Montaro Caine (28 page)

“Its sun died. Just as ours will,” Luther stated plainly.

Caine’s brain jammed as if it could not compute the appropriate imagery. He swallowed hard.

“How far away is the sun that died?” Caine asked.

“Thirty-three thousand years by light.”

“And how long ago did it die?”

“It’s been one hundred thousand years since the light stopped.”

“The Seventh Ship left before the sun died. Is that what happened, Luther?”

“A long time before. All of them did.”

“There were seven of them?”

“Yes.”

“And they’re all coming here?”

“No, only the Seventh Ship.”

“What has happened to the others?”

“They have all been here and gone.”

“Gone? Where to?”

“Each has gone in search of a sun that won’t die soon.”

“Will they stay here?” asked Caine. “Is this where they’ll be reborn?”

Luther shook his head. “I doubt they’ll stay,” he said.

“Why not?” asked Caine.

“Because someday the people here will have to leave, too. Just like they did.”

Caine gazed at Luther with wide-eyed fascination while Mozelle interjected. “Luther, do you know of a man named Matthew Perch?” he asked.

“No. Who is he?”

“Have you ever heard of a woman named Whitney Carson?”

“No.”

“She is married to a man named Franklyn Walker. Have you heard of him?”

“No.”

“Someday soon, Whitney and Franklyn will have a child. Do you know what will happen when that child is born?” Mozelle continued.

Luther shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know these people,” he said. “Who are they?”

“People who, like you, have had something to do with the information you’ve given us,” said Caine.

Howard mentioned the names Hattie Sinclair and Carrie Pittman, but Luther had not heard of them either.

“I’d say they must have something in common, though,” said Luther.

“What would that be?” asked Caine.

Luther shrugged. “Maybe they’re just honest people like you,” he said. “Maybe they’re people who have the capacity to believe.”

“Luther,” Caine asked. “Do you know how fast light travels?”

“One hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second,” answered Luther.

“And thirty-three thousand years by light would be how many miles?”

Luther smiled. “Five trillion, eight hundred and sixty-five billion, six hundred and ninety-six million, one hundred and seventy thousand.”

Dr. Mozelle gasped.

“Where did you learn that?” asked Caine.

“From a friend of mine,” answered Luther.

“Who?”

“His name is Tom Lund.”

“Where is Tom now?” Caine asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe dead by now.”

“When did you last see him?”

“A long time ago.”

“Where?”

“In the hospital in New York. When he was my friend.”

“You haven’t seen him since?”

“No.”

“How much did Tom Lund know of what you’ve just told us?”

“Nothing. One day when I was carving the ship for you, he asked me what it was. I told him it was a ship, and we got to talking. I asked him how many miles away thirty-three thousand light-years was. He knew about things like that. He was smart with numbers. We got along good. But I didn’t tell him anything about what I just told you.”

Before Caine could ask anything else, a distant voice shouted,
“Sorry, gentlemen, we are starting to serve dinner now.” The group looked up to see an approaching orderly dressed in white.

“It’s time for Luther to join the others,” she said as she neared the table.

“That’s all right,” Luther said. “We’re done here.”

Caine started to ask the orderly for more time, but Luther had already begun struggling to his feet; he now seemed more fragile than he had when they arrived. He tilted to his right side so severely that it seemed as if his spindly, withered leg would give way beneath him.

Luther picked up the carving of the Seventh Ship and passed it to Caine.

“Don’t forget this.” He placed the object gingerly in Caine’s outstretched hand. It seemed to rattle slightly. Caine hadn’t noticed that rattle before.

Raising the carving to his ear, Caine shook it lightly and heard the same faint rattle. “Is there something inside?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Luther.

“What?”

“A surprise.”

“Is there a way to open it?”

“You can’t. It will open when it’s time.” Luther turned and walked away with the orderly. He looked satisfied and at peace.

“God bless you, Luther,” said Mozelle. But Luther didn’t hear him. Mozelle and Caine watched Luther hobble along across the lawn with the arm of the orderly supporting him. Finally, he disappeared into the main building of Oakville Estates. For a long time, Mozelle and Caine stood still, gazing upon the spot where Luther and the orderly had been swallowed up by the red brick building.

