The Karma Booth

by Jeff Pearce

  Before the others could be sure exactly who he meant, he was already moving on, walking up the aisle and stopping in the middle.

  “Some of you are hiding. You think education is camouflage, and a degree is a passport. Perhaps. But in this room, you will learn to think. And your understanding of what a nation is, what power is, will be broadened as we go along. For instance, how many people here believe in non-violence?”

  There was a substantial show of hands from the seats. Tim let out a cruel laugh.

  “What a delightful bunch of liberal pussies!”

  There was more nervous laughter at this, but above it all was a new whispered chatter over his language.

  “Oh, my words are offensive? They’re sexist? If you can’t handle words, how can you possibly help a man tortured in a cell or who’s got a rifle to his head? Every political action in history began as an extreme. Passive resistance is passive.”

  “That’s not true!” piped up a girl in the seventh row. “People filled Tiananmen Square and—”

  “And what, Ms. Wong? They sat. Woooowwww! And when the tanks rolled in a few thousand of your distant relatives got shot. As I recall, you told me your parents immigrated here in 1989. Well, did they leave because they won? Do you ever ask them what morally questionable things they had to do so that little Michelle could get her degree in America?”

  She glared at him, not bothering to answer.

  “Gandhi admitted he could never fight Hitler with his methods,” the professor continued. “Why? Because non-violence relies on shame. What if your enemy feels no shame? Non-violence is a political response to a matter of warfare. It means you are not willing to do everything you can for your noble goals, so how important were they? No? Anybody?”

  The students traded looks, checking up and down the aisles, and just as it became clear that no one had a response for this, their professor pointed his finger at them like a gun.

  “Bang.”

  As the students filed out of the lecture hall, Timothy Cale packed up his reference texts and files. He was mildly annoyed by the man shifting from foot to foot, hanging back reluctantly like a slow buzzing insect at the edge of his peripheral vision. The man wore a boxy suit with a flat texture, the kind that was a wife’s compromise purchased at Sears. He had a weak chin and watery eyes, and his black hair was going silver. He was a man in his late forties who gave the opposite physical impression of Tim—aging faster than he actually was. Everything about him looked like it had been arrived at by compromise.

  “Professor, my name’s Schlosser. I was sent out by the Justice Department.”

  If he expected Tim to give him his full attention, he was disappointed. A student with the typical self-absorption of his years pushed forward and asked the professor a question about his thesis. Tim frowned as he flipped through a Steno notebook packed with scribbles, and then he rattled off a time for the afternoon.

  “So McInerny must be sending you on this errand,” said Tim, already heading for the door.

  “No, it goes higher.”

  “Weatherford then,” said Tim, stopping in mild surprise. He made it sound more like an accepted fact than a question.

  Schlosser nodded. “Yes, Weatherford. This is right from the top.”

  Tim arched his eyebrows then started walking again. Schlosser moved fast to grab the door as Tim let go of it, not caring if it slammed in his visitor’s face.

  “Do you actually believe the ideas you suggested in there?”

  Tim allowed himself a tiny smile, perhaps over an inside joke known only to him.

  “Mr. Schlosser, don’t be obtuse. My job here is to get these cognitive amputees to actually construct a logical thought—perhaps for the first time in their iPad-carrying, game-playing, Netflix-watching lives. Go ask a university student in Vietnam or Zimbabwe what democracy is, and he probably can’t give you a textbook definition, but he won’t be apathetic in searching for an answer. He’ll be invested.”

  Schlosser shrugged, a way of saying fair enough. “The department has a job for you, but it’s not about politics.”

  “Then don’t ask me how I teach political science.”

  Schlosser bristled. This wasn’t the reception he’d expected: curiosity, perhaps even gratitude, maybe a polite rejection with an acknowledgment that it was flattering to be asked. Not this rudeness. Timothy Cale didn’t even wait. He was already heading into the hall.

  “I asked about your theories because they’ll listen—the cabinet secretaries will listen, I mean—in part to what I have to say about you,” said Schlosser. He tried not to walk so quickly that it was obvious he was struggling to keep up.

  Tim was merciless. “No, they won’t. The ones making the decisions already know who I am and everything relevant in my career. McInerny does, Briggs does. You showed up on my doorstep because you wanted to put your two cents in, and you didn’t have anything on paper about me that hadn’t made the rounds and could be assessed by others. You need something new.”

  He suddenly stopped walking and stood in place, waiting for Schlosser to grant his point. Schlosser licked his lips, glanced down the long hallway at the students making their way to classes, and wondered why his impulse was to deny the truth. They had warned him that Timothy Cale had insight. But they had said nothing about him having a laser that bored right into you and got to the heart of your intentions.

  “You want to tell me what this job is now so I can say no and stop wasting both our time?”

  “No, Professor. Let’s talk about India.”

  “If they had any lingering concerns over India, they wouldn’t have sent you. And technically, it was barely in India. It was on the border.”

  “I have concerns.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “You’ll want this job, Professor.”

  “I have a job, thanks,” said Tim, on the move again and quickening his step. “And I actually have no ambitions to return to diplomatic service—or to work for government in any other capacity again.” He pushed hard on the door leading to the green lawn of the courtyard.

