Spin (11 page)

“Simon’s grandfather,” Jason said, “was Augustus Townsend, the Georgia pipe cleaner king.”

Diane rolled her eyes. Simon, still imperturbable—he was beginning to seem almost saintly—said, “That was in the old days. We aren’t even supposed to call them pipe cleaners anymore. They’re ‘chenille stems.’” He laughed. “And here I sit, heir to a chenille stem fortune.” Actually it was a gifts-and-notions fortune, Diane explained later. Augustus Townsend had started in pipe cleaners but made his money distributing tin-press toys, charm bracelets, and plastic combs to five-and-dime stores throughout the South. In the 1940s the family had been a big presence in Atlanta social circles.

Jason pressed on: “Simon himself doesn’t have what you’d call a career. He’s a free spirit.”

“I don’t suppose any of us is truly a free spirit,” Simon said, “but no, I don’t have or want a career. I guess that makes me sound lazy. Well, I
am
lazy. It’s my besetting vice. But I wonder how useful any career will be in the long run. Considering the state of things. No offense.” He turned to me. “You’re in medicine, Tyler?”

“Just out of school,” I said. “As careers go—”

“No, I think that’s wonderful. Probably the most valuable occupation on the planet.”

Jason had accused Simon of being, in effect, useless. Simon had replied that careers in general were useless… except careers like mine. Thrust and parry. It was like watching a bar fight conducted in ballet shoes.

Still, I found myself wanting to apologize for Jase. Jason was offended not by Simon’s philosophy but by his presence. This week in the Berkshires was supposed to be a reunion, Jason and Diane and me, back in the comfort zone, childhood revisited. Instead we were being treated to confinement at close quarters with Simon, whom Jason obviously regarded as an interloper, a sort of southern-fried Yoko Ono.

I asked Diane how long they’d been traveling.

“About a week,” she said, “but we’ll be on the road most of the summer. I’m sure Jason’s told you about New Kingdom. But it’s really pretty wonderful, Ty. We have Internet friends all across the country. People we can crash with a day or two. So we’re doing conclaves and concerts from Maine to Oregon, July through October.”

Jason said, “I guess that saves on accommodation
and
clothing expenses.”

“Not every conclave is an Ekstasis,” Diane shot back.

“We won’t be doing much traveling at all,” Simon said, “if that old car of ours falls apart. The engine misfires and we’re getting lousy mileage. I’m not much of a mechanic, unfortunately. Tyler, do you know anything about automobile engines?”

“A thing or two,” I said. I understood this was an invitation to step outside with Simon while Diane tried to negotiate a cease-fire with her brother. “Let’s have a look.”

The day was still clear, waves of warm air rippling up from the emerald lawn beyond the driveway. I listened with, I admit, partial attention, as Simon opened the hood of his old Ford and recited his problems. If he was as wealthy as Jase had implied, couldn’t he buy himself a better car? But I guessed it was a dissipated fortune he had inherited, or maybe it was tied up in trust funds.

“I guess I seem pretty stupid,” Simon said. “Especially in the company I’m keeping. I never much grasped scientific or mechanical things.”

“I’m no expert either. Even if we get the motor running a little smoother you ought to have a real mechanic look at it before you start driving cross-country.”

“Thank you, Tyler.” He watched with a sort of goggle-eyed fascination as I inspected the engine. “I appreciate that advice.”

The most likely culprit was the spark plugs. I asked Simon whether they had ever been replaced. “Not to my knowledge,” he said. The car had 60,000-plus miles on it. I used the ratchet set from my own car to pull one of the plugs and showed it to him: “Here’s most of your trouble.”

“That thing?”

“And its friends. The good news is it’s not an expensive part to replace. The bad news is, you’re better off not driving until we replace it.”

“Hmm,” Simon said.

“We can go into town in my car and pick up replacements if you’re willing to wait till morning.”

“Well, surely. That’s very kind. We weren’t planning to leave right away. Ah, unless Jason insists.”

“Jason will calm down. He’s just—”

“You don’t have to explain. Jason would rather I wasn’t here. I understand that. It doesn’t shock or surprise me. Diane just felt she couldn’t accept an invitation that made a point of disincluding me.”

