by Ward Wagher
“That’s a good idea,” she said immediately. “Do you know where there are some shovels?”
“No, but I suppose we could look around in the basement.”
“Let’s do it, then.”
“There is one problem, Maggie,” Larry said.
“And what would that be?”
“Everyone will think we are crazy,” he said.
She laughed in her infectious way. He thought to himself, once again, how much he liked to hear her snorting laugh.
“They already think we are crazy,” she said. “What’s the diff?”
“Good point.”
They quickly trotted up to the fourth floor and left their things in Larry’s flat. Back down the stairs to the basement, they began searching through the unused rooms.
“What is all this junk, anyway?” Maggie muttered as they worked their way through another room.
“Mostly old furniture, it seems. I know it’s not a good idea to throw things away. We need to recycle. But this stuff is useless.”
“Somebody needs to cart it away.”
Larry chuckled. “Right after we finish shoveling snow, right?”
She giggled. “Can you imagine the look on Mrs. Willow’s face, if we started hauling stuff away?”
“She only has one look on her face.”
“Point,” she giggled again.
At the end of a hallway, a door opened into a small closet. It contained a sink, a selection of mops and brooms, and lo, several wide, flat, shovels.
“Eureka!” Larry shouted.
“What’s that mean, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Larry shook his head. “Just that it signifies success or discovery, or something.”
“I’ll go with the something,” she said as she reached into the closet to grab one of the shovels. “Let’s go, Maestro.”
They walked purposefully back up the stairs and stopped at the front door to Maseeh Hall. They stepped outside and begin working on clearing the snow away from the steps. At the bottom, they began pushing it off the sidewalk.
“Do you suppose there is some kind of technique to this?” Maggie grunted as she pushed an increasing pile of snow in front of the shovel.
“Don’t… know,” Larry puffed as he heaved a shovel-full to one side.
Behind them, they heard the scrape of another shovel, and they turned to see Mrs. Willow also working on the sidewalk. She bent over, swung the shovel, and scooped up snow in a single, economical motion. She straightened up to glare at them.
“Any job worth doing is worth doing right, Mr. Berthold. Watch how I do it.”
They watched as she worked through a couple of cycles. She made it look effortless. Larry turned and attempted to mimic her motions. Maggie seemed to be a bit better at it.
“Watcha doing, guys?” Myfanwe Dimfan called from the door.
“Shoveling snow from the sidewalks,” Maggie called.
“Where’cha get the shovels?”
“In the basement.”
“Any more down there?”
“Couple,” Maggie puffed.
A few minutes later Myfanwe and Seb Sylvester were at the other end of the sidewalk, and energetically clearing snow. A half dozen of the other students eventually came out to shout encouragement and take over when anyone’s efforts seemed to be flagging. Everyone seemed afraid to approach Mrs. Willow, but she kept up her pace long after others grew tired and switched off.
Within a half hour, they had cleared a broad path around the corner and up to the first doorway of the MIT building. They returned to Maseeh Hall in good spirits, and carefully placed the shovels in a small room near the main entrance. Everyone agreed that it would be much easier to negotiate their way to the school when the snow was cleared.
Maggie and Larry walked up to his flat, where Larry collapsed on his bed.
“I don’t think I’ve worked that hard in a while,” he said.
“Well, get up. You promised to help me with my search, tonight.”
He pulled himself up. “That I did. Okay. I suppose I should start a meal.”
She elbowed him out of the way. “Since you were good enough to promise to help me, I suppose I can cook this time.”
They heard a tapping at the door, and Maggie walked over. When she started to pull the door open, it was pushed open from the outside. Mrs. Willow marched in carrying a tray with a teapot and a couple of cups.
“I thought, perhaps, you two needed to warm up,” she stated in her blunt fashion.
Maggie sniffed. “This isn’t tea. What is it?”
There was a twinkle in Mrs. Willow’s eyes. “Just something I happened to have. I suspect you have never had it before.”
She poured the thick brown liquid into the cups. “Go ahead. Drink up, before it gets cold.”
Maggie sniffed the cup, and then immediately took a slurp. Her eyes opened wide.
“Mrs. Willow, what is this? It’s wonderful.”
Larry took a small sip, then a larger one. “Wow!”
“This is hot chocolate. I thought you might enjoy it.”
“I’ve heard of it, but never had any before,” Maggie said. “I’ve never heard of anyone around here having it.”
“Oh, I had a bit and had been saving it. This seemed like a good occasion.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Willow,” Maggie said.
“Just bring the tray back when you’re done,” she commanded. “And don’t break the cups.”
“Of course, Mrs. Willow,” Larry said.
The old lady marched out again. Larry and Maggie retreated to the sofa, where they sipped on the hot chocolate. Maggie’s eyes glowed with pleasure. Conversation waned as they each sipped on the wonderful concoction.
“Do you suppose there might be some more in the pot?” Maggie asked.
