Scenes of devastation flickered behind her: flooded fields and leveled homes; the one-legged silhouette of Vidu.
“The U.S. Geological Survey has identified sand and gravel deposits carried inland a great distance by inundation… ”
As Swenson lectured, she drifted, thinking about her own past. Once, she too had been as fresh-faced and scrubbed and open to the world as these young students, when she’d first heard Dr. White speak at that lecture in Los Angeles. She had been at USC then, after her escape from South Dakota.
Born in a small town called Chance to Eric Swenson, a geologist, and Dolly Aalborg, part-time clerk, Emily had been precociously intelligent from the very start, skipping two grades by the time she was but ten. At twelve, she had lost her mother to lung cancer. Soon, she was working after school in the same tourist shop her mother used to manage, selling turquoise and fake Native American nick-knacks to tourists on their way to and from the Badlands. Only her swimming had kept her sane. She’d been captain of the local high school swim team, and an accomplished diver, winning a state championship at sixteen. The following year she had been accepted to USC on a scholarship where she had majored in oceanography, with a minor in geology — just like her father, with whom she was still close. On the weekends she’d worked at a local dive shop, and this too became a lifelong passion. But, even then, her beauty had worked against her.
Tall, voluptuous and blond, with robin-egg-blue eyes, few could believe she was the same person they got to know online, through her papers or academic correspondence. She looked more like a movie star. Most men were too intimidated to even ask her out, assuming, falsely, that she was destined to be busy; to the point, ironically, where she spent nearly every weekend on her own, linked to the world exclusively through her computer, forever working.
Her professors always discounted her because of her good looks. The women generally felt threatened. And the men either assumed she was a dumb blonde, or they fell in love with her. Even when it was Platonic, many ended up playing Henry Higgins to her Eliza. That’s why she’d left USC, after a brief affair with one of her professors — the infamous E.J. Dubinsky, author of This Primal Earth, for a few brief months a best-seller on The New York Times non-fiction list.
She had broken it off only a week or so before a scheduled expedition — 150 kilometers east of Atlantic City — designed to study some mysterious craters suspected of being formed by gas eruptions. Despite the recent terminus of the affair, they had descended together anyway, in a three-man Deep Submergence Vehicle called the Alvin, and at one point, out of nowhere, Dubinsky had tried to kiss her. Then, something went wrong. They had lost power and the DSV had drifted out of control. It was only after forty-five excruciating seconds that they had finally found a fix. But not before Swenson had panicked, not before she had screamed hysterically and accused Dubinsky of disabling the craft intentionally. That had really been the end of the affair. Soon after that, she had transferred to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to work with Dr. James L. White, one of the world’s pre-eminent authorities on tsunamis. She rarely thought about E.J. anymore. And, since that episode aboard the Alvin, she had never stepped foot inside a DSV again.
“Excuse me?” someone said. Swenson looked up. A tanned, dark-haired student in the back waved his hand above his head.
“Yes?”
“Do you think it would be possible to precipitate a tsunami, by planting explosives, say, along a fault line?”
The student had a thick accent. He sounded Indian or Pakistani. It was amazing how cosmopolitan the Institute had become. “I don’t believe so,” she replied. “Some geologists have tried to stimulate seismic activity. You know — for oil and gas exploration. That sort of thing. But none has succeeded. At least, not to my knowledge. But you might want to ask Dr. White about that one. I know he has some pretty controversial theories on vulcan stimulation.” Then she turned and looked about the crowd. They were starting to pack up. No one else had raised a hand. “Alright then,” she concluded. “I notice we’ve reached the end of our allotted time. I’ll see you all next week. Thanks for coming out so late tonight.”
The students burst into applause. It had been a lecture disguised as a video game. It spoke to them in their own language, with lightning cuts, and contemporary colors and design. It pulsed and moved. And it tore at both their heads and hearts.
Swenson descended from the stage, shimmied through the usual crowd of well wishers, sycophants and Lotharios who always seemed to gather at these affairs, and made her way across the Quad to Dr. White’s administrative office in the Bigelow Laboratory. She had been working there on her paper about the Indian Ocean tsunami because it was quieter than in her own shared quarters, and because — though small — the office had a spectacular view of the bay. Suddenly, someone shuffled by the door. The handle turned and Swenson was startled to see Dr. White materialize like a ghost within the brightened doorway. White had been out of the office for months, on leave, tending to his wife who was bed-ridden with cancer.
“I’m sorry,” Swenson said. “Dr. White, I didn’t know you were coming in.” She began to gather up her papers. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Don’t be silly,” Dr. White said. “I’ll only be a minute, Emily. I’m the one who’s barging in.” He glanced over at Swenson for an instant, then turned and averted her gaze. “And as I recall,” he added, “I gave you permission to use my office any time you wanted to. Especially when you’re working on a paper. Believe me, I know the value of solitude, and its curse.”
Dr. White seemed harried and distracted. He looked exhausted. He stuffed a dozen files into a bulging leather briefcase. Swenson chalked it up to his wife’s illness.
“I enjoyed your lecture, Emily,” White said, after a moment. “You’ve come so far.”
Swenson was surprised. She hadn’t seen Dr. White in the audience. Normally, when he showed up, he came down to the front when it was over, mixing in with the well-wishers.
“You’ve become a great asset to the field,” continued Dr. White. “There is nothing particularly revolutionary, nothing new about your findings, Emily, but you express them in a revolutionary way, and I guess that’s what science needs today. Especially oceanography.” He shook his head. “Despite the tsunami last year, our work is still under-funded compared to other fields. People have always underestimated the power of the sea. Their ships litter the sea floor. But now that we can fly — like demigods, like Angel apes — we think we’re above it all. We’ve become too arrogant. We whip the waves like Darius. The sea gods are not so easily dismissed. You’ll see, Emily. The whole world will see.” He sailed across the room, stood immediately before her, reached out and brushed a strand of golden hair behind one ear. “I may not have made much in this world — at least not financially — but I’ve left you a legacy of learning. I’ve always loved you like my daughter, you know that, Emily.” He kissed her on the cheek and she suddenly realized that he’d been drinking. “Don’t ever forget that.”
“Don’t talk that way, James,” she said, stepping back. “You’re acting like I’m never going to see you again.”
“I’m putting Doris in a hospice,” he continued. “She needs twenty-four hour care and I just can’t provide that for her. After all, I can’t stay on leave forever. This job may be rewarding in many ways — on an intellectual plain — but it’s never made me rich. Frankly, Emily, I just don’t have the money. Doris was never one to stick to a budget. She wasn’t raised that way. And her inheritance is gone.”