A gray haze layer cut off all buildings at the fourth story, giving Thalia Avenue an oddly truncated look. The cramped car labored along with an occasionally irregular pocketa-pocketa as Nigel leaned out the window, searching for building numbers. He had never become accustomed to the curious American reticence about disclosing addresses. Immense, imposing steel and concrete masses stood anonymously, challenging the mere pedestrian to discover what lay inside. After some searching, 2636 Thalia proved to be a low building of elegant striated stonework, the most recent addition to the block, clearly assembled well after the twentieth-century splurge of construction materials.
Dr. Hufman’s waiting room had the hushed antechamber feel to it that marked a private practice. A public medical center would have been all tile and tan partitions and anonymous furniture. As he walked in, Nigel’s attention returned to Alexandria’s unspoken tension and he looked around the waiting room, expecting to see her.
“Mr. Walmsley?” a nurse said from a glass-encased box that formed one wall of the room. He advanced.
“Where is she?” He saw no point in wasting time.
“In the laboratory, next door. I wanted to explain that I didn’t, we didn’t know Miss Ascencio was, ah…”
“Where’s the lab?”
“You see, she filled out her form as Single and gave her sister as person to be notified. So we didn’t know—”
“She was living with me. Right. Where’s—”
“And Dr. Hufman likes to have both parties present when…”
“When what?”
“Well, I, ah, only wanted to apologize. We, I would have asked Miss Ascencio to come with you if we had—”
“Mr. Walmsley. Come in.”
Dr. Hufman was an unremarkable man in an ill-fitting brown jacket, no tie, large cushioned shoes. His black hair thinned at the temples, showing a marble-white scalp. He turned and walked back into his office without waiting to see if Nigel would follow.
The office differed in detail but not general theme from every other doctor’s office Nigel had ever seen. There were old-fashioned books with real bindings, some of them leather or a convincing synthetic. Long lines of medical journals, mostly out of date, marched across the shelves on one wall, punctuated by a model ship here and there. On the desk and a side table were collections of stubby African dolls. Nigel wondered if physicians were given a course in med school in interior decorating, with special emphasis on patient-soothing bric-a-brac, restful paintings and humanizing oddments.
He began to sit down in the chair Hufman offered when a door opened to his left and Alexandria stepped in. She hesitated when she saw Nigel and then closed the door softly. Her hands seemed bony and white. There was in her manner something Nigel had never seen before.
“Thank you, dear, for coming so quickly.”
Nigel nodded. She sat in another chair and both turned toward Hufman, who was sitting behind a vast mahogany desk, peering into a file folder. He looked up and seemed to compose himself.
“I’ve asked that you come over, Mr. Walmsley, because I have some rather bad news for Miss Ascencio.” He spoke almost matter-of-factly, but Nigel sensed a balanced weight behind the words.
“Briefly, she has systemic lupus erythematosus.” “Which is?” Nigel said.
“Sorry, I thought you might have heard of it.”
“I have,” Alexandria said quietly. “It’s the second most common cause of death now, isn’t it?”
Nigel looked at her questioningly. It seemed an unlikely sort of thing for Alexandria to know, unless—unless she’d guessed.
“Yes, cancer of all sorts is still first. Lupus has increased rapidly in the last two decades.”
“Because it comes from pollution,” she said. Hufman leaned back in his chair and regarded her. “That is a common opinion. It is very difficult to verify, of course, because of the difficulty in isolating influences.”
“I think I’ve heard of it,” Nigel murmured. “But…” “Oh. A disease of the connective tissue, Mr. Walmsley. It strikes primarily the skin, joints, kidneys, heart, the fibrous tissue that provides internal support for the organs.”
“Her sprained wrists—”
“Exactly, yes. We can expect further inflammation, though not so much as to create a deformity. That is only one symptom, not the total disease, however.”
“What else is there?”
“We don’t know. It’s an insidious process. It could reside in the joints or it could spread to the organs. We have very little diagnostic capability. We simply treat it—”
“How?”
“Aspirin,” Alexandria said mildly with a wan smile. “That’s absurd!” Nigel said. “Fixing up a disease with—”
“No, Miss Ascencio is correct, as far as she goes. That is the recommended course for the mild stages. I’m afraid she is beyond that now, though.”
“What’ll you give her?”
“Corticosteroid hormones. Perhaps chloroquine. I want to stress that these are not cures. They offer only symptomatic relief.”
“What does cure it?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, hell! There’s got to be—”
“No, Nigel,” she said. “There doesn’t have to be anything.”
“Mr. Walmsley, we are dealing with a potentially fatal disease here. Some specialists attribute the rise of lupus to specific pollutants such as lead or sulfur or nitrogen compounds in auto exhausts, but we truly do not know its cause. Or cure.”
Nigel noticed that he was clenching the chair arms. He sat back and put his hands in his lap. “Very well.”