“Well… good for her.” I guess.

“But I could just as easily rent a room somewhere in town.”

“No need for that,” I said, wondering exactly how it had come to pass that I was pressing Simon Townsend to stay. I don’t know what I had expected from a reunion with Diane, but Simon’s presence had aborted any nascent hopes. For the best, probably.

“I suppose,” Simon said, “Jason’s talked to you about New Kingdom. It’s been a point of contention.”

“He told me you guys were involved in it.”

“I’m not about to make a recruiting speech. But if you have any anxiety about the movement maybe I can put it to rest.”

“All I know about NK is what I see on television, Simon.”

“Some people call it Christian Hedonism. I prefer New Kingdom. That’s the idea in a nutshell, really. Build the chiliasm by living it, right here and now. Make the last generation as idyllic as the very first.”

“Uh-huh. Well… Jase doesn’t have much patience with religion.”

“No, he doesn’t, but you know what, Tyler? I don’t think it’s the religion that upsets him.”

“No?”

“No. In all honesty I admire Jason Lawton, and not just because he’s famously smart. He’s one of the cognoscenti, if you’ll pardon a ten-dollar word. He takes the Spin seriously. There are, what, eight billion people on Earth? And pretty much each and every one of them knows, at the very least, that the stars and moon have disappeared out of the sky. But they go on living in denial. Only a few of us really believe in the Spin. NK takes it seriously. And so does Jason.”

This was almost shockingly like what Jason himself had said. “Not in the same…
style
, though.”

“That’s the crux of the matter. Two visions competing for the public mind. Before long people will have to face up to reality whether they want to or not. And they’ll have to choose between a scientific understanding and a spiritual one. That worries Jason. Because when it comes down to matters of life and death, faith always wins. Where would
you
rather spend eternity? In an earthly paradise or a sterile laboratory?”

The answer didn’t seem as clear-cut to me as it evidently did to Simon. I recalled Mark Twain’s reply to a similar question:

Heaven, for the climate. Hell, for the company.

There was some audible arguing from inside the house— Diane’s voice, scolding, and her brother’s sullen, uninflected replies. Simon and I pulled a couple of folding chairs out of the garage and sat in the shade of the carport waiting for the twins to finish. We talked about the weather. The weather was very nice. We reached a consensus on that point.

The noise from the house eventually settled down. After a while a chastened-looking Jason came out and invited us to help him with the barbecue. We followed him around back and made more nice talk while the grill warmed up. Diane stepped out of the house looking flushed but triumphant. This was the way she used to look whenever she won an argument with Jase: a little haughty, a little surprised.

We sat down to chicken and iced tea and the remains of the three-bean salad. “Do y’all mind if I offer a blessing?” Simon asked.

Jason rolled his eyes but nodded.

Simon bent his head solemnly. I braced myself for a sermon. But all he said was, “Grant us the courage to accept the bounty You have placed before us this and every other day. Amen.”

A prayer expressing not gratitude but the need for courage. Very contemporary. Diane smiled at me across the table. Then she squeezed Simon’s arm, and we proceeded to dig in.

It was early when we finished, sunlight still lingering, the mosquitos not yet at their evening frenzy. The breeze had died and there was a softness in the cooling air.

Elsewhere, things were happening fast.

What we didn’t know—what even Jason, for all his vaunted connections, hadn’t yet been told—was that somewhere between that first bite of chicken and that last spoonful of three-bean salad the Chinese had pulled out of negotiations and ordered the immediate launch of a brace of modified Dong Feng missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads. The rockets might have been rising in their arcs even as we pulled Heinekens out of the cooler. Icy green rocket-shaped bottles dripping summer sweat.

We cleared the patio table. I mentioned the worn spark plugs and my plan to drive Simon into town in the morning. Diane whispered something to her brother, then (after a pause) nudged him with her elbow. Jase finally nodded and turned to Simon and said, “There’s one of those automotive superstores outside Stockbridge that’s open till nine. Why don’t I drive you over there right now?”

It was a peace offering, however reluctant. Simon recovered from his initial surprise and said, “I’m not about to turn down a ride in that Ferrari, if that’s what you’re offering.”

