Ratner's Star

by Don DeLillo

  Orang Mohole was a man of ambiguous pigmentation. He introduced himself and sat in one of the oversized synthetic chairs. He wore a gold mohair smoking jacket with padded shoulders, platinum lapels and a bit of drizzly silver saddle-stitching on each pocket.

  “This used to be the maternity ward,” he said. “Once the last baby was born, I had it converted. All very unofficial. Not hush-hush really. Just unofficial. No one knows who shouldn’t know. I’ve longed for a setup like this ever since I saw the royal apartments in the summer palace on Guam.”

  “I thought you were Melcher-Speidell. That’s who I was expecting to walk in. When I heard you walk in, I thought that’s who it was.”

  “Melcher-Speidell is a mediocrity and a bore.”

  “How do you rate yourself?”

  “Twice winner of the Cheops Feeley Medal.”

  “What else?”

  “Acknowledged kingpin of alternate physics.”

  “How come you’re not at the conference?”

  “Small potatoes,” Mohole said. “I sent Bhang in my place. Bhang will present my view of things.”

  “I thought it was pretty interesting, hearing about what’s missing and why they can’t find it.”

  “Who’s chairing?”

  “They’ll all chairing,” Billy said. “But there’s a lady there who’s more or less taken it over.”

  “We did research together years ago,” Mohole said. “Heavy forms of hydrogen.”

  “What’s the story on her?”

  “Mediocre breasts.”

  “What about the leg department?”

  “Fair to average.”

  “I’m supposed to go back there.”

  “First I want you to tell me the status of your calculations.”

  “I’m getting close to something.”

  “Too bad,” Mohole said.

  “Why bad?”

  “First let me tell you what we’ve got out there. Ratner’s star is not about to enter the red giant phase as previously believed. It’s a white dwarf. It’ll remain so unless it degenerates further to the pulsar stage. This is Space Brain’s most painstaking analysis to date. There’s one planet, not two. A planet so large it seems to be radiating in the visible end of the spectrum. Enough heat at its core to make it glow. So it’s really not a planet at all but a dim star. A dwarf to be sure but a star nonetheless. A red dwarf star. So what we’ve got out there is a binary dwarf. One red star, one white star.”

  “That means there are no beings. It must be too hot for beings to exist on that kind of surface if it glows. So no message. Nobody to send.”

  “You’re half right,” Mohole said. “Two hot gaseous spheres, completely uninhabitable. No message-senders, true. But there is a message. It didn’t come from Ratner’s star, however. It only seems to have originated in that part of the galaxy. This is because Ratner’s star probably lies within the value-dark dimension, or mohole totality, as I sometimes call it. So the emphasis has shifted from the message itself to the primary source of the message and the secondary nature of the message. We don’t really mind if you keep working on decipherment. But the emphasis has shifted.”

  “Let me see if I have this straight.”

  “Of course you have it straight.”

  “But I’m getting near a solution.”

  “Whether you are or not is less important frankly than where the message came from and why it was reflected, if that’s the word I want, toward our part of the galaxy. There’s even a feeling among some of my colleagues that you should be prohibited from doing further work on the code. This is to avoid ambiguity. The feeling is that an answer at this point would only beg the question. This is an extreme position, however, and I don’t expect it to prevail. Would you like a greenie?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sometimes my neurons misfire.”

  “Is it a pill?”

  “You swallow it,” Mohole said. “You don’t stick pins in it or call it up on the telephone. It doesn’t have children of its own and a two-car garage. Yes, it’s a pill.”

  “What would it do for me?”

  “Depends on what type brain you have.”

  “They come in types?”

  Mohole got up and took a meditative stroll around the large room. His hands were plunged into the deep pockets of his smoking jacket. He wore two-toned shoes, silver and black, with tasseled laces. His trouser cuffs had been unstitched and extended full length, leaving shriveled indentations where the turned-up folds had been. He took a large green pill out of his pocket and put it on his tongue. His face seemed a hasty contrivance, making Billy think of a police sketch of a suspect as described by several witnesses. There was too much space between the eyes. His lips were very thin, seemingly at odds with the general heft of his body. He had a flat nose and high cheekbones and his electrified hair curled almost straight up. He closed his eyes now and threw back his head in a sudden convulsive motion, simultaneously gasping as he swallowed the pill.

  “Except for the first one thousandth of a second, we can trace the evolution of the universe from the big bang to the present moment,” he said. “In my early work on background radiation, which is detectable evidence of the fireball of the big bang, if there was a big bang, I developed a theory, listen to this, about a strange kind of mechanism at work in the universe. This is the value-dark dimension, or mohole totality, and it’s the core idea of a unique system of relativity. This is Moholean relativity, just beginning to attract attention, very controversial, named by me after myself. What I theorize happens in a mohole is that X-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet light, radio waves, gas, dust clouds and so forth are trapped and held by relativistic forces we don’t fully understand as yet—forces created in the first one thousandth of a second after the universe began. Incidentally it’s no good trying to visualize a mohole. I’ve already tried and it can’t be done. Nobody knows what it looks like because it doesn’t look like anything. And we can’t pinpoint its location because it seems to have many locations—another way of saying there are moholes numbering n—and they all seem to shift, affecting different parts of the computer universe for varying amounts of time. The sum total of all moholes is what I call the value-dark dimension. All the key words in this explanation, by the way, are totally misleading due to the everyday quirks of language.”

