17

“You make sweet sounds come out of that stringed box.”

Jack was sitting in the woods, his back against a tree, strumming his guitar. His bike was propped against another tree.

First a boxer dog had bounded into the little clearing in the woods; then a tall, lean older man wearing walking shorts and horned-rimmed glasses came along the path. The man had a long, very straight back.

“Don’t get up,” Doctor Radliegh said. “And don’t stop playing. I like it. May I sit down, Jack?”

Jack resettled his back against the tree. “They’re your woods, Doctor Radliegh.”

“God’s woods. God’s world. We’re just the caretakers.” Radliegh sat cross-legged on a tuft of grass. He chuckled. “If I were God, I’d fire us. Wouldn’t you?”

“If you were God, would you fire you?” Jack asked.

“I’ve tried to keep my patch neat.” Radliegh looked around at the planted forest. “Make the most of it. How does one play a guitar?”

“I’ve been doing it so long …” Jack did a short riff. “Just let your fingers play, I guess.”

After a lunch of sandwiches and milk in his cottage, Jack had strapped the guitar on his back and gone for a bike ride around Vindemia.

There were only a few cars outside the business offices on Saturday afternoon. Beauville’s BMW was one.

There were more than a dozen small airplanes, both jets and propeller driven, parked neatly on the airstrip. As Jack watched, an ancient yellow two-seater wobbled down the sky and made a perfect landing. There seemed to be only one person, the pilot, a man, in it.

Again, there were only a few cars outside the country club. The tennis courts, pool area, and greens were devoid of people.

While heading toward the airstrip, a gray Infiniti sedan with tinted windows passed Jack. Another passed him from behind before he went on the road around the country club.

Jack presumed guests were arriving in the airplanes and then being ferried to the main house for the party that night.

Beyond the clubhouse, Jack found a timber road heading off to the right. Intersecting with it were walking-riding trails. He jounced his bike along one until he came to a clearing where he thought he’d be alone.

He had been playing his guitar for only about twenty minutes.

Another plane went overhead, low.

Doctor Chester Radliegh looked up through the trees from where he sat cross-legged on the ground. “Lots of guests arriving.” He smiled at Jack. “Good time to take a walk.”

“You know my name,” Jack said.

Radliegh nodded. “Jack Faoni.”

The dog climbed onto Radliegh’s crossed legs and lay down on them. His settled his chin on Radliegh’s knee.

Radliegh said, “This guy’s name is Arky. He thinks I belong to him.”

“Arky?”

“Archimedes.”

“Of course.”

“Wanted to name a son that, but Mrs. Radliegh would have none of it.”

“Name a son after a screw?” Jack smiled.

“Never mind.” Conversationally, Radliegh said, “A few days ago my elder son, Chet, surprised me. He met me at the stables at dawn. He had saddled two horses. We had a great ride together.”

Jack waited for the point of this comment.

Radliegh said no more.

Jack asked, “Where was Peppy that morning?”

“I don’t know.”

Searching for a point, Jack asked, “How many days was this before your favorite horse died?”

“Oh, days,” Radliegh answered. “Three or four days.” He patted the dog’s head. “Things like that don’t happen as often as I expected they would.”

“Like what?” Jack asked.

“Oh, just one of the kids joining me for a ride.”

Thinking about Radliegh, Jack played a short, fast ditty on the guitar.

Jack was thinking he had never before met a mind like Radliegh’s. The man was a certified genius, but there was something childlike in what Radliegh had just said. Or was it subtle, profound?

Radliegh was surprised his children did not join him for rides.

Radliegh was surprised one son, one day, did join him for a ride.

Therefore … what?

When Jack had asked Nancy Dunbar why the need for all the security and spying at Vindemia, she had said: “Doctor Radliegh does not like surprises.”

Perhaps Radliegh’s mind was on a plane so different from the average person’s that everything about humans surprised him.

Intensely, Radliegh had watched Jack’s fingers play the ditty. “That’s fun,” he said.

“So how does one invent the perfect mirror?” Jack asked.

Radliegh shrugged. “Just like your fingers. Let your mind play; pick at things: something develops.” Then he said, “Sometimes.”

Looking at his fingers on the frets, Jack asked, “What happens to a black hole when it disappears?”

Radliegh smiled. “You mean, what happens to the information within?”

“I don’t know what I mean.”

“It would be fun if it elongated into a line so narrow that its cut length would be a speck so small it might be invisible.”

“Why would that be fun?” Jack asked.

“Because it might help define the indefinite we’re prone to think of as the infinite.”

“Oh.” Jack did not understand, but he heard the readiness to answer, the words. Doctor Radliegh may be surprised by humans, perhaps had inadequate language to deal with them, but he was not surprised black holes appeared to disappear.

“Do you mind my asking what your mind is playing with, picking at now?” Jack asked.

“Of course not,” Radliegh said. “Space locomotion.”

“Space travel?”

“I guess so. I don’t believe people are questioning sufficiently the basic principles of physics.”

Jack said, “I’m not.”

“You were taught not.”

“Only thing we were taught to question,” Jack said, “was our marks, not our teachers.”

“That is,” Radliegh continued rapidly, “that the basic laws of physics are universal, cosmological. Considering the history of the cosmos, we humans have been perceiving physical laws as briefly as it takes you to blink your eye, comparatively.”

Jack blinked.

“I’m not sure sufficient weight is given to the fact that our perceptions, so far considered absolute, are entirely dependent upon our intellectual appurtenances. These physical laws, seen from another planet, dependent upon other intellectual appurtenances, might be perceived entirely differently. Probably are.”

“Okay.”

“Yet the true, absolute, ultimate physical laws might conform to no perception of them yet achieved on any planet, be totally different.”

Jack said, “I guess I’ll stick to pickin’ my guitar.”

“It’s the same thing,” Radliegh said. “Your achieving a system of time and space permits you to play the guitar. We have to achieve a system of time and space presently inconceivable to us to achieve space travel.”

Radliegh lifted the boxer dog off his legs and stood it on its own legs on the ground. “Well, come on, Arky.” Radliegh stood. “Guess I’ve got to go be polite.” Standing up, Radliegh said, “You see, it’s okay to think about anything, however silly. That’s how questions develop.”

Feet spread, hands over his head, Doctor Radliegh stretched fully. “It’s a silly thought, of course, totally without basis, but wouldn’t it be nice if, for example, the elongated black holes had the information to be tramways, to get us through space quickly?”

From where Jack sat on the ground the stretching man seemed huge.

“One suggestion, or hope, always is,” Radliegh continued, as he crouched and petted Arky, “that everything has a purpose. Not to look for the purpose, not to see it, to see it and deny it, is fault, wouldn’t you say?”

“Sir?” Jack asked.

Smiling, Radliegh waited for Jack to speak.

“How come you sat and talked with me?” Jack asked. “Said such things to me? I mean, from your own mind?” Radliegh’s eyebrows shot up. “My way of saying thank you,” he said, “for your concern. Someday you might have the kindness to remember I did so.”

Which left Jack totally, absolutely confused.

Jack wondered if he was seeing Chester Radliegh from the right planet.