensors.

“Big screen, isn’t it?” He crossed over to the pearly blank 3D. He thumbed it on.

—A man in an orange and black uniform, holding a long, bloody sword, was disemboweling a young girl—

—The thing in silvered dorsal fins made an explicit gesture, grinning, eyes fixed. Male? Female? Ambig? It murmured warmly, twisting—

“Bit juicy, looks like,” Nigel said, switching away. “Perhaps we should not be witnessing his private channel selections …” Mr. Ichino said.

“True enough,” Nigel said. He flipped over to full public circuits. “Haven’t seen one this big in quite a while.”

A gaudy picture swam into being. The two men watched it for a few moments. “Ah, he’s a hibernation criminal, you see,” Nigel said, “and he is set on destroying this underwater complex, so’s the woman there, the one in red—” He stopped. “Dreadful stuff, isn’t it?” He spun the dial.

—The oiled bodies snaked in long lines. They formed the sacred annular circles under the glare of spots, off-camera, which did not wash out the log fire that blazed angrily at the center, sparks showering upward. Feet pounded the worn earth. A hollow gong carried the beat. Spin. Whirl. Stamp. Sing.

“Even worse than before,” Mr. Ichino said mildly. He reached out to the dial. Nigel stopped him. “No,” he said.

—Chanting, spinning in a dizzy rhythm, the bodies glistened with sweat. Their ragged chorus swelled into new strength.

Running living leaping soaring

Brimming loving flying dying

Only once and all together

Joyful singing love forever

Annular circles orbited about the central fire. Spin. Whirl. Stamp. Sing.

“Overall,” Nigel drawled, “I think I would prefer opium as the religion of the masses.”

“But you err there, sir,” a voice said from the doorway. A roly-poly man stood there with Alexandria. His eyes glimmered out from folds of flesh and he laughed deeply.

“Bread and circuses we need. We cannot provide infinite bread. So—” He spread his hands expansively. “Infinite circuses.”

Introductions: he was Jacques Fresnel, French, completing two years of study in the United States. (“Or what’s left of it,” Nigel added. Fresnel nodded uncertainly.) His subject was the New Sons in all their branches and tributaries. So Alexandria had struck up a conversation with him and, sensing an interesting confrontation, led him to Nigel. (And Nigel, despite the fact that the New Sons were not a favorite topic, felt a surge of happiness at this sign of her new liveliness. She was mixing and enjoying things again, and socializing better than he was at this party.)