  He returned to the chair and sat.

  “A mohole traps electromagnetic information, among other things, and then either releases it or doesn’t. It’s as though the mohole were a surface that absorbs light and sound and then reflects either or both to another part of the universe. But it’s not a surface and it doesn’t absorb. It’s a mohole. It’s part of a theoretical dimension lacking spatial extent and devoid of time value. Value-dark in other words.”

  He rubbed his crotch briefly and then crossed his legs without remembering to unwedge his hand.

  “The answer to what happened in the first one thousandth of a second after the universe began probably hinges on an investigation of exo-ionic sylphing compounds. This substance seems to be present, as far as I can tell, wherever there are moholes, although what I’ve just said indicates, more than anything else, the inadequacies of human language in the face of the mohole phenomenon, since ‘wherever there are moholes’ implies that a mohole occupies space, which it doesn’t. I suppose it could be said that a mohole is space-time raised to a higher electrovalent power, or sylphed.”

  He leaned to one side, resting his head in his free hand and appearing to be on the verge of sleep.

  “My model of the universe is open at the bottom, closed at the top. Imagine two triangles sharing the same base. With one abnormality: the base is invisible. This gives us two apexes, representing the closed top, while the lack of a base signifies the invisible mass. Can you visualize such a figure?”

  “A stellated twilligon.”

  “I postulate eventual collapse in a sort of n-bottomed hole or terminal mohole. First let me describe the two paths of
expansion in my model—paths represented by the two left or ascending sides of the twilligon as you call it, both lines generated by the same point. One path is taken up by detectable matter, growing outward since the big bang. The other line is gravity, getting stronger as the universe becomes more dense with both detectable and missing matter. We are currently at the apex of matter, the halfway point of gravity. As expansion ceases we turn our attention to the right or descending sides of the figure. What was open begins to close. Matter begins its inward fall at the apex of the twilligon. Gravity becomes dominant at the sub-apex. The two right sides converge at the same terminal point. Gravity clutches matter in a terrific frenzy.”

  His hand had sunk even deeper into the pouch between his thighs and he spoke very slowly now, talking almost by rote.

  “Nothing escapes the final collapse into an entity that nearly contradicts the word ‘entity.’ On second thought, let’s not say ‘nothing.’ Let’s say ‘almost nothing.’ I leave an opening, you see. I make an allowance for an indefinite number of bottoms. The average hole is either bottomless or uni-bottomed. An n-bottomed hole allows my model to qualify as an open universe. This is the privilege of a self-confessed maverick. A minor maneuver just short of cheating. All this gorgeous matter-crush shouldn’t have to end in a totally hopeless situation. I give things a chance to drip through. The final mohole is not leakproof. I leave a little opening. We can’t actually see this on paper or even in our minds because the two descending sides of the twilligon conclude in a single point and you can’t have an opening in a point. But we can pretend a little, can’t we? We’re not so scientific that we can’t have a little make-believe, right? Then, if something drips through, there’s a continuation, another chance, the universe refreshed.”

  Seconds after he spoke the last word he closed his eyes and fell asleep. Billy thought of leaving but remembered that Kyzyl was waiting outside to escort him. He assumed Kyzyl wouldn’t leave, or let him leave, without some word from Orang Mohole, who had put the escort rule into effect. After half an hour Mohole opened his eyes.

  “If Moholean relativity is valid,” he said, “we’ll one day witness events that do not conform to the predispositions of science. We may be confronted, pay attention, with a totally unforeseen set of circumstances. This is implicit in Moholean relativity and explains why my theorizing hasn’t won greater support.”

  “You said you got the Cheops Feeley Medal.”

  “Twice,” he said. “But neither time for moholes. Just mention the value-dark dimension and people go glassy-eyed. All these fears about invisible mass. These morbid parties full of whimpering people. Missing matter is explained by Moholean relativity. The mass holding the galaxies together is trapped in moholes. This is why we can’t find it. Some people accept this but many more don’t. Thus the end-of-the-world parties. Oddly the people showing the greatest fear are often the same ones who support every step in my formulation, from the big bang to the n-bottomed hole. The explanation for the missing mass frightens them more than the fact that so much mass is missing. These are scientists so-called. What’s your reaction?”

  “If you deserve it, you should get it.”

  “It would be unprecedented, a third Cheops Feeley. The award secretly coveted by everyone in the sciences. The one they’d lie and cheat to get. It’s the underground prize, given for work that has an element of madness to it. Of course, no one says this openly. But we all know that madness content is a determining factor.”

  “How much in cash?”

  “When you talk about cash, stick to the Nobel Prize. I’ll never get one of those, not for something with the high madness content of moholes.”

  “If it’s so crazy, why blame the people afraid of it?”

