"What was that?" Casimir asked. "Sounded big."
"Ach," said Sharon. "Throwing furniture again, I should guess. You know, don't you, that many of our students are very interested in the physics of falling bodies?" He delivered this, like all his bad jokes, slowly and solemnly, as though working out long calculations in his head. Casimir chuckled. Sharon winked and lit his pipe. "I am given to understand, from grapevine talk, that you are smarter than all of our professors except for me." He winked again through thick smoke.
"Oh. Well, I doubt it."
"Ach, I don't. No correlation between age and intelligence! You're just afraid to use your smarts! That's right. You'd rather suffer-- it is your Polish blood. Anyway, you have much practical experience. Our professors have only book experience." "Well, it's the book experience I want. It's handy to know electronics, but what I really like is pure principles. I can make more money designing circuits, if that's what I want."
"Exactly! You prefer to be a poor physicist. Well, I cannot argue with you wanting to know pure things. Alter all, you are not na?ve, your life has been no more sheltered than mine."
Embarrassed, Casimir laughed. "I don't know about that. I haven't lived through any world wars yet. You've lived through two. I may have escaped from a slum, but you escaped from Peenemunde with a suitcase full of rocket diagrams."
Sharon's eyes crinkled at the corners. "Yet. A very important word, nicht wahr? You are not very old, yet."
"What do you mean? Do you expect a war?"
Sharon laughed deeply and slowly. "I have toured your residential towers with certain students of mine, and I was reminded of certain, er, locations during the occupation of the Sudetenland. I think from what I see"-- the ceiling thumped again, and he gestured upward with his pipestem -- "and hear, that perhaps you are in a war now."
Casimir laughed, but then sucked in his breath and sat back as Sharon glowered at him morosely. The old professor was very complicated, and Casimir always seemed to be taking missteps with him.
"War and violence are not very funny," said Sharon, "unless they happen to you-- then they are funny because they haff to be. There is more violence up there than you realize! Even speech today has become a form of violence-- even in the university. So pay attention to that, and don't worry about a war in Europe. Worry about it here, this is your home now."
"Yes, sir." Alter pausing respectfully, Casimir withdrew a clipboard from his pack and put It on Sharon's desk. "Or it will be my home as soon as you sign these forms. Mrs. Santucci will tear my arms off if I don't bring them in tomorrow."
Sharon sat still until Casimir began to feel uncomfortable. "Ja," he finally said, "I guess you need to worry about forms too. Forms and forms and forms. Doesn't matter to me."
"Oh. It doesn't? You aren't retiring, are you?"
"Ja, I guess so."
Silently, Sharon separated the forms and laid them out on the Periodic Table of the Elements that covered his desk. He examined them with care for a few minutes, then selected a pen from a stein on his desk, which had been autographed by Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr, and signed them.
"There, you're in the good courses now," he concluded. "Good to see you are so well Socioeconomically Integrated." The old man sat back in his chair, clasped his fingers over his flat chest, and closed his eyes.
A thunderous crash and Casimir was on the floor, dust in his throat and pea gravel on his back. Rubble thudded down from above and Casimir heard a loud inharmonious piano chord, which held steady for a moment and moaned downward in pitch until it was obliterated by an explosive splintering crack. More rubble flew around the room and he was pelted with small blocks. Looking down as he rubbed dust from his eyes he saw scores of strewn black and white piano keys.
Sharon was slumped over on his desk, and a trickle of blood ran from his head and onto the back of his hand and puddled on the class change form beside his pipe. Gravel, rainwater and litter continued to slide down through the hole in the ceiling. Casimir alternately screamed and gulped as he staggered to his feet. lie waded through shattered ceiling panels and twisted books to Sharon's side and saw with horror that the old man's side had been pierced by a shard of piano frame shot out like an arrow in the explosion. With exquisite care he helped him lean back, cleared the desk of books and junk, then picked up his thin body and set him atop the desk. He propped up Sharon's head with the 1938 issues of the Physical Review and tried to ease his breathing. The head wound was superficial and already clotting, but the side wound was ghastly and Casimir did not even know whether to remove the splinter. Blood built up at the corners of Sharon's mouth as he gasped and wheezed. Brushing tears and dirt from his own face, Casimir looked for the phone.