On the Field of Honor - Roizen

8/2/2019 On the Field of Honor - Roizen

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On the Field of Honor

a history of science mystery

Ron Roizen

Lulu


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Copyright 2006 Ron Roizen

Printed by Lulu

www.lulu.com


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For Seb, Zoe, Ezra, and Alexis,who all shared in the

fateful consequences of this time


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A note to the reader:

I wrote this story in the late-1970s. For a time, as I was going through

a bitter divorce, writing it was my hobby and something of a lifesaver.

The idea for the story emerged from the experience of reviewing apaper that had been submitted for publication to a scientific journal. Itwas my first ever invitation from a journal editor to act as a reviewer,and I did the job, Im afraid, in an overly zealous manner. For instance, Itracked down every one of the numerous references cited in themanuscript. I found that the author had taken some liberties withscientific and scholarly norms. For example, he apparently had not

actually read some of the sources he cited but instead had borrowedcitations and their purported content from other papers in the literature. Imused about how hard I should come down on the author, this being myfirst reviewing experience. I also began to wonder if the author wouldknow or be able to figure out who his reviewer was. That, in turn, ledme to speculate on whether a murder -- that is, a murder in academia --might actually be solvable through the medium of a careful and thoroughliterature search. My stewing on this fanciful question in due course

generated this story.Somebody once said that Jorge Luis Borges didnt write fiction but

instead invented fact. I tried to put that notion into practice in writingthis story, for example by sprinkling the narrative with real issues andgenuine citations of works in the history of science. But I made-up manyother references and characters. The storys main characters (Alexi,Chu, Duggan, and Cook) are fictional, and, as it is said, any resemblanceto persons living or dead is coincidental and unintended. A few lesser

characters, I suppose, share some qualities with people I knew long ago.It is, after almost 30 years, a distinct pleasure to see On the

Field of Honorin print.

R.R., Wallace, Idaho, July, 2006


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July 30. The day had been hot and all the more uncomfortablebecause the blower on the third floor wasnt working. Saturday.Something about the automatic timer flickered in Alexis memory-- it would not turn on the cooling or the heating on weekends.Alexi pondered the thermostat in the hall: it was set at 70, the littlered pointer indicated something over 85, the fan switch was set onon. He estimated his office room was ten degrees hotter. Itsskylight, which Alexi regarded as the rooms only amenity, was

producing a hothouse effect. A white, cloudy glare covered thejunk on his desk. Though hed passed the afternoon there, Alexihad not felt like working. Most of the time had been spent merelystaring at the copy he was supposed to be editing.

During brief episodes of activity he would read a few lines,adjust wordings here and there, or cross out suggestions that thepublishers copyeditor had made. Toward late afternoon Alexi had

begun to forego even this much effort and had written STET thispage at the bottom of the papers last four pages. Thecopyeditors major contribution seemed to have been theelimination of the passive voice wherever he or she could spot itand regardless of its appropriateness. Damn the editing mind,Alexi thought to himself. The paper, Alexi had been instructed,had to be returned in Mondays mail. With this flourish of STETSthe job was done. Screw the cover letter. On his way out Alexi

slid the paper into the RUSH box, with the note, Send this to theD.M., the Columbia address, first thing Monday. Then, foremphasis and as well to cover his ass, Alexi added, MUST go out


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with Mondays mail. Maybe he would come in late on Monday;maybe wouldnt come in at all.

At least Mondays the first, Alexi thought, and he could float acheck over the weekend without worrying itd bounce. At sevenAlexi left the building. He walked the one block up Milvia, turnedleft and walked the several blocks to Vine, and turned right threeblocks more to his studio apartment at Oxford. He showered,considered shaving but didnt, and answered a telephone ring thatturned out to be his six-year-old son inviting him to dinner at thewifes place. Chat ended, and having said he could not come thisnight, Alexi left for his dinner appointment with Charles at LarryBlakes Rathskeller.

Dinner passed uneventfully; the talk was sparse and unfocussed.After eating they went to Charles flat. Janet, Charles woman,who had been laid up with a bad case of eczema, was up andaround. Alexi stayed for one beer. There was a brief conversation.Janet had been reading the original French and the English

translation of LamarcksPhilosophie Zoologique off and on sinceWednesday. She talked about how bad Zwerlings translation was.The conversation mostly dragged, though it flashed brighter for awhile when Janet held forth on the circumstances surroundingLamarcks eulogy. French scientific etiquette, she said, demandedthat a higher-ranking or at least equal-stature scientist giveLamarcks eulogy. That meant, at the time of Lamarcks death,only Cuvier would qualify. Cuvier, who was Lamarcks arch

antagonist, used part of the occasion to give a straw-man summaryof Lamarcks views, which he then proceeded to undercut andridicule. As it happened, Cuviers eulogy went on to become thehandy summary of Lamarckian thought that nineteenth-centurybiologists on the Continent and in Britain often used. Poor oldLamarck.

By ten-thirty Alexi was making his way past the sandbox toys,

the brass bedstead, and the other artifacts that littered the approachto his back-entrance studio. Half a dozenBerkeley Gazettes, eitherrolled up and rubberbanded or lying openface, were on the table


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next to the front door. Alexi picked the freshest from the table,unlocked the door, and came in. The place was hot, too hot for ten-

thirty. Alexi threw open a window. Next he got the half-gallon jugof Cribari out of the refrigerator and poured a glass. He turned onthe overhead light in the main room and descended on to thesingle, mattress-on-the-floor bed in the corner of the room. Withhis glass of wine on the floor Alexi turned his attention to thenewspaper.

