Ratner's Star

by Don DeLillo

  “Three plus three times two.”

  “Twelve.”

  “See you at the hole,” Endor said. “And, remember, there’s a point after which it is possible to stop digging and take the free fall. Use your imagination. That’ll tell you when to make the switch.”

  A long silence followed. He looked at the white tricycle on the screen. There was an electronic tremor and the picture went blank. He tried to get some work done. Endor’s visitation left him feeling puzzled, maybe in part because it was nonvisual in nature. He decided to return to the meeting. Kyzyl escorted him to the door of the conference room. Puzzled, yes, but not unhappy. He liked being called lad, particularly by a bearded person. There was something pleasantly old-fashioned about it.

  “But now a new theory has been put forth, one of vast implications.”

  He couldn’t understand why anyone would wear a toupee that looked like a bowl haircut. As Bhang Pao spoke he made hand-washing gestures, each hand curling in and out of the other. Masha Simjian sucked on hard candy. The other two scientists listened in a bland daze. Billy took his seat in the corner and worked to perfect a look of peripheral interest. Bhang Pao, in a concisely passionate narration, discussed space-time sylphed and went on to summarize the rest of Orang Mohole’s relativity theory.

  “The laws are not equally valid there,” he concluded. “Unpredictable events may flow from a given mohole or moholes. We don’t know precisely what sort of events. Catastrophe, natural or unnatural, can’t be ruled out. There is one hopeful note. The message of the star gods is still in effect. All we know is that the message-senders do not live on a planet in orbit around Ratner’s star. Nevertheless they do live, they do exist, and this is cause for optimism if not unalleviated joy.”

  The door opened and Melcher-Speidell entered. In the midst of introductions Maidengut explained to Billy that the contributions of these two men in the field of alternate physics were so interdependent that the men themselves had come to be spoken of as a single individual, their names latched by an undying hyphen. Maidengut then carried two extra chairs to the table and everyone was seated. Billy was still in the corner. Lepro sat between Melcher-Speidell.

  “There’s nothing to get excited about,” Melcher said. “When you talk and talk and talk about alternate modes of physical reality, as we’ve had to talk in our chosen endeavor, when you theorize and theorize, then it just seems to happen, whatever it is you’re talking about, coming as no big shock, and this too shall pass is the way you tend to react is my reaction. We’re just in the first stage. Nothing significant will happen until we’re fully ready for it. This is the way it usually works. The idea begins to develop and spread. The thing or event becomes increasingly conceivable in hundreds of thousands of minds. The next stage is usually frightening imminence. The thing or event becomes frighteningly imminent. This is nothing special to get excited about and I want to say at this juncture how happy we are to have this opportunity of a faces-to-face encounter with the radical accelerate in our midst in order to reassure him that his work on the mathematical content of the transmission is no longer of vital priority status. The last stage is what really matters.”

  “Alternate physics, if it teaches us anything,” Speidell said, “it teaches us that once you go across the line, once you’re over the line and left without your classical sources, your rational explanations, the whole of your scientific ethos, once this happens you have to pause. You have to pause as we may have to pause someday in the future. You’re over the line, sure, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep going or hurl yourself into the uncharted void. This is nonsense. You pause. You reflect. You get your bearings. Alternate physics, if it’s to move out of the theoretical realm, as it may have to one day, I guarantee you, with a vengeance, and into areas of direct application, must give us the bearings we need, or, lacking bearings to give, must soothe and support. We’ve come to an exciting time. Let’s take the positive view and emphasize the challenge. I’m excited about this. I want to communicate my excitement but don’t know how. I have my individual peculiarities. Things I cherish about myself. Private parts of me. I’m introspective. Fond of adults. Collect fruit and pennies. Like to take long walks on the beach. No better place to walk, incidentally. Sand toughens the calf muscles. You need this in the hypothetical sciences.”

