Science Is Magic Spelled Backwards and Other Stories

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  I found myself driving by the plant, located in what had been cow pasture and apple orchard when I was in high school. The humped buildings and thrusting towers silhouetted against the sunset sky took my breath away. My spirits lifted and I began to think again.

  At the stoplight, I turned onto the new six-lane highway into town. The old town center was coughing itself clear of homebound traffic and rolling up the sidewalks.

  I turned onto the two-lane street that had been the entire commercial district when I was a kid, before the shopping malls. The one- and two-story buildings looked tumbledown and dingy to my adult eyes, but I remembered the turns that put me into the parking lot of the Hotel Saginaw.

  The clerks were all new. They didn’t recognize me, or my name, when I checked in. Room 333. Third floor. That would have meant something profound to Mama, I’m sure.

  I fidgeted around the single-bedded, bare room. It was no Lasergloss Inn. I thought of going to a movie, a bar—anything. Instead I took a bath—the plumbing rattled—and went to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. No way I could banish my mother’s face from my mind’s eye. It was just like my freshman year in college all over again.

  I flipped on the failing, old television screen, promptly flicked it off, and instead counted the money in my wallet. What was I going to do? I’d counted on living at home, but that was obviously out of the question. Mama wasn’t going to let me rest until I joined her group of whackos. I’d have to get an apartment. My salary would cover it—easily—but it would be a month until I got paid.

  In all fairness, it did occur to me to wonder how, it was that I’d been offered this marvelous job when the ink on my diploma wasn’t even dry yet. And, of the ninety-two companies I’d applied to, this one, in my home town, was the only offer I’d gotten. Statistically, it was rather odd. Everyone else in the top ten of my class had gotten dozens of offers.

  I lay awake the rest of the night, cataloguing all the lucky breaks I’d had for the last eight years—statistical anomalies all. And now I was boxed into a job which ought to have gone to someone with at least two years’ experience. Oh, I was well prepared for it, but they didn’t know that. So why was I hired?

  I watched the dawn, and then grabbed a take-out breakfast and ate on the way to the plant, keyed up as if for a final exam.

  The personnel manager met me in the outer office, and before I could catch my breath, I’d been assigned an office, one quarter of a secretary, a security chip that opened some doors, and a whole list of things, I was sitting at my absolutely bare and empty desk staring at a digital photo of the plant that was the only decoration on the white walls, when a man walked in wearing a tag that said he was Alfred McCree.

  He was about my own height, with medium brown hair, black eyes, a lovely straight nose, in a face which I estimated at perhaps thirty years old, and he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. The smile was dazzling, too. “Ms. Samchik? I’m supposed to train you for the hot seat—that’s what we call your job around here.”

  “That’s nice,” I said as the room receded into a blur and he emerged with the blinding clarity of a brilliant vector graphic. “I mean,” I said shaking myself, “I hadn’t known I’d get any more training than a manual to read.”

  He shrugged. “This plant is so new the manuals haven’t been written yet! We went on-line just last year.”

  I liked his voice, too. “I know.”

  “But we have a new computer that’s going to make this plant the safest in the country—maybe the world. And it’s all yours from now own—on one shift anyway. Come I’ll show you!”

  I followed him across the hall and learned that he had been in the hot seat when the plant opened, and now had been promoted. Within the hour, we had littered the desk, chairs and most of the floors with opened binders, books, and magazines. Every screen in the room displayed one reference or another. Lunch was a cup of coffee, and an hour past quitting time I called a halt when I discovered I couldn’t focus my eyes because of the hunger headache lurking behind them.

  “Can I drive you home?” he asked.

  I remembered how his masculinity had affected me when he’d first walked in. The effect had faded while we were working, but it was coming back. Well, I thought with a sigh, it really isn’t good to get too personal with your boss. I shook my head. “I have my car.”

  “Can I offer you a dinner to make up for keeping you so late?

  I thought fast. The offer was so tempting, considering my flat wallet, but I said, “No, thank you very much. I’ve got a lot to do—getting settled and all. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I couldn’t afford to let him get the wrong idea about me.

  That first month flashed by. I looked up my High School best friend’s mother and rented a basement apartment in her house—on credit—and began to set up housekeeping.

  Mother insisted on feeding me dinners, and for that I could tolerate her lectures about how the energy problem was still an ongoing worldwide crisis, due to an imbalance in psychic forces, which her coven was working to rebalance. She really believed that the commercial development of clean burning nuclear fusion plants was due to the efforts of the hundreds of groups like hers, and therefore I should want to help them and join her coven.

  “Mavrana, this work, is vital. We’ve already got the world convinced that fusion is as safe as any other energy source. If we don’t convince the other half soon, there’ll be another depression like there was in the early years of this century. With your magical talent, why won’t you help us?”

  “Mama, why, won’t you listen when I tell you there is no way—no way at all—that your prancing and dancing could have altered people’s ideas!”

  “What do I have to do,” she protested, “trigger an earthquake under Sterling Bridge, before you’ll admit the obvious?”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” I shouted and stormed out.

