Mud and Glass

2. Celeste Gets a New Student

2

Celeste Gets a New Student

Three days later was the first day back to classes after spring break. I still ached from our efforts to wrestle the box into the back of Kortnoz’s four-wheel-drive and, after a hair-raising trip back to Purple Bay where it sounded (and felt) like the vehicle’s back end was dragging on the road surface, into the safe in Kortnoz’s basement.

I also ached because this Monday morning class was my least favourite: Intro to Geography. Two hundred itchy undergrads, only one or two of whom had even a spark of genuine interest in the subject. I wished I could get away with using a megaphone and a cattle prod. I was sure I’d get better results, but there were those pesky student welfare regulations.

‘All right,’ I sighed as I walked into the cavernous lecture hall. ‘Did everyone do the readings?’ Undergrads do reserve readings over spring break? Fat chance.

‘Dr Carlucci?’ said one young thing. ‘The library was closed over the break.’

‘Was it?’ I said sceptically.

‘Yeah, they said it was because the ceiling tiles were growing predatory mould and it wasn’t safe.’

‘Predatory mould.’

‘I saw what it did to the head librarian,’ said someone else, and shuddered.

Well, it wasn’t as implausible as some of the excuses they came up with. ‘All right, has the library been sorted out yet?’

Some nodded and muttered, ‘Uh-huh.’

‘Then you have an extra week to turn in your summaries.’ A few of them gave surreptitious gestures of triumph, which I ignored.

‘Dr Carlucci?’ In the glare from the open doorway stood a shadowy figure. ‘I’ve just transferred into your class.’

It was Danny, the kid from the ice-cream line the other day. Four or five of the undergrads groaned; a few more put their heads in their arms. One or two even turned around and said, ‘Aw, piss off, Danny.’

He walked up to the lectern and handed me the paperwork. All was in order: the late-transfer clearance, the change-of-major form, the apologetic note from his academic adviser: ‘There’s nothing I can do. Please just try to cope.’

‘All right, Danny, find yourself a seat.’

I started my lecture—the characteristics of population movements in pre-industrial societies—but a moment later Danny had his hand up.

‘Yes, Danny?’ More groans from around the room.

‘Dr Carlucci, will you be presenting an exhaustive list of the factors that influence population dynamics?’

I smiled sweetly. ‘Well, why don’t you just listen to the lecture and find out?’

‘It’s just that, well, my time is valuable, and—’

‘Thank you, Danny. You may stay or go as you please. But I will be expecting you to turn in excellent work that complies with all the assessment criteria regardless. Am I making myself clear?’

His eyes narrowed and he nodded. I spent the rest of the hour lecturing jauntily and hoping Danny would, in fact, walk out.

At the end of the lecture, as I was gathering my notes, I heard two of the undergrads talking quietly.

‘Did you hear how she talked to him? She’s so brave! And she doesn’t even have tenure yet.’

‘I wonder if she knows what she’s gotten into?’

‘Oh, she has to. Everyone knows about Danny.’

What, Danny the axe-murderer? Danny the evil genius with a nuclear cannon in his dorm room? I didn’t think so.

When I got back to the office, I was surprised to find Pace already there. She tried every year to avoid teaching before noon. One semester she’d had to teach at eight o’clock due to an unfortunate double-booking of the lecture hall between her Geography and Media seminar and Intro to Pantomime I. Her hands had shaken for three solid months, and to this day she couldn’t be trusted around anyone from the Department of Dramatic Arts.

She looked up from her computer and frowned. ‘You look annoyed.’

‘Oh, someone just transferred into my Intro class and he’s already trying my patience. Remember that obnoxious undergrad from the ice-cream stand the other day?’

‘Yeah, what a dweeb. Too bad.’

One of the teaching assistants stuck her head in the door. ‘I’m really sorry to hear, Dr Carlucci.’

‘Hear what?’

‘Danny Snotnose Wexler.’

‘Has everyone heard of this kid but me?’

‘He’s been chucked out of nearly every department in the university, but the word is he can’t be thrown out entirely, or we lose hundreds of thousands in charitable donations.’

‘From his parents, I’m assuming.’

‘Uh-huh. I hadn’t thought one family could be so rich, but there you have it. Well, sorry again. Bye.’

Pace looked at me with raised eyebrows.

My stomach sank a bit more when the phone rang. Sure enough, it was the head of the Earth Sciences School, who spent five minutes explaining that young Danny only needed an understanding mentor to blossom.

I sighed. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Thanks, Celeste. It means a lot. And it will be remembered at tenure time if you can get him through.’

I reflected as I hung up that he’d left the obvious corollary unspoken: it would also be remembered if I couldn’t get him through.

