The Soul Continuum (26 page)

Edith Levaux is already here. Wearing a faded black shawl embroidered with pale green flowers and her hair tied up in a loose bun, she sits at the desk facing the window, shoulders hunched as she bashes hard on the keys of our Underwood typewriter (loaned to me by none other than our very own Justin Underwood, who claims he is related to the famous John Thomas Underwood who created the line). Several sheets of paper have been screwed up into balls and discarded in the wastepaper bin at the side.

“Good morning, Edith,” I say, knocking at the door before closing it behind me.

She jumps and looks over her shoulder, a blush quickly masked by a guarded smile. “Clifford! Good morning.”

“You weren't expecting me?”

The chair legs scrape on the floor as she gets up to face
me. “Of course I was expecting you.” She looks at her dainty wristlet watch. “But not until nine. It's only just after seven.”

“Well, I didn't sleep well,” I say with a curt smile, “so I decided to get started early.” I glance at the typewriter. “What were you writing?” My question is meant to sound like idle curiosity, but I cannot stop the tone of accusation punching through.

She glances at the typewriter, too, as if it might help her to answer. “I was making a start on the journal. I thought a good approach would be to—”

I cough to stop her talking. “Yes, about that.” I lift my chin a fraction. “I'll be keeping my own journal for this particular endeavor.”

Edith clasps her hands tightly in front of her, close to her body. Unable to maintain eye contact, she flushes again and looks at the floor as if recovering from an insult. Small wonder. After my own meeting with Withering yesterday, I left his office convinced that he had changed his mind about who the real plagiarizer was. I imagine he had a few choice words to say to Edith before assigning her as my understudy again. For a moment I feel smug about that, but as I observe her standing bashful before me, I wonder what possessed me to request that she work with me again. At the time I wanted to punish her with the awkwardness of the arrangement, but ruled as I was by momentary anger, I failed to consider that I would feel just as awkward. I even feel a little sorry for her now that I have her here.

“I just want to help,” she says, still looking at the floor, and I cannot work out if her tone is defensive or mildly frustrated or both.

I feel a pang of guilt. Edith is always so forthright, so
confident—she's had to be to get anywhere in the scientific
community—but now this latest incident seems to have wounded her. Part of me regrets that the good working rela
tionship we had has been spoiled, but I cannot ignore what she did. Even so, the fact that she stands there so conflicted has me at odds, and I cough again. An embarrassed noise this time.

“Yes,” I say, “well, you will have the opportunity once more, Edith.”

She looks up at me again and I offer a quick smile and a nod.

“I assume Withering briefed you yesterday?” I say.

She also manages a quick, polite smile. “He didn't say much about it, but he did tell me it would be more work with flame emission spectroscopy.”

“So he didn't tell you what we will be analyzing?”

“No, but yesterday you mentioned the stone?”

“Correct. You're in for quite a surprise when you see it.”

She juts her head forward a little and widens her eyes. Our awkwardness momentarily forgotten, I pull the metal
box out from my waistcoat pocket and hand it to her. She takes it, but before she lifts the lid, I place a hand on her arm.

“Be careful.”

I don't know why I said that to her, but as I hold her
arm, my fingers grasping tighter than I intend, I feel another
wave of nausea. A sense of unease in connection with the stone fidgets within me just as it did the night before, but I quickly subdue it and release her.

“Clifford?” she says, looking briefly at her arm where I gripped her, then up at me. “Are you all right? You're not having another turn, are you?”

“No, no.” I frown back at her, then let out a noise that sounds like a nervous sigh. “Sorry.”

She continues to hold my gaze. “Sorry for what? What is this?” She looks at the tin in her palm.

“If I knew that, we wouldn't need to analyze it, would we?”

“You said last night that it glows.” She continues to look at the tin and I wonder if she feels the same uncanny foreboding. Cautiously, she lifts the lid.

The indigo pulse lights her face. “Oh, heavens! I wasn't expecting it to be so obvious.”

“Astonishing, isn't it?”

“Where did Withering get it?”

“He wouldn't say. He said it might taint the experiment if I knew.”

She squints at me in suspicion.

“I know, I know,” I say, lifting my hands, “I wasn't convinced either, but I got the distinct impression he didn't want me to pry. And, no, it's not radioactive. At least not according to him.”

“Are you quite sure about that?” she says, replacing the lid. “You haven't been feeling well, and don't you think it's something of a coincidence that Withering had a queer turn, too?”

“Perhaps, but he did seem very well informed and quite convinced.”

“But if he doesn't know what it is, how would he know it's not radioactive?”

The question stumps me. “Well,” I start uncertainly, “Withering might not be the most amiable of people, but I hardly think he would place us in any kind of danger unless he was absolutely sure. He's no fool.”

She considers the tin again. “I'm really not sure about this.”

“You think we should refuse?”

Edith sighs loudly. She knows, just as well as I, that Withering can be a beast when people cross him. And this stone, whatever it is, is too intriguing to ignore. “I suppose we could take some precautions and use some shielding,” she suggests. “And I would advise you to go back to him today and find out why he is so certain it isn't dangerous. I'm sure he won't object to a simple query.”

“Perhaps.” I take the tin from her and set it on the closest
table. “Shall we make a start, then?”

“Happy to.”

“Good.” I clap my hands and rub them together vigorously to overcome the trepidation, then look around my laboratory. “We'll have to make our own spectroscope if we want to use shielding. I'll see if I can find a suitable container while you pull together the rest of the equipment. Clear on what we need?”

“Of course.”

I find some lead plates in a crate in the corner together with a handful of bracket clamps and work on screwing the sides together while Edith clears one of the desks, boxing up the items into a spare crate.

