Pernak didn’t seem overeager to accept the implied invitation. to agree. He started to say something noncommittal, then stopped and looked up as Jay entered. “Hi, Jay. How was the movie’
“Aw, I wasn’t watching it.” Jay waved vaguely with the book and returned it to its shelf. “Usual stuff.”
“What are the gifts still talking about in there?” Bernard asked.
“I’m not sure. I guess I couldn’t have been listening that much.”
“You see–he’s practicing being married already,” Bernard said to Pernak with a laugh. Pernak grinned momentarily. Bernard looked at his son. “Well, it’s early yet. Figured out what you’re doing this afternoon?”
“I thought maybe I’d go over to Jersey and put in a few hours on the loco.”
“Fine.” Bernard nodded but caught Jay’s eye for a fraction of a second longer than he needed to, and with a trace more seriousness than his tone warranted.
“How’s it coming along?” Pernak asked.
“Pretty good. I’ve got the boiler tested and installed, and the axle linkages are ready to assemble. Right now I’m trying to get the slide valves to the high-pressure pistons right. They’re tricky.”
“Got far with them?” Pernak asked.
“I had to scrap one set.” lay sighed. “I guess it’s hack to square one on another. That’s what I reckon I’ll start today.”
“So when are you going to show it to me?”. Jay shrugged. “Any time you like.” “You going to Jersey fight now?”
“I was going to. I don’t have to make it right now.” Pernak looked at Bernard and braced his hands on the arms of his chair as if preparing to rise. “Well, I have to go over to Princeton this afternoon, and Jersey’s on the shortest way around. Jay and I could share a cab.”
Bernard stood up. “Sure… don’t let me keep you if you have things to do. Thanks for letting me have the cutter back.” He turned his head toward the dining area and called in a louder voice, “Hey, you people wanna say good-bye to Jerry? He’s leaving.” Pernak and lay waited by the door for lean and Marie to appear.
“On your way?” lean asked Pernak.
“Things won’t do themselves. I’m stopping off at Jersey with Jay to see how his loco’s coming along.”
“Oh, that locomotive!” lean looked at lay. “Are you working on it again?”
“For a few hours maybe.”
“Well, try not to make it half the night this time, won’t you.” And to Pernak: ‘Take care, Jerry. Thanks for dropping by. Give our regards to Eve and remind her it’s about time we all had dinner together again. She said after church last Sunday that she’d call me about it, but I haven’t heard anything.”
“I’ll remind her,” Pernak promised. “Ready, lay? Let’s go.”
Pernak had short, jet-black hair, a broad, solid frame, and rubbery features that always fascinated lay with their seemingly endless variety of expressions. He had lectured on physics topics several times at lay’s school and had proved popular as much for his entertainment value as for ‘his grasp of the subject matter, which he always managed to make exciting with tantalizing glimpses inside black holes, mind-bending accounts of the first few minutes of the universe, and fantastic speculation about living in twisted spacetimes with unusual geometries. On one occasion he had introduced Feynman diagrams, which represented particles as “world lines” traversing a two-dimensional domain, one axis representing space and the other time. Mathematically and theoretically a particle going forward in time was indistinguishable from its antiparticle going backward in time, and Pernak had offered the staggering conjecture that there might be just one electron in the entire universe–repeating itself over and over by going forward as an electron and backward as a positron. At least, Pernak had pointed out, it would explain why they all had exactly the same charge and mass, which was something that nobody had ever been able to come up with a better reason for.
Pernak had a surprisingly long stride for his height, and Jay had to hurry to keep up as they’ walked a couple of blocks through densely packed but ingeniously secluded interlocking terraces of Maryland residential units. It wasn’t long before Pernak was talking about phase-.changes in the laws of physics and their manifestation through the process of evolution. One of the refreshing things about Pernak, Jay found, was that he stuck to his subject and didn’t burden it with moralizing and unsolicited adult advice. He had never been able to make up his mind whether Pernak was secretly a skeptic about things like that or just believed in minding his own business, but he had never found a way of leading up to the question.