The initial response from his fellow scientists ranged from disbelief to actual horror. He heard nothing from Scaletta. He waited. He wanted to give the Pole-based scientists, whose experiments had been ruined, enough time to reflect on the idea.
Then came the phone calls, all of them asking for Sal. He was spending twenty hours a day in his lab, analyzing the readouts from his own experiment, so Dwight fielded things as they came and took messages. He brought these scraps of paper to the Smoke Bar each night, so Sal could go through them.
“What are they calling about?” Cooper asked.
“The shutdown. How to end it.”
Alek scoffed at this. “No, he is buying lemons.”
“Lemons?”
“Alek,” Sal said, his voice hoarse.
“This is how shutdown will end,” Alek said.
Floyd made his way over to where Sal was sitting. “And how are you going to go about doing that?”
Sal pinched the bridge of his nose. “I think NSF should agree to fund a climate skeptic on the Divide once a season.”
“Wasn’t that the opposite of what you were railing on about earlier in the season?” Pearl said. “I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but it sounds like you’re just changing your mind because you don’t want your experiment to be affected.”
“You’re right. But I think we should give Pavano the opportunity to fail. I think we should let all of them fail. That’s all they want—the opportunity to be totally, unmistakably wrong. If we don’t give them that opportunity, they’ll just keep stirring up this idea about uncertainty—‘we’re not sure, there’s no consensus, let us show you the science.’ I say, let them try. And in the meantime, we can get back to the real work of science.” This earned him a blank look, so he sat forward in his seat and cleared his throat. “Let me tell you a story about lemons.”
That night, he’d awakened in Cooper’s room to find her out of bed, standing at her desk. The room was dark and she remained frozen in the strange shadows cast by the seam of light under the door. Although her naked back was facing toward him, Sal could see she was looking at something, studying it intently. It took him a minute to see the pile of bandages and gauze on the desk.
“Cooper,” he said softly. “Come here.” He could see her stiffen, and she shook her head without turning around. Sal threw the blankets off and got out of bed. As he approached, she curled into herself, cocooning her injured hand. She shook her head again, as if, for the first time since he’d known her, she was unable to find her voice. When he wrapped his arms around her, she heaved a great sob.
“Let me see,” Sal replied, pulling her closer. She had tucked the injured hand between her rib cage and her left bicep, as if keeping it warm. He gently pulled at her wrist until her hand came free, and in the fading luminescence of the twilit sky that stole through the tiny window, he saw, for the first time, how her right hand looked pale and wrinkled with moisture, and how the place where her finger had been was knobby and scabbed. It struck him as so uncommonly beautiful, so like a tesseract, that he felt tears spring to his eyes. But he could tell from the way Cooper hung her head, and the way her body tried to become small as he cradled her hand, that she considered it ugly, and for once, he knew the kind of incomprehension everyone else experienced when looking at the Riemann hypothesis. They couldn’t see why its uncertainty made it beautiful. He couldn’t understand their blindness. Maybe there was something ugly in Cooper’s disfigurement, but he couldn’t see it, no matter how hard he tried.
In his lab now, where his phoenix had incinerated itself, Sal looked into Cooper’s face as she kneeled over him, her eyes wide and happy. Before he had a chance to speak, the sound of All-Call filled the room. Sal propped himself up on one elbow—there was cheering in the background.
He stood up, and he, Cooper, and Alek crowded around the speaker. The chants grew louder.
“What are they saying?” Sal asked.
Cooper turned to him, her eyes wide. “That’s why I came out here to find you. It’s over.” She kissed his dry lips. “Listen,” she whispered.
Sal, Sal, Sal, went the chant.
The lemon wedges had worked. Sal looked at Cooper and realized that while there was nothing left of his experiment but a pile of ashes, in the cinders the phoenix already stirred.
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
4201 WILSON BOULEVARD
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA 22230
Cooper Gosling
PO Box 423
Minneapolis, MN 55410
Dear Ms. Gosling:
At the close of every grant period the Antarctic Artists & Writers Program assesses the output of each grantee following his or her return from Antarctica. We have now had a chance to review the portfolio you sent. What follows reflects the comments from our distinguished panel of artists and arts administrators.
While we by no means consider ourselves the arbiter of “good art,” the panelists were confused by the complete lack of landscape in the collection. In fact, its absence suggested, as one panelist put it, “an act of will.” As you know, the United States Antarctic Program is a science-based research program, which takes as its sole directive the interaction with and better understanding of Nature. The Artists & Writers Program was designed specifically to convey this directive to the general public through different media. The panelists felt that your collection of portraits, while quite fine technically, could have been painted, in the words of one panelist, “in any local bar.”
There was one exception. We were particularly moved by the portrait you titled “David.” That the subject’s face was represented only by a smear of white seemed an appropriate homage to the courage and selflessness of the great polar explorers. The mitten cleverly embedded in the background added depth. We hope you build on this strength in your future work so you can provide, for yourself and others, a greater understanding of the heritage of human exploration in Antarctica. We also encourage you to consider applying for another Artists & Writers grant. Enclosed is an application for the upcoming research season, along with a preliminary psychological questionnaire.
Regards,
National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists & Writers Program
one ton depot
2004 July 10
20:46
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Prodigal daughter’s return