In spite of the University and its many influences on Berkeleylife, the Gazette was a smalltown paper. It might as well have beenEl Cerritos or Walnut Creeks. Alexi read it for the smalltownnews, the letters, the editorials, the We Like This Plan Because...column that invariably described the plans of family homes thatcould never be found among Berkeleys brown-shingle Victorians,apartment buildings, and hill houses. Alexi always read the dayscrime reports first, which were usually tucked into pages two andthree. It was a ritual begun as a half-rational reaction to separation

from his wife and three kids. What would they do without himthere? Who would protect them from a night burglary or sexualassault? So he checked the crime page. If there were no break-insthat day, he counted it a good day. If an event had happened in thehills, or on southside, or below Sacramento Street, at least it hadnot happened in the houses vicinity. Even a crime committedcloser to home was regarded as a good sign -- on the theory thatlightning never strikes twice. It was Alexis low form of prayer.

But this days crime news had been front page material. Amurder. Arch Street. Close. The description was brief. The body ofRobert M. Duggan, professor of history of science and resident ofBerkeley for 16 years, was found in his Arch Street apartment at3pm on Friday. Duggan, 47, had been shot in the back of the head.Money, but no credit cards, apparently had been removed from hiswallet. He was discovered after he failed to appear at a regularluncheon seminar, which this Friday he was to lead. Duggan hadbeen found by his landlord, L. Berg. Duggans graduate student,Harry Lewis, had phoned the landlord after repeated attempts to


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Duggans number produced no answer. There was no sign ofstruggle.

Alexis phone rang, twice, three times.

Yes?

Whereve you been? It was Alexis wife.

Charles and I had dinner out.

What about Janet?

Sick.Bad?

You know. Her eczema.

Did you see the thing about Duggan?

Uh-huh.

Know him?

Just by sight, said Alexi, History of geology I think.Nineteenth century.

Im telling you, Alexi, if you dont do something to get us outof Berkeley, Ill do it myself.

What are you calling about?

Mike has pinworms -- can you take him down to Kaiser

tomorrow?

Terrific. When? Whens the car available?


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II

Alexi awakened to the sound of the water heater going on andoff as somebody upstairs showered. What time was it? A hazy lightshowed through the window shades, so at least the sun was up.Nobody upstairs was tromping around so it was probably beforeeight. Sunday. Somebodys showering. No, it must be later. Ninemaybe, even ten. Alexi rolled over, pushing his head into themattress. The pillow lay on the floor a foot away.

God. Sunday. The most useless day. On Saturday, the kids. ButSunday was like no day at all. Alexi rolled over again. Staring upat the ceiling, Lamarck, Duggans killing, dinner with Charles,Mikes pinworms, and the rest rolled back through consciousness.Two oclock? Christ, it couldnt be that late yet? Alexi had noclock.

Alexi elevated himself from the bed. In the bathroom he pissed

and broke wind; he contemplated the drought-year question offlushing or not flushing. He flushed. A political act -- Alexiwondered if flushing was protected by the 1st Amendment. Heimagined his defense. Your honor, my client had stared into thatbowl.... No. No court would hear the case. Alexi looked deeplyinto the mirror -- the daily visit with his own face. Eye bags stable,at least if the expression was kept a little taut; eyes clear; beardlight; relatively severe sleepers in eyelashes and eyecorners. Washface. Brush teeth. Douche out armpits. As if to the music ofVictory At Sea, Alexi was washing up.

Hair stroked into place with his hand, Alexi strode back into hisroom. What the hell time was it? What the hell was he going to dountil two? Alexi resisted the inclination to slump back down on thebed. He pulled the sheet and the blanket reasonably straight andflipped the pillow back on the bed. He went to the closet and to

fish out some clothes. Clean clothes hung from the coat hangers;dirty clothes were piled in a cardboard box on the closet floor.Alexi took down a blue-striped, long-sleeve shirt. There were only


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dress slacks left on the coat hangers, two pairs. Alexi pulled acrumpled pair of cords out of the cardboard box. He cinched his

belt, slipped unsocked feet into sandals, loaded the pants pocketswith his wallet, checkbook, appointment book, change, and keys.

Alexi grabbed a notebook, went out the door, turned south onOxford and headed for the Doe Library. The library was not hisfavorite place. But it was close and he could poke around untilone-thirty or so. Alexi could work on a paper. He would work onthe Blyth paper. As he walked up the gently sloping path to themain library, Alexi noticed that the Campanile clock showed 10:20or so -- the library would be open, he would not stay long. He wentup the granite stairs, round the corner, in the doors, and through thecorridor to the author-title catalogue room. Business was slow. Thebig, lighted bingo board (for undergraduates, who were requiredto submit book requests at the desk and wait for their numbers toappear on the board) had only two numbers lighted. Alexi walkedpast the banks of catalogue drawers toward the turnstile entrance to

the stacks. He took no notice of the table-sitters scattered aroundthe long library tables. Instead, idly, he glanced at the rows ofcard-catalogue drawers as he walked past them. One, at the end ofthe row, top drawer, caught his attention for a moment: CRU-CUV. CUV, Alexi thought, ...wonder if Cuviers eulogy ofLamarck would be listed? Where would it be?Proceedings of theFrench Academy? Where?

No, of course not. The eulogy would not be listed under

Cuvier. Hed have to check out Colemans biography of Cuvier orsomething like that first. Maybe he could find it in someCollected Works. Cuviers collected works probably filled awarehouse, Alexi thought. The hell with it. He walked past. Alexihad his wallet out and was fishing for his faculty library card toshow the slight Asian girl who was manning the entrance to thestacks before he remembered Duggan. Then Alexi paused for amoment, he wheeled around, and headed back toward thecatalogue cabinets.


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What had Duggan written anyway? His drawer (DUC-DWI) wasin place. As Alexi withdrew it he flashed on the idea that it was a

little casket in a vast bibliothetic mausoleum. Duggans remains,Alexi thought to himself. The drawer contained three cards forRobert Mitchell Duggan. One was enclosed in the blue-edgedcellophane that identified books on reserve for one or two-hour usebecause they were required reading in one or another course. Theblue-edged card was forVictorian Geology, published in 1972.The two remaining cards gave the titles Whiston and the Discoveryof Comets and The 19th Century Case for Natural History.

