As She Climbed Across the Table

18

“We’ve drifted a long way past physics here, Philip. I’d like to try to get us back on course.”

Soft’s office was surprisingly intimate. It was easy to imagine it as a blown-up model of the interior of his skull. The walls were lined with texts, a decade’s issues of Physics Letters and Physical Review. The desks were heaped. On the wall was a water-stained certificate, subtly crooked inside its frame. Yellowing fireproof ceiling, ancient fluorescent desk lamp. Soft always seemed reptilian inside the physics lab, and out of place everywhere else, but this office was an intermediate, a human space he could credibly inhabit.

Soft sat behind his desk. In the rotting chair to his right sat an Italian physicist, just off the plane. He was tall and ruddy, and wore a wrinkled, lemon yellow suit. His collar was open and his tie was bundled into his jacket pocket, where it stuck out like a tongue. Soft introduced him with a name that began morphing so crazily the moment I heard it—Crubbio Raxia? Carbino Toxia? Arbino Cruxia?—that I didn’t dare try to say it aloud.

He sat watching me intently while Soft spoke.

“We’re dividing up the Lack hours,” Soft said. “I’m reclaiming a portion of the schedule myself. A team of our graduate students has submitted an impressive proposal, and they’ll be awarded a shift. Most exciting to me personally is the exchange we’ve negotiated with the Italian team. Carmo and his staff will be given access to Lack, in return for a share of hours at their supercollider in Pisa, something we’ve craved for years. Lack is a considerable bargaining chip.”

The Italian pursed his lips. “We have been following your results very closely. It is important work. Cannot be monopolized, you see? The international community has claims.”

“Carmo’s team has some very interesting theories, and they’re eager to put them to the test.”

“Hah! Yes. It’s a very narrow interpretation, so far.”

Soft winced. The Italian’s enthusiasm obviously irritated him. Maybe there was a political side to this exchange, some debt being paid.

“The reason I called you here,” continued Soft, “is that I’d like to ask you to administer Professor Coombs’ hours. Be her, ah, chaperone. I wouldn’t dream of disrupting her work, but I am looking to tighten up our sense of procedure here. I want to develop a variety of approaches, foster a little give-and-take among the various teams. And naturally there’s going to be some downtime, when one team is breaking down equipment or cleaning up the observation area. There’s only one Lack. So we’re all going to have to move forward in a spirit of cooperation. I’m looking to you, Philip, as someone who’s really an expert on how we do things around here, to help apply the subtle brakes and levers that can make this thing go. Especially with Professor Coombs. Because it’s not an easy thing, but in effect we’re downgrading her status in this situation, cutting into her time. Not that there aren’t compensations, of course, but still. I’m sure you’re cognizant of my drift.”

Soft smiled at Carmo—Texaco? Relaxo? Ataxia?—and folded his hands across his desk.

“But Alice—” I began.

“I don’t think this is really the time and place and time to talk about Professor Coombs’ recent difficulties, Philip. Professor Braxia isn’t interested in our petty little disputes or eccentricities. There’s a difference of opinion between myself and Professor Coombs. That’s no secret, I’m not hiding that from the Italian team. The point is to open this thing up to a variety of approaches.”

“We are not coming in here blind,” said Braxia smoothly. “We know your Professor Coombs’ work. She is passionate, stubborn. We like that, we understand that.”

“I think it goes somewhat beyond that,” I said. “Alice’s feeling is that we’re past traditional approaches here. That this is more along the lines of, say, alien contact, first contact, and that we ought to have a heightened sensitivity to, uh, anthropological or exobiological concerns. I think she’s likely to object to a strenuously hard-physics approach at this point. Speaking as her representative here.”

I was winging it. Stalling. But if Soft wanted to come between Alice and Lack, did I really want to stand in the way? My wishes and hers weren’t necessarily one and the same.

Carmo Braxia stretched back in his seat, and crossed his leg over his knee. “My dear fellow. It’s extraordinary to me that you would oppose an exercise of the basic scientific rigorousness that the situation is demanding. Just, for example, setting up a sonar or light beam to try and bounce a signal off the interior surface of this Lack. No damage is risked. Why has this not been attempted?”

“I’m afraid he’s right, Philip. There’s a basic threshold of responsibility here. We’re currently below it.”

“Perhaps there is a corresponding Lack, an out-hole,” suggested Braxia excitedly. “Undiscovered somewhere. Spewing out the junk you push into your end here. In some third-world nation perhaps. Hah! Very American.”

“Professor Coombs will have her time,” said Soft. “She’ll have plenty of chances to vindicate her theories. We’re all going to stay open and receptive. We’ll all pursue our own conclusions. At some point the teams will converge on the actual truth. We’ll know what we’re looking at here.”

“Results,” said Braxia gravely.

“And so you need my help with Alice,” I said.

Soft winced again. He wanted me to call her Professor Coombs. “More than that,” he said. “We’re inviting your presence. Work closely with Professor Coombs, with Carmo and the Italians, with myself, and look for correspondences we’re missing. Things we’re too close to see. Your kind of thing. And use your influence to keep Professor Coombs on an even keel. Focused, but not … obsessive.”

Braxia had pulled a tuft of stuffing out of the torn arm of his chair and was holding it up quizzically to the light.

“What if I were to submit a competing claim for time,” I said, improvising. “Representing, say, the concerns of the interdisciplinary faction. Sociological, psychological, even literary concerns. I’d represent the community of the bewildered, the excluded. I think yesterday’s demonstration proves the existence of my constituency. Would that be compatible with your time-share format?”

Soft looked like he was trying to swallow his Adam’s apple. “I see no problem there,” he managed to say. “Put in your claim. We’ll run it through the usual review process.”

“What’s important, my dear fellow, is that we get some physics done. We understand your Professor Coombs is feeling unwell. We extend our best wishes. Until she is ready to utilize her time we propose to offer a further exchange.” Braxia rustled in his pockets, pulled out a single folded sheet, and opened it. “For every additional weekly hour past the initial allotment,” he read, “one additional square foot of observation space in the Pisa facility. After an additional ten hours weekly, the rate changes to six additional inches per additional square hour.”

“I don’t think Alice will consider any concessions.”

“Here.” Braxia handed me the paper. “You will have our offer at hand. That is all I ask. The exchange is no concession. We have a very desirable facility—ask Soft. Four thousand events per run. A very nice machine. Explain it to him, Soft.”

“They have a very nice machine,” said Soft. “The envy of the international community.”

“Not anymore,” I said.