“I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t practical, or maybe they don’t care…”
“Or maybe the predator, having devoured its victim, leaves only a corpse behind.”
The bar was aggressively air-conditioned. Nerissa shivered.
Amélie nodded. “You understand, I think. And this is what has destroyed the plea sure I once took in looking through the telescope. All those wonderful possibilities. But now when I see the stars I think, death. Killing. Nature, red in the tooth…”
“Red,” Nerissa corrected her, “in tooth and claw.” Amélie was quoting Tennyson, whether she knew it or not. A passage about “man,” that Victorian abstraction, Who trusted God was love indeed / And love Creation’s final law—/ Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw / With ravine, shriek’d against his creed…
“‘In tooth and claw.’ Exactly.”
“And you blame Beck for changing the way you look at the sky?”
“Blame Beck? No, not for that.” Amélie smiled bitterly. “No. I blame Mr. Beck for propositioning me very crudely when we were alone in his room, and then belittling my work because I refused his advances. But that’s the kind of man he is.” She stood up suddenly, her chair teetering behind her. “I think Mr. Beck is as deluded as the rest of us. He simply cherishes a more militant delusion. Watch out for your husband, Nerissa. I mean to say, be careful of him. Protect him. Because he seems terribly impressed with Mr. Beck’s ideas. And I think Mr. Beck’s ideas are frankly dangerous.”
Nerissa saw Werner Beck once more that weekend, at a group dinner at the end of the conference. All technical discussion was banned for the duration of the meal. It was meant to be a social evening, though Nerissa was the only woman at the table: Amélie Fourier had booked an early flight to Louis Blériot Airport in Paris.
Conversation was shallow and often awkward. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to ban discussion of the single subject these people had in common. What was left? Books, films, politics, trivia. Nerissa said little and allowed her attention to drift, but she was impressed by Beck’s obvious domination of the event. The Correspondence Society was supposedly nonhierarchical and Beck held no official position, but it was Beck who called for menus, Beck who refereed minor disagreements, Beck who had organized the dinner in the first place.
And it was Beck who declared it over as soon as the dessert dishes had been cleared away. He held his hand out to Nerissa as she left with Ethan. “Plea sure meeting you, Mrs. Iverson.” His handshake was firm and his smile radiated a perfect confidence. She managed a smile in return, perhaps not very persuasively.
Later, in their room, she told Ethan what Amélie had said about Beck.
Ethan frowned. “It must be some kind of misunderstanding.”
“Amélie seemed clear on what happened.”
“Her work on microwave echoing was pretty thin gruel. Beck was a little dismissive of it in discussion, but I don’t think he said anything unfair. It was Beck who delivered the bombshell at this conference. He managed to detect signaling mechanisms in chondritic cells in culture.”
“And that’s important?”
“Like pulling down a piece of the sky and putting it under a microscope. If we understand how these cells communicate, it should be possible to monitor that communication or even interfere with it. I mean, if we choose to.”
“And the fact that he propositioned her?”
“Well, did he? He may have said something callous, which she amplified out of, you know, professional jealousy—”
“So she was lying?”
“Come on, Ris! Not necessarily lying, but…” He shrugged impatiently. “And no real harm was done. I don’t know why we’re even discussing this. She produced some trivial work, it got the attention it deserved, and she resented it. Maybe Beck didn’t conduct himself like a perfect gentleman, but even if that’s the case, does it really matter?”
At least take it into consideration, Nerissa thought. Don’t dismiss it out of loyalty to Beck. Don’t make excuses for him just because his research is impressive. But she didn’t say any of those things, only frowned and turned away.
The disagreement cast a shadow over their vacation. Oahu was predictably beautiful. They hiked Mokuleia, they sunned for blissful hours on the white sand of the hotel’s beach. But Nerissa had seen a side of Ethan (and of the Correspondence Society) she didn’t like and couldn’t altogether dismiss. And although the stars over the North Shore were lovely, she was haunted by what Amélie had said. Nature, red in tooth and claw / With ravine, shriek’d against his creed… And against Amélie herself, apparently. Amélie had been one of the first to die in the murders of 2007.
“Ris, wake up.”
For a moment she thought she was back in Hawaii. But no. She had slept in the car. She blinked her eyes against a gray dawn, hardly tropical. When she sat up, every joint in her body voiced a separate complaint.
Ethan had parked in front of a bungalow on some dusty street near a railroad crossing. She began to ask where they were, then realized she didn’t have to. This was one of Werner Beck’s many so-called safe houses, the address of which he had given Ethan in the letter that had arrived the day they left the farm house. Evidence of heightened radiosphere activity, Beck had written, take all precautions, you can reach me at this address.
And the man just now stepping out the door and down the porch steps was Werner Beck himself. He hadn’t changed much in the years since Nerissa had last seen him. His posture remained militarily erect, though his hair and beard were grayer. He wore loose khakis and an untucked red flannel shirt. And he was cradling a shotgun, though he offered a tight smile when Ethan rolled down the window.
Please let them be here, Nerissa thought. Please let them be inside the house, Cassie and Thomas, and Beck’s son, Leo. Let them be watching from a window. Let them come running out when they see me. She opened the car door. She stood up. Ethan did the same.
“You’d better get inside,” Werner said.
And from the house there was nothing. Only a pale light, an empty porch, a motionless door, the vacant silence.
17
EUGENE DOWD’S SPRAY PAINT HAD TURNED the car Leo had stolen from white to metallic blue. With its windows and trim still masked it looked almost fake to Cassie’s eyes, a trompe l’oeil automobile, a magic trick at the point of unveiling. Dowd said he would give it a buff and a clear coat in the morning—there wasn’t time for anything better, and the only purpose of all this work was to make sure the car no longer fit its original description. A hasty coat of paint and new plates was the best he could do. Then they would have to get on the road.
Of course Cassie wanted him to finish his story about Chile, about the desert called the Atacama and the strange lights he had seen there. But Dowd wasn’t in the mood. Tomorrow, he said. He talked better when he had something to do with his hands. In the meantime he meant to drive his truck into Salina to pick up supplies, and did anybody want to come with him?
Beth volunteered at once. Dowd nodded and escorted her out of the garage.
Cassie, Leo and Thomas adjourned to Dowd’s office upstairs, where the grimy window was orange with the glow of the sunset. They were too hungry to wait for Dowd and Beth to get back, so they assembled dinner out of the leftovers in Dowd’s refrigerator. Leo switched on Dowd’s little transistor radio and let it play for a while—mostly Christmas music, since that was the next big holiday on the calendar. The tinkling bells and choral arrangements were cheerful for a time, but after dark the music began to seem as sad and distant as a signal from a ship at sea. Cassie wondered whether she would ever celebrate Christmas again. Aunt Ris had not been particularly religious, but every December she dragged a dwarfish pine tree up the stairs to the apartment and installed it in a tin basin over a white sheet, where its fallen needles would collect in prickly drifts. Cassie supposed the apartment was empty now—past-due notices in the overflowing mailbox, food rotting in the refrigerator, dust sifting out of the still air.