Timescape (9 page)

he felt that in some way it should. Echoes of other men came from her. But they were gone now and he was here; it seemed enough.

He panted slightly, reminding himself that he ought to get down to the beach and run more often, and studied her face in the dim gray street light that leaked into their bedroom. The lines of her face were straight, without strategies, the only curves a few matted damp strands of hair across her cheek. Graduate student in literature, dutiful daughter to an Oakland investor, by turns lyrical and practical with a political compass that saw virtues in both Kennedy and Goldwater. At times brazen, then timid, then wanton, appalled at his sensual ignorance, reassuringly startled by his sudden bursts of sweaty energy, and then soothing with a fluid grace as he collapsed, blood thickening, beside her.

Somewhere, someone was playing a thin song, Peter, Paul and Mary's

"Lemon Tree."

"Goddam, you're good," Penny said. "On a scale of one to ten, you get eleven."

He frowned, thinking, weighing this new hypothesis. "No, it's we who are good. You can't separate the performance from the players."

"Oh, you're so analytical."

He frowned. He knew that with the conflicted girls back east it would have been different. Oral sex would have been an elaborate matter, requiring much prior negotiation and false starts and words that didn't fit but would have to do: "What about if we, well ..." and "If, you know, that's what you want ..." all leading to a blunt incident, all elbows and uncomfortable positions that, once assumed, you feared to change out of sheer unspoken embarrassment. With the intense girls he had known, all that would have had to happen. With Penny, no.

He looked at her and then at the wooden walls beyond. A puzzled concern flickered across his face. He knew this was where he should be urbane and casual, but it seemed more important now to get it right. "No, it's not me or you," he repeated. "It's us."

She laughed and poked him.

OCTOBER 14, 1962

Gordon thumbed through the stack of mail in his slot. An ad for a new musical,
Stop the World–I Want to Get Off
, forwarded by his mother. Not likely he'd be making it to the fall openings on Broadway this year; he dropped the ad in the trash. Something called the Citizens for Decent Literature had sent him a gaudy booklet, detailing the excesses of
The
Carpetbaggers
and Miller's
Tropic of Capricorn
. Gordon read the excerpts with interest. In this forest of parting thighs, wracking orgasms, and straightforward gymnastics he could see nothing that would corrupt the body politic. But General Edwin Walker thought so, and Barry Goldwater made a cameo appearance as savant with a carefully worded warning about the erosion of public will through private vice. There was the usual guff about the analogy between the US and the decline of the Roman Empire. Gordon chuckled and threw it away. It was another civilization entirely, out here in the west. No censorship group would ever solicit university staff for contributions on the east coast; they'd know it was futile, a waste of postage. Maybe out here these simpletons thought the Roman Empire line would appeal even to scholars. Gordon glanced through the latest Physical Review, ticking off papers he would read later.

Claudia Zinnes had some interesting stuff about nuclear resonances, with clean-looking data; the old group at Columbia was keeping up their reputation.

Gordon sighed. Maybe he should have stayed on at Columbia on a postdoc, instead of taking the leap into an Assistant Professorship so early. La Jolla was a high-powered, competitive place, hungry for fame and "eminence." A local magazine ran a monthly feature titled "A University on Its Way to Greatness", full of hoopla and photos of professors peering at complicated instruments, or ruminating over an equation. California goes to the stars, California leaps ahead, California trades bucks for brains. They'd gotten Herb York, who used to be the Deputy Director of the Defense Department, to come in as the first Chancellor of the campus. Harold Urey came, and the Mayers, then Keith Brueckner in nuclear theory– a trickle of talent that was now turning into a steady stream. In such waters a fresh Assistant Professor had all the job security of live bait.

Gordon walked down the third floor hallways, looking at the names on the doors. Rosenbluth, the plasma theorist some thought was the best in the world. Matthias, the artist of low temperatures, the man who held the record for the superconductor with the highest operating temperature.

Kroll and Suhl and Piccioni and Feher, each name summoning up at least one incisive insight, or brilliant calculation, or remarkable experiment.

And here, at the end of the fluorescent and tiled sameness of the corridor: Lakin.