The first of these, according to the card description, wasDuggans dissertation, published in monograph form in 1967. Thesecond was a collection of presidential addresses to variousnineteenth-century natural history societies in England andScotland; Duggan co-authored this one with Raymond Tiel in1970. All Duggans cards showed under the name, (1930- ).Alexi contemplated the process, and the time it would take, for

bringing Duggans cards up to date with his death year. All thesetitles would be in the Earth Sciences Library, Alexi thought tohimself, and he stopped for a moment to consider making the trekto the campuss north border in order to look at them. Maybetheyd be checked out. If nothing else, the walk would put himclose to the Northside Coffeeshop, and he could have a coffeebefore marching down the Hearst hill to pick up Mike for theKaiser trip.

Alexi started for the Earth Sciences building. He walked downthrough the depression that provided the site for the temporarybuildings -- green, woodframe, single-story long houses datingfrom the Second World War -- which now housed psychologicalservices and the student employment office. He walked up thesteep asphalt footpath toward the north entrance to campus. Insidethe Earth Sciences Library he went to the card catalogue -- Alexihad neglected to note the call numbers on the main Librarys cards.Again, the blue-edged card, and this time Alexi realized that thisbook could be gotten only from the Reserve Book Room, back at


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the main library. Hell -- Who wants to read a book checked out foronly an hour anyway? Alexi conjured up the image of a worried

undergraduate on this day working his way through VictorianGeology noting down all the assertions that might provide the basisfor good exam questions.

The other two books were listed here. Alexi jotted down the callnumbers and walked across the reading room to the open stacks.The 19

thCentury Case for Natural History was not on the shelves

but the Whiston book was. Alexi checked two rolling carts, loadedwith books returning to the shelves, for19th Century, but it was noton either of them. The Whiston book had no copy number belowits call numbers, implying this was the only copy the libraryowned. Alexi felt lucky for the find. He also felt a vague sense ofunease, even eeriness, about the volume in his hands. Before today,Alexi thought to himself, this had been an unknown fraction of aworking scholars lifetime output; today its one-third of all thebooklength things Robert Duggan ever did.

Out of habit, Alexi checked the back inside cover -- where thecheck-out registry was pasted. He checked for the last time thebook was checked-out. It was an old habit acquired whileresearching his own graduate school papers. He had felt a specialsense of pleasure and even of privilege on finding he was the firstor nearly the first to read a book that had lain in one of theuniversitys libraries for fifty years or more. It was also a way tokeep tabs on the competition -- an out-of-the-way book with a

recent datestamp on the slip might mean somebody was sniffing upthe same trail.

June 2, 1975. Almost exactly two years ago, Alexi thought.There were only a half-dozen date stamps on the slip. Duggan hadcome to Berkeley as an assistant professor at about the same timethat Alexi had arrived as an undergraduate, 1960 or 1961. Thus,the book was published at least five or six, and probably as many

as seven or eight, years after Duggan had finished his dissertation.Thats a pretty long lagtime, Alexi thought to himself. Plus,Duggan had taught scores of lecture courses and prodded along


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flocks of graduate students since 1967. Yet the book had hardlyever been checked out. Never assigned in a course? Never an

interested graduate student to follow-up on one of its implicationsfor future research? Alexi thought for a moment of all of thefaculty members hed known whose knowledge of their disciplinedid not extend much beyond the borders of their dissertations. Hethought of Professor Georges seminar devoted to his dissertationexclusively. Maybe Duggan didnt like the book after he saw it inprint, Alexi thought to himself.

From the checkout slip on the inside back cover Alexi turned tothe books back pages for the bibliography. This, too, had becomethe readers habit: knowing an authors reading list usually allowedAlexi to make a quick but not wholly unreliable estimate of hisideas and his scholarly thoroughness. In more recent years Alexishabit had grown more entrenched on account of a newermotivation -- in papers it might be reasonable to expect it, he likedseeing something he had written among the references. Duggans

was a lengthy bibliography, but it was not readily interpretable forAlexi. Alexi was not sure what a good bibliography for the late1950s would include; he was not familiar with Whiston; he knewlittle about seventeenth-century cosmology. Also, Duggansreadings seemed to consist mostly of secondary sources and oftenof general reading or well known classics sort of works.Lovejoys Great Chain of Beingand Koyres Closed World to anOpen Universe were to be expected, were perhaps even obligatory

citations, in Duggans dissertation. But what were J.D. Bernal,Henri Bergson, and Bertrand Russell doing among Duggansreadings on Whiston? Was Duggans an essay-contest sort ofdissertation? Was Whiston himself just the point of departure forlarger agendas? Certainly it suggested to Alexi that Duggan hadnot gone to Cambridge and done original research in the librarythere. At least, Alexi thought, Duggan didnt go in for the I-have-found-a-previously-undiscovered-letter sort of history of science,

a style of historical labor that put Alexi off completely.


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III

Alexi scribbled out the IBM-card checkout form for the Whistonbook, got stamped-out, and left the Earth Sciences building.Outside, he walked up the hill to the campus entrance, past theflower-vendor, across Hearst to the Northside Coffeeshop. It was,as ever, a clean well-lighted place. Not until he was at a table witha caf latte did Alexi open Duggans book in earnest. It was 11:40.By 1:20 he was on page 74 and his third cup. He gathered up the

book and his notebook and headed down Hearst to pick up Mike.As he walked Alexi mulled over Duggans first 74 pages. Thebook was well-written, evenhanded, richly conceived. Alexi saw itlanding Duggan an appointment in the History Department atBerkeley. The book was right; Duggan knew the lingo. But thebook was brave too, Alexi thought to himself. It was not just anaccount of Whistons cosmological theories or his place in late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century astronomy and

mathematics. Duggan had had loftier aims, and Whiston appearedto be a well-chosen subject.

