Gravitys Angel | Page 6

and two Japanese. Most were in their late thirties, though a few
were in their middle forties. No one under thirty, no one over fifty.
These were the theoretical heavyweights at the lab, men in their
short-lived prime as it exists in high-energy physics. A few were
drinking coffee; most just sat waiting, talking.
I gave her the simplest possible introduction. I said, "This is Carol
Hendrix, who is here from Los Alamos where she is Simulations Group
Leader. She has some very interesting simulations she would like to

present to us."
Carol Hendrix knew her audience. She had gone into sexless mode as
much as possible. Her face was pale and scrubbed, no makeup, and she
wore baggy tan trousers and a plaid wool shirt-in short, the closest
approximation she could get to what the men in front of her were
wearing. From her first words, she spoke calmly and authoritatively,
for they'd listen to nothing else from her, and allowed none of the
passion I'd heard to animate her presentation.
She gave it all to them, dealt it out on a screen in the front of the room.
The slides came up showing perky pictures from The Thing, equation
sets from QUARKER, annotations in her own hand: Each idea led
straightforwardly to the one after, theory and practice brought together
with casual elegance.
Leaving the last slide's END SIMULATION on the screen, she
summarized: "We know little about the physical attributes of a
singularity; in fact, its essential nature is lawless." She stopped, smiled.
"Though we would anticipate its interactions with the nonsingular
world of spacetime to be governed by the usual conservation laws, this
may not be the case. In short, the consequences of creating a singularity
are not well understood, and I would suggest that further analysis is
required before any experiments are undertaken that could bring such a
peculiar region of spacetime into close proximity with instruments so
delicate as those in an experimental area." She paused and looked at
them all, said, "I will be glad to hear your questions and comments."
This is where it will happen, I thought. Guests to Thursday Group often
got taken on the roughest intellectual ride of their lives, as this group of
brilliant and aggressive men probed everything they had said for truth,
originality, and relevance-or the converse. I went very tense, waiting
for the onslaught to begin.
"Dickie Boy," Bunford said. If this group had an alpha male, Bunford
was it. He was a big man--around six-three and more than two hundred
pounds--with a strong jaw, a lined face, and sunburned skin. He had
elaborated the so-called Standard Model in new and interesting

ways--the "semi-unbound quark state" was his particular interest-and
the smart money had it that he and his group could pick up a Nobel if
the SSC found the interactions he was predicting. "Did you validate her
simulations?" Bunford asked. Rather an oblique approach, I thought,
probably in preparation for going for the throat, theoretically speaking.
Carol Hendrix turned to see how Dickie Boy would answer.
"Sure," Dickie Boy said. "Very sweet, very convincing. Take for
instance the series of transforms ..."
"Fine," Bunford said. And to Carol Hendrix: "Thank you. If Dickie Boy
validates your Monte Carlos, I'm sure they're well-done." He paused.
"The physics is interesting, too ... though quite speculative, of course."
And he stopped there, apparently having finished.
I waited for him to go on, but he didn't-he was whispering quietly to
Hong, one of his group members. And no one else was saying a word.
Finally, Allenson stood from the pillow where he'd been sitting
cross-legged and said, "Shall we make it an early evening tonight? I
don't know about you guys, but I could use some sleep." He turned to
Carol Hendrix and said, "I'd like to thank our guest for speaking to us
this evening." Murmured voices said much the same thing. "At a later
time, perhaps we can discuss the implications of this work, but this
week we are all very busy getting the SSC up to spec."
Carol Hendrix stood white-faced and silent as all the men got up,
nodded good-bye to her, and left, some alone, others in small groups of
their colleagues.
"I don't understand," I said. We were walking along one of the
suburb-like loops that led from Allenson's house to mine. For the
present, many of us lived in Texlab-owned housing as a matter of
convenience. "They didn't even want to argue with you."
"I'm an idiot," she said. "I forgot some of the most important lessons
I've ever learned. In particular, I forgot that I'm a woman, and anything
I say gets filtered through that."

"Do you really think that?"
"Sax, don't be so fucking naive. Why do you think they were polite?