Acid Song

by Bernard Beckett

  ‘A hell of a word, never. She had a round face. Her hair was cut in a sort of pageboy style as I remember it, and she stood out on account of her being a woman. They weren’t unknown in the biology classes, but they were solidly in the minority. She sat near the front, she wore glasses and my notes were poor. She asked a question, of course, I don’t remember what, and I gave the prescribed answer. And that, McCreedy had assured me, would be that.

  ‘I knew something was up when she stayed behind to double check she had the title right. The next day I spied her sitting in the library, halfway through the recommended reading and showing no signs of slowing down. So you know, never take advice from a drunkard. I stayed up most of the night reading the book myself, and the next day Steve Watson visited the campus. History in the end is little more than the careful recording of accidents.’

  Richard stopped. It was the sort of anecdote he enjoyed retelling: capricious, and amusing at his own expense. The older he became, the more his past separated out into these little islands of story. Stories which would come across well enough on film, he imagined. This was his gift, and academically speaking, his weakness too. He had a way of dropping his words in such a pattern that believers could always find what they were looking for.

  ‘So don’t stop there,’ Amanda told him.

  ‘You know the rest.’

  ‘Yes, but the viewers don’t.’

  ‘So you’re still clinging to this viewer fantasy are you?’

  ‘Tell it exactly like you did at Eva’s that time.’

  ‘You should have filmed that.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have let me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  Eva’s was the suburban restaurant where Amanda had first pitched her ambitious plan. At Eva’s he had been drunk. Drunk and flattered, with a full stomach and the celebrations still six months in the future. Had he known then what he knew now, he never would have agreed to any of this. Richard looked for a place to begin, pulled cautiously at a strand and felt his whole head tighten.

  ‘Just whenever you’re ready.’

  ‘I’m looking for a place to start.’

  ‘Just anywhere is fine. That’s why we have editing.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just generate the whole interview digitally? Isn’t that how these things are done nowadays?’

  ‘Would you prefer to be a dinosaur or a gorilla?’

  ‘Make me a mermaid.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘I was thinking of shipwrecks.’

  ‘I thought you had to be somewhere at eleven?’

  ‘I do. Meeting of the penguin research group.’

  ‘Is it interesting?’

  ‘Of course it’s interesting.’

  ‘Let’s get back to Watson.’

  ‘You could use that as the title.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘This documentary.’

  ‘It’s already got a title.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Clash of the Mermaids.’

  Richard smiled. She was bright, Amanda, which was her weakness. Arguments fell into place too easily for her; she had little trouble believing they were solid. It gave her no appreciation of the fault lines that ran through everything.

  ‘Stephen Watson was young, and brilliant, and fêted, and controversial, and English. He was only three years my senior, but whereas I was an antipodean optimist, plotting world domination with my friends on the back of a beer mat, he was already dominating it. His book, Gene Genie, had sold something hideous like a million copies around the world, and that made him a superstar. He was out here on what was essentially a promotional tour. Academic purists sneered, of course; he wasn’t a real researcher, he was simply packaging knowledge, making it accessible to the world beyond the university walls. As if making knowledge accessible wasn’t important work, God help us. I’d read his book with some admiration, and more than a little envy. He was a gifted communicator. He captured that sense of wonder most scientists feel, but few are able to distil.

  ‘But it wasn’t just his popularity that attracted scorn, it was what others perceived to be his politics. Most biologists at the time were content to make their mountains out of molehills; we had by and large observed the old Cartesian demarcation and left humanity to the historians and the poets. Applying evolutionary speculation to humanity was considered not just a little gauche, but also rather dangerous. But not everybody is cowed by convention, and the sociobiology juggernaut was getting up another head of steam. And as Watson had discovered, while wondering out loud about the evolved nature of the human mind might have been frowned upon in academic circles, out in the general public the appetite for such thinking was huge. He told of industrious worker bees, battling seals, faithful voles, and sneaky cheating little birds; and he asked what was then something of a taboo question. Aren’t we a bit like that too? And people bought the book and answered, “Not me, but a lot of people I know”.

  ‘Like any great popularist, Watson went for the controversial and the titillating. He was pushing our buttons quite deliberately, and people either saw him as a breath of fresh air, a welcome antidote to the po-faced dictates of the social sciences; or as a misogynistic, baby-strangling racist. He was young, giddy with power and very good at what he did. And what’s more, he was bringing it here, to our windy little town in the middle of nowhere, a land of friendly flightless birds, hopelessly ill-equipped for the arrival of such a predator.

  ‘Although I must say it didn’t stop us giving our very best. There was a protest outside the lecture theatre, led by a history lecturer who I had flatted with back in our undergraduate days. Susan Russell. She was an attractive woman, which allowed her to scorn those of her sisters who turned to the diets and make-up she never needed. At the protest she had a banner which read “Hitler was a sociobiologist” and a T-shirt she had made herself, with “I am not defined by my biology” scrawled in such a way that you had to pause and regard her breasts to read it. Which I foolishly did. Only when I looked up did I realise who it was I was inadvertently ogling. “What the fuck are you doing going in there?” Susan demanded of me, not unreasonably, and I just had the presence of mind to realise it was my queuing for the lecture, rather than my consideration of her breasts, which she was questioning.