“I can put it through its paces for you.” Mollified by the prospect of showing off his car, Jason went into the house to fetch his keys. Simon shot back a well-gosh expression before following him. I looked at Diane. She grinned, proud of this triumph of diplomacy.

Elsewhere, the Dong Feng missiles approached and then crossed the Spin barrier en route to their programmed targets. Strange to think of them streaking over a suddenly dark, cold, motionless Earth, operating solely on internal programming, aiming themselves at the featureless artifacts that drifted in suspension hundreds of miles over the poles.

Like a drama without an audience, too sudden to see.

The educated consensus—afterward—was that the detonation of the Chinese warheads had no effect on the differential flow of time. What was affected (profoundly) was the visual filter surrounding the Earth. Not to mention the human perception of the Spin.

As Jase had pointed out years ago, the temporal gradient meant that massive amounts of radically blue-shifted radiation would have bathed the surface of our planet had that radiation not been filtered and managed by the Hypotheticals. More than three years of sunlight for every second that passed: enough to kill every living thing on Earth, enough to sterilize the soil and boil the oceans. The Hypotheticals, who had engineered the temporal enclosure of the Earth, had also shielded us from its lethal side effects. Moreover, the Hypotheticals were regulating not only how much energy reached the static Earth but how much of the planet’s own heat and light was radiated back into space. Which was perhaps why the weather these last few years had been so pleasantly… average.

The sky over the Berkshires, at least, was as cloudless as Waterford crystal when the Chinese payloads reached their targets, 7:55 Eastern time.

I was with Diane in the front room when the house phone rang.

Did we notice anything before Jason’s call? A change in the light, something as insignificant as the feeling that a cloud might have passed in front of the sun? No. Nothing. All my attention was on Diane. We were drinking coolers and talking about trivia. Books we’d read, movies we’d seen. The conversation was mesmerizing, not for its content but for the cadences of the talk, the rhythm we fell into when we were alone, now as before. Every conversation between friends or lovers creates its own easy or awkward rhythms, hidden talk that runs like a subterranean river under even the most banal exchange. What we said was trite and conventional, but the undertalk was deep and occasionally treacherous.

And pretty soon we were flirting with each other, as if Simon Townsend and the last eight years signified nothing. Joking at first, then maybe not joking. I told her I’d missed her. She said, “There were times I wanted to talk to you. Needed to talk to you. But I didn’t have your number, or I figured you were busy.”

“You could have found my number. I wasn’t busy.”

“You’re right. Actually it was more like… moral cowardice.”

“Am I that frightening?”

“Not you. Our situation. I suppose I felt as if I ought to apologize to you. And I didn’t know how to begin to do that.” She smiled wanly. “I guess I still don’t.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for, Diane.”

“Thank you for saying so, but I happen to disagree. We’re not kids anymore. It’s possible to look back with a certain amount of insight. We were as close as two people can be without actually touching. But that was the one thing we couldn’t do. Or even talk about. As if we had taken an oath of silence.”

“Since the night the stars disappeared,” I said, dry-mouthed, aghast at myself, terrified, aroused.

Diane waved her hand. “That night. That night—you know what I remember about that night? Jason’s binoculars. I was looking at the Big House while you two stared off into the sky. I really don’t remember the stars at all. What I remember is catching sight of Carol in one of the back bedrooms with somebody from the catering service. She was drunk and it looked like she was making a pass.” She laughed bashfully. “That was my own little apocalypse. Everything I already hated about the Big House, about my family, it was all summed up in one night. I just wanted to pretend it didn’t exist. No Carol, no E.D., no Jason—”

“No me?”

She moved across the sofa and, because it had become that kind of conversation, put a hand on my cheek. Her hand was cool, the temperature of the drink she’d been holding. “You were the exception. I was scared. You were incredibly patient. I appreciated that.”

“But we couldn’t—”

“Touch.”

“Touch. E.D. would never have stood for it.”

She took her hand away. “We could have hidden it from him if we’d wanted to. But you’re right, E.D. was the problem. He infected everything. It was obscene, the way he made your mother live a kind of second-class existence. It was debasing. Can I confess this? I absolutely hated being his daughter. I especially hated the idea that if anything, you know, happened between us, it might be your way of taking revenge on E. D. Lawton.”