I considered ranting to Pace, but before I could get started, she said quietly, ‘Ty wants to have a look at the, the stuff tonight. Want to come and help? Eight o’clock.’

‘Um, sure,’ I said, mostly out of years of habitually agreeing to Pace’s plans.

The phone rang again. It was my mother, who worked over in Personnel.

‘Honey, is it true? Do you really have that Danny Wexler in one of your classes now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, my. You know he’s been—’

‘—kicked out of nearly every department, yes.’

‘Well, I’m sure you know how to handle it. But let me know if you need any help, will you, sweetie?’

‘Sure, Mom. Thanks. Love you.’

‘Love you, too.’

Pace had a strange expression on her face. ‘All these years, and you still get along with your mother.’

‘All these years, and you still don’t get along with yours.’

‘I used to watch her pick you up at the gates of St Basilissa’s, always smiling, always glad to see you.’ She stared vacantly for a second, then shook herself. ‘Anyway. When do you see Danny again?’

‘Wednesday. Then Friday. Then every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until the final exam. Maybe there’s a break in there for study days, but that seems too far away to be real.’

‘You probably need something to cheer you up. What do you think of this?’ She reached into a desk drawer and brought out a small, battered book with a stained cover. My Time on Purple Bay, a Reminiscence by Millicent Strudthorne.

I took it from her eagerly and began to turn the pages. I had to be gentle, as time had done some damage. ‘Pace, this is fantastic! Where did you find it?’

‘Oh, there’s a little bookshop in Beggar’s Pit, not many people know about it.’

Beggar’s Pit was the oldest, and by far the nastiest, neighbourhood in Purple Bay. But drunks and punks never bothered Pace much. She gave off powerful vibes, particularly when there were books to be browsed.

‘When do you need it back?’ I asked.

‘What? No, it’s yours. I’m giving it to you.’

I felt my eyes start to prickle, but Pace wouldn’t thank me for crying. I pulled myself together and started reading the book. Every page was a treasure trove of wit, insight, and terrific illustrations that Millicent had done herself.

‘Celeste?’ The voice sounded far away. ‘Celeste? Don’t you have to teach another class soon?’

I jumped. Pace was right, it was nearly time for my eleven o’clock. I was always eager for this one, though: Advanced Riverine Geography. Flooding, levees, erosion, siltation, bridges, shipping, emergency management, travel and tourism, agriculture—rivers were civilisation.

I managed to put the book in my desk drawer and head out to the class. At least there would be no Danny: the students were all hand-picked by Kortnoz. He’d let me teach it because of my research specialisation, but he kept a close eye on how the dozen or so students progressed.

Today was the start of their in-class presentations. Nicki and Ricky—housemates, sweeties, and research partners, so inseparable their friends called them ‘The Ickies’—were up first.

‘We decided to study the braiding on the delta of the Purple River,’ said Nicki. ‘We overlaid satellite photos from the last ten years and morphed them to produce this animation.’ She played the animation and I watched, mesmerised, as the channels split and merged, split and merged, grew, diminished, and disappeared, only to form again.

‘We correlated the configurations with rainfall and with the value of the Krasnian dollar versus the Northern dollar, with a cross-reference to the Krasnian gross domestic product. We found that when the Krasnian dollar is weak relative to the North Kras dollar, Krasnian goods become relatively cheaper than Northern goods, and therefore more in demand—particularly in North Kras, but in other countries as well. Krasnian manufacturing increases, which increases discharge of waste water and by-products into the Purple River. Rainfall has some effect on the rate of change in the braiding patterns, but the main determinant is the level of Krasnian manufacturing activity. This, ultimately, is controlled by the strength of the Krasnian dollar, and is positively correlated with increases in gross domestic product.’

‘Very impressive,’ I said. It occurred to me that I had an opportunity here. ‘Let’s run that animation again, and see if we can detect any increase in land area.’

I stared hard as the animation ran. The edge of the delta fluttered like a curtain in the breeze, but never extended further in any lasting way. I looked extra hard at the photos of an anomaly there’d been a few years ago when Purple Bay had started to silt up. The sediment load and the turbidity of the water had dramatically increased for two months, but these photos showed no actual advance in the delta. Why wasn’t the delta growing? Aliens, behemoths, big cosmic steam shovels, anything?

‘That’s odd,’ murmured Nicki.

Ricky glanced at her, then mimicked her expression. ‘Yeah, that’s odd,’ he said.

‘How far back can you get these satellite images for?’ I asked Nicki.

‘I don’t think they go back much further than that.’ She bit her lip. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, no, not a problem. I was just curious, that’s all. Good work, you two. Now, who’s next?’