  ‘Inside was more subdued. There was a fair-mindedness about us back then, I think, a desire to see a person given a chance to explain themselves. Watson’s delivery was polished, honed over three months of touring, and the audience was eating out of his hand soon enough; and this included more than one or two attendees who had come in only to show their disapproval. Maybe it’s the carefully cultivated Oxford accent, or the dry laconic style he favours, but Stephen Watson in the flesh is hard to see as the devil.

  ‘He gave us the usual spiel, about the pervasiveness of selection pressures when it comes to crafting complexity, and from there took the usual leap into the dark world of human behaviour. That is, if we accept the brain is complex, then we must accept it too is designed by the same pressures of selection. And if we accept such a mechanism of design, then we must also accept that our behaviour will be drawn towards behaviours which would have favoured reproductive success in the past. Of course one can accept any one of those propositions without being obliged to accommodate the next, but this was more about entertainment than education, and to give him his due, he was very entertaining.

  ‘There was time for questions at the end. The first two he took were patsys. The third was more challenging, from a man I didn’t recognise, who was questioning the observational bias of the field studies Watson was quoting. There are two types of presenters, I have found: those who crumple under pressure, and those who revel in it. Watson of course was the second type. He turned on his accuser with a slow spreading smile.

  ‘“Would you say, Sir, that physics is a reliable science?”

  ‘“As a rule, although obviously mistakes can be made,” the questioner stammered. He realised then his mi
stake, I think.

  ‘“Indeed they can. And do you, on the basis of such mistakes, dismiss the study in question, or the entire field of enquiry? And if it is the former, Sir, as I most sincerely hope that it is, then do you have a specific example of a study I am using where the data has been unduly biased, or were you simply hoping that somewhere along the way I had forgotten to consider such matters as objectivity?”

  ‘I don’t know if they were the words he used precisely, but whatever the exact expression there was a meanness in them that I found surprising, disappointing even. He didn’t need to hurt this man, whom he would never meet nor hear of again; who was in point of fact grappling with a perfectly reasonable question. But Watson clearly had a taste for blood: it was part of the thrill for him. And he was cheating, as any public presenter can. By avoiding the substance of the question the first time around, he was forcing the questioner to put it again, and in doing so to appear dogmatic. If the questioner stays the course, the audience begins to resent them for attempting to monopolise the speaker’s time, and for ignoring the spirit of the event. A subtle sort of peer pressure is brought to bear, and the questioner crumples. I’ve seen it a hundred times. Few of us would ever agree to take questions from the floor were the odds not stacked this way.

  ‘Not surprisingly when Watson scanned the room for his next victim there were fewer hands on offer. One of them was mine. I could make this sound a lot grander than it actually was. But the truth is there was nothing preplanned or aggressive about my query. Rather it was an accident. I simply had a head full of Popper, and a question which I wished to hear answered. And I thought he would have an answer. I wasn’t trying to catch him out.

  ‘Let’s say a hush fell over the place as I stood. I like the sound of it.

  ‘“What,” I enquired, in the slightly over enunciated accent I had cultivated at international conferences, “is the unique prediction regarding human behaviour that this theory makes, against which it can be scientifically tested?”

  ‘It is, if I do say so myself, an excellent question, and perhaps I should explain why.’

  Richard looked to Amanda for permission to digress, and her shrug told him that he could do what he liked, for nothing educational would make it onto the final tape. Although Amanda would deny it, she was in the end one who led with her heart, and followed with her eyes; tailor-made for the age of sound and vision. Richard by contrast was a dinosaur, slow-moving and wary of warm-blooded slogans. He also took a certain pleasure in loitering in the path of progress. Not today though. The cards were all hers.

  ‘“If you had been listening more carefully,” Watson blustered, “you surely wouldn’t ask such a question. What is your field of speciality, Sir?”

  ‘“Mathematics,” I answered, sensing that he was bluffing.

  ‘“Figures,” Watson replied, and obliging laughter rippled as he scanned the auditorium for another question, presumably expecting me to sit down. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. For he hadn’t answered me.

  ‘“I would have been more impressed by that comment Mr Watson,” I rather shouted, drawing attention back to myself, “had you not made the prediction retrospectively. Which brings me back to my question. In what respect can we consider your theory predictive?”

  ‘He turned back to me then, and rolled his eyes, as if this was too tedious a business for him to be wasting any more time on.

  ‘“Look,” he informed the auditorium, letting out an exasperated sigh and running his hand through his foppish Oxford cut. “This complaint has been around since the time of Darwin, and despite being roundly beaten on any number of occasions, it simply refuses to die. I am almost reluctant to add to the punishment, lest it is some form of masochism which keeps it coming back for more.” He paused to give the congregation a moment to appreciate his wit. I waited for the killer blow. “Selection theory predicts that wherever there is complexity, there will be design. It predicts, in human terms, that there will be shared characteristics across cultures, that there will be average tendencies to behave in a certain way, and it predicts that these tendencies will be consistent with reproductive utility in the past. How many more predictions do you want?”

