Beyond the Veil of Stars

by Robert Reed

  He’d almost forgotten his invitation. “Well,” he said, “maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “No. I’m leaving.”

  And he asked, “Going where?”

  Eyes smiled. “Do you know what the universe is, Novak?”

  “No. What?”

  “It’s just like that neighborhood where you grew up. It’s all these little properties with fences between them.”

  She wasn’t joking, he realized.

  “Suppose you’re playing, and your ball goes into your neighbor’s yard. What are you doing?”

  He thought for a moment, then guessed. “Trespassing?”

  “As good a word as any.”

  And later, watching the late local news, Cornell found himself sorting through memories of the day, pretending they made sense. He pictured the desert and its odd sky and sun, and he heard Porsche Neal describing the universe as tract housing. Was that what this was about? Were they going to trespass on someone’s property?

  He had asked, but she wouldn’t tell him.

  Whose desert was it? he wondered. And what did they think about the wayward children in their midst?

  “If asked,” said F. Smith, “you’ve been given a sales position with Tangent Incorp. Here are your IDs. A credit card. The home address is authentic, as are phone, fax and E-mail numbers. If anyone asks, tell them you’re traveling for us. Company security keeps you from disclosing too much.”

  “I doubt if there’ll be questions,” he offered.

  She seemed to agree. “You have three days to yourself. I recommend getting your affairs in order. Return here by Thursday morning, ten o’clock, for one week’s training. Then you’ll start your first shift—”

  “Where?”

  She moved in her chair and grimaced. “I can’t give you specifics. Let’s say it’s a plum. Our current number one posting.” She showed him a maternal smile, then said, “You’re starting on a great adventure, Mr. Novak.”

  “On a desert world?”

  No reaction. Cold eyes staring, and no hint of emotion.

  He wasn’t intimidated, he told himself. More than once.

  Then she was saying, “You’ve given us a pledge. Forget the forms you signed. Forget laws and punishments. You made a promise, and everything we can see in your character tells us that you take promises seriously.”

  A stern talking-down, this was.

  Then she abruptly changed gears, telling him, “Just one more bit of business. We offer a five-hundred-thousand-dollar insurance policy, paid in full should you be disabled while on duty.”

  Cornell decided to stand up.

  “You see? We do what we can for our people.”

  He walked to the window, the distant security fence shimmering in the low morning light.

  “Who should I name as your beneficiary?”

  He said, “How about my mother?”

  “Address?”

  “I guess I thought you might know.” He looked at the old woman, then said, “Your background checks didn’t find her?”

  “Apparently not.” She squirmed a little bit as if bothered by the gap. “Perhaps you’d rather leave the money to your father—”

  “No.”

  “I see.” She dipped her head.

  And he said, “I don’t care who gets it.”

  “All right.” She jotted a note on a pad, then looked at him and promised, “We’ll find your mother. If it comes to that.” Then, “Which it won’t, of course.” Then, “Rest easy, and we’ll see you Thursday.”

  3

  Cornell’s apartment was on the ground floor of an old building beside the Panhandle, in Haight-Ashbury. It was surrounded by newer buildings put up after the ‘06 quake, everything done in the standard Victorian style but with modern materials. Cornell’s landlord still grieved that his building survived, nature’s muscle inadequate and every municipal law intended to save it for all time. That’s why his repairs were few, hoping rot would unburden him. That’s why Cornell could afford the place, the air smelling of mold, the plaster cracked and the roaches scuttling through the cracks, their sounds dry and unpleasant. Now he could move to a better place, he realized. The thought struck him the instant he stepped inside, the cheap house computer saying, “Hello. Who are you?”

  A blind computer; a dead flat voice.

  He said his name twice, making sure he was recognized.

  “I have eleven messages,” the machine reported. “There were no attempted burglaries, but your coffee maker is inactive—”

  “Fine.” The messages were from bill collectors, he guessed. But of course now he had money and could erase his debts. Such a freedom, money was. Images of a sunny apartment and electronic toys made him laugh out loud. It wasn’t until later, eating a microwave dinner, that Cornell stopped to wonder when he would be around long enough to enjoy any of it. Four weeks on duty, including his training. Then a mandatory three weeks off. Then three more on, or longer, depending on his abilities. More duty meant greater pay. He started to calculate the fortune he would make in two or three years of endless work, teasing himself with the zeros.

