1.1 Alenby's Transition
1.1.1 An Inadvertent Excursion in Hyperspace
Air France Check In, Newark International Airport, Newark NJ USA
6 pm Tuesday 1 April 1987
Next to his first sip of Château Latour 1961, Alenby rated his leap into the alien universe u as the most significant happening of his entire life.
That’s what he thought later. At the time, he didn’t think much of it at all. His U-to-u transition, as his excursion in hyperspace would be called by u-people of his later acquaintance, was not attended by the vivid sensations triggered by the '61 Latour: no flashes of ruby and garnet to engage the eye, no explosion of fruity lushness detonating on the palate, no bouquet of walnuts, cedar and cassis inundating the nose. Nothing, indeed, of the sort that makes the life of a middle aged, slightly overweight, effete, impotent gourmet worth living. Nothing at all out of the ordinary--beyond some puzzling business at the Air France check-in.
The clerk took her time over scrutinizing his ticket and his passport. This Marie-Claude—so read the badge on her lapel—seemed to Alenby exceedingly small and thin, like a child perched there behind the child-size check-in counter. She was evidently not young, though, for her lips had the pouty look that comes from years of practice in expressing desolation at some deficiency in one’s reservation on Air France. On this occasion she seemed poised to make some such announcement, but hesitated as if unsure of her ground. Eventually, seemingly flustered by signs of displeasure on the part of other waiting Ambassador-Class passengers—personages not accustomed to waiting in line—she hurried into the standard check-in routine. She spoke rapidly, and so softly that to hear her, Alenby was obliged to lean across the counter. An abnormally low counter....
Marie-Claude repeated her question: "Do you wish to check some baggages this evening, Excellency?"
Alenby smiled. Excellency—probably a form of address they were trained to use to conform with some sort of promotion of Ambassador Class. Yet it fit his persona—his appearance and bearing were more ambassadorial than those of most real-life ambassadors. His jackets had been taken in since he started with Dr Fatkid’s Low Carbohydrate, or LOCO diet, but in a manner contrived to preserve his elegantly ample outline while expanding the inside breast pockets to accommodate extra supplements and medications to guard against the hazards that are an inevitable side effect of any serious diet—diarrhea, constipation, spastic colon and so on and so forth, not to mention the sensation of a large and muscular snake writhing in one’s intestines and making occasional attempts to dart out via one’s throat or rectum. Of course, while in France one intended to depart from a strictly LOCO diet on occasion, eat a potato now and then, preferably a potato prepared in some correct traditional manner such as—
"Your baggages, Excellency? You are perhaps wishing to check the baggages this evening?"
"—pommes de terre farcies à la cantalienne," he completed his thought in fluent but atrociously accented French. Observing the clerk’s puzzled expression, he added: "One valise, my dear young lady, which as you will observe, I have deposited on the scale—"
"Yes, Excellency, I have observed it, but…."
He was forced to acknowledge that her irritating French mannerism, the palms-up shrug, was justified. Nothing on the scale, except a ghostly souvenir—70 on the digital readout.
But no valise.
His intestinal snake made a sudden 180 and surged up to his cardiac sphincter. He tasted bile, gasped at the burning sensation. Reacting quickly, he reached in his left inner breast pocket for the appropriate antacid, the safe and sure LiftiorpH. Two tablets, and without fluid accompaniment—this was an emergency! For Air France to lose one’s valise before takeoff was quite simply insupportable.
Of course one would sue. Choking down the two tablets, and a third for luck, he brought out his new cell phone—the first model to be made available to the public—and punched speed-code 2. But his attorney wasn’t there. All he got was a wrong number—someone, who wasn’t even a lawyer, wanting to sell him growth-inhibiting hormones.
Growth inhibiting—? Surely the fellow had it wrong. He must have been thinking of growth-enhancing hormones. Very useful supplements, steroids, excellent for muscle building without the bother of sweaty exercises. But growth inhibiting? It didn’t make sense. Alenby felt the tickle of perspiration under his jowls. He feared the collar of one's Sea-Isle long-staple Egyptian cotton shirt might become sodden—and without his valise, one had no replacement!
The clerk was darting nervous glances, not at him but apparently at someone behind and slightly to one side. "I am filing the misplaced baggages form," he heard her gabble. "You will be notified. Your contact in Paris is—Résidence Vert Galant, in the 13th? Yes yes fine. That is then all, except"—she gestured to the digital display of the scale—"the overweight baggage fee, 40 pounds over at five equals $200. Will Excellency prefer to pay cash, or…?"
Too dazed to protest that his bag was not over-weight, that he had in fact packed precisely to the 70 pound limit, Alenby took out his wallet, peeled off two hundreds and dropped them on the low counter.
