It was some weird shit, man. At first I didn't know what was happening. I thought it was some kind of slow-motion dance. Then it come to me. I was in 'Frisco a couple years ago, out at the Golden Gate Park with a lady friend real early one morning.
"There's this little, open, house-like thing, looks out over the ocean. Must a' been ten or fifteen oriental dudes in pajamas, men and women, doin' the same thing. The girl tells me it's Tai Chi, one of the oldest martial arts.
Then I remember ol' Gilbert’s hands." There was a pause as he looked around at the marines in the squad bay.
"This guy's got hands like Sergeant Hana, my old unarmed combat instructor at Camp Pendleton. Got those same blocky knuckles, and mean-lookin' calluses down the side. Then it come to me, Sergeant. I fuss with that ol' boy and he's gonna eat my lunch and the bag I brung it in!"
They'd all laughed and the Staff Sergeant nodded, "You're gettin' smart, Nicols, might be you'll survive this hitch."
Gilbert took the exercise through to the end. Then he tightened his rucksack and reluctantly left the top of the tower. Months before, on his second trip, he'd brought rope, set a line onto the face and left it there. He didn't care much about how he got down, so he used the rope and rappelled: Two and a half hours up and two minutes down.
The body is good, so why am I out of sorts? He moved about the small plateau, preparing his meal; heating the two cans of stew, cutting a few hunks of cheese. He ate two handfuls of figs and a pear while he waited for the stew to get hot.
He reviewed the work he'd been doing for the past three months. Site-W, Western Turkey, another 'secret' station which everyone in the defense community, Time Magazine, Aviation Week and probably the average guy in the street knew about.
The network of similar listening posts around the world was part of a chain of electronic intelligence gathering stations. Some of the sites had the large FPS series, over-the-horizon radars to track Soviet military flights and rocket launches. Each site had a variety of receiving equipment that covered every frequency band, civilian and military.
The men and women who worked there were about equally divided between technical personnel and listener-translators. Gilbert was an expert on the systems and operations engineering side, one of that rare breed who are equally comfortable with electronic hardware and software.
This particular site hadn't been putting out good quality data for months and he'd been sent to find out why.
It was mostly people. There were still some tracking anomalies in two of the big radar dishes, but he had a handle on that.
It wasn't related to his work. A year before he ended a love affair with a dancer in Paris, but that had been amiable. Neither wanted commitment.
There'd been a long series of mild arguments, which foreshadowed the end. They couldn't get passionate enough for a full-blown row, so there wasn't even the pleasure of making up.
If anything, he was relieved.
After he finished his meal he usually sat for a while and smoked a cigar. This morning he gathered his things as soon as he finished eating and headed back to the site.
Four days later he got the notification. It was remarkable in its lack of detail.
"I regret to inform you that your mother is dead: funeral on Tuesday next. As Executor of your mother's estate please advise." It was signed by a Mr. Eavers: a lawyer he didn’t know.
Chapter 3
Gilbert collapsed, like a man who all his life believes in the laws of gravity and suddenly finds himself floating off the surface of the planet.
"This is wrong! It cannot be!"
The site manager, a French NATO appointee, Robert Beaumanier, having read the telegram before he gave it to Gilbert, didn't know how to respond.
Since Gilbert's arrival he'd seen the work of a resolute, highly skilled engineer, one who never raised his voice.
"Mr. Piers?"
Gilbert looked at him for some time before Beaumanier realized Gilbert didn't see him at all. He looked at something far removed from the small office.
Finally, Beaumanier, not very bright under the best of circumstances, realized Gilbert was in shock, took his arm and gently led him to a worn couch covered with frayed damask. From a sideboard near the desk, he took a bottle of American whiskey, poured a generous amount into a heavy tumbler and placed it directly into Gilbert's hand. He led him to drink like a child.
"Here, drink this, Gilbert..." He pronounced his name in the French way. "Drink it, mon vieux. Je suis désolé. I am very sorry."
Gilbert drank, shuddering convulsively. His expression of disbelief hadn't changed. Tears came, but his features were frozen. He hadn't drunk twenty glasses of whiskey in his whole life, yet it was as though the body, apart from the spirit, wasn't affected by the powerful liquid.
The body weeps, the spirit is numb. After more than a half hour sitting thus, the glass clutched forgotten in his hand, he let go of whatever thought he clung to. His body sagged, the glass fell to the floor and he made a face as though having tasted something bitter. His hands, gripped and twisted in his lap
He looked up at the plump manager, aware of him for the first time since reading the telegram.
"I saw her...four months ago, Robert. A little murmur," Gilbert touched his chest, "otherwise her health was fine. She looked forward to..." He coughed, "expanding the garden. There were commissions from several magazines, other activities, which plus her investigative work would have taken years to complete. It is ridiculous!" He did not shout, but it was, never the less, a plea.
It took a day to arrange transport to Ankara and then to the United States. Before the trip, before the telegram, he seldom slept more than five hours a night. He didn't feel a need for more, and in fact resented the five hours as wasteful. Later, thinking back on this time, he would remember little of the flights.
On the longest segment from London to Los Angeles he slept for nine hours despite a worried stewardess's attempts to wake him for meals.
When he arrived in Los Angeles this strange bout of lethargy ended abruptly. It came and went without explanation. Those few hours when he was awake he knew only one thing with certainty; there was something strange, and something very wrong about his mother's death.
He knew nothing about how or why she died, but he was certain of the wrongness.
By the time he arrived in LA and caught a taxi to his family's home in the Los Feliz district, he had his grief under control.
Although he'd lived and worked all over the world for the past ten years, he considered his relationship with his mother close and affectionate. They wrote often. His letters and hers in return were more than duty between mother and son. They were the natural extension of education, temperament and affection.
Much of his education had come from his parents and their friends. Their spiritual home was the world of books: the quiet halls of academe, their natural environment.
In her letters she talked of her ups and downs, her wins and losses. Nothing in her letters suggested any sort of physical problem or personal difficulty.
