The Year's Best SF 08 # 1990

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  And in those studies our new and more distant relationship had another effect, one that ultimately proved far more important than personal likes and dislikes. For I could no longer compare myself with Arthur.

  In our first two years of acquaintance, he had been my calibration point. As someone a little older than me, and a full year ahead in a better school, he served as my pacer. My desire was to know what Arthur knew, to be able to solve the problems that he could solve. And on the infrequent occasions when I found myself ahead of him, I was disproportionately pleased.

  Now my pace-setting hare had gone. The divergence that I mentioned was intellectual as well as personal. And because Arthur had always been my standard of comparison, it took me three or four years to form a conclusion that others at the university had drawn long before.

  His lack of interest in attending lectures, coupled with his insistence on doing things his own way, led to as many problems in the Tripos examinations as it had in scholarship entrance. His supervision partner found him “goofy,” while their supervisor didn’t seem to understand what he was talking about. Arthur was always going off, said his partner, in irrelevant digressions. By contrast, my old approach of focusing on what was needed to do well in exams, while making friends with both students and faculty, worked as well as ever.

  In sum, my star was ascendant. I did splendidly, was secretly delighted, and publicly remained nonchalant and modest.

  And yet I knew, somewhere deep inside, that Arthur was more creative than I. He generated ideas and insights that I would never have. Surely that would weigh most heavily, in the great balance of academic affairs?

  Apparently not. To my surprise, it was I alone who at the end of undergraduate and graduate studies was elected to a Fellowship, and stayed on at Cambridge. Arthur would have to leave, and fend for himself. After considering a number of teaching positions at other universities both in Britain and abroad, he turned his back on academia. He accepted a position as a research physicist with A.N.F. Gesellschaft, a European hi-tech conglomerate headquartered in Bonn.

  In August he departed Cambridge to take up his new duties. I would remain, living in college and continuing my research. When we had dinner together a few days before he left he seemed withdrawn, but no more than usual. I mentioned that I was becoming more and more interested in the problem of space-time quantization, and proposed to work on it intensely. He came to life then, and said that in his opinion I was referring to the most important open question of physics. I was delighted by that reaction, and told him so. At that point his moodiness returned and remained for the rest of the evening.

  When we parted at midnight there was no formality or sense of finality in our leave-taking. And yet for several years I believed that on that evening the divergence of our worldlines became complete. Only later did I learn that from a scientific point of view they had separated, only to run parallel to each other.

  And both roads led to Stockholm.

  * * *

  When one sets forth on an unknown intellectual trail it is easy to lose track of time, place, and people. For the next four years the sharp realities of my world were variational principles, Lie algebra, and field theory. Food and drink, concerts, vacations, friends, social events, and even lovers still had their place, but they stood on the periphery of my attention, slightly misty and out of focus.

  I saw Arthur a total of five times in those four years, and each was in a dinner-party setting at his parents’ house. In retrospect I can recognize an increasing remoteness in his manner, but at the time he seemed like the same old Arthur, ignoring any discussion or guest that didn’t interest him. No opportunity existed for deep conversation between us; neither of us sought one. He never said a word about his work, or what he thought of life in Bonn. I never talked about what I was trying to do in Cambridge.

  It was the shock of my life to be sitting at tea in the Senate House, one gloomy November afternoon, and be asked by a topologist colleague from Churchill College, “You used to hang around with Arthur Shaw, didn’t you, when he was here?”

  At my nod, he tapped the paper he was holding. “Did you see this, Turnbull,” he said, “on page ten? He’s dead.”

  And when I looked at him, stupefied: “You didn’t know? Committed suicide. In Germany. His obituary’s here.”

  He said more, I’m sure, and so did I. But my mind was far away as I took the newspaper from him. It was a discreet two inches of newsprint. Arthur Sandford Shaw, aged twenty-eight. Graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, son of etc. Coroner’s report, recent behavior seriously disturbed … no details.

