Timescape

“Okay, I’m going.”

“You’re a literature student who’s for Goldwater? Come on”

“I know I don’t fit your stereotypes, but that’s your problem, Gordon.”

“Jeezus.”

“I’ll be back in a few hours.” She combed back her hair and checked her pleated skirt and walked out of the bedroom, stiff and energetic. Gordon lay on the bed watching her leave, unable to tell whether she was serious or not. She slammed the front door so hard it rattled, and he decided that she was.

•  •  •

It was an unlikely match from the start. They had met at a wine and chips party in a beach cottage on Prospect Street, a hundred yards from the La Jolla Art Museum. (The first time Gordon went to the Museum he hadn’t noticed the sign and assumed it was simply another gallery, somewhat better than most; to call it and the Met both museums seemed a deliberate joke.) His first impression was of her assembled order: neat teeth; scrupulously clear skin; effortless hair. A contrast with the thin, conflicted women of New York he had seen, “encountered”—a favorite word, then—and finally been daunted by. Penny seemed luminous and open, capable of genuinely breezy talk, uncluttered with the delivered opinions of The New York Times or the latest graduate seminar on What Is Important. In a flowered cocktail dress with a square neckline, the straight lines mitigated by a curving string of pearls, her glowing tan emitted warm yellow radiations that seeped through him in the wan light, life from a distant star. He was well into a bottle of some rotgut red by that time and probably overestimated the magic of the occasion, but she did seem to loom in the shadowed babble of the room. In better lit circumstances they might not have hit it off. This time, though, she was quick and artful and unlike any woman he had ever met before. Her flat California vowels were a relief from the congested accents of the east, and her sentences rolled out with an easy perfection he found entrancing. Here was the real thing: a naturalness, a womanly fervor, a clarity of vision. And anyway, she had ample, athletic thighs that moved under the silky dress as though her whole body were constrained by the cloth, capable of joyful escape. He didn’t know much about women—Columbia’s notorious deficiency—and as he knocked back more wine and made more conversation he wondered at himself, at her, at what was happening. It was uncomfortably like a cherished fantasy. When they left together, climbed into a Volkswagen and stuttered away from the still-buzzing party, his breath quickened at the implications—which promptly came true. From there the times spent together, the restaurants mutually enjoyed, the records and books rediscovered, seemed inevitable. This was the canonical It. The one thing he had always known about women was that there had to be magic, and now here it was, unannounced, even rather shy. He seized it.

And now in the metaphorical morning after, she had friends named Cliff and parents in Oakland and a liking for Goldwater. All right, he thought, so the details were not perfect. But maybe, in a sense, that was part of the magic, too.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

APRIL 15, 1963

GORDON HAD BREAKFAST AT HARRY’S COFFEE SHOP on Girard, trying to read over his lecture notes and invent some problems for a homework set. It was difficult to work. The clatter of dishes kept intruding and a tinny radio played Kingston Trio songs, which he disliked. The only recent item in pop music he could tolerate was “Dominique,” an odd hit recorded by an angel-voiced Belgian nun. He was not in the mood for concentration on things academic, anyway. The San Diego Union writeup of Saul’s PR blitz had been worse than he’d expected, sensational beyond the bounds of reason. Several people in the department had tut-tutted him about it.

He mulled this over as he drove up Torrey Pines, without reaching any conclusion. He was distracted by a weaving Cadillac with its headlights burning on high. The driver was the typical fortyish man wearing a porkpie hat and a dazed expression. Back in the late ‘50s, he remembered, the National Safety Council had made a big thing of that. On one of the national holidays they publicized the practice of driving with headlights on during the day, to remind everyone to drive safely. Somehow the idea caught on with the slow-is-safe drivers and now, years later, you would still see them meandering through traffic, certain that their slowness bestowed invulnerability, lights burning uselessly There was something about such reflex stupidity that never failed to irritate him.

Cooper was in the lab already. Showing more industry as his candidacy exam approaches, Gordon thought, but then felt guilty for being cynical. Cooper did seem genuinely more interested now, quite possibly because the whole message riddle had been elevated out of his thesis.

“Trying out the new samples?” Gordon asked with a friendliness fueled by the residue of guilt.

“Yeah. Getting nice stuff. Looks to me like the added indium impurities did the trick.”

Gordon nodded. He had been developing a method of doping the samples to achieve the right concentration of impurities and this was the first confirmation that several months of effort were going to pan out. “No messages?”

“No messages,” Cooper said with obvious relief.

A voice from the doorway began, “Say, uh, I was told…”

“Yes?” Gordon said, turning. The man was dressed in droopy slacks and an Eisenhower jacket. He looked to be over fifty and his face was deeply tanned, as though he worked out of doors.

“You Perfesser Bernstein?”

“Yes.” Gordon was tempted to add one of his father’s old jokes, “Yes, I have that honor,” but the man’s earnest expression told him it wouldn’t go over.

“I, I’m Jacob Edwards, from San Diego? I’ve done some work I think you might be interested in?” He turned every sentence into a question.

“What kind of work?”

“Well, your experiments and the message and all? Say, is this where you get the signals?”

“Ah, yes.”

Edwards ambled into the laboratory, touching some of the equipment wonderingly. “Impressive. Real impressive.” He studied some of the new samples laid out on the working counter.

“Hey,” Cooper said, looking up from the x-y recorder. “Hey, those samples are coated with—shit!”

“Oh, that’s okay, my hands were dirty anyway. You fellas got a lot of fine equipment in here? How you pay for it all?”

“We have a grant from—but look, Mr. Edwards, what can I do for you?”

“Well, I solved your problem, you know? I have, yeah.” Edwards ignored Cooper’s glare.

“How, Mr. Edwards?”

“The secret,” he said, looking secretive, “is magnetism.”

“Oh.”

“Our sun’s magnetism, that’s what they’re after?”

“Who?” Gordon began to rummage through his mind for some way to get Edwards away from the equipment.

“The people who’re sending you those letters? They’re coming here to steal our magnetism. It’s all that keeps the Earth going around the sun—that’s what I’ve proved.”

“Look, I don’t think magnetism has anything to do—”

“Your experiment here—” he patted the large field coils—“uses magnets, doesn’t it?”

Gordon saw no reason to deny that. Before he could say anything Edwards went on, “They were drawn to your magnetism, Perfesser Bernstein. They’re exploring for more magnetism and now that they’ve found yours, they’re gong to come and get it.”

“I see.”