Dan’s Notebook
In all probability Fran senses that I am still a virgin.
How else am I supposed to explain her behavior? She swims bare-ass in the excited lake, and makes sure I am watching. I have strolled into the bathroom and seen her lying there in her birthday suit: for a while she pretends not to notice; then she asks me to leave but makes no move to cover herself. Her heavy flesh shines a deeper brown in the moisture. She breastfeeds the baby right in front of my nose.
Francesca has obviously taken it upon herself to initiate me into the so-called mysteries of sexual praxis. She goes to bed deliberately early, and Uncle Ned is soon obliged to follow. Most nights they make love in absolute silence (presumably she insists on this, to keep me guessing), but once, as I knelt there outside their room, she lost control and openly sought me out with her cries of pain and yearning. All these complications will make it much harder for me to break the truth to her about the baby.
Down at the Section, Dad had a Russian friend, a defector and a staunch American, though he often moaned and wept —and sang—about his beloved motherland when he’d taken a drink or two. (Everybody drinks up a storm, down at the Section; and Slizard heads a big team.) Whenever they said good-by, in person or on the telephone, they always signed off in the same way. Dad: “Death to the babies.” Andrei: “And to your babies.” Dad: “And to your babies’ babies.” Andrei: “And to your babies’ babies’ babies. ” And so on. It was kind of a joke. After all, everyone jokes about their work, even people in the extinction business. They said it, let off steam. To stay sane.
I am a schizophrenic and my thoughts would be mad anyway (I know this, using insight), but there are mad thoughts everywhere now and at least mine are mine, not manmade, like Francesca’s, all ditties and jingles and lies. Uncle Ned has run away with the idea that I have a reality problem. Oh yeah? Reality has the reality problem. Reality is right out of control and could try anything, anytime. It is like the lake, always ready to explode. Ned will understand this all too well when I tell him—and I will tell him soon—that the baby has schizophrenia.
Ned’s Diary
July 27. Benson Holloway says ,he’ll give me $150 for the jeep and I have half a mind to accept. If I strip off the plates and use it only on the property then I don’t pay tax or insurance—but the old crate still guzzles money anyway. In this weather it overheats in five minutes and starts to drip and gurgle with gook and fumes. Just coming back from town you have to drive with your head practically out the window. But Benson is a shrewd bastard and why is he interested? This time next summer, though, I’ll have to pay somebody to come and haul it away. Hell, I’ll take the $150 and look around for something more practical. Mother and baby blooming (Fran sleepily, Harriet noisily!) and Dan absolutely no problem. The sun is really going it. You look up there and you think—the sun is really going it. The sun is really going nuclear.
Dan’s Notebook
Paradoxically, or at any rate surprisingly, the sun is powered by the weak force.
It is fueled by particle decay. If you want to witness nuclear fusion, then take a look at the sun. Ah, but you can’t. Even at a distance of ninety million miles, it still hurts the eye. A thermonuclear detonation gives rise to temperatures appreciably greater than those to be found in the sun’s core—or anywhere else in the universe, except for transient phenomena like exploding stars. At the Section one time, Dad showed me a film of a steel ball undergoing a significant fraction of this superstellar heat. It liquefies, and bubbles, like boiling water. And now the lake looks like boiling steel, what with the sun piling into it day after day.
Harriet, they tell me, was a premature baby. Well she has certainly made up for lost time. Many people believe that schizophrenia is a postadolescent occurrence. They are mistaken. An infant can show schizophrenic symptoms at a mere eight weeks. Harriet is eight months gone now and the condition is already far advanced. I’m afraid she is more or less a classic case.