“Silly too. Bat some balls, run in circles, sleep and repeat? Darwin might understand the conquest, the pecking order, but where does that leave higher evolution? Compassion. Empathy.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She sighed on cue, already bored in confirming his lagging social acuity. “Right. So you're happy with your contract, are you, Ramon?"
“Contract. . . Well, why wouldn't I be? But hey, ah. . . I'd really rather not discuss the particulars of that on camera, if ya don't mind.”
“Well, how about off camera, then? Like right now. Two point six million for, what. . .twenty-six games or so? Isn’t that true?”
Vasquez' face lost all expression. Then his dark eyebrows furrowed again, and he cocked his symmetrically masculine chin. “Okay, you’re right,” he conceded, giving her the same grin he probably used in singles bars--not sure where this exchange was leading, but hopeful. “Impressed?” he concluded, adopting his own belated experimentation.
Val smiled. “Oh, absolutely. After all, that's more than twenty-six high school teachers make, combined. All for hitting the same ball you did in sixth grade. Only a little harder, of course. And for chewing the right product, there's a bonus, too.” She paused. “Do some charity work, though, don't you, Ramon?”
Another and longer pause. “I do some, yeah. Don't like what you're implying, though.”
“Not implying anything,” Val said. She resurrected one of his impish smiles. “Got you there, didn't I? Like on 60 Minutes or Hardball?”
Vasquez nodded, his wary, cocky grin now wavering at the edges. “Yeah, I was warned about you. Yer good at what you do too, aren't ya?”
Val looked away from his striking face toward a certain gazebo beyond the fence, next to where a large, familiar cottonwood tree sat. “I'm not sure what you mean."
“Sure you do. I saw you on TV last night. I mean, they showed me the rerun. The home run.”
She looked back at him, meeting a more intrigued gaze this time. A different look that what had obviously worked well with women in awe of celebrity. “You know something, Ramon,” she reinforced his fascination, “there’s another star I met once, that I’d like to tell you about. On another assignment I had once.”
“A bigger star than me, is that it?”
She smiled politely at his tardy assimilation. “I’ll let you decide. Actually, it’s a tiny point of light in the sky that I was told about. Looks like a star. But with the telescope atop Mt. Graham, it comes into view as an elliptical galaxy three times the size of our Milky Way, with over a trillion suns surrounding the largest black hole known--something containing three billion solar masses. Doesn’t have a name, though. Just a number. M87. Yet the weight of that warped space, where this monster sits, can’t even be imagined. A light year wide disk of superheated gas orbits it, whirling at a good fraction of the speed of light, before it plummets along twisting magnetic field lines toward what nothing can escape. The astronomer told me, during my story on her, that at the poles of this bottomless well of gravity, all matter is ripped into atoms and then partly beamed as plasma so hot and fast that it could vaporize anything in its path, including the Earth. That beam shoots out over seven thousand light years from the core before it even begins to disperse. And further out, over fifteen thousand globular clusters of stars surround M87 like a halo of bees over a flower. Some of those clusters contain over a hundred thousand stars each, just like our sun. And yet all of it, if you looked up at the sky, Ramon, looks like a dim point of light. A minor star that you wouldn’t notice at all.”
“Wo-ww,” said Ramon with exaggeration, after a pause. “I guess there is a bigger star than me, after all. Although not as famous.” His lips turned upward in a slow grin as he gauged her reaction. “And, ya know, with all that hot talk of plasma, there, I must confess I was wondering just how well you wanted to know me, Ms. A-Lott.”
“Oh, I think I know you already,” Val told him. “I’m just wondering if you’ll ever know yourself.”
She couldn't resist smiling thinly as she got up from the bench. Glancing toward the gazebo, she apologized for not having more time. Vasquez did seem astonished to see her walk away, but by then she'd already decided to suggest to Greg that he should do the on-camera part of the interview, being such a fan. Maybe she could even call in sick that day, and go search for David instead.
If only she knew where to look.
