DID YOU REMEMBER: 1) to make out your check to Waveform Dynamics1? 2) to write your account number onyour check? 3) to sign your check? 4) to send payment in full, as we do not accept partial payment? 5) to enclose youroriginal payment document, not a reproduced copy? 6) to enclose your document in such a way that the addressappears in the window? 7) to detach the green portion of your document along the dotted line to retain for yourrecords? 8) to supply your correct address and zip code? 9) to inform us at least three weeks before you plan to move?
10) to secure the envelope flap? 11) to place a stamp on the envelope, as the post office will not deliver withoutpostage? 12) to mail the envelope at least three days before the date entered in the blue box?
CABLE HEALTH, CABLE WEATHER, CABLE NEWS, CABLE NATURE.
No one wanted to cook that night. We all got in the car and went out to the commercial strip in the no man's landbeyond the town boundary. The never-ending neon. I pulled in at a place that specialized2 in chicken parts andbrownies. We decided3 to eat in the car. The car was sufficient for our needs. We wanted to eat, not look around atother people. We wanted to fill our stomachs and get it over with. We didn't need light and space. We certainly didn'tneed to face each other across a table as we ate, building a subtle and complex cross-network of signals and codes.
We were content to eat facing in the same direction, looking only inches past our hands. There was a kind of rigor4 inthis. Denise brought the food out to the car and distributed paper napkins. We settled in to eat. We ate fully5 dressed,in hats and heavy coats, without speaking, ripping into chicken parts with our hands and teeth. There was a mood ofintense concentration, minds converging6 on a single compelling idea. I was surprised to find I was enormouslyhungry. I chewed and ate, looking only inches past my hands. This is how hunger shrinks the world. This is the edgeof the observable universe of food. Steffie tore off the crisp skin of a breast and gave it to Heinrich. She never ate theskin. Babette sucked a bone. Heinrich traded wings with Denise, a large for a small. He thought small wings weretastier. People gave Babette their bones to clean and suck. I fought off an image of Mr. Cray lazing naked on a motelbed, an unresolved picture collapsing7 at the edges. We sent Denise to get more food, waiting for her in silence. Thenwe started in again, half stunned8 by the dimensions of our pleasure.
Steffie said quietly, "How do astronauts float?"There was a pause like a missing tick in eternity9.
Denise stopped eating to say, 'They're lighter10 than air."We all stopped eating. A worried silence ensued.
"There is no air," Heinrich said finally. "They can't be lighter than something that isn't there. Space is a vacuumexcept for heavy molecules11.""I thought space was cold," Babette said. "If there's no air, how can it be cold? What makes warm or cold? Air, or soI thought. If there's no air, there should be no cold. Like a nothing kind of day.""How can there be nothing?" Denise said. "There has to be something."'There is something," Heinrich said in exasperation12. 'There's heavy molecules.""Do-I-need-a-sweater kind of day," Babette said.
There was another pause. We waited to learn if the dialogue was over. Then we set to eating again. We tradedunwanted parts in silence, stuck our hands in cartons of rippled13 fries. Wilder liked the soft white fries and peoplepicked these out and gave them to him. Denise distributed ketchup14 in little watery15 pouches16.
The interior of the car smelled of grease and licked flesh. We traded parts and gnawed17.
Steffie said in a small voice, "How cold is space?"We all waited once more. Then Heinrich said, "It depends on how high you go. The higher you go, the colder it gets.""Wait a minute," Babette said. "The higher you go, the closer you get to the sun. So the warmer it gets.""What makes you think the sun is high?""How can the sun be low? You have to look up to see the sun.""What about at night?" he said.