"Ah, you received my note," Lakin said when he answered Gordon's knock. "Good. We have decisions to make."

Gordon said, "Oh? Why?" and sat down across the desk from Lakin, next to the window. Outside, bulldozers were knocking over some of the eucalyptus trees in preparation for the chemistry building, grunting mechanically.

"My NSF grant is coming up for renewal," Lakin said significantly.

Gordon noticed that Lakin did not say "our" NSF grant, even though he and Shelly and Gordon were all investigators on the grant. Lakin was the man who okayed the checks, the P.I. as the secretaries always put it–Principal Investigator. It made a difference. "The renewal proposal isn't due in until around Christmas," Gordon said. "Should we start writing it this early?"

"It's not writing I'm talking about. What are we to write about?"

"Your localized spin experiments–"

Lakin shook his head, a scowl flickering across his face. "They are still at an exploratory stage. I cannot use them as the staple item."

"Shelly's results–"

"Yes, they are promising. Good work. But they are still conventional, just linear projections of earlier work."

"That leaves me."

"Yes. You." Lakin steepled his hands before him on the desk. His desk top was conspicuously neat, every sheet of paper aligned with the edge, pencils laid out in parallel.

"I haven't got anything clear yet."

"I gave you the nuclear resonance problem, plus an excellent student–Cooper–to speed things up. I expected a full set of data by now."

"You know the trouble we're having with noise."

"Gordon, I didn't give you that problem by accident," Lakin said, smiling slightly. His high forehead wrinkled in an expression of concerned friendliness. "I thought it would be a valuable boost to your career. I admit, it is not precisely the sort of apparatus you are accustomed to.

Your thesis problem was more straightforward. But a clean result would clearly be publishable in
Phys Rev Letters
, and that could not fail to help us with our renewal. And you, with your position in the department."

Gordon looked out the window at the machines chewing up the landscape, and then back at Lakin.
Physical Review Letters
was the prestige journal of physics now, the place where the hottest results were published in a matter of weeks, rather than having to wait at
Physical
Review
or, worse, some other physics journal, for month after month. The flood of information was forcing the working scientist to narrow his reading to few journals, since each one was getting thicker and thicker. It was like trying to drink from a fire hose. To save time you began to rely on quick summaries in
Physical Review Letters
and promised yourself you would get around to reading the longer journals when there was more time. "That's all true," Gordon said mildly. "But I don't have a result to publish."

"Ah, but you do," Lakin murmured warmly. "This noise effect. It is most interesting."

Gordon frowned. "A few days ago you were saying it was just bad technique."

"I was a bit temperamental that day. I did not fully appreciate your difficulties." He combed long fingers through his thinning hair, sweeping it back to reveal white scalp that contrasted strongly with his deep tan.

"The noise you have found, Gordon, is not a simple aggravation. I believe, after some thought, that it must be a new physical effect."

Gordon gazed at him in disbelief. "What kind of effect?" he said slowly.

"I do not know. Certainly something is disturbing the usual nuclear resonance process. I suggest we call it 'spontaneous resonance' just to have a working name." He smiled. "Later, if it proves as important as I suspect, the effect may be named for you, Gordon–who knows?"

"But Isaac, we don't understand it! How can we call it a name like that?

'Spontaneous resonance' means something inside the crystal is causing the magnetic spins to flip back and forth."

"Yes, it does."

"But we don't know that's what's happening?"

"It is the only possible mechanism," Lakin said coolly.

"Maybe."

"You do not still treasure that signal business of yours, do you?" Lakin said sarcastically.

"We're studying it. Cooper is taking more data right now."

"That is nonsense. You are wasting that student's time."

"Not in my judgment."

"I fear your 'judgment' is not the only factor at work here," Lakin said, giving him a stony look.

"What does that mean?"

"You are inexperienced at these matters. We are working under a deadline. The NSF renewal is more important than your objections. I dislike putting it so bluntly, but–"

"Yes, yes, you have the best interests of the entire group in mind."

"I do not believe I need my sentences finished for me."

Gordon blinked and looked out the window. "Sorry."

