First Contact (7 page)

“What was that, honey?” she asked saccharinely.

“What was what?”

“I thought I heard you say something.”

The Professor popped his head back into the bedroom.

“No, love. I didn’t say anything. Nothing at all.”

He knew she didn’t believe him. And he knew he would pay a price for his insubordination.

“Wash done yet?”

“No, still running.”

“Make sure you fold the clothes in the dryer.”

“I will.”

“And transfer the wash after it’s done.”

“Of course.”

“And turn the dryer back on.”

“Not a problem.”

“And don’t forget to turn off the buzzer. I don’t want it to go off while I’m sleeping. You always forget to turn it off.”

In fact the Professor had forgotten precisely once, seven years earlier.

“I’ll be sure to turn it off. Anything else?”

He turned, starting to walk away, thinking he had gotten off rather easily. He should have known better.

“What are you working on down there?”

The Professor turned back. “Oh, this and that,” he said. “You know, same old nonsense.”

“Still tackling the big problems in theoretical physics?”

“I suppose.”

“I worry about you,” she said in a tone that sounded concerned, though the Professor knew better.

“Why is that?”

“I worry that no one pays attention to your work. It could get depressing sitting in the basement every night working on these unimportant problems without any recognition. You might think your life has amounted to nothing. That could really get someone down.”

The Professor liked to believe every living organism possessed a unique talent. His wife’s unique talent was to masquerade in an expression of genuine interest or concern a devastating critique of a person that reduced his life to rubble—a spectacular sort of disingenuousness.

It was as if when John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, he said, instead of
“Sic semper tyrannis”
(which is Latin for
“Thus be it ever to tyrants”),
“Hic quidam salve tu vente”
(which is Latin for “Here is something to aid your digestion”).

O
F COURSE ON
R
IGEL
-R
IGEL
they had never heard of the highly literate assassin John Wilkes Booth or the great President Abraham Lincoln. There was a man named Abraham Lincon-Lindle who lived on Rigel-Rigel, but he worked in a factory that manufactured paste.

N
OW
M
RS
. F
ENDLE
-F
RINKLE
, E
VELYN
,
was both right and wrong in what she said. She was right in the sense that the Professor was a failure in his profession, and his failure was in large part attributable to his personal character.

At one time in his life the Professor had been a graduate student of great promise. Later, he secured for himself a teaching position in a well-regarded university. This was how he first came to be referred to as “the Professor,” a moniker that stuck with him even after he lost his post.

In the academy on Rigel-Rigel it is what they like to call “publish or perish.” It is expected that professors, especially young professors without tenure, will write and publish lots of articles in top journals and hence bring prestige to their university. This was most decidedly not the Professor’s style.

The Professor was a simple man. He did not have any aspirations to be rich or famous. He liked jelly beans and strawberry rhubarb pie, which had entirely different names on Rigel-Rigel but tasted basically the same as on Earth. He liked to take walks in drizzling rain. And he liked to think about physics. He didn’t care much about the practical consequences of the problems he thought about—he wasn’t trying to come up with a more efficient warp engine or a better electric toothbrush, for example—he just liked thinking about an interesting problem, even if it was the kind of problem that might take a long time to solve or might have no solution at all. As it was, he had been thinking about the same problem for thirty-two years.

He was in this sense a bit like a man on Earth named Andrew Wiles who devoted most of his adult life to proving Fermat’s Last Theorem, a mathematical conjecture that went unsolved on Earth for four hundred years. This problem was referred to on Rigel-Rigel as Ascribanta Alianta, which roughly translates as “The Elementary
Conjecture in Number Theory.” It was one of the first things every Rigelian student learned in second grade.

