was also decked out in high NK fashion: a cornflower-blue floor-sweeper skirt, blue blouse, and a ridiculous black wide-brimmed hat like the kind Amish men wear. But the clothes suited her, or rather they framed her in a pleasing way, suggested rude health and hayseed sensuality. Her face was as alive as an unplucked berry. She shaded her eyes in the sunlight and grinned—at me in particular, I wanted to believe. My god, that smile. Somehow both genuine and mischievous.
I began to feel lost.
Jason's phone trilled. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the caller ID.
'Gotta take this one,' he whispered.
'Don't leave me alone here, Jase.'
'I'll be in the kitchen. Right back.'
He ducked away just as Simon lofted his big duffel bag onto the wooden planking of the porch and said, 'You must be Tyler Dupree!'
He stuck out his hand. I took it. He had a firm grip and a honeyed Southern accent, vowels like polished driftwood, consonants polite as calling cards. He made my name sound positively Cajun, though the family had never been south of Millinocket. Diane bounded up after him, yelled, 'Tyler!' and grabbed me in a ferocious embrace. Suddenly her hair was in my face and all I could register was the sunny, salty smell of her.
We backed off to a comfortable arm's length. 'Tyler, Tyler,' she exclaimed, as if I had turned into something remarkable. 'You're looking good after all these years.'
'Eight,' I said stupidly. 'Eight years.'
'Wow, is it really?'
I helped drag their luggage inside, showed them to the parlor off the porch, and hurried away to retrieve Jason, who was in the kitchen interacting with his cell. His back was turned when I came in.
'No,' he said. His voice was tense. 'No… not even the State Department?'
I stopped in my tracks. The State Department. Oh my.
'I can be back in a couple of hours if—oh. I see. Okay. No, it's all right. But keep me informed. Right. Thanks.'
He pocketed the phone and caught sight of me.
'Talking to E.D.?' I asked.
'His assistant, actually.'
'Everything okay?'
'Come on, Ty, you want me to let you in on all the secrets?' He attempted a smile, not too successfully. 'I wish you hadn't overheard that.'
'All I heard was you offering to go back to D.C. and leave me here with Simon and Diane.'
'Well… I may have to. The Chinese are balking.'
'What's that mean, balking!'
'They refuse to entirely abandon their planned launch. They want to keep that option open.'
The nuclear attack on the Spin artifacts, he meant. 'I assume somebody's trying to talk them out of it?'
'The diplomacy is ongoing. It's just not exactly succeeding. Negotiations seem to be deadlocked.'
'So—well, shit, Jase! What's it mean if they do launch?'
'It means two high-yield fusion weapons would be detonated in close proximity to unknown devices associated with the Spin. As for the consequences… well, that's an interesting question. But it hasn't happened yet. Probably won't.'
'You're talking about doomsday, or maybe the end of the Spin…'
'Keep your voice down. We have guests, remember? And you're overreacting. What the Chinese have in mind is rash and probably futile, but even if they go ahead with it it's not likely to be suicidal. Whatever the Hypotheticals are, they must know how to defend themselves without destroying us in the process. And the polar artifacts aren't necessarily the devices that enable the Spin. They could be passive observational platforms, communications devices, even decoys.'
'If the Chinese do launch,' I said, 'how much warning do we get?'
'Depends what you mean by 'we.' The general public probably won't hear anything until it's over.'
This was when I first began to understand that Jason wasn't just his father's apprentice, that he had already begun to forge his own connections in high places. Later I would learn a great deal more about the Perihelion Foundation and the work Jason did for it. For now it was still part of Jason's shadow life. Even when we were children Jase had had a shadow life: away from the Big House he'd been a math prodigy, breezing through an elite private school like a Masters titleist playing a mini-golf course; home, he was just Jase, and we had been careful to keep it that way.
It was still that way. But he was casting a bigger shadow now. He didn't spend his days impressing calculus instructors at Rice. He spent his days positioning himself to influence the course of human history.
He added, 'If it happens, yes, I'll have some warning. We'll have some warning. But I don't want Diane worrying about it. Or Simon, of course.'
'Great. I'll just put it out of my mind. The end of the world.'
'It's no such thing. Nothing's happened yet. Calm down, Tyler. Pour drinks if you need something to do.'
As nonchalant as he was trying to sound, his hand trembled as he took four tumblers out of the kitchen cupboard.
I could have left. I could have walked out the door, hustled into my Hyundai and been a long way down the road before I was missed. I thought about Diane and Simon in the front parlor practicing hippie Christianity and Jase in the kitchen taking doomsday bulletins on his cell phone: did I really want to spend my last night on Earth with these people?
Thinking at the same time: but who else? Who else?
* * * * *
'We met in Atlanta,' Diane said. 'Georgia State hosted a seminar on alternative spirituality. Simon was there to hear C. R. Ratel's lecture. I just sort of found him in the campus cafeteria. He was sitting by himself reading a copy of Second Coming, and I was alone, so I put down my tray and we started talking.'
Diane and Simon shared a plush yellow dust-scented sofa by the window. Diane slouched against the armrest. Simon sat alertly upright. His smile had begun to worry me. It never went away.
The four of us sipped drinks while the curtains wafted in the breeze and a horsefly mumbled at the window screen. It was hard to sustain a conversation when there was so much we weren't supposed to talk about. I made an effort to duplicate Simon's smile. 'So you're a student?'
'Was a student,' he said.
'What are you doing lately?'
'Traveling. Mostly.'
'Simon can afford to travel,' Jase said. 'He's an heir.'
'Don't be rude,' Diane said, the edge in her voice signifying a real warning. 'This once, please, Jase?'
But Simon shrugged it off. 'No, it's true enough. I have some money set aside. Diane and I are taking the opportunity to see a little bit of the country.'
'Simon's grandfather,' Jason said, 'was Augustus Townsend, the Georgia pipe cleaner king.'
Diane rolled her eyes. Simon, still imperturbable—he was beginning to seem almost saintly—said, 'That was in the old days. We aren't even supposed to call them pipe cleaners anymore. They're 'chenille stems.'' He laughed. 'And here I sit, heir to a chenille stem fortune.' Actually it was a gifts-and-notions fortune, Diane explained later. Augustus Townsend had started in pipe cleaners but made his money distributing tin-press toys, charm bracelets, and plastic combs to five-and-dime stores throughout the South. In the 1940s the family had been a big presence in Atlanta social circles.
Jason pressed on: 'Simon himself doesn't have what you'd call a career. He's a free spirit.'
'I don't suppose any of us is truly a free spirit,' Simon said, 'but no, I don't have or want a career. I guess that makes me sound lazy. Well, I am lazy. It's my besetting vice. But I wonder how useful any career will be in the long run. Considering the state of things. No offense.' He turned to me. 'You're in medicine, Tyler?'
'Just out of school,' I said. 'As careers go—'
'No, I think that's wonderful. Probably the most valuable occupation on the planet.'