  “All right,” he said in a loud, clear voice. “Play the messages.”

  Strangers spoke. Just as he’d guessed, they wanted money. They were a tougher cadre of bill collectors than the last lot, Cornell decided. Then came a woman’s voice, someone he had dated last year, and she was wondering how he was doing and could he give her a call? Then came another collection agency, moral outrage washing over him. Then a tone, and he heard a familiar voice. Older and thicker, but unmistakable.

  “Cornell? This is Pete Forrest. Just calling to ask how you’re doing, the usual. Just to be nosy. Why don’t you call me back when you get the chance? Collect, if you want. Same number as always. We’d love hearing from you.”

  He sat motionless, elbows on the hard kitchen table. What time was it? Late enough that it was too late back home, and he rose and walked into the tiny living room, lights turning off and on in response to his motions. He punched on the old TV, then hit the phone function and the right numbers. Save for the last two digits, Pete’s number was the same as Dad’s. It was a coincidence, and it was dangerous. He punched with care, then a familiar face appeared, squinting and smiling. “Why look! Mr. Cornell.”

  Mrs. Pete sat in her living room, appearing amused.

  “Hello,” he managed. “How are you?”

  Putting on weight, he saw. And gray again, tired of those impossibly dark dyes that she’d used for years.

  She said, “I’m fine. And you?”

  “Good enough.”

  “How’s California? You look tired.”

  Which made him feel tired, hearing that assessment.

  “Want to talk to Pete?”

  “If he’s up—”

  “I’m up,” cried a distant voice. “Send him upstairs.”

  “Well, good seeing you,” she said, giving him a little wink as she punched the proper button—

  —and Pete was staring at him, his face a little more worn but not with age. It was like old wood, dried and polished by the elements. Cornell smiled, and Pete smiled, pulling his robe tighter and sitting on the edge of the bed. He was sixty now, wasn’t he? Which seemed impossible and unfair. “So what’s going on?” said the old man. “You sure look tired.”

  “I must be,” he allowed. “Anyway, I got your message.”

  “What’s going on?” Pete said again.

  Cornell shrugged, then said, “I got a new job.”

  “So we hear.”

  He said nothing.

  “Your employers sent us a couple suits-and-ties. Yesterday. They looked like insurance salesmen, sounded like cops…going from house to house, asking about you.”

  “They’re being careful.” He swallowed. “It’s an important job, and I’m lucky to get it.” Then he launched into the cover story, the thing practiced enough that it didn’t feel like a complete lie. But if Pete bought the story, he didn’t show
it. His face grew more skeptical as the fabrications increased, and finally, maybe two-thirds of the way through it, he interrupted, saying:

  “By the way, I recognized one of the suits-and-ties.”

  That startled Cornell. He stopped, forgetting his place.

  “You never saw him. But remember back…I don’t know…a couple of years before the Change? A big saucer was suppose to have landed on the highway near Tweaksburg, leaving skid marks in the asphalt—”

  “I didn’t go.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He gave a nod and smiled to himself. “It wasn’t a saucer. It was some crippled stealth ship, and we’d just gotten there when this jerk came over and told us to put our fucking cameras away. He told us to fuck off. A lot less polite than he was yesterday. Mr. Forrest this, Mr. Forrest that. Didn’t remember me, but I sure remembered his face.”

  Once, years ago, Cornell had thought Pete wasn’t the brightest fellow. Ever since he’d been learning how wrong he could be. Swallowing, he gathered himself. Then he said, “My job’s got government connections, security clearances, that sort of thing.”

  “Sure, I understand.” A sly smile. “Anyway, the two gentlemen talked to the neighbors. Then your dad. He watched them going door-to-door, and he called me every couple minutes, asking what I knew.”

