Langue[dot]doc 1305

2. Solving Problems

SOLVING PROBLEMS

“We can’t do everything,” Sylvia said. “These contractors simply won’t be able to deliver on time.”

Luke frowned. “Harvey warned us about this. If it’s money —” His office was big and full of sunshine. Whiteboards everywhere. Formulae everywhere. Papers everywhere, even on the stands of the fake tree ferns. The scent was plastic and paper, old dust and faint ammonia. It smelled as if Luke had lived in it forever, put down institutional roots. He had not. Luke had moved to Melbourne three years before, specifically for this project.

“Not money.” Dr Sylvia Smith’s voice was firm, despite its softness. “There were problems with the orders, with follow-through when personnel dropped out. And the contractors, as I said. The ones dealing with the scientific databases. All of them. Every single library supplier was waiting for confirmation from us about one element or another. Our history people walked out. Some of our scientists walked out. Follow-up never happened. This means that the library suppliers are running late. We can prioritise and get more than we have, but not everything. Not in time. There’s no way around it. We can’t change the launch date: our expedition will be short.”

“Not of supplies.”

“No, the Director was wrong. Supplies are mostly local and are all clear. It’s the databanks. Everything electronic. Mostly for research and reference.”

“How bad is it?”

The two sat down and spent an unhappy hour trying to work out what was most important. What could be improvised. Which project relied on what sort of electronic material. How the whole thing could be made to work.

“That’s most of it, then. Not so bad after all.” Sylvia was cheerful; her own research program was completely covered. Sylvia’s voice communicated her confidence. “If we hire a couple of students, get them to download publicly available material for the next four days, not even the library will suffer.”

“I wish you’d brought this to my attention earlier, Dr Smith.” Luke turned formal when he was unhappy.

Sylvia just let it flow over her. “We’ll manage.”

Artemisia found a café that had wifi. She set up her Skype account. She ordered a drink and waited for the call from Australia. It didn’t take long for Harvey to appear on her computer screen.

“Sorry to bother you. I was looking for you. I was given your email by your Department Chair,” he had explained. “It’s been a long time. I wanted to talk.”

That was why, here in Nîmes, Artemisia was nattering on the net. The Chair had already let her know all this, by email. Not a job, she had commented, but it might lead to something. Artemisia couldn’t take anything seriously today, not this chat and not France. Her mind was in a hospital in Australia, recovering from the last round of chemotherapy. She had perfected polite babble, however, and it helped her cover her hurt.

“My research was half an excuse. I came here on a kind of pilgrimage,” Artemisia explained, “Then I discovered this is the country of heroes. I came to see Saint William and Saint Gilles and found that William was a lot more than that. It was wonderful. This whole region has been special for a thousand years. More.”

“You’re going to stay and explore, now you’ve finished your research?”

“Can’t,” Artemisia almost sounded regretful. “I’m in between jobs, as you know, and my sister needs medical care. I’m going back to Melbourne to lose my academic career as quickly as I can. Sorry — that sounded flippant. It’s just that losing a career is such a strange thing to do.”

“Do you want to?”

“Go back to Melbourne? Of course. It’s where my sister is. Where I have contacts and can find a job. In a whacking great hurry.”

“To dump your career? I might be able to help you avoid that. I need a medievalist. Right away.”

Artemisia looked across at the stranger on her screen. Until this moment he hadn’t been a stranger. He’d been a friendly voice in a foreign land. He’d been an old flame she’d almost forgotten whose email had popped up in her in-box the day before.

His face was serious. He didn’t look as if he was asking questions that would undress her soul.

Artemisia took a sip of her citron pressé and the tartness of it and the golden light undid the floodgates. She told Harvey everything. About her sister fighting cancer, about there being no permanent jobs in her field anywhere and none at all in Australia and not even a contract job around for months. “Who needs an expert on Anglo-Norman and Norman hagiography?” she asked, denying the obscurity of her knowledge with her face and hands even as she claimed it with her tongue, paying no attention to Harvey’s reassurance that he had a job for her. He was a scientist — there was no job. Besides, he wasn’t the sort of person to race into employing anyone without due planning and calculation.

Melbourne would give her some sort of job, any sort of job, and those experimental medicines would be paid for and her sister might survive.

She suddenly realised that Harvey was now a stranger. Three dates ten years ago. Several friends in common. She felt raw.

“I must go,” Artemisia said. “It was lovely to talk to you again. Sorry about the confession.”

