Gregory Benford - Timescape

“What it says about the ocean, and this stuff reacting together—”

Ramsey shrugged. “Who knows? We’re babes in the woods about a lot of this long-chain molecule stuff. Just because we can make plastic raincoats, don’t think we’re wizards.”

“Look, I came over to Chemistry to get help in understanding that message. Who would know more about it?”

Ramsey sat back in his reclining office chair, squinting unconsciously at Gordon, plainly trying to assess the situation. After a moment he said quietly, “Where’d you get this information?”

Gordon shifted uneasily in his chair. “I’m… look, keep this quiet.”

“Sure, Sure.”

“I’ve been getting some… strange… signals in an experiment of mine. Signals where there shouldn’t be any.”

Ramsey squinted again. “Uh huh.”

“Look, I know this stuff isn’t very clear. Just fragments of sentences.”

“That’s what you’d expect, isn’t it?”

“Expect? From what?”

“An intercepted message, picked up by one of our listening stations in Turkey.” Ramsey smiled with a touch of glee, his skin around the blue eyes crinkling so that his freckles folded together.

Gordon fingered the tip of his button-down collar, opened his mouth and then closed it.

“Oh, come on,” Ramsey said, cheerful now that he had penetrated on obvious cover story. “I know about all that tip-top secret stuff. Lots of guys try their hand at it. Government can’t get enough qualified people to pick over this stuff, so they bring in a consultant.”

“I’m not working for the government. I mean, outside of NSF—”

“Sure, I’m not saying you are. There’s that working panel Department of Defense has, what do they call it? Jason, yeah. A lot of bright guys in there. Hal Lewis up at Santa Barbara, Rosenbluth from here, sharp people. Did you do any of that ICBM reentry work for DOD?”

“Can’t say as I did,” Gordon said with deliberate mildness. Which is precisely the truth , he thought.

“Ha! Good phrase. Can’t say , not that you didn’t do . What was it Mayor Daley said? ‘Coming clean isn’t the same as taking a bath.’ I won’t ask you to give away your sources.”

Gordon found himself fingering his collar again and discovered the button was nearly twisted off. In the New York days his mother had had to sew one back on every week or so. Lately his rate had gotten lower, but today—

“I’m surprised the Soviets are talking about this sort of thing, though,” Ramsey murmured, thinking to himself. The narrowing around his eyes had relaxed and he slipped back into the mold of experimental organic chemist pondering a problem. “They’re not very far along in these directions. In fact, at the last Moscow meeting I attended I could’ve sworn they were way behind us. They’ve pushed fertilizer for that five-year plan of theirs. Nothing of this complexity.”

“Why the American and English brand names?” Gordon said intently, leaning forward in his chair. “Dupont and Springfield. And this—’emitting from repeated agricultural use Amazon basin other sites’ and so on.”

“Yeah,” Ramsey allowed, “Seems funny. Don’t suppose it’s got anything to do with Cuba, do you? That’s the only place the Russians are monkeying around in South America.”

“Ummm.” Gordon frowned, nodding to himself.

Ramsey studied Gordon’s face. “Ah, maybe that makes sense. Some kind of Castro side action in the Amazon? A little under-the-counter aid to the backwoods people, to make the guerrillas more popular? Might make sense.”

“That seems a little complicated, doesn’t it? I mean, the other parts about the plankton neurojacket and so on.”

“Yeah, I don’t understand that. Maybe it’s not even part of the same transmission.” He looked up. “Can’t you get a better transcription than this? Those radio eavesdroppers—”

“I’m afraid that’s the best I can do. You understand,” he added significantly.

Ramsey pursed his lips and nodded. “If DOD is so interested they’d farm out info like this… Tantalizing, isn’t it? Must be something to it.”

Gordon shrugged. He didn’t dare say anything more. This was a delicate game, letting Ramsey talk himself into a cloak-and-dagger explanation, without actually telling him anything that was an outright lie. He had come over to the Chemistry Department prepared to lay things on the line, but he now realized that would have got him nowhere. Better to play it this way.

“I like it,” Ramsey said decisively. He slapped his palm with a whack onto a pile of examinations on his desk. “I like it a lot. Damned funny puzzle, and DOD interested. Bound to be something in it. Think we can get funding?”

This took Gordon aback. “Well, I don’t… I hadn’t thought…”

Ramsey nodded again. “Right, I get it. DOD isn’t going to pony up for every blue-sky idea that floats by. They want some backup work.”

“A down payment.”

“Yeah. Some preliminary data. That’ll make a better case for pursuing the idea.” He paused, as though juggling schedules in his mind. “I have some idea how we could start. Can’t do it right’ away, you understand. Lots of other work under way here.” He relaxed, leaned back in his swivel chair, grinned. “Send me a Xerox of it and let me mull it over, huh? I like a puzzle like this. Puts a little zip in things. I appreciate your bringing it by, letting me in.”

“And I’m happy you’re interested,” Gordon murmured. His smile had a wry and distant quality.

HE PICKED HIS WAY ALONG PEARL STREET, HITTING the brakes every moment or two as ruby tail lights winked in warning ahead. Traffic was getting thicker almost daily. Gordon felt for the first time the irritation at others moving in, gobbling up the landscape, crowding this slice of paradise, elbowing him. It seemed pointless, now that he was settled in, to develop this land any further. He smiled wanly as the thought struck him that he had now joined the legion of the genuinely transplanted; California was now here , other people were from there . New York was more a different idea than a different place.

Penny wasn’t at the bungalow. He had told her he would be late because of a recruiting cocktail party at Lakin’s house, and had half expected she would have a light supper ready. He prowled the apartment, wondering what to do next, feeling light and restless after three glasses of white wine. He found a can of peanuts and munched them. Penny’s papers from the composition class she taught were arranged neatly on the dining table, as though she had left in a hurry without putting them away. He frowned; that was unlike her. The papers were covered with her neat, curling handwriting, labeling paragraphs “tepid” or “arguable,” block letters shouting “SEN FRAG” or simply “AG”—failure of agreement between subject and predicate, she had explained to him, not a howl of anguish. At the top of one student essay on Kafka and Christ she had written “King Kong died for our sins?” Gordon wondered what it meant.

He decided to go out and buy some wine and nibble food. He certainly wasn’t going to wait around the apartment for her. On his way out the door he noticed a duffel bag leaning against the overstuffed armchair he usually sat in. He pulled at the sealing cord until the mouth sagged open. Inside was a man’s clothing. He frowned.

Full of a curious jangling energy, he delayed getting back in the Chevy and walked the half block down to Windansea Beach instead. Big combers battered at the smooth fingers of that rock that stretched into the sea. He wondered how long these rocks could stand the constant gnawing of the surf, booming in great bursts over them. To the south a few teenagers, brown as Indians, lounged around the small municipal water station pump house. They studied the tumbling surf in a languid stupor, some of them puffing on short cigarettes. Gordon had never been able to get more than three words out of them, no matter what he asked. Inscrutable natives , he thought, and turned away. Returning to his car along Nautilus he passed under Torrey pine trees that had ruptured the sidewalk, the concrete breaking on the hard and heavy bark like frozen waves.