Whiston was no slouch. He had succeeded Isaac Newton at thechair of mathematics at Cambridge.New Theory of the Earth,Whistons biggest opus, was published in 1696. It was a book forits times. What was Duggans line? Alexi tried to get the bigpicture. Duggan had begun by pointing out that Christian faith was

in trouble in the seventeenth century. All over Europe it faced arising tide of rationalism. Many contemporaries had the distinctsense that scientists or natural philosophers (as they were called)were some of the most successful underminers of the faith. Butalthough science often evoked suspicion, oddly enough the sourcesof its putative subversiveness were far from clear. Yes, in the pastthere had been Brunos (d 1600), Galileos (d 1642), andCopernicus (d 1543) confrontations with the Church. But these

men -- even if one discounted the phony disclaimers they issuedwhen they got into serious trouble -- were all steeped in piety.Science, in the Catholic context as much as anywhere else, was


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still a department of religious learning in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries.

The underlying dilemma facing the thinkers of the time was notscience or religion but simply, how better to be pious? It couldbe said that in Britain, and in other Protestant realms, science waseven more strongly allied with the Faith. It was not amongscientists, but rather among men of letters and even religioniststhemselves that the searchlight of rationalism had been doing itsmost devastating work. Those who had carried forward the causeof doubt had done so very much in spite of themselves. Thecivilization wanted to believe; on the whole, the civilization didbelieve. It was precisely because the pious believed as thoroughlyas they did that they were willing to test their truth against the newfacts of natural history, the emerging truths of physics andastronomy, and perhaps especially the new comparative analysis ofbiblical texts. Alexi recalled a favorite sentence from DonCameron AllensLegend of Noah: We shall perceive that reason

used in the most pious fashion and for the holiest of ends hadsucceeded in reducing certain sections of the Bible, that perfectrepository of the facts of revelation, to the level of many ordinarylegends of ancient origin.

But if biblical scholars -- who devoted themselves to things likecomparative analyses of Jeromes Vulgate version of the Bible andearlier Greek and Hebrew texts -- could expect only to create moretrouble for the Holy Book, at least natural philosophers could

believe their labors would ultimately support the faith. What harmcould come from the study and contemplation of Gods owncreation? Was not the book of nature as much authored by theDivine Penman as the Holy Scriptures? Was it not clear that God --in the Bible -- had made a point of speaking only in terms that hislisteners could understand, and devoting his communiqus for themost part to moral rather than physical truths? Moses, after all hadnot come down from the mount with NewtonsPrincipia; Christon the cross hadnt chosen even to reveal the existence of thewestern hemisphere.


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It was open season on natural truths. And what a season it hadbeen. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and the towering figure of Isaac

Newton. The yoke of Aristotelian mechanics had been shattered.There emerged out of contemporary times a new physics and anew cosmology that put the earthly events and the events of theplanets and the heavenly sphere in the same conceptual ballpark.The light of reason had never shown brighter, had neverilluminated so grand an intellectual landscape. These were piousachievements. The discoverers had worship on their minds. Butthough the universe seemed to grow in its grandeur because a few

of its principles had been grasped, the Newtonian achievement, inparticular, posed a special dilemma for the holy history. Newtonsworld, as everybody knew, was a clockwork. It ran on after itsinitial winding, or it got periodic rewinds, but whichever was thecase, it didnt make much room for surprises. It had no room, inparticular, for the catastrophic events of biblical history or, for thatmatter, for the creation itself. It was not an evolutionary world buta fundamentally unchanging one that Newtons planetary

mechanics revealed.

Then, along came Edmund Halley reporting that there werealmost two dozen comets in the solar system. Just the thing!Newton plus comets would provide just the sort of combinationthat could account for all the discontinuous events of the Mosaichistory: the creation, the deluge of Noah, indeed, damned near anysudden occurrence you like. Comets. Comets. The comets were the

bridge. They were the link between biblical history and all its veryun-Newtonian events, on the one hand, and the toweringaccomplishments of seventeenth-century science, on the other.Whiston, then, tried to provide the grand synthesis: the unificationof nature as revealed by the Newtons and Halleys of the scientificworld and earth history as revealed in the Bible. Duggan hadrecounted Whistons theoretical system with graceful prose. Butthe focus of the book was not on Whistons historical context or

even on the elements of his system.


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Duggans book was going to go well beyond that. Even in thespace of the introductory chapters, Duggan had laid out an

ambitious plan. He wished to divide the late seventeenth centuryscientific consciousness -- as it was reflected in Whistons system -- into a series of bite-sized explananda (things seen as needing anexplanation) and explanatia (things seen as providing anexplanation). In this way Duggan was going to try to show what agiven historical period assumed to be true (which in turn providedits explanatia) and what things constituted its problematicphenomena or issues (its explananda). In so doing Duggan would

show what building-blocks were available for the construction ofexplanations or theories, and beyond that, what matters wereregarded by the age as mysterious, problematic, or demandingexplanation. By exercising this approach, Duggan had promised,he would show how thoroughly different (even upside-down) werethe circumstances of seventeenth-century and twentieth-centuryscience. What turns up in seventeenth century as nagging problemsdisappear in the twentieth. One times assumptions are anothers

myths. One times answers, anothers questions. In the processDuggan would paint a brightly colored picture of naturalphilosophy or science when it was still more or less a departmentof theology. This too would provide for appropriate juxtapositionswith the twentieth century: Science today, Duggan would argue,was a freestanding or even a superordinate activity, defining forthe other departments of cultural life what constitutes appropriatestandards of knowledge and faith. In the seventeenth century, onthe other hand, science was a subordinate activity in a worlddefined first and foremost in theological terms.

Heady stuff, Alexi thought. It was not until he was sitting in thewaiting room at Kaiser, reading a copy ofTodays Health to Mike,that Alexi thought of Velikovsky.


