Phases of Gravity

by Dan Simmons

  Baedecker and Scott sat in the VIP stands near the Vehicle Assembly Building and watched across the turning basin canal as high cirrus from the west quickly were replaced by cumulonimbus. The launch was scheduled for 9:54 A.M. By 9:30 the clouds were overhead and the wind gusts had risen to twenty-five knots, close to the maximum allowed. At 9:49 there were lightning strikes visible to the north and rain began to fall intermittently. Baedecker remembered sitting in these same stands when lightning had struck Apollo 12 as it lifted off, knocking out every instrument in the Command Module and causing Pete Conrad to say some candid things into a live mike. At 9:51 A.M. the voice of NASA's Public Affairs Officer came over the loudspeakers to announce that the mission had been postponed. Because of a very tight launch

  window—less than an hour—they would recycle the countdown for a launch the next day between two and three P.M. At 10:03 the speakers announced that the astronauts had been removed from the shuttle, but the voice was talking to an empty grandstand as the would-be spectators ran through the growing rain squall to reach automobiles or shelter.

  Baedecker let Scott drive the rented Beretta as the flood of vehicles inched its way west across the causeway. "Scott," he said, "what are your plans if the launch goes off tomorrow?"

  "Just what I'd planned before," said Scott. "Go up to Daytona for a few days to visit Terry and Samantha. Then fly to Boston next week to see Mom when they get back from Europe. Why?"

  "Just wondering," said Baedecker. He listened to the windshield wipers tick away in their useless effort against the downpour. Brake lights flashed in the long line ahead of them. "Actually," said Baedecker, "I was considering flying to Boston today. If I wait until after the launch tomorrow afternoon, there won't be enough time before my appointment in Austin on Monday."

  "Boston?" said Scott. Then, "Oh, yeah . . . that might not be a bad idea."

  "Would you go up to Daytona tonight, then?"

  Scott thought for a second, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "No, I don't think so," he said. "I already told Terry I'd be there tomorrow night or Sunday. I think I'll stay here and watch the launch."

  "You don't mind?" asked Baedecker, looking at his son. The months they had spent together the previous spring and summer had helped him become much better at gauging Scott's true reaction to things.

  "Naw, I don't mind a bit," said Scott and his grin was sincere. "Let's go by the motel and get your stuff."

  The rain had let up considerably by the time they turned south on Highway 1.

  "I hope Thanksgiving wasn't too much of a letdown," said Baedecker. They had eaten alone at the hotel before going to the crew's dessert gathering.

  "Are you kidding?" said Scott. "It was great."

  "Scott," said Baedecker, "do you mind if I ask what your plans are? Long-term plans, I mean."

  His son ran his fingers through his short, wet hair. "See Mom for a while, I guess. Get through this semester."

  "You're definitely going to finish?"

  "With five weeks left before graduation? Damned right I am."

  "What about after?" said Baedecker.

  "After graduation? Well, I've been thinking about it, Dad. I got a letter from Norm last week and he said I can get back on his construction crew and work right on up until mid-August. It would help pay for the doctoral program in Chicago."

  "Are you planning on that?"

  "If the philosophy program is as good as Kent says it is, I'm very tempted," said Scott. "And even though the scholarship offer is partial, it's the best deal I've seen. But I've also been thinking about going into the service for a couple of years."

  Baedecker stared at his son. He could not have been more surprised if Scott had calmly announced that he was flying to Sweden for a sex-change operation.

  "It's just a thought," said Scott, but there was something in his voice that suggested otherwise.

  "Don't commit yourself to anything like that unless I get a few hours . . . or weeks . . . to try and talk you out of it, okay?" said Baedecker.

  "I promise," said Scott. "Hey, we're still going to spend Christmas vacation at the cabin, aren't we?"

  "I'm planning on it," said Baedecker.

  They drove east over the 520 Causeway and turned south again past endless rows of Cocoa Beach motels. Baedecker wondered how many times he had driven this way from Patrick Air Force Base in a mad rush to get back to the Cape. He said, "What branch?"

  "Hmmm?" asked Scott, searching for their motel entrance through a renewed downpour.

  "Which branch of the service?"

