Timescape

Gordon spoke up, interrupting the flow of Carroway’s probes. He pointed out that in the time remaining the committee had to consider the form and details of Cooper’s experiment, and they hadn’t touched on that yet. This worked. Gates nodded. Cooper, who had been standing with his back pressed to the blackboard, smiled with evident relief. The committee room filled with the small sounds of hands riffling through papers, bodies shifting position in uncomfortable chairs: the earlier mood was broken. Cooper could repair some of the damage.

Five minutes passed smoothly. Cooper explained his experimental setup, elaborated details of the rig. He passed around samples of his early results.

Lakin gave these papers scarcely a glance. Instead, he slipped some pages of his own into the set of data and passed them to Cooper. “My concern here, Mr. Cooper, is not only with the easy-to-understand results. I am sure the committee will find them unsurprising. What I wish to know is whether they are correct.”

“Sir?” Cooper said in a thin voice.

“We all know there are… odd… features in your work.”

“Uh, I…”

“Could you explain these things to us?”

Lakin pointed at his pages, face up on the table. They were traces showing the sudden interruption of smooth resonance curves. Gordon peered at them with a sinking feeling.

The rest of the examination seemed to go by very quickly. Cooper lost a certain calm distance he had successfully kept through the earlier questioning. He explained the spontaneous resonance effect in halting sentences. He would rush forward through an explanation he knew and, reaching the end of it, back away from its implications. He tried to edge around the question of what caused the effect. Carroway, now visibly interested, drew him back to it. Gordon’s interjections did nothing to stem the flow. Gates began to second Carroway’s skepticism, so that Cooper spun from Lakin to Carroway to Gates, meeting fresh objections as he turned from right to left. “This issue is at the heart of the thesis,” Lakin said, and the others nodded. “It must be settled. Only Mr. Cooper knows the truth of the matter.” Everyone in the room knew they were talking about the messages and Gordon and Saul Shriffer, not merely about the correctness of Cooper’s electronics. But this examination was a way for the faculty to express their professional judgment of the issue, and on this ground the battle had to be fought.

Gordon let it go as long as he dared, eating into the two hours. Finally he said, “This is all very well, but are we keeping to the point? You have seen the data—”

“Of course,” Lakin shot back. “But are they right?”

“I submit that this question is not what we are considering. This is a candidacy examination. We pass on the suitability of a topic—not on the final outcome.”

Gates nodded. Then, to Gordon’s surprise, Carroway did, too. Lakin was silent. As though the question had been settled, Gates asked Cooper an innocuous question about his setup. The examination wound down. Carroway slumped in his chair, eyes half-closed to his own interior world, the spark gone out of him. Gordon thought wryly of what the taxpayers would think of their half-awake public servant, and then recalled that Carroway followed what were, for theoreticians, standard working hours. He would arrive at noon, ready to substitute lunch for breakfast. Seminars and discussions with students took him into evening. By then he was ready to begin calculations—that is, real work. This early afternoon exam was, for him, a waking-up exercise.

Gordon’s real work began as Cooper left the room. This was when the thesis professor listened carefully to the comments and criticisms of his colleagues, ostensibly for future use in directing the thesis research of the candidate. A subtle tug of war.

Lakin opened by doubting Cooper’s understanding of the problem. True, Gordon conceded, Cooper was weak on the overall theory. But experimental students were traditionally more concerned with their detailed lab work —“stroking their apparatus,” Gordon called it, to provoke some much-needed mirth—than with the fine points of theory. Gates bought this; Carroway frowned.

Lakin shrugged, conceding it as a tied point. He paused while Carroway, and then Gates in turn, expressed some misgivings over Cooper’s occasionally sloppy work on basic physics problems—the two electrons in a box, for example. Gordon agreed. He pointed out, though, that the Physics Department could only require students to take the relevant courses and then hope that the knowledge sank in. Cooper had already passed the department’s Qualifying Examination—three days of written problems, followed by a two-hour oral examination. The fact that Cooper’s grasp of some points was still slippery was, of course, regrettable. But what could this candidacy committee do? Gordon promised to press Cooper on these subjects, to—in effect—browbeat the student into making up the deficiency. The committee accepted this, rather standard reply with nods.

So far Gordon had skated on relatively firm ice. Now Lakin tapped his pen reflectively on the table, tick, and slowly, almost languidly, reviewed Cooper’s data. The true test of an experimenter, he said, was his data. The crux of Cooper’s thesis was the spontaneous resonance effect. And this was precisely what was in question. “The thesis is an argument, let us remember, not a stack of pages,” Lakin said with dreamy ease.

Gordon countered as best he could. The spontaneous resonance phenomenon was important, yes, but Cooper was not primarily concerned with it. His topic was much more conventional. The committee should look at the spontaneous resonances as a kind of overlay, occasionally obscuring the more conventional data Cooper was trying to get.

Lakin countered in earnest. He brought up the Physical Review Letters paper, which carried the names of Lakin, Bernstein, and Cooper. The final thesis would have to mention it. “And this, of course”—a sad, weary glance toward Gordon—“means that we must bring up the entire issue of the… interpretation… which has been placed upon these… interruptions… of the resonance curves.”

“I disagree,” Gordon snapped.

“The committee must consider all the facts,” Lakin said mildly.

“The fact is that Cooper is going for a standard problem here.”

“It has not been so advertised.”

“Look, Isaac, what I do has no connection with this thesis and this committee.”

“I really rather believe,” Gates broke in, “we should focus on the possibilities of the experiment itself.”

“Quite so,” Carroway muttered, rising from his half-sleep.

“Cooper will probably not deal with the, ah, message theory at all,” Gordon said.

“But he must,” Lakin said with quiet energy. “Why?” Gordon said.

“How can we be sure his electronics gear is functioning right?” Gates put in.

“Exactly,” Lakin said.

“Look, there’s nothing that special about his equipment.”

“Who can say?” Lakin said. “It contains a few modifications above and beyond the usual resonance rig. These—if I understand them correctly—” a slight note of sarcasm here, Gordon saw “—were designed to increase sensitivity. But is that all they do? Is there not some unforeseen effect? Something which makes this experiment, this apparatus, pick up new effects in the solid in question— indium antimonide? How can we say?”

“Good point,” Gates murmured.

“What sort of effect are you thinking of, Isaac?” Carroway said, genuinely perplexed.

“I do not know,” Lakin conceded. “But this is the issue. Precisely the issue.”

“I disagree,” Gordon said.

“No, I think Isaac is dead right,” Carroway murmured.

“There’s some justice to it,” Gates said, reflecting. “How can we be sure this is a good thesis topic until we know the equipment will do what Cooper says it will? I mean, there’s Isaac here, who has doubts. You, Gordon— you think it’s okay. But I feel we ought to have more info before we go ahead.”

“That’s not the purpose of this exam,” Gordon said flatly.

“I believe it to be a legitimate issue.” Carroway said.

Gates added, “So do I.”

Lakin nodded. Gordon saw that they were all uncomfortable, not wanting to broach the issue buried under the detail of Cooper’s apparatus and the niceties of theory. Still, Gates and Carroway and Lakin thought the message