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.
“Now there’s just the two of us.” Mary Mother-of-Mac sat down beside me. “So, my dear, why don’t we find out a little more about each other?”
I learned during the next three-quarters of an hour what she meant by that. I was asked a series of penetrating questions regarding everything from my education and job description to my personal hygiene and tastes in men.
At the end of it she sat back and gave me a big smile. “You know, that is so much a relief. Artie is such an innocent. I was afraid that he might have fallen for a pretty face.” She thought for a moment, possibly decided that she was being less than tactful, and amended her statement. “Or he might have found an intellectual. That would be even worse.”
I said, “Perish the thought.”
It was wasted on her. “Now I’ll tell you what’s happening and why I’m here,” she said. “First, I’m going to be married.”
I made conventional sounds of congratulation.
“Well, I mean, it’s as good as being married. Fazool and I are going to live together. He’s enormously rich, and he likes the idea that I’m utterly poor. It makes him feel protective — he thinks if it weren’t for him I’d be in the poor-house.”
The house I would suggest for her sounded rather like poor-house; but I kept my mouth shut.
“Fazool would be very upset,” she went on, “if he ever found out that I had funds of my own. So I’ve decided to put my money into a trust. Artie is my only child, and the lad will be the ultimate beneficiary. I’m glad you’re around to take care of him, because he can be such a dim-wit.”
I looked around. The tea-room would be filling up in a few minutes, but fortunately the place was still deserted except for the two of us. Describing McAndrew as a dim-wit at this Institute would get you the same reaction as chug-a-lugging the altar wine during a church service.
“What about Mac’s father?” I asked. “Shouldn’t he be a beneficiary?”
“Ah, yes.” Her face took on a look of wistful sadness.
“Dead?” I realized that I had never heard McAndrew speak of his father, not even once.
“By all the logic, he is.” She smiled sweetly. “But a son-of-a-bitch like that is awful hard to kill.”
The arrival of a chattering half-dozen scientists saved me from fielding that remark. Mary McAndrew made an instant survey, checked the line of her skirt to make sure that plenty of leg was showing, and headed for the tallest and most distinguished-looking of the group. It was Plimpton, who according to McAndrew had not had an original thought since he started to grow facial hair and possibly not before. On the other hand, I don’t think Mary was seeking original thought. Original sin, maybe.
I followed her toward the tea and sweetmeats. Apparently I had been weighed in the balance and found reasonably adequate. But I suspected that Mary McAndrew employed an unusual scale.
A mother, and now a father, too. I couldn’t wait to hear McAndrew’s side of the story.
But wait I had to. McAndrew arrived at last from the seminar with half a dozen other scientists. He headed toward his mother. Before they could exchange more than two words, Emma Gowers came sashaying over toward them.
A word about Emma. She is the Institute’s expert on multiple kernel arrays and a formidable brain. She is also blond and beautiful, with a roving eye, a lusty temperament, and a taste for big, hairy men of diminished mental capacity.
I was standing only a step away. I saw Mary McAndrew and Emma size each other up, and I realized that neither knew who the other was. But like called to like, and they straightened and preened like two fighting cocks.
“Come on, Mac,” Emma said. “You and I have a date.”
The wording was provocative, but I knew that Emma had no possible sexual interest in McAndrew. His mother didn’t. So far as she could tell, Emma was cutting in.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
McAndrew made a feeble gesture from one to the other. “Mother, this is one of my professional colleagues, Emma Gowers. Emma, this is my mother.”
Mary McAndrew extended a slim and delicate hand. “And which profession would that be, my dear?” Her tone couldn’t have been warmer.
Emma gave her a friendly smile. “Not the one you are most familiar with, I’m sure.” She had been making a close inspection of Mary McAndrew’s neck and the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “But it’s encouraging to know that a person doesn’t have to change her line of work, just because she’s old. Come on, Mac.”
She gripped McAndrew firmly by the arm and pulled him away toward the door. I was left to face his mother.
I said, “It’s not the way it looks. She’s not chasing him. There’s a problem with the balanced drive on one of the ships, and he and Emma have an appointment to take a look at it.”
Mary McAndrew seemed not in the least upset. She said thoughtfully, “Well, I certainly underestimated that one. She and I must have a cozy chat when they get back. Where do you say they’re going?”
It was easier to show than to tell. I put down my cup and led her across to one of the room’s small observation ports. “They’ll be going outside the Institute and over to one of the ships. You can see it from here. That’s the Flamingo, the Institute’s smallest experimental vessel.”