“You do like to talk.”
“I keep in practice.”
“Most women don’t fit with… people like us.”
“She was young and needed lots of attention,” he said soberly, gazing off at the bar. “But if you were tired or busy, she wouldn’t count that for much. She loved well and truly when she was in that mood, but was oblivious when her mind was on something else.”
Alicia wondered if this rather pretty speech was prepared, but the look on his face said otherwise. Unless he was an exceptional actor. He seemed to feel her gaze, blinked, and said quickly, “Looked great, though.”
“Vogue on the outside, vague on the inside?”
“Dead on. Maybe I wasn’t the right romantic type.”
Alicia shook her head. Usually people would say, I’m kind of a romantic, with a half-embarrassed yet subtly superior air. “I’ve never understood romantic love, really. It’s like a list of depressive symptoms, as if missing someone makes you feel really alive. So it’s wonderful to cling, highly moral to be dependent.”
He looked askance at her but nodded, egging her on with “Self-inflicted misery is so enormously self-improving.”
“Right. Suffering, generally, makes life seem ultimately worthwhile. Madness!”
“Let’s see. Is there any other sacred idea we could trash in a singles’ bar?”
“Plenty. We were teenagers in the Nineties and now we have to get through the Noughts—”
“Or the Oh-Ohs, as some prefer.”
“—and we’ve got far too much freedom.”
His brow wrinkled. “Now that’s one I haven’t heard before.”
“You haven’t lived it. Women today have more freedom than many of them can handle.” She felt a diatribe coming on, maybe a full-fledged “Alicia rant,” as her father called them. But she didn’t want to stop. Let him have both barrels, part of her said, see if it spooks him. “Take work, for example. How important should our careers be? Hardly any men ever had any freedom of choice there.”
“Ummm,” he said judiciously, watching her face.
With most men this was a danger signal, the full-bore skeptical gaze, but she plunged on. “Sleeping with somebody? Or somebodies? Or nobody? Few guys were ever pestered with that problem; they didn’t get to do the choosing. How about marriage? Who, when, why—in the old days those got decided by the offers that came in.”
“Always shadowed by the prospect of becoming a crabby spinster,” he added.
She conceded this with a curt nod and plunged on, words ricocheting out. “Divorce? That’s a really fresh freedom, available now just if you want it. No need to prove cause. The cafeteria of love. Any way you cut it, today a woman has to make up her mind about every major area. Every one! Society stands mute—”
“Though maybe frowning a little.”
“Okay, some. But look at the weight of all that. Happy? Contented? No?—it’s your responsibility, gal. Freud asked what women wanted; now women have to ask that, and often we don’t know. We don’t even recognize how to know when we do know. We’re on our own.”
He cradled his face in both hands, giving her a slow, understanding smile. “You’re facing a lot, aren’t you?”
He looked so disarmed, she found it disarming. “It shows, huh?”
“In spades.”
“No pun intended?”
His mouth twisted, startled, and she had to laugh, quickly adding, “Sorry, it just came to me.”
“I don’t think of you as black,” he said tentatively.
“I don’t either. Not into identity politics. It’s enough trouble just being me.”
“Indeed, a full-time job.”
She relaxed a bit and pretty soon was surprised to find herself telling him about the call from Brookhaven, wondering out loud what it might mean. “Brookhaven will go to the UCI administration, right away,” she finished.
Max took another sip of merlot and thought a moment. The restaurant had filled, but neither of them noticed the rising noise level. Alicia was feeling much better. “And being bureaucrats,” he finally said, “they’ll appoint a committee to advise them.”
“Why not make a decision at the top?”
“The best strategy when you’re unsure is basic CYA—Cover Your Ass. You might need a panel of experts to point to if things get dicey.”
“I don’t like review panels and the like. They usually try to cut an issue both ways.”
“I don’t doubt you’ll tough your way through them.”
“How come?”
“You’ve got an edge on you. If you get pushed, you shove back, correct?”
She canted her mouth to one side, reluctant to concede the point. “I stick to essentials. You have to run your own life.”
“Our lives are the exhalations and inhalations of the gods,” he said loftily, sipping more wine. “All else is folly.”
12
She was working on some new diagnostics with Brad when the knock came at the lab door. Students never did that, just barged in, so she went to answer it. Her back muscles conversed with her, protesting how long she had been working in a fixed position. Should go snorkeling, she reminded herself. Why live on the ocean if you never go in? She had been working solid, fourteen-hour days longer than she wanted to remember.
A secretary from her department waited at the door, nervously shifting from one foot to another. “Sorry to bother you, Professor Butterworth, but Dean Lattimer has been trying to reach you by telephone. She needs to see you.”
“Okay, I’ll finish up here and—”
“She said, uh, right away.”
A small alarm went off way in the back of her mind. “Lattimer, she’s dean of research, right?”
“Yes.” She seemed anxious to get away. In the language of hierarchy sending a human messenger was part of the message.
Alicia closed the door. Some women on the staff still felt uncomfortable dealing with professors who happened to be women, slipping either into we’re-just-nobodies camaraderie or a stiff formality.
She shrugged and said to Brad, “I’ll be back soon. I hope.”
