Party Line

The senator cut him off. Til talk with you some other time.'

'Any time,' said Thomas, as affably as he was able. Til look forward to it.'

V

They had gathered in the lounge, as was their daily custom, for a round of drinks before dinner.

Jay Martin was telling about what had happened earlier in the day.

'It shook me,' he said. 'Here was this voice, from far away…'

'How did you know it was far away?' asked Thomas. 'Before they told you, that is.'

'I can tell,' said Martin. 'You get so you can tell. There is a certain smell to distance.'

He bent over quickly, reaching for a handkerchief, barely getting it up in time to muffle the explosive sneeze. Straightening, he mopped his face, wiped his streaming eyes.

'Your allergy again.' said Mary Kay.

Tm sorry,' he said. 'How in hell can a man pick up pollen out here in this desert? Nothing but sage and cactus.'

'Maybe it's not pollen,' said Mary Kay. 'It could be mold. Or dandruff. Has anyone here got dandruff?'

'You can't be allergic to human dandruff. It has to be cat dandruff,' said Jennie Sherman.

'We haven't any cats here,' said Mary Kay, 'so it couldn't be cat dandruff. Are you sure about human dandruff, Jennie?'

Tm sure,' said Jennie. 'I read it somewhere.'

'Ever see a physician about it?' asked Thomas.

Martin shook his head, still mopping at his eyes.

'You should,' said Thomas. 'You could be given allergy tests. A battery of tests until they find what you're allergic to.'

'Go ahead and tell us more,' said Richard Garner, 'about this guy who said the world was about to end.'

'Not the world,' said Martin. 'The universe. He was just spreading the word. In a hurry to spread the word. As if they'd just found out. Like Chicken Little, yelling that the sky was falling. Talking for just a minute, then dropping out. I suppose going on to someone else. Trying to catch everyone he could. Sounded a little frantic. As if there was little time.'

'Maybe it was a joke,' suggested Jennie.

'I don't think so. It didn't sound like a joke. I don't think any of the people out there joke. If so, I've never heard of it. Maybe we're the only ones who have a sense of humor. Anyone here ever hear anything that sounded like a joke?'

They shook their heads.

The rest of you are halfway laughing at it,' said Mary Kay. 'I don't think it's funny at all. Here are these people out on the rim, trying all these years, for no one knows how many centuries, to understand the universe, then up pops someone and tells them the universe has run down and they, out at the edge of it, will be the first to go. Maybe they were very close to understanding. Maybe they needed only a few more years and now they haven't got the years.'

'Would that be the way it would happen?' asked Hal Rawlins. 'Jay, you're the physicist. You'd be the one to know.'

'I can't be certain, Hal. We don't know enough about the structure of the universe. There might be certain conditions that we are not aware of. Entropy presupposes a spreading out, so that the total energy of a thermodynamic system is so evenly distributed that there is no energy available for work. That's not the case here, of course. Out at the rim of the universe, maybe. The energy and matter out there would be old, have had more time. Or would it? God, I don't know. I'm talking about something no one knows about.'

'But you finally contacted Einstein,' said Thomas.

'Yes, he came in a little later.'

'Anything?'

'No, the same as ever. We both got tired after a time, I guess. And talked about something else.'

'Is that the way it often goes?'

'Every now and then. Today we talked about houses. Or I think it was houses. Near as I can make out, they live in some sort of bubble. Got the impression of huge webs with bubbles scattered through them. Do you suppose Einstein could be some sort of spider?'

'Could be,' said Thomas.

'What beats the hell out of me,' said Martin, 'is why Einstein sticks with me. He beats his brains out trying to tell me about FTL and I beat my brains out trying to understand what he's telling me and never getting it. I swear I'm not a great deal closer than I was to start with, but he doesn't give up on me. He just keeps boring in. What I can't figure is what he's getting out of it.'

'Every once in a while I get the funny feeling,' said Garner, 'that maybe these aren't different people who are talking to us. Not a lot of different cultures, but a lot of different individuals, maybe different specialists, from the same society.'

'I doubt that's true,' said Jennie Sherman. 'Mine has a personality. A real personality. And different, very different, from the personalities the rest of you talk about. This one of mine is obsessed with death…'

'What a doleful subject,' said Rawlins. 'But I guess you've told us about him before. Talking about death all this time…'

'It was depressing to start with,' said Jennie, 'but it's not any more. He's made a philosophy out of it. At times, he makes death sound almost beautiful.'

'A decadent race,' said Garner.