Free Timescape by Gregory Benford Page B

the rest. There was a quickness of mind, certainly, and a lighthearted skepticism about politics and the way the world was run. Beyond that they seemed pretty much like everybody else.
    He decided to try a feeler of a different sort.
    "What did you think of Liston knocking out Patterson?"
    Blank stares.
    "He decked him in only two minutes of the first round."
    "Sorry, don't follow that sort of thing," Boyle said. "I should imagine the spectators would be rather miffed if they paid very much for seats."
    "A hundred dollars for a ringside seat," Gordon said.
    "Almost a dollar a second," Bernard chuckled, and that got them off on a comparison of time per dollar of all human events, considered as a class.
    Boyle tried to find the most expensive of all and Penny topped him with sex itself; five minutes of pleasure and an entire costly child to bring up if you weren't careful. Boyle's eyes twinkled and he said to her, "Five minutes? Not a great advertisement for you, Gordon."
    In the quick bubble of laughter no one noticed Gordon's jaw muscles clench. He was mildly shocked that Boyle would assume they were sleeping together, and then make a joke about it. Damned irritating. But talk moved on to other subjects and the knotting tension eased away.
    Food arrived and Penny continued to inject witty asides, plainly charming Boyle. Gordon admired her in silence, marveling that she could move so easily through such deep waters. He, on the other hand, found himself thinking of something original to say a minute or two after the conversation had passed on to something else. Penny noticed this and drew him in, feeding him a line to which she knew he already had a funny reply. The Limehouse swelled with the hum of talk, the tang of sauces.
    When Boyle produced from his coat pocket a notebook and made an entry in it, Gordon described how a physicist at a Princeton party was writing in his notebook, and Einstein, sitting next to him, asked why. "Whenever I have a good idea, I make sure I don't forget it," the man said. "Perhaps you'd like to try it–it's handy."
    Einstein shook his head sadly and said, "I doubt it. I have only had two or three good ideas in my life."
    This got a good laugh. Gordon beamed at Penny. She had drawn him out and now he was fitting in well.
    After dinner the five of them debated going to a movie together. Penny wanted Last Year at Marienbad and Boyle favored Lawrence of Arabia , contending that since he only saw one film a year he might as well take in the best. They voted in favor of Lawrence , four to one. As they left the restaurant Gordon hugged Penny in the parking lot outside, thinking, as he leaned to kiss her, of the smell of her in bed. "I love you," he said.
    "You're welcome," she replied, smiling.
    It seemed afterward, as he lay beside her, that he had turned her on the lathe of the light slanting in from the window, reforming her in an image that was fresh each time. He shaped her with his hands and tongue. She, in turn, guided and molded him. He thought he could sense in her sure moves and choices, first this way and then that, past imprints of the lovers she had known before. Strangely, the thought did not bother him, though.
    he felt that in some way it should. Echoes of other men came from her. But they were gone now and he was here; it seemed enough.
    He panted slightly, reminding himself that he ought to get down to the beach and run more often, and studied her face in the dim gray street light that leaked into their bedroom. The lines of her face were straight, without strategies, the only curves a few matted damp strands of hair across her cheek. Graduate student in literature, dutiful daughter to an Oakland investor, by turns lyrical and practical with a political compass that saw virtues in both Kennedy and Goldwater. At times brazen, then timid, then wanton, appalled at his sensual ignorance, reassuringly startled by his sudden bursts of sweaty energy, and then soothing with a fluid grace as he