Nina Reilly 9 - Presumption of Death by Perri O'Shaughnessy

Author:Perri O'Shaughnessy [O'Shaughnessy, Perri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780440334460
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2003-07-29T04:00:00+00:00

20

MIDNIGHT ON THIS SAME MAGNIFICENT TUESDAY night on Chews Ridge, ambient light low, skies crystalline. David Cowan saw the Trifid Nebula materialize on his screen as the thirty-six-inch reflector followed its computerized instructions. The light in the control room had been set as dimly as possible to see the detail. “Ray, you have to see this,” he said.

Ray, at the next table full of computer equipment, grunted and came over. A small astrophysicist with a beard, he worked at MIRA full-time.

“Beautiful,” he said.

“More than beautiful.” Rose, it was, shading from pale to brilliant pink and deepening to red on its three petals, shedding light below it, a rose. One new star seemed to shine from its center, though David knew that was a trick of the galaxy, the star was actually much closer.

He was peering forty-five hundred light years into space, and the grandness of it, the spectacularness of it, the knowledge of the vast energies roiling and twisting all around this pitiful planet where he existed, were so good for forgetting. He typed in the commands that would photograph the nebula but continued to stare at it.

“Sometimes, looking into it, always bright, always superb, I feel like I'm falling forward, leaving forever. There's vertigo, movement as I leave my body,” he told Ray.

Ray didn't answer. Beauty wasn't visual to him, it was mathematical. His screen, showing window piled upon window of moving graphs, gave him the same kind of pleasure.

“Rain's coming in from the coast,” David said. “I'd say an hour or so.”

“You ought to get back to work,” Ray said. “We have to get this mapping done by next Thursday or we lose the grant.”

“So what?” David said.

“We can't keep volunteers who don't care.”

“I'm thinking about building my own observatory.” But even Ray knew he wouldn't. That would take an independent, motivated person, unlike David, who didn't like doing things on his own.

David also knew that Ray didn't like telling him what to do, because David had given MIRA over a hundred thousand dollars. All David asked for was access to the scopes.

For two years now he had watched the stars, bolstered by his connection to the universe, pretending to participate in the work. David didn't care about the work. He just liked watching through the scope, falling into that endless blackness. They wouldn't kick him out. He knew it and so did Ray.

David's money had bought him salvation here, as it had brought him Britta at home.

The affairs she heaped on him didn't matter. He understood and accepted her as you should accept a force of nature. Audacious, untamable, reckless, she burst into his life, a hot star-forming nursery at the center of his desolate universe. She threw her colorful clothes on the floor, onto the living-room chairs; she smelled of B.O. and perfume. She kept the air ionized with her angry chatter. She was very angry that he had made her move to Carmel Valley, land of hicks, but she did what he told her. He had the money, it was that simple.

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