What Professor Fendle-Frinkle had in common with Wiles was an abundant reservoir of perseverance. Left to his own devices, Professor Fendle-Frinkle could think about a question for days. He didn’t require much sleep. When he did sleep he continued to think at a subconscious level. He would awake continuing the same thought as before he went to bed. He thought about the kinds of problems that were so complex it might take a year to resolve a small subproof. The long haul did not deter him, though. Once, he became so excited by the improbable sight of a dollowarrie flying over an upside-down rainbow (right-side up by Earth standards) that he lost a train of thought eighteen months in the making. This did not discourage him either. He simply picked up where he had been a year and a half earlier and started again.

This kind of stick-to-itiveness is remarkable and admirable but not well suited to a successful career in academia. Academics need to publish. Even Professor Wiles, the admirably persistent Fermat guy, put out a paper from time to time. On both Earth and Rigel-Rigel, a few organizations, such as the MacArthur Foundation and the Institute for Intertemporal Studies, provide funding for geniuses to sit and think all day. Unfortunately, the Professor had never lucked into a situation of this kind. He just sat and thought without funding, and without writing.

The Professor’s colleagues literally begged him to publish, even a sub-subproof in a second-tier journal would have done, just something to show the tenure committee. But the Professor could not be persuaded. He had no interest in describing his reasoning to others, or educating the public, or dealing with an editor at a journal. All of this seemed to him like a waste of time. He put it this way to his colleague Professor Sibilant-Sislakean of the mathematics department: “Which would you rather do: solve a Sudoku puzzle or write an essay explaining how you solved it?”

T
HEY ACTUALLY HAVE
S
UDOKU
puzzles on Rigel-Rigel, which by coincidence are called Sudoku puzzles, though the puzzles that are labeled “easy” in the local papers are a 25-by-25 grid and start with only four numbers as clues.

N
EEDLESS TO SAY, THE
Professor did not get tenure. Now, since even theoretical physicists have to eat (and since the Professor had a wife to support), he took a job teaching introductory physics in a private secondary school. This was a bit like Niles Bohr teaching subtraction to six-year-olds.

Professor Fendle-Frinkle didn’t mind the job. Since he didn’t like teaching, or communicating with other people in general, and since he was smarter than just about everyone in the universe, it made little difference to him whether he was forced to teach fifteen-year-olds or advanced doctoral students in theoretical physics at Chewelery State. To the Professor, all of it was a waste of time. He would just as soon have worked in a mitten factory. In some ways, he would have been happier there. All he wanted was a job that earned him enough money to eat and gave him time to think. In a mitten factory, there is lots of time to think.

Of course, making mittens is not the kind of job one expects for a prodigy in theoretical physics, nor for that matter is teaching in a high school for the children of wealthy government officials. By any objective measure, the Professor’s career was a failure. The soubriquet “Professor” was itself subtly derogatory. The students and teachers universally referred to him as “the Professor,” because they knew he had once taught at a university and been denied tenure. Not only did they not understand he was one of the smartest people in the universe, they thought he was a bit dim because he could not manage to keep his shoelaces tied. “Professor” was their ironic way of diminishing a man who seemed to have made very little out of his professional life. Long story short, when Evelyn said her husband’s professional life was a failure, she was right about that.

But Evelyn was wrong, clearly wrong, in characterizing the Professor’s work as unimportant. One could argue, in fact, the Professor was working on (and had been for thirty-two years) the most important problem in the history of the universe.

A
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATION PREVENTS
discussion of this problem in detail here. This consideration is that only a half dozen people in the universe could understand the Professor’s calculations, and certainly no one on Earth, not even Stephen Hawking, who is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, Isaac Newton’s old job.

Best I can, here’s the gist of it: It had long been proved that following a period of expansion the universe would begin contracting. This was a byproduct of the Big Bang. It was as if the universe were a balloon, and the Big Bang was a big fat guy in a circus who blew it up quickly, but got a bit lightheaded and forgot to hold the balloon shut. The air was slowly seeping out of the balloon. Some people speculated the balloon had been filled up several times, in effect creating multiple universes, a new one each time the carnival came to town, every twenty billion years or so. Some scientists on Earth had speculated about this possibility, but others believed, or rather hoped, the universe would instead expand indefinitely.