17
Driving toward her apartment, Val thought about April Ellis again. Of course she'd thought of April often enough in the past two years, but never as a potential friend or confidant. A slender woman with long red hair, April had been a gracious host, taking Val on a two hour tour of the Large Binocular Telescope atop Mt. Graham to the east of Tucson. But while standing beneath two massive mirrors, each over twenty-seven feet across and mounted on a tilting hydraulic platform that weighed over five hundred tons, April had also described her own career path as though explaining the workings of a high tech laser. Ever since high school--ironically graduating the same year as Val--April had successfully climbed a ladder of calculated professional achievement, first majoring in math and science before earning a doctorate in astrophysics. In a male dominated field, her focus had centered on the development of galaxies, on black hole formation, and on the theoretical influence of dark matter on the birth of large scale structure. She'd even authored papers on her research for Astrophysical Journal, and had been awarded a Magellan prize for outstanding contribution to astronomy. There'd been no designation "By a Female Under 40," and no mention in Entertainment Weekly, either. She'd done it on her own, without the aid of luck, and all because she'd followed her bliss, oblivious to the vain machinations of back seat drivers.
Jealousy, Val thought. That was the reason she hadn't called April. Faye, instead. Now if only she knew what to say. Or to ask.
Passing Tucson Mall, Val did another impulsive U-turn back into its parking lot, partly out of frustration. The lot was already nearly full of cars for an evening of ritual window shopping. Inside, and walking past the entrance to Sears, she noted nothing unusual. Whatever had happened here was over, now, and life had returned to what people habitually referred to as "normal."
She ordered an iced mocha latte at a coffee kiosk, and strolled with it along the lower level, looking at all the patrons who dawdled past salespeople hawking chic jewelry, designer shoes, glazed sticky buns, framed art. As she considered whether to call April or not, she picked out a few people at random, and deliberately focused her attention on them. A gangly kid in a white uniform meticulously swept small fragments of crumbs and dust at the front of a pretzel shop. An elderly woman clutched a maple cane in one bony arm as she squinted at the jar of face cream she'd just purchased. Three bored teenage boys huddled around their taco franchise register while waiting for customers, one of them twirling a gold chain. And an old geezer in an unbefitting cardigan stared out from his perch on the central fountain's retaining wall like a bone frozen iguana from a sculptured rock.
Reciting a line from an old Beatles song, the voice in Val's head returned to offer up a comment, almost casually:
Look at all the lonely people. . .where do they all come from?
Somehow, she realized, it didn’t matter where they came from, or where they were going, on any celestial scale. And it wouldn’t really matter to anyone on Earth but them, either, until they became famous or rich or criminal. Because average working class folks who went to the mall were mostly invisible, even to each other. After someone took their money, they were told to have a nice day, whatever that meant. No one really cared what they thought, except as it influenced what they bought. It wouldn’t be much, in any case. Just enough to survive, or to imagine themselves as stylish, or at least in possession of a choice. If choice it truly was.
They're dots of light on an astrophotograph, suggested the voice in her head. Like grains of sand on a boundless beach.
“Me, I wanna be something colorful, like a ne
bula,” she told the voice, aloud. Although not loud enough that anyone else heard.
She paused next to admire a pair of purebred Collie puppies in the triangular window of a pet shop. One of the lively brown pups chomped playfully on the other's ear, and for a moment Val wondered if Melissa Melendez had been found here, her little hands splayed out on the glass, entranced by the canine antics. Then she aimlessly strolled through clothing stores, gift shops, and finally Neiman Marcus, unimpressed by its elaborate displays of perfume endorsed by glamorous ‘It’ people, who were always young and rich and famous, which was what everyone imagined 'It' to be all about. Finally circling back to the atrium, she paused instinctively outside the mom-and-pop shop called View Finders. It was the mall's camera outlet, but featured half a dozen refractor and reflector telescopes in the front window, alongside various plexiglass-mounted cameras: Pentax, Minolta, Leica, Nikon. And again, like the last time she'd visited, she decided that the cameras and the photo-processing equipment were probably only to help pay the rent for the owner's true obsession: astronomy.
