Analog SFF, March 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Stuck in traffic on the way home an hour later, it came to him that the pitcher held a quart and he knew for a fact that he'd used less than a fourth of it after filling it that morning, leaving ... what, twenty-four, twenty-five ounces or so? Round that down to twenty, just to be on the safe side. Yet that same afternoon there had been only two or three ounces remaining.

  He frowned. Call it eighteen ounces of water evaporating in one day—less than a day—six hours, tops. Must be some pretty dry air in his office to empty the pitcher that rapidly. No wonder the poor spider plant looked so bad.

  * * * *

  The next morning, he was hailed as he was unlocking the door to his office. “Hey, Chris!”

  Arken pushed the door open and reached inside to toss his briefcase on the visitor's chair before turning. “'Morning, Bob. How're you doing?”

  “Great, man, great! We've finally managed to get that phase change to work.” Bob Tindall had spent the past eighteen months trying to improve the efficiency and color temperature of LEDs.

  “Then that means—”

  “Exactly! We'll be able to get a true paper-white LED.”

  Arken stuck out his hand. “Well, congratulations! I'll buy you a beer to celebrate.”

  Tindall grinned widely. “Better you should buy one for Nigel. I'm telling you, that kid's going places. Best grad student I've ever had.”

  “One for each of you, then,” Arken promised. “Tonight?”

  Tindall squinted, staring at nothing. “Uh, yeah, that'll work for me—I'm free this evening. I'll track down Nigel and see if he's got any plans.”

  “Let me know if it's okay,” Arken said. “I'm always open.”

  A brief look of sympathy passed over his friend's face. “Yeah, I know. But, hey, we'll get you out for some fresh air tonight.” Tindall hurried off down the hall, leaving behind an intangible air of busy energy.

  Arken entered his office. The first thing he did was to check the spider plant. Nicely moist soil and the plant itself had perked up. The pitcher was about as full as he remembered it being from the previous afternoon. The morning had dawned overcast and a light rain had begun as he'd driven into town. If the plant hadn't improved, he'd planned on setting it outside for a good soaking, but now he wouldn't have to.

  He shrugged, picked up his notes, and left for his eight o'clock lecture.

  * * * *

  Kenny Burton was waiting for Arken after class. “Professor, I know it's not office hours, but I wanted to ask you a quick question.”

  Arken reached in his pocket for his key and unlocked his office door. “As long as it doesn't take too long, Kenny.”

  He was speaking over his shoulder as he said this, but something in the student's expression made him turn. He blinked. Then blinked again. The glass in his office window had shattered, allowing rain to spatter in. Plaster had spalled off the outside wall in irregular patterns, leaving only bare lath. Part of the ceiling near the wall had collapsed. The room was a mess, with plaster dust everywhere, all over his desk, his papers, his ... spider plant? It was dead. Absolutely, irrevocably dead. Brown, desiccated leaves had fallen to the floor from shriveled stems. How the hell could the thing be dead? It had been doing fine before he left to teach class.

  Kenny gazed in wonder at the faint haze of dust hanging in the air. “Uh, Professor, if this isn't a good time, I can come back later.” He paused, then finished hesitantly, “I mean, I know it isn't office hours ... and ... well, I'll come back later.” He left hurriedly.

  Arken stared at the remains of the spider plant. Truth be known, he'd come to the conclusion that the ugly thing was unkillable. To have it expire so quickly and completely was a boon from his point of view, but he had the sneaking suspicion that there was a price yet to be paid.

  As fate would have it, that reckoning was to be sooner rather than later. “Chris?” came a feminine voice from behind him. “I've got your mail. Something came in that looked important, so I thought I'd bring it—”

  He turned to see Marsha, the departmental secretary. Her eyes widened as she looked past him into his office. “Ohmigod! What happened?”

  Arken shrugged. “I don't know. I just finished my eight o'clock and came back to find this.” He gestured vaguely at the mess. “It must have happened within the last few minutes or the dust would have settled.”

