Stephen Barr

“ I begin to see light. Give with the idea, Alec."
"Well, there was all this talk of crystals and then you were telling Molly about carbon and diamonds, and it occurred to me that what we have is something trying to crystallize—something that once was a crystal, and got broken up and wants to re-form. It keeps trying with playing cards and pigeons and automobiles, but it's no go. Why don't we give it some carbon to play with, McGill?" ”

“ The rabbit's foot was working, just as McGill said. I stepped down two inches and picked up the phone.
"I'm coming across," I said. "That is, if the wire that runs over here from the lab is strong enough to hold me."
"Alec! You're nuts!" McGill said, and I hung up. (Diamonds of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your nucleus.)
I took a look over the sill at the wire. It was held by a powerful steel eye-bolt, securely attached to the brickwork. Clutching the diamond fragment in its paper, I climbed over the sill and put a foot on the wire and felt immediately seasick. ”

“ McGill answered. "Most people haven't progressed beyond the Dark Ages. Look what happened with Orson Welles' broadcast about the Martians."
"Maybe we ought to leave town for a while." Molly said. "We could go to Oyster Bay or somewhere." Then she glanced up. "What's that noise?"
Outside, I now noticed, mingled with the soughing of the wind, a susurrus of many voices. We went to the lab windows. A crowd of two or three hundred people was standing in the campus, staring up at the sky over us.
"What are they looking at?" McGill asked. "No one can possibly know we're here." ”

“ Psychiatry tells us that some people are accident-prone; I, on the other hand, seemed recently to be coincidence-prone, fluke-happy, and except for the alarm clock, I'd had no control over what had been going on.
I went into our little kitchen to make a drink and reread the directions Molly had left, telling me how to get along by myself until she got back from her mother's in Oyster Bay, a matter of ten days. How to make coffee, how to open a can, whom to call if I took sick and such. My wife used to be a trained nurse and she is quite convinced that I cannot take a breath without her. ”

“ They seemed to be parlaying among themselves, but the crowd had a menacing sound. A brilliant light suddenly hit our windows, illuminating the lab ceiling—a police searchlight. I saw that Molly had disappeared and I assumed she had gone into McGill's office. ”

“ She was looking at the display of various chemicals and reagents on the shelves.
"What's that stuff?" she asked, pointing to a large jar of black powder labeled Deflocculated Graphite. "I bet those cops have gone for a search warrant."
"Finely divided carbon," McGill said. "Damn, I wish I could think of something! A chunk of glass ... blowing up...."
"Graphite is carbon?" Molly said. "You don't think they'd actually do anything to Alec, do you?"
"It's another form of carbon. A diamond is still another: the rare crystalline form," he said. "I wouldn't put it past that mob to do anything." ”

“ There's a similar idea about the atom. Another thing that's like a crystal is that it appears to be forming around a nucleus not of its own material—the way a speck of sand thrown into a supersaturated solution becomes the nucleus of crystallization."
"Sounds like the pearl in an oyster," Molly said, and gave me an impertinent look.
"Why," I asked McGill, "did you say the coins couldn't have the same date? ”

“ McGill grinned. "Don't be superstitious. And especially don't be anthropomorphic."
"Well, if it's the opposite of random, it's got to be a form of life."
"On what basis? All we know for certain is that random motions are being rearranged. A crystal, for example, is not life, but it's a non-random arrangement of particles.... ”

“ We were at the top of the ramp to the Westside Highway and he abruptly put on more speed: no traffic was in sight.
"But what is it?" I asked a little wildly. "How's it doing it? Why pick on me?"
"I don't know, but I'd say it picked you as the nucleus because you had just been the subject of various flukes—the taxi and subway and so on—so you represented a sample of what it's made of—flukes. I have a hunch you'll continue to be protected."
"Did you happen to catch Bill Bart's broadcast?"
"Yes, I did. On the car radio coming over. Not good. ”

“ We were doing a good sixty-five. "Here come the cops," I interrupted, but before McGill could answer, there was a faint pop and the police car wobbled and slowed to a stop, and was quickly out of sight.
"Blowout," I said.
"See what I mean?" McGill answered, and turned on two wheels into the 125th Street exit. Then he added, "Molly's waiting for us in my office."
I felt better.
We drove through some immortal gateway and McGill moderated his speed. He pulled up in front of a darkened building and we climbed the steps. It seemed cooler here and the wind was very strong. ”