  “Why or because is it,” Lepro said, “that the number one speaker here to my right hand says in his own words nothing to get excited about and this is followed upon by my left hand here, who, why or because of the positive challenge, says excitement, excitement. Is this difference why or because of basic disagreement on essentials or why or because of semantics? Who accepts semantics, those of us at the table, omitting the corner person? I say no. You ask why or because not. I answer why or because it’s too good to be true, that’s why or because not. The beach is a diversion. On my left brings in his beach why or because he wants to keep us from thinking of the issue itself, which is that the sky above may be getting funny.”

  The one-way priority phone buzzed loudly. Simjian went to the panel, picked up the telephone, listened for a few seconds, sourly, and then turned toward Billy.

  “It’s for you again. A man who says he doesn’t want to give his name but says you’ll know who he is by the message. I’ll try to repeat the message word for word as he relays it, although for the life of me I don’t know why we should have to keep interrupting this conference in order to take messages for someone who’s merely sitting in. ‘Double companionship not feasible. But can be simulated repeat simulated. Finger-feelies, sensitizers, inflatable vulvettes. Workmanship tops, stop, atmosphere conducive to you-know-what, stop, soft lights and special scents, stop, promise memorable moments to all who dare yield to their burgeoning teenage sensuality, stop, all happening in my apartments atop the you-know-where. Discuss with no one repeat no one.’ ”

  “I don’t accept the call.”

  “That voice sounded familiar,” Simjian said. “Was that who I think it was?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because if it was, he’s famous for his personal sleaziness.”

  “He’s completely self-taught.”

  “Not to mention the tasteless events he likes to host,” she said. “Degenerate ceremonies featuring objects and gadgets that mock our bodies.”

  “Speaking of ceremonies,” Maidengut said, “I have some depressing news for almost everyone here. A torch-lighting ceremony is scheduled for the Great Hall. Tomorrow at dusk. All thirty-two of the resident Nobel laureates are supposed to be in attendance.”

  “What’s depressing about that?” Simjian said.

  “Nobel laureates only. Nobody else allowed. Pretty inconsiderate if you ask me. They might have included some of the rest of us.”

  “I’ve never seen a torch-lighting ceremony,” Bhang Pao said. “I assume they light torches and hand them out. The torches are doubtless prelighted as a safety precaution and then everyone participating surely advances in a slow-moving line as the torches are handed out. After that I suspect everyone stands solemnly in place, holding his or her lighted torch as the ceremony unfolds.”

  “What’s the ceremony all about?” Billy said. “I bet it has something to do with the aborigine.”

  “What aborigine?” Maidengut said.

  “The white-haired aborigine. The nameless one. Somebody saw him this morning lurking around. I thought maybe they found him and wanted to do something nice, to show what they thought of him, the way he whirled.”

  “It’s for Ratner,” Maidengut said. “They’re honoring Ratner.”

  “I didn’t know there was a Ratner.”

  “He’s being flown in from the States. His first visit here. Got the Nobel Prize for physics when he was a fairly young man and that was a long, long time ago. Wonderful occasion, really, even if they insist on restricting it. A great man. The Great Hall. Ratner himself.”

  Melcher-Speidell got up and left. The others soon followed—all but Maidengut and t
he boy. The former sat heavily entrenched, solidifying his relationship with the chair. He seemed to be waiting for a conclusive remark to be made or final question to be asked before he either left the room or fell through the chair and the floor beneath it. Billy paused at the door.

  “The Ratner of Ratner’s star?”

  “The very same,” Maidengut said.

  This brief exchange completed, Kyzyl escorted the boy back to his canister.

  10

  OPPOSITES

  He passed through twillig-shaped openings in the air, an infinite series of discrete convenient gateways.

  Nobody seemed to know where the Great Hall was. He went to a nearby dining unit and checked the bulletin board (“advisory dispatch chart”) for word of a torch-lighting ceremony. No word. No sign of Ratner’s name. No directions to Great Hall. He read the lone note pinned there.