“Miss Ascencio’s condition is not acute. I must warn you, however, that the subacute or chronic stage of this disease has been getting shorter and shorter as its frequency among the population increases. There are cases in which the disease persists but is not ultimately fatal.”
“And—?” she said.
“Other cases sometimes go to completion within a year. But that is not an average. The course of the illness is totally unpredictable.” He leaned forward earnestly to emphasize the point.
“Simply take the drugs and wait, is that what you advise?” Alexandria said.
“We will keep close track of your progress,” Hufman said, glancing at Nigel. “I assure you of that. Any flareup we can probably control with more powerful agents.”
“What is it that kills people, then?” she said. “Spread to the organs. Or worse, interception of the connective tissue in the nervous system.”
“If that happens—” Nigel began.
“We often don’t know right away. Occasionally there are early convulsions. Sometimes a psychosis develops, but that is rare. The clinical spectrum of this disease is broad.”
Nigel sat and listened with pressed lips as the man went on, Alexandria with her hands folded neatly, the man’s voice droning in the soft air with facts and theories, his broad forefinger occasionally tapping Alexandria’s file to reinforce a point, his sentences paraded out to display a new facet of systemic lupus bloody erythematosus, more lockjawed Latinisms, words converging like a pack of erudite wolves to devour some new snippet of causation, diagnosis, remission, exacerbation. Nigel took it all, numbly, sensing a dim tremor within his chest that went unnamed.
During the drive home he concentrated. Traffic was always thin since the demise of the private automobile, and the broad avenues of Pasadena seemed an infinite plane over which they skated with Newtonian skill. He played the game of his youth, when everyone drove but fuel was excruciatingly short. He watched the lights flick yellow red green and timed his approach, seeking the path of minimum energy. It was best to glide the last third of a block, letting road friction and the gentle brushing wind slow them until the red popped over to green. If his timing was off he would down-shift to third, then second, storing the kinetic life that he envisioned as a precious fluid moving within the car, poured into temporary bottles somewhere between engine and axle. Making a turn, he would wait until the last moment before shifting, hoping to stretch the green time, then slapping the stick forward as his leg pumped the clutch, bringing the turgid car to a humming peak, tires howling slightly with expended energy. They arced into a new linear path, vectoring on the Pasadena grid toward the hills. Thus he played again the game of his youth, lines creasing his face.
“You can’t accept it, can you, Nigel?” she said in the long silence.
“What?”
She reached over and caressed his forearm, fluffing up the blond hair. Her own gesture; no other woman had ever touched him that way. “Ease into it,” she said.
He let the silence between them grow as several blocks of neon consumer gumbo passed, the sandwich parlors pooled in wan yellow.
“I’ll try. But sometimes, I… I’ll try.”
Something blazed ahead. As they approached they could make out a large bonfire in a ruined field, flames licking at the cup of darkening sky. Figures moved against the lemon flickering.
“New Sons,” he said.
“Slow,” she said. He lifted his foot and she studied the fire.
“Why is it round?” she murmured.
“It’s an annular flame. One of their symbols.”
“The secret center. Godhood in every person.”
“I suppose.”
Several figures turned from the playing flames and waved their arms toward the car, beckoning.
“They pile their scrap wood in a circle, leaving the center clear. One pair is left there when they light it. For the duration of the fire they are free. Nothing can reach them. They can dance or—”
“How do you know all this?” he said.
“Someone told me.”
A tall woman detached herself from the weaving line of figures and moved toward the street, toward their car. She was the focus of multiple, shifting shadows.
Nigel shifted into first and they surged away into the dim and desiccated night.
“Freedom at the center,” he murmured. “License for public rutting, I’ll wager.”
“So I’ve heard,” she said mildly.
When they let themselves into the apartment, Shirley was lying on the couch, reading. “You’re late,” she said sleepily.
Nigel explained about the car, about Dr. Hufman, and then it all came out in a rush, Alexandria and Nigel alternating in the telling. Lupus. Sore wrists. Connective tissue. Chloroquine. Swelling joints.
Shirley got up wordlessly and embraced each of them. Nigel chattered on for a bit, filling the room with busy, comfortable sound. Into the darting talk Alexandria inserted a mention of supper and their attention deflected to the practicalities of the meal. Nigel offered to do up some simple chopped vegetables in the wok. Rummaging through the refrigerator revealed a total absence of meat. Alexandria volunteered to walk down the two blocks to a grocery store and, without debating the issue, slipped out. Nigel was busy with an array of celery and onions on the chopping block as the door closed behind her and Shirley was washing spinach, snapping off the stems as she went.
At once a silence descended between them.
“It’s serious, isn’t it?” she said. He looked up. Shirley’s dark eyebrows were compressed downward, forming long ridges beneath her towering stack of black hair.
“I gather so.” He went back to chopping. Then, suddenly: “Shit! I wish I knew, really knew.”
