Aub’s face radiated sheer delight.
“You don’t say!” He made it sound like the best news he had heard for weeks. “I don’t believe it. You mean you finally told those ACRE bums to go get lost. Hey, Brad, that’s just great, man—really great!”
Clifford regarded him sourly.
“Why so funny?”
“You’re not gonna believe it. We both arrived at the same conclusion—I quit Berkeley too!”
Clifford gaped for a second or two. As the message sank in his features slowly broadened into a smile.
“You did? You too? That’s crazy . . . Why?”
“They tried to make me take that job again—the one I told you about—the secret project. But by that time I’d already figured the whole thing was a messy, lousy business and I didn’t want to get mixed up in it. So I told them I wasn’t interested. Then they tried using muscle and said they were empowered to order me to take it under special security legislation. I said I sure as hell hadn’t empowered them, and not long after that it occurred to me that the time had come for me and them to go our own separate ways.”
“Brad’s cleaned out,” Sarah told him. “They’ve cut off everything—all the benefits. He won’t be able to get a decent job either.”
“Yeah, me too.” Aub grinned, shrugged, and showed his empty palms. “So, who cares? Just remember the ice ball.”
“Ice ball?”
“Twenty billion years from now the whole world will be just one big ball of ice, so it won’t make any difference. I always think about the ice ball when Murphy’s around.”
“Murphy?” Sarah was getting rapidly confused.
“Murphy’s law of engineering,” Aub explained, then looked at her expectantly. She shook her head.
“In any field of human endeavor, anything that can go wrong . . .”
“Will go wrong,” Clifford completed for him. Suddenly they were all laughing.
“Well . . .” Clifford shook his head as if still trying to convince himself that life hadn’t taken a sudden turn into dreamland. “I suppose the cliché for the occasion is, ‘this calls for a drink.’ What’ll it be? Better make the best of it while the stuff lasts.”
“Rye ‘n dry,” Aub told him. “Cheers.”
“Vodka with Bitter Lemon,” Sarah added.
“So what the hell made you come here?” Clifford asked as he walked across to the bar and began pouring the drinks. “I was just about to give you a call.”
Aub collapsed untidily into an armchair and stretched his legs out in front of him, already seeming at ease and at home.
“That’s a good question,” he conceded as if it had occurred to him for the first time. He rubbed his beard reflectively. “I guess the thought never occurred to me to do anything else. It kinda seemed the obvious thing to do.”
“You make a habit of just, sort of . . . appearing in places?” Sarah asked, perching herself on the arm of the chair opposite Aub’s.
“Never really thought about that either,” Aub answered. “But I suppose, yeah . . . maybe you’re right. Good way to stay clear of getting in ruts . . .” He looked across at Clifford. “Oh—there was another reason I came here too . . . the best reason I find for doing anything.”
“What?”
“I felt like it.”
They all laughed again. Aub’s very presence seemed to fill the room with a charge of optimism and confidence that, whatever might come next, they could handle it. Suddenly everything was going to work out in the end . . . somehow.
“So where do you go from here?” Clifford inquired as he came over with the glasses. “Any plans?”
“None.” Aub shrugged and accepted his drink. “This is where I hitch up to serendipity, I guess. What about you?”
“No idea. Looks like maybe we hitch up to serendipity together.”
“I’ll drink to that, Brad,” Aub said readily. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“What about your things, Aub?” Sarah asked.
“Things?”
“Possessions . . . from wherever you were living in California. Where are they?”
“Oh those.” Aub shrugged again. “I sold everything that wouldn’t move to the guy I was sharing the apartment with. Traveling light suits me. The rest of it’s in a couple of bags outside the door.”