Грег Иган - Distress

And I was finally going to meet my subject.

I’d received a message the night before, from Mosala’s assistant, Karin De Groot. Mosala was giving a media conference at eight; after that, she’d be busy for most of the day—starting at nine, when Henry Buzzo from Caltech was delivering a paper which he claimed would cast doubt on a whole class of ATMs. Between the media conference and Buzzo’s paper, though, I’d have a chance to discuss the documentary with her, at last. Although nothing had to be concluded on Stateless—I’d be able to interview her at length back in Cape Town, if necessary—I’d been beginning to wonder if I’d be forced to cover her time here as just another journalist in the pack.

I thought about breakfast, but after forcing myself to eat on the flight from Dili, my appetite still hadn’t returned. So I lay on the bed, reading through Mosala’s biographical notes one more time, and rechecking my tentative shooting schedule for the fortnight ahead. The room was functional, almost ascetic compared to most hotels… but it was clean, modern, bright, and inexpensive, I’d slept in less comfortable beds, in rooms with plusher but gloomier decor, at twice the cost.

It was all too good, by far. Peaceful surroundings and an untraumatic subject—what had I done to deserve this? I’d never even found out who Lydia had sent into the breach to make Distress. Who’d be spending the day in a psychiatric hospital in Miami or Berne, while tranquilizers were withdrawn from one strait-jacketed victim after another, to test the effects of some non-sedative drug on the syndrome, or to obtain scans of the neuropathology unsullied by pharmacological effects?

I brushed the image away, angrily. Distress wasn’t my responsibility; I hadn’t created the disease. And I hadn’t forced anyone to take my place.

Before leaving for the media conference, I reluctantly called Sarah Knight. My curiosity about Kuwale had all but faded—it was sure to be a sad story, with no surprises—and the prospect of facing Sarah for the first time since I’d robbed her of Violet Mosala wasn’t appealing.

I didn’t have to. It was only ten to six in Sydney, and a generic answering system took my call. Relieved, I left a brief message, then headed downstairs.

The main auditorium was packed, buzzing with expectant chatter. I’d had visions of hundreds of protesters from Humble Science! picketing the hotel entrance, or brawling with security guards and physicists in the corridors, but there wasn’t a demonstrator in sight. Standing in the entrance, it took me a while to pick out Janet Walsh in the audience, but once I’d spotted her it was easy to triangulate to Connolly in a forward row—perfectly placed to turn from Walsh to Mosala with a minimum of neck strain.

I took a seat near the back of the room, and invoked Witness. Electronic cameras on the stage would capture the audience, and I could buy the footage from the conference organizers if there was anything worth using.

Marian Fox, president of the International Union of Theoretical Physicists, took the stage and introduced Mosala. She uttered all the words of praise that anyone would have used in her place: respected, inspirational, dedicated, exceptional. I had no doubt that she was perfectly sincere… but the language of achievement always seemed to me to crumble into self-parody. How many people on the planet could be exceptional ? How many could be unique ? I had no wish to see Violet Mosala portrayed as no different from the most mediocre of her colleagues… but all the laudatory clichés conveyed nothing. They just rendered themselves meaningless.

Mosala walked to the podium, trying to look graceful under hyperbole; a section of the audience applauded wildly, and several people rose to their feet. I made a mental note to ask Indrani Lee for her thoughts as to when and why these strange adulatory rituals—observed almost universally with actors and musicians—had begun to be followed for a handful of celebrity scientists. I suspected it was all down to the Ignorance Cults; they’d struggled so hard to raise popular interest in their cause that it would have been surprising if they hadn’t ended up generating some equally vehement opposing passions. And there were plenty of social strata where the cults were pure establishment, and there could be no greater act of rebellion than idolizing a physicist.

Mosala waited for the noise to die down. "Thank you, Marian. And thank you all for attending this session. I should just briefly explain what I’m doing here. I’ll be on a number of panels taking questions on technical matters, throughout the conference. And, of course, I’ll be happy to discuss the issues raised by the paper I’m giving on the eighteenth, after I’ve presented it. But time is always short on those occasions, and we like to keep the questions tightly focused—which, I know, often frustrates journalists who’d like to cover a broader range of topics.

"So, the organizing committee have persuaded a number of speakers to hold media sessions where those restrictions won’t apply. This morning it’s my turn. So if you have anything you’d like to ask me which you’re afraid might be ruled out as irrelevant at later sessions… this is your chance."

Mosala came across as relaxed and unassuming; she’d been visibly nervous in the footage I’d seen of earlier appearances—the Nobel ceremony, especially—but if she wasn’t yet a seasoned veteran, she was definitely more at ease. She had a deep, vibrant voice—which might have been electrifying if she ever took to making speeches—but her tone was conversational, not oratorial. All of which boded well for Violet Mosala. The awkward truth was, some people just didn’t belong on a living room screen for most of fifty minutes. They didn’t fit— and they emerged distorted, like a sound too loud or too soft to record. Mosala, I was sure now, would survive the limitations of the medium. So long as I didn’t screw up completely, myself.

The first few questions came from the science correspondents of the non-specialist news services… who diligently resurrected all the old non sequiturs: Will a Theory of Everything mean an end to science? Will a TOE render the future totally predictable? Will a TOE unlock all the unsolved problems of physics and chemistry, biology and medicine… ethics and religion?

Mosala dealt with all of this patiently and concisely. "A Theory of Everything is just the simplest mathematical formulation we can find which encapsulates all the underlying order in the universe. Over time, if a candidate TOE survives sustained theoretical scrutiny and experimental testing, we should gradually become confident that it represents a kind of kernel of understanding … from which—in principle, in the most idealized sense—everything around us could be explained.

"But that won’t make anything totally predictable. The universe is full of systems which we understand completely—systems as simple as two planets orbiting a star—where the mathematics is chaotic, or intractable, and long term predictions will always be impossible to compute.

"And it doesn’t mean an end to science. Science is much more than the search for a TOE; it’s the elucidation of the relationships between order in the universe at every level. Reaching the foundations doesn’t mean hitting the ceiling. There are dozens of problems in fluid dynamics—let alone neurobiology—which need new approaches, or better approximations, not the ultimate, precise description of matter on a subatomic scale."

I pictured Gina at her workstation. And I pictured her in her new home, recounting all her problems and small triumphs to her new lover. I felt unsteady for a moment, but it passed.