“You needed it,” Harvey still had his sunshine-laden, sympathetic voice. It had, perhaps, grown warmer with age. She would date him again, if life were different. “When do you arrive? What flight?” She told him and they left it at that. Normally Artemisia would have reflected on Harvey’s words, but she really didn’t care.

After she left that odd conversation, she went to the Roman temple. Its perfect proportions would soothe her, as they had last time she passed this way. There was nowhere to pray. The temple was denuded and full of tourists. She knew this. She also knew that the shape of stone would be gentle on her, make life easier. Telling Harvey had been a release, in a way, but not the one she needed.

After the temple and its perfect proportions, she collected her baggage and made her way to Montpellier, where she left her hire car at their bright little airport and took the first part of the wearisome journey back to home and her sister.

Two tired days later and she emerged from Immigration. Home, she thought. I’m home.

A taxi, was her next thought, when she took in the white brightness of Tullamarine and the damp chill of Melbourne in winter. Get home fast. Damn the cost.

“Can I offer you a ride to Carlton? It’s still Carlton, isn’t it?” asked Harvey. Artemisia was too tired to be astonished. She merely accepted. She accepted everything he said and everything he suggested. That was how she agreed to go to Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert twice in a subjective two-month period. She hadn’t quite processed, even once she accepted, that the second visit was for nine months, and that it started sometime in the early fourteenth century, and that she couldn’t quit if it didn’t work out. All she knew was that Harvey had promised her work as an historian.

Artemisia was mainly concerned about her sister. The initial sum she’d be paid would more than cover the experimental treatment Lucia’s doctor recommended, and would still leave enough to outfit Artemisia herself for her little expedition. Her main feeling was relief.

As soon as Lucia was up to receiving calls, Artemisia paid her a visit. Lucia was at home, in bed, looking determinedly cheerful.

“You know,” Artemisia said, “you don’t fool me.”

“I don’t?” Lucia was amused.

Artemisia took a long look at her sister, slender beyond sanity, pale as a vampire, hair sharply short. She didn’t look too bad, but this was between treatments. Resting up so that her cure didn’t kill her. “I know what you get up to in your spare time.”

“What spare time?” Lucia challenged her sister.

“The time when you’re not colouring your hair that unnatural brown. The time when you’re masquerading as . . . as . . .”

“Your imagination is failing you, my life.”

“Jetlag,” Artemisia claimed. It had to be jetlag. It couldn’t be because she had just noticed that Lucia’s infamous eloquent hands had been silenced by exhaustion. “Which reminds me, I need to give you your presents now.”

“Afraid I might die on you,” Lucia mocked, her voice gentle.

“I got a job. Nine months incommunicado. So you get your presents now.”

“What sort of job is that?” Lucia’s voice was full of wonder.

“A completely bizarre one. But it pays a lot.”

“No,” said her sister.

“Yes. It will make me happy.”

“But your career . . .”

“Would you believe that I’m participating in a scientific project as a bloody medievalist? And it’s only nine months. The worst it will do is give me a break from undergraduates. If you won’t let me pay for that damn treatment, I’ll say ‘no’ and get a job as a . . .”

“Check-out chick,” Lucia supplied. “You always say ‘check-out chick.’”

“Well, I will.”

“You’ll write to me in the nine months.”

“Can’t.”

“Then I need my presents, now!” They smiled at each other, remembering the same demand over many years of birthdays. At Easter, she always ate her eggs first. At Christmas she always opened the first package. Nine months would be hard on her, but Artemisia saw her sister lean her head back as if her neck was no longer strong enough to hold it and she wished that she could know that Lucia would get through. This is why she was going to the past. Not because of the excitement, but because she wanted her sister to be able to hold up her head, walk down the street, tear into wrapping paper, talk with her hands.

After she had seen Lucia, Artemisia went to see her new boss. She was blanketed in jetlag. What Professor Mann had to say was hardly reassuring, but whenever she thought she might back down, she remembered Lucia’s head, resting against the back of the couch. Mann talked about the great science and the progress for humankind. He extolled the physics and the crack team of scientists at both ends and the government support.

“And the history?” Artemisia prompted.

“It’s all history,” Mann said, expansively.

“And what if we change the people in the region? What if we change history?”

“It’s all covered. We’re living in a cave system,” he said, carefully, as if to a first year student. “Self-sufficient. No impact. Troglodytes. Our protocols cover everything outside those caves. History will be fine.”

Artemisia accepted, but not because of Mann’s reassurances. She accepted because she wanted Lucia to live.