Larry looked down at his empty cup. “I don’t know. Let me check.”
He lifted up the lid on the small teapot and looked inside. “Yes, I think there’s enough for another cup for you.”
“No, you must split it,” she insisted. “We’ll each have half a cup.”
“If you say so.”
“I do, and you’d better not argue with me, Mister!”
“I wouldn’t think of it.”
Hours later they huddled around her computer as they studied the output on the screen. They had spent the evening tuning the searches via the climate algorithm.
“You’re right, Mags,” Larry said. “There’s something screwy, here.”
“I’m getting a lot more data than I used to,” she said absently as she stared at the screen.
“But look here, and here,” he pointed. “You’re getting flat spots in the data recovery that shouldn’t be there.”
“What does it mean?” she asked.
Larry rubbed his chin as he thought. “I don’t know. Do you mind if I copy the program over to my computer? I’d like to run it against my searches. This has me curious.”
“Sure,” she said. She typed in several commands and copied the necessary programs out to a shared repository. “I have a lot to think about, here. And, it’s late, Larry.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at the watch on his wrist. “Tomorrow will come early.”
She folded her computer closed and stood up. “Thanks for the help. I’ll stop by in the morning and walk over with you.”
“On the clean sidewalk,” he said with a grin.
“Only if it doesn’t snow, again.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dr. Ferdinand Isaacs was tall, dark-bearded and gaunt. He was universally thought to look a lot like Abraham Lincoln. In fact, he was often called Honest Abe behind his back. He knew about that, of course, but didn’t care. He kind of enjoyed the notoriety. This morning was his weekly review meeting with Maggie Bosstic. He looked forward to the meetings with the geeky Québecoise. Unlike most of his other students, she did not take herself too seriously. But, she
was very serious about her course of study.
“I see no reason why you cannot go ahead and start working on your dissertation. Your research is complete, and it has been vetted.”
She ran a hand through her tangled hair. “I don’t know, Dr. Isaacs. I just can’t seem to get started on it.”
“What seems to be the problem?” he asked. “It seemed to me like everything was in place before you left on your trip.”
She pulled the pencil out of her hair and used it to scratch her head. He recognized it as a nervous gesture.
“I have my outline complete,” she said.
“Yes, yes, I know that,” Isaacs said. “Do you have your computer with you?”
“Of course,” she said. “It goes everywhere with me.”
“Then open it up. Let’s look at your dissertation document.”
She shook her head. “I have not started it yet.”
“Okay, so then, open a new document. Tell me when you have it ready.”
“Yes, Sir,” she said quietly as she manipulated the computer.
When the document was open, she looked up and nodded to him.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll dictate the first few sentences to you.”
“For centuries society has wrestled with an inexact science called Climatology.”
He watched as she typed in his first sentence. When it was clear she had completed typing what he dictated, he continued with the next several sentences and she obediently typed them into her computer.
“Now, what is your premise?” he asked.
“That the global climate is predictable only in hindsight,” she responded. “We can usually see trend lines and follow them but determining where they will head in the future is not possible. The reason is that the sun is the primary driver of the climate on Earth.”
“Good,” he said. “Now you can rephrase that slightly for your document.”
She pulled the pencil out again and lodged it crossways in her teeth. She started typing again with less hesitation. Isaacs nodded in approval. Sometimes all it took was somebody to prime the pump. As he watched, he concluded that Maggie was now rolling.
“Very well, Maggie,” he said. “That should be it for today. Why don’t you return to your office, and continue working on the document?”
“Thank you, Dr. Isaacs,” she said, standing up.
Without another word, she retreated from his office and walked determinedly back to hers. She wasn’t sure what had just happened, but she was now in the zone with her writing. She would probably spend the rest of the day and most of the evening writing. Her advisor had somehow dislodged her writer’s block and the words were bursting forth.
Larry looked in her window at lunchtime. Seeing she was busy he retreated to his office to eat his lunch. He recognized what she was doing and had learned to leave her alone when the muse struck. At five o’clock he tapped on her door, risking her wrath. But, he didn’t want her trying to walk back to the hall by herself.
“It’s after five, Mags,” he said quietly.
She had stopped in mid-word and looked over at the clock on her desk. “So, it is. We need to get going. Are you going to cook tonight, since you didn’t last night?”
“Absolutely,” he grinned. “I remember my obligations.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked darkly.
He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Just something I heard somewhere.”
“Right. Let’s go before your body gets left in a snow drift somewhere.”
“I’m not afraid of you. Fluffy will protect me.”
She laughed. “Just picturing that is entertaining.”
“Uh huh. So, let’s go.”
It was already dark when they left the building. During the day, someone else had extended the cleared section of sidewalk to the next entrance to the institute building. Some of the shops across the sward were still open, and their lights showed out on to cleared stretches of sidewalk.
“Looks like the storekeepers are getting into the act,” Maggie said.
“We may have started something good,” he replied.