  But I kept coming back—because I liked to eat, and because she did shut up and listen quite often. I had nobody else to burble to about all the wonderful new toys I had to play with, and I wanted to share my success with her. I think I secretly felt that I might even convince her that science works—and magic doesn’t. I owed her that much. She was, after all, my mother.

  The second month, I worked on the simulator, drilling on every emergency in the book and half a dozen I was inspired to invent. I even presented the earthquake scenario mother had suggested, and though the administrative board thought it far-fetched, they encouraged me to set up procedures.

  The third month, I was put to work for real. The hot bed as they affectionately termed the computer room where we controlled the safety systems, had one glass wall overlooking the pit where the main reactor lived. The other wall held the screens monitoring the rest of the plant. It took a crew of eleven to staff it, in four shifts, round the clock.

  For the first two weeks, I was never left alone in the hot seat. Randomly they hit me with every exotic drill they could imagine. But I never muffed it, and gradually I stopped worrying about whether it was a drill or real.

  Then, one afternoon, McCree met me at shift change, and shook hands solemnly. “You’re on your own, Ms. Samchik.”

  I had never known the meaning of pride before in my life. I wanted to scream for joy. Instead, I took a deep breath and ordered all stations to report. Ten all-clears snapped back to me, clean and crisp as could be. I was in charge of the whole fusion cycle plant.

  For weeks it was all fresh and new, important and beautiful. I could sit in the hot seat, surrounded by my own controls and gaze out that majestic window at the pit, and know I’d achieved everything I envisioned as a kid.

  But then I began thinking about McCree’s new job. He was in charge of acquiring new computers for the plant, and he got to travel all over the world, keeping abreast of research in the field. Six months I’d been out of school, and I could feel my skills becoming outmoded. I began to drop into McCree’s office, just to see what he was doing. But he took it for a personal intere
st.

  “I’ve got two tickets to a Ravens concert for Friday night. Shame to let them go to waste....”

  The Ravens had given me my first glimpse of the romanticism behind nuclear fusion—humans harnessing a piece of the sun—and often during difficult exam periods, their recordings had shored up my determination. But I hadn’t been able to get a ticket to their concert. I gritted my teeth and said, “Fine. I’ll take you out to dinner beforehand, okay?”

  I wish I’d remembered I’d told my mother I wanted a ticket to this concert, and that I’d also mentioned McCree.

  At the concert hall, I found he had front center balcony seats. The Ravens came on in feathered black capes and Native American style bird masks which they tossed aside to sing their own songs in the soft, lyrical style they’d made famous.

  Their final number was the one that had been their first hit and reprised all the superstitions about the raven, and about how useful their mischief could be when they’d been tamed and trained, ending, “So we’ll fly to the sun and bring it down to you.” Hearing that in person for the first time, I cried.

  As we put on our coats, I said, “I’d really love to meet one of them, but the crowd backstage will be awful.”

  “I’m game if you are.”

  Our eyes met and we nodded. But as we inched up the aisle, I saw my mother, with all of those I suspected belonged to the coven, seated in a block just above us. I maneuvered McCree’s back to them and tried to hide both of us in the crowd. I don’t know why. I’m sure Mama had been watching us the whole evening.

  This new theatre had been designed to let crowds flow through backstage in neat autographing funnels. We joined the end of the line and waited. As the line began to move, McCree suddenly said, “I haven’t got anything for them to autograph!”

  “Neither have I!” We hadn’t bought programs, and I’d lost the giveaway ad book in the ladies room. I searched my tiny formal handbag, came up with my wallet and a brainstorm. “I’ll have them sign the back of my Plant ID card!” I pried it out of the holder.

  He dug his out of an inside pocket. “It’ll be worth a million some day!”

  As the line crept forward, I began to feel foolish. What, I really wanted was to meet these men, not this.

  No, what I really want is for them to meet me!

  Now that was an embarrassingly adolescent emotion.

  When we got to the head of the line, the five Ravens were standing wrapped in black bathrobes, patiently autographing and smiling for pictures. I handed over my card mumbling about it being all I had with me to write on.

  Phil Raven turned it over, saying, “What’s this? Sterling Bridge Nuclear Cycle Plant? Hey, Art, come here!” The Raven on the end came around, looked at the pass, smiled and handed it back to Phil.

  Meanwhile, McCree had handed his card to Dan Raven who was also examining it. Dan, said, “Look, could you two step out around here for a few minutes? We’d like to talk to you.”

  Oh, God!

  McCree’s eyebrow was climbing, but he said amiably, “Sure, I think we have some time.”

  We were drawn into the dressing room behind them. It was a large suite with a sitting room from which eight small dressing rooms opened.

  Soon, their manager cut off the flow of people and herded the five of them into the sitting room, pushing the door shut behind them. “You guys get dressed before you all catch cold!” he shouted at them waving them out of the room.

  “But,” protested Phil who seemed about to approach us.

  The manager came over, waving his cell phone, “Get! Now!”

  Phil said at us, “Five minutes, don’t move!” and let himself be crowded into one of the dressing rooms. The room’s phones began ringing. Someone came in with a fistful of telegrams and a huge flower arrangement. Then several reporters were ushered in. In all, we waited an hour and a half while after-show business ceremonials were dispensed with, but finally Phil, Dan, and Art pulled us into one of the side rooms.

