The Falling Sky

by Pippa Goldschmidt

  Paula notices her discomfort. ‘Can you keep still for a bit longer? I’ll finish soon.’

  Finally Paula releases her. ‘All done.’ And she flops forward like a puppet with its strings cut. But this doesn’t really do it. The energy’s still there waiting for its outlet.

  Paula moves out from behind the easel but Jeanette stays bent over, looking at the floor. She doesn’t want to look up, and see Paula there, too solid and three-dimensional and real. She wishes the usual Paula were here with her red lipstick.

  ‘Hey.’ Paula’s feet are right in front of her. Still she doesn’t look up. ‘Are you ok?’ She nods her head. Then Paula touches her hair and something shivers down her back. The touch is tentative, not how Jeanette imagines Paula normally approaches people. She wants Paula to go away and be normal again.

  The next sitting is a week later. She’s been thinking about it all week, wondering if it’ll be the same experience.

  ‘You can sit down this time,’ Paula says, ‘I think I’m going to concentrate on your face today.’

  So she sits and watches Paula prepare, and thinks.

  ‘Paula,’ she says, ‘Is it different painting people to painting things? Like chairs?’

  Paula twitches, startled. A pause. ‘Yes and no, I suppose. I’m trying to bring out the essence of you, but in the same way I’m trying to bring out the essence of that chair. It’s more difficult with you, because I know you. It makes it more complicated because looking at you has all these associations. You have a history associated with you.’

  ‘You make me sound like an old book. Or an old lover.’

  But Paula doesn’t reply, so the word ‘lover’ is left hanging in the air.

  ‘Richard.’ She waits in the doorway of his office until he looks up.

  ‘What.’

  She thumps his paper down on his desk. ‘You’re right, a nice piece of work. Very nice indeed.’

  He narrows his eyes. ‘You’ve actually read it?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, some of it. Listen, how many galaxies do you have?’

  ‘Dunno. Thousands. That’s the whole point of the project… ’

  ‘I know. Umm — could I have a look at them?’

  ‘Uh?’ his mouth falls open.

  ‘Just sort of — borrow them for a bit.’

  ‘But they’re still proprietary. I couldn’t possibly let them out into the public domain.’ He looks worried now.

  ‘I know that! I’m not asking you to release the data. But I was wondering…’ She pauses for a brief, tactical second until she thinks she’s got his interest. ‘There may be something in your dataset about my galaxies. The connected ones.’

  He raises his eyebrows, thinking. He is definitely interested. ‘Well, you could look at the images here in this office, I suppose. No harm in that. As long as you don’t print them out or put them in your paper.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she smiles kindly.

  It’s quite easy to find what she needs, even under Richard’s eye. Her connected galaxies have indeed also been imaged by the consortium, and as she suspected, because they have so much data they haven’t got around to actually looking at these images properly. She shakes her head at the thought of all that lovely data lying unseen. But the consortium’s image of the galaxies also shows a connection. Although it’s much fainter, and could easily not be noticed unless you’d already seen something similar on another image. Bingo.

  She doesn’t realise that she’s spoken out loud until Richard looks up. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s there. It’s in your data too.’

  He comes over to look at the screen and she’s aware of his physical presence, the mass of him, just behind her.

  ‘Really? You think that that proves it?’ He sounds incredulous.

  ‘Not by itself. But in combination with our data.’

  ‘But you can’t actually use this in your paper.’

  She feels trapped between him and the screen. ‘I know, but it’s still helpful to know that this exists.’

  His reflection shrugs in the dark screen. ‘If you say so.’ And he goes back to his own work. She tries not to sigh, she knows why he’s being so deliberately casual about this; he’s trying to play it down. It’s the only way he can convince himself that his own work is just as important.

  No matter how hard she tries to move the telescope to another part of the sky, it’s locked onto the connected galaxies and won’t shift. Its glass lenses are radiant with the dazzle of far away stars. Photons have filled up the length of the tube and are splashing out onto the floor. In the control room, the computer screen glows pure white until a small dark patch appears, and smoke starts to waft up. The screen has caught fire from the light of the galaxies.

  Jeanette is astonished when the paper is accepted for publication. The journal’s editors make it clear that they don’t like the inference that the two galaxies are connected, but they can’t spot anything wrong with the data.

  Now she knows the paper is going to be published, she starts worrying about it. The image of the galaxies has now been replicated in scores of pictures on the internet, popped up in forums all over the place, been discussed by astronomers in Beijing, Moscow and California. Paradoxically, because it’s been approved by other people, she doubts it more. More copies of the picture seem to make it less concrete. It’s been cloned everywhere — but are clones real?

  She starts waking up at indeterminate times during the night, lying on her back staring at the blankness overhead, worrying; her mind so twisted around the image of the galaxies that it can’t seem to pick its way loose. Once, she has the sensation that her body is the telescope dome, and the numbers on her alarm clock are the telescope control panels. There are people observing in her, doing what they want.

  The Observatory issues a press release which states that the paper contains ‘evidence contradicting the Big Bang theory’, even after Jeanette has begged the press officer to tone it down and make the result sound more circumspect. But she suspects that the Death Star has done the exact opposite. He doesn’t exactly admit it to her when she asks him, he just says that he has routine contact with the press office.

