The lecture was in an old church not far from Pershing Square, and to Tib's horror it was packed. This madness was spreading! He sat at the back of the room, hoping no one would recognize him. The church hall was incongruously decorated, a great green tree in one corner and flights of gold paper angels across the windows, but there was nothing Christmasy about Dr. Lautermilch's message. He drew on every "psychic" and "seer" from Nostradamus to himself—no, even before Nostradamus, because he actually pulled out a set of measurements of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh to prove that Western civilization was on its last legs.
Duty or no duty, it was more than Tib Sonderman could stand. He left long before Lautermilch was finished and took a taxi to his home. Everyone had gone insane! The Jupes were all over the airport, more of them than of Santa Clauses and a dozen times as visible. In the plane he had been forced to endure fifty minutes' conversation with a young high-school teacher from Oakland, on her way to spend Christmas with her parents in Van Nuys. As soon as she found out he was a geologist, she wanted to be reassured that Los Angeles would last at least until the first of the year, when she would be flying back. And she was a teacher! Presumably an educated woman! Presumably sane!
Tib's mood was not Christmasy as he paid off the cab at the street entrance to his house, and started up the steps to the front door he almost never used.
The lights were on inside the house. Something was wrong.
As soon as he let himself in he was certain. Someone had been there. Bare stretches appeared in the living room bookshelves, where once they had been tightly packed; someone had removed about a quarter of the books. The coffee table with the Moorea shells under its glass top was gone, and two paintings were missing from the walls. Tib didn't think of burglars. His first thought was "ex-wife", and when he entered the kitchen he was not surprised to find the row of copper-bottomed skillets gone from the rack on the wall. He heard voices outside, and knew before he turned to the window what he would see. Wendy was there, Wendy and her new husband, or next husband, or let's-try-it-on lover, or whatever he was at the moment; he could see the shape of his pale green VW van, and then he saw them at the door.
His former wife stopped cold at the door. "Oh, my God, Tib, you scared me. I thought you were off in Puerto Rico or Iceland or something. "
"Just San Jose, Wendy. Hello, Don." The young pale man who Wendy had preferred to him was carrying empty cardboard cartons, looking as though he wished he could make them disappear. "I didn't expect to see you here, is all."
Wendy grinned. "Thought we were three thousand safe miles away? Sorry, Tibber. We got to missing California, so we just hopped in the van. We've got a little place in Venice—my God, what they want for rent—but there's nothing in it. So we're just taking some of the stuff I left . . . ?"
"Yes, of course, fine, " said Tib, glowering. It was not in any way fine.
Wendy's pale young man cleared his throat. "I hope we're not making a mistake," he offered.
"What kind of mistake?"
"Well, all those Jupiter people in the shopping centers, you know." Wendy was looking at him with bright interest, waiting for academic authority to settle the matter.
Oh, God, Tib thought, you too! He said shortly, "I do not think there is anything specific to fear." And then, driven to be polite, "Please, go right on, I'll stay out of your way. Would you like some coffee?"
Wendy glanced humorously at her young man. "Not your tap-water special, Tibber, but thanks. I've been keeping a list for you of everything we take."
"That's all right. Uh, I didn't know you still had a key—"
"I'll leave it for you when we go. I think this'll be about the last load. We took all the heavy stuff yesterday."
"Fine," he said, although he didn't really think it was fine. When Wendy had taken off for Soho she had left a note saying she didn't want any of her possessions, and over the three years since the end of their marriage Tib had got used to thinking of the coffee table as his own. Not to mention the books. Not to mention— "Yes, that's fine," he said heartily. "Look, I'm going to make some real coffee, so why don't you have a cup?"
He got out of their way and carefully did not watch over his shoulder to see what else was going. They had been divorced for a year and three months now, and separated for nearly two years before that; he had almost forgotten what she looked like, he thought. But not really. He had just forgotten what the two of them looked like as a portrait pair, Tib and Wendy, Wendy and Tib. She was wearing her hair in some way different now, smoother and more severe. The bangs were gone, and it was all pulled back. She had put on some weight, too, he noticed. And wondered what she was noticing about him—pulling in his gut, standing up a little straighter over the stove.
Wendy was twenty-eight years old, nine years less than Tib; perhaps it had been a mistake for him to marry one of his graduate students. Anyway, she seemed to be going in the other direction now. This Don person was surely younger than she. As near as Tib knew, Don Fingle was a wholesale druggist, or pharmaceutical salesman, or something of the sort. Wendy had been a little evasive about that part of it, when she first appeared with Don in tow—when, out of burning curiosity disguised as polite conversation, Tib had asked. But what Don did for a living he did in one place. Wendy had made it clear that that was important. He was not going to be off to Tokyo or Tierra del Fuego to measure earth movements for weeks at a time, leaving her to sit at home.
"Coffee's ready," he called, pulling cups out of the cabinet and discovering that the company set of china was gone. Don and Wendy politely washed their hands after they had moved the last load into the van, and all three sat down for a polite ordeal. It was not easy for any of them, and for Tib, suddenly conscious of the way Wendy smelled, it was more than disconcerting. The scent was arousing. Wendy had always poured on the cologne with a liberal hand, and he had established that as the modality for all women. They covered the weather, agreeing that it was fine that the Santa Ana had stopped; the old mutual acquaintances Tib and Wendy had run into recently; what Tib was doing with the Jupiter Effect; and they managed to deal with them all, as well as finish their coffee, in well under ten minutes.
And then they were out the door. Tib turned away from the door and picked up the cups to put them in the sink, just as Wendy poked her head back in the door. "Oh, Tibber? Somebody put this under our windshield wiper. Thought you might be interested. And Merry Christmas!" She handed him a sheet of pink, printed paper, kissed him quickly and was gone again.
Tib sat down, very conscious of the aura of cologne that hung on his cheek and opened the paper. Its headline was:
SCIENTIFIC PROOF!
Scientists now agree ancient laws of astrology ARE FACT!
At the bottom was the address of a storefront "reader" in Malibu. So the astrologers were getting into the act! It was only what one could have expected, but it did not decrease Tib's growing mood of depression. He crumpled up Madame Lucy's flyer and threw it into the kitchen wastebasket—or threw it in that direction, but tardily discovered the wastebasket was gone, so it landed on the floor next to the sink.
He swore and got up. Might as well see what the looters had carried away! He prowled the upper floor of the house, a task which took very few minutes because there was so little of it. But there was even less than there had been. The bedroom looked quite bare without Wendy's family hand-down dresser and vanity. The soft, fluffy mats were gone from the bathroom floor. The record shelves were nearly empty. All of the schmaltzy nineteenth-century romantics that Wendy doted on were gone, along with the rock albums and the little bit of dance music they had bought for parties they never gave. All that was left was his own few records of Vivaldi and Correlli and Bach, and some of the twentieth century electronic stuff he had tried to interest himself in. But, he saw, it didn't matter much, because the stereo was gone too.