  Cornell could think of nothing worth saying.

  “Your dad’s gotten kind of paranoid anyway. I guess. We don’t spend as much time together anymore.” A deep breath. “Not that I blame him for spooking, what with the government asking about his son. On your best day, that’s hard to swallow.”

  Were his bosses that graceless with everyone? But then again, how many candidates got as far as he had? Suits-and-ties could invade a thousand neighborhoods, and the world at large wouldn’t be the wiser.

  Pete said, “They spent a couple of hours with your dad. He taped the whole thing, on the sly. Mostly they asked about you. About school, about friends. That kind of thing.” He paused for a long moment, considering his audience. “It was smoke. Banal shit meant to get your dad to relax. Then they hit him with questions about when he saw you last, and why the two of you went to war. Always sounding polite, but nothing nice about it.”

  “Dad told you?”

  “And I heard the tape.” A calm, sober nod. “I don’t know what they were hunting, but they sure rattled him.”

  Cornell said, “Sorry.”

  “Hey, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  “So what did he tell them? Anything?”

  “‘It’s none of your goddamn business,’ he said. True. He cursed at them, your mild-mannered dad did. It was something.”

  Cornell took deep breaths, then thought of something else. Years ago, more than once, he had borrowed money from the Petes; now he could say, “I’ll pay you back. In a few weeks, maybe sooner.”

  The old man shrugged his shoulders. “Whenever. I’m not worried.”

  No, he never was a worrier, was he?

  “Anyway, I just wanted to call, see how you’re doing. Any messages for your dad?”

  Cornell’s mind went blank.

  “Or nothing. Whatever.” Pete adjusted the robe’s belt, and Cornell wondered what it was that made old men wear ugly socks to bed. He could see the brown things reach halfway up his ivory shins.

  “Thanks for everything,” Cornell offered.

  Pete said, “And take care of yourself. And congratulations on the big job. Elaine and I are proud of you. You know that.”

  “Thanks,” he said. Then, “Bye,” and he disconnected the line, sitting back and staring at the ceiling, its cracks longer than he remembered and the room smaller. His mind shifted into a useful paranoia. His house computer had said there weren’t any burglaries, which seemed unlikely. Hadn’t one of the Panhandle nobodies tried his windows at least once? In all this time? What if someone had come and left, editing the computer’s memories? What if these next days were a test, Cornell given every chance to fail, his bosses waiting for him to tell what he knew before he knew too much?

  Still staring at the ceiling, he whispered, “I hope I did all right.” Then he shut his eyes, speaking louder, telling them, “Now, if you please, fuck off.”

  He had never learned which trees grew in San Francisco, which was unlike him. But then moving here had been a temporary adventure, expensive and foolish. A several year adventure, he realized. He came after he grew tired of Texas with its hard sun and guiltless wealth, and San Francisco had seemed like a natural antithesis. It was crowded and its climate was mild, verging on boring. Despite some good times, he’d always felt like a tourist here. That night, walking through the Panhandle, he felt more displaced than ever. He could have been a Midwesterner fresh from the bullet train, save for his indifference to the scenery and the old, unwashed clothes.

  It was a foggy night, skyless and unnaturally quiet. Only electric cars were allowed this deep into the city, and even their hums seemed subdued by the hanging curtains of vapor.

  Eventually Cornell found himself inside the park, surrounded by robot-tended flowers and shadowy couples, a few automated sentries drifting nearby, rotors whirring. What time was it? Nearly eleven. But he couldn’t sleep, and he might never sleep again. That’s how awake he felt.

  He remembered the last time he talked to Dad.

  It was stupid and Freudian, a conspiracy of the fingers. He’d been calling Pete, and suddenly he saw Dad staring at him, the white hair thin and the blue eyes hidden in shadow. Cornell’s first thought was to wonder why Dad was sitting in Pete’s house. Then he knew what had happened, and he considered disconnecting, not caring how it looked. Except those conspiring hands refused to move, grasping one another and the seconds stretching on.

  It was Dad who found something to say.

