Those who did take the idea seriously were more likely to be members of the Society’s inner circle, numbering no more than five hundred individuals in universities and research facilities throughout the world. Invariably, their work had confronted them with evidence they could neither safely publish nor honestly ignore. Ethan, for example. Ethan had been one of those outer-circle Society academics until his work with Antarctic ice cores. He had shared some of his results with Werner Beck, who had pushed him into conducting isolations of the chondritic dust he discovered in his samples. It was Werner Beck who had recruited him into the inner circle.
The inner circle didn’t hold conferences in the conventional sense, but every few years there was an informal gathering somewhere in the world. That year, Beck had booked rooms in a motel in Framingham outside of Boston. It wasn’t necessary to rent function rooms—the Society attendees amounted to six men and two women (four from the U.S., one from Denmark, two from China and one from India); the entire gathering would fit comfortably in a single hotel room. Each delegate was scheduled to present a paper deemed too sensitive for the larger Society mailing list. Ethan would be reporting on his work with the ice cores; Beck, on the cultures he had succeeded in growing from Ethan’s extractions.
Ethan had introduced her to Beck in the motel’s coffee shop. She had expected someone slightly larger than life. And maybe he was, but only in the metaphorical sense: Beck was no taller than Nerissa herself, and she topped out at five and a half feet. His hair was dark and thinning. He wore a beard: a uniform quarter-inch of facial hair so carefully manicured that it had a topiary quality. He dressed casually, in spotless jeans and a white shirt open at the neck, and in contrast to most of the attendees he looked as if he’d spent some time at the gym—broad shoulders, thick upper arms.
His eyes were his most striking feature. There was nothing nervous or tentative about them. He looked at her steadily and with a bluntness that began to make her uncomfortable. Then he smiled. “You must be Mrs. Iverson.”
Ethan, typically, had forgotten to introduce her. “Nerissa,” she said. “Hi.”
“Werner Beck.” He shook her hand briskly and briefly, then turned to Ethan. “Last time we met you were single. You’ve done all right for yourself.”
“Thank you,” Ethan said—a smidgen too obsequiously, Nerissa thought.
“It’s unusual to bring a spouse to one of these events.”
“We’re both on a sort of sabbatical. Well, a vacation. After this weekend we’re headed to Hawaii. Two weeks at Turtle Bay.”
“Sounds nice. Anyway, welcome, Ethan. We have a lot to talk about. Mrs. Iverson, I hope you don’t feel left out. But Boston’s a big city. I’m sure you can keep yourself busy.”
It was a dismissal, and not a particularly gracious one. Nerissa fought the urge to say something condescending in return. She had hoped Ethan might stick up for her, but all he offered was a nervous laugh. “Ris knows the city pretty well—she’s lived here most of her life.”
“I’m sure. Anyway, we have our first gathering this afternoon at one. It’s Wickramasinghe’s session—he’ll be talking about organic inclusions in meteorite fragments. A great lead-up to your work.” Beck’s eyes flicked back to Nerissa. “Nice meeting you, Mrs. Iverson, and I hope to see you again soon.”
“Well?” Ethan asked, after Beck had left the table.
She shrugged. “He’s well-groomed.”
“That’s your impression of him? Well-groomed?”
“A little oily.” Since you ask.
“He’s just trying to make a good impression.”
“On the unexpected spousal baggage?”
“That’s not fair.”
Perhaps not. The Society, Ethan had told her, didn’t have a strict policy on how much information members could share with their families. But it was understood that talking too freely could endanger one’s career—that was why the Society had come to exist in the first place. And much of what the Society’s inner circle had learned would have sounded bizarre or even irrational to an outsider. Nerissa understood that she would have to tread carefully here, perhaps especially around a key player like Werner Beck.
But she resented being treated as an interloper. Or worse, a potential spy. As if she cared what these people discussed at their meetings. As if their ideas would ever be more to her than an unsettling and highly speculative hypothesis.
“Anyhow,” Ethan said, “it’s his ideas that count. And he’s a solid researcher. Since his wife died a few years ago, his work is all he has. And he can afford to devote himself to it.”
“He’s a widower?”
“Raising a son by himself.”
She allowed Ethan to change the subject. They talked about their plans for Oahu. Nerissa imagined a room with bamboo furniture, a breeze, the distant sound of the sea. And herself on a shaded veranda with a drink (something with gin and an umbrella in it) to extinguish any lingering thoughts about the forces that influenced human events.
On Saturday she wandered through the secondhand bookshops in Old Boston. Nerissa found bookstores soothing, especially antiquarian bookstores—the smell of old ink, the muted acoustics. She wanted something smart but not too challenging, and she eventually settled on a tattered second printing of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister. Back at the motel she staked out a table by the window of the bar and began to read. She had not reached the end of the first chapter when she became aware of a looming shadow. A woman of, she guessed, forty-something, carrying a drink and blinking from behind an impressively dense pair of eyeglasses. “You’re Ethan’s wife, right?”
Nerissa nodded cautiously.
“I thought so. I saw you with Ethan and Beck the other day.” Her voice was small (birdlike, Nerissa thought) and she spoke with a French accent. “I’m Amélie. Amélie Fournier. I’m one of the—well, you know. I’m with the Society. Do you mind if I sit with you? Or if you’d rather be alone—”
“No, please sit. I’m Nerissa.”
Amélie lowered herself into a chair. “Thank you. I’m playing hooky from the meeting. Is that the right expression? Playing hooky? I find I can endure only so much of staring into the abyss.”
“The abyss?”
“I mean the deep of the sky. And what lives there.” Amélie
wrinkled her face, an expression not quite approximating a smile. “Of course, I don’t know how much Ethan has discussed with you…”
“My husband and I don’t keep secrets.”
“Really? That would be unusual. But of course I shouldn’t be talking about these things at all. Mr. Beck would be upset with me. But I discover I don’t really care. I’m tired of Mr. Beck. I prefer the company of the unenthusiastic. By which I mean someone who is not so highly partisan. Mr. Beck considers himself a warrior. In his eyes we are all unsatisfactory soldiers. Some of us are reluctant to be soldiers at all, much to his disgust. I’m sorry, would you rather talk about something else? I can be a bore when I drink. People tell me so.”
“Not at all. It’s refreshing to get another point of view.”
“As opposed to your husband’s?”
“My husband’s opinion of Mr. Beck is somewhat higher than yours.”
“Yes, I am in a minority. I admit it. I think there are truths Mr. Beck is unfortunately ignoring.”
“Such as?”
Amélie hesitated. She ran a hand through her hair, which was cut in a style Nerissa hadn’t seen before, like sleek dark wings. “Each of us at this meeting represents a certain discipline. Mine is astronomy. I am an astronomer. Have you ever looked through a telescope, Nerissa?”
“Once or twice.”
“Optical telescopes are old-fashioned. Nowadays we look at the sky at invisible wavelengths. Or with photographic plates. The naked eye is an unreliable observer. But I was raised by a man whose hobby was astronomy. We lived in Normandy, in the west of the country. My father owned a large property there. Farmland. Far from the cities. The sky was dark at night. The stars were a constant presence. I became fascinated with the stars, as was my father. He used to say that there was something noble about the act of looking through a telescope. Human beings are small animals on an insignificant planet, but when we look at the sky—when we understand that the stars are distant suns—we begin to encompass an entire universe.