He glanced up, hunched over a tangle of gear. His speed and understanding were remarkable; she had to keep reminding herself that he was an undergraduate. Did she expect him to be a bit less ambitious because he looked easygoing and dressed in the casual SoCal mode? “Uh, okay. I’m getting more photons than ever out of this UV counter.”
“Have you changed anything? Reseated those light pipes?”
“No, I was going to do that next.”
“But results are better?” She hesitated, not wanting to walk away from a puzzle like this. “Maybe it’s changing.”
“Like that tidal effect?” Brad nodded, adjusting some dials on an oscilloscope. “That was sure weird. We would’ve noticed it earlier if it had been there, for sure.”
“Maybe.” She kept being blindsided by events, it seemed, making her feel unsure about everything. “And now you’re getting more counts in the photodetectors.”
“Yeah, going up all the time. If it had been emitting like this before, I could’ve gotten that spectrum in a day, not a week.”
“Ummm. Suppose Max is right about—”
“Wormholes?” Brad made a rude noise.
She blinked. Making fun of a Caltech professor’s ideas was not typical student behavior; Brad had more confidence than sense. “Just suppose, okay? Then more light coming through could mean that the other end is getting bigger.”
“This end isn’t.”
“Are you sure? How long has it been since we measured it?”
“Here,” Brad said, getting up and grabbing a large pair of calipers. They both walked from the ‘scope room into the bay. Carefully they folded back the blankets of light shielding around the U-magnet. Alicia had not been inside here for days; Physics 3-B was taking a lot of her time with office hours and homework grading. The sphere was nearly buried behind photodetector leads and lenses. Brad leaned throug
h and with some grunting measured the diameter.
“Looks like 38.3 centimeters,” he read out.
“Do it again.”
His mouth twisted but he did it. “Same: 38.3.”
“That’s bigger, not the same,” she said, pulling back a flap of the light blanket. “See?” On the board was DIAMETER 37.8 CM. She thought again about erasing it to keep casual inquiries down.
Brad frowned. “Now, how in hell…?”
“Otherwise it looks the same.” She felt a cold spike of unease. If it grew further…
“Yeah, but look, a little expansion can’t explain how we’re getting more than an order of magnitude more light out of this thing.”
“Granted. Look, check your other baseline measurements. We can’t assume anything holds steady.”
“I guess not.”
A glance at her watch. “I’m needed across campus. Let me get this out of the way and we’ll check some of the other early measurements.”
He stood transfixed by the sphere. “It’s changing. Growing.”
She saw him then more deeply, and at the core of him was a drive very much like hers, the engine of her life. For the first time she felt that she knew him. “Yes. So much for a controlled experiment.”
Another odd result, straight out of the blue; blindsided again. They should set up a continuous measurement of its size, maybe with a laser beam reflected from the surface…
“Something big is going on here.” Brad seemed a little uneasy and she wondered if he was being completely straight with her. He was gifted, able to keep up with this experiment as a mere grad student, though of course just as a data-taker. He would do very well indeed, once he knew more; his innate understanding of electronics was a marvel. But his quick-developing rivalry with Zak might have some side effects, she thought. Competitive types could easily rub each other the wrong way.
And was Brad telling her everything? Well, she would go through it all when she got back.
She deliberately put the whole issue out of her mind as she walked quickly through Aldrich Park, grateful for its calming trees and lawns. Focus, focus. Research after politics.
The receptionist outside Lattimer’s suite was formal to the point of severity, a precursor of Lattimer herself. Tall and tweedy, Rebecca Lattimer had risen swiftly from molecular biology after only a few years of mediocre research, making the momentous movement two years before across the circle, over the green glade of UCI’s central park to the ramparts of the Admin building.
Alicia had noticed two major styles of female professors at UCI: Frowsy and Brisk. Frowsy was easy, with its wild hair, clomping shoes, and shapeless dresses, often preferred in the schools of humanities and biology, with ropy ethnic jewelry in the social sciences. The Brisks, on the other hand, suggested Radcliffe, with tailored dress-for-success severity, usually softened with pearl earrings or a lacy touch. They always returned phone calls and e-mail and could be ruthless without anybody noticing.
Lattimer was a full-bore Brisk. Well-cut gray suit, eggshell blue blouse, turquoise pin to match her eyes, hair bunched to highlight the high cheekbones. Her office was startling after the fluorescents and shiny enameled surfaces in the rest of UCI, the Light of Scrutiny look. Here an ivory carpet lapped at the base of well-oiled paneling of tongue-in-groove cedar. An ample modernist couch sectioned the spacious preserve into a conversation area and a more official, desk-dominated realm. Several windows slanted afternoon sunlight into the hushed space, bringing out the polished mahogany of the scrupulously bare desk. Or nearly so, for the deep tones enhanced the effect of a single stack of paper. Alicia eyed those pages as she passed by them, ushered in with the usual cordialities to the couch area.
