Alexander: [Alexander Trilogy Book Two]

by Stan I. S. Law

  “Dr. Alexander Baldwin,” echoed Alicia and Joan. Their eyes were shining, their cheeks flushed, their faces filled with wonder.

  And they all raised their glasses.

  During all this canonization Suzy sat quietly, gazing at her man. Alec had changed little from the time when she’d first met him on Lake Champlain. The mop of hair was just as disheveled. The rest of him seemed to have enlarged in proportion to his age, too. About a foot and a half taller and broader, somehow more muscular, looking more like a professional football player than a scientist of fledgling reputation. No one would ever suspect that he was completely dedicated to scientific research. No one except herself, who knew him better than his own mother—by now, much better. There had been times when she’d mothered him herself, when she’d given him gentle nudges in the right direction. And now she knew that it was all worth it. Alec no longer needed her motherly concern. He was a man through and through, independent, with considerable self-assurance, confident of his ground. I wonder, she mused, I wonder when he’ll ask me next. I wonder....

  “Speech, speech...” they echoed each other.

  Alec had no choice. Obediently he rose to his feet.

  “Dear mothers, dads... I love you all. In many ways, whatever I’ve managed, so far, is as much your achievement as mine. But....” he looked down at Suzy who succeeded in finding something terribly interesting on her plate, “but of one thing I am more certain than of anything else in my life. If you’re raising your glasses to me, then you must raise them to Suzy. She was my inspiration, my friend, my haven when I felt lost. She pulled on the tiller when I was loosing wind in my sails. I give you my toast. Suzy!”

  And over ‘bravo!’ and ‘Suzy!’ they all rose again and emptied their flutes.

  Suzy blushed and then laughed, and laughed, and then cried. And then both ladies cried and the men found a great need to blow their noses.

  “This damn bug is getting to me,” said John.

  “Same here,” Alec’s dad seconded. “The damn bugs...”

  And they both blew a frightful cacophony.

  Suddenly Alec Baldwin Sr. leaned over his plate. His glass toppled as he tried to prop himself on one elbow. In a single leap Alec was at his side.

  “This way dad, come and lie down,” he commanded.

  “I’m all right, I tell you.” But his voice was raspy and he didn’t resist Alec’s arm.

  Too many emotions? Was dad just too happy?

  As he rested on three pillows, colour slowly returned to his face. The voices in the living room were muted until he told them to speak louder because he couldn’t hear them. The boisterous atmosphere returned, but not fully.

  “He’s all right,” said Alicia. “He’ll be alright. Just let him rest. He got overly excited with Alec and all the good news.” Regardless of her words there was such concern in her voice that Suzy embraced her and gently stroked her hair.

  “Of course he is, Alicia. Of course he is.”

  But he wasn’t. He died later that day.

  Sandra… Sandra, Alec whispered. Suddenly he felt terribly alone. And then thoughts flooded his unresisting brain with succeeding waves. What is death? Is it the end or the beginning? Or is it just part of a continuous cycle, neither terminating nor initiating life? Surely, we cannot define death until we discover the nature of life. Alec had never had to face the death of someone close to him.

  Is life no more than a biological function endowed with the ability to self-reproduce? Or is life more than a means of maintaining and propagating the genes we carry in our bodies? Are we more than mobile robots constructed as complementary units designed to assure the immortality of this basic gene... robots endowed with the facility to move, from place to place, in search of basic materials to assure the gene’s survival?

  Sandra… What is life?

  In Bally, at the foot of the Himalayan Mountains, they maintain that both life and death are an illusion. A strange religion, Alec thought, but is this not what he’d once attempted to escape, the illusion of life? Have his own inner travels been more than an illusion? The Ballynese might espouse a strange religion, yet all religions, even as secular systems, failed to sate man’s hunger for knowledge. Is this what life really is? A search for knowledge? Is this what I am doing by turning to physics? Will my Theory of Information finally lead man to a greater, fuller, more satisfying life?

  Or just to yet another illusion...