  I went back to my rooms in Trinity and telephoned the Shaw house. While it was ringing, I realized that no matter who answered I had no idea what to say. I put the phone back on its stand and paced up and down my study for the next hour, feeling more and more sick. Finally I made the call and it was picked up by Marion.

  I stumbled through an expression of regret. She hardly gave me time to finish before she said, “Giles, I was going to call you tonight. I’d like to come to Cambridge. I must talk to you.”

  The next day I had scheduled appointments for late morning and afternoon, two with research students, one with the college director of studies on the subject of forthcoming entrance interviews, and one with a visiting professor from Columbia. I could have handled them and still met with Marion. I canceled every one, and went to meet her at the station.

  The only thing I could think of when I saw her step off the train was that she had changed hardly at all since that June morning, thirteen years ago, when we first met. It took close inspection to see that the ash-blond hair showed wisps of grey at the temples, and that a network of fine lines had appeared at the outer corners of her eyes.

  Neither of us had anything to say. I put my arms around her and gave her an embarrassed hug, and she leaned her head for a moment on my shoulder. In the taxi back to college we talked the talk of strangers, about the American election results, new compact disk recordings, and the town’s worsening traffic problems.

  We did not go to my rooms, but set out at once to walk on the near-deserted paths of the College Backs. The gloom of the previous afternoon had intensified. It was perfect weather for weltschmerz, cloudy and dark, with a thin drizzle falling. We stared at the crestfallen ducks on the Cam and the near-leafless oaks, while I waited for her to begin. I sensed that she was winding herself up to say something unpleasant. I tried to prepare myself for anything.

  It came with a sigh, and a murmured, “He didn’t kill himself, you know. That’s what the report said, but it’s wrong. He was murdered.”

  I was not prepared for anything. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

  “It sounds insane,” she went on. “But I’m sure of it. You see, when Arthur was home in June, he did something that he’d never done before. He talked to me about his work. I didn’t understand half of it—” she smiled, a tremulous, tentative smile; I noticed that her eyes were slightly bloodshot from weeping “—you’d probably say not even a tenth of it. But I could tell that he was terrifically excited, and at the same time terribly worried and depressed.”

  “But what was he doing? Wasn’t he working for that German company?” I was ashamed to admit it, but in my preoccupation with my own research I had not given a moment’s thought in four years to Arthur’s doings, or to A.N.F. Gesellschaft.

  “He was still there. He was in his office the morning of the day that he died. And what he was doing was terribly important.”

  “You talked to them?”

  “They talked to us. The chief man involved with Arthur’s work is called Otto Braun, and he flew over two days ago specially to talk to me and Roland. He said he wanted to be sure we would hear about Arthur’s death directly, rather than just being officially notified. Braun admitted that Arthur had done very important work for them.”

  “But if that’s true, it makes no sense at all for anyone to think of killing him. They’d do all they could to
keep him alive.”

  “Not if he’d found something they were desperate to keep secret. They’re a commercial operation. Suppose that he found something hugely valuable? And suppose that he told them that it was too important for one company to own, and he was going to let everyone in on it.”

  It sounded to me like a form of paranoia that I would never have expected in Marion Shaw. Arthur would certainly have been obliged to sign a nondisclosure agreement with the company he worked for, and there were many legal ways to assure his silence. In any case, to a hi-tech firm Arthur and people like him were the golden goose. Companies didn’t murder their most valuable employees.

  We were walking slowly across the Bridge of Sighs, our footsteps echoing from the stony arch. Neither of us spoke until we had strolled all the way through the first three courts of St. Johns College, and turned right onto Trinity Street.

  “I know you think I’m making all this up,” said Marion at last, “just because I’m so upset. You’re just humoring me. You’re so logical and clearheaded, Giles, you never let yourself go overboard about anything.”

  There is a special hell for those who feel but cannot tell. I started to protest, half-heartedly.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to be polite to me. We’ve known each other too long. You don’t think I understand anything about science, and maybe I don’t. But you’ll admit that I know a fair bit about people. And I can tell you one thing, Otto Braun was keeping something from us. Something important.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I could read it in his eyes.”

