Searching for a point, Jack asked, “How many days was this before your favorite horse died?”
“Oh, days,” Radliegh answered. “Three or four days.” He patted the dog’s head. “Things like that don’t happen as often as I expected they would.”
“Like what?” Jack asked.
“Oh, just one of the kids joining me for a ride.”
Thinking about Radliegh, Jack played a short, fast ditty on the guitar.
Jack was thinking he had never before met a mind like Radliegh’s. The man was a certified genius, but there was something childlike in what Radliegh had just said. Or was it subtle, profound?
Radliegh was surprised his children did not join him for rides.
Radliegh was surprised one son, one day, did join him for a ride.
Therefore … what?
When Jack had asked Nancy Dunbar why the need for all the security and spying at Vindemia, she had said: “Doctor Radliegh does not like surprises.”
Perhaps Radliegh’s mind was on a plane so different from the average person’s that everything about humans surprised him.
Intensely, Radliegh had watched Jack’s fingers play the ditty. “That’s fun,” he said.
“So how does one invent the perfect mirror?” Jack asked.
Radliegh shrugged. “Just like your fingers. Let your mind play; pick at things: something develops.” Then he said, “Sometimes.”
Looking at his fingers on the frets, Jack asked, “What happens to a black hole when it disappears?”
Radliegh smiled. “You mean, what happens to the information within?”
“I don’t know what I mean.”
“It would be fun if it elongated into a line so narrow that its cut length would be a speck so small it might be invisible.”
“Why would that be fun?” Jack asked.
“Because it might help define the indefinite we’re prone to think of as the infinite.”
“Oh.” Jack did not understand, but he heard the readiness to answer, the words. Doctor Radliegh may be surprised by humans, perhaps had inadequate language to deal with them, but he was not surprised black holes appeared to disappear.
“Do you mind my asking what your mind is playing with, picking at now?” Jack asked.
“Of course not,” Radliegh said. “Space locomotion.”
“Space travel?”
“I guess so. I don’t believe people are questioning sufficiently the basic principles of physics.”
Jack said, “I’m not.”
“You were taught not.”
“Only thing we were taught to question,” Jack said, “was our marks, not our teachers.”
“That is,” Radliegh continued rapidly, “that the basic laws of physics are universal, cosmological. Considering the history of the cosmos, we humans have been perceiving physical laws as briefly as it takes you to blink your eye, comparatively.”
Jack blinked.
“I’m not sure sufficient weight is given to the fact that our perceptions, so far considered absolute, are entirely dependent upon our intellectual appurtenances. These physical laws, seen from another planet, dependent upon other intellectual appurtenances, might be perceived entirely differently. Probably are.”
“Okay.”
“Yet the true, absolute, ultimate physical laws might conform to no perception of them yet achieved on any planet, be totally different.”
Jack said, “I guess I’ll stick to pickin’ my guitar.”
“It’s the same thing,” Radliegh said. “Your achieving a system of time and space permits you to play the guitar. We have to achieve a system of time and space presently inconceivable to us to achieve space travel.”
Radliegh lifted the boxer dog off his legs and stood it on its own legs on the ground. “Well, come on, Arky.” Radliegh stood. “Guess I’ve got to go be polite.” Standing up, Radliegh said, “You see, it’s okay to think about anything, however silly. That’s how questions develop.”
Feet spread, hands over his head, Doctor Radliegh stretched fully. “It’s a silly thought, of course, totally without basis, but wouldn’t it be nice if, for example, the elongated black holes had the information to be tramways, to get us through space quickly?”
From where Jack sat on the ground the stretching man seemed huge.
“One suggestion, or hope, always is,” Radliegh continued, as he crouched and petted Arky, “that everything has a purpose. Not to look for the purpose, not to see it, to see it and deny it, is fault, wouldn’t you say?”
“Sir?” Jack asked.
Smiling, Radliegh waited for Jack to speak.
“How come you sat and talked with me?” Jack asked. “Said such things to me? I mean, from your own mind?” Radliegh’s eyebrows shot up. “My way of saying thank you,” he said, “for your concern. Someday you might have the kindness to remember I did so.”
Which left Jack totally, absolutely confused.
Jack wondered if he was seeing Chester Radliegh from the right planet.
18
In his blue bow tie, carrying his silver tray, at dusk Jack approached a group of formally dressed people on one of the terraces of the main house at Vindemia.
“Would you care for an hors d’oeuvre, sir?”
Turning around suddenly, a man grabbed the silver tray firmly with his left hand and held it steady. “Ah! Liver wrapped in bacon! One of my favorite things!”
Jack said, “D—!”
“You almost dropped the tray, lad!” Fletch said, letting it go. “Want to see us all dressed so pretty at a grand party at Vindemia on our hands and knees eating liver wrapped in bacon off the terrace floor? That would be a pretty sight!”
The two women to whom Fletch had been talking tittered.
Then Fletch thrust his face close to Jack’s and whispered, “Can you spell it?”
His eyes on them, Doctor Chester Radliegh guided his wife across the terrace to Fletch.
“What?”
“Hors d’oeuvre.”
“Sure.”
“Good! Your grandmother never could.”
“My grandmother? The mystery novelist?”
“Your grandmother, the defective novelist,” Fletch said.
“Mister Fletcher!” Radliegh held out his hand to Fletch. “I’m Chester Radliegh.”
“How nice of you to have me on such short notice!” Fletch took Radliegh’s hand.
“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time,” Radliegh said.
“I’m a great fan of your biography of Edgar Arthur Tharpe Junior.”
Glaring at Jack, Fletch sniffed. “Some like it.”
“My wife,” Radliegh introduced, “Amalie.”
“So pleased to meet you, Doctor Fletcher.”
“No doctor at all,” Fletch said. “Not even a patient. Call me Irwin.”
“Irwin?” Jack muttered. “Since when Irwin?”
“Where are you from originally?” Amalie asked. Her eyes were glazed with complete indifference.
Jack noticed that, unlike her appearance that morning, not one hair on Amalie Radliegh’s head was either out of place or gray. Although still puffy, the skin of her face was smooth and had good color.
“Montana,” Fletch answered.
