“Ha!”
“Maintenance purposes, then. It probably short-circuited the occasional desire to carve one’s initials in her.”
“Unlikely,” she said. “Ummm. ‘The eternal dance of the Yogini and the lingam,’ it says, on this next one. Eternal.” She gazed at it for a long moment, and then turned quickly away. Her mouth sagged. She wobbled uncertainly on the glossy tiles. Nigel took her arm and held her as she limped toward a row of chairs. He noticed that the gallery was oddly hushed. She sat down heavily, air wheezing out in a rush. She swayed and stared straight ahead. Her forehead beaded with sudden perspiration. Nigel glanced up. Everyone in the gallery had stopped moving and stood, watching Alexandria.
“She ought to quit that damned job now,” Shirley said adamantly.
“She likes it.”
Nigel sipped at his coffee. It was oily and thick, but still probably better than what he could get at work. He told himself that he should get up and clear away the breakfast dishes, now that Alexandria had left for her meeting, but Shirley’s cold, deliberate anger pinned him to the dining nook.
“She’s holding on, just barely holding on. Can’t you see that?” Her eyes flashed at him, their glitter punctuated by the high, arching black eyebrows.
“She wants to have a hand in this Brazilian thing.” “God damn it! She’s frightened. I was gone—how long? five minutes?—and when I came back she was still sitting there in that gallery, white as a sheet and you patting her arm. That’s not healthy, that’s not the Alexandria we know.”
Nigel nodded. “But I talked to her. She—”
“—is afraid to bring it up, to show how worried she is. She feels guilty about it, Nigel. That’s a common reaction. The people I work with, they’re guilty over being poor, or old, or sick. It’s up to you and me to force them out of that. Make them see themselves as…”
Her voice trickled away. “I’m not reaching you, am I?”
“No, no, you are.”
“I think you ought to at least persuade her to stay home and rest.”
“I will.”
“When she’s feeling better we’ll take a trip,” Shirley said quickly, consolidating her gains.
“Right. A trip.” He stood up and began stacking plates, their ceramic edges scraping, the silverware clattering. “I’m afraid I haven’t noticed. My work—”
“Yes, yes,” Shirley said fiercely, “I know about your damned work.”
He awoke in a swamp of wrinkled, sticky sheets. July’s heat was trapped in the upper rooms of this old house, lying in wait for the night, clinging in the airless corners. He rolled slowly out of bed, so that Alexandria rocked peacefully in the slow swells of the water’s motion. She made a foggy murmur deep in her throat and fell silent again.
The cold snap of night air startled him. The room was not close and stifling after all. The sweat that tingled, drying, had come from some inner fire, a vaguely remembered dream. He sucked in the cool, dry air and shivered.
Then he remembered.
He padded into the high-arched living room and switched on a lamp where the light would not cast into the bedroom. He fumbled among the volumes of the Encylopaedia Britannica and found the entry he wanted. Reading, he groped for the couch and sat down.
Lupus erythematosus. May affect any organ or the overall structure of the body. Preference for membranes which exude moisture, such as those of the joints or those lining the abdomen. Produces modified antibodies, altered proteins. For long intervals symptoms may subside. Spreading through the body is usually undetectable until major symptoms arise. Communication to the central nervous system has become a consistent feature of the disease in recent years. Studies relating disease incidence and pollution levels show a clear connection, though the precise mechanism is not understood. Treatment—
Until this moment it had not seemed truly real.
He read through the article once, then again, and finally stopped when he found that he was crying. His eyes were stinging and watery.
He put the volume back and noticed a new book on the shelf. A Bible bound in ridged acrylic. Curious, he opened it. Some pages were well thumbed. Shirley? No, Alexandria. Had she been reading it, even before their conference with Hufman? Had she suspected in advance? He sat down and began reading.
SIX
“The President does not know how long, Nigel,” Lubkin said sternly. “He wants us all to hold on and try to find it.”
“Does he think anybody can suppress news about something this big forever? It’s been five months now. I don’t think the Washington or UN people will keep quiet much longer.”
Once more they were framed in the pool of light around Lubkin’s desk. The one window in the far wall let in some sunlight, giving Lubkin’s sallow skin a deeper cast of yellow. Nigel sat stiffly alert, lips pressed thin.
Lubkin casually leaned back in his chair and rocked for a moment. “You aren’t hinting that you might…?”
“No, rubbish. I won’t spill it.” He paused for a second, remembering that Alexandria knew. She could be trusted, he was sure. In fact, she didn’t seem to quite grasp the importance of the Snark, and never spontaneously spoke of it. “But the whole idea is stupid. Childish.”
“You wouldn’t feel that way if you had been with me at the White House, Nigel,” Lubkin said solemnly.
“I wasn’t invited.”
“I know. I understand the President and NASA wanted to keep the number of attendees down. To avoid attracting notice from the press. And for security reasons.”
The trip had been the high point of Lubkin’s career, clearly, and Nigel suspected he burned to tell someone about it. But at JPL only Nigel and the Director were privy to the information, and the Director had been present at the White House, anyway. Nigel smiled to himself.
“The way the President put it was really convincing, Nigel. The emotional impact of such an event, coupled with the religious fervor afoot in the country, in fact in the world … those New Sons of God have a senator to speak for them now, you know. They would kick up quite a bit of dust.”
“Which wing of the New Sons?”
“Wing? I don’t know…”
“They come in all colors and sizes, these days. The fever-eyed, sweaty-palmed ones can’t count to twelve without taking off their shoes. If they have any. The intellectual New Sons, though, have a doctrine cobbled together about life existing everywhere and being part of the Immanent Host and that sort of thing. So Alexandria says. They—” Nigel stopped, aware that he’d begun to rattle on about a side issue. Lubkin had a definite talent for deflecting from the point.
“Well,” Lubkin said, “there are also the military people. They’re pretty nervous about this thing.” Lubkin nodded unconsciously to himself, as though this last statement needed added weight.
