After an hour he stood up, stretched his arms, and left the office, walking through the wet grass to the edge of the lake. The moon was out again; he watched its reflection on the water for a while, and then he stared at Newton’s window and said softly aloud the question that had been taking shape in his mind for twenty minutes: “What kind of a man would compute with logarithms to the base twelve?” The light in Newton’s window, much fainter than the moon, stared back at him blankly, and at his feet the water washed gently against the shore, in a dim, mindless cadence, monotonous, quiet, and as old as the world.
1988:
Rumplestiltskin
1
In autumn the mountains around the lake became red and yellow and orange and brown. The water, under a colder sky, was bluer; it reflected in places the colors of the trees on the mountains. When the wind blew, pushing ripples before it, reds and yellows would flash on the water, and leaves would fall.
From the door of his laboratory, Bryce, often lost in thought, would sometimes stare across the water to the mountains, and to the house where T. J. Newton lived. The house was more than a mile distant from the crescent of aluminum and plywood buildings to which the laboratory was joined; at the other side of the crescent, when the sun was shining, the polished hull of the Thing—the Project, the Vehicle, whatever it was—glistened. Sometimes the sight of the silvery monolith would make Bryce feel something resembling pride; sometimes it only seemed ridiculous, like an illustration from a child’s book on space; sometimes it frightened him. It was possible for him to stand in his doorway and look directly across the lake to the uninhabited far shore and see the peculiar contrast—which he had observed early and often—between the structures at each end of the panorama; to his right the old Victorian mansion, with bay windows, white clapboarding, huge and useless pillars at its three porches, a home built in heavy-handed and tasteless pride by some unknown and long-dead tobacco or coal or lumber baron more than a century before; and to his left the most austere and futuristic of all constructions, a spaceship. A spaceship standing in a Kentucky pasture, surrounded by autumnal mountains, owned by a man who chose to live in a mansion with one drunken servant, with a French secretary, with parrots, paintings, and cats. Between the ship and the house stood the water, the mountains. Bryce himself, and the sky.
One morning in November, when the youthful seriousness of one of his lab assistants had made him feel a twinge of his old despair over scientific work and the airs of young men who practiced it, he went to the doorway and spent several minutes staring at the familiar view. Abruptly, he decided to take a walk; it had never occurred to him before to walk around the lake. There was no reason why he shouldn’t.
The air was cold, and for a moment he thought he should return to the lab for his jacket. But the sun was warm, in a mild. November morning way, and by staying along the edge of the water, out of the shade, he was able to keep comfortable enough. He walked in the direction of the big house, away from the construction site and the ship. He was wearing a faded wool plaid shirt, a ten-year-old gift from his dead wife; after a mile of walking he was forced to roll up the sleeves to his elbows, for they had begun prickling with the warmth of his body. His forearms, thin, white, and hairy, seemed shockingly pale in the sunlight—the arms of a very old man. Underfoot was gravel, and occasionally scrubgrass. He saw several squirrels, and a rabbit. Once, out in the lake, a fish jumped. He passed a few buildings and some kind of metalworking shop; some men waved at him. One of them spoke to him by name, but he did not recognize the man. He smiled back, and waved. He settled to a slow walk, and let his mind wander aimlessly. Once he stopped and tried to skip a few flat rocks on the lake and succeeded in forcing one of them to make a single leap. The others, hitting wrong, all sank the minute they touched the water. He shook his head at them, feeling foolish. High overhead a dozen birds flew soundlessly across the sky. He went on walking.
Before noon he passed the house, which seemed closed and silent, sitting a few hundred feet back from the water’s edge. He stared for a moment at the upstairs bay window, but could see nothing save the reflection of the sky on the glass. By the time the sun was as nearly overhead as it would be at that time of year, he was walking along the uninhabited shore at the far edge of the lake. The scrubgrass and weeds were thicker now; there were bushes and goldenrod and a few rotten logs. He thought momentarily of snakes, which he disliked, but dismissed the thought. He saw a lizard, sitting immobile on a stone, its eyes like glass. He began to be hungry, and wondered idly what he would do about it. Tiring, he sat on a log at the water’s edge, loosened his shirt buttons, wiped the back of his neck with his handkerchief, and stared at the water. He felt momentarily like Henry Thoreau, and smiled at himself for the feeling. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. He looked back toward the house, partly obscured now by trees. Someone, still quite distant, was walking toward him. He blinked in the strong light, stared for a few moments, and became gradually aware that it was T. J. Newton. He leaned his elbows on his knees, and waited. He began to feel nervous.