  Her eyes locked on something and he knew with dreadful certainty what was coming next. “Oh, and the spider plant!” She turned hurt eyes on him. “Didn't you water it?” She pushed past him, leaving smudged footprints in the dust on the floor. She tested the soil with her finger and said in an accusing tone, “Why, it's dry as a bone! Men! Can't even take care of a simple plant.” She flounced out, insulted.

  “Maybe the plaster dust poisoned it,” he said to her retreating back. The words sounded lame, even to him.

  But then his eyes stole to the pitcher. It was empty. Nothing but a faint brown haze towards the bottom showed that it had ever contained water at all. And it had been over half full just before class.

  Really dry air.

  * * * *

  Maintenance showed up while he was still trying to dust off the papers on top of his desk. He knew the man vaguely, having spoken to him once about a flickering light in the corridor. Tom, Bill, Jack, some common name, but for the life of him he couldn't remember which one.

  “Whoa! Good one, Prof.”

  As though it was something Arken had done on purpose. He caught himself on the verge of saying something rude to the man. “How long to fix it?”

  From the way the maintenance man flinched, his tone must have been sharper than he'd intended. “Don't know, man. Never seen a wall let loose like that.” He spent a minute prodding at the wall, causing more bits of loose plaster to fall, then turned to face Arken. “You'd better get your things together. We're going to have to see about moving you somewhere while we fix this. It's going to get messy.”

  Arken threw down a book in disgust. It raised a cloud of fine, choking dust, setting him to coughing. Clearly, the room was a health hazard. “Get messy?” he complained. “Looks like we've already achieved messy status.”

  The maintenance man nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, it'll be a pain, no matter how you look at it. We'll have to call someone in who does walls. All I can do is grab some plastic sheeting and put it over the window to keep any more rain from coming in.”

  Arken sighed. “Okay. Let me start packing things up.”

  * * * *

  Christopher Arken actually preferred that people use his full first name, but he could never bring himself to correct those who shortened it to Chris. It was a small matter in the great scheme of things, but all the same it annoyed him. His wife, Mindy, had called him Christopher from the first day he'd met her. In some mysterious manner, she had intuited his desire and had never once called him Chris. When she'd died, he'd found their home too choked with memories. He'd sold it and moved into an apartment, telling himself that it would be easier to clean.

  The ease of cleaning aspect was going to factor heavily into his evening's work. He had a row of paper bags sitting on the floor. Plaster dust had settled over absolutely everything in his office and he'd brought home an assortment of cardboard boxes and bags containing all the books and papers and oddments that he had accumulated over his career. Every piece he pulled out of the bags sent more dust drifting through the air in his apartment. He had the vacuum going and was using the little round fuzzy brush attachment to go over everything. He'd already had to change the filter once and was on the verge of needing to do so again. It was amazing how fine the dust was.

  Arken's back was stiff from hunching over for so long. The clock said it was after nine, which made it almost three hours that he'd been vacuuming things. It seemed like forever. Time for a break. After dropping a stack of cleaned paperwork on the kitchen table, he stepped across to the kitchenette and filled a glass with water. On his way back past the table, he happened to notice that the pa
pers he'd cleaned were yellow in comparison to the pages of a novel he'd left open on the table the night before.

  He frowned. Surely he'd done a better job of cleaning off the dust than that. Rubbing a finger on the yellowed sheets, however, did not produce much in the way of dust. Nor did it whiten the page.

  Curiouser and curiouser. Arken pulled up a chair and sat. He took the top sheet off the pile and examined it closely. An ordinary piece of paper. It just happened to be slightly yellowed. Not enough to be obvious until it was seen against something white as a reference. Of course, the paper used in novels wasn't all that white—more of a light grayish-cream color. So if something appeared yellow compared to that standard, it must be really yellow.

  He stood and went to his computer. Pulling a fresh sheet of paper from a ream sitting next to his laser printer, he returned. Seen against a new, white sheet of paper, the yellowing was even more obvious, trending towards the color of parchment.

