by Curtis Hox
She could see the quad through the windows behind the receptionist. Bright, summer sunlight suggested all the promise of a new beginning, or end.
Hattie had not fully recovered from her last transition, which had taken longer than the first. While Masumi prepared by reading Hugo, Hattie had lain in bed all morning and into the afternoon before she felt good enough to meet.
Academic integrity hearing.
Riodola University had been incorporated in 1866, a year after Cornell, as a competitor of the non-sectarian troublemaker in upstate New York. She was proud that Riodola modeled itself on mavericks who saw a need for the modern research university. What began as a personal project of Alfonse Riodola turned into a profitable and honorable institution made up of eleven colleges with enough prestige to compete with the Ivy League.
Science, of course, became its focus in mid-century when the Soviets launched Sputnik. With its rise, the classics suffered defeats from which they had never recovered. Sadly, they’d been retreating ever since, she would tell you. In protest of this decline, two deans were replaced, the last quietly after a suicide by hanging. The other traditional liberal arts, though, remained fonts of learning at Riodola even when the N.P.B. began to force the most difficult of questions to the front, especially when a young, eager professor, Dr. Harriet Sterling, arrived.
The board had censured faculty before—the last one a biology associate professor who liked high-grade alcohol sipped from beakers. But they had never met to discuss something similar to what happened last week.
What happened? They wanted to know.
Hattie prepared herself to meet Riodola’s ad hoc Committee for Academic Integrity. Eliot had already been censured the previous day. They recommended that he not be offered his chair next semester, as well as seriously considered whether to keep his research facilities at Riodola.
Riodola, though, did everything discreetly and privately. His censure would be implemented as quietly as possible. He’d told her what had happened through e-mail this morning, too dejected to see her in person after her transition. She hadn’t ask for any advice. He’d had none to give.
The door opened, and President Janet Fevereau ushered Hattie in. She was a finely dressed middle-aged woman, not much older than Hattie, but taller.
“Welcome,” President Fevereau said, extending an outstretched arm that ended in a delicate hand with finely manicured nails. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Dr. Sterling.”
Hattie shook the hand, then followed the president to the end of a long, oval table around which sat Dean Edwards with enough of a frown you’d think a pet had died.
Hattie also saw several provosts and three other college deans, two regents, and a few important faculty members she recognized but didn’t know well. And Dr. Stephan Ross, the only one with a smile.
“Dr. Sterling, we won’t take up too much of your time,” the president said. The red light of a recording device in the center of the table clicked on. “Tell us what really happened at your press conference.”
“Do you mind telling me why this formal meeting is being called?”
No one answered at first, as if unsure what to say. Stephan fidgeted in his chair, obviously wanting to speak but following protocol.
“Your and Dr. Brandeis’s actions have cost the university.” The president nudged a few newspapers that lay on the table. “The science press is unsure whether we allowed this stunt for publicity or because we don’t have control of our faculty.”
Hattie had ignored the press lately, confident they couldn’t deny what they had seen.
“It wasn’t a stunt.”
A few barely stifled grunts escaped from the table. Stephan glared hatred. The president maintained a cordial smile.
“What was it then?”
Hattie calmed herself with another deep breath and imagined the worst; she accepted the possibility they might even take her tenure.
Take it.
She didn’t need them anymore.
She had all the pieces to the puzzle. For a moment she considered incanting right there and conjuring up the tulip petal (except she didn’t know any enactment elements off hand, and probably couldn’t remember the incantation anyway). She should have practiced, she realized.
No, Hattie thought. Better to remain professional, academic; scaring them would only reinforce their desire for a witch hunt.
“As real as real gets,” she said. “I want it officially recognized that I am not denying what happened. I maintain full sincerity in my claims.” Even the president appeared stunned by this direct response. “I was expecting my university’s full support. Are you telling me that because of a fiscal issue in the sciences, a liberal arts professor should be held responsible?”
There, she’d said it. She’d demanded an answer for an unstated and unfair relationship the university had had for decades.
One major difference between Riodola and other major, secular research institutions was that Riodola encouraged its liberal arts faculty to resist the impulse toward quantifiable standards of academic excellence. Most considered this a blessing because it freed Riodola from stultifying disciplinary myopia. A liberal arts committee that refused quantifiable constraints, in fact, had created the Cultural Studies cluster program, and it worked. But the liberal arts also got less money than the sciences because of this freedom.
Stephan raised his hand. The president nodded.
“This is an issue of academic integrity,” he said. “Some of us here think you’re a fraud, Hattie.” A subtle hiss issued from a few less-convinced individuals. “I think you are.”
President Fevereau raised her hand. “Stephan—”
“She’s perpetrated a hoax on the back of our university. I call for her immediate resignation.”
The table awoke as several people tried to mollify him. A few, mostly the deans and the regents, sat quietly, obviously in agreement.
Hattie stood straight. “I will not.” And then, “Is that it?”
President Fevereau stood. “Unless you have anything else—”
Hattie leaned forward, knuckles on the table, and glared with such naked animosity Stephan snapped his mouth shut.