Mozelle looked dazed, as if struck by a traumatizing blow. “Oh my God,” he said, quietly. “I hope we’re not losing our minds.”

Overhead, lightning ignited and thunder rolled. Then, silently, Caine and Mozelle turned and moved toward the parking lot where Caine’s car was parked.

“Maybe we are,” said Caine.

Once the men were back in the car, a light rain began to pepper
the windshield. As Caine began to drive back toward Manhattan, both he and Mozelle sat silently, deep in thought.

Dr. Mozelle was thinking about the artwork on the walls of Matthew Perch’s hut, the configurations of constellations that he had also seen on the coins, the strange moon or star that appeared on one coin but not on the other. Perhaps, he allowed himself to think, this was actually the star Luther had spoken of, the star that had died.

Caine was thinking of that long-ago day when his grandfather had handed him the carving of the Seventh Ship, a gift from a little black boy he had never met. “Later in life,” his grandfather had told him, “who knows—this might provide you with fond memories of your father.”
Yes
, he thought,
that indeed had been true
.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, WHEN
C
AINE PULLED TO A STOP IN FRONT
of a modest house on a tree-lined street on the outskirts of Philadelphia, he was alone. As he approached the front door to the house, carrying a shoulder bag full of his father’s old tapes and notebooks, the door opened and there stood Tom Lund, a slender man of medium height with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, blue eyes, and a warm smile. He appeared to be in his midseventies.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me. I appreciate it,” Caine said, extending his hand. He was surprised by Lund’s firm handshake.

“Come in, Mr. Caine. Welcome, welcome.”

Caine followed Lund into a comfortably appointed living room where both men sat, Lund in his favorite easy chair and Caine on the nearby sofa, setting his bag down on a plain wooden end table. Nothing in the humble room attested to Lund’s mathematical genius—no framed diplomas, no awards, no photographs of academic ceremonies. “So, how is Dr. Banks these days?” Lund asked.

“He sounded fine on the phone,” Caine said. “He’s retired now, of course, and living in Florida. You have fond memories of him?”

“He was O.K.,” Lund said flatly.

“How long did you stay in his research program?”

“Fifteen years, four months, and seventeen days.”

“That long, my goodness.”

“Wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I didn’t mind it,” said Lund. “But was it downright boring sometimes? Well, that depended on how smart the professors were who came to pump me. Your dad was special, though. I’m not blowing smoke at you. He was one of the best. I only sat with him three times, but I remember thinking I wanted to sit with him again. He was as much a professor of philosophy as he was a professor of mathematics. By the way, what you probably don’t know about me is that I wasn’t at the hospital full time like most of the others. I always lived with my folks here outside Philly. Early Friday mornings, I’d take the train into the city; Sunday nights, I’d take a train back home. I had a day job Monday through Thursday.”

“Really?” said Caine. “You’re right; I didn’t know that.”

Tom Lund chuckled. “How else do you think I made my living? I was crunching numbers, keeping books. Back then, Dr. Banks was only allowed to pay me forty dollars for three hours a day, three days a week. That was supposed to include train fare.”

“You know,” Caine said, “yesterday, I visited a friend of yours from those days, Luther John Doe.”

“No! Really?” Lund’s face displayed surprise and delight. “That little son of a gun! Well, I’ll be damned. He’s still alive?”

“He is.”

“Can you beat that,” Lund exclaimed. “How’s he holding up?”

“Fairly well, given the degree to which age and deformities have taken their toll.”

“Well—hey, that’s the process of the journey, if you live long enough. There’s not much you can do about that.”

“He said you were his friend.”

“Yeah, I was. And it was the other way around too. We just took to each other.”

Touched by the tenderness in Lund’s remark, Caine waited for the moment to run its course, then said, “When I was eight years old, he made a present for me. He asked my father to take it home with him even though he had never met my father before and couldn’t have known he had a child. And my dad died in a plane crash on his way home that very night.”

