Timescape

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

GORDON WAS WALKING DOWN THE HALLWAY, ON HIS way back to the lab, when he overheard the remark. Two full professors were talking in low voices. “—and as Pauli said, it isn’t even wrong!” one finished as Gordon approached. They saw him and instantly fell silent. Gordon knew the story. Pauli was a prominent, highly critical physicist in the first half of the century. He had remarked, about a scientific paper, “This work is so bad it’s not even wrong.” Meaning, it began and ended in midair; it was so badly formulated it could not be tested. Gordon knew instantly they were talking about him. The Life article had done its work. When he reached the end of the hallway there was more murmured talk behind him and then a final bark of laughter.

Penny brought home a copy of National Enquirer and left it out for him to see when he came in late. On the front page was a headline, NUCLEAR CALL FROM OUTER SPACE and beneath it, Prominent Scientists Contact Other World. There were two photographs of Saul and Gordon, evidently by the Life photographer. Gordon threw it in the trash without reading it.

At the beginning of classes there was a party for the physical sciences faculty, to mark the opening of the new Institute for Geophysics building. The staff sterilized the bowl of a fountain on the lawn outside. Hugh Bradner and Harold Urey filled it with a potent mix of vodka and fruit juices. Gordon had thrown his invitation away with the usual university news notices; Penny discovered it and insisted they go. He wanted to get some rest, but her nagging made him pull on his lightest jacket and, for the first time, skip wearing a tie. In California such details were unimportant. Penny sported a floppy tan straw hat—“For dress-up,” she said. Behind it she could hide a fraction of her face. This sense of added mystery rekindled in him an interest in her. He realized that he had been going through the motions these last few weeks, saddled with lecture preparations and spending most of his time with the NMR rig. This knowledge shocked him. The zest of their beginnings was seeping away. The abrasions between them were rubbing off the cosmetic illusions.

He spoke to several members of the Physics Department, but struck up no interesting conversations. Penny found some literary types but he was unmoored, wandering from one knot of academics to another. The English Department people already seemed drunk, quoting modern poets and ancient movies. There were bright, airy people there he’d never seen, goy princes, blond and unbearably self-assured, the sort of people who had refrigerators full of yogurt and champagne. He saw a visitor from Berkeley in the crowd, tall and well dressed, a Nobel winner of some years back. Gordon had met him before. He wedged himself into the crescent of people around the man and, when the Nobel laureate’s eyes shifted to him, he nodded. The eyes passed on. No nod, nothing. Gordon stood, plastic cup in hand, glassy smile on his face. The eyes came by again. No pause, no flicker of recognition. Gordon backed out of the chattering crescent, face reddening. Maybe he didn’t recognize me, Gordon thought, walking away. He got himself another cup of the vodka. On the other hand, maybe he did.

“Good booze, eh?” a man said at his elbow. “Try to say ‘spectroscopy’ three times, real fast.” Gordon tried the exercise, and failed. The man turned out to be named Book, and indeed, he did look bookish. He was from General Atomic and proved to be far friendlier than the university people. They stood under a sign that proclaimed, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THANK A TEACHER. None of Book’s levity penetrated Gordon’s mood. Vodka, however, began to relieve the world of its awful concreteness. He began to see the point in goys drinking so much. Book went off somewhere and Gordon drifted into conversation with a visiting particle physicist, Steingruber. Both of them shared a deepening appreciation for the vodka. They began to discuss the ageless topic, women. Gordon made several pronouncements about Penny. In a curious way he did not quite understand, Gordon inverted their roles, so that Penny had been the sexual student initiated into the adult world by himself, the sophisticate from New York. Steingruber accepted this as only reasonable. Gordon came to see that Steingruber was indeed a fine fellow, capable of profound insight. They had another drink together. Steingruber pointed to a blond standing a short distance away and asked, “What is your opinion of that one there?” Gordon peered at her and pronounced, “Pretty cheap looking. Yeah.” Steingruber looked at Gordon sharply. “She’s my wife.” In a moment, before Gordon could frame a suitable reply, he was gone.

Lakin came by, smiling amiably. He was with Bernard Carroway. “I have heard that you are repeating Cooper’s experiment,” Lakin said without preamble.

“Who did you hear that from?”

“I could see for myself.”

Gordon took his time. He had a swallow from his cup and discovered it was empty. Then he looked at Lakin. “Fuck off,” he said very clearly. Then he walked away.

He found Penny in a crowd gathered around Marcuse. “The newly appointed Communist-in-Residence?” Gordon asked when he was introduced. To his surprise, Marcuse laughed. A black woman graduate student standing nearby did not think anything was amusing. It developed that her name was Angela and that the revolution was not going to be brought about by people at cocktail parties; this was all Gordon could get out of the conversation, or at least all he could remember. He took Penny’s hand and wandered away.

Jonas Salk was off in a corner. Gordon debated trying to meet him. Maybe he could find out how Salk felt about Sabin—who had really developed the vaccine? An interesting question, indeed. “A parable of science,” Gordon muttered to himself. “What?” Penny asked. He steered her instead toward a pack of physicists. Some nagging voice within bid him to shut up, so he let Penny carry their fraction of the conversation. People around him seemed distant and vague. He tried to decide if this was due to him or due to them. The eternal relativistic problem. Maybe Marcuse knew the answer. Some Frenchmen asked Gordon about his experiments and he tried to sum up what he believed. It proved surprisingly difficult. The odd thickness of his tongue had gone away, but there remained the problem of what he himself thought was true. The Frenchmen asked about Saul. Gordon sidestepped the question. He tried to keep discussion focused on the results of his experiments. “As Newton said, ‘I frame no hypotheses’—at least, not yet. Ask me only about data.” He went off in search of more vodka, but the fountain bowl was empty. Sadly, he took the last of the crackers and pâté. When he returned, Penny was standing a little distance away from the Frenchmen, staring out at the view of La Jolla and the satiny glow of the sea. The Frenchmen were speaking French. Penny seemed angry. He tugged at her and she came along, glancing back.

She insisted on driving them home, though Gordon could see no reason why he should not. Going past the beach clubs and rambling private homes, Penny said, “Those bastards”, with sudden vehemence.

“Huh? What?”

She grimaced. “After you wandered off they said you were a bungler.”

Gordon frowned. “They said that to you?”

“No, silly. They started speaking French. They assumed that of course no American understands another language.

“Oh.”

“They called you a fake. A fraud.”

“Oh.”

“They said everybody was saying that about you.”

“Everybody?”

“Yeah,” she said sourly.