Bubble, bubble, Hoyle and Hubble. Allan Sandage needs a bandage. Ah, the cage at midnight, with your flask, your parka, your leather ass and your iron bladder. The seeing! Detective—
Excuse me. The what?
The seeing. The seeing? Actually it’s a word we still use. The quality of the image. Having to do with the clarity of the sky. The truth is, Detective, we don’t do much “seeing” anymore. It’s all pixels and fiber optics and CCDs. We’re down at the business end of it, with the computers.
I asked him the simple question. I asked him if Jennifer was happy in her work.
I’ll say! Jennifer Rockwell was an inspiration to us all. She had terrific esprit. Persistent, tough, fair. Above all tough. In every respect her intellect was tough. Women...Let me rephrase this. Maybe not at the Nobel level, but cosmology is a field where women have made lasting contributions. Jennifer had a reasonable shot at adding to that.
I asked if she had an unorthodox side, a mystical side. I said, You guys are scientists, but some of you end up getting religion, right?
There’s something in that. Knowing the mind of God, and so on. You’re certainly affected by the incredible grandeur and complexity of revealed creation. But don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s reality we’re investigating here. These things we’re studying are very strange and very distant, but they’re as real as the ground beneath your feet. The universe is everything religions are supposed to be, and then some, weird, beautiful, terrifying, but the universe is the case. Now, there are people around here who pride themselves on saying, “All this is just a physics problem. That’s all.” But Jennifer was more romantic than that. She was grander than that.
Romantic how?
She didn’t feel marginalized, as some of us can do. She felt that this was a central human activity. And that her work was... pro bono. She felt that very strongly.
Excuse me? The study of stars is pro bono?
Now I’m going to speak with some freedom and optimism here. All set? In broad terms it makes sense to argue that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were partly powered by the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. And Brahe and Kepler and others. You’d think that it would be desolating to learn that the earth was merely a satellite of the sun and that you’d lost your place at the center of the universe. But it wasn’t. On the contrary. It was energizing, inspiring, liberating. It felt great to be in possession of a truth denied to each and every one of your ancestors. We don’t act like we know it, but we’re now on the edge of an equivalent paradigm shift. Or a whole series of them. The universe was still the size of your living room until the big telescopes came along. Now we have an idea of just how fragile and isolated our situation really is. And I believe, as Jennifer did, that when all this kicks in, this information that’s only sixty or seventy years old, we’ll have a very different view of our place and purpose here. And all this rat-race, turf-war, dog-eat-dog stuff we do all day will be revealed for what it is. The revolution is coming, Detective. And it’s a revolution of consciousness. That’s what Jennifer believed.
But you were fucking her, weren’t you, Professor. And you wouldn’t leave Betty-Jean.
I didn’t actually say that last part. Though I kind of wanted to, by then. One of the things I knew about Bax Denziger: He’s a twelve-kids-and-one-wife kind of guy. Still, for all his TV ease and brightness, and his high-saliva enthusiasm, I sensed uneasiness in him, reluctance—qualms. There was something he did and didn’t want to reveal. And I too was in difficulty. I was having to relate his universe to mine. Having to, because Jennifer had linked them. And how about my universe, also real, also there, also the case, and with all its primitive passions. To him, my average day must look like psychotic soap opera—crazed surface activity. Jennifer Rockwell had moved from one world to the other, from revealed creation to the darkness of her bedroom. I pressed on, hoping that he and I, both, would find the necessary words.
Professor, were you surprised when you heard?
Consternated. We all were. Are. Consternated and devastated. Ask anybody here. The cleaning ladies. The Deans. That someone so...that someone of such radiance would choose to extinguish herself. I can’t get my head around it. I really can’t.
She ever get depressed that you knew of? Mood swings? Withdrawal?
No, she was unfailingly cheerful. She got frustrated sometimes. We all do. Because we—we’re permanently on the brink of climax. We know so much. But there are holes in our knowledge bigger than the Bootes Void.
Which is?
It’s more nothing than you could possibly imagine. It’s a cavity 300 million light years deep. Where there’s zip. The truth is, Detective, the truth is that human beings are not sufficiently evolved to understand the place they’re living in. We’re all retards. Einstein’s a retard. I’m a retard. We live on a planet of retards.
Jennifer say that?
Yeah, but she also thought that that was what was so great about it. Beating your head against the lid.
She talked about death, didn’t she. She talk to you about death?
No. Yes. Well not habitually. But we did have a discussion about death. Quite recently. It’s been in my head. I’ve been playing it back. Like you do. I’m not sure if this thought was original to her. Probably not. But she put it... memorably. Newton, Isaac Newton, used to stare at the sun? He’d blind himself for days, for weeks, staring at the sun. Trying to figure the sun out. Jennifer—she was sitting right there where you’re sitting. And she quoted some aphorism. Some French guy. Some duke. Went something like: “No man can stare at the sun or at death with a, with an unshielded eye.” Now here’s the interesting part. Do you know who Stephen Hawking is, Detective?
He’s the ... the guy in the wheelchair. Talks like a robot.
And do you know what a black hole is Detective? Yeah, I think we all have some idea. Jennifer asked me, why was it Hawking who cracked black holes? I mean in the sixties everybody was going at black holes with hammer and tongs. But it was Stephen who gave us some answers. She said, why him? And I gave the physicist’s answer: Because he’s the smartest guy around. Jennifer wanted me to consider an explanation that was more—romantic. She said: Hawking understood black holes because he could stare at them. Black holes mean oblivion. Mean death. And Hawking has been staring at death all his adult life Hawking could see.
Well, I thought: That isn’t it. Just then Denziger looked at his watch with what seemed like irritation or anxiety. I said quickly,
“The revolution you talked about. Of consciousness. Would there be casualties?
I heard the door open. A broad in a black sweatsuit was standing there, making a phone call. When I turned again Denziger was looking at me. He said,
“I guess it wouldn’t neccessarily be bloodless. I have to talk to Hawaii now.
“Yeah. Well I’m in no hurry. I’m going to smoke a cigarette out on the steps there. Maybe if you get a moment you’ll walk me to my car.”
And I reached for the tape recorder and keyed the Pause.
With my arms folded to promote warmth and thought, I stood on the steps, looking at the quality of life. Jennifer’s life. Jennifer’s life. The fauna of early spring—birds, squirrels, even rabbits. And the agitated physicists—the little dweebs and nerds and wonks. A white sky giving way to pixels of blue, and containing both sun and moon, which she knew all about. Yes, and Trader, on the other side of the green hill. I could get used to this.