  “Theory, in theory, that’s in theory. Everything we’ve discussed is pure theory. In theory it’s soothing, it’s lovely, it explains a great deal. If the theory is ever tested, however, and if they find evidence of real-life moholes, then it’s every man for himself. The laws are different there, you see. Although some of my lesser colleagues would argue against this, I am convinced that alternate physics is not designed to cope with physical reality; that is, with the real world. As kingpin, I would probably react more drastically than anyone. This has always been part of my psychological value pattern. I have never been far from snapping. This is in confidence I’m telling you this.”

  “What do you think would happen if you snapped?”

  “We won’t talk about that,” Mohole said.

  “Anyway, about the Nobel Prize, aren’t they holding up some of the awards this year?”

  “You got yours.”

  “I think they’re trying to decide some of the tricky ones.”

  “I’m completely self-taught,” Mohole said. “I took correspondence courses. I went to the library. I practically lived in the library. A lot of people become deeply involved in their work but only self-taught people experience total murderous obsession. It took years but I finally beat them at their own game.”

  “What game?”

  “Science.”

  “What’s wrong with two medals with your kind of background?”

  “I’m a snapper, that’s what wrong. When things start getting unbearable I see myself getting a high-powered rifle out of the closet.”

  “Then what?”

  “We won’t discuss it further.”

  “They’ll want me getting back there to sit in.”

  “I was fanatically determined to make my mark among the great figures of modern science and I’ve done it, I’ve succeeded, a two-time Cheops Feeley medalist, all the work and struggle rewarded with an entire theoretical system of relativity named in my honor. But plenty could still happen if it moves out of the realm of theory.”

  “Named in your honor by you yourself.”

  “Are you criticizing?”

  “Not that I’m criticizing.”

  “Einstein wasn’t all wrong, you know. I certainly don’t think my efforts lead inescapably to that conclusion. He did some promising work in pure mathematics before regrettably abandoning that field at the age of sixteen, I believe it was.”

  “You mean Einstein wasn’t all right. He made a little mistake here and there. That’s what you mean.”

  “If I seem to be raising my voice,” Mohole said in a calm tone, “it’s only because I recognize your right to correct me. I wouldn’t be yelling if I didn’t respect you. Yelling is a bond between people who respect each other despite invalid corrections. We yell and scold as a way of paying homage to each other’s views. This is the burden of friendship between extremely high-strung individuals. If we didn’t accept the burden, we’d be sworn enemies. Friendship is exasperating at best. But think of the alternative.”

  “I am.”

  “The essence of my brand of relativity—that in a mohole the laws of physics vary from one observer to another—is at odds with every notion of the universe that displays a faith in nature. In the value-dark dimension the laws are not equally binding in all frames of reference, whether accelerated or nonaccelerated, and if I get up and leave suddenly it’s because I have to use the vomitorium.”

  He put another green pill in his mouth. Billy was certain that if he threw his head back as abruptly as he had the last time he swallowed, the head would smash against the back of the chair, perhaps causing a whiplash injury to Mohole’s neck or spine. But this time he used an abbreviated head-jerk, beginning his gasp sooner and sustaining it until a scant trace of bilious secretion appeared on his lips. Billy thought this would be followed by stomach matter, the gush itself, but before it could happen Mohole rose from the chair, uttering hoarse dry sounds, and disappeared into one of the rear chambers. When he returned he was wearing a turquoise cravat.

  “So the radio signals have the characteristics of an echo,” he said. “Although a mohole has no surface and radiates no heat, the message gives every indication of having been reflected from a high-temperature object of very dense su
rface composition.”

  “But you don’t want to know what it says.”

  “Now that Ratner’s star has been ruled out as the source of the transmission, we don’t want to presuppose a new conclusion. We want to pursue certain lines of argument without outside equivocation. In other words you needn’t overexert yourself on cracking the code.”

  “You want to find out who sent it and from where but not what it says.”

  “It would only beg the question.”

  “An answer.”

  “Exactly,” Mohole said.

  “It’s probably not a good idea to say who’s going to stop me if I decide to keep working.”

  “Can you blow bubbles with spit?”

  “Only little.”

  “I do big,” Mohole said.

  “Can you sneeze out of just one nostril?”

  “Have a greenie.”

  “They’re so big. I’ve never seen pills that big.”

  “Have one for your head.”

  “Look how big.”

  “Have a greenie.”

  “Even if I knew what they did to my type brain, I couldn’t swallow it because of the size.”

  “Some people are swallowers, some aren’t. I concede that. But have one anyway.”

  “Can you belch at will?”

  “A greenie,” Mohole said.

  “Everybody knows about drugs and jumping off roofs.”

  “Do it to please me.”

  “How can it please you to give me something I don’t want?”

  “That’s the way high-strung people are. We expect others to make small sacrifices for the sake of our emotional calm. Now that I’ve explained things, will you take the greenie?”

  “No.”

  “I feel hurt when people refuse to accept what I offer. I can’t tell you how hurt I feel. Hurt enough to snap. Granted, some people aren’t known as swallowers. Still, I hurt all over. In fact I see myself with a high-powered rifle and a whole lot of ammunition. I’m standing in a window high above the street.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Make a deal.”

  “My psychological value pattern is what it is and there’s nothing I can do about it.”