The Thing Itself Read Free Page A

A. I often think of Sartre’s words. Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realises its freedom. Where is freer than the very bottom of the world? Nil desperandum! Yours, A.’ This, though slightly gnomic, was not out of character for Prof. Addlestone, who had worked on SETI for so long it had made his brain a little funny. No letter from Lez, which worried me. But, after all, she didn’t write every week. I reread the Professor’s note several times. Did it read like a PS, a scribbled afterthought? Did it perhaps mean that the letter Roy bought had been from Addlestone? Maybe. Maybe not.
    We got on with our work, and I tried to put the whole letter business behind me. Roy did not help, as far as this went. He was acting stranger and stranger; simpering at me, and when I queried his expression (‘What? What is it?’) scurrying away – or scowling and saying, ‘nothing, nothing, only …’ and refusing to elaborate.
    The next thing was: he moved one of the computer terminals into his room. This was a proper hefty 1980s terminal; not one of those modern-day computers the size and weight of a copy of Marie Claire , so it was no mean feat getting the thing in there. He even cut a mousehole-like shape in the bottom of his door, to enable the main cable to come out into the hall and through into the monitor room.
    ‘What are you doing in there?’ I challenged him. ‘That’s not standard policy. Did you clear this with Adelaide?’
    ‘I’m working on something,’ he told me, not meeting my eyes. ‘I’m close to a breakthrough. SETI, my friend. Solving Fermi’s paradox! You should consider yourself lucky to be here. You’ll get a footnote in history. Only a footnote, I know: but it’s more than most people get.’
    I ignored this. ‘I still don’t see why you need to squirrel yourself away in your room.’
    ‘Privacy,’ he said. ‘Is very important to me.’
    One day he went out on the ice to (he told me) check the meteorological data points. It seemed like an odd thing – he’d never shown any interest in them before – but I was glad he was out of the base, if only for half an hour. As soon as I saw his torch beam go, wobbling its oval of brightness away over the ice, I hurried to his room. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I told myself. I was just checking the identity of the letter’s author. Maybe have a quick glance at its contents. I wouldn’t steal it back (although, I told myself, I could . It was my letter after all. Roy was being an idiot about the whole thing). But once my itch was scratched, curiosity-wise, then everything would get easier about the base. I could wait out the remainder of my stint with equanimity. He need never even know I’d been poking around.
    No dice. Roy had fitted a padlock to his door. I rattled this uselessly; I could have smashed it, but then Roy would know what I’d been up to. I retreated to the common room, disproportionately angry. What was he doing, in there, with a whole computer terminal – and my letter?
    I had enough self-knowledge to step back from the situation, at least some of the time. He was doing it in order to wind me up. That was the only reason he was doing it. The letter was nothing – none of my letters, if I looked back, contained any actual, substantive content. They were just pleasant chatter, people I knew touching base with me. The letter Roy bought must be the same. He bought it not to have the letter, but in order to set me on edge, to rile me. And by getting riled I was gifting him the victory. The way to play this whole situation was to be perfectly indifferent.
    However much I tried this, though, I kept falling back.
    It was the not knowing!
    I tried once more, during the week. ‘Look, Roy,’ I said, smiling. ‘This letter thing is no big deal, you know? None of my letters have any really significant stuff in them.’
    He didn’t reply to this, but he did