  That was an unarguable statement; but it was not persuasive. The drizzle was slowly turning into a persistent rain, and I steered us away from Kings Parade and towards a coffee shop. As we passed through the doorway she took my arm.

  “Giles, do you remember Arthur’s notebooks?”

  It was a rhetorical question. Anyone who knew Arthur knew his notebooks. Maintaining them was his closest approach to a religious ritual. He had started the first one when he was twelve years old. A combination of personal diary, scientific workbook, and clippings album, they recorded everything in his life that he believed to be significant.

  “He still kept them when he went to Germany,” Marion continued. “He even mentioned them, the last time he was home, because he wanted me to send him the same sort of book that he always used, and he had trouble getting them there. I sent him a shipment in August. I asked Otto Braun to send them back to me, with Arthur’s personal things. He told me there were no notebooks. There were only the work journals that every employee of ANF was obliged to keep.”

  I stared at her across the little table, with its red-and-white checkered cloth. At last, Marion was offering evidence for her case. I moved the salt and pepper shakers around on the table. Arthur may have changed in the past four years, but he couldn’t have changed that much. Habits were habits.

  She leaned forward, and put her hands over mine. “I know. I said to Braun just what you’re thinking. Arthur always kept notebooks. They had to exist, and after his death they belonged to me. I wanted them back. He wriggled and sweated, and said there was nothing. But if I want to know what Arthur left, he said, I can get someone I trust who’ll understand Arthur’s work, and have them go over to Bonn. Otto Braun will let them see everything there is.”

  She gazed at me with troubled grey eyes.

  I picked up my coffee cup and took an unwanted sip. Some requests for help were simply too much. The next two weeks were going to be chaotic. I had a horrendous schedule, with three promised papers to complete, two London meetings to attend, half a dozen important seminars, and four out-of-town visitors. I had to explain to her somehow that there was no way for me to postpone any part of it.

  But first I had to explain matters to someone else. I had been in love with Marion Shaw, I told myself, there was no use denying it. Hopelessly, and desperately, and mutely. She had been at one time my inamorata, my goddess, the central current of my being; but that was ten years ago. First love’s impassioned blindness had long since passed away in colder light.

  I opened my mouth to say that I could not help.

  Except that this was still my Maid Marion, and she needed me.

  The next morning I was on my way to Bonn.

  * * *

  Otto Braun was a tall, heavily-built man in his mid-thirties, with a fleshy face, a high forehead, and swept-back dark hair. He had the imposing and slightly doltish look of a Wagnerian heldentenor—an appearance that I soon learned was totally deceptive. Otto Braun had the brains of a dozen Siegfrieds, and his command of idiomatic English was so good that his slight German accent seemed like an affectation.

  “We made use of certain ancient principles in designing our research facility,” he said, as we zipped along the Autobahn in his Peugeot. “Don’t be misled by its appearance.”

  He had insisted on meeting me at Wahn Airport, and driving me (at eighty-five miles an hour) to the company’s plant. I studied him, while to my relief he kept his eyes on the road ahead and the other traffic. I could not detect in him any of the shiftiness that Marion Shaw had described. What I did sense was a forced cheerfulness. Otto Braun was uneasy.

  “The monasteries of northern Europe were designed to encourage deep meditation,” he went on. “Small noise-proof cells, hours of solitary confinement, speech only at certain times and places. Well, deep meditation is what we’re after. Of course, we’ve added a few modern comforts—heat, light, coffee, computers, and a decent cafeteria.” He smiled. “So don’t worry about your accommodation. Our guest quarters at the lab receive high ratings from visitors. You can see the place now, coming into view over on the left.”

