Terrors (15 page)

Vernon covered
his face with his hands. “Maybe we could just talk a little. Informally. Father.”

The priest made a vaguely encouraging sound.

“Did Rudy tell you what’s been happening to me? I mean—things are changing. I think they’re changing. But nobody else notices.”

Nuñez looked at Vernon. “Can you be more specific, Mr. Browne?”

“Well, like the Aztec in the Crushers helmet.”

“Yes, Rudy told me about
that.”

“Well, he had this theory. Or he said this guy Detroit Jackson had some theory. About cosmic rays.”

Nuñez laughed. “Yes, Rudy’s told me about that, too. Farfetched, don’t you think? But it isn’t impossible, is it? Who knows what’s impossible, Mr. Browne—if anything, eh? Do you take that notion seriously?”

Vernon shook his head. “I could almost believe it, about the picture, I mean. But
something else keeps happening.” He laced his fingers together, squeezed them between his knees. He could feel himself sweating.

“I’m afraid we’re a very poor parish, here at Santa Maria’s, but can I offer you a cup of tea? Or something cold? It’s still beastly hot, isn’t it? Not the climate we’re accustomed to.”

“No, nothing. Nothing, thanks.”

After a silence the priest said, “Well, then what
was this other thing that you say keeps happening? Is it more pictures that change?”

“It’s my car.”

“You’re having car trouble? That can be upsetting, but it hardly –”

“My car keeps changing. I mean, I keep thinking that it’s changing.”

“I don’t understand. You trade it in too often, is it something like that?”

“No. I mean—look, Alex, Father –”

“Whichever.”

“Alex? You don’t mind? I drive
this De Soto. A nice car. It’s a convertible. Firedome V8 engine, Fluid Drive transmission, wire-recorder with four speakers. I really like the car. Bought it new, two years ago. From Henderson De Soto, on Broadway.”

“”Yes, I know the people. Very reputable. But what’s the problem?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s always been a De Soto. I mean, everything is right. I’ve got the registration in the
glove compartment. The keys right here.” He reached into his pocket, extracted his keys and held them up for Father Nuñez to see. They were attached to a leather fob embossed with an enamel De Soto crest.

Father Nuñez nodded. “Yes.”

“But I think it was a Nissan. Or—maybe a Toyota. Or a Studebaker. Didn’t Henderson used to sell Studebakers? I think I bought one from them a couple of years ago.
I think I still own it. Only it’s a De Soto.”

“They haven’t built Studebakers in years, Mr. Browne. Decades. As far as I know, Henderson has always been a De Soto dealership. I’ve lived in Oakland for forty-five years, and they’ve always sold De Soto’s.”

“Then what’s changing?”

The priest sat quietly for a while. The only light in the room came from a small lamp on his desk. There was a window
behind him, the lights of downtown winking through it, through the steaming night. “Do you have a job, Mr. Browne? A steady job, a regular income? Do you mind my asking?”

“Do you want money, Alex? For the church? I mean, if there’s a fee –”

“Not at all. I find this fascinating, and if I can help my fellow man –”

“I’m not Catholic.”

“God makes Protestants and Buddhists and even atheists. It’s
my job to help everybody I can help.”

“Well, I work for the Oakland
Press
.”

“You mean a print-shop?”

“No. The
Press
. You know, the morning paper.”

“Oh, the
Mirror
. Yes, it is our daily press, isn’t it?”

“No, damn it! I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“I didn’t mean to—I mean, the Oakland
Press
. It’s the only daily in town. It’s been published for a hundred years. More.”

“How can that be? Mr.
Browne, I’m seventy-seven years old, and I’ve lived the past forty-five of those years in this city. I’ve been reading the
Daily Mirror
for all of those years. Wouldn’t I have heard of it, if there were another daily paper here?”

Despite the heat, Vernon felt icy. He looked at Nuñez, then past him into the gloomy, torrid night. “Look, there’s the Press Tower, you can see it from here.” He pushed
himself to his feet, circled behind the priest, staring out the dirt-streaked window at the gothic tower where the circle of a huge illuminated clock surmounted the glaring word
Mirror
.

Vernon Browne started down the church steps. In his pocket was a slip of paper with a name and phone number given him by the priest.
Simon Carstairs
, and after the telephone number,
Physics Department. University
of California
.

