South Pole Station

If not for the description of the Vikings shirt, Cooper wouldn’t have known Sal was referring to her. He looked at her expectantly. Here again came that weird seizing feeling in her chest of being on a precipice, and she could not immediately figure out how to respond. Sal laughed, and looked away. “I’m sorry. Usually when I make women uncomfortable, it’s on purpose.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m not uncomfortable. I’m—I’m surprised. One minute we’re talking about telescopes and words I can’t pronounce, and the next minute—you said that. Sorry.”

“Okay, now we’ve both apologized for nothing.” He pinched the bridge of his nose like an exhausted teacher. “Look, I’m not used to subtlety in polar courtship. This is me telling you I like you. This is me telling you that sometimes I wonder where you’ll be sitting at dinner or if you’ll come into the Smoke Bar afterward. And that, after finding out from a Florida newspaper that I’m a total disappointment to a world-class scientific institution, not to mention my own father, if you still want to talk to me, I can usually be found here.” As Cooper struggled to take all this in, Sal gestured toward yet another door. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“The ’scopes. That’s why I brought you out here.”

After inching along a metal scaffold bridge, dusted with fine ice particles, they arrived at a wooden frame—not a window, not a door, just a portal. Cooper peered through it and saw yet another incomprehensible scene of metal, wires, and mirrors. But as Cooper looked at it, it seemed to take a shape. “It looks like a metal coffee filter,” she said.

Sal blinked at her. “That’s actually a completely accurate way of describing what this telescope does. Except instead of coffee grounds, it catches neutrinos and maybe b-modes, if I’m really unlucky.”

“Unlucky?”

“The Kavli team from Stanford is looking for b-modes, which, if found, will confirm the inflationary theory—the Big Bang. Lisa Wu would lay down her life to get a five-sigma on the presence of b-modes worming their way toward us from thirteen billion years ago. Of course, if she does, then my model is eliminated.”

“The one where the universe is just a bouncing ball?”

Sal considered the telescope for a moment. “Do you believe in the Big Bang?”

“Believe in it? I thought it was a done deal.”

“Not a done deal. Not yet. I don’t buy the inflationary theory of the origins of the universe. I like a different model. I like the one that says there wasn’t a Big Bang. That the universe is not infinitely expanding. That our universe collides against another universe—a brane—every few trillion years and this spurs something that looks like a ‘big bang’ but is really a big bounce. The theory is completely compatible with every finding now held up as evidence for the inflationary theory, completely in line with what the WAMP satellite has detected. In fact, our models—the inflationary theory and the cyclic model, which is what my model is called—are like twins. They share 99.99 percent of their DNA. Only their mother can tell them apart. But if Lisa finds b-modes, the cyclic model is smoke.”

“What if she doesn’t find them?”

“If she doesn’t, those waves are too small to measure, and all those temp fluctuations and galaxy seeds were created in a process gentler than the violent expansion the inflationists promote. The cyclic model is like the lover’s kiss of cosmology. In my opinion, it’s the most compelling scientific theory outside of gravity and evolution.”

“Then why does it seem like you’re the only one who believes it?” Cooper said. Sal looked discomposed.

“I don’t believe it,” he said. “That’s not how science works. But I find it compelling enough to devote my life to it. The inflationary theory has serious conceptual problems. It’s extravagant, for one thing—about as fine-tuned as a Beverly Hills housewife. It also dabbles in the anthropic—it takes life into account—and that moves it from physics to metaphysics.”

There was an opening here, Cooper thought, one she could slip through by asking a big but simplistic question. She wanted to connect with him in a way that went beyond their moment in the library. She decided to go for it. “How can something come from nothing?”

It was clear at once that Sal was irritated, but Cooper didn’t know why. “And there’s the metaphysics, right on cue,” he said.

“I’m just asking a question,” Cooper said, confused.

Sal looked at her for a moment. “Ah, I see now. You’re not asking me how it happened. You’re asking me who pulled the trigger.” He turned away and tinkered with the telescope. “Shit.”

“What?”

He looked over at Cooper. “Nothing. It’s just—I think you’re spending too much time with Pavano. These are his questions, not yours. Dumb questions are not attractive.”

Cooper felt humiliated. Blistering heat coursed through her body. “Well, since I live each day in service to what you find attractive, I’m devastated.”

Sal stared at her in surprise—Cooper herself was surprised—and both fell silent.

“Why is it so hard to talk to you?” he finally said.

“You brought me out here so I’d ask questions, right? Or did you just want me to ooh and ahh over your big telescope? I asked a question because I’m interested. In this. In you. You’re telling me you and Alek sit out here and talk about the minutia of the beginnings of the universe and it never occurs to you to ask how it started?”

“That’s all we do.”

“No, I mean how it started before it started.”

“And I am answering your question with precision: the universe is cyclic, it is built and destroyed, and then it is rebuilt. It bumps up against another world, from which we are separated by a dimension, and this sets off a bounce, what inflationists call the Big Bang.”

“Before that. Before any of it, Sal.”

“These are questions every kindergartener asks, Cooper.”

“Have they gotten an answer yet?”

Sal started pacing the metal scaffold. “You know what gets old real quick? People trying to ask if there’s a god in about a hundred different ways. Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds to someone who knows what the universe actually looks like? Is it my job to pretend like we’re all on equal footing here, that we’re all smart and all of our answers are equal and we all get certificates just for showing up? That may work in art, Cooper, but that doesn’t work in the real world. Science doesn’t work that way.”

He studied Cooper for a moment, and then seemed to grow remote. “Oh, I see. It’s meaningless to you because it doesn’t take you into account.” He laughed. “I know exactly what you want me to say. That your precious ‘Big Bang’ was the eye of god opening. When I don’t play your game, you ask me if I can prove that it wasn’t. Here’s a real question for you: Would you even want me to tell you if I could?”

Cooper and Sal stood staring at each other. Cooper could see both certainty and fear looking back at her, until Sal blinked, and only certainty remained.

*

At the Smoke Bar that night, Cooper sat in silence with Birdie, watching Floyd and a contract plumber grind against a dining assistant to the strains of Electric Hellfire Club.

“Quit hogging the girl,” the plumber shouted at Floyd.

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