  Scott pulled into the drive and parked in front of their unit. The rain pounded on the roof. "Gee, Dad," he said. "You need to ask that of me? What with me growing up in a family proud of three generations of Baedeckers in the U.S. Marine Corps?" He opened the door and jumped out, hunkering down in the rain just long enough to say, "I was thinking Coast Guard," and then ran toward the protective overhang of the motel balcony.

  It was snowing in Boston and already growing dark by the time Baedecker took a cab from Logan International to the address near Boston University. Still sunburned from the three days in Florida, he looked out through the gloom at the brown, icy water of the Charles River and shivered. Lights were coming on along the dark banks. The snow turned to dirty slush to be thrown up by the cab's tires.

  Baedecker had always pictured Maggie living near the campus, but her apartment was some distance to the east, not too far from Fenway Park. The quiet side street was lined with stoops and bare trees, a neighborhood that looked to have been on the edge of decay in the sixties, saved by young professionals in the seventies, and now would be on the verge of invasion by the middle-aged affluent with an urge to homestead.

  Baedecker paid the driver and ran from the cab to the door of the old brownstone. He had tried calling from Florida and again from Logan, but to no avail. He had pictured Maggie out shopping for groceries, returning home just as he arrived, but now he glanced up at the dark windows and wondered why he thought he would find her home on the Friday evening after Thanksgiving.

  The second-floor hallway was warm but dimly lit. Baedecker checked the apartment number on the envelope, took a deep breath, and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again and waited. A minute later he walked to the end of the hallway and looked out a tall window. Through an alley opening he could see snow falling heavily in front of a neon sign above a darkened shop.

  "Hey, mister, were you the one knocking?" A young woman in her early twenties and a young man with horn-rimmed glasses were leaning out into the hall from an apartment two doors down from Maggie's.

  "Yes," said Baedecker. "I was looking for Maggie Brown."

  "She's gone," said the woman. She turned into the apartment and shouted, "Hey, Tara, didn't Maggie go to Bermuda with what's-his-name . . . Bruce?" There was a muffled reply. "She's gone," said the young woman as Baedecker took a step closer.

  "Would you know when she'll be back?"

  The woman shrugged. "Thanksgiving break just started yesterday. Probably a week from Sunday."

  "Thank you," said Baedecker and went down the hall and stairway. An attractive young woman with short brown hair passed him in the foyer.

  Baedecker stepped out onto the sidewalk and paused, looking up at the snow. He wondered how far he would have to go to find a phone or a taxi. The cold cut through his raincoat and he shivered. He turned right and began walking back toward Massachusetts Avenue.

  He had gone a block and a half and his shoes were soaked through when he heard a voice calling behind him. "Hey, you, mister, wait up a second, please."

  Baedecker stopped at the curb while the young woman he had passed in the foyer ran across the street to him. "Are you Richard, by any chance?" she asked.

  "Richard Baedecker," he said.

  "Wow, I'm glad I stopped to chat with Becky," she said and stopped to catch her breath. "I'm Sheila Goldman. You talked to me once on the phone."

  "I did?"

 
; Sheila Goldman nodded and brushed a snowflake from her eyelash. "Yes," she said. "Way back last September right at the beginning of the school year. Maggie was with her family that night."

  "Oh, yes," said Baedecker. It had been the briefest of conversations; he had not even left his name.

  "Becky told you that Maggie was gone for break?"

  "Yes," said Baedecker. "I didn't know the university's schedule."

  "Becky said that she thought Maggie had gone with Bruce Claren, right?" She paused and brushed more snow from her lashes. "Well, Becky doesn't know much. Bruce had been hanging around for weeks, but there was no chance that Maggie was going anywhere with him."

  "Are you a friend of Maggie's?" asked Baedecker.

  Sheila nodded. "We've been roommates for a while," she said. "We're pretty close." She rubbed her nose with her mitten. "But we're not so close that Maggie wouldn't kill me if she found out that you'd come to visit and . . . well, anyway, she's not down in Bermuda with Brucie."

