“That seems most confusing for the theoretician.”
Gogarty nodded. “But it lets me explain what’s happening to our planet.”
“Oh?”
“The universe doesn’t stay the same forever. A theory that works can determine reality for only so long, and then the universe must ring a few changes.”
“Upset the apple cart, so we do not become complacent?”
“Yes indeed. But reality can’t be observed to change. It has to change at some level not being fixed by an observation. So when our noocytes observed anything and everything to the smallest possible level, the universe was unable to flex, to reshape itself. A kind of strain built up. They realized they could no longer conduct themselves in the macro-scale world, so they… well, I’m not at all sure what they did. But when they departed, the strain was suddenly released and caused a snap. Things are out of kilter now. The change was too abrupt, so the world has been shifted unevenly. The result—a universe that is inconsistent with itself, at least in our local vicinity. We get burning snow, unreliable machines, a gentle kind of chaos. And it may be gentle because—” He shrugged. “More cracked pottery, I’m afraid.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Because they’re trying to save as many of us as they can, for something later.”
“The ‘Big Changes.’ “
“Yes.”
Paulsen-Fuchs regarded Gogarty steadily, then shook his head. “I am too old,” he said. “You know, being in England has reminded me of the war. This is what England must have been like during the… you called it the ‘Blitz.’ And what Germany became toward the end of the war.”
“Under siege,” Gogarty said.
“Yes. But we humans are very delicately balanced, chemically. You think the noocytes are trying to keep mortality rates down?”
Gogarty shrugged again and reached for the letter. “I’ve read this thing a thousand times, hoping there would be some clue to that question. Nothing. Not a hint.” He sighed. “I can’t even hazard a guess.”
Paulsen-Fuchs finished his toast. “I had a dream last night, rather vivid,” he said. “In that dream, I was asked how many handshakes I was from someone who lived in North America. Is that meaningful, do you suppose?”
“Ignore nothing,” Gogarty said. “That’s my motto.”
“What does the letter say now? You read.”
Gogarty opened the paper and carefully recorded the message. “Pretty much the same,” he said. “Wait—one word added. ‘Big changes soon.’ “
They went for a walk in the intermittent sunshine, boots crunching and squeaking in the snow, compressing it to ice. The air was bitterly cold but the wind was slight. “Is there hope that it will all flex back, return to normal?” Paulsen-Fuchs asked.
Gogarty shrugged. “I’d say yes, if all we were dealing with were natural forces. But Bernard’s notes aren’t very encouraging, are they?”
“I am ignorant,” Gogarty said suddenly, exhaling a cloud of vapor. “How refreshing to say that. Ignorant. I am as subject to unknown forces as that tree.” He pointed to a bent and gnarled old pine on a bluff above the beach. “It’s a waiting game from here.”
“Then you did not invite me here so that we could seek solutions.”
“No, of course not.” Gogarty experimentally tapped a frozen puddle with his foot. The ice broke, but there was no water beneath. “It just seemed Bernard wanted us here, or at least together.”
“I came here hoping for answers.”
“Sorry.”
“No, that is not strictly true. I came here because I have no place in Germany now. Or anywhere else. I am an executive without a company, without a job. I am free for the first time in years, free to take risks.”
“And your family?”
“Like Bernard, I have shed various families over the years. Do you have a family?”
“Yes,” Gogarty said. “They were in Vermont, last year, visiting my wife’s parents.”
“I am sorry,” Paulsen-Fuchs said.
When they returned to the cabin, consuming more cups of hot coffee and laying a fresh fire in the grate, Bernard’s note read:
Dear Gogarty and Paul—
Last message. Patience. How many handshakes are you from someone now gone? One handshake. Nothing is lost. This is the last day.
They both read it. Gogarty folded it and put it in a drawer for safe-keeping. An hour later, feeling a tingle of premonition, Paulsen-Fuchs opened the drawer to read the letter again.
It was not there.
46
Suzy leaned out of the window and took a deep breath of the cold air. She had never seen anything so beautiful, not even the glow of the East River when she had crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. The burning snow was simple, entrancing, an elegant coda announcing the end of a world gone mad. She was sure of that much. In the nine months she had spent in London, in her small apartment paid for by the American Embassy, she had watched the city come to a shuddering, spasmodic halt. She had hidden away in her apartment, peering out the window, seeing fewer and fewer cars or lorries (such a fun word), more and more people walking, even as the bright snow deepened, and then—
Fewer people walking, more, she supposed, staying inside. An American consular official came to see her once a week. Her name was Laurie (not quite like the trucks) and sometimes she brought Yves, her fiancé, whose name was French but who was an American by birth.
Laurie always came, bringing Suzy her groceries, her children’s books and magazines, bringing news—what there was of it. Laurie said the “airwaves” were becoming more and more difficult. That meant nobody was getting much use out of their radios. Suzy still had hers, though it hadn’t worked since she dropped it while climbing on to the helicopter. It was cracked and didn’t even hiss but it was one of the only things that was hers.
She pulled back from the window and shut her eyes. It hurt every time she remembered what had happened. The sense of loss, standing in the middle of empty Manhattan, feeling foolish. The helicopter landing a couple of weeks later, and taking her back to the huge aircraft carrier off the coast…
Then they had sailed her across the ocean to England and found her an apartment—a flat—in London, a nice small place where she felt okay most of the time. And Laurie came and brought things Suzy needed.
But she hadn’t come today, and she never came after dark. The snow was very thick and very bright. Pretty.
Strangely, Suzy didn’t feel at all lonely.
She closed the window to shut out the cold air. Then she stood before the long mirror that hung on the inside of her wardrobe door and looked at the bright snowflakes melting and dimming in her hair. That made her smile.
She turned and looked into the dark wardrobe interior. The steam pipes rattled, just like at home. “Hello,” she said to the few clothes in the wardrobe. She pulled out a long dress she had worn to the American Ball six months ago. It was a wonderful emerald green and she looked very good in it.
She hadn’t worn it since, and that was a shame.
She stood by the radiator and took off her robe, then unzipped and unlatched the back and stepped into the dress. Gown, she corrected herself.
Didn’t one get to meet the queen only in a gown? That made sense.
She pulled it up over her shoulders and fitted her breasts into the cups sewn in. Then she zipped it up as high as she could and stood before the wardrobe again, turning back and forth, all but her face, smiling at herself.
She had been very popular at the embassy in the first few months. Everybody liked her. But they had stopped asking her over because the embassy was quite a distance away, and traffic was messier and messier.
Actually, Suzy thought as she looked at the pretty girl in the mirror, she wouldn’t mind dying right now.
It was so beautiful outside. Even the cold was beautiful. The cold felt differently than it used to in New York, and not because it was English cold. Cold everywhere felt differently, she imagined.