Timescape

“Your ad says I get a safety deposit box if I maintain a minimum balance of twenty-five dollars, right?”

“Indeed. But as I was beginning to say, we intend this as an initial offering to encourage clients to set up accounts. The firm certainly does not mean for customers to hold these indefinitely, solely on the strength—”

“Your ad doesn’t quibble the way you do.”

“I don’t think your—”

“I’m right and you know it. You want I should ask for the manager? You’re just starting out here, aren’t you?”

The clerk’s face gave away nothing as he thought. “Well… you do seem to have uncovered an aspect we had not anticipated…”

Gordon grinned. He took the yellow sheet of paper out of an envelope and put it on the desk.

CHAPTER FORTY

NOVEMBER 3, 1963

“HELLO.”

“Gordon? Gordon, is that you?”

“Uncle Herb, ah.” Gordon hesitated and looked at his office telephone receiver in puzzlement, as though his uncle’s voice were out of place here.

“You’re working so hard, you can’t go home at night?”

“Well, you know, some experiments.”

“So the girl said.”

Gordon smiled. Not lady, his usual term. No, Penny was a girl. And his mother had undoubtedly told Uncle Herb what kind of girl.

“I’m calling about your mother.”

“What? Why?”

“She is krank.”

“What? Cronk?”

“Krank, sick. She has been sick for quite a while.”

“Not when I was there.”

“When you were here, too, yes. She was. But for your visit, she did not let on.”

“Good grief. Look, what’s wrong?”

“Something with the pancreas, they said. They’re not sure. These doctors, they never are.”

“She said something about pleurisy, a long time ago—”

“That was it. That was when it started up with her.”

“How bad is it?”

“You know doctors, they don’t say yet. But I think you ought to come home.”

“Uncle Herb, look, I can’t just now.”

“She has started asking about you.”

“Why didn’t she call?”

“You know her, the trouble between you two.”

“We weren’t having any bad trouble.”

“You can’t fool your uncle, Gordon.”

“No, really, I didn’t think it was.”

“She thinks so. I think so, too, but I know you don’t listen to your old dummy uncle’s advice.”

“Look, you’re no dummy. I—”

“Come see her.”

“I have a job, Uncle Herb. Classes to teach. And these experiments now, they’re very important.”

“Your mother, you know she won’t call you, but—”

“I would if I could, and I will, I will as soon as—”

“It’s important to her, Gordon.”

“Where is she now?”

“In the hospital, where else?”

“For what?”

“Some tests,” he admitted.

“Okay, look, I really can’t get away now. But soon. Yes, soon I’ll come.”

“Gordon, I think now.”

“No, look, Uncle Herb, I know how you feel. And I will come. Soon.”

“Soon means when?”

“I’ll call you. Let you know as soon as I can.”

“All right then. Soon. She hasn’t heard from you much lately.”

“Right, I know. Soon. Soon.”

•  •  •

He called his mother, to explain. Her voice was thin and reedy, shrunken by the miles. She seemed in good spirits, though. The doctors were very nice, they treated you with consideration. No, she had no problem with the hospital bills, he was not to worry about that. She played down the idea that he should come see her. He was a professor, he had students, and why spend all that money for only a few days. Come home at Thanksgiving, that would be early enough, that would be fine. Uncle Herb was a little overconcerned, that was all. Gordon said abruptly into the telephone, “Tell him for me, I’m trying to not be a potzer, here. The work is at a crucial point.” His mother paused. Potzer was not really a polite word, too close to putzer. But she let it go. “That he’ll understand. So do I, Gordon. Do your work, yes.”

•  •  •

The university had arranged the press conference for Ramsey and Hussinger. There was a three-man team from the local CBS station, and the journalist who did the A University on Its Way to Greatness feature, as well as San Diego Union and Los Angeles Times men. Gordon stood in the back of the hall. There were slides of the results, pictures of Hussinger beside the testing tanks, graphs of the breakdown in the ocean ecosystems. The audience was impressed. Ramsey fielded questions well. Hussinger—an overweight, balding man with quick, black eyes—spoke with rapid-fire intensity. A reporter asked Ramsey what led him to conjecture that such terrible things could come from such an obscure cause. Ramsey skirted the issue. He glanced at Gordon and then made a vague remark about hunches coming out of nowhere. People you knew or worked with said something and then you put them together, all without really knowing where the initial spark was from. Oh, the reporter asked, was someone else at UCLJ working on things like this? Ramsey looked uneasy. “I don’t think I can say anything about that at this time,” he murmured. Gordon slipped out the back before the conference broke up. Outside, the air seemed smoky. He breathed deeply, felt dizzy, and coughed harshly. The shafts of sunlight had a shifting, watery look.

•  •  •

Hercules fell below the horizon around 9 p.m. now, so Gordon could shut down the rig reasonably early. There was still decoding work to be done, though, if he found any interruptions of the NMR traces. He got home reasonably early most of the time, for about a week. Then the noise level began to rise again. He received sporadic signals. Hercules was in the sky from midmorning until night. He spent the day taking data. Then, after 9 o’clock, he would prepare his lectures and grade papers. He began to stay later and later. Once he slept in his office overnight.

•  •  •

Penny looked up with surprise as he unlocked their front door. “Well, well. Run out of electricity?”