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.