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IV

The Todays Health article was on ambulances, their outfittingsand their activities. Mike was very interested in ambulances. Alexiwas stunned for a moment by the thought of Velikovsky, and hestopped reading from the account of ambulances long enough toearn a nudge from Mike. Mike took the occasion to point out thatsome ambulances made the siren sound, EERRRRRRRRRRR-

RRRRRR, but others sounded more like, WOO-OOH WOO-OOHWOO-OOH, and was the magazine going to talk about that?

Lets see, said Alexi. He read on.

As he did Alexi mulled over his discovery. Whiston was, afterall, the original Velikovsky. Velikovsky had published first when?1949? 1950? Comets, one more time. Alexi could recall nomention of Velikovsky in Duggans book. Maybe that made sense.

Why raise red flags in a perfectly scholarly sounding work bybringing up crazy Velikovsky? Maybe Duggan had brought upVelikovsky, and someone on his dissertation committee advisedhim to take the mention out.

Too bad, thought Alexi to himself. What an opportunity hadbeen missed. If Duggan wanted to show how drastically differentthe contexts of scientific explanation were in the seventeenth andthe twentieth centuries, what better mechanism could he have

hoped for than a Velikovsky? Velikovsky, for example, in hisWorlds in Collision, had had to convince a twentieth centuryaudience that massive earthly events had actually occurred -- thesorts of events that would require something as big as a planet-comet near-collision to make them happen. Whistons readers, onthe other hand, already knew that the great events of the OldTestament, the Creation and the Deluge, had taken place. Whiston,instead, had tried to account for comets in Gods scheme of thingsby linking them to these events.


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But, all right, it made sense for Duggan to pass up mention ofVelikovsky. Duggans dissertation, for one thing, had been written

before the revival of interest in Velikovsky in the late sixties.When Duggan was writing Velikovsky would have been regardedas a crank -- wasnt there even a chapter on him in MartinGardners fifties book on scientific quacks? Still, the link betweenWhiston and Velikovsky made the inattention that Duggans bookapparently had suffered even more difficult to account for. TheVelikovsky revival in the late sixties was swept along by anti-establishment sentiment and also by the more or less correct

predictions Velikovsky had made about Venuss atmosphere andtemperature -- findings brought back from the Mariner spacevoyager. Articles had been written, even a book published on thecontroversy and the handling of Velikovsky by the academic press.Yet Alexi could remember no mention of Duggans book. Was theVelikovsky revival the reason for the late publication of Duggansbook in 1967? Did the publisher figure, as Alexi would have, thatinterest in Velikovsky would rekindle interest in his most notable

precursor?

Mike Plotin, the nurse announced from the hallway entrance.Alexi and Mike walked heavily down the corridor to theexamination room they were directed into. The nurse was middle-aged, Irish looking. She wore white gauzy-looking stockings and amechanical pencil pinned to her blouse, attached by a thinretractable wire. She took Mikes temperature with one of the new

electronic thermometers that registers temperature in ten seconds.Mike took off his shirt. Alexi settled into one of the two brightorange, plastic-mold chairs in the tiny room. As soon as the nursewas gone, and the wait for the doctor begun, Alexi realized hesmelled bad. Jesus.

Alexi hoped the doctor would be along soon. The ambulancearticle had been read through -- no discussion of siren sounds.Alexi pulled down four paper towels from the silvery dispenser,crumpled two together into a reasonable ball, handed them toMike, and then crumpled the remaining two into a ball for himself.


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The two waiters commenced a contest, lobbing the papertowelballs into the wastebasket -- which, as it happened, was a small

net-like cylinder in the corner.The Kaiser trip dragged on. First, the doctors examination, then

the long wait in the pharmacy. It was ten-to-four before Alexi andMike had extracted themselves and were driving up Broadway,down College to Bancroft, and then round the bottom of campus toHearst Avenue. Alexi pulled in the driveway, took up Duggansbook from the seat, and deposited Mike inside the Houses frontdoor.

The doctor didnt know if there were pinworms or not, heannounced, but he said everybody might as well take the antidote.He also said Mike should be shown how to wipe his behind, andwash up and all that. Because the other two kids were not there --Sue was at friend Gretchens, Chris was playing tennis -- Alexiwas off after making his good-bye to Mike.

Alexi walked toward home, he considered shopping but passedby the Shattuck Avenue Co-op. Alexi felt as though he weredragging himself as he arrived at his apartment. He went to the lineof record albums stacked between the speakers of his KLH. He puton Emmylou Harris, moved the arm over to Boulder toBirmingham, and, this done, turned to the bookshelf.

The wall space across the room from his bed was one floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall set of bookshelves -- pine one-by-twelves held

up by silvery arms mounted in metal tracks screwed to the wall.Alexi looked up high, on the paperback shelves, for his copy ofVelikovsky. He plucked it down and settled into his lone loungingchair -- a black, swiveling, Danish modern, leatherette object thatstood on one four-footed chrome leg. Alexi did not likepaperbacks, and he gave out a quiet groan as he opened the book toits index. It was the Dell Laurel edition ofWorlds in Collision,published in 1967. Whiston was mentioned three times -- pp. 55,57, and 333.


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Alexi wondered if Velikovsky was embarrassed by Whiston, andwould resist citing him on that account. After all, here was

Velikovsky articulating in 1949 a theory that sounded likesomething out of the 1600s. Then, along comes the discovery ofWhiston -- someone with roughly the same theory as Velikovsky --who actually published in 1696. Alexi savored the irony: Dugganwriting on Whiston would avoid mention of Velikovsky in order toavoid being tarred by Velikovskys poor standing. Velikovsky, onthe other hand, would avoid mention of Whiston in order to avoidbeing called a cosmological atavist.

Christ, Alexi thought to himself, how many times didVelikovsky mention Whiston in the first edition ofWorlds inCollision? Whiston, on the other hand, probably would have citedboth Duggan and Velikovsky if he could have!

