— I think perhaps you liked the thunder of ambition inside yourself, and sought silence to hear it.
— Ambition! Me? I’ve never had ambition. I don’t care. I just don’t care.
— Not now. But you did then. Oh, I don’t mean mere ambition to get to the top, I know the staleness of that. No. You couldn’t bear the idea of becoming, perhaps, a second-rate physicist. So you chose something easier.
— Easier!
— You know the world of doctors, Larry. As in any world, only a few have full capacity, top rank. The rest, I shudder to think, get by on average intake. But people don’t know that, and trust them absolutely, or else believe it matters less in that field than in what they call real science. Pure science to you, a purist at heart, Larry. The naked ambition to break barriers, find new laws, advance things, not yourself.
— And things make a hell of a noise, a sort of vibrant hum. Or do I mean people? The hum returns, the filaments of gas, the smoke wisps intertwining voices that swim for dear life saying Hot Spots, Uninhibit, One-shot-trigger, time heals and things like that or how did it feel exactly query what did the joke fat woman unjoke say did you die laughing unquery if I can get a dial in edgeways how come you said nothing saw nothing of the slightest interest to anyone bracket I mean the world of course good people close bracket comment no wonder you wanted to come back uncomment query did you want to come back repeat quote mister Lazarus unquote shout no unshout he says quote you ask all the wrong questions and so of course unquote like eight hundred million miles of no story in the psychotic handwriting of the spheres on a small screen unless perhaps in the last sentence the leeches cling in the chilly depth of darkness and suck out the red corpuscles leaving only the white, up once a minute to breathe, hold it, your breath I mean, and read the inscriptions, the bright imperatives in the ultra-violet light, up once a decade or so, ah, breathe away, so how do you like it, Larry?
— What?
— My idea!
— I feel very tired, Really, can’t it wait?
— No you don’t. You feel elated. I choose my time well. I have great expertise in these matters. Of course you must think it over, but I’d like your first reaction, now, at once, just as a matter of personal interest, you know, I won’t hold you to it.
— Hold me to what?
He gets up and walks to the long table behind the sofa for cigarettes or something.
— You haven’t heard a word I said, have you?
— I don’t know, Telford. I thought I did all the talking around here. For once.
— You did. Indeed you did. Look, I’ll make some coffee. Relax.
The room empties of waves and undulations that treble each other as on a map of ocean depths disturbing the horizontal lines as they pass like arpeggios over a harp recumbent plucked. The dark stares back its giant starless coalsack that radiates nothing. Something however creates the wavering outlines and if not the eyes then some faint memory, surely, behind the eyes that close to avoid the issue of their death and amazing recovery. The closing resolves the optical image like a change of lenses and the silence comes, filling the room, the house, the street, the entire sky with planets unless moons perhaps hanging on a shaft of light that widens into a voice now, here, that’ll perk you up, cigarettes in front of you. Well now. Listen, look. Think about what you see. I prefer to close my eyes. Ah, but you didn’t close your eyes tonight, Larry. Listen, look. You remember in my letter I said I had an idea to discuss with you. Well, it has grown into a great big vibrant hum inside me, as you would say, a thing I must advance, a barrier I must break. I’ve thought a lot about what you’ve told me. And I want to do a programme on it.
— But, but, Telford, what have I told you?
— Everything.
— What!
— Everything I need to know.
— But how? I don’t know it myself.
— Well, you’ve talked enough. About the Big Bang and the Steady State, the beginning of determinacy with space and time –
— Oh. That.
— And indeterminacy and madness and the exhaustion of infinite distances. In brief, your particular world of scientists, as seen by an informed but uninvolved intelligence. Just what I want.
— Oh, for heaven’s sake.
— Well–
— You can’t. You can’t appropriate this — this — no, I won’t let you.
— Look, Larry. I told you we’d done a programme on the Ozma Project at Green Bank. And we may do a follow-up on the work at your place, which ties up. But radio-astronomy, however fascinating, makes bad television, let’s face it. You can’t photograph means of communication that work by magnetic impulses, except as they appear on dials, and the viewer soon gets bored with dials and wavy lines and mathematical formulae. A few interviews can pep it up, but not much more. Now this idea of mine –
— But what idea, Telford?
— In simple words, Larry, I want to do a programme, or even a series, on the mental health of scientists. Naturally I shall concentrate mostly on atomic scientists. But this ties up, in a way, and I want the astrophysicist’s view on radiation, on explosions of bombs in outer space, on hydrogen explosions as possible causes of abnormally strong radio sources, colliding galaxies and so forth, and their view, too, on the mental health of atomic scientists. Above all your view, as an expert, of their own mental health.
— I won’t associate my name with it. Or my university.
— Well of course, you have to appear anonymously anyway. I could, if you insist, do it with an actor speaking your words. But I would rather have your image in personal interview, for conviction, rather than just your words on the sound-track.
— What words?
— All your words, Larry. All that you’ve told me tonight. Your story. I have it here on tape.
The room goes darkly deep inside, with small square marble tables good to write on some story of death and amazing recovery, but the patterns in the marble make no sense for time has chipped the edges and all the laws get broken. The dark room fills with people who come and go or pretend to, good people, meeting professional friends who can count and therefore know them better than friends who profess only friendship but can’t read inscriptions. Hands shake, smoke wisps and voices swim for dear life. The room seems huge for the edge of the town, or perhaps the centre lies at the circumference, bright cepheids, Blue Giants that tremble on a screen with the horizontal lines of a plucked harp recumbent, so that the voices swim along the streets like neural cells in mad morse along nerve-fibres, teleprinting their messages from Base Headquarters somewhere on the left focus of an ellipse because someone has cleared the channels, good boy, he didn’t cry get off, don’t touch me, I won’t let you, I won’t.