But he is also McAndrew, and they are right, too. He was mourning, for his dead human fellows; and also he was mourning for the loss of the other, the permanent loss of an alien intelligence that he would never again have a chance to meet with and strive to understand.
Then he turned around. He didn’t look at me — at anyone. His eyes were a million miles away.
Mourning? Certainly. But I knew that expression. He was also planning, estimating, calculating.
I went over and grabbed his arm. “McAndrew, don’t even think of it. It’s gone. Get it? It’s gone.”
He returned to the world of the Ptarmigan. His limbs jerked and his eyes blinked like a wind-up toy. “Uh?” he said. And after a few moments, “Gone? Yes, yes, of course it’s gone. I know it is. But Jeanie, if we go back to the exact place where the Ark was when we found it, and make an appropriate set of measurements… we wouldn’t need to tell the USF what we were doing, and of course we’d take every imaginable precaution…”
I hate to admit it, but the others are right. When science is on the agenda, McAndrew doesn’t qualify as human at all.
NINTH CHRONICLE: McAndrew and the Fifth Commandment
What do the following have in common: Aristotle, Confucius, Cleopatra, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Einstein, and Madame Curie?
The answer is, each of them had a mother. And if that seems like a stupid and trivial response, I offer it to make a point. Every famous man or woman has a mother. More often than not, we never hear of her. How much do you know about Hitler’s mother? Not a thing, if you are like me.
So it was a shock one morning to come to the Penrose Institute and learn that McAndrew’s mother was expected to arrive there later the same day. He had a mother, of course he did, but she lived down on Earth and I hadn’t heard him say much about her, except that she had no interest in space or anything to do with it.
“Did she say why she’s coming?” I asked.
McAndrew shook his head. He looked nervous. He may be one of the gods of physics, the best combination of experimenter and theorist since Isaac Newton, but I had the feeling that might cut little ice with Ms. Mary McAndrew. Probably, she still thought of him as her little boy. I imagined a darling and elderly Scottish lady, grey-haired and diminutive, summoning up the nerve at long last to travel beyond high orbit and pay a visit to her own wee laddie.
“Writing her will.” McAndrew spoke at last. “Something about changing her will.”
If anything, that confirmed my impression. Here was a nervous old dear, worried about the approach of death and wanting to make sure that all her affairs were properly in order before the arrival of the Grim Reaper.
I said as much to McAndrew. He looked doubtful, and rather more nervous. I didn’t realized why until I went with him to the docking port, where the transfer vessel from LEO to the L-3 Halo orbit was making its noon arrival.
After a five-minute wait, four people emerged from the lock. The first two were Institute administrative staff, returning from leave and laden down with trophies of Earth including a basket of pineapples and a live parrot.
The third one I also recognized. It was Dr. Siclaro, the Institute’s expert on kernel energy extraction. He too had been on vacation. He was wearing a flowered shirt and very short white shorts, revealing tanned and powerful legs. The fourth person was a glamorous redhead, dressed to kill. She was right at Siclaro’s side, chatting with him while frequently glancing down to eye with interest his calves, muscular thighs, and all points north. From the look on her face he had been protected from direct physical assault only by the new-grown and loathsome mustache that crawled like a hairy ginger caterpillar across his upper lip.
I was looking past those two, waiting to see who next would emerge from the lock, when McAndrew stepped forward. He said weakly, “Hello, Mother.”
“Artie!” The redhead turned and gave him a big hug, leaving generous amounts of face powder and lipstick on his shirt.
Artie? I had never expected to live long enough to hear anyone call Arthur Morton McAndrew, full professor at the Penrose Institute and a man of vast intellectual authority, Artie.
“Mother.” McAndrew awkwardly disengaged himself. “You look well.” She looked, I thought, like an expensive hooker. “This is Jeanie Roker. I’ve told you about her.”
That was news to me. What had he told her? She took my hand and gave me a rapid head-to-foot inspection. “The mother of Artie’s bairn,” she said. “Now, that’s very convenient.”
I couldn’t tell from her expression if she approved or disapproved of the fact that Mac and I had had a child together, but I was doubly glad that there had been a lunchtime ceremony honoring old Professor Limperis and I was dressed in something a lot fancier and more formal than my usual crew’s jump-suit.
Why, though, was it convenient that I was at the Institute?
“The three of us will talk later.” Mary McAndrew was as tall as I, and big blue eyes stared straight into mine. So much for my bent and tiny Scottish elder. “First, though, I need to unpack, freshen up, and maybe have a wee nap.”
She looked at Dr. Siclaro. “I hate to impose, but could you show me where I’ll be staying?”
“It will be a pleasure.” If Monty Siclaro found it odd that he would serve as guide to the Institute rather than McAndrew, he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. He offered Mary McAndrew his arm and they swayed off together. A mechanical porter emerged from the lock and followed them carrying nine cases of luggage.
I wouldn’t pack nine cases for a trip to the end of the Universe. As soon as they were out of earshot I asked, “Mac, just how long is your mother planning to stay here?”
“I have no idea.” He gazed at me hopelessly.
“But her luggage.”
“Doesn’t mean a thing. When I was a lad, she’d take six cases with us for a weekend away.”
Another revelation. McAndrew not only had a mother, he had also had a childhood. In all the years I’d known him he hadn’t said one word about his early days. And I wouldn’t hear more about it for a while, because Emma Gowers arrived to drag him away for a seminar with the enticing title of “Higher-dimensional complex manifolds and a new proof of the Riemann conjecture.” I may not have learned much in life, but I recognize cruel and unusual punishment when I see it. The speaker was Fernando Brill, whom I recalled had an unusually loud and penetrating voice. I wouldn’t even be able to sleep through him. I stayed in the Institute’s parlor, where it was the custom of the faculty to meet daily for tea.
It was only two-thirty. I expected a clear couple of hours when I could take a nap, because I had been travelling most of the night on my journey from Lunar Farside. I closed my eyes. Two minutes later — at least, it felt that way, though the clock registered 3:15 — a dulcet voice cooed in my ear.
“Why, here you are, my dear. I didn’t expect to see you until later.”
I opened my eyes. Mary McAndrew was in front of me. She was wearing a green dress, slit to each hip. By the look of it she was not wearing much else. Monty Siclaro stood at her side, giving an impression of a new-found Egyptian mummy.
McAndrew’s mother turned to him and squeezed his hand. “You run along now Monty, you sweet man. Jeanie and I need to have a bit of a chat. We’ll see more of each other later.”
Monty You-Sweet-Man Siclaro, distinguished fellow of the Penrose Institute and leading expert on the extraction of energy from Kerr-Newman black holes, dutifully tottered away. His etiolated look suggested there wasn’t much more of him for her to see.