He turned to get a parting glance at the church. It looked somehow different, its facade more rectangular than it had appeared earlier. And hadn’t there been a steeple? He wasn’t certain, and the lighting was different now. He looked at the bilingual announcement board. It was in Hebrew and Spanish. The heading read
Congragacion B’nai Israel—Sefardico
.

He ran back up the steps,
taking them two at a time. He brushed past a heavyset woman as he plunged through the doorway. She seemed vaguely familiar, but he didn’t stop to talk. He ran down the aisle, between the rows of pews, past the pulpit and torah, down the dim hallway into the shabby office.

“Mr. Browne. Is something wrong?”

“Father?”

The old man’s wrinkled face split into a smile. “They usually call me Rabbi.
But whatever makes you comfortable.”

“Aren’t you Father Nuñez? Alejandro Nuñez?”

“Of course I’m Alejandro Nuñez. We just spent the last half hour talking.”

“And isn’t this a Catholic church?”

“There are several Catholic churches in this section. But this is a synagogue, Mr. Browne. A Sephardic synagogue. Our congregation is composed of Hispanic Jews. Are you all right, Mr. Browne?”

Vernon
backed toward the doorway. “I—yes, I’m all right. I’m sorry.”

“You have that number I gave you—Simon Carstairs’ number over at UC?”

“I have it. Thanks. Thanks, Rabbi Nuñez. I, I—never mind.”

He staggered from the office, leaned on a pew for a few minutes until the shaking was under control, then walked out of the synagogue. His LaSalle coupé was parked at the curb, safe and untouched.

In the
morning he dialed the paper to tell his boss he would be out sick. The switchboard operator said, “Good morning, Oakland
Times-Reporter
.” Vernon got through to his own department and left his message.

He climbed on his Harley Indian and rode the freeway toward Berkeley. He was still agitated, but he knew a certain way to calm himself. He slipped on his earphones and tuned the bike radio to a
classical music station. The announcer’s plummy voice was describing the next piece of music: the overture to
The Yentas
by Ginsberg and Solomon.

Ginsburg and Solomon?

The music began—bright, cheerful tunes worked into a pleasing medley. Vernon felt better, almost from the first note. But while the music sounded vaguely familiar, he couldn’t quite place the melodies. Or the operetta. He thought
he knew the G&S canon by heart.
The Yentas?
He vaguely recalled that one. Something about young lovers and interfering in-laws. And one family was Jewish and the other Irish? But that wasn’t a G&S operetta. That was—he couldn’t remember.

Ginsberg and Solomon?

With a roar, a rocket sled zoomed past him, its rider making an obscene gesture as the sled threw up a cloud of noxious fumes.

Vernon
Browne’s brightened mood was shattered.

He got off the freeway at the University Avenue exit and drove up to UC. The heat had not broken, and the air was wetter than ever. In fact, the moisture condensed as a sort of hot mist, soaking his face and hair.

On the lush lawn outside the physics building a couple of lunar
trees had settled in. They were surrounded by an iron fence. The sign on the
fence warned that the trees were carnivorous and fond of humans. Vern stood watching them for a few minutes. They were quarreling over something, snapping at each other with giant claw-edged fronds. Vern shook his head—he’d always thought it unwise of the Apollo-Soyuz expedition to bring back dangerous lunar life-forms. But it was too late to get rid of them now—they had taken too well to Earth’s
soil and climate. They had become a regular part of the ecology.

He found Professor Carstairs’ office at the end of a second-floor hallway. Carstairs was a heavyset man who looked like a pile of soft dough. His handshake was tentative and his questioning suspicious.

After Vernon had spoken for a few minutes, Carstairs picked up a two-way radio mike and called Alejandro Nuñez. He darted glances
at Vernon while whispering into the microphone. Finally he put it back on its hook.

“Alex says you’re for real.”

“Yes, I am.”

“And you’re having these odd hallucinations. I’m not sure why Alex sent you to me. He’s the shrink. I’m just a theoretical physicist.”

“They’re not hallucinations.”

Carstairs raised his eyebrows. “No?”

“Everything is changing.”

“Of course it is. We’ve known that
since Democritus.”

“I don’t mean that everything is changing. I mean—well, it
is
changing. It is!”

