The Night Travellers

6. The Main Line

6 The Main Line Fred Davis stood before the green even spread of his lawn, so lately mowed and rolled by the same gardeners his father had dealt with before him. Like God on the Sunday of Creation Week, he saw that it was good. He circled, careful to step on flagstones. He checked the slates on the slope of roof above the library. He wandered to the end of the drive to ponder over a stone tool and storage outhouse, no longer in use. Convert it to some purpose? Tear it down? The fashioning was pure Pennsylvanian,native rock, rough surfaces, made to last. He let go of nothing. The lilacs, their blooms spent, had been nicely pruned. Reluctantly, he turned his mind to treasures within. Kate, her blond hair turning gray with what went on inside her mind. They had just returned from a cruise. The Greek Isles, memories of Odysseus , the wine-dark deep, Penelope weaving as she waited out the years. Kate on deck, her eager talk throughout one afternoon, all facing off with a fellow researcher she had brought to light among the passengers. "We were all but there, I could see it just around the corner." A detailed account, featuring . . . changes in chromosomes . . . amino acids . . . variations in DNA . . . the researcher and his wife nodding in unison, the swish of evening waters, no island in sight. How, in this sea, freckled with islands, could there ever be a whole hour with no island in sight? Nearing Crete, they said. But no Crete so far. "You certainly took an original approach," the researcher had agreed. "Too bad it got cancelled that way. No funding is the big cry in the whole business, the cutoff signal." "When the tap runs dry . . ." his wife said. 315 316 T H E N I G H T T R A V E L L E R S "There ain't no water no more/' he finished. Kate burst in, "Oh, but you see there would have been. We had additional funding from a defense contract. It's just that my daughter—" "I'm going down to dress," Fred told her, turning from the rail, hoping there was warning in his voice. If she got started on Mary Kerr . . . But how did you ever stop her? Later, behind the researcher and his wife in the ship's corridor, Fred heard them exchange notes. "That particular approach to the amino acids was checked out as early as '70." "I thought so, but I didn't dare try to stop her." That night Kate had fallen on the dance floor, though with a suddenly rough sea he managed to cover for her. Later she had been sick in the state room. Alone on his impeccable lawn now, moving over his property, he knew that what he was doing was circling, avoiding the move of coming face-to-face with Kate. Confrontations led to decisions; decisions to action. Did he dare? Inside, what did it matter what she was actually doing on this fair summer morning? It was her mind that made the climate he would have to enter. Mary Kerr and Kathy. Obsessively she dwelt on them. A drink would break the circuits. But the break itself was deadly. This beautiful creature, found by chance, Fred told himself, was his to preserve, even to the point of killing for her. Killing? He had just happened to stumble on the phrase. Yet it might, he concluded, bewhat is now required. Ethan Marbell, whom she lavishly blamed, was said to be dying. No reason to doubt that. But Jefferson Blaise was always healthily present among the dregs of her bitter cup. Her daughter's life, with that gruesome mate, would remain cursed as long as he lived. Fred began to wonder how to pluck him loose so the poison could flow out, the streams clear. He thought he might travel a little. He would see what he could do. ...