  Vintage art films—8 millimeter

  Sale or rent

  1 – “Two in a Tub”

  2 – “Aunt Polly’s Banana Surprise”

  3 – “What the Butler Did”

  4 – “Volleyball Follies”

  5 – “Frenchy and the House Dick”

  Contact O. Mohole

  Maternity Suite

  By appointment only

  He walked along a semicircular corridor, asking directions in vain, met in fact with squinted eyes and little sniffles, everyone reacting to this entity the Great Hall in similar fashion, civilized pygmies asked to climb sequoia trees, something ancestral in their replies, a captive skepticism shading every face. Eventually he came to a moving walkway (“linear glide”) and stepped on. He’d never ridden on one of the linear glides, although he’d seen them once or twice in different parts of the building. It was a pleasant experience. You simply stood there, holding on to the moving strap above your head. The strap, similar to the kind found in subways, was suspended from a flexible-strength wire that enabled you to pull it down to suit your particular stature.

  Only moments earlier he’d imagined he was moving through air-gaps cut to his shape, an infinite number of distinct apertures. Now, on the linear glide, he felt he was passing through one continuous hole. Precisely his height and width. A custom perforation. Even a special opening to accommodate his raised right arm. He moved in a straight line through a dim midevening monochrome, a kind of interior dusk, abstract murals on either side. At one point a large figure, adumbral and shapeless, was superimposed on the geometry of walls and ceiling. Unerringly rendered shapes and amorphous overshadow. What was there about these surfaces that made the journey seem descendent and led him to believe he was breathing sheerest calculus? Strict precision strict. Down the line to dream the subliminal blend of number and function. Analysis rethought in arithmetical terms. Opposed positions. Whole numbers providing the substance for the continuous torsional spring of analysis. Atomism and flow. Down the line past history’s black on white. Ideal of proof ideal.

  Every semirecluse has his amaranthine woman. Imaginary love-lies-bleeding. “But in this case,” Softly had written, “the woman was not only real but a mathematician as well. This is Sonja Kowalewski and we can only guess at the levels of intensity during those afternoons when she arrives at his home for lessons. Twenty years old to his fifty-five. Aristocratic and social, while he is accustomed to life in remote villages. To someone fixed in solitude she must have seemed a brighter presence than he could bear. She is brilliant, attractive, Moscow-born, an Eastern jade (it is suspected) determined to have her pick of the schoolmaster’s gifts. So we speculate on the density of their meetings. The quality of the sunlight in his parlor. The tone of their discussions on power series and irrational numbers. The very clothes she wears. His face, while she listens. Her eyes, adventuring. Is it within the student’s vested right to consume the preceptor’s soul? He is a bachelor, remember, while she is married (in name at least). Another level worth exploring. To empty each other of possessions. To negate each other’s artificial names. In his regard for logic, proof, exactitude and caution, he tries not to dwell on his own belief that death is payment for risks not taken, and pours himself a beer. And for her part—what? Does she have fantasies about mathematics? Does she imagine that in his attacks of vertigo he spins from room to room, a scientist trying to cope with holiness, or perhaps himself immune, a germ-carrier of ecstasy? She titles a mathematical memoir: On the Rotation of a Solid Body About a Fixed Point. They pass their afternoons and when she dies (surprise) he burns her letters.” Of, pertaining to, or resembling the amaranth. An imaginary flower that never fades.

  In the wall ahead was an archlike opening through which the linear glide continued to move. The hole was about as tall and wide as he was. He stepped off the glide just as it whispered through the darkened arch. Adjacent to this opening was a door with a black arrow painted on it. The arrow pointed down. He opened the door and went down a flight of old stone steps, cracked in many places. The lighting consisted of a makeshift network of low-watt bulbs strung along the ceiling. He came to the bottom of the vertical shaft around which the staircase had been constructed. There was a large jagged hole in one wall and next to the hole stood a man with a plastic torch in his hand, flames two feet high.

