Physical Problems. The Institute lies well north of campus, in the foothills of Mount Lee, where the old observatory looms. What you do is: You take the MIE around CSU, skirting Lawnwood. And spend twenty minutes stuck in the Sutton Bay tailback. The Sutton Bay tailback: Another excellent reason for blowing your brains out.
Then you park the car and walk toward a low array of wood-clad buildings, expecting to be met by a forest ranger or a Boy Scout or a chipmunk. Here comes Chip. Here comes Dale. Here comes Woody Woodpecker, wearing a reversed baseball cap. The Department of Terrestrial Magnetism has the following words scrolled into the wall of its entrance corridor: ET ERITIS SICVT DEI SCIENTES BONVM ET MALVM. I got a translation from a kid who was passing: 'And you will be like gods, knowing good and evil'. That's Genesis, isn't it? And isn't it what the Serpent says? Whenever I've been out to CSU—for a criminology lecture, an o. d., a student suicide around exam time—I've always had the same feeling. I think: It's a drag, not being young, but at least I don't have to take a test tomorrow morning. Another thing I notice, at the Institute of Physical Problems, is that someone has changed all the rules of attraction. Sexual allure is a physical problem that the students are no longer addressing. In my day, at the Academy, the women were all tits and ass and the men were all dick and bicep. Now the student body has no body. Now it's strictly sloppy-joe.
I am identified and greeted in the corridor by Jennifer's department head. His name is Bax Denziger and he's big in his discipline. He's big all right: Not a joint-splitter like my Tobe, but your regular bearish, bearded, flame-eyed, slobber-mouthed type with (you can bet) an inch-thick pelt all over his back. Yeah, one of those guys who's basically all bush. The little gap around the nose is the only clearing in the rain forest. He takes me into his office, where I feel I am surrounded by enormous quantities of information, all of it available, summonable, fingertip. He gives me coffee. I imagine asking permission to smoke, and imagine the way he'd say no: Totally relaxed about it. I repeat that I'm conducting an informal inquiry into Jennifer's death, prompted by Colonel and Mrs. Rockwell. Off the record—but is it okay if I use a tape recorder? Yes. He waves a hand in the air.
Bax Denziger, incidentally, is famous: TV-famous. I know stuff about him. He has a twin-prop airplane and a second home in Aspen. He is a skier and a mountaineer. He used to lift weights for the state. And I don't mean in prison. Three or four years ago he fronted a series on Channel 13 called 'The Evolution of the Universe.' And they have him on the news-magazine shows whenever something gives in his field. Bax here is a skilled 'communicator' who talks in paragraphs as if to camera. And that's pretty much how I'm going to present it. The technical language should be right because I had Tobe run it by his computer.
I kicked off by asking him what Jennifer did all day. Would he please describe her work?
Certainly. In a department like ours you have three kinds of people. People in white coats who man the labs and the computers. People like Jennifer—postdocs, maybe assistant professors—who order the people in white coats around. And then people like yours truly. I order everyone around. Each day we have a ton of data coming in which has to be checked and processed. Which has to be 'reduced'. That was Jennifer's job. She was also working on some leads herself. As of last fall she was working on the Milky Way's Virgo-infall velocity.
I asked him: Could you be more specific?
I am being specific. Perhaps I should be more general. Like everyone else here she was working on questions having to do with the age of the universe. A highly controversial and competitive field. A cutthroat field. We're looking
Then you park the car and walk toward a low array of wood-clad buildings, expecting to be met by a forest ranger or a Boy Scout or a chipmunk. Here comes Chip. Here comes Dale. Here comes Woody Woodpecker, wearing a reversed baseball cap. The Department of Terrestrial Magnetism has the following words scrolled into the wall of its entrance corridor: ET ERITIS SICVT DEI SCIENTES BONVM ET MALVM. I got a translation from a kid who was passing: 'And you will be like gods, knowing good and evil'. That's Genesis, isn't it? And isn't it what the Serpent says? Whenever I've been out to CSU—for a criminology lecture, an o. d., a student suicide around exam time—I've always had the same feeling. I think: It's a drag, not being young, but at least I don't have to take a test tomorrow morning. Another thing I notice, at the Institute of Physical Problems, is that someone has changed all the rules of attraction. Sexual allure is a physical problem that the students are no longer addressing. In my day, at the Academy, the women were all tits and ass and the men were all dick and bicep. Now the student body has no body. Now it's strictly sloppy-joe.
I am identified and greeted in the corridor by Jennifer's department head. His name is Bax Denziger and he's big in his discipline. He's big all right: Not a joint-splitter like my Tobe, but your regular bearish, bearded, flame-eyed, slobber-mouthed type with (you can bet) an inch-thick pelt all over his back. Yeah, one of those guys who's basically all bush. The little gap around the nose is the only clearing in the rain forest. He takes me into his office, where I feel I am surrounded by enormous quantities of information, all of it available, summonable, fingertip. He gives me coffee. I imagine asking permission to smoke, and imagine the way he'd say no: Totally relaxed about it. I repeat that I'm conducting an informal inquiry into Jennifer's death, prompted by Colonel and Mrs. Rockwell. Off the record—but is it okay if I use a tape recorder? Yes. He waves a hand in the air.
Bax Denziger, incidentally, is famous: TV-famous. I know stuff about him. He has a twin-prop airplane and a second home in Aspen. He is a skier and a mountaineer. He used to lift weights for the state. And I don't mean in prison. Three or four years ago he fronted a series on Channel 13 called 'The Evolution of the Universe.' And they have him on the news-magazine shows whenever something gives in his field. Bax here is a skilled 'communicator' who talks in paragraphs as if to camera. And that's pretty much how I'm going to present it. The technical language should be right because I had Tobe run it by his computer.
I kicked off by asking him what Jennifer did all day. Would he please describe her work?
Certainly. In a department like ours you have three kinds of people. People in white coats who man the labs and the computers. People like Jennifer—postdocs, maybe assistant professors—who order the people in white coats around. And then people like yours truly. I order everyone around. Each day we have a ton of data coming in which has to be checked and processed. Which has to be 'reduced'. That was Jennifer's job. She was also working on some leads herself. As of last fall she was working on the Milky Way's Virgo-infall velocity.
I asked him: Could you be more specific?
I am being specific. Perhaps I should be more general. Like everyone else here she was working on questions having to do with the age of the universe. A highly controversial and competitive field. A cutthroat field. We're looking
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