"Thank you, Excellency!" Distractedly, Marie-Claude swept the bills into a cash drawer. "You have the window seat 8A, as requested. Boarding will be at 8:30 from Gate 90, conveniently accessible from the Ambassador Lounge on the first floor where complementary French Champagne and hors d’oeuvres are being offered here is your ticket and boarding pass have a good flight!"
As he took the papers, Alenby followed the clerk's glances and found himself looking into a pair of brown eyes, shiny—like chocolate-coated cherries, he thought—gazing up at him from under the brim of a green fedora. The short, slim woman smiled and looked away, and a moment later he saw her gliding through the crowded concourse in the direction of the nearest elevator.
She’s headed for the Ambassador Lounge, Alenby thought, and a heavenly vision came to his mind—Champagne. A tall glass of Champagne, well chilled, with twisted streams of tiny bubbles leisurely ascending. On the nose, hints of apples and citrus fruits, and fresh-baked bread. He put himself in the picture—sniffing, sipping, occasionally tossing a bon mot to the lady with the shiny brown eyes. He picked up his flight bag and followed her.
***
Alenby's disappearance excited only mild interest in the media. Most sources were content to note that Alenby Faintwether Hoggett IV, age 45, was last seen in the Air France First Class check-in counter in Terminal C, Newark International Airport, at 6:00 pm on Tuesday 1 April 1987, and to offer a few biographical details of the vanished gentleman: scion of a socially prominent family of bucolic Healthcare Township, New Jersey; educated at various elite private schools including Rowan Hamilton Academy, then Princeton, then Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship; vocation, race-car driver—victor in various motorcross events—and now a Hollywood stunt driver; avocation, bon vivant with a leaning to authentic traditional French regional dishes and wines.
Mr Faintwether Hoggett, added the New York Times' chief food critic, had had no known enemies—a headwaiter whom he had upbraided in 1974 for confusing the cassoulet styles of Castelnaudery and Toulouse had since admitted his error—and there was no cause for suspicion of foul play. In any event, according to witnesses the disappearance was practically instantaneous and totally non-violent—the palpable, bulky figure had simply faded into a weird wavering glow, and then...nothing.
The Liz Smith column mentioned his persistent though low-key presence on New York society. In his youth, his old-money background coupled with suave moves on the ballroom floor made him a desirable escort for uncoordinated debutantes. Later, he regularly appeared in newspaper society pages, a dim figure flanking his wife (since divorced) the wealthy Blanche de Noires, at glittering gala events in support of the Metropolitan Opera and other needy causes. Among his peers he was known for his diffidence in such brilliant settings, and there were jocular whispers that he attended the opera chiefly for the performance.
Might the divorce, and his father's subsequent decision reportedly to cut him off without a penny, have driven Alenby to secretly get away from it all, stage his own disappearance, perhaps take his own life? It seemed unlikely. He didn’t seem to have had any immediate money problems--it has been whispered that, thanks to a well-written pre-nup, the divorce had netted him a cool $3.4 Megs.
Health problems? Not really. Nothing more than the usual deficits of the typical red-blooded American male prior to his first heart attack: overweight but not yet obese, touch of colitis more nuisance than life-threatening, prostate only modestly enlarged and cancerous to be sure, but with no rapidly growing tumors as yet in evidence. All and all he was in good shape for a man of 45, and he had one big thing going for him health-wise—risk-averse to a fault, he was conscientious about taking his medications, and he never hesitated to consult one of his health care professionals for a dose adjustment in case of any unusual side-effect or adverse interaction.
Maybe he was depressed, lacking a zest for life? Not at all. He’d just purchased a English sports car, a sky-blue Borstal Aero with a custom ash-wood roll-bar, to be waiting for him upon his arrival in Paris—not exactly the action of a man down in the dumps. In fact, insiders confided that the missing gourmet’s thoughts were centered on a choucroute garnie with a wine as yet to be decided upon, to be savored at a micro-restaurant known to gourmets as Chez Schreiffer, in Strasbourg….
In short, the theory that Alenby had engineered his own disappearance lacked a motive. And so far, reported the Newark Star Ledger the following day, it lacked a body. Diligent search had discovered no body of a middle-aged man, muscular, 5-9½, 180 pounds, nor of his accouterments. No homburg, the hat he was accustomed to wear with éclat surpassing even that of the late Dean Acheson. No Harris tweed jacket and flannel slacks unfashionably but impeccably styled by the London tailors, Messrs Gieves & Hawkes, of Number 1, Savile Row. No bright-hued show handkerchief of the sort that he was given to wear flopping nonchalantly from the lapel pocket of the above-mentioned jacket. No Florentine leather valise packed with woolen suitings, no Florentine leather flight bag packed with medications....
Blanche de Noires and the Faintwether Hoggett family had declined to comment on the disappearance.
In the absence of further news, speculation dried up. It seemed there was nothing more to be said without venturing into the realm of fantasy.