CHAPTER FORTY ONE
THE SIGNAL STRENGTH GOT ABRUPTLY BETTER. THERE were whole paragraphs about the Wheeler- Feynman theory. Gordon called Claudia Zinnes to see if the Columbia group was getting the same results.
“No, not for five days now,” she said. “First we had some equipment failure. Then the graduate student got the flu—the one that’s been going around. I think he was overtired. Those times you gave us—that’s ten, twelve hours in the lab, Gordon.”
“You mean you have
“Not for those days, no.”
“Can’t you do some of the times yourself?”
“I will, starting tomorrow. I do have other things to do, you know.”
“Sure, yes. I want to have some confirmation, that’s all.”
“We have that
“It’s not only the effect that’s important. Claudia, look back over those signals. Think about what it means.”
“Gordon, I don’t think we know enough yet to—”
“Okay, I agree, basically. Most of my data is a jumble. Fragments. Pieces of sentences. Formulas. But there is a consistent feel to it.”
Her voice took on the precise, professional clarity he remembered from graduate school. “First the data, Gordon. Then we indulge in some theory, maybe.”
“Yeah, right.” He knew better than to argue with her on the philosophy of experimental physics. She had rather rigid views.
“I promise you, I start up tomorrow.”
“Okay, but it could fade by then. I mean—”
“Don’t kvetch, Gordon. Tomorrow we start again.”
It came less than three hours later, shortly after noon on Tuesday, November 6. Names, dates. The spreading bloom. The phrases describing this were clipped and tense. Parts were garbled. Letters were missing. One long passage, though, related how the experiments had begun and who was involved. These sentences were longer and more relaxed and almost conversational, as though someone were simply sending what came into his head.
—WITH MARKHAM GONE AND BLOODY DUMB RENFREW CARRYING ON THERE’S NO FUTURE IN OUR LITTLE PLAN NO PAST EITHER I SUPPOSE THE LANGUAGE CAN’T DEAL WITH IT BUT THE THING SHOULD HAVE WORKED IF—
There came a scramble of noise. The long passage disappeared and did not return. The terse biological information reappeared. There were missing words. The noise was rising like a tossing sea. Through the last staccato sentences there ran an unstated sense of desperation.
Penny saw something different in his face when he came into the kitchen. Her raised eyebrows asked a question.
“I got it today.” He surprised himself at the easy, blank way he could say it.
“Got what?”
“The answer, for Chrissake.”
“Oh.
Gordon handed her a Xerox copy of his lab notebook. “So it really is the way you thought?”
“Apparently.” There was a quiet assurance in him now. He felt no pressing need to say anything about the result, no tension, not even a hint of the manic elation he had expected. The facts were there at last and they could speak for themselves.
“My God, Gordon.”
“Yeah. My God, indeed.”
There was a moment of silence between them. She put the Xerox page on the kitchen table and turned back to deboning a chicken. “Well, that should take care of your promotion.”
“It sure as hell should,” Gordon said with some relish.
“And maybe—” she gave him a sidelong look—“maybe you’ll be worth living with again.” The sentence had started out all right but by the end a bitter tone came into it. Gordon pursed his lips, irked.
“You haven’t made it any easier.”
“There are
“Uh huh.”
“I’m not your goddam little wifey.”
“Yes, you made that brilliantly clear some time ago.”
She sniffed, lips pressed so tight they grew pale, and wiped her hands on a paper towel. Penny reached over and clicked on the radio. It began playing a Chubby Checker tune Gordon stepped forward and turned it off. She looked at him, saying nothing. Gordon picked up the Xeroxed page and put it in his jacket pocket, carefully folding it beforehand.
He said, “I think I’ll go do some reading.”
“You do that,” she said.
All through the afternoon of November 7 the noise level rose. It blotted out the signal most of the time. Gordon got a few words here and there, and a very clear RA 18 5 36 DEC 30 29.2, and that was all. The coordinates made sense now. Up ahead in the future they would have a precise fix on where they would seem to be in the sky The solar apex was an average of the sun’s motion. Thirty-five years from now the earth would be in a location near the average motion. Gordon felt a certain relaxing in him as he watched the jittering noise. All the pieces fit now. Zinnes could confirm at least part of it. Now the question was how to present the data, how to build an airtight case that couldn’t be dismissed out of hand. A straightforward paper in
Penny carried knives and forks to the table; Gordon brought the plates. The slatted blinds let in yellow swords of sun. She moved gracefully in this light, her face pensive.
They ate silently for a moment, both hungry. “I thought about your experiments today,” she began hesitantly.
“Yes?”
“I don’t understand them. To think of time that way…”
“I don’t see how it can make sense, either. It’s a
“And facts rule.”
“Well, sure. I kind of feel we’re looking at this the wrong way, though. Space-time must not work the way physicists think.”
She nodded and pushed potatoes around her plate, still pensive. “Thomas Wolfe. ‘Time, dark time, secret time, forever flowing like a river.’ I remember that from
“Haven’t read it.”