“Real,” she said, “every bit of it as real as the blinkered science Stephan Ross advocates. Good day, everyone. Stephan, I’ll see you at the symposium.”
Hattie gracefully exited the conference room, then hurried out of the building.
She tried not to run, but couldn’t resist. She shuffled along the quad, trying not to be noticed. She eventually forced herself to walk, even though the image of Stephan Ross and the administrators had burned into her brain as if each one had taken a hot poker and smashed it through her skull.
Hattie hadn’t felt this angry, not at anything, in years. She stifled a curse. The thought of their impudence was more than she could handle. I’m right. They’re wrong. Why should I suffer? She ran the scenarios through her mind, wondering what she would do if they closed the library. She’d have to remove the portal. She had a perfect interpolation for deconstructing it, so she thought …
If she couldn’t, then what? She’d have to hire someone to drywall over it.
These thoughts kept her busy all the way back to the library, where she found Alice in the atrium, reading a paperback with a torn cover.
“Have you heard from Masumi?” Hattie asked as she approached Alice’s table.
Alice tried not to frown.
“No.”
Hattie peeked at the book. “What are you reading?” Alice presented a beat-up trade version of Gone with the Wind. Hattie said, “Civil War, Alice, really? That should be interesting.”
“I hope.”
“Are you ready?”
“I get to go?”
“Soon.”
Hattie looked around.
Such potential. To lose it now …
She needed something to convince the university.
Hattie sat at the reading table in the brightly lit place a
nd let her eyes glaze over, staring at the soft light coming from the windows in the ceiling. “Keep reading. You’ll have to be fully immersed when you begin.”
Alice nodded eagerly and returned to her task.
Hattie knew she faced the first moral test of her Society. What should the N.P.B. be used for? Definitely not personal gain, nor wealth, nor political power. Knowledge, yes, but protected knowledge, responsible knowledge. Yet she and Eliot might lose their homes in the university because the world wasn’t ready for their insights.
She hadn’t formalized the rules yet, she knew. And now she might break them.
She had to break them.
Hattie withdrew her cell phone and dialed the president’s office. She left a message with the receptionist: “My institute has been promised a handsome endowment for the further examination of the N.P.B. I’ll gladly put this money up to offset any loses from me and Dr. Brandeis.”
The president called her back within minutes.
“How much will be needed to assure both my and Eliot’s good standing?” Hattie asked.
“Fifteen million over four quarters,” the president said, “should cover it.” Her tone suggested she thought reaching such a sum was impossible.
“Fifteen million,” Hattie said, through clenched teeth. “Give me some time. I’ll have the endowment written up. It’ll be for the pursuit of culture science.” She waited, hoping to avoid any resistance.
“Fine,” the president replied. “Eliot will work with you next semester, then. His labs are done. For fifteen million you get your Culture Science Department in Landash.”
“I understand.”
Hattie hung up.
“Fifteen million dollars?” Alice asked.
Hattie hushed her. “Not a word about that, to anyone. Agreed?”
“Of course.”
She knew a wide grin had spread across her face because Alice asked, “What?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
I’ll tell her later.
Hattie realized how easy this could be.
Her novel.
Yes, her unpublished novel, so rich in detail already, would contain a new chapter at the end.
All she needed to do was write a vignette in which she wanders into an empty apartment and finds fifteen million dollars … wait, finds what exactly? Cash? Bullion? She realized she had no idea how to even visualize such tender. Could she physically carry gold worth that much? She had seen a movie once in which bearer bonds in millions were carried around in a suitcase. She had no idea how to write about such things.
No, she needed another solution: a simple donation to her institute of an uncut diamond as large as an egg. Such a massive stone, after cutting and polishing, would surely cover her debt to the university and leave plenty left over. An anonymous gift left in a safety deposit box … Hattie relaxed, finally, and imagined a time when her Society would be fully established in the vanguard of defining the new science. Then, maybe she could complete her ultimate goals. So many possibilities to consider—ultimately, knowledge put to humanistic ends. But first, the investigation of the portal as a tool to save her Society, then understanding, then wisdom.
* * *
Masumi walked in carrying her Hugo. She saw Dr. Sterling and Alice sitting quietly. She had chosen a suitable place in the text with no conflict or high drama—daytime, in front of the cathedral on its island. She would arrive on a peaceful morning in which Quasimodo dreams of Esmeralda.
“I’m ready,” Masumi announced. “Any advice?”
Before they could answer, she walked for the stairwell.
Alice and Dr. Sterling hurried after her.
Masumi wouldn’t be slowed because she didn’t want to be dissuaded. She had tired of the charade. If this were to work, she had read enough.
When they arrived in the office, Dr. Sterling wrung her hands. “Alice, help her remove the books.”
This ritual took only minutes before they revealed the door behind the bookcase.
Masumi didn’t pause as she pushed on the handle, the novel still under her arm.
“Stay only a minute or so,” Dr. Sterling said, “just until you’re sure. You’ll see the way back.”
Masumi pulled the door open and walked into the dark corridor.
“You’ll need this,” Dr. Sterling said. She rummaged around in her desk, then pulled out a flashlight. “Just for when the door shuts. I should put some candles in there.”
