Star Shot by Mary-Ann Constantine Page B

hurries down the stairs, through the galleries, past groups of primary-school children in the busy main hall and out down the steps through the shiver of silence to find a bench where she can put her head in her hands and weep.
    40.
    Even if it didn’t do any good, says someone, it didn’t do any harm either; no harm at all.
    Everyone, says Phoebe, had a wonderful time.
    And it was good publicity, excellent really, with the professor’s stunning media profile applications have simply rocketed up.
    Luke, who has been told by someone very senior, in no uncertain terms, and in the strictest confidentiality, that he will be strongly recommended for fast-track promotion, is keeping modestly quiet.
    Are there any biscuits? says someone.
    Biscuits would be nice, says Phoebe. I’ll go and ask. And has everyone got coffee who needs it?
    Can you do me a fennel and liquorice tea? asks Aslan, who is chairing this meeting in the professor’s absence. There’s a box by the kettle. Wrth ymyl y degell. Diolch .
    They listen to three reports. The Museum Steps project now has a hundred and seventeen recorded negative reactions (NRs), and fifty-two follow-up interviews, mostly carried out by Phoebe who is very good at such things, and whose respondents offer a range of explanations for turning back. Roughly sixty-five percent say they felt an overwhelming sense of grief or despair, twenty-two per cent felt ill and dizzy, and the rest said they’d just thought of something else they needed to do instead, and had changed their minds.
    The relevant graphs are projected and explored at some length. Luke presents a brief round-up of the benches project, though he explains that, because of involvement in the Parade, he has had to delegate most of the data-collection to other people. Everybody nods vigorously. The figures here speak for themselves, revealing a gradual, inexorable thinning of sitters, attributable mainly to the lower temperatures around the benches where the cold silence swirls and pools.
    The third report, a PowerPoint prepared by the professor and presented by Aslan, shows the current reach and spread of the silence across the city. A month’s worth of day-by-day mapping, with brief analysis of the directions of flow and the principal channels. A note at the end adds that they are currently in talks with Physics to explore ways of measuring the intensity, or it may be that the better word is viscosity, of the silence in different designated areas. This initiative meets with considerable approval.
    The final item on the agenda is titled Ar ôl yr Orymdaith/Post-Parade . It asks for a brief assessment of the effect of the Parade on a) the silence and b) the profile of the university, and suggests, by way of concluding the meeting, a half-hour brainstorming session to come up with new ideas. The assessment part is quickly done, since the general feeling is that although the effect on a) was negligible, the effect on b) was entirely positive. The discussion that follows is predictably chaotic, with suggestions involving everything from electricity to hot-air balloons, and tempers are properly starting to fray when Aslan manages to remind them that the task in hand is not so much to solve the problem of the Interference – they have, after all, got most of the university science section on the case, quite apart from the work being done by the Government people and the scientists at the museum – as to be seen to be engaging with it in persuasively exciting ways.
    Events, he says. Smaller-scale than the Parade, obviously, but public events, workshops, short films – things that will get reported in the media, to show we’re doing our bit, you know they’ll be bored with this story soon, we need to find ways of keeping it alive. Creative responses are always good, too. Can we find some artists?

    41.
    When he was about ten, on holiday, someone let him drive a tractor. Grey, a Massey