The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(39)

Yeah right. What time can we expect you?

Late.



* * *





When they came in they would make tea and sit and talk mathematics and physics until their grandmother came down in her robe to fix breakfast. By the time he left for Caltech in the fall he’d changed his major from math to physics. The reasons he gave in his letter were the best he could come up with but they werent the reason. The reason was that in talking to her on those warm nights at his grandmother’s kitchen table he had seen briefly into the deep heart of number and he knew that world would be forever closed to him.



* * *





The Kid stood at the window. Cold out there, he said. What are you writing?

I’m trying to ignore you.

Good luck with that. Where’d you get the snazzy fountain pen?

It belonged to my father. It was given to him by President Eisenhower.

Yeah? No defacto defectors in that lot, were there? You dont think that odd I suppose. What are you guys doing tomorrow? I dont know, you? I dont know. What do you say we blow up the world? Hey, there’s an idea.

He left the window and began to pace again. He wrinkled his brow and shaped one flipper into the palm of the other. We might have very different notions about the nature of the oncoming night, he said. But as darkness descends does it matter?

I dont know.

An outlier such as yourself always raises again the question as to where this ship is headed and why. Is there a common denominator to existence? Core questions can make you look stupid. Are you with me?

Sure.

Good girl. Where was I?

Looking stupid.

Right. The question that comes to mind of course is who is the ideal guest.

Of the universe.

Yes. Coupled with the question of where it actually is in fact that we are. These are not static problems since there are no static things. Is the ideal guest the next such in a sequence of such? Is that what you’d have guessed? Or that maybe the game is rigged?

More tautologies.

So? What’s wrong with that? At least they’re not hard to spell. Can you really write and carry on a conversation at the same time?

It depends on the conversation.

Let me see.

She turned the pad and slid it over the bed and he bent to look. Jesus, he said. What the fuck is that?

It’s shorthand. Gabelsberger.

It looks like worms crawled out of an inkbottle. This stuff goes in your file you know. Do you scribble when you’re having your little chats with Doctor Hard-Dick? Why do I get the feeling that he at least gets a little respect?

What little he gets is because he’s a doctor. Whereas you’re a dwarf. And his name is Hardwick.

Jesus.

I’m sorry. I shouldnt have said that.

I’ve heard of looking a gift horse in the mouth but not of whacking him in the teeth with a shovel.

I am sorry.

Yeah, well. Probably comes from listening to him say nasty things about me. Anyway I really dont know how you deal with someone who regards you as the product of an unruly liver. He probably doesnt get it that if you scratch from the menu everything that’s hard to swallow it’s going to make for a pretty lean lunch.

I’m sorry I called you a dwarf. I wish I could take it back.

Yeah. It wouldnt make me any taller though, would it? Anyway, you need to give a bit more thought to your own recent history before wishing me out of it. You sure you’re logging all this?

Dont worry. It’s a coldstop file. Everything’s retrievable.

Maybe. Of course there’s always the likelihood of something getting reconfigured into another format by cybertrolls somewhere down in the circuitry.

I’m going to bed.

She switched off the bedside lamp and in the dark of the room where the mercury light framed the window she pulled off her jeans and her sweater and socks and crawled into bed and pulled the covers up and lay listening. She could feel him move closer. Listen, Ducklescence, he whispered. You will never know what the world is made of. The only thing that’s certain is that it’s not made of the world. As you close upon some mathematical description of reality you cant help but lose what is being described. Every inquiry displaces what is addressed. A moment in time is a fact, not a possibility. The world will take your life. But above all and lastly the world does not know that you are here. You think that you understand this. But you dont. Not in your heart you dont. If you did you would be terrified. And you’re not. Not yet. And now, good night.



* * *





She shut the door behind her and leaned against it. Cigarette smoke was coiling in the lampshade at her desk. The Kid sat with his feet up. Wearing a jaunty snapbrim hat.

Dont get up, she said.

Dont worry. Nobody’s getting up.

It’s a joke.

Yeah sure. Your lipstick is smeared.

She crossed the room and sat on the bed. She was dressed in a silver lamé top and a tight blue silk miniskirt. Black stockings and three inch heels. She tossed her blonde hair and took a compact from her purse and opened it and sat wiping her mouth with a handkerchief.

Quite a picture, said the Kid. He took his cigarette from the dish on her desk and took a long draw and blew the smoke sideways. Quite a picture. Where you been?

Dancing.

Yeah?

Yes. I didnt know you smoked.