Drop by Drop

22

Bud Moriarty was disappointed that Jack had not suggested he invest in the River Valley Transportation Service. The business obviously was expanding. Lacey Strawbridge was even more disappointed. “I thought you and Jack were partners! How could he cut you out like that?”

“He didn’t cut me out of anything, it’s a separate business entirely. Besides, it doesn’t belong to him.”

“Are you sure? I’ll bet he has a finger in it, a silent partnership maybe. Jack’s always had an eye for the main chance and those two are friends of his.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re joined at the hip. Don’t worry about it, Lace, we’re doing all right, aren’t we?”

“We’d do a lot better if you had more gumption. The tire business isn’t nearly as good as it was at first because there are so few cars on the road—so the garage is failing too.”

“It isn’t failing,” he assured her. “I still have my tools and I’m doing more repair work than I ever did. Most anything that comes apart gets brought to me.”

“Mending the handles of pots and pans. What sort of work is that?”

“Damned good work, Lace, and I’m glad to have it. People aren’t throwing things away anymore, and it’s not just pots and pans. Frank Auerbach was mighty happy I could repair his typewriters, that’s where I got the advertising posters I put up in Friendly Foods. They’ve brought in a lot of business. We could have had more if you’d taken some posters to Goettinger’s.”

She was appalled. “I used to model for Goettinger’s!”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of about putting up posters.”

“I’m not ashamed of anything—except that I was fool enough to give up a modeling career for this.”

Your modeling career gave you up, Bud thought, but did not say.

Jack took Nell home after every meeting of the Wednesday Club, and always allowed enough time at the end of the evening to enjoy a brief tussle with Sheila and Rocky. The setters adored him. His scarlet Mustang continued to provide reliable transportation; he subjected it to an exhaustive examination morning and evening. He even broke up the cement floor in Bea’s garage and dug a mechanic’s pit so he could get at the undercarriage. Bud Moriarty had long since replaced the few vulnerable items in the classic car with substitutions of his own devising. “If I could just get my hands on an old Model T…” he said.

But no one was selling antique cars.

Nell enjoyed riding in the convertible with the top down; it reminded her of the brief, carefree time before her marriage. She brought a silk scarf to keep in the car’s glove compartment and wound it around her head and throat to keep her hair from blowing.

“You look like Grace Kelly,” Jack told her.

“Who was she?”

“A movie star years ago. She married a prince.”

No matter how late the hour Nell’s children were always waiting up for her—a development Jack had not anticipated. They would not go to bed until they knew she was in the house. Colin still suffered from terrible nightmares. Jessamyn sucked her thumb in her sleep.

“It breaks my heart to see her do that,” Nell confided to Jack.

“She’ll outgrow it, give her time.”

“What if there are psychological problems that haven’t surfaced yet? After all they’ve been through there could be serious damage. How do I protect my children?”

You can’t, he thought privately. Nell, so gentle otherwise, became a tigress where her children were involved. She refused to accept any advice from a man who had no children of his own.

There were other elements of Jack’s relationship with Nell that he tiptoed around. Sex was one. Or the lack of sex, to be accurate. Under the circumstances it did not happen very often.

On the few occasions when they did manage to be intimate he discovered to his delight the playful sensuality hidden beneath her reserved exterior. When he made the mistake of comparing her to a kid in a candy store she was embarrassed. “How could you say that? Oh, Jack, am I—”

He laid a restraining finger across her lips. “Absolutely perfect for me? Yes, you are.”

Gerry Delmonico prepared rigorously for the next meeting of the Wednesday Club, even searching through college textbooks that had survived the problems with ink. He explained to Gloria, “I keep hoping to find a clue to the Change, one that’s been overlooked.”

“Do you think there is one? Surely by now the other scientists have—”

“Scientists are only human, Muffin; they find what they expect to see. Jack Reece once said something that’s stuck in my mind ever since. He said, ‘The man in the street might be better than a panel of experts.’ So I’m trying to look at the problem like that man, with no presuppositions. Random violence is increasing because of the stress we’re all under and I want to offer our friends a ray of hope. If not hope of a solution to the Change, at least hope of understanding it. I’ve even jotted down some notes and tucked them in my shirt pocket, just in case. Jack’s bound to have questions.”

“Doesn’t he always?”

That evening Gerry waited until the others arrived and drinks had been ordered before he asked, “What do any of you know about quantum physics?”

That got their attention.

“I have a layman’s acquaintance with theoretical physics,” Jack offered. “E equals mc squared?”

“Einstein’s famous equation, that’s right. But what does it mean?”

“Energy is equivalent to mass?”

“Basically, yes, but there’s more to it than that,” said Gerry. “Mass is congealed energy. Energy has inertia, which is the defining feature of mass. When something like plastic dissolves there can be a mass-to-energy conversion. That’s what happens in nuclear fission. Less than one gram of mass was converted to energy in the explosion at Hiroshima, which will give you an idea of what powerful forces we’re dealing with here. For over a year we’ve been seeing the Change release the energy from apparently solid objects. Why? Where in hell is all that energy going?”

Gerry swept the room with his eyes. He had a rapt audience. “Take a step back. That equation is E equals mc squared. Energy equals mass plus the square of the speed of light. That’s the c squared part, which is a constant of proportionality linking energy and mass. Every time energy is released there is some decrease in mass. Conversely, every time energy is gained there is some increase in mass, though I don’t see how that could apply here.”

Lila Ragland leaned forward. “Is the Change some huge experiment?”

“I’m not saying that, but the possibilities are—”

“Frightening,” Gloria interrupted.

