Dan Simmons - Phases of Gravity

'Good,' said Dave in a relieved tone. Suddenly he coughed twice into his fist. Torn-up bits of yellow Kleenex fluttered into the air like feathers.

Baedecker closed his eye.

'Real good to have you here, Richard,' said Dave Muldorff.

Baedecker smiled without opening his eyes. 'Real good to be here, Dave.'

Baedecker had sold his car in Denver and taken the train west with Maggie Brown. He did not know whether the decision was wise — he suspected that it was not — but for once he attempted simply to carry out an action without analysis.

The Amtrak California Zephyr left Denver at nine A.M., and he and Maggie breakfasted in the dining car while the long train burrowed under the continental divide through the first of fifty-five tunnels awaiting them in Colorado. Baedecker looked at the paper plates, paper napkins, and paper tablecloth. 'The last time I traveled by train in America, there was real linen on the table and the food wasn't microwaved,' he said to Maggie.

Maggie smiled. 'When was that, Richard, during World War II?' She meant it as a joke — a not-so-subtle jibe at his constant mentioning of their age difference — but Baedecker blinked in shock as he realized that it had been during the war. His mother had taken his sister Anne and him from Peoria to Chicago to visit relatives over the holidays. Baedecker remembered the train seats that faced backward, the hushed tone of the porters and waiters in the dining car, and the strange thrill that passed through him as he peered out the window at streetlights and the orange-lit windows of homes in the night.

Chicago had been constellations of lights and rows of apartment windows flashing by as the train moved along elevated tracks through the southside. Despite the fact that he had been born in Chicago, the view had given the ten-year-old Baedecker a sense of displacement, a not unpleasant feeling of having lost the center of things. Twenty-eight years after the trip to Chicago, he was to feel the same sense of uncenteredness as his Apollo spacecraft passed out of radio contact with the earth as the rough limb of the moon filled his view. Baedecker remembered leaning against the small window of the command module and wiping away condensation with his palm, much as he had four and a half decades earlier as the train carrying his mother, his sister, and him pulled into Union Station.

'You folks done?' The Amtrak waiter's voice bordered on belligerence. 'All done,' said Maggie and swallowed the last of her coffee.

'Good,' said the waiter. He flipped the red paper tablecloth up from opposite corners, enclosed the paper plates, plastic utensils, and Styrofoam cups in it, and tossed the entire mass into a nearby receptacle.

'Progress,' said Baedecker as they moved back through the shifting aisle. 'What's that?' asked Maggie.

'Nothing,' said Baedecker.

Late that night, while Maggie slept against his shoulder, Baedecker watched out the window as they changed engines in a remote corner of the switching yard in Salt Lake City. Under an abandoned overpass, bounded about by tall weeds made brittle by the autumn cold, hobos sat by a fire. Are they still called hobos? wondered Baedecker.

In the morning both he and Maggie awoke just before dawn as the first false light touched the pink rocks of the desert canyon through which the train was hurtling. Baedecker knew instantly upon awakening that the trip would not go well, that whatever he and Maggie had shared in India and rediscovered in the Colorado mountains would not survive the reality of the next few days.

Neither of them spoke while the sun rose. The train rushed on westward, the rocks and mesas flying by, the morning wrapped in a temporary and fragile hush.

Dave and Diane Muldorff lived in a well-to-do suburb on the south side of Salem. Their patio looked down on a wooded stream and Baedecker listened to water running over unseen rocks as he ate his steak and baked potato.

'Tomorrow we'll take you over to Lonerock,' said Dave.

'Sounds good,' said Baedecker. 'I look forward to seeing it after hearing about it all these years.'

' Dave will take you over,' said Diane. 'I have a reception at the Children's Home tomorrow night and a fund-raiser on Sunday. I'll see you on Monday.' Baedecker nodded and looked at Diane Muldorff. She was thirty-four, fourteen years younger than her husband. With her tousled mane of dark hair, startling blue eyes, snub nose, and freckles, she reminded Baedecker of all the girls-next-door he had never known. Yet there was a solid streak of adult in Diane, a quiet but firm maturity, which was now emphasized as she entered her sixth month of pregnancy. This evening she wore soft jeans and a faded blue Oxford shirt with the tails out. 'You look good, Di,' Baedecker said on impulse. 'Pregnancy agrees with you.'

'Thank you, Richard. You look good, too. You've lost some weight since that party in Washington.' Baedecker laughed. He had been at his heaviest then, thirty-six pounds over his flying weight. He was still twenty-one pounds over that weight.

'Are you still jogging?' asked Dave. Muldorff had been the only one of the second generation of astronauts who did not run regularly. It had been the point of some contention. Now, ten years after leaving the program, he looked thinner than he had then. Baedecker wondered if Dave's illness was the cause.

'I run a little,' said Baedecker. 'Just started up a few months ago after I got back from India.' Diane carried several icy bottles of beer to the table and sat down. The last of the evening light touched her cheeks. 'How was India?' she asked.

'Interesting,' said Baedecker. 'Too much to take in in so short a time.'

'And you saw Scott there?' asked Dave.

'Yes,' said Baedecker. 'Briefly.'

'I miss seeing Scott,' said Dave. 'Remember our fishing trips off Galveston in the early seventies?' Baedecker nodded. He remembered the endless afternoons in rich light and the slow, warm evenings. He and his son would both return home with sunburns. 'The redheads return!' Joan would cry out in mock dismay. 'Get out the ointment!'

'Did you know that what's-his-name, Scott's holy man, is coming to stay full-time in that ashram of his not far from Lonerock?' asked Diane.

Baedecker blinked at her. 'Full-time? No, I didn't.'

'What was the ashram like in Poona where Scott was staying?' asked Dave. 'I don't really know,' said Baedecker. He thought of the shop outside the main building where one could buy T-shirts with images of the Master's bearded face on them. 'I was just in Poona two days and didn't see much of the ashram.'

'Will Scott be coming back to the States when the group moves over here?' asked Diane.

Baedecker tasted his beer. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Maybe he's here now. I'm afraid I'm out of touch.'

'Hey,' said Dave. 'Want to come inside to the billy yard room for a fast game?'

'Billy yard room?' said Baedecker.

'What's the matter, Richard,' said Dave, 'didn't you ever watch The Beverly Hillbillies back during the golden age of the tube?'

'No,' said Baedecker.

Dave rolled his eyes at Diane. 'That's the problem with this lad, Di. He's culturally deprived.' Diane nodded. 'I'm sure you'll fix that, David.' Muldorff poured more beer and carried both mugs with him to the door of the patio. 'Luckily for him, I've got twenty episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies on tape. We'll start watching as soon as I thrash him in a fast but expensive game of pool. Come wiz me, mon sewer Baedecker.'

'Oui,' said Baedecker. He picked up some of the dishes and carried them toward the kitchen. 'Einen Augenblik, por favor, mon ami.'

Baedecker parks his rented car and walks the two hundred yards to the crash site. He has seen many such sites before; he expects this one to hold no surprises. He is wrong.