“ Damn the heat, damn the pencil, damn Madison Avenue and advertising. My drink was gone and I went back to the kitchen and read Molly's notes again to see if they would be like a letter from her. I noticed one that I had missed, pinned to the door of the dumbwaiter: "Garbage picked up at 6:30 AM so the idea is to Put it Here the Night Before. I love you." What can you do when the girl loves you?
I made another drink and went and stared out of the living room window at the roof opposite. The Sun was out again and a man with a stick was exercising his flock of pigeons. ”

“ The cops showed me surprising consideration; it turned out they were furious at the irresponsible riding they had been getting from Bill Bart. A scientific big-shot that McGill knew, named Joe Stein, convinced them I was in no way to blame, and the case was dropped. Professor Stein gave a wonderfully incomprehensible but tranquilizing statement to the press, and Molly and I went to Oyster Bay.
"In two weeks, everybody'll have forgotten all about it," the lieutenant told us. "You may even be a hero. I don't know."
Before we left, we went with McGill to the lab and saw the diamond. ”

“ But I felt the time had come for me to get expert advice, so I went to the phone to call McGill. McGill is an assistant professor of mathematics at a university uptown and lives near us. He is highly imaginative, but we believe he knows everything.
When I picked up the receiver, the line sounded dead and I thought, more trouble. Then I heard a man cough and I said hello. McGill's voice said, "Alec? You must have picked up the receiver just as we were connected. That's a damn funny coincidence." ”

“ All I mean is that improbable things usually have improbable explanations. When I see a natural law being broken, I don't say to myself, 'Here's a miracle.' I revise my version of the book of rules. Something—I don't know what—is going on, and it seems to involve probability, and it seems to center around you. Were you still in that building when the elevators stuck? ”

“ The motions of the particles of a gas are what we call random, but there are so many of them, we treat them statistically and derive the Second Law of Thermodynamics—quite reliable. It isn't theoretically hard-and-fast; it's just a matter of extreme probability. Now life, on the other hand, seems not to depend on probability at all ”

“ One of the waiters came up to the owner and tapped him on the shoulder and started to tell him about the air-conditioner, thus creating a momentary diversion, which did not, however, include the fat lady.
"He must be drunk!" she told her companion, who nodded contemptuously. A man carrying a stepladder came down the aisle from the back, his eye on the air-conditioner, but not, it seemed, on the stepladder, which bumped the owner of the restaurant on the shoulder just as he was turning back to me.
It was not a hard bump, but it threw him off balance, so that he more or less embraced the waiter. ”

“ I started to lean out of the window, twisting up my head to see what it could be.
"Don't do that, Alec! They'll see you!" McGill warned, and I pulled my head in.
"Can we get on the roof?" I asked, but Molly suddenly said, "Look who's here." Three squad cars drove up and several policemen got out.
"Perhaps we ought to sort of very gently turn the lights off," I suggested.
Molly immediately snapped off the shaded bench lamp, which was all that was on in the lab. This left McGill's office light, and I started toward it. ”

“ Graham," Danny said, "it's at the station house. What there's left of it, that is."
Molly thanked him and there was a short pause, during which I felt the speculative regard of the lieutenant. I pulled out a packet of cigarettes, which I had opened, as always, by tearing off the top. I happened to have it upside down and all the cigarettes fell out. Before I could move my foot to obliterate what they had spelled out on the sidewalk, the two cops saw it. The lieutenant gave me a hard look, but said nothing. I quickly kicked the insulting cigarettes into the gutter. ”

“ There were, by this time, a number of harassed cops directing the maneuver and we heard one of them say to Danny, "I don't know what the hell's going on around here. Every goddam car's got something the matter with it. They can't none of them back out for one reason or another. ”

“ I went to the desk and turned the radio on, low.
"... are doing all they can, which doesn't seem much," Bill Bart was saying breathlessly. "He was last seen speeding uptown on the Westshore Drive, but the cops lost him. The town is gripped in superstitious fear—it is now known that Graham was responsible for the elevators jamming in the I.T.V. Building this morning—but how did he do it? ”