By the time Edgar had graduated from school, been rejected by the Army and worked for a time, the cold war was well advanced. Three generations were mind-sick with tensions and fears and doubts—heart-sick with the impossible wish to roll back the years to times of peaceful, neighborly, unfrenzied human living.
Edgar did.
And the next time, in 1959, Susan went back. For most of us, 1959 came only once, the year of the crisis when the missiles had already been launched from both sides before the astonishing "thieves' agreement" was reached and the missiles were aimed into the sea.
There could be nothing but relief for a few months after that, but then the play on nerves began again, the tensions began their unbearable rise.
In 1962, Susan's grandchildren were funneled like sacks of coal through Andover Hare's machine. There were eighteen of them and a group of their descendants built another machine later the same year. The following March, another group disappeared—a much larger one this time. They spread the gene so widely that most of us bear it today.
It was inevitable that we carry the seed of that desperate desire to escape our own troubled times. And the urge makes living under this doubly grinding pressure more anguished every day.
How many times this week have you read or heard a piece of news and wondered how much longer before the final, fatal mushrooms flare? How many times has a video show, a movie, or even just a snapshot brought the swift wish that you could be back there? How many times have the "good old days" crept into your conversation, your thoughts?
As this account began with Edgar Evans, so it shall end with Benjamin Reeves. Not yet, but soon—it must be soon now.
Like all truly wise men, Benjamin Reeves is a modest man. He's tall, stooped a little, and his limbs are attached in that special loose way that makes a man amble rather than walk, sprawl rather than sit. At 50-odd, he looks much more like a friendly janitor than a respected research engineer.