*
Cooper spent the hours leading up to Pavano’s presentation trying to realize in oils a sketch she’d made after her walk with him. The colors combined to create too-dark grays and Disney-like blues. Everything was contrasty and obvious. And, again, everything was flat. She turned to the portrait of Tucker she’d begun on Halloween. She’d sketched most of the painting out on the canvas already, and had gotten as far as the right eye with her oils. But now the eye was too big: it dominated the canvas grotesquely. After staring at it for a few moments, Cooper realized that of course it was supposed to be grotesque. She grabbed her eraser and briskly removed the rest of the sketch, including the weak attempt to capture Tucker’s sharp facial structure, the unintentionally cubist lips, and the left eye that was not only smaller than the right, but also oddly shaped. In erasing, she felt she’d accomplished enough to soak her brushes in turpentine and head to the galley for Pavano’s presentation.
When she got there, the room was packed with Polies—even the artists had shown up. Cooper took an empty seat next to Sal and Sri, whose messy thatch of black hair and tired eyes suggested he had clearly spent too many hours squinting at ice cores. Dwight, who was handling the moderating duties, tapped the microphone twice, then said, “Icebreaker to start.” When everyone laughed, he looked around, puzzled.
“Dwight is deaf to puns,” Sal whispered to Cooper.
Dwight cleared his throat, and tried again. “Tell us a personal thing about yourself, Pavano. And by the way,” he added, looking out at the audience, “each questioner will have to do the same when he asks his question.”
“I enjoy Rollerblading,” Pavano said.
“What’s the worst thing about Rollerblading, Pavano?” Floyd called from the back, where he sat with Marcy. “Telling your mom you’re gay!” The room exploded with laughter.
“Careful, Floyd,” Simon, the VIDS admin, warned.
Dwight pulled a scrap of paper from a small pile on the table in front of him. “Okay, first question goes to my lovely companion, Bonnie.”
Bonnie got to her feet. “My name is Bonnie and a personal thing about myself would be that I am the head cook here and that I hate vegetarians because they make my life difficult. And then my question is: What’s up with ice cores, and why is everyone mad?”
The audience tittered.
“I think I understand your question, Bonnie,” Pavano said, with a voice that possessed all the treble and pitch of a window air conditioner. “You are interested in the controversy surrounding ice-core analysis.”
“Sure,” Bonnie said. Next to Cooper, Sri bounced in his chair, and Sal placed a hand on his friend’s knee.
“Prevailing scientific opinion states that ice cores will reveal patterns of climate change,” Pavano continued, “even evidence of volcanic eruptions. However—”
“Look, most of us understand basic ice-core analytics, right?” Sri burst out, wrenching around in his seat to look at everyone in the audience.
“Here we go,” Sal murmured.
“Drill down a million feet, take out an ice core, look at the rings, analyze. Summers get warm, so the ice melts and you get clear layers. Winters, no melt, you get snow layers, a milky layer, and you look at the air bubbles trapped in the layers. People who have dedicated their lives to analyzing these cores know what they are looking at; they know how to interpret the data.”
Pavano cleared his throat. “What Dr. Niswathin is saying is that it is widely assumed—and I use the word assumed intentionally—that each ring pair, the clear ring and the milky ring taken together, account for a single year: the clear ring accumulates during the summer season and the milky ring appears at the conclusion of a winter season. That’s how you get estimates of a hundred thirty-five thousand years of ice data. But on what evidence do we base our assumption that each pair represents a year?”
“It’s rather obvious,” Sri said.
“That is the fallback position of the researcher with bad data,” Pavano replied with a smoothness that Cooper hadn’t thought possible. “I’m not here to debate geology, of course, but if the earth is billions of years old,” he continued, “why isn’t there more ice at the North and South Poles? Is the earth, as you posit, billions of years old, or is there any chance the polar ice cores show us that other models might have some validity? If they do, what does that say about your team’s climate-change research?”
One of the climatologists on Sri’s team raised her hand. “Before this, you were a vocal proponent of intelligent design. Intelligent design is not a scientifically accepted theory. You don’t even believe in the validity of radiometric dating.”
“I am often surprised by the parochialism of mainstream science,” Pavano replied.
Sal leaned forward in his seat. “And I’m surprised that the oil industry landed a bought scientist at a federal research facility.”
“Are you suggesting that I manipulate my conclusions to align with the financial interests of my funding source?”
“I’m saying that you and whoever signs your checks are making a cottage industry out of global warming denial because the money’s good.”
“If I were willing to alter my views to ingratiate myself with a funding source, I’d be an extremely vocal proponent of so-called global warming, seeing as most of the grant money seems to go to researchers who take man-made causation as fact. As I’ve argued with you before, there is nothing unscientific about looking for other explanations. But let’s step into your line of expertise: the origins of the universe.”
For a moment, the men shared a look that betrayed some level of intimacy, and everyone in the galley caught it.
“Sounds like a desperate ploy to distract from your poor science, but go ahead,” Sal said.
“Time and time again, scientists like you have failed to provide any meaningful explanation of how the universe began. You can tell us what it looked like; you can tell us how it was done. You can’t tell us why.”
“Why? This is all about god?” Sri exclaimed. “Of course! It’s what you do. I mean, look at your paper on the structural dynamic stability of Noah’s ark. I read that.” He looked over at Sal. “We all did.”
For the first time that evening, Pavano looked flustered. “That was an early publication, and one that I regret. And I’ve said so in print. I will add, just for interest’s sake, that some models of ice cores do suggest significant quantities of snow accumulated immediately after the Flood, that perhaps as much as ninety-five percent of the ice near the Poles could have accrued in the first five hundred years or so after the Flood—”
The room fell quiet, as if Pavano’s words had gone beyond the pale and could never be taken back. Cooper and the other nonscientists looked at one another, confused.