60
Professor Whitfield strokes his beard. He pauses to take a sip of the coffee he’s been replenishing for the last hour and a half.
“Obviously I don’t know for sure,” he says. “This has never happened before, as far as I’m aware. There’s nothing in the literature . . .”
He’s stalling, and I know it. Of course he doesn’t know for sure, and of course there’s nothing written about it in any of the science literature—that’s not what I’m asking.
“Professor?” Something in his expression is starting to worry me.
He coughs into his fist. It’s almost as fake as the cough Halli gave me just a minute ago.
“He’s not answering,” I tell Halli.
“I can see that,” she says.
“Here’s my concern,” he says. “In every previous instance, the two of you were able to communicate. Toward the end we never h
