Consequence

by Steve Masover

  “Wine would be great. Whatever’s open.”

  They tracked their father from the cabinet to the refrigerator to the butcher-block counter. Professor Kalman handed Christopher a glass of something white. “Cheers,” he said. “Now where did I leave mine?”

  Christopher gave the wine a swirl and a sniff. A sip confirmed his initial impression. “Nice,” he said. “What are we drinking?”

  “Rosenblum Cellars, a local outfit, in Alameda,” Marshall said. “It’s a Marsanne, a Rhône varietal.”

  “Alameda the naval base? Vineyards in Alameda?”

  Marshall shook his head. “Vintners, not growers. The fruit comes from all over California, some from Australia. Zinfandel is the grape they’re known for, but five or six years ago they started in on whites and Shiraz.”

  Christopher took another sip. “So what are you up to?”

  “The usual,” Marshall said. He turned to a cutting board piled with green beans. “Playing the markets, looking for an interesting gig.”

  “What’s interesting these days?”

  Professor Kalman stood in the kitchen doorway, listening.

  “To borrow from the Supreme Court, I guess I’ll know it when I see it.”

  Christopher ran a quick calculus in his head, and resisted temptation. Justice Stewart had been distinguishing hard-core from less offensive smut, but cracks about day traders agog over online pornography wouldn’t help them get through dinner. “Then how about some investment advice for neophytes?” he asked, addressing Marshall’s back. As near as he could tell, his brother was lining up green beans in parallel berms, fussing over nothing to avoid facing him.

  Marshall sighed dramatically. “What’s your stake?”

  “A retirement account. I guess … oh, let’s say enough to cover the down payment on a midsize sedan. A used sedan.”

  “Then I’d recommend a real job,” Marshall said. “Or a spiritual cult that teaches fulfillment on brown rice and rainwater.” He turned back to his father and brother, smirking. Professor Kalman looked away.

  “Let’s get that halibut going,” Christopher said.

  —

  He kept trying when they sat down to eat. Christopher complimented the green beans, the Chardonnay Marshall poured with the meal, the papaya and chipotle salsa prepared for the fish. Neither his father nor brother had noticed the construction underway at the Harrington’s. He wondered about the weedy flowerbeds out back. Christopher inquired after relatives he hadn’t seen for years. Nothing generated conversational traction. The empty place laid at the end of the table kept catching his eye. It made his skin crawl.

  After an endless interlude of flatware on china, a Mozart sonata drifting in from the kitchen, Professor Kalman spoke. “So I’ve been invited to give a paper in Prague.”

  “When?” Christopher asked, jumping at the chance to nurse any topic along.

  “End of September, at the ISB meeting. The International Society for Bioinformatics.”

  “Why Prague? Somebody’s cloning the golem?”

  Marshall rolled his eyes. “Christopher, must you?”

  “I’m sure it’s much more prosaic than that,” Professor Kalman said. “The right meeting space for a good price is how these things are usually decided.”

  “What will you present?” Marshall asked.

  “I was starting to tell Chris. We’ve been working with students in the College of Engineering, applying signal-processing algorithms to filter out noisy microarray data. Like grooming a radio signal. A short article in Nature is not out of the question.”

  “Digital processing everywhere you look,” Marshall said.

  “Quite right, in any number of disciplines,” Professor Kalman said. “Computational linguistics, astronomy, economics. The common thread is a corpus of data too big for a human mind to ingest. Molecular biology certainly fits the bill.”

  “I suppose,” Marshall said after a moment, “there’s the danger of conflating bits and pieces of useful analysis with a comprehensive model.”

  Christopher looked up, surprised his brother was engaging instead of lobbing the usual conversation-enders into their exchange. “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “New methods always introduce the chance of false ‘eureka’ moments. One danger is to generalize too quickly from data that are less representative than they seem. Especially when the analysis is small in relation to the real world—say to the universe of DNA in biological organisms.”

  “That,” Professor Kalman said, “is why biologists have always been careful to focus on simpler organisms before moving on to complex life-forms.”

