As She Climbed Across the Table

They hesitated at the sound of my footsteps, then shrugged together and groped at the elevator doorway for the button.

“You must have done something wrong,” said Evan.

Garth didn’t speak.

“You must have done something wrong,” said Evan again. Nothing.

“You must have done something wrong.”

“What time is it?” said Garth. They groped their watches.

“Two-fifty-seven.”

“Right. At least we’re synchronized. I didn’t do anything wrong. I saw a particle.”

“I don’t think you did it right.”

“She wanted to measure the spin. But there wasn’t any spin. It wasn’t spinning. Huh.”

“That was no particle.”

The elevator doors opened. They stepped inside, and I followed. They bustled into the rear, canes tangling.

“Would you press lobby?” said Evan.

I hit the button.

“Whoever it is, they’re probably going to the lobby too, you know,” said Garth, as if I couldn’t hear it.

“We can’t be sure,” said Evan.

“Probably about seventy-five percent of the people in a given elevator are going to the lobby,” said Garth.

“Unless they got on at the lobby,” said Evan.

I remained silent.

“You didn’t see anything,” said Evan, a little viciously. “That’s why she has no use for you. That wasn’t a particle.”

“How would you know?”

“It wasn’t a particle. It wasn’t anything.”

“Correction. I don’t see things that aren’t there. That’s the whole point.”

The elevator opened to the lobby and I stepped out.

“Lobby?” said Evan.

I didn’t speak.

“It sounds like the lobby,” said Garth.

“We’re about five blocks from the bus stop,” said Evan as they came out of the elevator.

“We should be there in about five minutes.”

“It took four minutes on the way over. Not that there was any reason to rush, as things turned out.”

They tapped past me, toward the breeze and its smells, the chirping insects, the warm invisible sunlight. The bus stops and parking meters waiting to be cataloged and curated.

My mystery had deepened. The blind men were like me and Soft. They stood outside of Alice’s narrowing circle of favor. I’d have to find other suspects.

Garth paused at the entrance and raised his head, wrinkling his nose as though detecting my presence by scent. He pursed his lips and frowned, like a bullfrog. “At least I saw a particle,” he said, as much in my direction as Evan’s. “She never had any use for you in the first place.”

9

Alice never packed a bag. Her time in the apartment just dwindled. I pretended we were suffering a temporary rift, and that in her silent way she would slip back into my arms. Four or five lonely nights had passed before the morning I cornered her in the hall of the administration building.

“Philip,” she said, almost sweetly.

“Alice.”

“I have to stay with Lack,” she said. “He can’t be left unobserved.”

Neither can I, I wanted to say.

“I’m canceling my classes. This is a big opportunity. Lack’s all mine now. I understand what he’s saying. I’m the only one.”

“You’re the only one for Lack.”

“Yes.”

It was work holding back my sarcasm. The result was silence.

“Philip. You understand, don’t you?”

I closed my eyes, leaned against the wall. “You’re sleeping with Lack.”

She ignored the provocation. “I’m sleeping in the lab. I mean, I’m not really sleeping much, to tell the truth. Please understand, Philip. I’m on the edge of the territory.”

Horizon of the real, I silently corrected.

A desultory student passed us in the hall, headed for some office to beg for reprieve.

“You’re leaving me,” I said.

“I have to be where this takes me.”

“It takes you away. You’re gone, and I’m alone.”

“You’re not alone.”

“Worse than alone, actually. I’m partial. I’m part of something that isn’t there anymore. I’m a broken-off chunk.”

Alice looked down. “What I’m doing is very important.”

“When will you come back?”

Silence.

“Say something encouraging,” I said. “Tell me it’s good for us. Tell me you think I’m overreacting. Use the word us.”

She met my eyes with a look of terror.

“What I’m hearing is you won’t use the word us,” I said.

She stared at her feet again. “Soft once told me that certain discoveries choose the scientist who discovers them. They wait for the right one. That’s me and Lack.”

Welling sarcasm again drowned my tongue.

Alice took my hand. “I have to go, Philip.”

“To Lack.”

“Yes.” She pulled her hand away, ran hair out of her eyes, smiled feebly. “I’m sorry.”

Before I could speak she was gone.

10

When Alice held her press conference I crept in and sat unobtrusively at the back. It turned out that Alice was right, Soft wrong. Lack was displaying a preference for certain particles. There wasn’t any explanation, but Alice had dubbed it vacuum intelligence, and Lack was instantly and forever anthropomorphized.

Lack had star potential, at least on campus. He was a charismatic mystery, a mute ambassador, a cosmic Kaspar Hauser. Developments in his chamber went murmuring through the faculty daily. And today he was being offered to the larger world.

The larger world was showing only the slightest interest. The conference hall was less than half full, and I