Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

Christine Warnecke Rudeman, I thought suddenly. Christine Warnecke. Of course. The photographer. There had been a display of her pictures at the library a year or two ago. She had an uncanny way of looking at things, as if she were at some point that you couldn’t imagine, getting an angle that no one ever had seen before. I couldn’t remember the details of the show, or any of the individual pieces, only the general impression of great art, or even greater fakery. I could almost visualize the item I had read about the death of her husband, but it kept sliding out of focus. Something about his death, though. Something never explained.

Tuesday I went home for lunch. I often did, the lab was less than a mile from the house. Sometimes I took Lenny with me, but that day he was too busy with a printed circuit that he had to finish by six and he nodded without speaking when I asked if he wanted a sandwich. The air felt crisp and cool after the hot smell of solder as I walked home.

I was thinking of the computer cutting tool that we were finishing up, wondering if Mike had mastered the Morse code yet, anticipating the look on his face when I installed the ham set. I was not thinking of Christine, had, in fact, forgotten about her, until I got even with the house and suddenly there she was, carrying a tripod out toward a small toolhouse at the rear of the lot.

I turned in the Donlevy drive. If it had been Ruth Klinger, or Grace Donlevy, or any of the other women who lived there, I would have offered a hand. But as soon as I got near her, I knew I’d made a mistake. It hit me again, not so violently, but still enough to shake me up. I know this woman, came the thought.

“Hi, Eddie.” She put the tripod down and looked hot and slightly out of breath. “I always forget how heavy it can get. I had it made heavy purposely, so it could stay in place for months at a time, and then I forget.”

I picked it up and it was heavy, but worse, awkward. The legs didn’t lock closed, and no matter how I shifted it, one of them kept opening. “Where to?” I asked.

“Inside the toolshed. I left the door open…”

I positioned it for her and she was as fussy as Lenny got over his circuits, or as I got over wiring one of the suits. It pleased me that she was that fussy about its position at an open window. I watched her mount a camera on the tripod and again she made adjustments that were too fine for me to see that anything was changed. Finally she was satisfied. All there was in front of the lens was a maple tree. “Want to take a look?” she asked.

The tree, framed by sky. I must have looked blank.

“I have a timer,” she said. “A time-lapse study of the tree from now until spring, I hope. If nothing goes wrong.”

“Oh.” My disappointment must have shown.

“I won’t show them side by side,” she said, almost too quickly. “Sort of superimposed, so that you’ll see the tree through time…” She looked away suddenly and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Well, thanks again.”

“What in hell do you mean, through time?”

“Oh… Sometime when you and Janet are free I’ll show you some of the sort of thing I mean.” She looked up, apologetically, and shrugged as she had that first time I met her. It was a strange gesture from one so small. It seemed that almost everything was too much for her, that when she felt cornered she might always simply shrug off everything with that abrupt movement.

“Well, I have to get,” I said then, and turned toward the drive. “Do you have anything else to lug out here, before I leave?”

“No. The timer and film. But that’s nothing. Thanks again.” She took a step away, stopped and said, with that same shy apologetic tone, “I wish I could explain what I want to do, in words. But I can’t.”

I hurried away from her, to my own house, but I didn’t want anything to eat after all. I paced the living room, into the kitchen, where the coffee I had poured was now cold, back to the living room, out to the terrace. I told myself asinine things like: I love Janet. We have a good life, good sex, good kids. I have a good business that I am completely involved in. I’m too young for the male climacteric. She isn’t even pretty.

And I kept pacing until I was an hour later than I’d planned on. I still hadn’t eaten, and couldn’t, and I forgot to make the sandwich for Lenny and take it back to him.

I avoided Christine. I put in long hours at the lab, and stayed in the basement workshop almost every evening, and turned down invitations to join the girls for coffee, or talk. They were together a lot. Janet was charmed by her, and a strong friendship grew between them rapidly. Janet commented on it thoughtfully one night. “I’ve never had many woman friends at all. I can’t stand most women after a few minutes. Talking about kids sends me right up the wall, and you know how I am about PTA and clubs and that sort of thing. But she’s different. She’s a person first, then a woman, and as a person she’s one of the most interesting I’ve ever run into. And she has so much empathy and understanding. She’s very shy, too. You never have to worry about her camping on your doorstep or anything like that.”

She’d been there almost two months when Pete’s letter finally arrived telling us about her. Janet read it aloud to me while I shaved.

“ She’s a good kid and probably will need a friend or two by the time she gets out of that madhouse in Connecticut. Rudeman was a genius, but not quite human. Cold, calculating, never did a thing by accident in his life. He wound her up every morning and gave her instructions for the day. God knows why she married him, why they stayed together, but they did. In his own way I think Rudeman was very much in love with her. He said once that if he could understand this one woman he’d understand the entire universe. May he rest in peace, he never made it. So be good to her.

“Grace sends love. She’s been redoing our apartment…”

I stopped listening. The letter went on for three pages of single-spaced typing. The letter had left as many questions as it had answered. More in fact, since we already had found out the basic information he had supplied. I decided to go to the library and look up Rudeman and his death and get rid of that nagging feeling that had never gone away.

“Eddie, for heaven’s sake!” Janet was staring at me, flushed, and angry.

“What? Sorry, honey. My mind was wandering.”

“I noticed. What in the world is bothering you? You hear me maybe half the time, though I doubt it.”

“I said I’m sorry, Janet. God damn it!” I blotted a nick and turned to look at her, but she was gone.

She snapped at Rusty and Laura, and ignored me when I asked if there was any more mail. Rusty looked at me with a What’s-eating-her? expression.

I tried to bring up the subject again that night, and got nowhere. “Nothing,” she said. “Just forget it.”

“Sure. That suits me fine.” I didn’t know what I was supposed to forget. I tried to remember if it was time for her period, but I never knew until it hit, so I just left her in the kitchen and went downstairs to the workroom and messed around for an hour. When I went back up, she was in bed, pretending to be asleep. Usually I’d keep at it until we had it out in the open, whatever it was, and we’d both explain our sides, maybe not convincing each other, but at least demonstrating that each thought he had a position to maintain. That time I simply left the bedroom and wandered about in the living room, picked up a book to read, put it down again. I found Pete’s letter and saw that we’d been invited to visit them over Christmas. I seemed to remember that Janet had gone on about that, but I couldn’t recall her words. Finally I pulled on a jacket and walked out to the terrace. I looked toward the Donlevy house, Christine’s house now. Enough leaves had fallen by then so I could see the lights.