  “Remember the glass circle in the park, here in town?” he began. “Well, the parks people got tired of it, brought in heavy machinery and broke it up into chunks. Carted the whole thing away. Can you imagine?” No greeting, no sense of pleasure. The man acted as if Cornell hadn’t been out of his sight for ten minutes, the bright eyes coming closer, that ageless voice telling him, “It’s a tragedy. I think their brains must be damaged. Can you imagine doing such a criminal thing?”

  Always the difficult man. It had been two years since their last conversation, and Dad had nothing but this one thin obsession. “I keep working on the circles, Cornell. Every day.”

  And Cornell muttered, “That so?”

  “Working with the samples, the data. I’m pestering the physics department at the university, trying to get them to run tests.” The face was composed and focused, and distant. The voice had a practiced quality, as if this was a lecture kept bottled up until needed. It practically bubbled out of Dad, words blurring together. “I have a theory. I’m thinking that the circles are complex messages from them. Did you know that glass isn’t a true solid? That it’s not crystalline at all?”

  How would a physicist deal with him? Cornell wondered. He imagined a man in a lab coat, his face wary, watching some dangerous loner shove sacks of black glass into his hands.

  “It’s an amorphous substance, I’ve been reading. Individual atoms frozen in random positions. But what if the positions aren’t random? I’m thinking, what if they form a careful pattern? I’ve estimated the numbers of atoms in the typical circle, and how much potential information is there—”

  Cornell imagined what the physicists might call his father. “The glass man.” “The loon.” Or the always poignant, “Nutcase.”

  “—and the potential is enormous. Almost endless. Just one of these samples of mine can hold more data than any encyclopedia—”

  “What are you doing?” Cornell snapped.

  Dad paused, nothing showing on his face.

  “I call, and what do you do? Ramble on about circles and glass. That’s not much of a hello.”

  Eyes dropped, the expression chastened now. “I thought you’d be interested.”

 
; “And where’s your evidence?” Cornell persisted. “A theory isn’t something thought up in the shower. It’s the result of a lot of work, a lot of positive evidence, and saying ‘theory’ is going to set off a lot of alarms. Scientists will know you’re a crank.”

  “Sorry,” the man responded. “I forgot about your advanced degrees. How’s MIT?”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “What? What shouldn’t I do?”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “I know.” Dad wiped both hands on his trousers, then straightened and said, “The work is pointless. I forgot.”

  As if Cornell’s defection was recent, he thought. As if this was the first time Dad had admitted there was a gulf.

  “I thought you’d be interested, that’s all.”

  Then came a stiff prolonged silence, both men considering things never mentioned aloud. Like Mom. And Cornell’s disgust with his father’s fathering. Not that he was angry anymore; that wasn’t the point. This was tradition, their animosity. It was a kind of safety device. What if they did bring up old issues? They might enrage each other, severing their last ties. Perhaps that’s what both of them sensed, sad as it seemed, instincts warning them this was the best they could manage for now.

  “Anyway,” Dad concluded, “it doesn’t matter. Everyone’s destroying the circles now. Who cares what they mean?”

  “Too bad,” Cornell offered.

  A helpless shrug of the shoulders made Dad look feeble, and the blue eyes gazed at the floor, at his own feet “I am keeping the samples you helped collect. Safe and sound.”

  “Well…good…”

  A sluggish nod, and he whispered, “Safe. And sound.”

  Sitting on the beach when the early morning light emerged, Cornell watched the steady cold surf, the first gulls searching for whatever the ocean had brought to them. Opening his wallet he picked through pockets until he found the one photograph he allowed himself—an old snapshot of his mother—and he pulled it out and touched the slick paper. He wasn’t sure about any of his memories about her. What was real, and what was wishful fancy? Shutting his eyes, he saw Mom and Mrs. Pete talking over the fence. He saw Mom and Dad in the kitchen, saying nothing in that conspicuous way of people who are at odds. Then he remembered Mom alone, sitting in the middle of the sofa with a pillow on her lap, watching TV. The image was banal, and it was true, and it meant nothing, giving him absolutely no insights.