The index showed no mention of Duggan, but that was to beexpected since Velikovskys 1967 edition was essentiallyunchanged from the 1949. Alexi consulted the 1967 Preface, an

updating written by Velikovsky on the post-1949 history of histheory. No mention of Duggan -- once more, expectable.Velikovskys references to Whiston were not particularlyrevealing. On page 55 Velikovsky considered the implausibility ofthe story of Joshuas requisition of the sun and moon to stand stillin order for him (Joshua) to take Jericho. Velikovsky began byechoing the improbability of the story:

But that the sun and the moon should halt in theirmovements across the firmament -- this could be only theproduct of fancy, a poetic image, a metaphor [1]; a hideousimplausibility when imposed as a subject for belief [2]; amatter for scorn -- it manifests even a want of reverence forthe Supreme Being.

Footnote [1] was to SchiaperellisAstronomy in the Old Testament(1905); footnote [2] was to Whiston, crediting him with the


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position that the Bible should be interpreted metaphorically on thispoint. Whiston, rather than anticipator of Velikovskys views, was

being gently guided into the seat of the straw man and holder-of-the-conventional metaphorasist view of the story of Joshua andJericho.

The next reference to Whiston, two pages later, was more to thepoint. Velikovsky was pointing out that collisions between theearth and an object as large as a comet would have to fight alongstanding prejudice against the acceptance of even meteoritesor stones falling to the earth. Velikovsky wrote:

Only shortly before 1803, the Academy of Sciences ofParis refused to believe that...stones had fallen from thesky. The fall of meteorites on July 24, 1790, in southwestFrance was pronounced un phenomene physiquementimpossible [4]. Since the year 1803, however, scholars

have believed that stones fall from the sky. If a stone cancollide with the earth, and occasionally a shower of stones,too, cannot a full-sized comet fly into the face of the earth?It was calculated that such a possibility exists but that it isvery unlikely to occur [5].

Footnote [5] began with (for a footnote) the odd assertion that D.F.

Argo had computed on some occasion a one in 280 millionchance for a collision between a comet and earth.

Wish I could get away with that, Alexi muttered to himself,though at the same time he had a vague sense of admiration forVelikovskys chutzpa. Clearly, Velikovsky had felt that thesubstance of the quotation was more important than the fact that hecould not remember where in the hell he had read or heard it! Thefootnote went on to remind the reader of the big craters in Arizona

and Siberia, and the 1946 passage of the small Giacobini-Zinnercomet, which came ...within 131,000 miles of the point where the


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earth was eight days later. These realities were offered asevidence that the earth could collide with big objects. Alexi

wondered if any of Velikovskys readers flatly would have arguedthat it was impossible for such a collision.

The second paragraph of footnote [5] took off in a new direction-- it was Velikovskys quiet nod to Whistons priority:

While investigating whether an encounter between theearth and a comet had been the subject of a previousdiscussion, I found that W. Whiston, Newtons successor atCambridge and a contemporary of Halley, in hisNewTheory of the Earth (the first edition of which appeared in1696) tried to prove that the comet of 1680, to which he(erroneously) ascribed a period of 575 years, caused thebiblical Deluge on an early encounter.

Velikovsky then referred the matter to one of his favoriteauthorities: G. Cuvier, who was unable to offer his ownexplanation of the causes of great cataclysms, referred to thetheory of Whiston in the following terms:

Whiston fancied that the earth was created from theatmosphere of one comet, and that it was deluged by thetail of another. The heat which remained from its firstorigin, in his opinion, excited the whole antediluvianpopulation, men and animals, to sin, for which they wereall drowned in the deluge, excepting the fish, whosepassions were apparently less violent.

Not very generous, thought Alexi. So its more important todistance oneself from a Whiston than to embrace him warmly.


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Velikovsky could have said that thinkers as great as Newton andLocke liked Whistons stuff, but he did not.

That the Emmylou Harris record had for some minutes been overand was bumping in the terminal grooves suddenly dawned onAlexi. He put Velikovsky down on the floor to put something elseon. It was as he rose from the chair that he noticed a piece ofpaper on the floor a couple of feet from the front door. It musthave been slipped under the door and then pushed aside when Icame in, Alexi thought. For a moment he considered the potentialsenders -- Kip, the landlord, who lived upstairs? Patty, nextdoor?Why a note? Not unattended-to obligations to people in thebuilding occurred to him besides the rent check, but it was tooearly to be hinting around about the rent.

Alexi picked up the note, which was neatly folded-in-fours pieceof 8 by 11 paper. It was dated July 30, today, and written in aneat almost architect-like printed hand. Would you please call metomorrow at 549-9000 during work hours, 9-5. Thank you. Daniel

Chu, Berkeley Police Department. Oh SHIT, thought Alexiimmediately, Im a suspect in Duggans murder for checking outhis goddam book! Alexi shook his head at the ceiling. With theturntable still emitting its annoying bumping sound Alexi shuffledthrough the drawers and the cabinet spaces beneath the bar thatmarked off his kitchen area from the rest of his room. The Eastbayphone directory finally emerged from it, and Alexi paddledthrough the Cs looking for Chu. Chu, D; Chu, DW; Chu,

Donald -- no Daniel, though either of the Ds might be one. Butneither of the Ds had Berkeley addresses, which Alexi thought wasrequired of city employees. Sure, Alexi, he said under hisbreath, homicide detectives always list their home phones andaddresses in the phonebook. Alexi decided not to pursue thematter immediately. It annoyed him though. He knew hed mullover the Chu call till it was actually made the next morning, andthat meant that he would not be able to work up the concentrationto get something done this evening.


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Alexi guessed it was about six, and he began to think about food.Why the hell was the BPD interested in Duggans book? Alexi

went to his bookshelves again, this time to the third from the topshelf. From the left end of this shelf roughly three dozen Meadtwin-wire 3 subject notebooks were lined up in a row. Each wasmade up of 150 sheets of 9 by 6 inch paper, divided into threesections by pages of thicker blue paper. The last seven notebookswere empty, a condition they revealed by their narrownesscompared to the used ones. When filled a notebook bulged fromthe aggregate effect of the paper-curl caused by Alexis writing on

one side of each page.

