Amelia and I had shared a bottle of wine with dinner. I declared that I wanted to get a few hours' sleep before I pasted a new patch, and Amelia said she'd join me.
I was lying under the covers, wide awake, when she finished in the bathroom and slid in next to me. She held herself still for a moment, not touching.
"I'm sorry you saw us," she said.
"Well, it's always been part of our arrangement. The freedom."
"I didn't say I was sorry I did it." She turned on her side, facing me in the darkness. "Though maybe I am. I said I was sorry you saw us."
That was reasonable. "Has it always been like this, then? Other men?"
"Do you really want me to answer that? You'll have to answer the same question."
"That's easy. One woman, one time, today."
She put her palm on my chest. "I'm sorry. Now I feel like a real shit." She stroked me with her thumb, over my heart "It's only been Peter, and only since you ... you took the pills. I just, I don't know. I just couldn't stand it."
"You didn't tell him why."
"No, as I said. He just thought you were sick. He's not the kind of man to press for details."
"But he is the kind of man to press... for other things."
"Come on." She scrunched over so her body was long against my side. "Most unattached men constantly radiate their availability. He didn't have to ask. I think all I did was put a hand on his shoulder."
"And then surrender to the inevitable."
"I suppose. If you want me to ask for your forgiveness, I'm asking."
"No. Do you love him?"
"What? Peter? No."
"Case closed, then." I rolled over on my side to embrace her and then tipped her onto her back, pressing against her lightly. "Let's make some noise."
I was able to start, but not finish; I wilted inside of her. When I tried to continue with my hand, she said no, let's just sleep. I couldn't.
THE CASE WAS NOT closed, of course. The encounter with Zoe kept coming back to him, resonating with all the complicated emotions he still felt for Carolyn, dead more than three years. Sex with Amelia was as different as a snack is from a feast. If he wanted a feast every day, there were thousands of jills in Portobello and Texas who would be more than willing. He wasn't that hungry.
And although he appreciated Amelia's directness, he wasn't sure he quite believed her. If she did feel some love for Peter, under the circumstances she could justify lying about it, to spare Julian's feelings. She certainly hadn't looked casual, his face buried in her womanhood.
But there was time for all that later. Julian finally fell asleep some seconds before the alarm went off. He groped around for the box of speedie patches and they both took a paste. By the time they were dressed, the cobwebs were melting away and Julian was one cup of coffee away from math.
After they ground the fresh data through the mill, Julian's modern method and Peter's tried-and-true, all three were convinced. Amelia had been writing up the results; they spent half a day cutting and fine-tuning it, and zapped it to the Astrophysical Journal for peer review.
"A lot of people will want our heads," Peter said. "I'm going to go away for about ten days, and not take a phone. Sleep for a week."
"Where to?" Amelia asked.
"Place down in the Virgin Islands. Want to come?"
"No, I'd feel out of place." They all laughed nervously. "We have to teach, anyhow."
There was a little discussion over that, optimistic on Peter's part and exasperated on Amelia's. She already had been missing one or two classes a week, so why not a few more? Because she had already missed so many, she insisted.
Julian and Amelia flew back to Texas thoroughly exhausted, still running on speedies since they didn't dare come down until the weekend. They went through the motions of teaching and grading, waiting for their world to fall apart. None of their colleagues was on the Aph. J. review board currently, and apparently no one was consulted.
Friday morning, Amelia got a terse note from Peter: "Peer review report due this afternoon. Optimistic."
Julian was downstairs. She buzzed him up and showed him the message. "I think we might want to make ourselves scarce," he said. "If Macro finds out about it before he leaves the office, he'll call us up. Just as soon wait till Monday."
"Coward," she said. "Me, too. Why don't we go out to the Saturday Night Special early? We could kill some time at the gene zoo."
The gene zoo was the Museum of Genetic Experimentation, a place that was regularly closed by animal rights groups and reopened by lawyers. Ostensibly, the privately owned museum was a showcase for groundbreaking technology in genetic manipulation. Actually, it was a freak show, one of the most popular entertainments in Texas.
It was only a ten-minute walk from the Saturday Night Special, but they hadn't been there since the last time it was reopened. There were lots of new exhibits.
Some of the preserved specimens were fascinating, but the real attraction was the live ones, the actual zoo. They had somehow managed to contrive a snake with twelve legs. But they couldn't teach it how to walk. It would step forward with all six pairs at once, and lurch in one rippling flop after another-not a conspicuous advance over slithering. Amelia pointed out that the legs' connection to the animal's nervous system must be the same as goes to a normal snake's ribs, which undulate together to make it move.
The value of a more mobile snake might be questionable, and the poor creature obviously was made just as a curiosity, but another new one did have a practical application, besides scaring children: a spider the size of a pillow that spun a thick strong web back and forth on a frame, like a living loom. The resulting cloth, or mat, had surgical applications.
There was a pygmy cow, less than a meter tall, that wasn't touted as having any practical purpose. Julian suggested that it could answer the dairy needs of people like them, who liked cream in their coffee, if you could figure out how to milk it. It didn't move like a cow, though; it waddled around with earnest curiosity, probably gene-jumped with a beagle.
TO SAVE CREDITS AND money, we went to the zoo snack machines for some bread and cheese. There was a covered area behind the place with picnic tables, new since the last time we'd been there. We got a table to ourselves in the afternoon heat.
"So how much do we say to the gang?" I said, slicing cheddar in crumbling chunks with a plastic knife. I had my puttyknife but it would make a raclette out of the stuff, or a bomb.
"About you? Or the Project?"
"You haven't been there since I was in the hospital?" She shook her head. "Let's not bring it up. I meant should we talk about Peter's findings; our findings."
"No reason not to. It'll be common knowledge tomorrow."
I stacked an uneven pile of cheese on a slab of dark bread and passed it to her on a napkin. "Rather talk about that than me."
"People will know. Marty, for sure."
"I'll talk to Marty. If I have a chance."
"I think maybe the end of the universe might upstage you, anyhow."
"It does put things into perspective."
The half-mile walk to the Saturday Night Special was hot and dusty, even with the sun setting; a chalky kind of dust. We were glad to step into the air-conditioning. Marty and Belda were there, sharing a plate of appetizers. "Julian. How are you?" Marty said with careful neutrality.
"All right now. Talk about it later?" He nodded. Belda said nothing, concentrating on dissecting a shrimp. "Anything new on the project with Ray? The empathy thing."
"Quite a bit of new data, actually, though Ray's more up to date on it. That terrible thing with the children, Iberia?"
"Liberia," I said.
"Three of the people we were studying witnessed that. It was hard on them."