"It's on the other side of the earth. But people still look up.""The whole point of Sir Albert Einstein," he said, "is how can the sun be up if you're standing18 on the sun?""The sun is a great molten ball," she said. "It's impossible to stand on the sun.""He was just saying 'if.' Basically there is no up or down, hot or cold, day or night.""What is there?""Heavy molecules. The whole point of space is to give molecules a chance to cool down after they come shooting offthe surface of giant stars.""If there's no hot or cold, how can molecules cool down?""Hot and cold are words. Think of them as words. We have to use words. We can't just grunt19.""It's called the sun's corolla," Denise said to Steffie in a separate discussion. "We saw it the other night on theweather network.""I thought Corolla was a car," Steffie said.
"Everything's a car," Heinrich said. "The thing you have to understand about giant stars is that they have actualnuclear explosions deep inside the core. Totally forget these Russian IBMs that are supposed to be so awesome20.
We're talking about a hundred million times bigger explosions."There was a long pause. No one spoke21. We went back to eating for as long as it took to bite off and chew a singlemouthful of food.
"It's supposed to be Russian psychics22 who are causing this crazy weather," Babette said.
"What crazy weather?" I said.
Heinrich said, "We have psychics, they have psychics, supposedly. They want to disrupt our crops by influencing theweather.""The weather's been normal.""For Jthis time of year," Denise put in smartly.
This was the week a policeman saw a body thrown from a UFO. It happened while he was on routine patrol on theoutskirts of Classboro. The rain-soaked corpse23 of an unidentified male was found later that night, fully clothed. Anautopsy disclosed that death was due to multiple fractures and heart failure—the result, perhaps, of a ghastly shock.
Under hypnosis, the policeman, Jerry Tee Walker, relived in detail the baffling sight of the neon-bright object thatresembled an enormous spinning top as it hovered24 eighty feet above a field. Officer Walker, a Vietnam vet25, said thebizarre scene reminded him of helicopter crews throwing Vietcong suspects out the door. Incredibly, as he watcheda hatch come open and the body plummet26 to the ground, Walker sensed an eerie27 message being psychicallytransmitted to his brain. Police hypnotists plan to intensify28 their sessions in an attempt to uncover the message.
There were sightings all over the area. An energizing29 mental current, a snaky glow, seemed to pass from town totown. It didn't matter whether you believed in these things or not. They were an excitement, a wave, a tremor30. Somevoice or noise would crack across the sky and we would be lifted out of death. People drove speculatively31 to theedges of towns, where some would turn back, some decide to venture toward remoter areas which seemed in thesepast days to exist under a spell, a hallowed expectation. The air grew soft and mild. A neighbor's dog barked throughthe night.
In the fast food parking lot we ate our brownies. Crumbs32 stuck to the heels of our hands. We inhaled33 the crumbs, welicked the fingers. As we got close to finishing, the physical extent of our awareness34 began to expand. Food's bordersyielded to the wider world. We looked past our hands. We looked through the windows, at the cars and lights. Welooked at the people leaving the restaurant, men, women and children carrying cartons of food, leaning into the wind.
An impatience35 began to flow from the three bodies in the rear seat. They wanted to be home, not here. They wantedto blink an eye and find themselves in their rooms, with their things, not sitting in a cramped36 car on this windsweptconcrete plain. Journeys home were always a test. I started up the car, knowing it was only a matter of seconds beforethe massed restlessness took on elements of threat. We could feel it coming, Babette and I. A sulky menace brewedback there. They would attack us, using the classic strategy of fighting among themselves. But attack us for whatreason? For not getting them home faster? For being older and bigger and somewhat steadier of mood than they were?
Would they attack us for our status as protectors— protectors who must sooner or later fail? Or was it simply who wewere that they attacked, our voices, features, gestures, ways of walking and laughing, our eye color, hair color, skintone, our chromosomes37 and cells?
As if to head them off, as if she could not bear the implications of their threat, Babette said pleasantly, "Why is itthese UFOs are mostly seen upstate? The best sightings are upstate. People get abducted38 and taken aboard. Fannerssee burn marks where saucers landed. A woman gives birth to a UFO baby, so she says. Always upstate.""That's where the mountains are," Denise said. "Spaceships can hide from radar39 or whatever.""Why are the mountains upstate?" Steffie said.