  At the time, they’re having lunch with the other post-docs, so she can’t really ask him properly.

  The others are openly arguing about the link between the galaxies. They’ve brought a hard copy of her image with them to lunch and have spread it out between the plates to scrutinise it. One of them jabs at the link with his fork.

  ‘It’s obvious,’ he says to the others. ‘There must be something else behind these galaxies that’s pushing up the light values on those pixels. A more distant object is mimicking the connection.’ A clod of potato drops off his fork onto the picture.

  Jeanette winces. She knows she should interrupt, and take control of the conversation. But she’s too aware of their jealousy of her paper. It’s all any of them want, a chance to write something that other people will read and take account of. She thought she wanted it too, but not like this. Not with all the fear attached to it.

  ‘It’s not obvious,’ she replies, ‘nothing’s obvious.’

  Later that week, she’s interviewed for the lectureship. The interview takes place in the Death Star’s office; a thin and dusty room with only one window high up above them all. She sits at one end of a narrow table, and the four interviewers are arranged down either side so that all she can see of them is a series of theatrically diminishing profiles.

  She practiced what to say in the bathroom that morning, watching her reflection in the fogged mirror; the boundaries of her body merging into the steam. But in this room she has to be crisp and precise. She doesn’t talk about the connecting galaxies; instead she tells them about other, more certain, aspects of her work.

  As she talks, she plays with the buttons on her blouse, each one an island stranded in its sea of cotton.

  The interviewers’ heads nod, and their hands take notes on small pieces of paper. When she peers down the
table she can’t immediately tell which fingers are connected to which head. Her own fingers continue to grip the buttons.

  Finally, the Death Star mentions her and Maggie’s paper. He says it’s very exciting, and he hopes that they’ll follow it up in more detail.

  One of the other heads says, ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘Means?’

  ‘Your result. What do you think the physical implication is?’ He’s looking right at her and she notices that his eyebrows meet above his nose. She has to fight an urge to ask him what this means. She must be serious. She looks away from the joined-up eyebrows and thinks for a moment.

  She needs to be careful. She must stand by her result, but not over-identify herself with it. It may be published but it’s still very likely to be wrong. She repeats what she said earlier to Richard, ‘It’d take more than this to bring down the Big Bang model!’ half expecting them to laugh, but there is just silence, and the questioner cocks an eyebrow, waiting for her to say more.

  She places her hands on the table where everyone can see them and stretches out her fingers, before she continues, ‘What we have is an apparent link between two galaxies at different redshifts, which as you know is not possible in the standard Big Bang model. We worked out the likelihood of something else mimicking that link, and whilst that formal likelihood is not zero, it is small. We’ve tried to be circumspect in the paper, not to over-interpret the actual data. I think we all — the whole community — just need to wait and see what other data show, before anyone does any more interpretation.’

  Someone else, further down the table, states that they’ve been too hasty in publishing the images and that they should have waited for more data. But Jeanette knows how to defend herself. ‘It was a good opportunity. Our data would have been in the public domain next month, so even if we had decided not to go ahead, someone else would have spotted this and published it. We felt it was worth publishing, along with a responsible commentary on it.’ The heads nod and the fingers scribble.

  The Death Star comments, ‘You’re walking a tight-rope,’ and she can’t do anything else but silently agree.

  Afterwards, the Death Star comes to see her in her office. ‘Well done. Too early to say anything definite of course, but that was a good performance.’

  She decides to risk asking him, ‘How important is the paper?’

  ‘Can’t say, really. It’s just one of many considerations.’

  After he leaves, she prints off yet another image of the galaxies. Her office is full of these paper prints. They lie on the floor like dead leaves and rustle against her feet when she moves. She picks up a handful of them, but lets them flutter back down.

  Then she walks over to the blackboard to re-examine ‘GAG’, and touches it gently before tasting the chalk. There’s a noise behind her. Her finger still in her mouth, she turns around. Richard.

  ‘How fetching,’ he says. ‘You look so innocent, sucking on your finger.’

  She hastily wipes her finger on her skirt.

  ‘How was your interview?’ he continues.

  ‘Oh, pretty good, they asked me all the right questions.’ She smiles, hoping to appear confident. ‘It was quite straightforward.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘When’s yours?’

  ‘This afternoon at three.’

  Silence.

  ‘Any tips?’ he asks finally. It’s clear he hates asking her for help.

  ‘Not really. Just be yourself!’ And she goes back to examining the blackboard. She hears him leave the room and she knows without seeing that his face is focused inwardly on himself and what he has to do.

  The next day, when she arrives at her office, she’s surprised to see a copy of her paper about the connected galaxies lying on her desk. When she gets closer she sees that it’s been left open at the page where she’s mentioned the corroboration from the consortium’s data. A sentence has been ringed in red and there’s an exclamation mark scrawled next to it.

  It must have been Richard. But why? He let her look at the data, and she didn’t actually use it in the paper, she just mentioned it. It must have been ok. She’s still standing there, the paper in her hand, when he comes crashing into her office.

