Gregory Benford - Timescape

Renfrew assembled his tools systematically, with as much care as he took in the laboratory. Their house was old and leaned slightly, as though blown by an unfelt wind. Renfrew found that his plumb line, nailed to the wainscotting, weaved a full three inches out from the scuffed molding. The floor sagged with an easy fatigue, like a well-used mattress. He stepped back from the tilting walls, squinted, and saw that the lines of his home were askew. You put down the money on a place, he reflected, and you get a maze of jambs and beams and cornices, all pushed slightly out of true by history. A bit of settling in that corner, a diagonal misaimed there. He had a sudden memory of when he had been a boy, looking up from a stone floor at his father, who squinted at the plaster ceiling as if to judge whether the roof would fall.

As he studied the problem his own children caromed through the house. Their feet thumped on the margins of polished wood that framed the thin rugs. They reached the front door and ricocheted outside in a game of tag. He realized that to them he probably had that same earnest wrenched look of his father, face skewed in concentration.

He arrayed his tools and began to work. The piles of lumber on the back porch gradually dwindled as he cut them into a suitable lattice. To fit the thin planks at the roof he had to make oblique cuts with a rip saw. The wood splintered under his lunging thrusts, but kept to line. Johnny appeared, tired of tag with his older sister. Renfrew set him to work fetching tools as they were needed. Through the window a tinny radio announced that Argentina had joined the nuclear club. “What’s a nuclear club, Daddy?” Johnny asked, eyes big. “People who can drop bombs.” Johnny fingered a wood file, frowning at the fine lines that rubbed his thumb. “Can I join?” Renfrew paused, licked his lips, peered into a sky of carbon blue. “Only fools get to join,” he said, and set back to work.

The radio detailed a Brazilian rejection of preferential trade agreements, which would have established a Greater American Zone with the US. There were reports that the Americans had tied the favor of cheaper imports to their aid on the southern Atlantic bloom problem. “A bloom, Daddy? How can the ocean do like a flower?” Renfrew said gruffly, “A different kind of bloom.” He hoisted boards under his arm and took them inside.

He was sanding down the ripped edges when Marjorie came in from the garden for inspection. She had mercifully taken the battery-operated radio into the garden with her. “Why’s it jut out at the base?” she asked by way of greeting. She put the radio on the kitchen table. It seemed to go with her everywhere these days, Renfrew noted, as though she could not bear to be alone with a bit of quiet.

“The shelves are straight. It’s the walls that are tilted.”

“They look odd. Are you sure… ?”

“Have a go.” He handed her his carpenter’s level. She put it gingerly on a rough-cut board. The bubble bobbed precisely into the place between the two defining lines. “See? Dead level.”

“Well, I suppose,” Marjorie reluctantly conceded.

“Worry not, your jars aren’t going to topple off.” He put several jars on a shelf. This ritual act completed the job. The boxy frame stood out, functional pine against aged oak paneling. Johnny stroked the sheets of wood tentatively, as though awed that he had had a hand in making this wood lattice.

“Think I’ll be off to the lab for a bit,” Renfrew said, collecting his rip saw and chisels.

“Steady on, there’s more fathering needs doing. You’re to take Johnny on the mercury hunt.”

“Oh hell , I forgot. Look, I’d thought—”

“You’d put in an afternoon tinkering,” Marjorie finished for him with mild reproof. “Fraid not.”

“Well look, I’ll just go round to pick up some notes, then, on Markham’s work.”

“Best make it on the way with Johnny. Can’t you leave off for a weekend, though? I thought you had settled things yesterday.”

“We worked out a message with Peterson. Ocean stuff, for the most part. We’re letting pass the lot on mass fermentation of sugar cane for fuel.”

“What’s wrong with that? Burning alcohol is cleaner than that wretched petrol they’re selling now.”

Renfrew scrubbed his hands in the washbasin. “True enough. The snag is that the Brazilians cut back so much of their jungle for the sugar cane fields. That lowers the number of plants which can absorb carbon dioxide from the air. Trace that effect round a bit and it explains the shifts in the world climate, greenhouse effect and rainfall and so on.”

“The Council decided that?”

“No, no, research teams worldwide did. The Council simply make policy to offset problems. The UN mandate, extraordinary powers, and all that.”

“Your Mr. Peterson must be a very influential man.”

Renfrew shrugged. “He says it’s pure luck the United Kingdom has a strong voice. The only reason we do is that we’ve still got research teams working on highly visible problems. Otherwise, we’d have a seat appropriate to Nigeria or the Viet Union or some other swacking nobody.”

“What you’re doing is—what did you say, ‘visible,’ isn’t it?”

Renfrew chuckled. “No, it’s bloody transparent. Peterson’s deflected some help my way, but he’s doing it as sort of a personal lark, I’ll wager.”

“That’s very nice of him.”

“Nice?” Renfrew dried his hands, meditating. “He’s interested intellectually, I can tell that, though he’s no soft of intellectual in my book. It’s a fair trade, I’d say. He’s getting some amusement from it, and I’m getting his pound notes.”

“But he must think you’ll succeed.”

“Must he? Maybe. I’m not sure I do myself.”

Marjorie seemed shocked. “Then why do it?”

“It’s good physics. I don’t know if we can alter the past. No one does. Physics is in chaos about this thing. If there weren’t a virtually complete shutdown of research, chaps would be swarming over the problem. I’ve got a chance here to do the definitive experiments, unit’s the reason. Science, luv.”

Marjorie frowned at this but said nothing. Renfrew surveyed his handiwork. She began busily ranking jars on the shelves. Each had a rubber collar and metal sealing clamps. Inside swam vague blobs of vegetables. Renfrew found the sight distinctly unappetizing.

Marjorie abruptly turned from her work, her face knitted with concern, and said, “You’re deceiving him, aren’t you?”

“Na, luv, I’m—what’s the phrase?—keeping his expectations high.”

“He expects—”

“Look, Peterson’s interested in the problem. I’m not responsible for guessing his true motivations. Christ, you’ll have him on the couch babbling about his early childhood next.”

“I’ve never met the man,” she said stiffly “Right, see, this conversation has no basis.”

“It’s you we’re properly talking about. You—”

“Hold on. The thing you don’t realize, Marj old lass, is that nobody really knows anything about these experiments. You can’t accuse me of false adverts yet. And for that matter, Peterson seemed as concerned as I was with the interference we’re getting, so maybe I misread him.”

“Someone’s interfering?”

“No, no, something is. A lot of incoming noise. I’ll filter it out, though. I planned to work on that very point this afternoon.”

Marjorie said firmly, “The mercury hunt.”

She clicked on the radio, which blared to a jingle, “Your ho-ney is mo-ney, in the new job-sharing plant That’s right, a couple splitting one job can help the current—”