Brenda Cooper: The Single Larry Ti, or Fear of Black Holes and Ken

He nodded, his facial features carefully controlled. “But I’m not sure we won.”

Trust him to be gallant. “I’m sure your side will prevail. The media polls have you ahead 10 percent.”

He smiled and leaned in closer. “The chief justice’s daughter is a scientist.”

Maybe that explained the compassion I’d glimpsed. “She’s one of seven.”

“Two. The other American always votes with her. So if you convinced two more?”

“I still think you’re in fantasyland.” His hand sat easily at my waist. He smelled clean, like unscented soap. He used to keep his own bar of unscented soap in the shower, and if he was out, he wouldn’t use my lavender soap. Now who was in fantasyland? “What can I do for you, Ken?”

He pressed a fat capsule into my hand, carefully, hiding it from the swarms. “Just remember how we used to work together in the past.”

I almost dropped it. The capsule was the right size, a little over two inches long, more than one deep, and a little heavier than I remembered. Back when he’d first shown me the lost nanosecond, we’d both been afraid for a few months. We’d carried these: vials of negative mass, sealed in Penning traps. He’d worked on it as a graduate student in the ‘40s, and he must still have access. God alone knew how. Not that I believed in God.

The only thing we had been able to think of that might destroy a microscopic black hole: feed it some negative mass so the forming singularity would be neutralized.

Maybe we’d live. No one had thrown negative mass at a singularity, because no one could make a singularity to throw anything at. But if we did, we’d have it. Funny safety valve for scientists.

He whispered in my ear. “Take it to the Moon with you.”

I closed my eyes, my heart thumping in my chest like it had so many years ago. It had faded and gone away, this fear. It had gone so far away I was willing to testify on national media streams. Damn him. I’d outgrown this, gone beyond it. It had never happened again. No more bad results, no lost milliseconds, no black hole bogeys under the bed. Just physics and acceptable levels of risk.

Just adult things.

I let my eyes meet his for the first time, looking for what he saw. He saw the young scientist afraid she’d blow up the whole world but bravely moving forward. I’d lost the fear. I’d lost myself. The words came out broken and stuttering. “Th… thank you.”

He leaned down and kissed me hard enough to call up strings of excitement in my belly. String theory. Physics jokes between lovers. I almost laughed. I needed to laugh, but I couldn’t, not here, not now.

Even though I’d gone beyond him, I pocketed the capsule and returned to my seat, to the good guy’s side of the aisle.

I felt awkward in small talk to my colleagues. I felt so uneasy all the way through lunch with Jerry and Salli and Jeff and the CEOs that I completely missed it when Salli told me I’d done well. She had to repeat herself, like a strengthening echo before I realized she’d been talking to me. I should have been hungry, but everything tasted like crackers or mashed potatoes in need of salt.

I gave up and excused myself, returning early to the round Hall of Justice, feeling small and out of place.

The twenty minutes before the next person came in took forever. I stared at the walls, slowly exhaling the smell and feel of Ken. This was why I left him: He scared me. Beside him, the world was always one breath away from dying.

Control returned, followed by the press and the rest of the audience.

Jerry smiled as he sat by me, looking brave in the face of likely disaster. The windows had been opened against the afternoon, and a soft warm breeze made the flags flutter, giving me a faint feeling of hope.

The bailiff called out, “All rise.”

We rose.

The judges filed in.

Three women and four men. Six countries. The minority opinion always went first. I realized I’d stopped breathing and dragged in a deep lungful of stale air, hot from the midday sun.

“We, Venezuela and Russia, find the prosecution right.”

Oh my god. Right. The minority found the prosecution right. Oh my god. I sat up, trying to keep the triumph from smearing itself across my face in a great big smile. The cams. Have to be patient for the cams.

I glanced over at Ken and patted my pocket. This time I didn’t stutter, I just mouthed, “Thank you.”

He nodded, the cowlick visible in all its glory from here. My ex-husband, the scared little boy, sitting on the side of the afraid. But I’d take some of his fear with me. A good scientist remembered the risks, and the old women with fear in their eyes.