the Third Twin

34

JANE EDELSBOROUGH WAS A WIDOW IN HER EARLY FIFTIES. A statuesque but untidy woman, she normally dressed in loose ethnic clothes and sandals. She had a commanding intellect, but no one would have guessed it to look at her. Berrington found such people baffling. If you were clever, he thought, why disguise yourself as an idiot by dressing badly? Yet universities were full of such people—in fact, he was exceptional in taking care over his appearance.

Today he was looking especially natty in a navy linen jacket and matching vest with lightweight houndstooth-check pants.

He inspected his image in the mirror behind the door before leaving his office on his way to see Jane.

He headed for the Student Union. Faculty rarely ate there—Berrington had never entered the place—but Jane had gone there for a late lunch, according to the chatty secretary in physics.

The lobby of the union was full of kids in shorts standing in line to get money out of the bank teller machines. He stepped into the cafeteria and looked around. She was in a far corner, reading a journal and eating French fries with her fingers.

The place was a food court, such as Berrington had seen in airports and shopping malls, with a Pizza Hut, an ice-cream counter, and a Burger King, as well as a regular cafeteria. Berrington picked up a tray and went into the cafeteria section. Inside a glass-fronted case were a few tired sandwiches and some doleful cakes. He shuddered; in normal circumstances he would drive to the next state rather than eat here.

This was going to be difficult. Jane was not his kind of woman. That made it even more likely that she would lean the wrong way at the discipline hearing. He had to make a friend of her in a short time. It would call for all his powers of charm.

He bought a piece of cheesecake and a cup of coffee and carried them to Jane’s table. He felt jittery, but he forced himself to look and sound relaxed. “Jane,” he said. “This is a pleasant surprise. May I join you?”

“Sure,” she said amiably, putting her journal aside. She took off her glasses, revealing deep brown eyes with wrinkles of amusement at the corners, but she looked a mess: her long gray hair was tied in some kind of colorless rag and she wore a shapeless gray green blouse with sweat marks at the armpits. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here,” she said.

“I’ve never been here. But at our age it’s important not to get set in our ways—don’t you agree?”

“I’m younger than you,” she said mildly. “Although I guess no one would think so.”

“Sure they would.” He took a bite of his cheesecake. The base was as tough as cardboard and the filling tasted like lemon-flavored shaving cream. He swallowed with an effort. “What do you think of Jack Budgen’s proposed biophysics library?’

“Is that why you came to see me?”

“I didn’t come here to see you, I came to try the food, and I wish I hadn’t. It’s awful. How can you eat here?”

She dug a spoon into some kind of dessert. “I don’t notice what I eat, Berry, I think about my particle accelerator. Tell me about the new library.”

Berrington had been like her, obsessed by work, once upon a time. He had never allowed himself to look like a hobo on account of it, but nevertheless as a young scientist he had lived for the thrill of discovery. However, his life had taken a different direction. His books were popularizations of other people’s work; he had not written an original paper in fifteen or twenty years. For a moment he wondered whether he might have been happier if he had made a different choice. Slovenly Jane, eating cheap food while she ruminated over problems in nuclear physics, had an air of calm and contentment that Berrington had never known.

And he was not managing to charm her. She was too wise. Perhaps he should flatter her intellectually. “I just think you should have a bigger input. You’re the senior physicist on campus, one of the most distinguished scientists JFU has—you ought to be involved in this library.”

“Is it even going to happen?”

“I think Genetico is going to finance it.”

“Well, that’s a piece of good news. But what’s your interest?”

“Thirty years ago I made my name when I started asking which human characteristics are inherited and which are learned. Because of my work, and the work of others like me, we now know that a human being’s genetic inheritance is more important than his upbringing and environment in determining a whole range of psychological traits.”

“Nature, not nurture.”

“Exactly. I proved that a human being is his DNA. The young generation is interested in how this process works. What is the mechanism by which a combination of chemicals gives me blue eyes and another combination gives you eyes which are a deep, dark shade of brown, almost chocolate colored, I guess.”

“Berry!” she said with a wry smile. “If I were a thirty-year-old secretary with perky breasts I might imagine you were flirting with me.”

That was better, he thought. She had softened at last. “Perky?” he said, grinning. He deliberately looked at her bust, then back up at her face. “I believe you’re as perky as you feel.”

She laughed, but he could tell she was pleased. At last he was getting somewhere with her. Then she said: “I have to go.”

Damn. He could not keep control of this interaction. He had to get her attention in a hurry. He stood up to leave with her. “There will probably be a committee to oversee the creation of the new library,” he said as they walked out of the cafeteria. “I’d like your opinion on who should be on it.”

“Gosh, I’ll need to think about that. Right now I have to give a lecture on antimatter.”

Goddamn it, I’m losing her, Berrington thought.

Then she said: “Can we talk again?”

Berrington grasped at a straw. “How about over dinner?”

She looked startled. “All right,” she said after a moment.

“Tonight?”

A bemused look came over her face. “Why not?”

That would give him another chance, at least. Relieved, he said: “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“Okay.” She gave him her address and he made a note in a pocket pad.

“What kind of food do you like?” he said. “Oh, don’t answer that, I remember, you think about your particle accelerator.” They emerged into the hot sun. He squeezed her arm lightly. “See you tonight.”

“Berry,” she said, “you’re not after something, are you?”

He winked at her. “What have you got?”

She laughed and walked away.