  The doctor Suzy called arrived, obviously, too late. He certified the death and left with the standard words of sympathy. What more could he have done? “Arise Lazarus,” he could have said. “Arise and walk, in the name...” But he had no power. He was a physician not a healer. He transcribed chemical compounds to those we call still alive. He was helpless in death. Death is death. It seemed so final.

  What is death? What is death, Sandra?

  Bless Suzy. She called the doctor. She called the funeral parlour. She saw to it that everything was done. The body of Alec Baldwin Sr. was lifted and placed on a collapsible trolley by four black-clad gentlemen; black, except for a fringe of white shirt underscoring a black tie. They moved quickly, quietly, on rubber soles, with the efficiency and economy of motion required of those who deal with matters we pretend do not really exist. She led her own parents to the door, assuring them that everything would be all right. After the body was taken out she sat with Alicia, then made the bed up for her to stay overnight, longer if she wished. She gave Alec a large Scotch and sat next to him, saying nothing, just being there to lean on.

  Was father really gone, or was it just that his body was missing? Why did I dream I was lying next to him in a double coffin? Am I also that close to death?

  Alec looked at the chair from which his father had risen not three hours ago to propose the toast to his life. Life! What a sardonic twist. A dying man toasting life.

  “May he live long and prosper!” The echo still rung in Alec’s ears.

  “Thanks, dad, thanks…” He hadn’t even had the time to say it.

  Time is such an enigmatic concept. It seems to arrange some events in a sequence, yet leaves others out. Is that by accident or on purpose?

  Alec had to face the concept of death in his studies. Not death in an emotional context, but as a factor contributing to the event horizon, such as defines a Black Hole. In purely scientific sense, we hover on the thin line between living and dying all the time. For some reason, most people call this ‘life’. As consciousness is withdrawn from our body, the body stops recreating itself. It glides along for a short while, like a cart pushed along a smooth ground. Soon the body stops dividing and regenerating its cells. Cells break down into molecules, then into atoms and sub-atomic particles. Ultimately those same atoms will combine into new molecules, new cells, form other bodies. At some level we already are immortal.

  So what is missing?

  Apparently consciousness. No wonder the great biologist, Dr. David Baltimore, found it the most fascinating question of all. He seemed to suggest that science was on the verge of getting its teeth into the question of what constitutes consciousness.

  To most people, man is the embodiment of an enigmatic soul; a word few people manage to endow with any meaning. To Alec, to Dr. Alexander Baldwin, a man is a universe of trillions upon trillions of bits of information, encapsulated in atoms and subatomic particles and their relationship to each other, held together by forces vaguely known to physics. This is consciousness. This is life.

  So what happens to our consciousness when it withdraws itself from the swirling universe of atoms?

  Alec had never had to face this problem so close to his heart. Was dad’s consciousness immortal even as atoms appeared to be? Does consciousness, on vacating the body, retain its characteristics? Does it retain any form of individuality? What happens to it? What happens to the information stored in a photon and how does it transfer its knowledge, the knowledge of its polarization, to another photon elsewhere? We all emit photons, all the time. We rad
iate energy. We absorb it, we reflect it, and we radiate it... at some level of our awareness.

  “What is my father’s consciousness doing right now?”

  Alec smiled. Nothing physical ever disappears in the universe—although the black holes raise an interesting question, he had to admit, an enigmatic smile reflecting his musing. Would this be true also of non-physical manifestations such as emotions, thoughts or ideas? Do they linger in the virtual universe ever ready to be reentered, ‘reused’ for the purpose of gathering new information––even as atoms are? And again he asked himself the same question: Is this what life is––a process of gathering information? And if so, what for? For fun or out of necessity? Is it a condition, sine qua non, for survival? But if neither matter nor emotions nor ideas ever dies, then who or what sustains them? And if all of them, all the bits of information, are immortal then they have no beginning. They just are.

  Is my dad immortal, in some form or another?

  “I am,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Darling, it’s time you got some sleep. It’s late.”