  “A more interesting trap is the gulf between precise data at a small scale, and the properties of complex systems,” Marshall said. “Whether the systems are biological, physical, or economic. The stock market, for example.”

  Christopher leaned forward. “Say more.” Was it possible he might agree with Marshall? About anything?

  “In physical science, large organizational principles emerge independently of microscopic properties. The rigidity of ice isn’t a function of water’s molecular structure, or ammonia’s, or whatever happens to be frozen. Rigidity emerges out of how the molecules line up. Nothing to do with the state of particular atoms.”

  “Well, yes, Marshall,” Professor Kalman said, “but that doesn’t mean we can ignore atoms and molecules.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But the point is that close study only goes so far. If the effect is what’s interesting, the molecular-scale elements aren’t necessarily the story.”

  Professor Kalman shook his head vigorously. “First one has to know which components are participating in any given event.”

  Christopher wasn’t sure he followed, but plunged in anyway. “You can’t just ignore that, Dad. If local mechanics don’t predict the big picture, that’s fundamental.”

  Marshall made a show of offering around the last of the wine before emptying the bottle into his own glass. “There’s a guy at Princeton,” he said, “doing this sort of thing with data that disparate schools of investing use to predict stock prices. Dividend yields, sector trends, currency trading patterns, housing starts—mashing it all together and using statistical algorithms to look for patterns over time.”

  “Is he beating the market?” Professor Kalman asked sardonically.

  “This is important,” Christopher said, heading off his father’s dismissal. “It’s the question of reductionism, isn’t it? Whether you can describe a large system by dissecting it down to the smallest parts? Like the ocean. Waves washing up on the shore aren’t determined by molecules of water either. And you can only apply a higher order of rules—fluid dynamics—if you idealize an ocean to the point that the mathematics don’t describe the actual thing in the world.”

  “Science takes empirical measurements using the best tools we have,” Professor Kalman said. “As the tools get better, our understanding deepens. Is that so complicated?”

  “Not at all, Dad,” Christopher said. “No rational person could have a problem with that. I object only when you take measurements at one scale and infer meaning at another. Where you see isolated qualities in an engineered bacterium, and leap to conclusions that you can improve agriculture by injecting your mutant into an evolved ecosystem—one that your experiments don’t measure or model.”

  “That may be the most coherent set of statements I’ve heard you make since high school,” Marshall said.

  Christopher chuckled, because the alternative would be to throw something. “Don’t ever lose that endearing arrogance, Marshall. Really, I mean it.”

  “By the way, the guy at Princeton is still an academic. If his analysis beat the market reliably, he’d be working for Wall Street.”

  “I hate to disagree when you boys are getting along,” Professor Kalman said, “but let’s examine the choices. Either we allow experts to build social and economic capacity based on considered, peer-reviewed analysis, or we throw such decisions to bands
of self-appointed amateurs—driven by who knows what irrational agendas—and wind our way back down into the dark ages.”

  The silence that followed could have forked in any direction. Marshall looked at Christopher. Christopher looked at Marshall.

  “Speaking of ivory towers,” his brother said, “I believe I’ll clear the table.”

  Their father shook his head dismissively. Christopher stood. “Let me.” Rinsing plates and stacking them in the dishwasher, he heard Marshall rummaging around the dining room. “Should I start coffee?” he called.

  “I’ll get it,” Marshall said, entering the kitchen.

  “You already made dinner. I don’t mind.”

  “I need to fix dessert. Go on, keep Dad company.”

  Professor Kalman was staring into his wineglass when Christopher returned to the dining room. “That’s the most anyone has gotten out of Marshall in months,” he said quietly.

  “Seems lucid enough to me. Not especially likable, but—”

  “Too isolated,” his father said. “He never sees anyone.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m not a social butterfly, Chris. I never have been. But I leave the house every morning. I’ve got my students, my colleagues. Your brother sees no one. He hardly—”

  Professor Kalman swallowed his words when Marshall appeared carrying a trifle dish. The tiramisu he prepared each year, soggy with rum and espresso, was Betty’s recipe. Mercifully, there were no candles. The three fell over each other serving coffee, passing cream and sugar, dishing out dessert. Marshall poured generous measures of cognac all around, from a heavy, sapphire-blue decanter. He waited for the others to raise their snifters. “To Mom,” he said.