“Hufman doesn’t sound very sympathetic.”
“He isn’t. I don’t think he intended to be. He simply told us the bloody facts in that flat voice of his.”
“It takes a while,” she said softly, “to come to terms with facts.”
He rapped the block with the cleaver, scattering onion cuttings. “Right.”
“What do you think we ought to do?”
“Do?” He stopped, puzzled. “Wait. Go on, I suppose.” Shirley nodded. She rolled up the sleeves of her shimmering blue dress, bunching it above the elbows. She handed him the spinach in aligned stacks, ready for cutting. “I think you ought to travel,” she said.
“Eh? What for?”
“To take her mind off it. And yours.”
“Don’t you think her usual, settled routine is more the thing?”
“That’s just the point.” Shirley said abruptly, an edge to her voice. “You two are stuck here because you don’t want to leave your work at JPL—”
“And she doesn’t either,” he said evenly. “She has a career.”
“Damn it!” She threw down a wad of spinach. “She could be dead in a year! Don’t you think she realizes that? Even if you don’t?”
“I realize it,” he said stiffly.
“Then act like it!”
“How?”
Shirley’s mood changed abruptly. “If you become more flexible, Nigel, she will, too. You’re so absorbed in that damned laboratory, those rockets, you can’t see it.” Her lips parted slightly, puckering outward infinitesimally. “I love you both, but you’re so fucking blind.”
Nigel put his chopping knife aside. He was breathing in quick little gasps, he noted, and wondered why. “I… I simply can’t throw it all over—”
Shirley’s eyes moistened and her face seemed to draw downward. “Nigel… you think all this space research is so important, I know that. I’ve never said anything until now. But now your obsession can hurt Alexandria, damage her terribly in ways you may never even see.”
He shook his head dumbly, blinking.
“If the work was so vastly important, I wouldn’t say anything. But it isn’t. The real problems are here on Earth—”
“Buggering nonsense.”
“They are. You slave away at this business, after all they’ve done to you, and act as though it’s somehow crucial.”
“Better that, than a job handing out the daily dole.” “Is that what you think I do?” she said, voice teetering between acid and genuine curiosity.
“Well…”
“No backing and filling. Is it?”
“Not quite. I do know it’s not my sort of thing.” “With your intelligence, Nigel, you could make real contributions to—”
“Human problems, as you call them, are seldom accessible to intelligence alone. It takes patience. A warm touch, all that. You’ve got it. I don’t.”
“I think you’re very warm. Below that surface, I mean.”
“Uh,” he said wryly.
“No. You are. I, I know you are in some ways, or else you and I and Alexandria wouldn’t be possible, it couldn’t work.”
“Does it work?”
“I think so,” she said in almost a whisper.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean that. Just lashing out.”
“We need people in the project at Alta Dena, in Farensca. It’s not easy, creating a sense of community after all that’s happened. Those sociometricians—”
“Haven’t a clue about making it work, I know. Good for diagnostics and precious little else.”
“Yes.” Her fine-boned face took on a bleak, introspective look.
“I think you should stay over tonight.”
“Yes, of course.”
The front door clicked open then, Alexandria returning with lean cuts of flank steak. The mere presence of so much meat implied that the occasion was festive, and Nigel resumed chopping, silent, pondering the details of whether to open a bottle of red wine before the cooking began. Without having time to absorb the meaning of what Shirley had said, he slipped into the routine and ritual of evening.
Each time with Shirley he found some new depth, some unexplored flavoring, a sea change. The revelation always came at that place where all parts of her converged; his head cradled between her thighs, the salt musk aswarm in his nostrils. Alexandria’s presence was a warm O sliding on him. He was an arched segment of their ring. His hands stretched toward where Shirley and Alexandria intersected, Shirley’s black hair mingling with Alexandria’s pubic brown. His arms made an unsuccessful chord to the circle, too short; he turned his hands and felt the puckering of Shirley’s nipple. His tongue worked. Shirley was moist and cool under his massaging hand. The equilibrium between the three shifted and resolved: Alexandria’s tongue fluttered him to new heat; Shirley drew down Alexandria’s breasts, cupping them and rolling the perked nipples between her long fingernails, like marbles. Here they were at their best, he knew. Here the machinery of their bodies spoke what words could not or would not. He felt Shirley’s edgy tension in her hip which trembled with concealed energy. He sank into Alexandria’s encased calm, her mouth fluid and impossibly deep. He felt his own knotted confusion focus in a thrusting jerk, battering against her slick throat. Yes, here was their center. Loving, they hauled each other’s bodies as though they were sacks of sand, stacking them against the waters that surrounded Alexandria, and thus now enveloped all three of them. Shirley moved. Her legs released him and her hand caressed the back of his neck where two rigid bands of muscle formed a valley between. She smiled in the dusky light. Their bodies moved to a new geometry.