  “I’m Evinrude,” he said. “You’re very, very late.”

  “Is this the ceremony?”

  “They’re working out size places and they want the smallest last. That’s the only thing that saved you.”

  “But this is the ceremony for Ratner, right?”

  “Just to make it official, I have to ask if you’re a laureate.”

  “Yes.”

  “In what field?”

  “Mathematics.”

  “Because only laureates are allowed beyond this point,” Evinrude said.

  “Zorgs. I won for zorgs.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A class of numbers.”

  “Out of curiosity, would I know what you were talking about if you described them further?”

  “No.”

  “Can people do things with these numbers of yours?”

  “The average person, forget about, but in his book-to-be, right where I’m up to now, Softly says zorgs in their own way hark back to the nineteenth-century redefinition of the ancient and semimystical idea of whole numbers forming the basis of all mathematics. They hark back, he says. Softly can be funny that way.”

  “Who or what is Softly?”

  “Head of the School of Mathematics at the Center for the Refinement of Ideational Structures.”

  “Correct,” Evinrude said.

  The torch he held was very large and Billy hoped they wouldn’t give him one to carry, particularly if the ceremony was scheduled to be a long one.

  “What happens next?” he said.

  “I ask you why you’re late.”

  “Nobody could tell me how to get here. I asked everybody I saw and none of them ever even heard of the Great Hall. It’s not that I didn’t ask. They just never heard.”

  “No wonder they never heard of it,” Evinrude said. “You gave them the wrong name. It’s not the Great Hall. It’s the Great Hole. Whoever told you Great Hall was guilty of a misnomer. This is the old part of Field Experiment Number One. The building was partly built on an existing structure. Not many people know that. The old structure was buried, and so instead of destroying it or bypassing it they incorporated the old part into what they were putting up, a buttress for the foundation, because of the archaeology involved. This is where we’re standing now. The old part. The temple cave. They still haven’t figured out how to make it disasterproof. A sudden noise or loud report could bring it all down.”

  “What’s this about size places?”

  “It’s to get a dramatic effect with the torches.”

  “We all hold torches?”

  “The laureates,” Evinrude said. “All the laureates get a torch and go to their size places and then light the torch and hold it.”

  “Why are they having the cerem
ony down here?”

  “Ratner’s people.”

  “What kind of people?”

  “The doctor, the nurse, the organist, the fella from the bearded sect. They insisted on having the ceremony in the Great Hole because of first of all there’s the old gentleman’s health to be considered and the air down here is the right kind of air and because of second of all there’s a sense of the past in the Great Hole because of its being part of a venerable structure and there’s that to be considered, awareness of past, respect for heritage. The laureates agreed. Those that were consulted.”

  “I wasn’t consulted.”

  “You were very, very late. Maybe that’s why you weren’t consulted. Ratner’s people weren’t late. They came thousands of miles but they got here on time.”

  “They weren’t told Great Hall instead of Great Hole.”

  “Time to go in,” Evinrude said. “Step lively, keep it moving, spread it out.”

  He dipped the torch and Billy stepped through the hole and walked down a flight of crooked stairs into a small dusty room with nothing in it but a bronze door and a stone bench. He sat on the bench and looked at the door. The particles in the air reminded him of chalk dust and he assumed all this powdery matter had simply floated off the walls and ceiling, further indications of the structure’s fragility and age. The door opened, admitting a man wearing a mink fedora and a long black coat. His beard was white and untrimmed, reaching to his chest, and although its wispy attenuated ends made the boy think of surgical cotton sticking out of a box after a handful has been removed, he was sure on second glance that the beard was anything but soft, that its strands were coarse, firm and wiry, toughened by decades of misery and grit. The man’s coat extended almost to his shoes. He approached the bench and Billy moved over to give him room to sit but the man stopped short of the bench, put his hands behind his back and leaned forward slightly, head inclined, lips beginning to move a few seconds before he actually said anything.