Newton was carrying a small basket on his arm. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and light gray slacks. He walked slowly, his tall body erect, but with a light gracefulness to the movement. There was an indefinable strangeness about his way of walking, a quality that reminded Bryce of the first homosexual he had ever seen, back when he had been too young to know what a homosexual was. Newton did not walk like that; but then he walked like no one else; light and heavy at the same time.
When Newton was close enough to be heard he said, “I brought some cheese and wine.” He was wearing dark glasses.
“Fine.” Bryce stood up. “Did you see me when I passed the house?”
“Yes.” The log was fairly long and semicircular in shape. Newton sat at the other end of it, placing the basket at his feet. He withdrew a wine bottle and a corkscrew and held them out toward Bryce. “Would you open it?”
“I’ll try.” He took the bottle, noticing as he did so that Newton’s arms were as thin and pale as his own, but hairless. The fingers were very long and slender, with the smallest knuckles he had ever seen. The hands trembled slightly, as Newton handed him the bottle.
The wine was a Beaujolais. Bryce held the bottle, cold and wet, between his knees and began working the corkscrew. This was one operation he was fairly dexterous at, unlike skipping flat rocks on the water. He got the cork out, with a neat and satisfying pop, on the first try. Newton walked over with two glasses—not wineglasses, but tumblers—and held them for him while he poured. “Be generous,” Newton said, smiling down at him; and he poured the tumblers nearly full. Newton’s voice was pleasant; the faint accent seemed quite natural.
The wine was excellent, cool and fragrant in his dry throat. It warmed his stomach instantly with a tinge of the fine old double pleasure of alcohol—physical and spiritual—the pleasure that kept a great many men going, had kept him going for years. The cheese was strong cheddar, old and flaky. They ate and drank silently for several minutes. They were in the shade, and Bryce rolled his sleeves down. Now that he was no longer walking, he was cool again. He wondered why Newton, in his light clothes, did not seem cold. He looked the sort of man who would sit by a fire, wrapped in a shawl—the person whom George Arliss had played in old movies: thin, pale, cold-blooded. But who could say what kind of person he was? He might be a vaguely foreign count in an English comedy, or an aging Hamlet; or the mad scientist, planning discreetly to blow up the world; or an unostentatious Cortés, quietly building his citadel with local labor. The Cortés notion reminded him of his old idea, never completely forgotten, that Newton might be an extraterrestrial. At this moment almost anything seemed possible; it was not so ridiculous that he, Nathan Bryce, might be drinking wine and eating cheese with a man from Mars. Why not? Cortés had conquered Mexico with about four hundred men; could a single man from Mars do it alone? It seemed possible, as he sat with the wine in his stomach and the sun on his face. Newton
sat beside him, chewing delicately, then sipping, his back erect. There was an Ichabod Crane look to him in profile. How could he, Bryce, be sure that if Newton were from Mars he would be the only one from there? Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Why not four hundred Martians, or four thousand? He looked at him again, and Newton caught his eye and smiled gravely. From Mars? He was probably a Lithuanian, or from Massachusetts.
Feeling a little drunk—how long had it been since he had been drunk at midday?—he peered inquisitively at Newton and said, “Are you a Lithuanian?”
“No.” Newton was looking at the lake and did not turn at Bryce’s question. Then he said, abruptly, “This entire lake belongs to me. I bought it.”
“That’s nice.” He finished his glass of wine. It was the last of the bottle.
“A great deal of water,” Newton said. Then, turning to him, “How much, do you suppose?”
“How much water?”
“Yes.” Newton absently broke off a piece of cheese, and bit into it.
“God. I don’t know. Five million gallons? Ten?” He laughed. “I can hardly estimate the amount of sulphuric acid in a beaker.” He looked at the lake. “Twenty million gallons? Hell, I don’t have to know. I’m a specialist.” Then, remembering Newton’s reputation. “But you aren’t. You know every science that is. Maybe some that aren’t.”
“Nonsense. I’m only an… inventor. If that.” He finished his cheese. “I imagine I’m more of a specialist than yourself.”
“At what?”
Newton did not answer for a while. Then he said, “That would be hard to say.” He smiled again, cryptically. “Do you like straight gin?”
“Not exactly. Maybe.”
“I have a bottle in here.” Newton reached down to the basket at his feet and took out a bottle. Bryce laughed abruptly. He could not help it—Ichabod Crane with a fifth of gin in his lunch basket. Newton poured him a generous glassful, and then one for himself. Suddenly he said, still holding the bottle, “I drink too much.”
