At the same time that Dr. Jerry Lukacs was looking blearily into the mirror in his cluttered apartment in Hyde Park, a party was boarding a military aircraft in Washington. The NSC had dispatched Tom Harkness to go to Chicago and inspect the "object."
Washington had been through mild panic, and had now slipped into skepticism. The magic word was spreading—hoax—and since Harkness had done more of the spreading than anyone, he got tagged for the assignment.
He strode aboard the aircraft with confidence. And why not? Tom Harkness hadn't climbed this far up the NSC ladder by not finding exactly what he'd been told to find. . . .
Not one of the team of hangers-on and Pentagon desk jockeys boarding with Harkness had ever allowed themselves to look like Jerry Lukacs. Not even first thing in the morning. Jerry tugged at the almost-goatee on his chin. He must buy some razor blades again. Really must. He didn't even notice the disordered bush of hair. If he had noticed it, he'd have chuckled and said "medusoid" and left it at that. Jerry was possibly the most unsartorially elegant person in the entire universe.
He dressed his scrawny body by guess, and with some difficulty. He was trying to read at the time—Jerry was usually trying to read at any time—and the clothes kept getting in the way of the book. It was only with great reluctance, and great haste, that he tore his eyes away from the print from time to time to finish his vestmental chore.
Finally, he was clad in clean jeans, unmatched socks, a shirt and a windbreaker. The prerequisites of not being arrested for public indecency being fulfilled, he wandered into the kitchen for a cup of black coffee and a bowl of cornflakes. He was still reading as he went. But, since he was familiar with the layout of his apartment, he did manage to avoid bumping into corners. Or, at least, to turn head-on collisions into glancing encounters.
Once in the kitchen, alas, he discovered that there was almost no coffee left. And, while there was a full box of cereal, there wasn't more than half a cup of milk left in the carton. Jerry was as absentminded about grocery shopping as he was about getting dressed.
He peered peevishly at the note pinned to the refrigerator door with a small magnet. Must buy more milk. Really must. Coffee too. Razor blades.
Jerry sighed. Then, steeling himself to necessity, he set the book down on the counter—carefully marking his place with a fork—and set to work. Fortunately, long experience had inured him to such hardships. He rather fancied himself a kitchen survivalist, in point of fact.
Old coffee grounds with a spoon full of new coffee on top will work, after all. And this wasn't the first time he'd turned insufficient milk into impromptu skim milk by simply adding water to his cereal. As he ate his breakfast, the reopened book propped against the laid-flat cereal box, Jerry even congratulated himself on improving the healthfulness of his diet.
On the flight from Washington, Tom Harkness complained about not having real cream for his coffee.
Jerry Lukacs headed out for the Oriental Institute. Most people had long been at work already, but, well, he was pretty near nocturnal.
His progress was slow, of course, since he was still reading the book. Fortunately, with the honed skills of a rabid reader, Jerry had an almost instinctive sense for when he was approaching an intersection. A quick glance was enough to check the traffic light. Green, he marched across, still reading. Red, he waited. If he was lucky, and someone else was also waiting at the corner, he didn't even have to glance up to see when the light changed. He just started walking whenever he sensed the person next to him go into motion.
As usual, therefore, he missed the scenery of the University of Chicago's rather charming environs. As one of America's older universities, the U of C had grown up inside a city rather than on a set-aside campus. Except for the central quad adjoining the Oriental Institute, the university's grounds were intermixed with the city's Hyde Park neighborhood. The end result was a kind of cosmopolitan pastiche of staid old college buildings and far less staid commercial establishments.
But Jerry, this day as on most, didn't notice any of it. He also, of course, failed to notice the unusual number of police vehicles cruising the area. He was far too preoccupied with his dissection of this idiot thesis! advanced by Professor Kilmer concerning the origins of the sphinx mythology prevalent throughout the ancient eastern Mediterranean.
The Oriental Institute was only two blocks away from the Regenstein Library. By the time Jerry reached the steps leading up into the Institute, the population density of police vehicles resembled an ant hill. But Jerry was oblivious to it all.
As Jerry Lukacs walked through the entrance to the Oriental Institute, Lamont Jackson opened up his toolbox, down in the air handler room of the same building. It was a noisy place, buried in the middle of the large edifice. Lamont was one of the university's mechanical repairmen. He was usually the one sent to the Institute whenever a job needed to be done. He was the acknowledged expert on all aspects of maintenance in that particular building.
To a large degree, the reputation was due to Lamont's general level of skill. But Lamont also engaged in shameless self-promotion whenever repair work needed to be done at the Institute. Lamont was fond of working in that building, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, over the years he had found himself becoming fascinated with the work they did there. In his own eclectic way, the maintenance mechanic had developed a level of knowledge concerning ancient history and mythology which would have astonished the academics who worked at the Oriental Institute.
Well, except one—Jerry Lukacs. Which was the second reason Lamont was looking forward to the day's work. The absent-minded Dr. Lukacs, Lamont had discovered, was not given in the least to putting on professorial airs when talking with a mere repairman. The visiting professor seemed to find nothing odd in Lamont's interest. The fact that a man with no better than a high school diploma should be both informed and curious about mythology didn't seem to strike Dr. Lukacs as odd. He seemed to assume everyone would know the Gilgamesh legend and the tales of Homer. Well, he obviously wasn't born and raised in Chicago's south side! And the professor shared Lamont's own enthusiasm for that lowest of all literary art forms: the pun. Later that day, Lamont would wander up to Dr. Lukacs' office on the third floor. They'd enjoy a few minutes' worth of punstery. Since their last exchange, Lamont had thought up several new wordplays. Ancient names and terminology gave you a lot of scope.
For the most part, however, Lamont enjoyed working in the Oriental Institute's air handler room for another reason. He could play music—to which he was even more devoted than puns—and play it loudly. The air handler room was isolated from everything else, as well as being noisy in its own right. So nobody could hear the music and complain.
Lamont had always found that Tina Turner and a nice collection of jazz improved any work environment immensely. So, pulling out his tools, he began his day's labor with a willing spirit. Five minutes later he was oblivious to the outside world. The demands of the job itself, and the loudness of the air handler room, isolated him. So did Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain, played at a respectable level.
Dr. Elizabeth De Beer, sitting at her desk in the nearby building which headquartered the University of Chicago's biologists, was also completely oblivious to the rest of the world. The cause, in her case, was grief.
It was a quiet kind of grief. More in the way of melancholy than anguish. Liz had long known that her marriage was gasping its last breath. So the final gasp, coming over a restaurant table the night before, had come as no surprise. Nor could she even say it came with any real regrets.
Still . . .
She remembered a day once, in her native South Africa, when she had worn a wedding gown instead of the utilitarian work clothes she was wearing now. The sun had shone so brightly that day, it seemed.
So, at least, she remembered. True, it was not a memory she particularly trusted. Looking back now, she could easily see how foolish she had been to think that a marriage with such a self-centered man as Nick would ever work.
Still . . .
She remembered another day, and was oblivious to the present one.