  Schlosser followed him out to the sunshine. “You’d be a private contractor on this one.”

  “Don’t care. If they let a paper-pusher like you ask about that incident then that’s enough to suggest there would be more interference.”

  “This is the last time you see me,” said Schlosser. “As for how others interact with you… Well, I can’t make any guarantees. You’d be well compensated.”

  Another cocky smile. “I make enough now when I see corporate clients.”

  Schlosser had disliked the man from his department bio, and he despised him thoroughly now. He felt no one should ever be fully confident in his own security. It allowed him the privilege of indulging his own beliefs instead of following carefully developed policies. When he got back to Washington, he promised himself he would complain about being assigned the task of enabling such a man.

  “There are other rewards to consider, Mr. Cale.”

  “Oh, this is rich! An appeal to my intellectual vanity?”

  “Not your vanity, Professor. Curiosity. Now assuming they take you on with my recommendation, you’ll do this job not for your own ambition or for any monetary gain, but so you can learn certain things—perhaps some things you’ve wanted to know for a long time.”

  Tim didn’t break stride, looking straight ahead. “That’s a hell of a display of logic! Jump to conclusions of motive before you’re sure of my course of action! Mr. Schlosser, in less than five minutes, we’ve learned only two things. One is that you don’t know me, and two is that you’re a pompous ass.”

  Schlosser was tired of both the walk and the verbal humiliation. “You’re right, I don’t know you, but Dr. Weintraub claims he does. He says you’ll be interested.”

  Tim stopped again. “Weintraub could have phoned me himself.”

  “Departmental formalities.”

  “Uh-huh. Meaning Weintraub recommended me, but this has
to go through the department… whatever it’s really about. Go back to Washington, Schlosser. Tell them I’ll speak with the Attorney General myself. Direct. I’ll send my fee request to his office.”

  Schlosser pulled out his cell. “Okay, I’ll phone and get you the email for his executive assistant.”

  “Don’t need it. I have Weatherford’s own email.”

  “Mr. Cale, I don’t know why I ask, since it sounds like I already have the answer,” sighed Schlosser, “but they’ll want to know: What are your views on capital punishment?”

  “I’ll make them clear if I ever wind up having to kill somebody,” snapped Tim. “It’s amazing you can move around at all, Schlosser, dragging all those assumptions around.”

  “You never answered my question.”

  “If they want to know, they can ask me themselves,” replied Tim. “And you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

  He turned on his heel and left Schlosser standing there.

  There were only four witnesses to the Nickelbaum execution that weren’t in lab coats. One was the warden. A second was the administrative and theoretical head of the R and D team, Gary Weintraub. The third was a general electrician in overalls, a fellow who had no idea what was going on and was there just in case the power was lost or there was an electrical fire. And like the warden, he had signed a legal statement that prohibited him from telling anyone what he saw. The fourth person was the least known to the scientists, Timothy Christopher Cale.

  When the murderer disappeared in the carvings of light and the wretched figure of Mary Ash was led out of the booth like a frightened animal, Tim Cale was as shocked as anyone else—and the most quiet person in the room.

  He supposed the researchers had a right to be curious about him because, only two hours before, the head of their team, Gary Weintraub, had ushered him around without volunteering what he did or why he was there. The researchers all assumed he was a bureaucrat sent to babysit, so they sneered the “Mister” next to his name as if it were an insult. Tim’s sense of mischief was tempted to correct them, but he had seen enough class and status nonsense to last him a lifetime back when he was posted in London. And today had given him much to think about, just like the others. He decided to be self-effacing in the circle of experts and lab coats, not gushing over the astonishing thing they had just witnessed and not congratulating them at all.

  As doctors accompanying the young girl left for the private hospital in Manhattan, the remaining witnesses filed into a conference room, and Tim joined the slow exodus to a long table. They could barely contain what they felt, and few wanted to sit. This was one of the rare moments when scientists could be children again.

  Tim watched them whisper and talk, voices climbing over each other, pairs of hands gesticulating. Others scribbled down estimates and equations. One of them—there would always be one—was the oracle of caution, suggesting the phenomenon might not be easily repeated. Weintraub, now free to talk about certain details more candidly, was busy saying things like “No, no, it will work again.”

  Tim already knew Weintraub from university symposiums and presidential committees. He was a man in his sixties with a moon face and spectacles who didn’t mind at all that his students had nicknamed him “Bunsen Honeydew” after The Muppets character. Weintraub had first achieved fame as a documentary host, and since the media liked physicists to be interesting personalities (it was easier than trying to understand what they said), much was made of his distinctive nasal voice, his amateur skill at jazz piano and how as a young man he’d made a pilgrimage to study with one of his scientific heroes, the equally eccentric Leó Szilárd (when Szilárd didn’t like someone, he liked to pull out his colostomy bag and show them). Weintraub was arguably the smartest man in the room. Tim Cale was certain he was.

  The multiple conversations grew to an insect hum, and at last Weintraub raised his hands.