On Rigel-Rigel, however, it was understood by all that the universe alternately expanded and contracted. It was also known that the rate of expansion and contraction did not change evenly. The universe got bigger quicker and quicker and would also get smaller at an accelerating pace. It was further known the universe would ultimately be reduced in size to a microscopic dot, a so-called Singularity. This made some wealthier folks on Rigel-Rigel quite anxious. They worried it would diminish the property values of their homes. For example, many people in the nicer neighborhoods surrounding Chewelery worried that after the Big Contraction they would be living, literally, right on top of the Rashukabia.

Not everyone found this news discouraging. Several developers saw an opportunity to build very low-cost condominiums. They could put up a hundred thousand units on less than a square micron. By and large, though, the Contraction was regarded as bad news.

But while it was known the universe would inevitably contract, and while it was known the Big Contraction would accelerate once it began, it was generally believed on Rigel-Rigel that the universe had begun contracting but only slowly, and that the end of the Contraction—the return to the great Singularity—was still a long way off in the future. Most Rigelian physicists believed it would take about as long for the universe to contract as it had taken for it to expand, which meant it would be about another 14 billion years before the Rashukabia got in.

The Professor knew better. He had hypothesized thirty-two years earlier the rate of contraction might be faster than people had predicted. He theorized that after the universe shrank below a certain critical mass the Contraction would proceed much,
much faster than people realized. That evening, after getting the toilet paper for Evelyn, the Professor concluded his calculations. The proof consisted of six lines on his yellow pad. It showed the Contraction, instead of taking 14 billion years, would take about eighteen months. Things would seem pretty much normal through the following summer, after which people would begin to notice little things out of the ordinary, like being able to ride a bicycle from one galaxy to another.

Many people would have become agitated by completing a proof of this kind. They might claim credit in the scientific community or clamor for the government to do something. This, most decidedly, was not the Professor’s style. For one thing, he knew there was nothing to do about the situation. The proof was irrefutable, the outcome inevitable. And he cared not at all about being credited for his work. In fact, after he completed the proof, which had been the work of his life for three decades, the Professor crumpled up the sheet on which he had written the proof and threw it in the garbage.

Then he began thinking about the next problem on his agenda. They had these trinkets on Rigel-Rigel, tiny glass cylinders with small models of space-faring vessels inside them. The Professor had long wondered how the manufacturers accomplished this, and his attention now turned to this problem. He spent another hour or so sitting at his desk thinking about this. Then he put the underwear back on top of his desk so his wife would not get mad. Then he went upstairs to the kitchen and had a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie.

L
ATE
S
UNDAY MORNING, THE
President returned from his short weekend and summoned Ralph to the Oval Office. He was wearing a flannel shirt and dungarees and appeared at first glance to be quite relaxed. The Chesapeake had that effect on the President. Ralph imagined he had spent the previous day fishing from his boat or hitting golf balls into the bay or running along the beach.

The President greeted Ralph warmly.

“Sit down, sit down,” he said and gestured for Ralph to sit on one of the sofas, which Ralph did as the President took a seat opposite him. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” the President said. “There’s something about the bay that gives me clarity of thought. Camp David is nice enough, but there’s no substitute for being near the water.” The President went on, but Ralph did not hear the rest of what he said because he noticed then that on the arm of the President’s sofa was a pair of Ralph’s own underwear.

To make matters worse, the underwear was not even modestly concealed. It was in full view, resting on the arm of the sofa, where it appeared to have been folded and quite neatly placed. Under different circumstances, it might have been possible for Ralph to steal back into the Oval Office during a break in the President’s schedule and lift the bloomers from the couch. But if the President had not already noticed the underwear he would soon enough. Discovery was inevitable. So Ralph did not even make a perfunctory effort at a bottom-of-the-ninth, Hail Mary, buzzer-beater-type play. He did not even do what most people do in uncomfortable moments such as this, which is to ignore the situation and hope it will go away. In fact, while the President spoke, Ralph stared directly at his underwear.