  I had been instructed not to judge by appearances. Otherwise, I would have taken the research facility of ANF Gesellschaft to be the largest concrete prison blockhouse I had ever seen. Windowless, and surrounded by smooth lawns that ended in a tall fence, it stood fifty feet high and several hundred long. All it needed were guard dogs and machine-gun towers.

  Otto Braun drove us through the heavy, automatically opening gates and parked by a side entrance.

  “No security?” I said.

  He grinned, his first sign of genuine amusement. “Try getting out without the right credentials, Herr Doktor Professor Turnbull.”

  We traversed a deserted entrance hall to a quiet, carpeted corridor, went up in a noiseless elevator, and walked along to an office about three meters square. It contained a computer, a terminal, a desk, two chairs, a blackboard, a filing cabinet, and a book-case.

  “Notice anything unusual about this room?” he said.

  I had, in the first second. “No telephone.”

  “Very perceptive. The devil’s device. Do you know, in eleven years of operation, no one has ever complained about its absence? Every office, including my own, is the same size and shape and has the same equipment in it. We have conference rooms for the larger meetings. This was Dr. Shaw’s office and it is, in all essentials, exactly as he left it.”

  I stared around me with increased interest. He gestured to one of the chairs, and didn’t take his eyes off me.

  “Mrs. Shaw told me you were his best friend,” he said. It was midway between a question and a statement.

  “I knew him since we were both teenagers,” I replied. And then, since that was not quite enough, “I was probably as close a friend as he had. But Arthur did not encourage close acquaintances.”

  He nodded. “That makes perfect sense to me. Dr. Shaw was perhaps the most talented and valuable employee we have ever had. His work on quantized Hall effect devices was unique, and made many millions of marks for the company. We rewarded him well and esteemed his work highly. Yet he was not someone who was easy to know.” His eyes were dark and alert, half-hidden in that pudgy face. They focused on me with a higher intensity level. “And Mrs. Shaw. Do you know her well?”

  “As well as I know anyone.”

  “And you
have a high regard for each other?”

  “She has been like a mother to me.”

  “Then did she confide in you her worry—that her son Arthur did not die by his own hand, and his death was in some way connected with our company?”

  “Yes, she did.” My opinion of Otto Braun was changing. He had something to hide, as Marion had said, but he was less and less the likely villain. “Did she tell you that?”

  “No. I was forced to infer it, from her questions about what he was doing for us. Hmph.” Braun rubbed at his jowls. “Herr Turnbull, I find myself in a most difficult situation. I want to be as honest with you as I can, just as I wanted to be honest with Mr. and Mrs. Shaw. But there were things I could not tell them. I am forced to ask again: is your concern for Mrs. Shaw sufficient that you are willing to withhold certain facts from her? Please understand, I am not suggesting any form of criminal behavior. I am concerned only to minimize sorrow.”

  “I can’t answer that question unless I know what the facts are. But I think the world of Marion Shaw. I’ll do anything I can to make the loss of her son easier for her.”

  “Very well.” He sighed. “I will begin with something that you could find out for yourself, from official sources. Mrs. Shaw thinks there was some sort of foul play in Arthur Shaw’s death. I assure you that he took his own life, and the proof of that is provided by the curious manner of his death. Do you know how he died?”

  “Only that it was in his apartment.”

  “It was. But he chose to leave this world in a way that I have never before encountered. Dr. Shaw removed from the lab a large plastic storage bag, big enough to hold a mattress. It is equipped with a zipper along the outside, and when that zipper is closed, such a bag is quite airtight.” He paused. Otto Braun was no machine. This explanation was giving him trouble. “Dr. Shaw took it to his apartment. At about six o’clock at night he turned the bag inside out and placed it on top of his bed. Then he changed to his pajamas, climbed into the bag, and zipped it from the inside. Sometime during that evening he died, of asphyxiation.” He looked at me unhappily. “I am no expert in ‘locked room’ mysteries, Professor Turnbull, but the police made a thorough investigation. They are quite sure that no one could have closed that bag from the outside. Dr. Shaw took his own life, in a unique and perverse way.”