“Mr. Browne, maybe you ought to go back to Alex Nuñez and ask him to recommend a good facility. A resident facility.”

“You think I’m crazy?”

“Who, me? I’m not a psychiatrist, I told you that.”

“Look, Dr. Carstairs—ahh—okay, so I’m crazy. Maybe. Maybe I am crazy. Okay, but I’m not violent. I’m
not dangerous. So will you humor me? Will you talk to me for a little while, listen to what I have to say?”

Carstairs steepled his puffy fingers, leaned his soft chin on them. Only his eyes were hard and sharp. “Five minutes. If you insist.”

Behind Carstairs, through a window, Vernon could see the lawn. The hot mist was so thick that water was condensing on the window and running down it like
rain. Even so, Vern could see the two lunar
trees in their cage. A large woman stood outside the bars. She carried a huge handbag. She reached into it and pulled something out. She reached back and threw it over the fence. Whatever it was, Vernon could see it writhing even as it coursed in an arc. One of the trees caught it skillfully but the other grabbed it away. They quarreled and fought silently
over the morsel.

“I can’t waste time, Mr. Browne,” Simon Carstairs was saying.

“Wh—what?”

“I just told you I’d give you five minutes if you really insist. But then you just sat there staring out the window.”

“Dr. Carstairs—how long have we had lunar life forms on Earth?”

“Are you serious? Since the first moon landings. Nineteen sixty-nine. Back during President McCarthy’s first term. I remember
how he called the astronauts on the moon and read them a sonnet he’d just composed. That’s what we get for electing a poet president.”

“Right—1969. That’s what I thought. I mean I knew that all along. I think I did, anyhow.”

The mist had finally turned to rain, and the lawn outside the physics building was rapidly turning into a swamp.

Vernon said, “Either the world is changing, or maybe I’m
changing. Somehow I’m getting false memories. But I don’t think so. I think the world is different. Like—have I always had an Indian bike? I think I have. I’ve got my helmet, gloves, the registration slip, everything. It says I’ve owned the Indian for three years. But—I feel as if I maybe had something else.”

“A different brand of motorcycle, you mean?”

“Yes. Or no. I don’t know. Maybe I had
a car.”

“Maybe you did. Until you traded it for the motorcycle. Or maybe you own a car
and
a motorcycle.”

Vern shook his head. “I guess it could be. But—could one turn into the other? I mean, ah, I guess I don’t mean could you take the parts of a, say, a Tucker Torpedo and take ’em apart and cut ’em down and build a bike out of them. I mean, could the one just turn into the other? Could the
world change? And everybody takes it for granted, nobody notices, because they change along with it? But somehow I
didn’t
change? The change didn’t take right, it didn’t work completely for me, so I have these memories of the way things were before?”

Carstairs leaned back, grinning broadly. “Have you ever studied physics, Mr. Browne?”

“High school. Let’s see, we had units on heat, optics, mechanics—is
that what you mean?”

Carstairs nodded condescendingly. “I had in mind high-energy theoretical physics. Specifically, quantum probability theory.”

Vern shook his head. No. Behind Carstairs, the water had risen so the lawn was completely obliterated. The sun looked like a fuzzy yellow disk in the gray, wet sky. Occasional splashes marked the surface of the swamp.

“You see,” Simon Carstairs said,
“what you’re talking about fits in rather nicely with quantum theory. Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Planck of course. The great names of the century.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Let me put it this way, Mr. Browne. According to quantum probability, we don’t really
know
the location and energy state of very small particles. Not only
do
we not know, we
cannot
know. To find out, we have to put energy into the
system, thereby changing the very information we were seeking. So when we find out what we wanted to know, the data is no longer valid. I’ve always thought that Einstein would consider this one of God’s great jokes.”

“You mean—I don’t know whether I have a Harley or a Tucker? Can’t I just go outside and look?”

“That isn’t exactly what I mean. More to the point, you might own a Harley
and
a Tucker.
Also a Kaiser, a Packard, a Nash and an infinite number of others. And an infinite number of each. A convertible, a sedan, a station wagon. And an infinite number of each of those—one in every color of the spectrum, one with a scratch on the hood, one without a scratch on the hood, one with—well, you see my point, don’t you? There are an infinite number of particles in the universe, and the
condition of each is an uncertainty, a statistical probability. Not a fact.”