  ‘And still I didn’t sit, because now I smelled a hint of victory. And the very possibility of it, in front of my own, against a combatant of international standing, was simply irresistible.

  ‘“Considerably more predictive than that, Sir, I would respectfully submit,” I told him. “For unless you can show me the competing theory which explicitly predicts no such shared characteristics, or can outline for me right here and now a discovery which would shake your confidence in your theory, I am afraid I find it hard to accept that what you are doing amounts to any sort of science.”

  ‘A little knowledge is, as they say, a dangerous thing, not least because of the appetite it gives one for battle. I didn’t, back then, know what I was talking about, not really: I was just flailing about, seeing what I might hit. And what I hit, by luck not design, was the softest and fleshiest part of his agenda.

  ‘The questions moved on, but he was shaken and his performance suffered. I had become the story, at least in the eyes of those who saw in Stephen Watson a threat to all they held dear.

  ‘Susan of the attentive breasts embraced me as I left the auditorium, and I was whisked away by a group of admirers to a pub off-campus, where we drank and made instant legend of that single brief encounter. And as the empty jugs crowded out our table, we did something even more outrageous. We made plans for a new sort of research centre, an institute where scientists and social scientists would work alongside each other, complementing rather than denying one another’s contribution. I had no idea at the time just how well-connected some of these people were. Before I could properly articulate the how or the why of it, I – along with Susan and an anthropologist by the name of Pipa Whyte – was moving down to Wellington, to establish the country’s first solely academic research institute. It lasted only two years before it was brought under Victoria’s wing, but university politics makes for a dull interview. That in brief is the story of Stephen Watson, and The Institute. A tale of chance in the end. Written perhaps in the stars.’

  Richard leaned back and stretched his arms together above his head.

  ‘And that is all you’re getting for now, unless you are interested in making a film about penguins.’

  ‘Just one last question,’ Amanda replied, ignoring the dismissal as, Richard supposed, journalists must. ‘What, if you were to sum it up in hindsight, is The Institute’s achievement you remain most proud of?’

  ‘I suppose in the end the networks we have established. Internationally, there is a community of ideas, of interest, and we’re part of that. It’s old fashioned to say it I know, but we’re part of the ongoing search for knowledge. Maybe a futile search, but a profoundly human one. Will that do?’

  He’d given that answer so many times over the years that it was polished smooth from the handling. And the smoother it got, the less plausible it became. These days, truth be told, he didn’t believe in it at all.

  ‘YEAH, SO, UM, see ya then.’

  Ollie allowed himself only a quick scan of Sophie’s face to make sure she wasn’t crying, then looked again to his feet. He kicked at the ground, and waited for her to say something. Waited to be released. People swarmed all around, laughing, complaining, squealing, pushing their way past. If it were anyone else, Sophie might have thought he planned for it to happen this way, right at the end of lunchtime, at the bottleneck at the bottom of the stairs. She wouldn’t scream here. She wouldn’t break down. She wouldn’t plead or make a scene. But she knew Ollie didn’t plan things. If he was asked, if he was forced to think about it, he might even be able to imagine himself as the victim. That she just happened to him. Saturday night, at the party, it just happened. What she had thought of as his cool was something else, she saw that now. It was just unbothered. Too unbothered to say no, and then later, when the sex and the alcoho
l had both faded, too unbothered to answer his mates, when they asked, ‘So what’s the deal with Sophie?’ (What deal man? There’s no deal.)

  He did it this way. He was coming down the stairs while everybody else was going up, finishing a lunchtime detention probably, planning on a session up at the pines as compensation. He saw her. She happened to be there. He grabbed her arm, slowed her down, forced her to take in his smile. His easy, casual, nothing-happening face.

  ‘Hey, Sophie.’

  ‘Hi.’ She smiled back, felt it warm her.

  He launched straight into it, as if it was a thought that had only just this moment come to him. Which was possible.

  ‘Hey, about the other night, that didn’t, like, just checking you knew that didn’t mean nothing right?’

  ‘What? Nah, of course not.’

  Naked beneath him, terrified, wishing he would say something, wishing he would at least look her in the eyes, hoping it wasn’t the sort of park people would walk through, late at night. And if she couldn’t have any of that, then wishing she could be drunk like he was, as a way of deadening the disappointment. Why would it mean anything? What did he think she was, stupid?

  Sophie shrugged, raised a single eyebrow, a move she had perfected in front of the mirror in Year Nine. Not for this. She’d had bigger plans for the eyebrow.

  ‘Right, sweet.’ Ollie nodded sagely, like an old man appreciating the late revelation of life’s pattern. Only he was sixteen, with a pimple forming between his eyes and oil glistening on his forehead. The nod he had picked up from a music video.

  ‘Yeah, so, um, see ya then.’

  ‘See ya.’ She smiled. The effort of it fractured fault lines in her brain.

  Ollie bobbed against the tide a moment, then regained his momentum, his shoulders rolling out towards the door. The air. Freedom.