There was a silence into which the grating of the bulldozers intruded, breaking Gordon's concentration. He glanced into the stand of jacaranda trees further away and saw a mechanical claw rip apart a rotten wooden fence. It looked like a corral, an aged artifact of a western past now fading.

On the other hand it was more probably a remnant of the Marine land the University had acquired. Camp Matthews, where foot soldiers were pounded into shape for Korea. So one training center was knocked down and another reared up in its place. Gordon wondered what he was being trained to fight for here. Science? Or funding?

"Gordon," Lakin began, his voice reduced to a calming murmur, "I don't think you fully appreciate the significance of this 'noise problem' you're having. Remember, you do not have to understand everything about a new effect to discover it. Goodyear found how to make tough rubber accidentally by dropping India rubber mixed with sulfur on a hot stove.

Roentgen found x-rays while he was fumbling around with a gas-filled electrical discharge experiment."

Gordon grimaced. "That doesn't mean everything we don't understand is important, though."

"Of course not. But trust my judgment in this case. This is exactly the sort of mystery that
Phys Rev Letters
will publish. And it will bolster our NSF profile."

Gordon shook his head. "I think it's a signal."

"Gordon, you will come up for review of your position this year. We can advance you to a higher grade of Assistant Professor. We could even conceivably promote you to tenure."

"So?"

Lakin hadn't mentioned that they could also, as the bureaucratese went, give him a "terminal appointment."

"A solid paper in
Phys Rev Letters
carries much weight."

"Uh huh."

"And if your experiment continues to yield nothing, I am afraid I will, regretfully, not have very much evidence to present in support of you."

Gordon studied Lakin, knowing there wasn't anything more to say. The lines were drawn. Lakin sat back in his executive chair, bobbing with controlled energy, watching the impact of his own words. His Ban-Lon shirt encased an athletic chest, his knit slacks clung to muscled legs. He had adapted well to California, getting out into the welcoming sun and improving his backhand. It was a long way from the cramped, shadowy labs at MIT. Lakin liked it here and he wanted to enjoy the luxury of living in a rich man's town. He would hustle to maintain his position; he wanted to stay.

"I'll think it over," Gordon said in a flat voice. Beside Lakin's sturdy frame he felt overweight, pale, awkward. "And I'll keep taking data," he finished.

On the drive back from Lindbergh Field Gordon kept the conversation on safely neutral ground. His mother rattled on about neighbors on 12th Street whose names he didn't remember, much less their intricate family squabbles, their marriages, births, and deaths. His mother assumed he would instantly catch the significance of the Goldberg's buying a place in Miami at last, and understand why their son Jeremy went to NYU rather than Yeshiva. It was all part of the vast soap opera of life. Each segment had meaning. Some would get their comeuppance. Others would receive, after much suffering, their final reward. In his mother's case he was plainly reward enough, at least in this life. She oohed at each marvel that loomed up in the fading twilight, as they zoomed along Route I toward La Jolla. Palm trees just growing by the roadside, without help. The white sand of Mission Bay, unpeopled and unlittered. No Coney Island, here. No cluttered sidewalks, no press of people. An ocean view from Mount Soledad that went on into blue infinity, instead of a gray vista that terminated in the jumble of New Jersey. She was impressed with everything; it reminded her of what people said about Israel. His father had been a fervent Zionist, plunking down coin regularly to insure the homeland. Gordon was sure she still gave, though she never implored him to; maybe she felt he needed all his gelt to keep up with the professoring image. Well, it was true. La Jolla was expensive. But Gordon doubted if he would give anything for the traditional Jewish causes now. The move from New York had severed his connection to all that mumbo-jumbo of dietary laws and Talmudic truths. Penny told him he didn't seem very Jewish to her, but he knew she was simply ignorant. The WASPland she'd grown up in had taught her none of the small giveaway clues. Still, most people in California were probably equally oblivious, and that suited Gordon. He didn't like having strangers make assumptions about him before they'd shaken his hand. Getting free of New York's claustrophobic Jewish ambience was one of the reasons for coming to La Jolla in the first place.