The two men slowly began drawing themselves into a meaningful quiet until Lund cleared his throat. “I was in the hallway that afternoon,” he said. “I saw Luther give that carving to your father. He told your dad that the carving was a ship, but it didn’t look anything like a ship. I remember how considerate your father was, how gracious. He tried to open it and couldn’t. Luther said, ‘It will open when it’s time.’ ”

“Did you get the sense that Luther was mentally deficient? Like he was not all there?” Caine asked.

“Not at all. I thought he was exactly like me. He could carve ordinary wood into designs like no one I’ve ever seen. Just like I could crunch the hell out of numbers. But neither of us was ever much good at anything else. That’s how it has always been for people like Luther and me. For whatever reason, that’s how we were wired.” Lund looked Caine in the eye and said, “I know you came to see me for a reason. And I’ve tried to imagine what that reason might be, but I can’t pull it up. So you might as well just lay it out for me. If I can be of any help, you got it.”

Caine paused for a moment, then asked, “Ever heard of a man named Matthew Perch?”

Lund’s brow wrinkled. “Matthew Perch? No, I can’t recall having heard that name. Who is he?”

“He’s a mystery,” Caine said.

“Oh,” Lund responded, then leaned over to Caine and asked, “What does this ‘mystery’ fellow do?”

“Things that border on the impossible.” Caine reached for his shoulder bag and pulled out a folder containing several pages of his father’s notes. “Here are the questions my dad put to you forty-eight years ago, and your answers,” he said. “May I read a few to you?”

Lund nodded.

Caine began reading: “In your lifetime and mine, two digits, a zero and a one, were recently introduced by innovators as revolutionary forces in the field of mathematics. These forces will be technologically applicable in countless ways never before imagined—in data processing, medicine, mechanics—and they will spawn new inventions that will bring abundant changes into the lives of people everywhere. These two digits may change the face of technology. Modern
technology will be able to fashion, in a fraction of a second, endless multitudes of sequences out of just these two digits. Think of it, an endless alphabet of only two digits. My question to you, Tom, is, did you ever think you would see such a day in mathematics?”

As Montaro read these words, he could hear his father’s voice. In flashes, Caine saw himself as a little boy; he saw his father alive, then later, his mother reading these notes that had survived the plane crash. As Tom Lund looked at Caine, he seemed to see both men before him—the father and the son.

Montaro looked up from his father’s notes. “Tom, do you remember what your answer was?” he asked.

Lund’s face took on a sober look. “Yes, of course I knew such a day would come. In fact, I wondered why it had taken so long. Zero and one are numbers just as A, B, C, D, E, F, and G are letters. What differentiates letters from numbers? Nothing really; they’re both alphabets and they both form the basis of languages. Your father and I believed the same thing.”

“My dad told you that you probably had the swiftest mind in existence,” said Caine.

“That’s high praise,” said Lund. “But undeserved.”

“And now,” Caine pressed on, “if you will indulge me, I would like to see how swift that mind still is. At this very moment as we sit here, I would like you to think exclusively in terms of numbers, not words, in arriving at your answers. Then, when you have an answer, I would like you to translate those numbers into words. Remember: quick questions, quick answers. Sound okay?”

Tom Lund smiled. “That’s how my mind works anyway,” he said. “I always translate words into numbers; that’s the language I know best.”

“Okay, here goes: Does another universe exist aside from ours?”

“Not to my knowledge, but my guess is yes.”

“If yes, what might be the distance between them and us?”

“More than any mind can fathom.”

“Will there ever come a time when future generations will bridge that distance?”

“Future generations of other creatures and their science might. I don’t think it ever was nature’s intention for us to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because we were not designed for that journey.”

“Why not?”

“The carrying capacity of our home planet will soon be stretched far beyond the point at which our science and the resources of our planet could ever possibly get us there.”

“So then what lies ahead for us?”

“Clearly neither our science nor the resources of our planet will get us as far as our imagination promises.”

“So, will we blunder our way into extinction?”