  “Okay, okay, first of all, there is no possible way I can expect this won’t leak out, legal documents or not,” he said, wearing the same self-congratulatory smile as the staff. “We do have an official announcement drafted and a news conference scheduled—we prepared all this in advance in case things went well.”

  A new buzz around the table: their director had apparently known what to expect, while the others had been left mostly in the dark. But the lab coats’ resentment couldn’t last. It was crushed to insignificance by what they had seen.

  “The media doesn’t always go through proper channels so if you are asked, please, please, be careful in your use of language. Don’t use any words of religious connotation—I’m sure they’ll happily go overboard on those themselves. Make sure they understand we followed a procedure, and it won’t be up to us how the transposition booths are assigned. That’s a matter for the courts and the legislators.”

  “We don’t even have to go there, do we, Gary?” piped up one of the scientists. “Don’t we have years of research ahead of us before we try to repeat what we saw?”

  The arguments and counter-arguments all ran for a few seconds with Weintraub unable to restore order.

  “Come on, how do you test and research this? What we’ve got to do is ensure the safety of an arrival who—”

  “People will not want to wait for years of clinical—”

  “Look at in vitro fertilization and the stigma that was attached to—”

  “You can’t compare the social history of decades ago to a completely new radical—”

  “How does it work?”

  The most innocent and direct of questions came from their guest. There was a sudden hush around the conference table, all the scientists now facing Timothy Cale. And he saw a remarkable, almost tangible shame in their expressions. I’ll be damned, thought Tim.

  Because he realized: They don’t know.

  Weintraub spoke for them all. “We’re not completely sure.”

  “Meaning you don’t have a clue, right, Gary?”

  He and Weintraub liked each other. Tim knew Weintraub didn’t have a molecule of condescension in his body for laymen, nor was his ego so fragile that he couldn’t admit to ignorance. They could speak plainly here.

  “What you must understand, Tim, is that we had nothing to do with the manufacture of the transposition equipment or its original R and D,” replied Weintraub.

  “What? Are you kidding?”

  “I assure I’m not. We served as oversight on its health and safety aspects and on the scientific evaluation. Washington gave the green light, and we went ahead and… Well, we needed to figure out protocols, to make sure it does what we were promised it will do…”

  Tim was incredulous. His friend hadn’t given him a clue what he would see today, and neither, in fact, had Schlosser or those out in Washington. He had expected a bit of a magic act from Gary Weintraub—he always got one. The man’s theatrical flair was part of his professional success both on campuses and on television. But nothing like this, nothing with such ramifications!

  “Now wait a minute,” Tim tried again. “How can you go ahead with something this momentous without knowing how the damn thing fundamentally works?”

  “Hey, uh, Mr. Cale,” interrupted one of the scientists, an up-and-coming physics star who looked barely old enough to shave. “Before Gary answers that, can you, like, tell us a little bit more about what you do and how you came to be here?”

  Tim smiled at the naked challenge. “If it helps, I’m here at the request of both the US Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services. I’m a consultant.”

  “What kind of consultant, Mr. Cale?”

  “The expensive kind.”

  There was hesitant laughter over the quip, but the faces were so earnest, he knew he should offer a more definitive response. After all, he was asking them plain enough questions.

  He made eye contact around the table and explained, “My career is somewhat eclectic, ladies and gentlemen. I used to be with diplomatic services stationed overseas, posted at various legatio
ns—mostly in Asia. I conducted investigations that involved any high-profile American national. But over time, I’ve fallen into what can loosely be called, for lack of a better term, ‘risk management.’ I don’t pretend at all I have your scientific background or anything close it, but because of umm… well, a few personal experiences, which I won’t go into today, the White House likes to use me from time to time to write reports and investigate certain phenomena—though up to now nothing on the scale of what we all saw today.”

  The young expert who had challenged Tim leaned forward. “And where did you have these experiences, Mr. Cale?”

  Tim looked down the table and met his gaze evenly. “India… South East Asia.”

  Tim knew the smirks would begin first and then the traded looks. He had seen it all before, and he didn’t care. He didn’t have to prove his credibility here or with the White House, certainly not at the contract price he was charging, and there were fortunately others in positions of influence who were less dogmatic.

  “Dr. Weintraub?” he prompted. “Gary? About my question?”

  Weintraub leaned forward to respond, but another of the scientists jumped in.

  “Listen, Mr. Cale. Tim, is it? Tim, there have been countless scientific innovations where the discovery and our reaping of benefits preceded our full understanding. Penicillin for one—”

  “I am familiar with the history of penicillin, thank you, Mister…?”

  “Doctor Andrew Miller,” answered the scientist. “I’m team leader for Gary’s neuroscience division.”

  His straight brown hair almost reached his shoulders, looking like it could use a wash, and his large hazel eyes were fierce in their direct stare. No doubt, he used all this Byronic intensity with girls. Tim knew his type from his university classes.

  “Good for you, but I know about penicillin, Doctor Miller,” Tim said calmly. “That was a time when—”

  Miller wasn’t listening. “Fine then, look at the recent tests that demonstrate adrenaline can play a factor in memory. We don’t fully understand them, but they began with mice running around a drum full of water. Drug trials went ahead even though researchers didn’t know exactly what was going on. Look at atomic energy—”