The notebooks represented Alexis intellectual departments. Atfirst, five or six years ago, he had begun carrying a notebookaround to jot down ideas he got while driving or waiting in thecheckout line at the Co-op. Later, they evolved into a specificseries of subjects, each notebook section being devoted to a specialtopic. The notebooks were arranged haphazardly on the shelf --

only the outer covers color and the general wear of the book andits thickness cued Alexi to the subjects it contained. The supply ofseven fresh notebooks was a more recent innovation. They werebought as a result of two sorts of motivations: first, Alexis desireto splurge on himself after his divorce, and second, his intention toencourage broadening his notes beyond the subjects he already hadbeen collecting.

The notebooks themselves were made up of collections of

references, of questions and conjectures, and (less often) of draftsof paragraphs and pages he would pull together someday. Thepages were often riddled with asterisks or oversized handwriting,two devices Alexi used to flag things that needed to be recalledwhen the notebook was read over. Occasionally, Alexi had thingsstapled in the notebooks: like xeroxed pages from an article or aslip of paper he had noted something on when the notebook itselfwasnt handy. The notebooks had no outer titles, but each of theinternal divider pages bore a heading. For the most part, theseheadings were undescriptive except to the author himself:


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Reasons-Causes, Outcomes, Kuhn, S of S, LicensePlates, Bergson, Huxley, Earth Age, Prisons, Blyth,

Science Norms, Conflict Among Experts, LisbonEarthquake, Personals, -- these were the headings in the firstfive notebooks.

Alexi took down the first of the remaining new notebooks andfetched a felt-tip pen from the cup on his door-on-sawhorses desk.(He paused for a moment to marvel that a pen was where it oughtto have been!) Not on the outer cover but on the first blue dividerjust inside it Alexi carefully lettered the title: DUGGAN ANDWHISTON. He turned to the first lined page and began to putdown what seemed to be the central concerns. Each entry waslisted with a little number inside a little circle. He wrote down:

(1) Why was Duggans book so unread? (2) Hadnt theVelikovsky controversy initiated more Whiston studies? HadDuggans book played a part in the controversy -- check the DeGrazia book? Check the first edition of V for references to

Whiston. (3) How much did V. depend on Wh.? Read Velikovsky;read Whiston. (4) How were Duggans reviews -- checkIsis,J.Hist. Ideas, astronomy journals? (5) Other work on Whiston beforeDuggan? (6) How did BPD get it out of the library that I hadWhiston!? Why did they care? (7) Check Habers and Allensbooks for Whiston? For Duggan? (8) Get Duggans other books,get papers from his c.v.

Following these numbered entries Alexi wrote a series of things,first references and call numbers, then Sgt. Chus office phonenumber (Chus note he stapled in the back of the notebook).

Alexi had decided to know something about Duggan. It was nota choice explicitly made, but it was made nonetheless. He drew aline below the last of these items and wrote below it, Whiston,R.N. (which, in his code, stood for Reading Notes). Then hewent through the first seventy-four pages of Duggans book notingthe pages on which he had made light, pencil-point marks. Heerased these as he went, and where it was necessary he transcribed


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the essences of important paragraphs. More often, though, Aleximerely put an asterisk by a page number that contained some good

stuff. This much done, Alexi felt caught up. He laid Whiston downon the desk and laid the notebook down on top of it.

Alexi finally took the record off, and put on side one of JarrettsKln Concertalbum. He got up and went to the kitchenette. Fromthe shelves of the refrigerator Alexi removed two pork-loin chops,a half-full jar of applesauce (which he eyed for mold, but foundnone), half a head of red leaf lettuce, and a jar ofMaries bluecheese dressing. First he started the pork loins going over amedium flame, next he washed individual lettuce leaves, flickingeach dry and then ripping them up and tossing them in the saladbowl. Alexi neither liked to cook nor demanded conventionalmeals at conventional times, but he enjoyed meal preparation time.He sensed its positive meaning in the feeling of self-sufficiency itgave him. Hovered over the applesauce jar, some dimly lightedpart of his consciousness was saying, Im Alexi Plotin, I live

alone, and Im doing just fine thank you.As the chops sizzled, Alexi pondered the rest of the evening. He

guessed it was 6:30. He considered going to the laundromat. No,not today. The laundromat always humbled Alexi. He didnt feellike it. The hell with tonight, Alexi thought to himself. Aftereating hed take a bath and then go to bed with Duggans book. Itseemed as good as anything else.


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V

Sergeant Daniel Chu of the felony section of the BPD was anunlikely collection of characteristics. Six years ago, when he was asenior at San Francisco State, Chu had decided that crime wouldnot go out of fashion in his lifetime. On the strength of that, he hadaimed himself toward becoming a cop. He was still young, tooyoung some of his departmental colleagues thought, for a homicideinvestigator. At twenty-seven, Chu had been out of school only

two years. He had a Masters from Berkeley in criminology -- notthe social-science but the criminalistics kind. He was a little oversix feet tall, had broad muttonchop sideburns, and a luxuriantly fullmustache that filled the area above his lip and fell straight downthe sides of his mouth, terminating at the lower edge of his jaw. Hewas thin but not narrow. He wore a plaid short-sleeve shirt, whichlooked as if it might have been thoroughly starched, and whitelevis. He had on Wallaby shoes, the dark brown sort with the seam

running straight up the vamp, and black wool socks. A dark greentee-shirt showed through at the neck. The attire was informal but itcould be said that the man was not. Chus posture wasunselfconsciously straight, and, combined with his officer-corpsdemeanor, he was set off against his casual dress. There was nohint of his Chinese origins in his speech, facial expressions, ormanner. A cup of coffee sat steaming on his desk blotter.