  ‘What the hell…’ He’s so angry he’s out of breath. She stares at him, waiting. He actually looks rather magnificent; hair everywhere, eyes flashing. ‘Why the hell did you refer to it? The data’s embargoed, you silly bitch!’

  ‘I only mentioned it!’ They glare at each other. ‘I didn’t show the image! I didn’t release any information!’

  ‘You said…’ and now he scrabbles at the paper, trying to find the right sentence. ‘You said, “the consortium also has an image of this pair of galaxies and this image also shows a link, although at a lesser statistical significance”.’ His voice is deliberately high-pitched, perhaps in some desperate parody of hers.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So…’ he’s pulling at his hair now. ‘You — just — cannot — do — that. Not without getting my permission.’

  ‘But you let me look at the data, what did you think I was going to do once I found the link in it? Just ignore it? Of course I was going to mention it.’

  ‘Do you know what they said they’d do, Jeanette? They’re threatening to boot me out of the consortium.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He sits down in her chair and puts his head in his hands. She reaches out and pats his shoulder. ‘Richard, I’m sorry. Perhaps if I explain to them that it wasn’t your fault…’

  She can’t see his face. They both stay like that for some time, in silence, before he eventually gets up and leaves, still without speaking to her. The paper’s fallen to the floor and she leaves it there.

  It’s still there the next day when the Death Star comes in to tell her she’s got the job.

  Something else is present in the studio. It’s taken up residence since the last sitting. It’s touching Jeanette, stroking along the inside of her arms, whispering around the nape of her neck. She feels hypersensitive to everything; every movement made by Paula is transmitted to her skin through the dusty air. Perhaps she’s so aware of how Paula is moving because she herself has to remain immobile. She feels like she’s waiting for something, but she’s not sure what. The base of her spine prickles with energy but it can go nowhere. All she can do is watch Paula paint.

  As at the last sitting, Paula isn’t wearing any make-up, and her skin seems at the same time more ordinary and more interesting than usual. She has the same hollows and bumps and shadows as other people. Her eyes are small, her lips are faded pink, not bright red. She looks more human. And as she works, she is quieter, more concentrated. Jeanette cannot imagine the usual Paula knowing how to mix paints together to create different colours, knowing how to lay one colour underneath another.

  There is another session and then the portrait is finished.

  ‘Come and have a look at yourself.’ Paula takes a step back from it, and Jeanette suddenly realises how tired she looks.

  She walks over to the canvas and is astonished. Against the dark, shadowy background of the telescope dome, her own face looms disproportionately large and pale compared to her body, which looks small and overwhelmed by the scribbled in space around it. She’s reminded of the nights she used to spend as a child, standing and staring out of her bedroom window at the sky. In this painting her body is that of a child again.

  Sometimes, when she’s around other people, she gets the feeling that someone has just left, that there is an absence so palpable it becomes a shape, a presence. She looks at this painting, and sees that Paula has painted the absence, and she’s afraid.

  ‘What do you think?’ Paula asks.

  ‘Why did you paint my body so small?’

  Paula tilts her head and considers her work, before replying. ‘I’m drawing attention to it. The smaller it is the more people will notice it. I kind of like that paradox.’

  Jeanette wants to ask more. How have you cre
ated an absence with paint and colour? What did you think when you looked at my body? How did your mind change it so that you could paint it like this? But she is silent. Paula doesn’t say anything either, and the silence settles on them, as they stand side by side in front of the painting.

  As the two of them look at the image of Jeanette, it makes her very aware of the three dimensional nature of her surroundings, the feel of denim against her legs, her socks hugging her feet, the pinch of her bra against her chest. And beyond that, in the wider room, everything now seems very complicated to understand. The way the chairs are precariously leaning against each other, each with only two legs on the floor, in an apparent demonstration of Newton’s third law; every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you push something it pushes back. That is in the nature of matter.

  When Paula moves, it recalibrates the space between them. All she does is brush her hair away from her face but Jeanette is now aware, as she’s never been aware before, of exactly how near Paula is. The presence in the room transforms every mundane movement. Paula rolls her sleeves up and Jeanette feels a feathery touch on her own skin, as if someone is slowly stroking her.

  But when it finally happens later that day, there’s nothing tentative about it. They’re back in the flat and everything feels normal again. The only reminder of the afternoon is the paint caked around Paula’s fingernails, highlighting the landscape of creases in her fingers. How complicated the human body is, thinks Jeanette. Galaxies are much simpler.

  Paula notices her looking. ‘Don’t veins make you think of underwater creatures?’ she says. ‘Like eels. Something slippery.’ And she holds out her hand, as if for inspection. Jeanette reaches out and they both contemplate their hands side by side. The hands shift together fractionally. Still, there is space between them. Jeanette looks at where Paula’s arm disappears inside her rolled shirt sleeves, and it’s as if a switch is flicked inside her, and she’s taken back to the studio. She suddenly realises that Paula has a body hidden under these old paint-stained clothes. She’s seen Paula’s body of course, it’s regularly on display. That’s not the point. It was never interesting then.