Night Train полностью

It’s more nothing than you could possibly imagine. It’s a cavity 300 million light years deep. Where there’s zip. The truth is, Detec­tive, the truth is that human beings are not sufficiently evolved to understand the place they’re living in. We’re all retards. Einstein’s a retard. I’m a retard. We live on a planet of retards.

Jennifer say that?

Yeah, but she also thought that that was what was so great about it. Beating your head against the lid.

She talked about death, didn’t she. She talk to you about death?

No. Yes. Well not habitually. But we did have a discussion about death. Quite recently. It’s been in my head. I’ve been play­ing it back. Like you do. I’m not sure if this thought was original to her. Probably not. But she put it... memorably. Newton, Isaac Newton, used to stare at the sun? He’d blind himself for days, for weeks, staring at the sun. Trying to figure the sun out. Jennifer— she was sitting right there where you’re sit­ting. And she quoted some aphorism. Some French guy. Some duke. Went something like: “No man can stare at the sun or at death with a, with an unshielded eye.” Now here’s the interesting part. Do you know whoStephen Hawking is, Detective?

He’s the ... the guy in the wheelchair. Talks like a robot.

And do you know what a black hole is Detective? Yeah, I think we all have someidea. Jennifer asked me, why was it Hawking who cracked black holes? I mean in the sixties everybody was going at black holes with hammer and tongs. But it was Stephen who gave us some answers. She said, why him? And I gave the physicist’s answer: Because he’s the smartest guy around. Jennifer wanted me to consideran explanation that was more— romantic. She said: Hawking understood black holes because he could stare at them. Black holes mean oblivion. Mean death. And Hawking has been staring at death all his adult life Hawking could see.

Well, I thought: That isn’t it. Just then Denziger looked at his watch with what seemed like irritation or anxiety. I said quickly,

“The revolution you talked about. Of conscious­ness. Would there be casualties?

I heard the door open. A broad in a black sweat­suit was standing there, making a phone call. When I turned again Denziger was $ looking at me. He said,

“I guess it wouldn’t neccessarily be bloodless. I have to talk to Hawaii now.

“Yeah. Well I’m in no hurry. I’m going to smoke a cigarette out on the steps there. Maybe if you get a moment you’ll walk me to my car.”

And I reached for the tape recorder and keyed the Pause.

With my arms folded to promote warmth and thought, I stood on the steps, looking at the quality of life. Jen­nifer’s life. Jennifer’s life. The fauna of early spring— birds, squirrels, even rabbits. And the agitated physicists—the little dweebs and nerds and wonks. A white sky giving way to pixels of blue, and containing both sun and moon, which she knew all about. Yes, and Trader, on the other side of the green hill. I could get used to this.

The naked-eye universe. The “seeing.” The eighty-billion-year heartbeat. On the night she died, the sky was so clear, the seeing was so clear—but the naked eye isn’t good enough and needs assistance... In her bedroom on the evening of March fourth Jennifer Rockwell conducted an experiment with time. She took fifty years and squeezed them into a few seconds. In moments of extreme crisis, time slows anyway: Calm chemicals come from the brain to the body, to help it through to the other side. How slowly time would have passed. She must have felt it. Jennifer must have felt it—the eighty-billion-year heartbeat.

Students straggled by. No, I don’t have to take a test tomorrow morning. I’m done with being tested. Aren’t I? Then why do I feel like I feel? Is Jennifer test­ing me? Is that what she’s doing—setting me a test? The terrible thing inside of me is growing stronger. I swear to Christ, I almost feel pregnant. The terrible thing inside of me is alive and well, and growing stronger.

Blinking with his whole forehead, Bax Denziger staggered out into the light. He waved, approached— we fell into step. Without any prompting he said,

“I dreamt about you last night.”

And I just said, “You did, huh?”

“I dreamt about this. And you know what I said? I said, ‘Arrest me.’ “

“Why would you say that, Bax?”

“Listen. The week before she died, for the first time ever Jennifer fucked up. She fucked up on the job. Big.”

I waited.

He sighed and said, “I had her defending some distances in M101. Princeton were kicking our butt so bad—they were killing us. Let me keep it simple. The plate density scan gives you a bunch of numbers, mil­lions of them, which go into the computer to be com­pared and calibrated against the algorithms. The—”

Stop, I said. The more you’re telling me, the less I understand. Give me the upshot.