"Mountains are always upstate," Denise told her. "This way the snow melts as planned in the spring and flowsdownhill to the reservoirs near the cities, which are kept in the lower end of the state for exactly this reason."I thought, momentarily, she might be right. It made a curious kind of sense. Or did it? Or was it totally crazy? Therehad to be large cities in the northern part of some states. Or were they just north of the border in the southern part ofstates just to the north? What she s.aid could not be true and yet I had trouble, momentarily, disproving it. I could notname cities or mountains to disprove it. There had to be mountains in the southern part of some states. Or did theytend to be below the state line, in the northern part of states to the south? I tried to name state capitals, governors.
How could there be a north below a south? Is this what I found confusing? Was this the crux40 of Denise's error? Orwas she somehow, eerily41, right?
The radio said: "Excesses of salt, phosphorus, magnesium42."Later that night Babette and I sat drinking cocoa. On the kitchen table, among the coupons43, the foot-longsupermarket receipts, the mail-order catalogs, was a postcard from Mary Alice, my oldest. She is the golden issue ofmy first marriage to Dana Breedlove, the spy, and is therefore Steffie's full sister, although ten years and twomarriages fell between. Mary Alice is nineteen now and lives in Hawaii, where she works with whales.
Babette picked up a tabloid44 someone had left on the table.
"Mouse cries have been measured at forty thousand cycles per second. Surgeons use high-frequency tapes of mousecries to destroy tumors in the human body. Do you believe that?""Yes.""So do I."She put down the newspaper. After a while she said to me urgently, "How do you feel, Jack45?""I'm all right. I feel fine. Honest. What about you?""I wish I hadn't told you about my condition.""Why?""Then you wouldn't have told me you're going to die first. Here are the two things I want most in the world. Jack notto die first. And Wilder to stay the way he is forever."
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dynamics
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| n.力学，动力学，动力，原动力；动态 | |
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specialized
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| adj.专门的，专业化的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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rigor
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| n.严酷，严格，严厉 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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converging
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| adj.收敛[缩]的，会聚的，趋同的v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的现在分词 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集 | |
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collapsing
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| 压扁[平]，毁坏，断裂 | |
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stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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molecules
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| 分子( molecule的名词复数 ) | |
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exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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rippled
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| 使泛起涟漪（ripple的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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ketchup
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| n.蕃茄酱，蕃茄沙司 | |
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watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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pouches
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| n.（放在衣袋里或连在腰带上的）小袋( pouch的名词复数 )；（袋鼠等的）育儿袋；邮袋；（某些动物贮存食物的）颊袋 | |
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gnawed
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| 咬( gnaw的过去式和过去分词 )； （长时间） 折磨某人； （使）苦恼； （长时间）危害某事物 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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awesome
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| adj.令人惊叹的，难得吓人的，很好的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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psychics
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| 心理学，心灵学； （自称）通灵的或有特异功能的人，巫师( psychic的名词复数 ) | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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vet
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| n.兽医，退役军人；vt.检查 | |
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plummet
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| vi.(价格、水平等)骤然下跌；n.铅坠；重压物 | |
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eerie
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| adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的 | |
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intensify
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| vt.加强；变强；加剧 | |
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energizing
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| v.给予…精力，能量( energize的现在分词 )；使通电 | |
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tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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speculatively
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| adv.思考地，思索地；投机地 | |
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crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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inhaled
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| v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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chromosomes
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| n.染色体( chromosome的名词复数 ) | |
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abducted
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| 劫持，诱拐( abduct的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（肢体等）外展 | |
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radar
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| n.雷达，无线电探测器 | |
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crux
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| adj.十字形；难事，关键，最重要点 | |
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eerily
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| adv.引起神秘感或害怕地 | |
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magnesium
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| n.镁 | |
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coupons
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| n.礼券( coupon的名词复数 )；优惠券；订货单；参赛表 | |
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tabloid
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| adj.轰动性的，庸俗的；n.小报，文摘 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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