  “It seems, that we are stuck in the eternal process of becoming,” he said aloud.

  “Shhhh, your mother is already asleep. I gave her a couple of pills...”

  Alec’s eyes had that far away look that Suzy had noticed on so many occasions. He was perfectly entitled to have that look today, she thought. Poor darling.

  “You know, Sue, I’m in danger of loving you forever....”

  “Yes, dear. Me too. Now go to sleep.”

  And she led him by the hand to the bedroom. She left him there to check on Alicia. When she returned, Alec was lying prone on the side of the bed, fully clothed, fast asleep.

  She didn’t wake him. For a while she stood, looking down at her husband to be. For some reason, she felt that Alec’s life was predicated on the assumption that he is special and that therefore the events of his life have meaning and value. Without that assumption their relationship would be little more than a ramble. Like most lives.

  ***

  6

  Stormy Night

  Alec had a surprisingly good night. The stiffness of the joints he’d felt for more than a week hardly bothered him. ‘Must be doing something right,’ he told himself.

  Somehow he wasn’t as distressed about his father’s death as he always imagined he would be. Living on his own, away from his parents since he was seventeen, may have had something to do with it. He’d lost the immediacy of their previous relationship. He still loved his dad just as much, but his father was no longer part of his everyday life. It helped.

  He was much more concerned about his mother. Perhaps he needn’t have been. It was his mother who had originally taught him to live in the present. To enjoy whatever life offered at any particular time. He was hardly surprised when Alicia, just three days after the funeral, decided to go to Europe. She still had some family there and thought that it would be a good time to visit them.

  “No one needs me here, Ali. I might as well stretch my wings,” she said.

  There was a peculiar, almost uncanny peace about her. A serenity that comes with the acceptance of what must be. Not under duress, but with an open mind.

  “He’d had problems for the last two years, you know”, she added. “He always presented a brave face to the world, but he never really liked it here. To the very end he missed the Old Country. He was a Brit through and through.”

  Alec thought he’d known his father. He remembered dad’s British idiosyncrasies, little sayings, witticisms, habits, but he had never paid much attention to them. He thought they were just that: idiosyncrasies—quaint, nothing to be taken too seriously.

  “He resented that he couldn’t quite cut it back home.” Alicia looked far into the distance. “In a way, I killed him. I convinced him to come to Canada. At least I should have pushed him to continue working after the inheritance came. He needed his work. He found pride in doing something useful.”

  “You mustn’t talk like that, mother. Dad was a grown man...”

  “Why can’t I? He doesn’t mind any more. And frankly, I still think we had a good life together. He fought his demons, and most of the time he was on the winning side. We all have them, you know, Ali. We all reach out for the unknown, often for the forbidden.”

  The mention of demons struck an eerie chord in Alec’s heart. He sensed anger, a tumultuous gathering of clouds, a roar of distant thunder, then… as quickly as they came, the darkness that was drawing him in with inexorable force, was replaced by calm. As if those momentary visions belonged to someone else, with Alec being no more than a spectator.

  “Demons, M-mother?”

  Alicia looked at her son with guilt in her eyes.

  “We were both trying hard to protect you from them…” she said softly. “Dad was the kindest of man, but, at times, he had to struggle.” And then, as though shrugging cobwebs of her past, she whispered. “There is good and evil in this world, Ali. In equal measure.” Then she looked at Alec with her usual, carefree smile. “He’s all right now. He’s resting.”

  During all the years he’d lived at home Alec had never heard his mother talk like this. He wondered if he’d ever truly known either of his parents. Does one ever really know anyone? Alicia always presented her light, almost whimsical side to the world. To everyone she encountered she gave the impression of a flighty, light-hearted woman. In many ways she was. Might be. Yet at some deeper level...

  At some deeper level we’re all deeper, Alec thought, even my dear mother. He was growing aware of having demons to subdue in his own personality, but dad?