“Everybody drinks too much.” Bryce tasted the gin. He did not like it; gin had always tasted like perfume to him. But he drank it. How often does a man have a chance to get drunk with the boss? And how many bosses are Ichabod Crane—Hamlet—Cortés, fresh off the boat from Mars and about to conquer the world by spaceship in the fall of the year? Bryce’s back was tired and he let himself slip to the grass and lean against the log, his feet pointing out to the water of the lake. Thirty million gallons? He took another drink of gin and then fished a flattened pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to Newton. Newton was still sitting on the log, and from Bryce’s low vantage point he looked even taller, more distant than ever.
“I smoked once, about a year ago,” Newton said. “It made me very sick.”
“Oh?” He took a cigarette from the package. “Would you rather I didn’t smoke?”
“Yes.” Newton looked down at him. “Do you think there’ll be a war?”
He held the cigarette speculatively, then flipped it into the lake. It floated. “Aren’t there three wars going now? Or four?”
“Three. I mean a war with big weapons. There are nine nations with hydrogen weapons; at least twelve with bacteriological ones. Do you think they’ll be used?”
Bryce took a larger sip of gin. “Probably. Sure. I don’t know why it hasn’t happened yet. I don’t know why we haven’t drunk ourselves to death yet. Or loved ourselves to death.” The Vehicle was across the lake from them, but could not be seen for the trees. Bryce waved his glass in its direction and said, “Is that going to be a weapon? If it is, who needs it?”
“It’s not a weapon. Not really.” Newton must be drunk. “I won’t tell you what it is.” And then, “After how long?”
“After how long what?” He felt high, too. Fine. It was a lovely afternoon to be high. It had been a long time.
“Until the big war begins? The one that will ruin everything.”
“Why not ruin everything?” He tossed off his drink, reached over to the basket for the bottle. “Everything may need ruining.” As he took the bottle he looked up at Newton, but could not see his face because the sun was behind him. “Are you from Mars?”
“No. Would you say ten years? I was taught it would be ten years at least.”
“Who teaches things like that?” He poured himself a glassful. “I’d say five years.”
“That’s not long enough.”
“Long enough for what?” The gin did not taste so bad now, even though it was warm in the glass.
“It’s not long enough.” Newton looked down at him, sadly. “But you’re probably wrong.”
“All right, three years. Are you from Venus? Jupiter? Philadelphia?”
“No.” Then he shrugged. “My name is Rumplestiltskin.”
“Rumplestiltskin what?”
Newton reached down, took the bottle from him, poured himself another glass of gin. “Do you think it might not happen at all?”
“Maybe. What would keep it from happening, Rumplestiltskin? Man’s higher instincts? Elves live in caves; do you live in a cave, when you’re not visiting?”
“Trolls live in caves. Elves live everywhere. Elves have the power of adapting themselves to extraordinarily difficult environments, such as this one.” He waved a shaky hand out toward the lake, spilling gin on his shirt. “I am an elf, Doctor Bryce, and I live alone everywhere. Altogether everywhere alone.” He stared at the water.
A large group of ducks had settled on the lake about a half mile from them, probably tired migrants on their way to the far South. They seemed to float like tiny balloons on the surface of the water, drifting, as if incapable of locomotion. “If you were from Mars, you would be alone, all right.” Bryce said, watching the ducks. If he were, he would be like a lone duck on the lake—a tired migrant.
“It’s not necessary.”
“What isn’t necessary?”
“To be from Mars. I imagine you have felt alone often enough, Doctor Bryce. Have felt alienated. Are you from Mars?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Philadelphia?”
Bryce laughed. “Portsmouth, Ohio. That’s farther from here than Mars.” With no apparent warning, the ducks on the lake began quacking confusedly. Suddenly they took off in flight, beginning in disarray, but then coordinating themselves into something loosely resembling a formation. Bryce watched them disappear over the mountains, still gaining in altitude. He thought fuzzily of the migration of birds, of birds and insects and small furry animals, moving, following old, old pathways to ancient homes and new deaths. And then the flock of ducks reminded him bitterly of a squadron of missiles he had seen pictured on a magazine cover years before, and this made him think again of the thing he was helping this strange man beside him to build, that sleek, missilelike ship that was supposed to explore or experiment or take pictures or something and that somehow, now, feeling very light and drunk in the mid-afternoon sun, he did not trust, did not trust at all.
Newton stood up, unsteadily, and said, “We can walk to the house. I’ll have Brinnarde drive you home from there, if you’d like.”
“I’d like.” He stood up, brushing leaves from his clothes, and then finished his gin. “I’m too drunk and too old to walk home.”