“Squires?”
“Yes indeed. He’s working on modifications for the diving bell — something he calls an absolute gyro. It’s a steadying mechanism, I believe, although I’m not much of an engineer myself. Latzarel is planning a voyage into the pool off Palos Verdes sometime next month.”
“Good old Squires,” William said. “I’ve got some ideas I’d like to try out on him. I’ve been reading Einstein, and have a plot for a first-rate story. Hard science, too. Rock hard. That’s why I think Squires is the man to try it on.” William scratched the end of his nose. “Is the maze room intact?”
“Of course,” said Edward.
“Then I’ll just put in a few hours.” William shoved fresh tobacco into his pipe, lit it, and stood up puffing. “Mice all dead?”
“No,” said Edward. “I’ve got a new lot. All white. Absolutely innocent. And there’s three that just gave birth.”
“Grand!” cried William, elated. “I’m going to put some of the litter in with that big bufo morinus. If we keep him full of horsemeat maybe he’ll leave them alone long enough for them to imprint. We’ll be halfway home then.”
‘The bufo died two months ago. But there’s an axolotl as big as a rabbit out there that will work just as well.”
William nodded, caught up in the spirit of science. ‘That will do nicely,” he said. “Very nicely. External gills too. Very pretty items. How is Giles Peach these days, by the way?”
“Amazing. He’s onto something big, I think. John Pinion has an eye on him.”
But Edward was sorry he’d said it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. “Pinion!” William gasped. “Pinion can keep his filthy hands off Giles Peach! Peach is ours!”
“Of course,” said Edward. “Of course. I’ve said as much. Damn Pinion.” And finally William, wearing a leather apron, went out the back door, muttering to himself. He got about halfway to the maze shed, stopped, turned, shoved back in, and shouted something incoherent into the kitchen. All Edward could make out were the words “Pinion” and “travesty,” but he let the matter slide and didn’t ask for clarification.
Chapter 3
The Newtonian Society met every month, more often if an excuse could be found. Two years back it had been called the Blake Society and had met to discuss literary matters. William Hastings, at the time, hadn’t yet turned the corner; he was merely an eccentric professor of Romantic literature at Eagle Rock University who possessed an amazing library and who had, one Sunday afternoon, run out of shelf space in the living room, and so had pressed the refrigerator into use, shoving a copy of Herodotus and The White Oaks of Jalna, for some inexplicable reason, in among jars of salad peppers and pickle relish.
The Newtonian Society was formed after William Hastings’ disappearance into what Oscar Pallcheck cheerfully referred to as “the hatch.” Literature was abandoned for science — specifically for the investigation of Professor Latzarel’s theories. On the Saturday evening following William Hastings’ surprise arrival, then, Giles Peach and his friend Jim hurried down the sidewalk toward Jim’s home, anxious to attend the meeting and especially to hear Latzarel’s opinions on the little tidepool hand.
Professor Latzarel’s vehicle — Jim couldn’t think of a better word for it — ground to a halt at the curb just as the two of them drew up to the house. It was an old Land Rover station wagon, a tremendous square thing that appeared from almost every angle to be built entirely of wood — wood covered in a coat of gray dust like the sarcophagus of an Egyptian pharaoh that had sat in the desert for a dozen centuries until, perhaps by osmosis, the wood itself had begun to metamorphose into dust. A day would come, Jim was certain of it, when the machine, wheezing along one of the interlacing highways of the southwest desert, would complete the transmutation and crumble into a quick heap to be blown across the sands by a wind devil spawned by the sudden cessation of motion. The driver of a pursuing automobile, not quite believing in the existence of the unlikely machine in the first place, would see the distant shiver of its decay through the shimmering desert heat and would call it a mirage, not noticing the receding back of the pith-helmeted Professor Latzarel carrying a butterfly net, disappearing beyond a clump of Joshua trees. Jim would have given anything to own such a car.
Professor Latzarel, in fact, must have been packed for an outing, for there, strapped to the enormous rear bumper, was a quiver of old ghost-town picks and shovels, and one of those canvas water bags that perpetually leak and yet are never empty. Inside were a half dozen topographic maps and what must have been a mile of hemp cordage.
Latzarel himself was a fierce, weedy-looking man who took everything very seriously and who couldn’t be bothered to comb his hair. His coat complemented his car. He rushed past Jim, nodding obliquely, then caught sight of Giles Peach. He stopped and shook Giles’ hand, fabricating something to say. He clearly couldn’t keep his eyes off Giles’ gills, which were almost hidden by a turtleneck sweater. “Have you seen Dr. Pinion?” he asked suddenly, raising one eyebrow. Gill replied that he had, just yesterday.
“Ah,” replied Latzarel, nodding his head. “Did he have anything interesting to say?”
“No, sir. He wanted to know about the digging machine.”
“Ah,” said Latzarel again. “That would be the subterranean prospector? Edward has told me a good bit about it. I’d like to have a look at it myself, if I might.”
Giles didn’t reply. He half nodded, but showed no enthusiasm, a strange thing for Giles, who was normally full of his inventions. Jim could see that Professor Latzarel was disappointed, but that he hesitated to be obviously so. The three of them clumped up the steps and into the house, which by then was full of talk and tobacco smoke and glasses of port. Jim was relieved to see his father talking animatedly to Roycroft Squires. He half feared, as he always did, that just beyond the veil of the present some eccentricity lay waiting. That his father might at any moment slide off the thin edge of sanity, and that his uncle would dash for the telephone and a van would come screaming down the road. Oscar Pallcheck liked to call them the “white coat boys” and laughed at the idea of gigantic butterfly nets and shepherd’s crooks. Jim generally laughed along guiltily. But now that his father was home, he couldn’t see the joke. He couldn’t, in fact, develop any considered opinions about his father at all. His thoughts were limited by a misty wall beyond which his mind wouldn’t venture. He had determined that the same wall existed within the mind of his father, that they were products of the same foggy uncertainty. He wondered how often his father traveled back to the day Jim’s mother died in the autumn hills above Los Angeles.
They had gone picnicking in Griffith Park — Jim, his father and mother. Uncle Edward had elected to stay home and, as he put it, whack about in the garage. It was his mother’s idea that they pack a picnic lunch, hike around in the hills — green from early rains — and then catch the late afternoon program at the planetarium.
They found a grassy knoll beneath a clump of nearly leafless oaks and ate sandwiches. Jim’s mother talked about the kitchen curtains and about the attention Uncle Edward had been paying to Velma Peach, Giles’ mother. Jim could remember the conversation almost word for word, even though at the time he was indifferent to kitchen curtains and couldn’t at all see why anyone would develop an interest in Velma Peach, or in anybody’s mother, for that matter. Now, two years later, the faded kitchen curtains were tangled in his memory with his mother’s face, one of them calling up the other without fail.