  To spend more time with Alec, and generally to help, if need be to look after Alicia, Suzy had taken two weeks off work. They didn’t like her doing so, but when she’d offered to resign, the administrators found a substitute teacher with no trouble at all. Some days later, after driving Alicia to the airport, Alec called Dr. McBride, and having assured himself that he was not in immediate demand, he rented a boat just south of the border, on Lake Champlain. He felt a little more relaxed, the physical and mental exhaustion he’d experienced recently was still tugging at the corners of his mind. At least that’s what he thought it was. Exhaustion. He also wanted to get away. To break the pace. Just for three days. He thought it would be nice to visit the old bays, old anchorages. Old memories.

  Suzy was delighted.

  “Darling, what a wonderful idea. I’ll meet you all over again!” She had a marvelous ability to smile with her mouth, her eyes, even with the tone of her voice.

  They used to sail a lot more in the past. Her father still kept a boat near Kingston, on mighty Lake Ontario, but her memories were really of Spoon Bay, where she and Alec first met. He was a scrawny lad, with a big mop of hair. Long or short, it seemed to stand on end at the slightest provocation. A gust of wind, an open window, or even just his fingers running through it. A mop became Alec’s logo, an ever-present feature. Even now. Only now it was much farther away from his feet.

  They drove down to the lake the next day. It was the very end of summer. In a week, two on the outside, the boats would be hauled out onto the hard, to spend the winter away from the crushing ice. But there was still a little time.

  The weather was glorious.

  Just a suggestion of autumn colours, here and there, to force you to enjoy the last days of summer. Every single ray of sunshine was precious. Actually, autumn had officially started last week. They were four days into the golden season.

  This time of the year the wind tended to be stronger, gusts more unpredictable, the sail more challenging. But they both thought of themselves as old salts, as weathered sailors.

  Suzy made sure that they carried enough food and ice, not to mention Scotch and wine, to last them a week. Well, almost. But they wouldn’t have to economize on anything. The boat had a good icebox, no refrigeration, but with just three days this was of no consequence. Particularly this late in the season. The sloop was similar to the O’Day h
is dad had bought over ten years ago, only three feet longer. The OAL was thirty feet, a good size for the lake. They transferred their provisions on board at once, filled the icebox with ice, and cast off within an hour of arriving at the marina.

  The gentle purr of the diesel was soon silenced as Suzy hoisted the main, while Alec unfurled the Genoa. The wind was kindly at ten knots from north by northwest, an ideal tack to take them south, to their beloved Valcour Island. Some say that the South Pacific hosts the most romantic islands in the world. Not in their opinion. Not by a long shot.

  By three in the afternoon Alec dropped anchor in Smuggler Harbor, a tiny bay where one left one’s bow facing the lake and tied the stern to a convenient tree. Actually someone had embedded iron rings to tie their warps to, but a tree was far more romantic. Sort of ‘wilder’. They both shed a dry tear for not anchoring in Spoon Bay, the place of their original meeting, but with wind predominantly from the north it would hardly give them enough protection. Anyway, there was not a single yacht in the tiny Harbor. The cove was as idyllic as any they could wish for.

  Alec was the first (and, as it happened, the last) to dive overboard.

  He almost screamed on contact with the water. He was about a month too late to enjoy the warm waters they’d been used to. But, when you’re in your mid-twenties, a Scotch awaiting you on board not to mention a beautiful woman, the water was just right. In spite of his assurance regarding its quality, Suzy did not join him. Instead, she prepared some tidbits to go with the drinks, and then encouraged him to stop showing off and join her in the cockpit.

  He didn’t need much coaxing. He pulled himself up the metal rungs just in time to enjoy his Scotch in the last rays of sunshine. The little Harbor faces east, and the trees of the Island cast an early shadow over the bay. No matter. After a single drink they took the dinghy to the shore and spent the next two hours walking the winding footpaths. They had the island to themselves. In mid-week, and at the tail end of summer, most people had given up sailing for the year. Perhaps a short cruise on the weekend, but no one would want to spend a night on board, away from their marina. But, Suzy and Alec had each other, and this magic combination kept them as warm as they chose to make it.