  From nowhere, Christopher felt a violent sob rising. He pulled hard at his brandy. For a long minute, breathing deeply, he struggled against showing himself.

  Professor Kalman started in on the tiramisu. “This is awfully good.”

  Christopher cleared his throat and tasted a spoonful. “Better every year,” he said, embracing banality.

  Marshall poured himself another finger from the decanter. Something baroque slotted itself into the CD player.

  “Your mother would have enjoyed this.”

  Christopher cringed. She would have, it was true, but enough already.

  “If only.” Marshall stared at the tablecloth, tracing its embroidered pattern with a spoon.

  “Chris, tell us what you’ve been up to,” his father said.

  “The same as ever, work and politics.” Christopher groped for something more concrete. “An old friend came back into town a couple weeks ago,” he said, realizing as he spoke that Brendan’s release from prison was too freighted a topic. “Someone I haven’t seen for a while.”

  “Anybody we know?”

  He shook his head, though either might remember Brendan from their time as undergraduates.

  “Not an old girlfriend by any chance?”

  Christopher glanced across the table. For years he and Marshall had been equally embarrassed by their father’s yearning for grandchildren. “’Fraid not.”

  “So what’s fermenting among the diehard Left?” Marshall asked after another awkward pause.

  “Would I know?” Why go there, Christopher wondered, when they’d almost made it through the evening?

  “Okay, try this. I heard there’s a union that wants paid time off on the day Trotsky was elected to the Politburo. What’s your call, Christopher?”

  “Oh, that diehard Left. The Left that only exists on bitchy rightwing radio.”

  “Boys, stop it.” Professor Kalman sighed. “Really, it’s so old and worn out.”

  “What do you mean, Dad?” Marshall asked, grotesquely feigning innocence. “It’s just our way of saying ‘I love you.’”

  “Leaving Trotsky aside,” Christopher said, “the broad-based Left is opposing the president’s push to eviscerate the Bill of Rights and conquer the Middle East.”

  “You could just say you’re against the war in Iraq, like the rest of us,” Marshall said. “This thing’s going to come back to bite Bush, hard. Iraq and Afghanistan both. He’ll have to steal the election again if he wants another term.”

  Christopher might have let it go, but his brother had tapped a deep resentment. Why was the stock market suitable dinner conversation, but political activism fit only for ridicule? “My own circle,” he said, “is working to expose the world’s largest genetic engineering convention as a forum for hubris and ruin.”

  “What’s that?” Professor Kalman asked. “Is that GeneSynth you’re talking about?”

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  “If you were involved in that kind of protest I would be very disappointed.”

  “I suppose it won’t be the first time.”

  “GeneSynth is a scientific conference,” Professor Kalman said, “where researchers present the results of their efforts to discover what is true—”

  “GeneSynth is a conclave,” Christopher said, “where scientists offer their corporate sponsors a smorgasbord of opportunities to reap short-term profit at the expense of ecological equilibrium.”

  “That is pabulum!” Professor Kalman banged his fist on the table.

  “StarLink corn leaked into the food supply is a direct consequence of supposedly innocent research—”

  “And what harm did it do? Proven harm?”

  “Disruption of its own ecosystem by killing butterfly larvae, for starters. The evidence is plain, but industry funded piles of specious studies to bury it.”

  “You should be ashamed to spout nonsense like that.”

  “Ashamed? Ashamed of having a perspective broader than the field of an electron microscope? Ashamed of worrying about scientists twiddling random knobs on the planet’s most complex machinery? C’mon, Dad—”

  “And so.” Marshall was swirling his cognac in lazy circles and smiling like the Mona Lisa. “You’ll stop the madness how? By sitting in the street with your adolescent minions, chanting to the news cameras?”