In this textured, welcoming space the afternoon sun cast a buttery radiance on Lattimer’s face as she sat in a posture that looked studied, leaning casually back into an ebony leather chair, putting the papers in her lap, saying, “I’m glad you could come right over,” without looking glad at all. A quick intelligence showed itself in the guarded set of her mouth, which bore only a trace of lipstick; Alicia wondered if this were deliberate, or whether she did not bother to replace the lipstick lost eating lunch; though, come to think of it, she probably didn’t eat lunch at all. Alicia crossed her legs, now quite aware that she wore a gray jogging suit and heavy lab shoes.
“I’ve gotten some disturbing letters from the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and have appointed a committee to look into them.”
“My, that was quick.” Alicia knew that one of her own irritating mannerisms was a curt inability to smooth conversations along when plainly the other person was trying to, so she added, “I didn’t know Brookhaven had done anything.”
“Umm, they have, they have.” Lattimer gave her a long flat stare, probably intended to sober the recipient.
“I promised to share data with Brookhaven as soon as I have a good result.”
“I decided to convene a panel from the physics department—just advisory and completely confidential—to advise on, well, let us call them ‘property rights’ in your subculture.”
Be diplomatic. “I’m surprised you didn’t tell me anything about this.”
“That was to avoid stirring up the issue more than it had to be.” Lattimer tented her fingers and studied them intently, a strikingly judicious gesture.
“I could have told you, everything in an accelerator experiment generally belongs to the host body. A blanket organization, Associated Universities Incorporated, holds title. Brookhaven controls that, so they can decide matters.”
“Quite so.” Lattimer got up and stood behind her chair, grasping its back, peering down at Alicia, then slowly leaning forward. “I should have thought you would have informed them of your discovery.”
“It wasn’t a discovery then, just a depressing accident. I collected the wreckage of my detector and left.”
“Are you sure?”
Piercing gaze, hands tightening on the chair back. Alicia made herself breathe in slowly. She had learned to beware anyone who dramatically leaned in toward her in conversation, or who pushed things back across the desk at her, or sat back and struck poses, or dressed a bit too carefully or adjusted the lighting to favor them, or who even had their chair placed higher than hers. Usually this revealed a phony more concerned with appearance than accomplishment. But the better bureaucrats combined all that with rhetoric and delivery, plus telling arguments.
“I was pretty torn up about the failure. We just hauled everything home. My students and I did not get a good idea of how strange this sphere was until we studied it.” All true, too.
“Ummm.” More narrow-eyed scrutiny, though slacking off a bit. “I could not help but notice that your colleagues do not even know you have this object.”
Couldn’t help it, see. Somebody forced me to convene this special panel, see… “No reason they should.” No, too curt. Try some self-confession, maybe. “I—I’ve been pretty scarce around the department lately. Getting my students enthused about repairing our detector takes plenty of time.”
“I had another call from the assistant director at Brookhaven just this morning—”
“Brookhaven didn’t make it. It was in my detector debris. So why’s it theirs?”
Lattimer blinked. Deans spent their energies managing underlings’ appetites and getting money, not sipping from the heady wine of research reports; perhaps Lattimer had forgotten that scientists could get passionate. She blinked and seemed taken aback by Alicia’s sudden gumption.
Carefully Lattimer said, “We must rise above feelings of ownership in such matters,” using a tone which Alicia realized probably came in quite handy at fund-raisers, usually at the conclusion of a speech titled “Whither Science?”
Seeing no point in descending to the level of principle, Alicia said flatly, “What are you going to do?”
The dean steepled her hands again and peered at her over them, her mouth becoming a stern, flat line. Her excellent cheekbones caught
the yellow sunlight which was slanting lower, reaching into the hushed recesses of the room. “I shall retain my informal committee to keep track of your progress. Your argument, that this thing was in your detector, seems to have some minor merit.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Have you considered safety?”
“Uh, yes. There’s no apparent cause for concern.”
“Good. I expect my panel will rule that you retain this object for study but share results with others in timely fashion.” She had a concluding tone, nodding.
Alicia felt that she could probably not have done any better than this; Lattimer’s panel seemed to be a tame animal, rendering whatever verdict she liked. Soon enough Alicia was crossing back through the circular park, mulling over matters. There was a difference of attitude here she could not quite fathom. Sure enough, she had stretched the rules all along. But she had stayed inside them—or thought she had—and that was what mattered.
Once in grade school she and some friends had wanted some bauble, long-forgotten, but the way they decided who would get it had stuck in her memory. A boy proposed that they each pick a number between zero and 100, and he would compare with one he had already chosen. Her best friend picked 66, another 78. Everyone seemed irked when Alicia naturally chose 65. “You shouldn’t get so close to my number!” her best friend insisted. But to Alicia the point was to maximize her chances, so she captured the biggest fraction of the numbers. “It’s not fair,” another said. When the boy revealed his number, 88, everyone seemed to feel that Alicia had been dealt a stinging rebuke, another reaction she could not fathom.
She shrugged, feeling a sharp desire to be quick, lean, sure. At the heart of all this lay the Riddle, and everything else was just packing material for it.
To work along precise lines with hard facts, after the muggy evasions of Lattimer’s soft office, would be a genuine pleasure. But first she had some political scores to settle. She strode energetically back to the physics department through the late-afternoon light.
COSM Page 12
