Тед Чан - Exhalation - Stories

I told her she had better be there as well, and she looked insulted. “Of course I’ll be there. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done. Weren’t you listening?”

Tomorrow I go to speak with Dr. and Mrs. McCullough. This has not turned out at all the way I expected when I left Chicagou. I was preparing to bring a criminal to justice, and instead I have to inform parents about their child’s misbehavior. Or, I should say, their daughter’s misbehavior. She is neither child nor criminal, but I’m uncertain as to what she is. Had she been a criminal, I would know better where I stand. Instead I’m just perplexed.

Help me to understand other people’s positions, Lord, even when I don’t share them. At the same time, grant me the strength to not ignore wrongdoing simply because it is committed by someone who is well intentioned. Let me be compassionate while remaining true to my convictions.

Amen.

Lord, I’m frightened by what I’ve heard today. I need your guidance desperately. Please help me make sense of what has happened.

I rode the ferry to Oakland today and from there hired a cab to the address that Wilhelmina had given me. A housekeeper opened the door. I introduced myself and told her that I needed to speak to the McCulloughs regarding their daughter, Wilhelmina. A minute later they appeared. “Are you one of Mina’s teachers?” asked Dr. McCullough.

I explained that I am an archaeologist with Boston’s Museum of Natural Philosophy. Mrs. McCullough recognized my name. “You write those popularizations,” she said. “How is it that you’re acquainted with our daughter?” I suggested that we speak inside. Both of them turned to look at Wilhelmina, who was standing on the stairs behind them, and they let me in.

Once we were in Dr. McCullough’s study, I described how I came to suspect that relics were being taken from the museum’s storerooms, and how I discovered Wilhelmina was behind it. Dr. McCullough turned to Wilhelmina and asked if it was true. “Yes, it is,” she declared, with neither shame nor belligerence.

Dr. McCullough was plainly incredulous. “Why on earth would you do such a thing?”

“You know why,” she said. “To remind people of what you’ve forgotten.”

His face grew red, and he said, “Go to your room. We will discuss this later.”

“I want to discuss it now,” she said. “You can’t keep denying—”

“Do as your father tells you,” said Mrs. McCullough. Wilhelmina left reluctantly, and then Dr. McCullough turned to me.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” he said. “You can be assured that nothing else from the university’s collection will leave the premises.”

I told him I appreciated his saying that, but I wanted to know what had prompted Wilhelmina’s actions. She seemed to be acting in reaction to something he had said or done. Was that true?

“That’s no concern of yours,” he said. “We’ll deal with this as a private family matter.”

I told Dr. McCullough that it wasn’t my intention to pry, but the theft of property might legitimately be a concern of the museum’s board of trustees, and I needed a more detailed explanation in order to be comfortable with not informing them. I asked him whether, if our positions were reversed, he would accept an explanation like the one he had given me. He glared at me so severely that if I’d been a subordinate of his, I might have left the matter alone. I wasn’t, though, so it seemed like we were at an impasse.

Then Mrs. McCullough said to him, “Tell her about the paper, Nathan. She came all this way, and besides, everyone will know soon enough.”

Dr. McCullough relented. “Very well, then,” he said. He went to his desk and picked up a manuscript. “I was asked to review a paper for publication in the journal Natural Philosophy. ” He handed the manuscript to me, and I saw the title was “On the Relative Motion of the Sun and the Luminiferous Aether.” I have only a layperson’s understanding of the aether, the medium that carries light waves: I know that, just as a shout carries farther when traveling with the wind than against it, the speed of light varies relative to the Earth’s own motion through the aether. I said as much to Dr. McCullough.

“Your understanding is correct, as far as it goes. However, detailed measurements suggest that the variations in the speed of light are not caused solely by the Earth’s motion around the Sun. Instead, there appears to be a steady aetheric wind across our solar system as a whole. Most physicists believe this has no significance, but the astronomer Arthur Lawson proposes an alternate explanation: he suggests that the Sun is not actually at rest, but is in motion relative to the aether, which is itself at rest.”

That seemed a bit like observing an incessant wind blowing across the desert and concluding that the desert must be in motion while the atmosphere was still. Dr. McCullough anticipated my objection, saying, “Yes, of course, it sounds topsy-turvy, but bear with me. Lawson hypothesizes that there is another star whose motion relative to the Sun is the same as the aetheric wind. Such a star would be stationary with respect to the luminiferous aether, and therefore truly be at absolute rest.

“Astronomers have only recently begun mapping the proper motions of stars, but they have detected some broad patterns, so Lawson began looking at the section of the sky where the stars’ velocities are similar to that of the aetheric wind. He found several stars whose motions are close to it, but none that match it exactly.

“Then he happened across 58 Eridani, a star in the constellation Eridanus. Based on its Doppler shift, Lawson measured 58 Eridani to be moving toward us at a speed of several thousand miles per second. That would be extraordinary in and of itself, but later measurements showed that its motion wasn’t consistent. The star was alternately moving toward us and then away from us, again at several thousand miles per second.”

I said that obviously some sort of measurement error must be responsible.

“Of course that was his first assumption. But after ruling out every source of error he could think of, Lawson asked astronomers at another observatory to take a look; they confirmed his findings. Together they determined that 58 Eridani’s motion varied with a period of exactly twenty-four hours. Lawson believes it is moving in a circle.”

I asked if it was in orbit around a larger body, and he said an object traveling in that manner couldn’t possibly be gravitationally bound. It defies everything we know about celestial mechanics. I asked if he thought it qualified as miraculous, whether this was finally unambiguous evidence of your ongoing, active intervention in the universe, Lord.

“It certainly does,” said Dr. McCullough. “But the significance of the miracle is the real question. What does this marvel tell us about God’s design?

“Lawson offers an interpretation. He suggests that 58 Eridani is actually orbiting a smaller body too small for us to detect, a planet the size of the Earth. The star is moving in such a way as to provide a day-and-night cycle of twenty-four hours for a stationary planet. He believes that it constitutes a geocentric solar system.

“He goes on to suggest that the planet that 58 Eridani is orbiting is stationary relative to the luminiferous aether, meaning that it’s the sole object in the universe that is at absolute rest. On that planet, and only on that planet, would the speed of light be precisely the same no matter which direction it was traveling. And although there’s no way to detect life on that planet, Lawson suggests the planet is inhabited, and that its inhabitants are the reason God created the universe.”