“And it did not require the town council to issue a directive.”
Larry thought about that as they walked along. “I wonder how long it will take the council to involve themselves in this.”
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Well, sometimes they get their knickers twisted about stuff. They might not like this.”
“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” Maggie stated.
“We’ll see, I guess.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“How about a small bet?” he asked.
“What do you have in mind?”
“If the council comes up with something negative, you cook for us for a month. If they say nothing, or it’s positive, I cook for a month.”
“That’s a sucker’s bet, Larry.”
“For which one of us?”
“Oh, I think you’re going to be cooking for me a lot.” She had an impish look on her face.
He smiled to himself as they walked back to Maseeh Hall.
Larry had found some bacon in one of the groceries. Pig farms were not popular in the Boston area because of the smell. The cardboard and waxed paper wrapper declared it was packed at Vendable Farms, Indianapolis. Since the Paladin was paying the freight, he decided to send a little of the money back to the Palatinate. So, their dinner on this evening was bacon and eggs.
“Bacon, Larry?” she said when she smelled it start to cook. “You can’t afford that.”
“Probably not very often,” he said. “I found a package that came from the Palatinate and decided to send some of Arthur’s money back to him.”
“It does smell wonderful,” she said wistfully.
“Don’t worry, Mags, I’ll give you your fair share. How many strips do you want?”
“Could I have four, please?”
“Four it is.”
“And you must have four, as well.”
“You have convinced me,” he said with a grin.
She opened her computer and began typing again. Larry noticed and was careful not to interrupt her as she worked. He paid careful attention to the food so that it did not burn. The bacon had to be cooked carefully since the quality was uneven, and some was not entirely cured. He had heard about trichinosis and had no desire to experience that particular parasite.
Maggie looked up as he slid the plate and the cup of tea in front of her.
“Oh… thanks, Larry. I lost track of time there.”
“It looks like you’re making a lot of progress,” he said. “I didn’t want to get in your way.”
“You’re a dear. Okay, let’s eat.”
He marveled, once again, at her stout appetite. She quickly polished off the bacon and eggs, then returned to her typing. He quietly cleaned the dishes and then stretched out on the bed to read. He was a little embarrassed about not having made the same kind of progress that Maggie had. He really needed to get busy.
He awakened in the dark. Maggie, having noticed he had fallen asleep, had quietly picked up and left. She first turned off the lights and pulled the comforter over him. She also remembered to turn down the gas heater. He decided all was well and fell back asleep.
The next morning, Larry awakened and swung his feet around to sit up, and then doubled over in agony. He held his hands to his head to try to quell the pounding headache. He was also frightened, for he didn’t know what was wrong with him.
There was a light tapping on the door, and Maggie stuck her head in. When she saw Larry, her expression changed to concern, and she bustled over to where he sat.
“Larry, what is the matter?”
He moaned. “Not so loud. Unbelievable headache.”
“Are you sick to your stomach?” she asked.
“I think I’m getting ready to be.” He started hyperventilating in an attempt to settle the
revolt in his intestinal tract.
She quickly grabbed a wastebasket and emptied it on the floor. She set it down beside him. If you’re going to blow chunks, please aim for the waste can. A moment later he obliged. She stroked his head as the waves of nausea ripped through him.
“Did that help?” she asked. “Are you feeling any better?”
“No,” he groaned. “It’s worse if anything.”
She picked up the waste can. “Let me take care of this. I’ll be back in a mo.”
He toppled over in the bed and began shivering. When Maggie came back into the flat, she covered him up and then turned up the gas heater. She studied Larry for a few moments, and the left the flat. Larry shivered and wondered if he was going to die. He did not remember ever being this sick.
Maggie ran down the stairs as quickly as she could. She knocked on Mrs. Willow’s door as she fought to catch her breath.
“Whatever is the matter, Child?” Mrs. Willow asked.
“Larry is very ill. I don’t know what to do.”
“Very well,” she grumped, pulling the door shut behind her. “Shall we go see what he has done to himself, this time?”
Maggie walked quickly back to the stairwell as Mrs. Willow stumped along behind her. After making their way to the fourth floor, she walked quickly to Larry’s flat, still breathing hard. Mrs. Willow followed, not showing the results of any exertion.
The old lady walked over to Larry’s bed and felt his forehead. She then looked around, sniffing suspiciously.
“What’s the matter?” Maggie asked.
“Was his room locked last night?” Mrs. Willow asked.
“No. Nobody locks their doors, here. Too many of the locks jam.”
Mrs. Willow gave a long sigh. “Very well. Somebody was in here last night, and they gave him a shot of sleepy gas.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Maggie said.
“He apparently awakened, and they hit him with the gas. It’ll put you immediately to sleep for the night, and you won’t remember anything the next day. A heavy dose will make one very ill. I would suggest you leave his door open for a while, to air out the room.”
“Should we take him to a doctor?” Maggie asked.
