End of an Era

"Nothing." I looked at her, her narrow face, the high cheekbones, the mane of orange hair. God, I didn’t want to lose her. She was my whole life. But if what the diary said was true, I was nothing to her. I knew I should apologize, recant before it was too late, before the words became part of the immutable past, the foundation for a wall between us, but I couldn’t bring myself to take them back. I was hurt by — by what? By what she might do? By what she might have done if things had been different? Finally I looked away from her astonished green eyes and got up from the couch. "I’m going upstairs to pack for my trip," I said.

I arrived in Vancouver on a Tuesday. Dr. Huang ignored my calls until late Wednesday afternoon, when I managed to get her to answer at her office. She was all set to hang up on me again, when I broke into Chinese. That shocked the hell out of her, but I’d learned more than enough to get by while participating in the Canada-China Dinosaur Project. She finally agreed to see me but insisted it be during the day, not the evening, and at her office, not her home. That meant running up an extra night’s stay at the Holiday Inn, but given that I didn’t have much of a bargaining position, I agreed.

Driving up to TRIUMF, at the edge of a beautiful pine forest on the outskirts of the University of British Columbia campus, I was greeted by two signs. The one on the right, made of seven three-meter-long boards of prime B.C. lumber, told me in both English and French that I’d arrived at Canada’s national meson center, operated by four universities under a contribution from the National Research Council. The one on the left, in government-issue red and white, reminded me that my tax dollars were hard at work here.

There were dozens of buildings spread around the grounds, including a bunch of temporary structures, and it took me a while to find the main entrance. None of the brochures I picked up at the desk wanted to tell me what TRIUMF stood for, but I had a vague memory from a trivia game I’d played once that it was "Tri-University Meson Facility." That meant, I guessed, that one of the four institutions sponsoring it had been a Johnny-come-lately, and the acronym had been deemed too clever to change. I knew next to nothing about physics, but apparently this place boasted the world’s largest cyclotron. Although I wasn’t exactly sure what a cyclotron did, it certainly sounded like the kind of thing one might find quite handy while trying to invent a time machine.

Besides the brochures, the ancient man at the desk also gave me a clip-on dosimeter which looked like an old-fashioned car fuse. I told him I was there to see Dr. Huang but before he got around to phoning to ask her to come and get me, a nerdy-looking fellow in a navy-blue lab coat said, "I’ll take him back, Sam." He led me through a warren of corridors to an unmarked door. I took a moment to gather my thoughts, then knocked.

I was glad to see that physicists enjoyed no more glamour than did paleontologists. Ching-Mei Huang’s office wasn’t much more than an oversized closet. Still, it provided plenty of room for its diminutive occupant. Huang looked to be about sixty, with a small amount of gray streaking her close-cropped black hair. Her clothes were plain, almost frumpy. She wore no makeup or jewelry. Her eyes were darting, haunted; her movements quick and nervous.

"Dr. Huang, I presume."

"Mr. Thackeray."

"It’s ‘Doctor,’ Doctor, but please call me Brandy."

She made no move to invite me into her office. Indeed, she seemed to be blocking the doorway as best she could with her small body. "We can’t talk in here," she said. "Come with me to the cafeteria."

"What I have to say is private, Dr. Huang. Can’t we use your office?"

"No." She looked up at me and, for a brief moment, her eyes stopped darting long enough to hold mine. "Please."

I shrugged. Hell, I’m never going to see any of the potential eavesdroppers again. So what if they think I’m a loon?

It was early enough in the morning that the cafeteria was mostly empty. I caught snatches of conversation as we moved to a table at the far end of the room: a knot of people discussing something to do with Higgs bosons, whatever they were; two guys arguing about the Thunderbirds, which I gathered were the campus football team; and three women discussing in locker-room detail the physique of a new male coworker.

We found a table and sat down. I looked at the person seated opposite me, nervous and small. "Did you ever teach at Dalhousie?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, looking surprised at the question, "but I lost my job there — what? — sixteen years ago." She smiled for the first time, one academic to another sharing the universal lament. "Budget cuts."

She’d broken a police officer’s shin there, the Canadian Press story had said. She looked too timid to do anything like that now. I wondered what had happened in the interim to take the fight out of her. "I’m sorry," I said.