I could have been April, she realized, with sudden clarity.
She stood frozen by the notion for an instant, her head bowed, forehead furrowed in memory. Then she shook her head, as though struck by the thought like a blow.
I could have been April.
She’d flashed on the idea before, of course, but this time the revelation seemed beyond mere whimsy. Vividly, she now recalled how her parents had discouraged her interest in science. It was an inappropriate career choice for a girl, hadn't they said? Yes. Too distant and too impersonal, the exploration of wispy blue veils of hydrogen gas illuminated by some double star cluster like NGC 1850. Besides, the physics involved. . . women just didn't have the unique capacity for such abstract conception. No, she would do better in business or communications. Pursue that, dear. Never mind if one day she might end up sitting on a park bench, wondering why she’d never felt truly alive or engaged with anything or anyone around her. Why she didn't even have her own family as compensation.
Val fished out her cell, her hand shaking, now, in deciding at last to conduct her own research experiment. Even if it was over a decade too late.
"Hello, April?"
"Speaking."
"It's Valerie Lott, remember me? I did a piece on you back when you won that honor. For KTAT?"
"Oh, hi Valerie. What can I do for you?"
"Well, I. . . I'm not sure. I just wanted to touch base. I mean, it's been a while, and so I was wondering if there's been any new developments. What are you working on now?"
A pause before a detectable flatness invaded the astronomer's tone. "We're mapping the density of dark matter perturbing the light from a distant quasar in Cygnus."
"A gravitational lens?" Val asked.
"That's. . . right." A touch of surprise.
"Is anything else there to measure it? Besides the degree that the quasar's light is being bent into multiple images?"
"Yes, actually. There's an elliptical galaxy whose velocity we can track in relation to the other galaxies in a nearby supercluster." A pause. "You seem to know something about astronomy. But then, I seem to remember that about you."
"What I know isn't much. Just the basics. What fascinates me is that we still don't know much about the true nature of the universe. Dark matter, dark energy. . . supposed to be over seventy percent of everything, and yet we don't really know what it is, do we? I mean you, of course."
"That's what we're trying to determine, yes. . . by calculating the effects of gravity from these anomalies on the velocities of what we can see. It's one way to measure the missing mass. Doesn't tell us what it is, yet, but these incremental mapping studies add to the research database, and. . ." April paused again, with suspicion this time. "Where we going with this? You want another interview? Because this isn't exactly news. Not yet, at least. Although, if you're fishing for a lead, I could refer you to--"
"No, no, thanks," Val interrupted. "I was just thinking about space. About emptiness, I mean. Like is space really empty, or are there unseen forces, maybe coming from higher dimensions."
"I see."
"Like gravity, for instance. What is it? Even Einstein wasn't sure, was he? A warp in spacetime, sure, but does it leak between these other dimensions? If it does, could we use it to communicate instantly across vast distances somehow?"
"I'm not sure," April replied, her voice already starting to resemble Val's own in talking to Trish Slater.
"Sorry, I mean you. Then there's the Big Bang, which could have been a kind of white hole instead of a black hole. And what was before the Big Bang, do you think?"
"As far as we know, there was no before."
"Empty space?"
"No space at all."
"How could there be no space at all?"
"Listen, Valerie, I. . ." Really should go now.
"I understand." A long pause without response. "Sorry to bother you like this. Just one more question?"
"What's it about?"
"It's about time. Is time an illusion? What's your opinion?"
A sigh. "I'm not sure I have time. It's a big question. I would say, if time depends on the relative velocity of the observer, and according to Einstein gravity acts on matter the same as acceleration does, it makes sense that infinite gravity would equal infinite velocity, and time would stop completely, too. So in that sense it is an illusion. Space and time are not absolutes. They can be bent by gravity, just as light is bent."
"Bent into another dimension, another reality? The one true reality, where all the elemental forces combine into a unified whole? The emptiness from which we came?"
