Eighth portion

15

Nora Davidson Owens was worried.  Her son had not answered her call. That was not unusual. But there was no ‘your son regrets not to answer your call now,  but he will return it soon’ message. Instead she heard ‘The BT customer you are attempting to call is offline. Please leave a message, and it will be forwarded as soon as possible.’  That had been last night, and it was still the only response she received this morning. Ken was never offline. Something was wrong. A mother knew these things.

The father meanwhile, was not worried at all. Yanto Owens was, it is true, always a bit disappointed in his son, whom he was sure should do something to earn a Nobel Prize, or at least a Turing Award. But he had accepted that Kenneth would always explore his own path, and he had even become a bit proud of his son’s stubbornness. Ken was always up to something. Maybe one of his experiments, which Yanto never quite understood, needed him to be ‘offline’ so he could take some more ‘readings’. To Yanto, a metallurgist who liked to work with and theorize with nice ‘solid’ objects, even if sometimes they were molten or even vaporized, Ken’s readings may as well have been of Tarot Cards. His oft-repeated admonition to his son was ‘Be whatever you want to be, but be the best.’ Ken had seemingly been a much better astrophysicist than Yanto a metallurgist, and in that he took pride, but leaving even a  third-rate university for a cottage in a tourist trap of a town seemed an unlikely career move. It was a long way from Pilton to Paris or Bern, even on the internet. Or so it seemed to Yanto Owens.

Nora, truth be told, was more disappointed in her son than was Yanto, although she would never have admitted it. She wanted family. She had wanted more children, but could never convince her husband that the time was right for another little Owens, so all her eggs were in Ken’s basket. She had adjusted to his being gay: lots of gay couples adopted children, and Ken’s stubbornness came with a patience that she had been certain would make him a great parent. When she had met Marcus, she was ready to order a cake. He seemed everything a mother would wish in a son-in-law: handsome, witty, well-connected, very smitten with Ken, and with beautiful brown eyes. But they had never become so attached as she had hoped. Marc had continued to visit her and Yanto in London even after Ken had moved to Pilton,and Nora had thought the subtext of his visits had been how to get Ken back, but nothing like that had ever been said, and Ken had seemed just as happy living a solitary life as he had when he and Marc were ‘seeing each other’.

Kenneth seldom came to London, but he did chat with his mother nearly every Sunday.  So, when he had not called this time, she thought he must be up to something important. She was patient. Had not Ken inherited his patience from her, just as he had inherited his stubbornness from Yanto?  But on Monday, Halloween, her patience thinned. She had thought he might like to come up to London for All Saints. She thought that if he did, she would invite Marcus, who might want a bit of lead time. But there was nothing she could do. There was Instagrams, and that seemed possible for an invitation to an impromptu dinner party. Tuesday morning, she tried to call again. Tuesday noon, she tried to call again, Tuesday evening, she tried to call again. Tuesday night, she took motherly action, and called Marcus Rutschman.

16

It would be false to say that Kenneth Owens had been the last thing on Marcus Rutschman’s mind when Nora called. Ken always hovered around the edges of his thoughts, but he doubted that Ken thought often of him. Nora, yes. Ken, no. Ken seemed to be on a path without companions, It had come as no surprise that when he bought a car, a very high-tech car, it had been a single-seater. Certainly Ken in the flesh  could be full of passion and attention. No one Marc knew was a better lover. But Ken’s true love was his work, for which the university post seemed just a cover, and which remained something of a secret. The passion and attention he gave to his work was even greater than he gave to Marc. When Ken had moved to Pilton, Marc knew that if was for the work, whatever that was. When asked about it, Ken would simply say that it might be dangerous to share it. Marc almost felt that Ken could be a spy.

His own work, however, was very public. As head of research for the Sir Henry Royce Institute, what he did was highly publicized. The Royce Institute had grown from a centre for reinvigorating  British manufacturing to a partner with countries around the world. He helped develop production systems, so that Sheffield’s exports became much more than physical products. Many of their students and many of their customers were not only from the usual suspects, China, India, and Brazil but from Greenland and Australia, Argentina and the Philippines. Ironically, his work with materials gave Marcus a rich field for discussion with Yanto Owens, who tried to keep up with what was happening his metallurgy even though his own projects now were seldom bigger than making false relics for celtic re-enactments.

Ken had also taken a keen interest in Marc’s work when he wanted to print a strange weave of metals and semiconductors onto the surface of his Hyundai. No one knew more about 3-D printing than Marcus Rutschman, so he had happily helped Ken get Atilla ready for what Ken had called ‘possible field work’.

Marc immediately saw how worried Nora Owens looked on his watch. She had hoped, she said, to invite a few people for a holiday meal, and had hoped Marcus could come, but she had a problem. Ken had disappeared. She told of trying to call him, with no response, that there had been no distress signals from his house or his car or his phone, but that neither his phone, glasses, or car were online anywhere. Only the house responded to her inquiries. “Mr. Owens left Monday night, ma’am, and didn’t say when he would return’ was all she knew. It was unlike Ken to be offline. He had not called Sunday. Did Marcus know anything?

No. He didn’t. He hadn’t heard from Ken for a fortnight, and then Marc had called him to see if the printed project were working allright. Ken had said that everything seemed to be fine, and that he would know for sure around Halloween. Probably he was doing the ‘fieldwork’ he had mentioned when he modified the Hyundai. He had enough electronic magic in that little car to become ‘invisible’ at least in most ways, if he wished. No need to worry. Still, Marc assured Mrs. Owens, he would check around, and let her know if he found anything. Ken might be working with someone at the University. He’d let her know what he found.