That evening he and Mona sat up until their son's next feeding, talking about colleges and professions. It would be up to Adrian to choose, they agreed on that. But would not their own attitudes, the training the gave him, and their very table-talk, influence Adrian's choices? At ten they kissed, looked in on Adrian, and kissed again.
'Goodnight, honey,' Mona said; and he, knowing that she did not want him to watch, 'Goodnight, darling.'
As he combed his hair the next morning, he found that his thoughts, which should have been focused on work, were full of Adrian--and the plate. More and taller buildings would go up when this was over. More and taller building would be built, that was to say, if there was anyone left alive to plan and build them. His firm would have a part of that, and would profit by it. Those profits would contribute to his profit-sharing plan.
He shrugged, rinsed his comb, and put it away. The new and wonderful house that he himself had designed-- with a den and a sewing room, and enough bedrooms for five children--would not be quite so far off then.
At work, he found the needle not quite so near the peg as it had been. Three business cards slipped into the opening easily. Four would just clear.
Up on the roof, a little knot of his coworkers were marveling at the vastness of the tossing green waters that stretched to the horizon in every direction. The secretary with the gold pince-nez gripped his arm. 'I come up here every morning. We'll never be able to see anything like this again, and today will be the last day we're this high up.'
He nodded, trying to look serious and pleased. The secretary with the gold pince-nez was the CEO's, and although he had seen her often he had never spoken to her--much less been spoken to.
An executive vice president laid large soft hands on his shoulders. 'Take a good long look, young man. If it sticks with you, you'll think big. We always need people who think big.'
He said, 'I will, sir.'
Yet he found himself looking at the people who looked, and not at the boundless ocean. There was the freckled kid from the mailroom who whistled, and over there the pretty blonde who never smiled.
All alone at the very edge of the gently slanting roof, was old Parsons. Hadn't Parsons retired? Clearly Parsons had not; and Parsons had set up a tarnished brass telescope on a tripod--a telescope through which he peered down into the watery abyss that had opened before the city, not out at the grandeur of the horizon.
'Something in the water?'
Parsons straightened up. 'Sure is.'
'What is it?'
Gnarled fingers stroked bristling, almost invisible white whiskers. 'That,' Parsons said slowly, 'is what I'm trying to figure, young feller.'
'A whale?' he asked.
Parsons shook his head. 'Nope. ''Tain't that. You might think it'd be easy to figure, with a good glass. But 'tain't.' Parsons stepped aside. 'You want to look?'
He bent as Parsons had and made a slight adjustment to the focus.
It was a city, or a town at least, nestled now in the trough. Narrow streets, roofs that seemed to be largely of red tiles. A white spire rose above its houses and shops, and for an instant--only an instant, it seemed to him that he had caught the gleam of the gold cross atop the spire.
He straightened up, swallowed as though his throat and stomach had some part in absorbing what he had just seen, and bent to look again.
Something white fluttered and vanished above one red roof. A pigeon, he felt certain. There were pigeons as well as gulls there, circling above the houses and shops; pigeons that no doubt nested in the eaves and scavenged the town's streets for whatever food might be found in them.
'Been lookin' on my old computer at home,' Parsons said. 'There's views of various places on there, if you know where to look. My guess is Les Sables-d'Olonne. Mind now, I'm not sayin' I'm right. Just my guess, I said. You got one?'
He shook his head. 'If--It'll be out of the way, won't it? By the time we get there? The next wave will pick it up first, won't it?' As he spoke, he discovered that he did not believe a word of it.
'Can't say.' Parsons scratched his bristling jaw. 'Pretty slow, generally, goin' up. Slidin' down's faster 'n blazes, and you go a long way.' Turning his head, he spat. 'We're heading right at it.'
'If it wasn't, if it was still in the way… And we hit--'
'Might bust our plate. I dunno. I phoned up one of them geologists. They're s'posed to know all about all that. He said he didn't know neither. Depend on how fast each was goin'. Only you ought to think 'bout this, young feller--ain't a buildin' on ours that could stand it if we bump with much speed a-tall. Knock 'em flat, ever' last one of 'em.'
Reluctantly he nodded. 'You're right, it will. May I ask who you called, sir?'
'Doctor Lantz, his name was. Said don't talk about it, only he don't have any right to give me orders.' Old Parsons appeared to hesitate. 'Won't matter to me. I'll be gone long before. You might still be around, though, a healthy young feller like you.'
'Yes,' he said. Images of the baby, of Adrian, filled his mind; he continued to talk almost by reflex. 'I asked about the geologist because I know a geologist. Slightly. I've gotten to know him slightly. His name isn't Lantz, though. It's Sutton. Martin Sutton. He lives one street over from us.'
He had debated the matter with himself for more than an hour before telephoning Sutton. 'You know some things I need to know, Marty,' he said when the preliminaries were complete, 'and I'm going to pick your brain, if you'll let me. This city or town or whatever it is in the trough--are we going to hit it?'
There was a lengthy silence before Sutton said, 'You know about it, too.'
'Correct.'
'They've kept it off TV. They'll keep it out of the papers, if they can. I wonder how many people know.'
'I have no idea. Are we, Marty?'
'That's not my field. I'm a geologist, okay? I study the plate.'
'But you know. Are we?'
Sutton sighed. 'Probably. How'd you find out?'
'I looked though a telescope, that's all. There's a town down there. Or a small city--take your pick. It's got fields and gardens around it. What are the odds?'
Sutton's shrug was almost audible. 'One in ten, maybe.'
'One in ten of hitting?'
'No. One in ten of missing. They were calling it one in five yesterday. You mustn't tell anybody I've told you, okay?'
'I won't. But they told you. So you could tell them whether our plate would break?'
Another silence, this one nearly as long as the first. Then: 'Yeah.'
'They did, but that wasn't the main reason. What's the other thing? It might help if you'd tell me.'
'For God's sake keep it under your hat.' Even over the phone, Sutton sounded desperate.
'I will, I swear. What is it?'
'They wanted to talk about the feasibility of breaking up the other plate in advance. You know--the one we're going to hit.'
'I understand. Go on.'
'Suppose we could do it. Suppose we could break it into three pieces. They'd drift apart, and we might not hit all three.'
He nodded slowly to himself. 'And even if we did, three small shocks wouldn't be as damaging as one big one.'
'Right.' Sutton seemed a little less nervous now.
'They'll try to prepare for them too, of course. We've got a crew going through our offices double-bolting everything. Steel boots to hold the legs of the desks, and they're screwing our file cabinets to the walls as well as the floor. I was watching it a few minutes ago.'
'I suppose we'll get that here too,' Sutton said, 'but it hasn't started yet.'
'Your superiors don't know.'