“Not necessarily. It could indicate that a very powerful mind is at work here, which means the Change is not uncontrollable but being controlled. If so that’s the good news. Maybe.” Gerry waited for a response.

“You referred to quantum physics,” said Jack. “That’s a lot more complicated than what you just outlined.”

“It is, but it begins with the tiniest known particles, because they’re the building blocks of the universe.”

“Particles! Like the highly charged particles in solar flares.”

“That’s right, Jack. All the interactions in our universe involve the creation and annihilation of particles. The Change is a perfect example.”

“So is the Change good, or evil?”

“Neither or both, Nell. I suspect it’s like power; it all depends on how it’s used.”

“And who’s using it,” Tilbury said darkly. “You have any theories about that?”

“Not yet, but if I’m right about what’s happening we may be able to find out. To track the Change to its lair,” Gerry added hopefully.

Another round of drinks was ordered.

An hour later Nell recalled, “When I was a girl I used to hear my grandparents complaining because everything was changing, and I didn’t know what they meant. To me it seemed that nothing changed. Every day was like the one before. I thought I’d give anything for a change.”

Gloria said fervently, “I’d give anything for the Change to stop.” She glanced at the baby lying beside her on the seat, snugly wrapped in blankets and sound asleep. “I want Danielle to grow up in a stable environment.”

“When were we able to guarantee that?” Jack asked. “Consider the whole span of history. There have been some quiet periods, sure, but inevitably a disaster shook everything up: revolutions, world wars, the atom bomb…”

“’Scuse me, too much beer.” Gerry got up and headed for the rest room.

“Humans were responsible for those things,” Edgar Tilbury pointed out, “but the Change is different.”

“No, we only think it’s different because we don’t know who’s behind it.”

Bill said, “So you’ll grant that someone is behind it. What happened to your other theories, Jack?”

“None of them helped.”

“Nothing’s gonna help either,” predicted Hooper Watson. “The fuckin’ Change is gonna go on and on until we fall into a giant sinkhole like the ones on the asphalt roads.”

Morris Saddlethwaite said, “You’re a li’l ray of sunshine, arncha?”

“Well, it’s true.”

“We don’t know what’s true and what isn’t,” Lila argued. “There are times when it seems like a huge magic show, with the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, pulling the strings. Any minute I expect him to pop out wearing a clown mask.”

“Make it stop,” Gloria whispered. She could feel everything piling up: all the familiar items that had disintegrated, the growing worry and uncertainty, the gradual failures of the society she depended on, the unfocused anger and onrushing fear. There was no end to it. Just growing and growing and… “Make it stop! Oh please, God, make it stop, I can’t take any more!”

Her sudden collapse stunned the others.

Evan Mulligan jumped to his feet and scooped her into his arms. “Go get her husband and somebody take the baby,” he said over his shoulder. “Hurry!” He bent his head over the sobbing woman. “It’s okay, it’ll be okay, just take deep breaths.”

The frozen tableau came to life. Jack ran to the restroom to bring Gerry back, while Nell produced a handkerchief and Bill Burdick poured a glass of brandy.

It was Edgar Tilbury who comforted the baby.

The Change continued, as inevitable as the changes that marked the passage of a day, a month, a year. On an unstable planet revolving in a finite solar system nothing remained the same. True stability, if such a thing were possible, would have broken the law of gravity and torn the space/time continuum.

Yet even the Change must change. How could it be otherwise?

Before he went to sleep Edgar Tilbury sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the photograph in its plain gold frame. A beautiful woman with finely cut features, her full lips slightly parted as if she were about to speak to him.

Hers was the only photograph in the house. He kept it in his bedside drawer, next to the old AllCom that still worked occasionally.

“We’ve got children at last, Veronica,” he told her. “Never thought it would happen. That Lila—she’s a hard case, isn’t she? Needs a lot and won’t admit it. Maybe that freckle-faced veterinarian can give it to her, if she wants him. He’s a decent guy and there aren’t many of those around. There’s room for them both here… and more.”

He raised his eyes from the face in the picture and stared into space, thinking. Lovingly tucked the photograph back in the drawer. Scratched his chest and turned out the light.

Dwayne Nyeberger knew who to blame, and it wasn’t the Change either. It was the woman he thought he killed, the woman who had stolen everything that should have been his. He could not sleep at night for thinking about her and planning ways to get even.

He needed to get her alone, and to do that he needed to find out where she lived. Where she went, what she did.

The obsession grew like a dark cloud over his head.

Evan Mulligan’s AllCom emitted a series of random clicks, then a pulsating tone muffled by the fact that it was in his jacket pocket. The jacket was hung on a hook outside Rocket’s stall.

The boy was kneeling on the straw beside a long-legged colt, trying to persuade the little creature to accept a leather halter on his head. Evan would have preferred to use a halter of woven nylon, which was softer, but most of those had disintegrated.

Rocket stood close by, nudging her little son with her muzzle to reassure him. His black baby coat would give way to gray as he grew older; he was finely bred. Evan had saved his own money to breed the mare to an Arabian stallion in Nolan’s Falls. He had been hoping for a filly, though he was delighted with the colt. Next year he would take Rocket back to Nolan’s Falls and try again.

When he recognized the ringtone of his AllCom he got to his feet carefully, so as not to startle the colt, and retrieved the device. He was surprised to see Lila Ragland’s face appear on the screen. “Evan? Is your father home?” She sounded as if she were whispering.

“He’s still in the clinic, I think. Want me to go get him?”

“That’s all right, when he comes in give him a message for me, will you? Ask him if he can come over here tomorrow and get me.”

“Tomorrow’s not Wednesday.”

“I know that, Evan. Just tell him, please. I think somebody’s stalking me.”