April laughed. "You surprise me, once again. Call back, when I have more time?"
"I will," Valerie promised. Count on it.
~ * ~
Closing her cell, Val sank onto a nearby bench that was not unlike those at the park. She closed her eyes and imagined standing where April stood, under a wide dome busily preparing to open skyward for another exhilarating night of observation. When she opened her eyes again, she gazed at the ferns in a large marble pot nearby, their leaves gently rocking in a funnel of air falling from a cooling duct high overhead. She stared at the shiny marble floor tiles with their swirling, grainy brown patterns, their beautiful imperfections, all of them part of a larger design and geometry. A larger mystery. She seemed to float peacefully for a while in these oddly new perceptions, feeling invisible somehow, even to the people walking by, although she heard them talk, listened to the water in the fountain, the echo of footsteps on marble. But then the curious reality of the epiphany began to subside, slipping away as quickly as it had arisen, with the recurrent thought, I could have been April.
I could have been. . . who I was meant to be.
A tear fell down her cheek. She brushed it away, absentmindedly. When another took its place, she lowered her head, and clamped shut her eyes tightly. Then she opened her purse, took out a tissue, wiped her eyes quickly, and rose.
She found the store directory map, and scanned all the store names there. Maybe there was a Godiva chocolate franchise. She needed chocolate badly. She hoped it was just the ticket for someone trying hard not to notice the women holding hands with handsome, strong men, or riding in convertibles with kids and a dog whose long wet tongue lapped at the breeze as they swept past her, alive and in the moment.
Hypnotically, she scrolled the store names again with her gaze, then stopped at the words Satellite City.
Satellite City?
Something about the name drew her attention. It sounded like a moon base. A place of refuge. She traced the location and her route to it from the YOU ARE HERE logo, which was a pale green rectangle. The store was situated across the mall on the upper level. She rose, and walked almost purposefully, it felt, toward the stairs.
When she arrived, she saw that a dozen HDTVs of various sizes faced the passing shoppers. The store sold HDTVs and satellite dish antennas. So that was it.
But then she saw in amazement that the wide screens all showed the same two smiling faces. Familiar faces. The faces of relieved parents that she recognized as city council member Frank Melendez and his wife Maria.
Val stepped quickly past a knot of bouncy, self-absorbed teens, dressed all in black, into the shop's opening. Channel 4 was doing the honors, with an exclusive interview sandwiched during a commercial break. The shocker, right before Donald Trump appeared on The View, came at the end of the brief recap, when it was revealed that little Melissa Melendez had been shown a photograph of David Leiter, and had insisted it was not him who had abducted her.
18
Shoppers turned to gawk at Val as she ran through the mall, cell phone drawn. Dodging and weaving past each aura of vacant surprise, she looked like an undercover cop chasing a shoplifter. Or maybe a sports agent going for an endorsement contract. She punched the autodial for Greg, and put the phone to one ear. “Greg, it's me. I'm on my way there. Tell me what's happening. Does the girl know where David is?”
A wire display of sunglasses tottered and nearly collapsed as she careened into it. When she burst out of the Sears exit into the lower parking level, behind her a hollow "Hey!" echoed from the closing door. She ignored that too, and listened to Greg's explanation as she fumbled for her car keys.
“No one knows, Valerie. They only know it wasn't Leiter. This guy was Hispanic, and he was alone. They're working with a sketch artist, but it's hard to do that with a child. Too emotional for them. They confuse easily. Theory is that this perp stole Leiter's identity--his wallet, van, and keys.”
“He's dead, you mean? David's dead?”
“We don't know that.”
“But you think it.”
“I don't know what to think, yet.”
“Well, I do,” Val told him. “David is innocent, and I was wrong to let you try and convince me otherwise!”
“I’m sorry,” Greg said, “but he could still be involved here somehow. The evidence, it was. . .” Greg paused, as if biting his lip. “There’s something else.”
The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott Page 24
