Free As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem

conclusions. At some point the teams will converge on the actual truth. We’ll know what we’re looking at here.”
    “Results,” said Braxia gravely.
    “And so you need my help with Alice,” I said.
    Soft winced again. He wanted me to call her
Professor Coombs
. “More than that,” he said. “We’re inviting your presence. Work closely with Professor Coombs, with Carmo and the Italians, with myself, and look for correspondences we’re missing. Things we’re too close to see. Your kind of thing. And use your influence to keep Professor Coombs on an even keel. Focused, but not … obsessive.”
    Braxia had pulled a tuft of stuffing out of the torn arm of his chair and was holding it up quizzically to the light.
    “What if I were to submit a competing claim for time,” I said, improvising. “Representing, say, the concerns of the interdisciplinary faction. Sociological, psychological, even literary concerns. I’d represent the community of the bewildered, theexcluded. I think yesterday’s demonstration proves the existence of my constituency. Would that be compatible with your time-share format?”
    Soft looked like he was trying to swallow his Adam’s apple. “I see no problem there,” he managed to say. “Put in your claim. We’ll run it through the usual review process.”
    “What’s important, my dear fellow, is that we get some physics done. We understand your Professor Coombs is feeling unwell. We extend our best wishes. Until she is ready to utilize her time we propose to offer a further exchange.” Braxia rustled in his pockets, pulled out a single folded sheet, and opened it. “For every additional weekly hour past the initial allotment,” he read, “one additional square foot of observation space in the Pisa facility. After an additional ten hours weekly, the rate changes to six additional inches per additional square hour.”
    “I don’t think Alice will consider any concessions.”
    “Here.” Braxia handed me the paper. “You will have our offer at hand. That is all I ask. The exchange is no concession. We have a very desirable facility—ask Soft. Four thousand events per run. A very nice machine. Explain it to him, Soft.”
    “They have a very nice machine,” said Soft. “The envy of the international community.”
    “Not anymore,” I said.

Soft had Lack’s chamber sealed off during the reorganization, leaving Alice to founder in the apartment. She never went out. I would come home to find her dazedly channel-surfing, or stirring a can of condensed chowder to life on the stove, or fallen asleep on the couch, a notepad clutched to her chest, pages blank. We didn’t talk. We avoided each other. I slept on the couch and was awake and out of the house before she even stirred. She and the blind men dined together, I ate separately. The apartment was a museum of unspoken words.
    Finals were faintly visible on the event horizon, and students began making pilgrimages to my office to ask about their status, negotiate extra-credit assignments, beg extensions on work already due, or plead for outright mercy. I started pinning notes to my door. I employed the uncertainty principle, offered only fleeting glimpses of my trajectory. The coffee machine, secondfloor, between three-fifteen and three-twenty, Wednesday. Walking across the east lawn toward the parking lot, eleven-forty-five, Monday. With correction fluid I shortened my phone number in the posted directories to six digits.
    The Italian team appeared, led by Braxia. They took over a table in the far corner of the faculty cafeteria, chattering in the incomprehensible double language of Italian and Physics. Lackwatch vanished, or was suppressed. Soft’s stature was restored. He could again be seen striding through hallways like a comet with a tail of students, his brow knit, his finger cutting a swath through the air.
    That morning forest fires to the north produced a carpet of ash that reddened the skies. The sun glowed orange