  Christopher rounded on his brother. “Is political engagement beneath you, Marshall? You’re going to smirk yourself to death if you don’t suffocate under all that gold you’re hoarding.”

  “Who do you imagine is going to suffocate first?” Marshall asked. “Me under the weight of my modest assets, or you under an insupportable burden of self-righteousness?”

  “Stop!” Professor Kalman struck the table again. The dessert plates jumped, and the room went suddenly quiet.

  Marshall set down his glass decisively. Christopher pushed away from the table, resolved to turn his back first. “I should go,” he said.

  “Not like this, Chris,” their father said, pleading.

  Marshall offered an alternate opinion. “Perhaps we should quit pretending,” he said. “Perhaps the clock has run out on all this sort of … ceremony.”

  TEN

  Buzz and Jonah rounded the corner. “It’s backward, dude,” Buzz said, running his fingers through a flaccid mohawk, the dyed hair twisted into bluish-black ropes. Buzz was first in his sixth grade class to pierce a lip, just the year before, to which he’d since added studs in his eyebrows and nose, and a thicket of steel hoops around the rims of both ears. A threadbare PiL t-shirt hung slack across his narrow chest, nearly lost under a bomber jacket cut for a far larger frame. “Ravi Shankar doesn’t even have MySpace. Probably never even heard of the shit.”

  Jonah unlocked the front gate. “Ravi Shankar was famous before MySpace even happened. Same as the Sex Pistols. It’s called history, dude.”

  “How come there’s a gate on your house?” Buzz asked as it crashed shut behind them. “You guys get robbed?”

  “Probably it was here when we moved in.”

  They clattered up the stairs. Partway up the second flight, Jonah grabbed Buzz by the elbow, braking them both to a halt. “Don’t say anything,” he whispered.

  Buzz pulled out of the other boy’s grasp. “You worry too much,” he said, a
nd continued climbing, now at a listless pace.

  Jonah hesitated, then double-staired to catch up and lead the way back toward his room. They stopped at the refrigerator. Jonah yanked it open, rattling a clutter of canning jars perched on top. “Want anything?” he asked. Buzz pointed at a fresh six-pack of Anchor Steam. Jonah shook his head. “Better not,” he said, just as Allison emerged from her room.

  “How goes it, guys?” she asked. “Better not what?”

  “Hey Miz Rayle.”

  “Hey Mom.”

  “What are you boys up to on a Saturday afternoon? Catching up on homework?”

  “Not even.” Jonah closed the refrigerator.

  “Truth is, Miz Rayle, I’m all caught up.”

  Jonah rolled his eyes. “Dude …”

  Zac bounced into the kitchen. “I heard that,” he said. “How’s my favorite Johnny Rotten wannabe? What’s the capital of Uzbekistan?”

  “Not on the test,” Buzz said.

  “You have to say John Lydon if he’s wearing a PiL shirt,” Jonah said. “Johnny Rotten was only before the Sex Pistols broke up.”

  “Picky, picky,” Zac said, laughing.

  Jonah opened the refrigerator again, more gently this time, and fished out a bottle of cranberry juice. He and Buzz disappeared into the pantry.

  “I thought you were working,” Allison said to Zac.

  “Traded with Diego. I’m on my way now.”

  Brendan sauntered in. “Who’s Diego?”

  “Hey! Where’d you come from?” Zac asked.

  “Dozed off in the front room. The New York Times isn’t as gripping as it used to be. So who is he, some new boyfriend?”

  Zac shook his head. “Another barista at the Royal. Cute, in a manly man kind of way. Not my type.”

  Jonah and Buzz stepped out of the pantry.

  “Hey guys.” Brendan held out a hand to Jonah’s friend. “I’m Brendan.”

  Buzz nodded.

  Brendan waited several beats, then withdrew his arm.

  “Hey Mom, can me and Buzz go downtown?”

  “‘Buzz and I.’ What’s downtown?”

  “Music stores and stuff—”

  “So.” Buzz cut in from where he stood leaning against the doorframe, still eyeing Brendan dubiously. “You don’t look Mexican.”