Pace was out when I got back to the office. There was a note on my whiteboard: ‘See you at eight.’ I looked over at Pace’s desk at the boxes of bugs. She’d put a few drops of water and a tiny piece of lettuce in each box.

I took out Millicent’s Reminiscence and resumed reading. She’d loved Purple Bay, loved the river from headwaters to delta. Sure, she was a bit … overly dedicated about the measurements, and about the way her laundry was done, about her breakfast, her clothing, other people’s clothing, adherence to traffic laws, the number of pages in each day’s newspaper, how many times she brushed each tooth. But hey, it was that kind of attention to detail that made her the researcher I could never be. I had no idea how such a meticulous person could ever have gotten involved in a scandal, but the rumours were persistent, if vague: some said she’d been involved in an illicit liaison with a student, some that she’d embezzled university research funds, some that she’d falsified research results and sabotaged colleagues’ work.

Me, I’d already been involved in several, not least the time when I’d stolen Pace’s research and published it. Oh, I’d had noble intentions (I thought I was saving the Purple River by making the research public when Pace had been too timid—I should have known that was impossible). Still, the fallout had been pretty bad—reprimands, the postponement of my tenure application by two years, and the very stern dictum that ‘One more mistake like that, Celeste, and we’ll have to let you go.’ Tenure, or unemployment and disgrace—there was no middle ground. And no matter how careful I was, it still might end in disaster, now that I had Danny Snotnose Wexler to worry about. The loose cannon, the unknown quantity, the fart in the library.

The rest of the day moved past as sluggishly as a reed-choked stream. I ate dinner—toast and orange marmalade, because it was two days before payday (a hamburger and a beer, which was what I really wanted, would have to wait).

Finally, it was time to take the bus over to Kortnoz’s. I walked the last two blocks to his house, and knocked on the door. The pinpoint of light from the peephole flicked to dark, then bright again, and Kortnoz opened the door.

‘Thanks for coming over,’ he said.

‘No problem.’

‘Would you care for something to eat?’

Department chairs got paid better than we did. The coffee table was covered in plates and bowls: chips, vegetables, bread, dips, chocolates—chocolates!

‘Wow, thanks, Dr Kortnoz.’ I ate as fast as I could without actually burying my face in the dishes. He watched me with an awed expression on his face, but didn’t say anything. He probably remembered what it was like to earn a non-tenured professor’s salary. Maybe it’s better in some other university in a parallel universe, but at Purple Bay they did their best to wring more than their money’s worth out of you.

‘Celeste,’ said Pace, ‘didn’t Sister Genesia have a few words to say about your mealtime decorum?’

‘She’s not here,’ I said with my mouth full.

After a while, when I no longer felt the sharp little rodent teeth of hunger in my stomach, I picked up a piece of chocolate and sat back on the sofa. I noticed, somewhat guiltily, that it was the last piece, and realised I must have eaten all the rest. I’d make it up to Kortnoz sometime. When I, too, had tenure.

‘Shall we head downstairs?’ said Kortnoz. Once in the basement, Kortnoz opened the safe, and he and Pace worked hard to pull a rollered shelf out, upon which was the box. Kortnoz put a brace under the front of the shelf. Then he and Pace lifted the lid.

Inside were five pieces of glass or polished quartz about as big, and as thick, as my hand. They were smooth, rather than faceted, and gave back the light from the room in a soft glow. Each was a different colour: purple, red, yellow, green, and a smoky grey.

‘That’s what was so heavy?’ I said.

‘The box is what’s heavy. Thick panels of lead, protecting these—the filters!’ said Kortnoz rapturously. ‘If you look at the pages of the Codex using these filters, the secret writing appears!’ He sobered. ‘That’s what I think, anyway.’

‘And nobody’s done a spectroscopy on the Codex this whole time and figured this out?’ I said.

‘The Codex isn’t in a museum. It’s in the keeping of the Praxicopolis family.’

‘Those nutbags? How’d they get hold of it?’

‘They bought it in a surreptitious deal about thirty years ago,’ he said. ‘The National Museum was just about to fold, and they offered enough to keep the museum going for generations. The director agreed to the sale if the Praxicopolises signed a lengthy list of agreements having to do with allowing access to scholars and other legitimate researchers. All of which they instantly broke. The whole thing was hushed up, and everyone just assumed the museum had removed the book to a super-controlled environment “for its preservation”.’