  Okay, so what yellows paper? Well, exposure to chemicals could do it. Nitric acid, perhaps hydrochloric ... but there had been no smell in his office, and either would have left a pungent calling card. Rephrase the question: What is odorless that would yellow paper? That took a moment's thought, but ultraviolet light seemed like a good candidate. So where would the ultraviolet light come from? The fluorescent lights in the ceiling? True, fluorescent lights put out some UV, but not enough to yellow paper in a matter of days. And short of applying the entire output of the lights as heat, there was absolutely no way they could evaporate a nearly full pitcher of water in a mere ninety minutes.

  Which left him with a yellowed piece of paper, a failed hypothesis, and a large pile of dusty things that still needed vacuuming. He shrugged and went back to work.

  * * * *

  As fate would have it, word of his mishap had spread among his students and in consequence Christopher Arken acquired a great deal of perverse interest. A greater than usual number of students—including several he was certain needed no help with physics—came to office hours in his new “office” which was, in fact, a hastily cleaned out storage room on the third floor. Most of them were content with one visit, but each had to be seen, regardless of whether they were there with serious questions or not. Fortunately, the novelty wore off quickly.

  What didn't wear off so quickly was the discomfort and inconvenience of being shoehorned into a narrow space that barely provided enough room for him to push back from his desk. Arken was getting quite a collection of bruises on his shins from maneuvering around the desk on the way in and out. His books had been haphazardly stored in a motley collection of cardboard boxes that now lined one wall of the storeroom. His student visitors invariably chose to perch on the cardboard boxes rather than sit in the awkwardly positioned visitor's chair, leading to a certain amount of wear and tear on the boxes. Arken could only hope that the books inside the boxes were taking the punishment gracefully.

  He'd been in too much of a hurry on the way in to work that morning to stop by his old office and check on progress, so when lunch finally rolled around he walked down the nearest flight of stairs. Luck was with him and the red-headed leader of the workmen was just leaving, pulling the door to behind him.

  Arken explained who he was and asked for an update. The red-headed man pushed the door open and showed him the naked lath. “We finished getting the plaster off the wall this morning. Normally, we'd leave anything that was sound, but in this case, we're going to put up wallboard, so we wanted the lath completely clear.”

  “So what happened?” Arken asked.

  “Well, when the brick let loose, it—”

  “Wait a minute ... what brick?”

  The workman raised an eyebrow. “You didn't know the brick fell off the outside of this wall, here?”

  Arken shook his head. “No, this is the first I've heard of it. I wasn't in here when it happened and I don't normally walk around that side of the building.”

  “And no one told you? Huh! Okay, the brick on the wall outside your office broke apart and fell. Not entire bricks, just the outer half-inch or so. Split away from the wall and fell to the ground. An area about fifteen feet in diameter. It is, bar none, the single weirdest thing I've ever seen. One brick—okay, you might could see how one brick might have had a crack in it or something, but for a whole round section of the wall to let go...” He shook his head in wonder. “Anyway, the vibration from that must have been what knocked your plaster down. Broke the window, too, but that's already fixed. Had a glazier come by and put new glass in.”

  “Wow, I'm glad I wasn't in here when it happened. Probably would have scared me to death,” Arken said.

  The man nodded in agreement. “I imagine so. Anyway ... got some masons coming to tear out what's left of the old brick and put in new. ‘Course, it won't look the same, being as how it's impossible to match old brick like you've got here, but at least it'll keep the weather out. They're worried that the cement will have let go—the rest of the brick might just up and fall out entirely one of these days.”

  “So how long will it take to get all this back together?”

  The workman scratched his head. “Lemme see. Take another day to get the wallboard up and tape the joints. In a house, we'd take longer, but an office like this we just slap-and-go.”

  Arken grimaced. “Sounds encouraging.”

  “Hey, man, we offered to do the full do-rah, but they just wanted to get your room back together as soon as possible.”

