Gregory Benford - Timescape

“I move that we fail Mr. Cooper on this first try at the candidacy examination,” Lakin said mildly. “He needs more preparation. Also, this matter of the spontaneous resonances—” a glance at Gordon—“should be resolved.”

“Right,” Gates said.

“Um,” Carroway said drowsily, already picking up his scattered papers.

“But look—”

“Gordon,” Lakin murmured with a kind of tired friendliness, “that is a majority of the committee. Could we have the forms?”

Gordon stiffly handed over the University form for the examination, on which faculty could sign and write out either “yes” or “no” to the question of whether Cooper had passed. The form came back across the table with three nos . Gordon stared at it, still off balance, still not sure the whole thing was over. It was the first time he had shepherded a student through this examination and now the student had failed—a rather uncommon event. The candidacy was supposed to be a putz of an exam, for Chrissakes. Gordon thought suddenly of the conventional theory of scientific revolutions, where paradigms overtook each other, old replacing new. In a way the message theory and the spontaneous resonance theory were paradigms, erected to explain one bunch of mysterious data. Two paradigms, arguing over a scrap of experimental bread. It almost made him laugh.

The scraping of chairs and shuffle of papers roused him. He muttered something to each of the men as they left, still dazed with the outcome. Lakin even gave him a handshake and a lightly delivered, “We do have to straighten this out, you know,” before leaving. As Gordon watched Lakin’s retreating back he saw that to the other man this was a regrettable incident involving a junior faculty member who had gone off on a tangent. Lakin had abandoned the softer ways of persuasion. He could no longer come to Gordon and gently urge him to give up his notions. That kind of conversation would lead nowhere— had led nowhere. Their personalities didn’t match, and maybe that was in the end the most important thing in research. Crick and Watson hadn’t got on with Rosalind Franklin, and that prevented their collaboration on the DNA helix riddle. Together they might have cracked the problem earlier. Science abounded with fierce conflicts, many of which blocked progress. There were great missed opportunities—if Oppenheimer had broken through Einstein’s hardening isolation, perhaps the two of them could have gone beyond Oppenheimer’s 1939 work of neutron stars to consider the whole general relativistic problem of collapsed matter. But they hadn’t, in part because Einstein stopped listening to others, cut himself off with his own drowsy dreams in a complete unified field theory…

Gordon realized he was sitting alone in the bleak room. Downstairs, Cooper was waiting for the result. There were joys to teaching, but Gordon suddenly wondered whether they were worth the bad moments. You spent three-quarters of your time on the bottom quarter of the students; the really good ones gave you no trouble. Now he had to go down and tell Cooper.

He shuffled his papers together and left. Sunlight streamed in yellow blades through the corridor windows. The days were getting longer. Classes were over. For a moment Gordon forgot Cooper and Lakin and the messages and let a single thought wash over him: the blessed long summer was beginning.

BY THE TIME MARJORIE HEARD A CAR CRUNCH ON the gravel of their driveway, she had everything ready. There was ice in the freezer, carefully hoarded through the power-off hours. She was looking forward to company after a dull week. John’s description of Peterson had quite prepared her to dislike him; Council members were remote, forbidding figures. Having one in her own home carried the threat of committing some enormous social gaffe and the compensating thrill of contact with someone more important than a Cambridge don.

John had given her two hours’ notice, the classic unthinking husband’s trick. Luckily the house was reasonably tidy, and anyway men never noticed things like that. The problem was dinner. She felt that she would have to invite him to stay, out of politeness, though with any luck he would refuse. She had a roast in the battery-assisted freezer. She had been saving it for a special occasion, but there was no time to defrost it. She knew it was important to put on a good show for Peterson; John was not inviting him home out of friendship. A soufllé, perhaps. She had searched through her kitchen cupboards and found a tin of shrimp. Yes, that would do it. A shrimp soufflé and a salad and French bread. Followed by strawberries from the garden, and cream. Bloody elegant, considering. It would exhaust a good fraction of her weekly grocery budget, but economy be damned on such short notice. She had fetched up a bottle of their expensive California Chablis and put it in the tiny freezer, the only way to chill it in time. Might as well make the occasion festive, she thought. For days she had hardly seen John, as he worked late every night at the lab. She had got into the habit of fixing a quick and easy dinner for the kids and herself, keeping a pot of soup to heat up for John whenever he came home.

Outside, car doors clapped. Marjorie stood up as the two men came into the living room. John looked his usual teddy bear self, she thought affectionately. Seeing him in daylight for the first time that week, she also noticed how tired he was. Peterson was goodlooking in a smooth sort of way, Marjorie decided, but his mouth was too thin, making him look hard.

“This is my wife, Marjorie,” John was saying as she held out her hand to Peterson. Their eyes met as they shook hands. A sudden prickly feeling ran through her. Then he looked away again and they moved into the room.

“I hope this isn’t inconveniencing you too much,” Peterson said. “Your husband assured me it was all right, and we still have some business to discuss.”

“No, not at all. I’m glad to have some company for a change. It can be pretty dull being the wife of a physicist when he’s working on an experiment.”

“I imagine it can.” He gave her a brief dissecting glance and strolled over to the window. “You have a charming place here.”

“What can I get you to drink, Peterson?” John asked.

“I’ll take a whisky and soda, please. Yes, this is charming. I’m very fond of the country. Your roses look especially good.” He gestured towards the garden and followed this up with precise comments on soil conditions.

“You live in London, I suppose, Mr. Peterson?”

“Yes, I do. Thank you.” He accepted a drink from John.

“Have you got a weekend cottage in the country too?” Marjorie asked.

She thought she saw something flicker for a second in his eyes before he answered. “No, unfortunately. I wish I did. But I probably wouldn’t have time to use it. My work requires a lot of travel.”

She nodded sympathetically and turned to her husband. “I’m one ahead of you on the drinks, but I’d like another one, please, John,” she said, holding out her glass.

“Sherry, is it?” From the deliberately light way he spoke Marjorie saw at once the effort he was making to get on with Peterson. She had felt the tension between the two men from the first instant. John crossed to the sideboard and said in a strained, jolly voice, “It’s Ian’s job to see we aren’t forced to sop up too much of this stuff in order to face the world.”

This remark made no visible impression whatever on Peterson, who murmured, “Unfortunate, that previous sots hadn’t the excuse of a World Council to blame their reality-avoiding on.”