October 4

Beyond the wide picture windows and a curtain of tall pines, the river eddied quiet and green around a slight bend. To the west, white clouds rolled inland, their bottoms heavy and gray.

In the kitchen, amid hanging copper pots and pans, Arthur cracked eggs into an iron skillet on the broad gas stove.

"We've known each other for thirty years," he said, bringing out two plates of scrambled eggs and sausage and laying one on the thick oak table before his friend. "We don't see nearly enough of each other."

"That's why we've been friends for so long." Harry tapped the end of his fork lightly on the tabletop. "This air," he said. "Makes me feel like thirty years ago was when I last ate. What a refuge."

"You're cramping my sentimentality," Arthur said, returning to the kitchen for a pitcher of orange juice.

"The sausages ... ?"

"Hebrew National."

"God bless." Harry dug into the fluffy yellow pile on the round stoneware plate. Arthur sat down across from him.

"How do you ever get any work done here? I prefer concrete cells. Helps the concentration."

"You slept well."

"I snore, Arthur, whether I sleep well or not."

Arthur smiled. "And you call yourself an outdoors-man, a fisherman." He cut the tip from a sausage and lifted it to his mouth. "Between consulting and reeducating myself, I've been trying to write a book about the Hampton administration. Haven't even seriously started on chapter one. I'm not sure how to describe what happened. What a wonderful tragic comedy it all was."

"Hampton gave science more credibility than any President since . . . Well," Harry said, "since." He lifted one hand and splayed his fingers.

"I'm hoping Crockerman—"

"That name. A president."

"May not be so bad. He's part of the reason I invited you out here."

Harry raised a bushy eyebrow. The two were as much a contrast as any classic comedy team—Arthur tall and slightly stooped, his brown hair naturally tousled; Harry of medium height and stocky to the edge of plumpness in his middle years, with a high forehead and a friendly, wide-eyed expression that made him seem older than he was. "I told Ithaca." Ithaca, the lovely, classically proportioned wife, whom Arthur hadn't seen in six years, was a decade younger than Harry.

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her you used the tone of voice that means you have some job for me."

Arthur nodded. "I do. The bureau is being revived. In a way."

"Crockerman's reviving Betsy?"

"Not as such." The Bureau of Extraterrestrial Communication—BETC or "Betsy" for short—had been Arthur's last hurrah in Washington. He had served as science advisor and Secretary of BETC for three years under Hampton, who had appointed him after the Arecibo Incident in 1992. That had turned out to be a false alarm, but Hampton had kept Arthur on until his assassination in Mexico City in August of 1994. Vice President William Crockerman had been sworn in on a train in New Mexico, and had immediately moved to place his own stamp on the White House, replacing most of the Cabinet with his own choices. Three months after the swearing-in, the new chief of staff, Irwin Schwartz, had told Arthur, "No little green men, no lost ships off Bermuda . . . might as well go home, Mr. Gordon."