  “And paint?” Arken prompted.

  “Oh, yeah. That'll be another couple days.” He patted the doorjamb. “We should have you fixed up by next Tuesday or so. Wednesday at the latest. I'm not sure when the brick guys are getting here, but other than some noise and people outside your window, there's no reason you can't move back into your office as soon as the paint's done. It's not like you're running around naked in here or anything, so as long as you aren't worried about privacy I'd say that you can plan on being back in here the middle of next week.”

  Arken thanked him and left.

  Part of him was glad that the workmen would be done sooner rather than later. The other part was miffed that the department didn't consider him worth however much extra money it would cost to get the “full do-rah,” whatever that might mean.

  The bright side was that he'd secretly been wishing they would paint his office for several years now. Willy-nilly, he was going to get new paint. He just hoped that they chose a tasteful color.

  * * * *

  Knowing that his office would be back in service soon made the cramped storage space easier to tolerate. His exile to the third floor became more like a camping trip—a temporary privation to be proud of, rather than something to complain about. Arken was already practicing lines in his mind, simple throwaways like, “Oh yes, back when my office wall exploded...” After all, it wasn't a tale that his colleagues could easily match. Their lives were unutterably boring and mundane, unlike his. After all, who among them could brag that their office wall had collapsed? Put in those terms, it all seemed rather silly, but it brought a smile to his face nonetheless.

  With that, his mood improved and he started finding humor in the situation. He welcomed the students who dropped by during office hours with an airy, “Enjoy the view,” even though the storeroom had no window. He got some strange looks, but a few went along with the gag, pretending that they could see through the wall all the way over to the center of town, nearly two miles away.

  He had never spent much time on the third floor. Nothing against the place, it was just that he wasn't in the habit of climbing the extra flight of stairs unless there was a need. Now that he found himself on third with a few extra minutes to kill before his Thursday 11:00 lecture, he thought it might be interesting to take the long way around and tour the floor.

  Phillips Hall, the physics building, had originally been two separate, parallel buildings back in the early twentieth century. The long axis of the buildings was east-west. In 1957, the
two buildings had been joined across their eastern ends with a new, third wing. At the time, the building had been a marvel of modernity, but now it was a worn-out shoe that no longer fit twenty-first century science. Any research that required more than a modest amount of electricity was restricted to either the dank basement or the first floor. The ceiling had been almost completely removed from the basement, allowing orderly ranks of electrical conduits to run along the joists, either to the basement laboratories, or to the floor directly underneath the first floor labs.

  Christopher Arken had been assigned a second floor office in the south arm of Phillips Hall for exactly that reason. He was a theoretician, not an experimentalist, and was content with a functioning computer terminal. It worked to his advantage, in that he was graced with a view of the outside world, even if it was bounded by the north arm of the building. He was not one to complain that the walk running between the two wings and through the east wing was a favored route for the coeds living in the dorm just to the west.

  Other than the purely practical division between theoretical and experimental work, there was neither rhyme nor reason to the assignment of offices, either by floor or by wing. Eigen was here on third, helping to raise the temperature of effective superconductors. Sanchez was on first, but in the other wing, doing much the same thing, though from an experimental point of view. Wellington was tucked down in the basement, diddling with time. First floor had Marchall-Wingert and his elaborate vacuum chamber, playing with vapor deposition of alloys on ceramic substrates in an attempt to create new semiconductors. When he'd first arrived, Arken had wondered why people weren't arranged in a more logical manner. As time went on, he saw that it was part random availability as offices came open and part inspired cross-fertilization to keep researchers from growing stale.

  Arken walked along the hallway, noting that it was almost a carbon copy of the second floor. No surprise there. The east connecting wing was sufficiently different in design that it stood out from the south and north wings, both on the outside and inside. Although somewhat newer, the rooms were smaller and newer members of the faculty were assigned offices here, side-by-side with display cases full of dusty old cloud chambers and poorly labeled X-ray diffraction prints.