Gregory Benford - Timescape

“Well—” Gordon summarized the second message and how Shriffer got involved. “I’m afraid Saul took things further than they should properly have gone, but—”

“I would say so. Our contract monitor called, as well”

“So what?”

“So what? True, he does not have very much real power. But our colleagues do. They pass judgment.”

“Again, so what?”

Lakin shrugged. “You will have to deny Shriffer’s conclusions.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Because they are false.”

“I don’t know that.”

“You should not make statements you cannot prove to be true.”

“But to deny them is also untrue.”

“You consider his hypothesis likely?”

“No.” Gordon shuffled uneasily. He had hoped he would not have to say anything, one way or the other.

“Then refuse to go along with it.”

“I can’t deny we got that message. It came through loud and clear.”

Lakin raised his eyebrows with a European disdain, as though to say, How can I reason with a person such as this? In response, Gordon unconsciously hitched at his pants and hooked his thumbs into his belt at his hips, flexing his shoulders. Absurdly, he had a sudden image of Marlon Brando in the same pose, squinting at some thug who had just crossed him. Gordon blinked and tried to think of what to say next.

“You realize,” Lakin said carefully, “that talk of a message will—aside from making you appear a fool—cast doubt on the spontaneous resonance effect?”

“Maybe.”

“Some of my telephone calls were specifically about precisely this point.”

“Maybe.”

Lakin glanced at Gordon sharply. “I believe you should reflect upon it.”

Gordon murmured impishly, “To shine is better than to reflect.”

Lakin stiffened. “What are you—”

The telephone rang. Gordon seized it with relief. He answered the caller in monosyllables. “Fine. Three o’clock, then. My office number is 118.”

When he hung up he looked levelly at Lakin and said, “San Diego Union”

“A dreadful paper.”

“Granted. They want some background on the story.”

“You’re seeing them?”

“Sure.”

Lakin sighed. “What will you say?”

“I’ll tell them I don’t know where the hell the stuff if coming from.”

“Unwise. Unwise.”

After Lakin had left Gordon wondered at the sudden phrase that had forced its way into his mouth: To shine is better than to reflect . Where had he heard it before? Penny, probably; it sounded like some literary remark. But did he mean it? Was he after fame, like Shriffer? He was conditioned to accept a certain amount of guilt over something like that—that was the cliché, wasn’t it, Jews feel guilty, their mothers train them to? But guilt wasn’t it, no; his intuition told him that. His instinct was that something lurked in the message, it was real. He had been over this ground a hundred times and still he had to trust his own judgment, his own data. And if to Lakin the subject was foolish, if Gordon appeared to be a fraud—well, tough; so be it.

He hitched his thumbs into his belt and gazed out at the California insect engineering and felt good, pretty damn good.

After the San Diego Union reporter went away Gordon still felt confident, though with some effort. The reporter asked a lot of dumb questions, but that was par for the course. Gordon stressed the uncertainties; the Union wanted clear answers to cosmic questions, preferably in one quotable sentence. To Gordon the important point was how science was done, how answers were always provisional, always awaiting the outcome of future experiments. The Union expected adventure and excitement and more evidence of a university on its way to greatness. Across this gulf some information flowed, but not much.

He was sorting his mail, putting some into his briefcase for reading in the evening, when Ramsey came by.

After a few preliminaries—Ramsey seemed earnestly interested in the weather—he slipped a page from an envelope and said, “This the picture Shriffer showed last night?”

Gordon studied it. “Where did you get it?”

“From your student, Cooper.”

“And where did he get one?”

“He says, from Shriffer.”

“When?”

“A few weeks back. Shriffer came to him to check the dots and dashes, he says.”

“Um.” Gordon supposed he should have known Shriffer would check it. That was a reasonable precaution. “Okay, it’s a small point. What about it?”

“Well, I don’t think it makes any sense, but then I haven’t really had any time to—look, what I mean is, what’s this Shriffer guy doing?”

“He decoded a second message. He thinks it comes from a star called 99 Hercules that—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Point is, why’s he going on TV?”

“To figure out that picture.”

“He doesn’t know about the first message, the one I’m working on?”

“Sure he does.”

“Well, cripes—this stuff on the TV, it’s garbage, right?”

Gordon shrugged. “I’m an agnostic. I don’t know what it means, that’s what I just told a reporter.”

Ramsey looked worried. “You think this is the straight scoop, though? The stuff I’m working on is okay?”

“It’s okay.”

“Shriffer’s just an asshole?”

“I’m an agnostic,” Gordon said, suddenly tired. Everybody was asking him for the eternal, fixed Truth and he had none for sale.

“Geez. Some of the biochem is starting to make some sense, y’know? The li’l experiment I put one of my students on is panning out some, is how I know. Then this comes along…”

“Don’t worry about it. The Shriffer message may be pure bullshit for all I know. Look, I’ve been rushed and—” Gordon wiped his brow—“it’s just plain gotten away from me. Keep on with the experiments, okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Rushed why?”

“Shriffer. He thinks he’s decoded something and all of a sudden he’s on TV. Wasn’t my idea.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. Makes it different.” Ramsey seemed mollified. Then his face clouded again. “What about the first message?”

“What about it?”

“You releasing it?”

“No. No plans to.”

“Good. Good.”

“You can have all the time to work on it you want.”

“Fine.” Ramsey held out his hand as though a deal had just been concluded. “I’ll be in touch.”

Gordon shook the hand solemnly.

The bit of playacting with Ramsey had bothered him at first, but he realized it was part of dealing with people: you had to adopt their voice, see things from their point of view, if you wanted to communicate at all. Ramsey saw all this as a game with the first message as privileged information, and Shriffer as simply an interloper. Well, for the purposes of Ramsey’s universe, so be it. At one time when he was younger Gordon would have been rudely cynical about striking a stance purely to convince someone. Now matters seemed different. He wasn’t lying to Ramsey. He wasn’t withholding information. He was merely tailoring the way he described the events. Adolescent cliches about truth and beauty and bird thou never wert were just crap, simplistic categories. When you had to get something done you talked the talk. That was the way it was. Ramsey would keep on with the experiments without fretting over unknowables, and, with luck, they might find out something.

He was walking away from the Physics building, toward Torrey Pines Road where his Chevy was parked, when a slight figure raised a hand in salutation. Gordon turned and recognized Maria Goeppert Mayer, the only woman in the department. She had suffered a stroke some time before and now appeared seldom, moving ghostlike through the hallways, one side partially impaired, her speech slurred. Her face sagged and she seemed tired, but in the eyes Gordon could see a dancing intelligence that let nothing slip by.