  “I’ve always admired you people who could actually understand all that math. Science has always defeated me,” said Dan. “I try to make up for it by writing songs that inspire kids to work hard at learning it.”

  “It worked,” I said, and told them about struggling through college on their inspiration.

  “Well, now’s a good time to pay the debt. Settle a bet for us, will you?”

  I nodded, and Art said, “Ten percent of this grid’s power comes from fusion, right? But Sterling Bridge is a fission plant.”

  Phil said, in that velvet bass voice I loved, “No, I remember distinctly when it was built. It’s a fusion plant supplying thirty percent of this grid’s power.”

  “No, that’s the grid north of here!” protested Dan.

  Art started to say something but McCree cut him off with a raised hand. “Sterling Bridge is the most advanced fusion plant on line now, but the grid has ten percent tidal, eight percent solar, sixty-five percent fission, and seventeen percent fusion, with Sterling Bridge providing half of that. That’s approximately. There’s still a coal plant on line that can use natural gas in a pinch, and some home owners are selling-back from windmills.”

  “And you’re right, Dan,” I added, “the grid north of here has a fusion plant supplying thirty percent of its power.”

  That settled the bet with no winners and no losers. They all laughed, and as I basked in the amiability of the three stars, I began to understand where their music came from. It only made me more hungry for their company, but now it was time to leave.

  McCree’s car was the last in the lot, but traffic was still clogging the intersections. We’d seen the Ravens piling into their long, black, chauffeured limousine, still pursued by avid fans. They’d driven away in a different direction, so it was with some surprise that I heard Phil’s velvet bass tones coming from a taxi sitting next to us at the traffic light. “I wonder how many of those fans are still following the limo?”

  “Get your beak out of my ribs,” complained Gordon, one of the Ravens we hadn’t actually met.

  “That’s my elbow, dodo!” answered Art, laughing.

  As the cars began to move, I stuck my head out of the window—McCree was driving. It was a very beat-up old taxi. Hardly where you’d expect to find stars. On a totally wild impulse, I called, “Mr. Raven?”

  Two pale faces appeared at the taxi window. “Oh, what a relief!” To the others, Phil said, “It’s not fans.” And to me again, he said, “Is the traffic always this bad on the airport road?”

  “No, just when the theatre lets out. Are you trying to catch a plane?”

  “No, we’re staying over.”

  I had a marvelous idea. “If you’ll be here tomorrow, come on out to the plant and we’ll see you get the grand tour.”

  There was a hasty conference as the lines of cars began to separate, and he replied, “Would two o’clock be okay?”

  “Fine,” I shouted back, overjoyed.

  “Look,” Phil called over, “we’re having some friends in for supper. Follow us, if you have time.” And then he was out of range.

  That night may go down as the high point of my life. The Ravens never sought us out, but they gave the impression to everyone else there that obviously we belonged. My one penetrating memory was of sitting on the floor with about ten others, listening to Phil and Dan reminiscing about the long string of miraculous breaks over the last twenty years—especially since their comeback some six years ago.

  Some of the scrapes they’d been through were hysterically funny, and some were just plain spooky, at least to the daughter of a witch. Others might not be so sensitive to the possibility of a supernatural explanation.

  When we left, the Ravens all waved to us, saying, “See you tomorrow!”

  In the car, I shook off the star shock and said, “Alfred, do you have any idea what the odds were against this evening happening?”

  “That’s the first time you’ve called me Alfred.”

  “Yeah,
but I’d really like to know what the odds were.”

  “I’ll run it up for you tomorrow. Look, it happened, so it wasn’t impossible.”

  But I couldn’t help thinking about the hundreds of other Sterling Bridge employees who had been there and would have given anything for the evening we’d had. “If I hadn’t lost my program, I wouldn’t have thought of them signing the cards.”

  “So maybe you’re psychic and knew about their bet?”

  “You don’t believe in ESP, do you?”

  “I don’t believe in it, but there is something about living things that sometimes affects random chance, somehow, and bends it to our will. That’s been experimentally established.”

  That was true, but I’d never believed those experiments.

  I lay awake all night wondering if McCree believed them, and if he did, then I began to wonder about the intensity of my original reaction to him. Why had Mama been at that concert, sitting behind us where she could watch us all evening? If she could control chance with her magic—at last I let the scary question surface: What if she had caused the whole evening’s sequence of improbable events?

  And I did mean without paying anyone off under the table!

  My mental model of the universe—acquired over eight long years in four colleges—had no room in it for the will of one person to affect the life of another. Such a power couldn’t exist, therefore my mother didn’t have it, therefore she was a charlatan or a fool.

  I tried to force myself to face it but I only ended up crying wretchedly until sunrise. The anguished knot in my gut screamed out for some concrete proof, one way or the other. I didn’t know how much longer I could live with this. “I don’t care what it costs,” I finally said aloud, “I’ve got to know.”

  I pasted myself together with stiff jolts of coffee and liberal applications of makeup—and made it to work on time. As I took over the hot seat, I even felt bright enough to trust myself with the job.