  A car took the turn at high speed, splashing slush at both of them. Baedecker took Sheila Goldman's elbow and they backed away from the curb together. "Where did Maggie go for Thanksgiving?" he said. He knew that her parents lived only an hour's drive away in New Hampshire.

  "She left yesterday for South Dakota," said Sheila. "She flew out late in the afternoon."

  South Dakota? thought Baedecker. Then he remembered a conversation they had had in Benares many months before. "Oh, yes," he said. "Her grandparents."

  "Just Memo, her grandmother, now," said Sheila. "Her grandfather died in January."

  "I didn't know that," said Baedecker.

  "Here's their address and everything," said Sheila and handed him a slip of yellow paper. The handwriting on it was Maggie's. "Hey, you want to come back to our apartment to call a cab or anything?"

  "No, thanks," said Baedecker. "I'll call from down the street if I can't flag one down on Mass Avenue." Impulsively he took her hand and squeezed it through the mitten. "Thank you, Sheila."

  She reached up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. "You're welcome, Richard."

  Baedecker flew into Chicago shortly before midnight and spent a sleepless six hours in the airport Sheraton. He lay in the dark room listening to vague motel sounds and breathing motel smells and he thought about his last conversation with Scott.

  Waiting with him in the Melbourne Airport near the Cape for Baedecker's connecting flight to Miami, Scott had suddenly said, "Do you ever think about what your epitaph might be?"

  Baedecker had lowered his newspaper. "That's a reassuring question right before flight time."

  Scott grinned and rubbed his cheeks. He was letting his beard grow back, and the red stubble caught the light. "Yeah, well, I've been thinking about mine," he said. "I'm afraid it will read—'He came, he saw, he screwed up.'"

  Baedecker shook his head. "No pessimistic epitaphs allowed until you're at least twenty-five," he said. He began reading again and then set the paper down. "Actually," he said, "that's not too far from a quote I've carried around in my head for years, half suspecting that it might end up serving as my epitaph."

  "What's that?" asked Scott. Outside, the rain was letting up, and they could see bright sky silhouetting palm trees.

  "Have you ever read John Updike's 'Music School'?"

  "No."

  Baedecker paused. "I guess it's my favorite short story," he said. "Anyway, there's a place in it where the narrator says, 'I am neither musical nor religious. Each moment I live I must press my fingers down without confidence of hearing a chord.'"

  Scott said nothing for half a minute. The airport PA system was busy paging people and disavowing any collusion with religious solicitors. "So how does it end?" asked Scott.

  "The story?" said Baedecker. "Well, the narrator remembers when he was a boy going to Holy Communion and had been taught not to touch the Host with his teeth . . ."

  "Uh-uh," said Scott. "That's not what they taught me at Saint Malachy's."

  "No," agreed Baedecker, "now they bake the wafer so thick that it has to be chewed. That's what the narrator decides about his life at the end of the story. I think the closing lines are—'The World is the Host. And it must be chewed.'"

  Scott stared at his father for some time. Then he said, "Have you read any of the Vedic holy books, Dad?"

  "No," said Baedecker.

  "I did," said Scott. "I read quite a bit from them last year in India. They didn't have much of anything to do with the stuff the Master was teaching, but somehow I think I'll remember the books longer. One of my favorite things was from the Tattireeya Upanishads. It goes—'I am this world, and I eat this world. Who knows this, knows.'"

  At that moment the boarding call was announced for Baedecker's flight. He stood, hefted his flight bag with his left hand, and held out his right hand to his son. "Take care, Scott. I'll see you at Christmas break if not before."

  "You take care, too, Dad," said Scott and, ignoring the offered handshake, threw his arms around Baedecker and hugged him.

  Baedecker put his hand on his son's strong back and closed his eyes.

  Baedecker caught a 7:45 A.M. United flight out of O'Hare. It was bound for Seattle but had a scheduled stop in Rapid City, South Dakota, which was as close as Baedecker could get to Maggie's grandparents' ranch near Sturgis without bailing out. Tired as he was, Baedecker noticed that the aircraft was one of the new Boeing 767s. He had not flown in one before.

