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Trevor hesitated for a moment longer. Lee remained motionless, watching him.
Then Trevor lowered himself slowly and heavily back into his seat, and made an
awkward pushing motion with his hand. "If that's what you want...What's the
point anyhow?" He sounded surly, but underneath grateful to let the matter go
at that. Lee said nothing as he uncoiled back into his chair, shedding tension
like a spring being unwound. An uncomfortable silence followed.
At last Tom turned to look across at Murdoch. "I didn't know about your
grandfather. When did he get a Nobel?"
"Back in the eighties," Murdoch said, keeping his eyes on Trevor for a moment
longer before shifting them toward Tom. "It was for some work he was involved
in at Stanford."
"What kind of work?" Sheila asked.
"The first isolation of free quarks. He moved there from Princeton to work on
the big
Stanford accelerator."
The conversation gradually picked up again. Trevor and his three pals talked
among themselves about other things until a respectable time had passed, then
got up and left together with a few perfunctory good-nights to the rest of the
company. At once a more relaxed atmosphere descended.
"Whew, that feels better," Jerry said. "For a moment I thought we were going
to have a real barney. What on earth's got into Trev tonight?"
"I think he thought he had territorial rights," Tom murmured, nodding toward
Anne.
"Gee, I didn't mean to start anything like that," Murdoch said. "As far as I
was concerned, we were just talking."
"Shut up!" Anne exclaimed indignantly. "You're sounding as if you're
apologizing for something. If Trevor had any thoughts like that, he should
have asked me first. If anybody needs to apologize, it ought to be me...for
calling you cowboys earlier on today. You handled the whole thing very well."
"Cowboys are from Texas," Murdoch told her, grinning. "Californians are
different."
"You mean Californians don't wear their hats and smoke cigars in the bathtub?"
"Certainly not"' Murdoch replied. "We take showers."
"With hats and cigars," Jerry threw in.
"Of course."
Sheila laughed and sipped her drink, then looked at Lee. "Were you bluffing?"
she asked.
"For a moment you really looked as if you'd have had a go at all four of them,
never mind Trevor."
"He would have," Murdoch said. "Don't worry about it. Lee can handle himself
if he needs to."
"Ah, what the hell," Lee grunted. "It's over. Forget it."
"He's right," Jerry declared. "Look, we've got a nice-sized crowd for a party
now. How about going on somewhere? We could go into town and try one of the
clubs. I could use a bite to eat too. What's the vote?"
"Sounds good," Tom said. The others nodded.
"Right then," Jerry declared. "Unanimous it is. One more round before we go.
This one's mine. Same again for everybody?"
Midnight had come and gone and been forgotten. Murdoch and Anne were sitting
with their heads close together, talking across a corner of the table in a
dimly lit alcove of the nightclub.
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Tom and Sheila were together on the dance floor, while Lee and Jerry were at
the bar talking with a couple of girls who had come in about an hour before.
The band had burned off its surplus energy and was slowing down in preparation
for calling it a night.
"Know something?" Murdoch said. "You smell nice. What is it?"
Anne smiled and shrugged without looking up. "Nothing special. I've been at
work all day.
Maybe it's just something that exists in the nose of the...oh, I don't know.
What's a word like
'beholder' that means smell?"
"Hell, how should I know? I don't write dictionaries." He thought for a
second. "How about
'philodorer'? That ought to mean 'liker of nice scents.'"
Anne giggled and placed her hand on his arm. "You really are crazy. What would
a Texan have said?"
"I can't imagine."
"Where did you get black hair like that? I like men with thick, black hair."
"Grandpa's used to be the same. You'll have to meet him sometime."
"I'd like to. He sounds fascinating."
"You know," Murdoch said, leaning closer, "a guy could get really fond of
somebody like you, given enough time." He traced his fingertip lightly along
her arm. "Why don't we do something
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Anne appeared to think about it for a second or two, then answered, "Yes, I
think I'd like that. Is it a promise? I'll hold you to it, you know."
"You'd better believe it."
Anne slid her fingers over the back of his hand and entwined them loosely with
his. They felt cool, smooth, and exhilarating. "Are you going to be over here
for very long?" she asked.
"Who knows?" Murdoch replied. "I guess it depends on how things go. We're not
really sure yet how much work there is to do at Storbannon."
"Then I hope you run into all kinds of problems that you didn't bargain for,"
Anne told him. She smiled, and Murdoch could see that the one-way mirrors had
been switched off.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The time-communication model that had been tentatively proposed held that a
signal transmitted back from the future would remain imprinted on the new
timeline established in the process. The whole of the timeline that lay after
the event of the signal being received, however, which included the event of
its being sent, would be altered according to the new circumstances.
One of the purposes of the tests that had been run throughout that week was to
test this hypothesis more thoroughly.
In one set of tests, the machine had been programmed to send a signal back to
a point in time advanced one second from the point at which the machine had
last received a signal in the past. On the new timeline thus established, the
receipt of the time-advanced signal would itself become the most recently
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