Masumi clicked on the hefty Maglite. “See you soon.”
She shut the door, then walked away without the slightest fear, only the faintest hint that what she was doing was insane.
Not if it were true, she thought; not if.
Masumi stood before the other door, flashlight beaming, and noted its rough exterior of handmade clapboards. She steeled herself for whatever she might discover, even the harsh reality of a hoax. She would not allow herself to expect the opposite. If she did and she were to believe … she’d feel more than foolish. She grabbed the cold, iron handle and turned it. She pushed on the door.
It opened with no hint that anything but darkness awaited. The space widened. Masumi felt compelled forward. The magnificence began with a blinding light and rushing sound. Before she could step back (she managed only the paltry lifting of a foot) she stood on wet, uneven cobbles.
Masumi entered a brightly lit morning surrounded by two and three-story tumble-down, stone tenement buildings with shuttered windows and thatched roofs. She stood in a wide square, a few goats rummaging nearby in a pile of trash that stank of rotten fruit. On the opposite side, several skeletal human beings in rags slept in the shade of a large cherry tree.
The sun was rising just above the buildings in front of her. Masumi turned around and faced Notre Dame de Paris before its debasement at the hands of the Romantic restorers or its reimagining by royalists. The stones of the cathedral were daubed in wide swaths of lichen. Moss and ivy grew on the southern tower, even spreading across the facade. The cathedral had fallen into disarray, but there it was.
She took a few steps, kicking up dust, and saw a faint outline of a human shape.
The portal.
For a moment, Masumi felt dizzy. She couldn’t focus and almost went to a knee. Instead, she walked to keep standing. An old woman led a mule pulling a wain with empty pewter crockery that jangled and competed with the sounds of hoofs on cobbles.
She began to feel better and found a rotting wooden bench canted at an angle. She nearly sat on a splinter, but probably wouldn’t have minded. She still carried her paperback. She tossed it in her bag.
Someone across the square, maybe a shop owner, spotted her and stared as if he saw a ghost. The old man barely reached five feet and looked to be all arms, feet, knees. Deep-set eyes stared at her from behind a bushy face of hair.
Time to get going, she thought, before someone speaks to me.
Masumi reached down and grabbed a jagged piece of slate in the weeds. She put it in her bag.
She still saw the faint outline of the portal. She waved to the old man, who continued to glare, now mumbling a silent prayer.
He watched as the strangely dressed, odd-looking girl walked toward the cathedral and disappeared. For three generations after that day, stories were told in his family of the ghost in the square who waved and smiled and looked like a foreign princess.
* * *
Just seeing Masumi’s face, Hattie knew that she had made the journey, though only a few seconds had passed. Alice guided Masumi to an empty chair.
“Relax and breathe,” Hattie said. “You’re all right. It’ll pass.”
Masumi shut her eyes. “Must be VR,” she mumbled. “Some ultra-sophisticated technology. The doorway triggers the environment.” She stopped talking to catch her breath.
“Whatever it is, it’s real,” Hattie said. “What did you bring back?”
Masumi pointed to her bag, and Hattie rifled through it: the Maglite, a few pens, a notepad, the paperback …
She handed the book to Alice. “It’ll be in there. Find it.”
Alice began flipping pages and found the prize in under a minute.
She showed it to Masumi. Clearly marked among a patch of dingbats was the simple phrase, a happy stone.
Masumi closed her eyes in acceptance and nodded.
“Help her up,” Hattie said. They led her to a spare apartment furnished with only a bed, pillow, and end table. “This’ll do.”
They turned off the light and shut the door, leaving Masumi in her dreamy, fugue-like state.
“How long have you been reading?” Hattie asked Alice.
“Two days.” She perked up. “Nonstop.”
“You’ll need to change into a dress …”
“Masumi went in shorts.”
“She only planned to stay a few minutes.”
“Oh … right.”
“Get changed, Alice.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Alice said, and hurried down the hall.
Once crossed over, Alice would not return as quickly as Masumi had. Alice probably wanted to see Scarlett and Rhett—and perhaps Ashley as well—and would definitely want to poke around Tara a bit.
However, Masumi had reacted just as Hattie had imagined she would: with celerity and a keen desire to understand. Masumi had seen all she needed to see. The interpolation in the book, whatever it was, would fasten the truth to the experience.
If Masumi wanted it incanted, that wouldn’t be a problem. Hattie grabbed her cell phone and dialed Eliot. His answering machine picked up.
“Eliot, what’s your favorite novel?”
* * *
Eliot didn’t answer because he sat hunched between two burly men in the back of an unmarked car heading God knows where. He had left the university and driven to Alpine, New Jersey, to dig up some old contacts in his Rolodex.
He had decided to stop for a soda at a local grocery store, and as he got out of the car, a big, dark SUV pulled up; then two, large men in suits approached. One said something about being from some federal agency and asked him to accompany them. Eliot followed his first instinct to trust authority and took a step toward the car. In the next instant, he was rudely thrust inside. Once the doors were shut and locked, they drove away. When they forced a black sack on his head, he knew he was in trouble.