A
SHESTARED
, R
ALPH
wondered how he had made the mistake. Forgetting underwear is not the kind of thing a man often does. When he does he generally notices it quickly and says something to himself like, “I have forgotten to wear underwear.”

Ralph went over the events of the night before in his mind. It had all been innocent enough. After dinner, Ralph rustled up some blankets and bedclothes. They changed into their pajamas in separate rooms, made camp on the floor, and stayed up most of the night talking. In the morning, they were greeted by glorious sunshine streaming in from the east. They woke, drank coffee, and talked for a little while more. Then they changed, Ralph in the coffee-cubby, Jessica in the office, and left.

Looking back, Ralph now recognized he forgot to put on the clean pair of underwear he had packed for himself. In fact he put his pants on directly over the pajama bottoms. That Ralph did not notice this, and hence recognize he had left his change of underwear by the Equal, was all the more astonishing given that Ralph had floated back to his apartment and showered before returning to work. Somehow, Ralph failed to have a moment in which he said, “Oh, I am wearing pajama pants under my slacks.” He attributed this to the delirium of love. He also recalled what Hans Shruman, parliamentarian of the student government, wrote in his college yearbook:

This is Latin for “always wear underwear.”

A
LL THE WHILE
R
ALPH
reflected, the President continued talking. During this time, Ralph did not pay much attention to the substance of what the President said. He did, however, remain on alert for certain key words and phrases he expected to be uttered, such as “fired,” “disgraced,” and “federal charges.” He heard no such expression. In fact the President seemed to be in the best of spirits. He paid no attention whatsoever to the incriminating underwear. Rather, the President was talking about the situation with the aliens.

“So,” the President said. “After a great deal of soul searching I have decided Len Carlson is right about the visitors to our planet. I prayed long and hard on this question, and God assured me they are most definitely men of faith, and almost certainly Jewish.”

Ralph didn’t know what to say.

He wanted to ask the President whether God had really told him the aliens were Jewish.

What he actually said was: “Yes, Mr. President.”

This is pretty much always a safe thing to say when conversing with the president of the United States.

The President had more to say.

“Ralph,” he continued, “I’ve been thinking a great deal about your place in all of this.”

“Mine, sir?”

“Yes. You have been a faithful servant to me since I took office. No president could have asked for any more loyal service than that which you have rendered to me. I am very grateful to you.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

There was still no mention of the underwear and the President did not seem upset. In fact, he was smiling. He seemed almost playful.

“Now, Ralph, I know you didn’t go to college so you could have a career getting someone’s lunch and taking care of their dry cleaning. I mean you could have gone to Harvard for that, right?”

Ralph smiled, but the President laughed heartily. He had a general anti-elitist sentiment, and a specific distaste for Ivy League
institutions. The President had graduated from a state agricultural college and believed his public education had fundamentally shaped the man he was. He liked nothing better than to poke fun at people who were, as he called it, “the children of educational privilege” almost as much as he liked to make fun of the French. He found these jokes uproariously funny no matter how often he made them, which was often since more than half of the West Wing staff had attended Princeton, Harvard, or Yale. Brown, however, was conspicuously underrepresented.

T
HAT WAS A GRATUITOUS
shot against Brown and I really don’t know why I took it. It seems out of place, so much so that I went back to the section with the aim of deleting it. Instead I ended up leaving the insult and writing this additional section exploring why I wrote the insult in the first place. Even after this further reflection, I have no insight to offer. I think it is an example of one of the many, sometimes hurtful, things we all do in spite of ourselves.

R
ALPH SAID
, “T
HAT’S A
good one, Mr. President.”

Still caught up in the bonhomie and humor of the moment, the President said, “I like you, Ralph. I don’t trust most of these people around me. I don’t trust how they think. I don’t even trust how they dress. You’re a different story. You remind me of me.”

“Sir?”