‘So,’ I said, ‘all we have to do is keep these glass blocks safe, find enough money to buy the Codex back from the Praxicopolises, keep it safe long enough to find an expert in ancient Krasnian languages who can decipher the hidden text, get the expert’s translation verified by another expert, write up the findings, get the paper peer-reviewed, and publish it to international acclaim and the benefit of humanity across the globe. And manage, the whole time, to keep from getting killed in some sort of tragic and horrible way.’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘Yup,’ said Kortnoz.

‘Easy,’ said Pace.

‘We’re geographers, you do remember, right?’ I said. ‘Not archaeologists, not linguists. Geographers.’

‘Everything is geography,’ Kortnoz and Pace intoned together.

Still, I had to admit that their enthusiasm was grabbing me. Pulling this whole plan off meant we’d be making very big news, which in turn meant a pretty good crack at the lecture circuit. Speakers’ fees were one of the few ways a reputable academic had of making a decent living (the disreputable ones had found a few other ways). And I was not entirely immune to the lure of fame, I’ll confess it now. We all have our flaws.

‘What’s the first step, then?’ I asked.

Pace answered; of course, they’d been discussing this on their own. ‘It’s no good asking the Praxicopolises; they’ve refused dozens of requests for access to the Codex. We need to start by researching the family, looking for some kind of leverage we can use.’

‘They don’t live in Purple Bay, do they?’ It wouldn’t exactly be their kind of town, what with the crime, the boisterous tourists, the shoddy and decaying Opera House and the shoddy and decaying musicians who hung out there, and the hopeless sports teams. Really, the Miraculous Mud Flats were the only draw, and the Praxicopolises had never shown an interest as far as I knew.

‘No, they live up in the mountains, about five hours’ drive away.’

‘I guess the Net is the best place to start, since we can’t talk to them.’

The Infonet had been around for about ten years, and we’d all quickly gotten used to consulting its gathered wisdom for every random musing and research question. Like any large, chaotic system, it occasionally produced collaborations of stunning beauty along with the noise. President Kim-Hatton kept threatening to shut it down, as it ‘widened the gap between the regular folks and the geeks’—of course, her solution was to drag the geeks back rather than help the regular folks catch up. I couldn’t wait for the next election, so we could see the back of her. The good news was, the Infonet was so big and chaotic, even a president had no way of squashing it all at once.

‘How much time do you have over the next few days?’ said Kortnoz.

‘A bit,’ I said reluctantly. ‘I’ve got Millicent Strudthorne’s thesis to finish going over, and that’s taking a lot longer than I’d estimated. Then there are mid-terms to grade, and pretty soon it will be time for the losers in Intro to start panicking and I’ll have to extend my office hours to cope.’

‘You’re too soft with them,’ said Pace. ‘Do what I do, give it to them straight. “You’re stupid, lazy, ignorant, and self-centred. If you ever show up in a geography class again, I’ll make sure it’s the worst experience of your academic career.”’

‘I can’t do that. I’m not tenured.’

‘We all know why that is,’ muttered Pace, who, to be fair, really was trying her best to get over the whole unpleasant research-theft incident.

‘Hey,’ said Kortnoz gently, putting an arm around her shoulders. ‘That’s over now.’ She rested her head against his cheek for a moment.

‘And, what’s with sticking me with Danny Wexler?’ I said, to change the subject.

‘What?’ Kortnoz was genuinely surprised. ‘The Board Chair’s snotty little son? Is he an undergrad already? I remember him as a five-year-old nightmare. One evening she and her husband—Dan Wexler senior, the one who runs all those newspapers and television stations—brought him to a reception for some overseas scholars. It took maintenance three days to bring the room back to usable condition. A few months later, one of the scholars came out with a book: The Myth of Krasnian Civilization. Two entire chapters were devoted to Krasnian child-rearing customs. It did wonders for tourism, but who wants to be famous for having children who are considered by the international emergency-management community to be individual natural disasters?’

‘So you didn’t set me up?’ I said.

‘No, of course not, I’d never do that to any of my faculty members. Someone must have gone over my head. I’ll see if I can sort it out in the morning.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But if you want me to find time to do that Net research, I’d better head home.’

‘Ty, can I borrow your car to give Celeste a ride home? The buses don’t run all that often, and it’s starting to get dark.’ Another unexpected kindness from Pace. Maybe her relationship with Kortnoz was having an effect.

‘Keys are over there. Thanks, Celeste. It’ll be worth it, I promise.’

‘Sure, Dr Kortnoz. See you tomorrow.’

As soon as we got in the mud-caked four-wheel-drive, Pace said, ‘We involved you today because we needed a third person. Ty thinks you’ve learned your lesson, but you’d better not go trying to steal his research.’

‘I—’

‘That’s all I’m saying about it.’

We spent the rest of the trip in silence.