Timescape

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

GORDON HAD NOT REALIZED THE LIGHTS WOULD BE so bright. There were banks of lamps to both sides of the small platform, to make his face shadow-free. A TV camera snout peered at him, an unwinking Cyclops. There were some chemists in the audience, and nearly all the Physics Department. The department draftsman had labored until midnight to get all the charts drawn. Gordon had found the staff a great help in hustling things together for this. He was beginning to realize that the hostility he had felt from them all was an illusion, a product of his own doubts. The last few days had been a revelation. Department members hailed him in the hall, listened intently to his descriptions of his data, and visited the lab.

He looked around for Penny. There—near the back, in a pink dress. She smiled wanly at his hand wave. The press men were murmuring to each other and finding seats. The TV crewmen were in place and a woman with a microphone gave lastminute instructions. Gordon counted the crowd. Incredibly, it was larger than the number who turned out for Maria Mayer’s Nobel conference. But then, this one had a day or two of lead time. The UPI man got his exclusive story—picked up by the other wire services—and then the University had stepped in and set up this dog and pony show.

Gordon riffled through his notes with damp fingers. He had not really wanted any of this. The feel of it seemed somehow wrong to him—science carried on in public, science elbowing for time on the 6 o’clock news, science as a commodity. The momentum of it was immense. In the end there would remain the article in Science, where his results had to meet their tests, where no amount of bias for or against him could tip the scales—

“Dr. Bernstein? We’re ready.”

He wiped his brow one last time. “Okay, shoot.” A green light winked on.

He looked into the camera and tried to smile.