Carson was, if nothing else, a gentleman; he did not bring up the subject of the meeting until the plates had been cleared and his guests were settled comfortably with their final cups of coffee and small chocolate candies. Then, steepling his fingertips over his coffee cup, looking at his own fingernails rather than meeting anyone else’s eye, he said, “What I’d like to talk with you about this morning, Steve, Tony, if I may, is a small problem here at the university you might be able to help me with.”
Chuckling, Tony said, “A small problem, Chip?”
While Schlurn thought, I will never call him “Chip,” Carson chuckled back at Tony and said, “Small with your help, I think.”
“And what is the name of this problem?” Tony asked.
Carson sighed. “Dr. Marlon Philpott.”
At once, Tony’s expression grew more serious. He said, “Women? Alcohol? Embezzlement?”
But Carson, almost in a panic, was madly waving his hands in front of his face, like a man bedeviled by gnats. “Oh, no, no, no,” he cried, “nothing like that. Good heavens, I don’t want to malign the man’s reputation.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Tony said. “What in fact is his problem, then?”
“Explosions,” Carson said.
They all waited for more, sitting around the table like people who haven’t quite gotten the joke and know they haven’t quite gotten the joke, but Carson had said it all. Silent, he sipped coffee and looked at them in mute appeal.
Since Tony had been handling the conversation up till now, Schlurn saw no reason to leap in at this baffling juncture, so he sat back, fiddling with his coffee cup’s handle — even velvety coffee is less than pleasant if you already have heartburn — and eventually Tony said, “Do I take you to mean, Chip, that our friend Marlon blows things up?”
“Not often,” Carson said. “I’ll give him that, the explosions are rare enough. But, gentlemen, look at this setting!” he cried, passion suddenly in his voice as he gestured broadly at the windows. “This is not the setting for explosions! Not even occasional explosions, minor explosions, unimportant explosions. The students are not paying twenty-two thousand dollars a year to be in an environment of explosions.”
With a reminiscent grin, Tony said, “Some of them might quite like it, if I remember rightly my own undergraduate days.”
“Their parents wouldn’t,” Carson said.
“Quite right,” Tony said. “Point taken. And now you have something to suggest to alleviate this problem, I take it?”
“It’s more in the form of a question, or a request, than a suggestion,” Carson said. “What I would like to do, with your assistance, Tony, and yours, Steve, is find Dr. Philpott another location, not terribly far from campus, for his laboratory.”
Tony frowned, clearly not seeing it. “Some sort of concrete bunker out in a field somewhere, you mean?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that.” Carson toyed with his coffee cup, choosing his words. “Dr. Philpott does need a fairly sophisticated infrastructure in which to work. I was thinking, frankly, in terms of an existing installation, I don’t know yet precisely which installation, but one that could house Dr. Philpott in the manner he requires, but would at the same time be more... adaptable to the idea of the occasional small controlled explosion.”
“I can’t think what sort of installation that might be,” Tony said.
“Well, that’s where Steve comes in,” Carson told him, smiling at Schlurn with those big teeth.
I’m not going to like this, Schlurn thought. He said, “I do?”
“Through your excellent efforts,” Carson pointed out, “we have a number of military bases in this general area.”
Damn right. One of the key issues for the voters in every election is jobs, and one of the very finest sources of local jobs is a nice military base. Every congressman fights to get more than his share of the nation’s military presence in his district, and Schlurn had seniority enough, clout enough, friends enough, to have done very well in that department.
But so what? Warily, the congressman said, “We do have a few army bases, yes, and air force, too. And that supply depot, and a few other things.”
“One of those,” Carson said, “one of the army bases, say, might be just the perfect spot for Dr. Philpott.”
“Oh, now,” Schlurn said, stalling, putting his cupped hand up in front of his mouth (his habitual gesture, though he didn’t know it, when in a tight spot), “now, wait a minute, I’m not sure the army would like—”
“If Unitronic Laboratories, meaning Tony here,” Carson interrupted, “were to finance the construction of a new lab for Dr. Philpott to military specifications, guaranteeing that whatever — incidents — might occur would be contained away from the normal areas of the base...”
“I suppose we could do that,” Tony said, “but on an army base? Steve, do you think you could deliver such a thing?”
He did not. Schlurn imagined himself in conversation with one of those desk-cowboy generals over at the Pentagon, trying to introduce explosions to an army base. In no way did he want to make such an attempt, to even ask the question, to get the outraged refusal he fully anticipated and knew he would fully deserve. No way.
How to get out of this? How to refuse to even make the request? They were all watching him, waiting. Aware of the sympathetic panic in Jerry Seidelbaum’s eyes, knowing Jerry was not going to come up with any last-minute rescue here, he temporized, saying whatever came into his head: “Well, you know, uh, these are difficult days for the military—”
“All the more reason,” said the implacable Carson, “for them to be accommodating.”
Oh, God. What to do? Schlurn turned to Tony. “What exactly is this research Dr. Philpott’s into? Something about alternate sources of energy?”
“Strange matter,” Carson said sardonically, as though the words were some sort of presumptuous stranger at the gate.
“Yes, that’s right,” Tony said. He told Schlurn, “We’re using up the most fruitful sources of energy on the planet, so eventually, and sooner rather than later, we’ll have to go into other realms to find fresh energy.”
Schlurn, not liking the sound of that, said, “Other realms?”
“According to the scientific chaps,” Tony said, “the two likeliest new sources of energy — almost infinite energy, in either case — are strange matter and black holes.”
Schlurn said, “Aren’t black holes something in outer space?”
“Yes, they are. Extremely dense areas between the stars that give off no reflection at all. Such great density means, if we could tap into a black hole, we’d have energy and to spare for as long as human beings exist.” Tony grinned, and shook his head. “Putting the necessary cable into place,” he said, “several light-years long, is a problem we haven’t quite surmounted yet. Or alternatively, like the Saudis roping an iceberg and dragging it home to the Persian Gulf, to lasso a black hole and tug it to the solar system also still has a few bugs in it to be ironed out. Which leaves strange matter.”
Schlurn said, “Which is?”
“Well, I’m not quite sure,” Tony admitted. “Something like anti-matter, I take it. But very dense, like black holes, and therefore potentially another limitless source of energy. Some scientists, our Dr. Philpott among them, believe it would be possible to create strange matter here on Earth, which eliminates the access problems of the black holes.”
Schlurn nodded, thinking hard. “So what Dr. Philpott is doing,” he said, “is looking for an extremely powerful new energy source.”
“That’s about it.”