“May I ask you something?” I say. “And please don't be offended.”

She connects a Bunsen burner to the gas supply and stoops to bring her eyes level with the funnel as she tests a flame. “Ask away.”

I stop midway through screwing the third bracket in place and look at her. “What would you do in my place?”

“Pardon me?” She looks at me through the flame, her expression blank.

“If I had taken
your
work and presented it as a paper and—”

“Oh!” Edith rises slowly and turns the Bunsen off as if it is an act of finality. “I wondered when we would get this out in the open.” Her nostrils flare as she sucks at her bottom lip—a look of mild frustration again. “I assume this is about your claims of plagiarism that Professor Withering spoke to me about yesterday?”

I maintain eye contact, surprised but more than a little annoyed. If anyone should be offended, it is I, but the flush she tried to hide earlier that I thought may have been contrition now seems to be revealed as indignation.

“Miss Levaux, I especially requested you as my—”

“How dare you ‘Miss Levaux' me!” The French accent
suddenly becomes more pronounced, embellished with the harsh volume of retaliatory accusation, and I think the awkward
atmosphere that was brewing earlier this morning has just boiled over into something I might later regret.

“We've been on first-name terms for over a year.” She has her forefinger raised now. “And for your information, you were perfectly happy giving me permission to write my paper based on your findings.”

“I what?” I am unable to prevent my mouth from hanging open. How dare
I
? How dare
she
!

She lowers her finger and fixes me with a glare that oscillates between icy rage and wounded tears before drawing
a deep, shuddering breath and returning her attention to the desk. She slams a prism down and then pulls out a dark oblong plate, fixing it in place two hand widths away from the prism. “I can only assume you drifted off into one of your daydreams again,” she says, adjusting the angle of the plate as if it is a troublesome child resisting a face wipe. “It's plain you don't remember, but a month into the experiments, when you were trying to catch up on the assignments you were
supposed
to be working on, I asked whether you were planning to submit our experiment as a paper. Do you remember that?”

“I . . .”

“No, of course you don't! And I suppose you don't recall how I offered to type it up for you to save time?”

“I vaguely—”

“Or how you told me to take the credit because I had done most of the work and catalogued the spectrums far more precisely than you would have? Do you remember insisting when I refused, and do you remember how elated and thankful I was?”

An image of Edith beaming from ear to ear as she clasped her hands to her mouth slipped unwanted into my mind. I remember her excitement but not what caused it. Only now as I stand and think do the memories slink forward.

“You ask me what I would do in your place?” she says, hands on hips. “I now ask the same thing.”

It seems I have been a complete ass. She refuses to look away now, and I am captured by her gaze, which has settled into a cold glare. I want to somehow defend my actions but am utterly bankrupt. “Well,” I say. My mouth is dry and I am unable to avoid swallowing awkwardly. “I'm rather thirsty. Would you like tea?”

She shakes her head almost imperceptibly, now looking to the side in bewilderment, and I know she thinks I am a hopeless case who cannot be reasoned with. At this moment, I think she is quite correct.

“Yes, tea would be nice,” she says flatly and goes back to stooping over the equipment.

T
he atmosphere is still uncomfortable an hour later when we finalize the setup of the spectroscope. Rain lashes against the window, drowning out Edith's words when she speaks, and each time I ask her to repeat whatever it was she said, she sighs and pushes past me to get the item she needs. She is actually enjoying this moment, I think, and she has every reason to look down at me from her moral high ground. I am more than a little ashamed of my actions, and I feel even more cowardly at not being able to acknowledge my failings.

“Are we ready?” I ask.

“We are,” she says and forces a smile.

“Very good. Just to make certain, let's begin with our baseline. Can you bring me the tin in the top drawer over there, please?” I nod to the cabinet on the opposite side of the room. “I'd like the potassium sample, please. It should be pure enough to give us the reading we need.”

She goes to the drawer, rummages through the contents.
“You really should get more organized, Clifford. An untidy laboratory reveals an untidy mind.”

“I suppose it is a little like my mind,” I concede. “There
is far too much going on inside it, and I am constantly having
to push things aside in haste to make room for some new thing I must retain.”

She pulls a tin out of the drawer, squints at the label, then brings it to me.

“Sometimes I forget where I put things.” I tap the side of my head. “Important things. And when I lose them, I get into trouble when I forget I even have them.” I keep the tin in my hand and hold her gaze for a moment. “Do you understand?”

She stares back, her expression flat. “An apology?”

I look at the tin rather than at her, then open it. “Tongs please.”

She brings me the tongs and I select a large chunk from the tin. “I admit to my mistake, yes, but it would have been nice for you to have told me when you actually did submit the paper, and perhaps you should have mentioned me in there somewhere.”

“Apologies should never be accompanied by
buts
.”

“Then I apologize unreservedly.”

She suppresses a smile. “There,” she says. “Was that so distressing?”

“No, but—”

“Ah!” She raises a finger, and I suddenly feel like a small boy who has been denied a second slice of cake. “I think we should leave it there and move on, no?”

Of that I am sure. It will be hard enough for me to regain
any respect she may once have had for me, and my own self-respect and confidence has taken a rather hard knock.

Edith switches the Bunsen back on and the flame jets upward. I place the potassium sample in the little cradle above it and place the lead container around it to cover the lilac flame it creates. There is a lens and a thin slit on one side of the box to allow the light through, and a grill at the
top lets the heat escape. The light filtering through the slit passes into the prism, splitting it into its composite colors, then carries on through another lens and onto an absorption plate.

Presently, Edith removes the plate and I turn the Bunsen
off. “How is it looking?” I ask.

She looks at the colored strands stained into the plate and compares the image with the potassium pattern we have in our catalogue record.