  They served breakfast somewhere over southern Minnesota. Baedecker stared at the tray of reheated scrambled eggs and sausage and decided that appetite or no appetite, it was time to eat after almost three days. He could not do it. He was sipping coffee and looking down at glimpses of brown landscape between the clouds when the stewardess came up to him and said, "Mr. Baedecker."

  "Yes?" said Baedecker and felt a stab of alarm. How did she know his name? Had something happened to Scott?

  "Captain Hollister wonders if you would like to come up to the flight deck."

  "Sure," said Baedecker and followed her forward through the first-class section with relief slowing his heart rate. He searched his memory, trying to recall if he had met an airline pilot named Hollister. He could remember no one with that name, but he did not trust his memory.

  "Here you are, sir," said the stewardess and opened the door for him.

  "Thank you," said Baedecker and stepped through.

  The pilot looked up and grinned. He was a florid-faced man in his early forties with thick hair, a boyish grin, and a pleasant, Wally Schirra-like expression. "Welcome, Mr. Baedecker, I'm Charlie Hollister. This is Dale Knutsen."

  Baedecker nodded a greeting at both men.

  "Hope we didn't disturb your breakfast," said Hollister. "I noticed your name on the passenger list and just wondered if you'd like to see how our new baby here compares to your Apollo hardware."

  "My God," said Baedecker. "I'm amazed you made the connection with my name."

  Hollister smiled again. Neither pilot nor copilot appeared to be involved with flying the aircraft.

  "Here," said Knutsen and released his straps. "Have my seat, sir. I'm going back to the galley for a minute."

  Baedecker thanked him and settled into the fleece-lined right seat. Except for the yoke in place of a hand-controller, the cockpit could have been a close relative of the space shuttle's. Video display terminals flashed instrument readings, lines of data, and colored maps onto three screens in front of him. A computer keyboard filled the console between Hollister and him. Baedecker looked out at the blue sky, distant horizon, and layer of clouds far below. He looked back at the pilot. "I am surprised that you made the connection," he said. "We haven't met, have we?"

  "No, sir," said Hollister. "But I know all of the names from the various missions and remember seeing you on television. The only thing I ever really wanted in life was to be an astronaut myself, but, well . . ."

  Baedecker extended his hand. "Let's drop the sirs," he said. "They mak
e me feel a little old. My name's Richard."

  "Howdy, Richard," said Hollister as they shook hands across the computer.

  Baedecker glanced at the flashing data screens and moving yoke. "The aircraft seems to be flying itself pretty well," he said. "Does it let you do anything?"

  "Not much," said Hollister with a rueful laugh. "She's a doozy, ain't she? State of the art. I can program her on the ground at O'Hare and wouldn't have to do a thing until we're setting down in Seattle. Only thing she can't do herself is lower the gear."

  "You don't actually go on full automatic like that, do you?" asked Baedecker.

  Hollister shook his head. "We argue that we need to keep our hand in, and the union supports us. The airline argues back that they bought the seven-six-seven so that the Flight Management Computer System will save money on fuel and that every time we take over manual, we piss that away. Fact is, they're right."

  "Is it fun to fly?" asked Baedecker.

  "She's a good ship," said Hollister. He punched a button and the displays changed. "Safe as sitting on Grandma's back porch. But fun . . . naw." He proceeded to show Baedecker details of the Automatic Flight Control System, the Engine Indicating and Crew Alert System, and the computerized color radar displays that incorporated maps of their position relative to VHF Omni-Range stations, waypoints, and Instrument Landing System beams. The same map showed the location of weather fronts, kept a running count of wind velocity, and let them know which

  direction they were flying at all times. "It'll tell me who my wife's sleeping with if I ask it real politely," said Hollister. "So how does this stack up with the gear you took to the moon?"

  "Impressive," said Baedecker, not telling Hollister that he had worked for a company producing military avionics light-years ahead of even this system. "To answer your question, we had a lot of crude gauge and dial instrumentation and the LM computer we depended on to guide our butts to the surface had a total capacity of only thirty-nine thousand words . . ."

  "Sweet Christ," said Hollister and shook his head.

  "Exactly," said Baedecker. "Your FMCS here can work rings around our old PGNS. And most of ours was locked in. If a new problem came up, we could only call on a couple of thousand words."