“You’re an honest kid, Ralph, and you’re relentless. Once you start on a project, you don’t let up until the problem is solved. I like that. I see a lot of myself in you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I have been thinking for some time about elevating your level of responsibility. You can’t spend eight years in the White House just looking after me. You have too much potential. I’m going to start having you do some policy work for Quimble. You’ll do this in addition to your regular duties through the election. If that goes well, you can work full-time in the chief of staff’s office next term.”

“Thank you,” Ralph said, still with an eye on the underwear.

“Quimble is entirely in favor of this. Your official title will be Assistant Chief of Staff. How does that sound?”

“It sounds fine, Mr. President.”

“As your first assignment, I’m appointing you as point person for the logistics of the aliens’ arrival. We need a White House staffer to coordinate the response of the various agencies. Secret Service, State, Defense, and CIA are all going to be involved. I want an honest broker in charge, someone I can trust implicitly, and that’s you, Ralph.” He smiled. “Besides, I don’t want the first person our visitors meet to be some wonk from one of those schools in New Haven or Cambridge. They’ll fly back home tout de suite. I want a regular honest Joe. Someone just like you and me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I have always thought of us as kindred spirits. You know, picking ourselves up by our shoelaces and all.”

“Yes, Mr. President. I’ll do my best, sir.”

The President nodded. “I know you will.”

The President had still more to say.

“There’s one other thing, Ralph. Now that you’re an official member of the executive staff, you’ll have a place in the chain of succession.”

“Sir, I thought only the cabinet was in the line of succession.”

“That’s what everyone thinks,” the President said. “Everyone knows the vice president succeeds the president and after that the Speaker of the House and so on. The list is actually a lot longer. A few years ago I convened a commission on continuity in government. After they issued their recommendations, Congress secretly revised the Presidential Succession Act to include all of Congress and anyone designated by executive order. You know, nuclear Armageddon and all.”

“Sir, aren’t I too young? Don’t you need to be thirty-five to be president?”

“There’s a provision that in the event of a national emergency—defined as the simultaneous death of more than four people in the order of succession—persons are eligible to serve who would otherwise be disqualified because of constitutional infirmities. That’s the lawyer word for it—‘infirmities.’”

“Is that constitutional?”

“Some of the lawyers in the commission asked that. The way we figured it, if something like this ever happened, people wouldn’t be asking a lot of questions.”

Ralph couldn’t argue with that.

T
HE
P
RESIDENT PRESSED THE
button on the intercom. “Lois,” he said, “can you come in?”

Mrs. Dundersinger walked in carrying an executive order, which the President examined after donning his reading glasses, and then signed.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You are now nine hundred forty-ninth in the presidential order of succession.”

“Congratulations,” said Mrs. Dundersinger, and she walked out of the room. She paid no heed to the underwear.

The President stood up from the couch and offered Ralph his hand.

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Ralph said, shaking.

“You’re welcome, Ralph.”

The President walked back to his desk. Ralph understood this as his cue to leave, but could not resist asking the obvious.

“Sir, may I ask a question?”

“Yes, Ralph,” the President said, turning back to face him.

“I’m very grateful for all of this, but why today of all days?”

The President returned to the sofa and lifted the underwear off the couch. “I would be lying,” he said, “if I didn’t say this had something to do with it.”

“Sir?”

“You did it, Ralph. You found the perfect underwear. Someone else might have given up after all this time, but you stuck with it and you succeeded. You demonstrated a tremendous amount of perseverance and great loyalty. These qualities say a lot about a person.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I have to say I was particularly impressed you got me a smaller waist size. When I tried them on earlier this morning, I didn’t think I’d be able to fit into them. But with all the running I have been doing I was able to get into them just fine. I never would have thought of trying a smaller size, but the snugness was exceedingly comfortable. And it’s good incentive to keep up the running. Maybe soon I’ll be as thin as you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know where you’ll be able to get more of these?” the President asked, gesturing to his pants.

“Yes, Mr. President,” Ralph said. “I think I know a place.”