Ben Bova - Able One

For her part, Sylvia saw in Harry a steady, dependable man who could be led rather easily. He had this funny hair that flew every which way at the slightest breeze, but he wasn’t that bad-looking and he was doggedly determined to do well in class and get a rock-solid job after graduation. He was quiet, and so shy he wouldn’t get fresh with her, so after a few dates she got fresh with him. After nearly a year of dating they moved into a tiny studio apartment together.

Harry married Sylvia in a simple civil ceremony in Bethlehem’s city hall. Neither her parents nor his saw fit to attend the wedding. Both families were infuriated by their marriage. Sylvia’s mother feared that this goy boyfriend of hers had gotten her pregnant; Harry’s father asked him why, when there were so many fish in the sea, he wanted to settle so soon for just one of them.

As graduation neared Harry was recruited by a firm in California, Anson Aerospace Corporation. The company was developing lasers and Harry had worked summers in the university’s laser lab to make enough money to support himself and his bride.

With their diplomas in their hands, they moved to Pasadena, leaving their disapproving parents thousands of miles behind them. Sylvia got part-time work as a substitute teacher while Harry threw himself into his job as a laser technician.

Anson Aerospace was a happy haven for the young engineer. All his life he had been an oddball, a nerd, a quiet, studious boy who was shy with girls and respectful to adults and preferred reading books to getting involved in teenaged pranks. At Anson, Harry was surrounded by people just like him. Geek heaven. There was a pecking order, of course: scientists were above engineers, even though the engineers all felt that physicists should never be allowed to touch any of the equipment in the lab.

“It’s easy to make a laser that’s idiot-proof,” the head of Anson’s safety department told Harry. “Making it Ph.D.-proof is just about impossible. Those guys think they’re brilliant, see. They poke into the lab and fiddle with this and twiddle with that until they either give themselves a ten-thousand-volt shock or burn the place down.”

Harry knew he was not brilliant. But he worked hard and steadily for long hours and little recognition. Yet he loved it. He loved the technical challenges, the camaraderie that slowly developed among his fellow engineers, the bowling league he helped to organize, even the physicists who unconsciously lorded it over the engineers as if it was their right to look down on the guys who got their hands dirty. Indeed, Harry was not brilliant, but he was dependable. He got the job done, no matter how difficult it was, no matter how long or hard he had to work at it. Quiet and steady as he was, gradually he was recognized by his supervisors, and even by the scientists who ran the lab. To his own surprise, Harry got salary raises almost every year: small ones, but he didn’t complain.

Sylvia did. They had two daughters now and a sizable mortgage on their home. She felt Harry wasn’t aggressive enough about his salary.

“You should be getting more,” she would say. “Gina Sobelski’s husband hasn’t been with the company half as long as you have and he makes twice as much.”

“Sobelski’s in the legal department,” Harry would counter. “Different pay scale.”

Logic did not move Sylvia.

“You’re dull, Harry. Nobody pays any attention to you. You’re a bore.”

He didn’t argue. He just let her vent and the next morning he went to work, where the only pressure on him was to do his job.

Anson Aerospace landed a juicy contract to build a megawatt-plus chemical laser for the Missile Defense Agency. The whole company was abuzz with the news. Victor Anson himself called a meeting of the entire staff in the company cafeteria to tell them that this program would be the most important contract the firm had ever received.

Harry was surprised when he was picked to be part of the small, select group of engineers who would build the device.

Dr. Jacob Levy was chosen to head the laser group, with Pete Quintana as the chief engineer under him. Monk Delany complained to Harry that Quintana only got the job because he was Hispanic and the company wanted to look good to the affirmative action busybodies.

A couple of the guys began calling Quintana el jefe. Harry and the others went along with it. What the hell? Harry thought. He had no problems with a Hispanic being his immediate supervisor. He liked Pete.

Sylvia took the news of Harry’s new assignment strangely.

“I suppose that means you’ll be working longer hours, doesn’t it?” she asked that evening, after their daughters had gone to their rooms to do their homework. Harry could hear the thumping beat of the music they listened to while they were supposed to be studying.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

Sylvia grumbled and Harry wondered why she got sore at the fact that he was successful at his work.

“Look, Sylvie, I’ve got a big responsibility now,” he tried to explain. “I know I’m not a genius. I’ve got to put in long hours and work as hard as I can. These scientists I’m working for are really brilliant; I’ve got to give it everything I’ve got just to keep up with them.”

Sylvia stared at his earnest face and shook her head.

There were women in the lab, of course: a couple of Caltech grads among the scientific staff; several engineers and technicians. A few of them were even good-looking. The Christmas parties were fun, although Harry always drove straight home afterward. Sylvia would scowl at him the next day as Harry nursed his hangover and thanked whatever gods there be that the Pasadena traffic cops hadn’t stopped him on the way home.

Sylvia had given up her teaching career, such as it was, once she became pregnant with Victoria. Then came Denise. Instead of a career in education, Sylvia pursued Causes. Women’s rights. Neighborhood beautification. Abused children. Political campaigns. Harry thought of them as hobbyhorses. Sylvia always had some Cause or other to keep her busy, as if raising two daughters wasn’t enough of a job. Through her Causes she met people, dragged Harry to meetings and cocktail parties, gave herself a sense of accomplishment.

Harry didn’t mind Sylvia’s hobbyhorses, as long as they didn’t interfere with the increasingly long hours he had to put in at the lab. He settled into middle-class Americana, his wispy hair thinning even more, his kids growing up amazingly fast, his wife slowly becoming more distant. Harry could never understand why Sylvia was resentful that his job absorbed so much of his time and interest, and that he enjoyed it.

“We never go anywhere,” she would complain.

“We took the kids to Disney World, didn’t we?”

“Last year.”

“So?”

“I was thinking about an ocean cruise. Maybe to Hawaii.”

Harry scratched his head. “The four of us? Do you know what that would cost?”

“We could leave the girls with the Sobelskis. Just you and me, Harry. On a beautiful ocean liner.”

He thought about how much time that would take but knew better than to mention that out loud. Besides, she knew he had amassed lots of unused vacation days.

“We’ll see,” he said.

Nearly a year later he finally gave in to her drumbeat of hints and accusations. They took a cruise to Hawaii. It wasn’t really romantic, just a different setting for the same pair of them. Hawaii actually depressed Harry with its obviously phony facade of tropical splendor and the locals debasing their native culture for tourist dollars.

As their cruise liner left Honolulu for the trip home, Harry stood at the rail and watched the pier gradually slipping away, more and more distant, the gulf of oily, trash-laden water separating the ship from the land slowly, slowly widening. Turning to Sylvia, standing beside him with tears in her eyes, he thought that the same thing was happening to them— they had already drifted apart, and the gulf between them was getting wider every day, every year.