Chu, this Monday morning was looking over Duggans autopsy -- the rotation had finally come around to Chu with a homicide. Itwas his first, and he was anxious to regard it no differently fromthe other felonies he had handled since joining the department. Ashe read, Chu translated the deputy coroners terse medical prose.One .22 caliber slug entered in the no-mans-land between theback of the head and the neckbone, had traveled up through thebrain, and come to rest behind the forehead. Nearly no bone had

been struck, but the bullet had cut a catastrophic path throughDuggans brain, severing the spinal nerves from their trunk at themedulla oblongata, and cutting a tunnel below the pituitary gland


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and stopping in the right frontal lobe behind the right forehead.Aside from the fact that the angle of entry ruled out Duggans

unaided shooting of himself, the report held little interest for Chu.The only other noteworthy finding was that Duggan was dying ofcancer, a condition that had apparently begun in the intestines andhad not been caught before it spread just about everywhere.Breckenridge, the deputy coroner, had estimated that Duggan hadsix to twelve months to live.

When it rains, it pours, Chu said to himself. Though Chu waswell-schooled in criminalistics he had doubts about how much job-helping expertise his education provided him. Somehow, the twodozen or so cases he had had or had assisted in since hed gottenthe job had not seemed to need anything he knew from hisgraduate school years. And, anyhow, most criminalisticalinvestigation was done by the people up in the lab. In fact, only theineptitude Chu saw in greenhorn investigators (and one or twomore senior investigators, whom he had on occasion bailed out)

made him feel at all competent or seasoned in his job.Chu had begun the investigation on Friday with the ritual of the

examination of the crime scene. He had given the appearances ofattentiveness to detail, but in fact had decided moments afterarriving and giving the place a quick onceover that there would belittle to learn there. He had in fact begun to speculate about thecase before he had looked at the body. Why does one murder aRobert Duggan, Professor of History? Did Duggan have a second

life, a seamier side? Was he doing drugs, was he gay, was hemessing around with somebodys wife or some students fianc?Chu browsed around in his commonsense understandings aboutmurder. People kill somebody when they are afraid of them orwhat they might do. But sometimes people kill by mistake, aswhen a burglar is surprised in the act, or a bar-room brawlbecomes a homicide because on of the fighters falls on his head.People kill when theyre drunk or on drugs, Chu continued his list,feeling only a weak commitment to this last reason. People alsokill to enforce the rules -- Chu thought of Joey the hitmans


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autobiography: He thought of Joeys contention that hiring ahitman was too expensive for there not to be a good reason for

killing the party at whom the service was directed.The thought of a hitman made Chu feel momentarily insecure

and out of place. Hell, thought the detective, if its a hitman theyllgive the case to Pearson or maybe even to Mihalotov. But then,mentally standing back from himself for a moment, Chu switchedassumptions: Why should I look for some seamier side of the goodprofessor? Wouldnt a professors job produce as many occasionsfor being killed or killing as anybody elses? What, thought Chu tohimself, have addicts, homosexuals, or ladiesmen got overprofessors?

The body was being moved into the coroners van; officers werestarting to knock on neighbors doors, interviewing them forwhatever light they could shed. Hell, maybe it was a case ofmistaken identity, thought Chu as he climbed down from the flightof thought hed been following. Friday afternoon had passed. The

interviews with neighbors had produced absolutely nothing. Fewwere home at the time of the shooting, and among those who were,nobodyd heard a shot, seen a car, nothing. Chu had checked therecord of Friday calls to the department, but again nothing turnedup. It was going to be a long one, Chu thought to himself, and hewas going to have to fill a thick file in the course of it.

Chu knew he would turn the investigation next to Duggans

family and to his colleagues at the University. He also knew thathed better scrape together something to report at LieutenantMihalotovs Friday afternoon progress-report seminar. Mihalotov,along with Pearson, Lampman, and all the rest would see rightaway that the coroners report, ballistics, the prints, neighborstatements and all the rest amounted to nothing, were just so muchfiller. There was, Chu thought, no real lead; nothing pointing to anext step. Something has to turn up, Chu thought to himself,

maybe the creep will turn himself in.


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VI

On Sunday, at 11am, dressed in cutoffs and a blue sweatshirt,Chu had gone to the main library on campus equipped with hisyounger brothers reg card. His brother was a grad student inforestry, and hed lent the card without a thought -- Sure. Say,where is the library? Ron had said to Daniel. But Sergeant Chuhad been reluctant to use the card -- especially because he worried

that this false library identity might come out in the full course ofthe investigation. But, for now at least, Daniel Chu expected nocomplications. He just wanted to glance at Duggans work. He feltgood in a collegians uniform again, too. He knew the library andhe could still pass for an undergraduate. If nothing else, hewouldnt appear quite so idiotic in his interviews with the Historydepartment faculty if he knew a little about the victims work.

But, an hour later, Chu was coming away from campus

emptyhanded. The Reserve Book Room was closed, closing accessto one of Duggans books, and the other two books were out onloan from the Earth Sciences Library. Having found that theywere not on the shelves, Chu had approached the referencelibrarian on duty at the desk. He assumed his own rather thanRons identity, almost shyly folding open his badgecase so thelibrarian could see it. After a phone call down to the main librarythe librarian handed Chu three IBM-card checkout forms. Two hadchecked out the librarys two copies ofThe 19th Century Case forNatural History and one had checked out Whiston and theDiscovery of Comets. All three books were 14-day loaners -- the19

thCentury had been lent ten days earlier and eight months

earlier, respectively, by two graduate students, Denise Martin andEzra Goldberg. The third book had been signed out just that day bya faculty member, Alexi Plotin. The faculty privilege allowed him

to keep it out for the entire academic quarter.Chu noted down the addresses and phone numbers of all three.

Instead of spending Sunday afternoon in a carrel in the stacks, as


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he had imagined, he had driven around Berkeley leaving littlenotes to the Duggan books borrowers. On top of it all, Chu had

the unmistakable feeling that he was wasting his time. Filler in thefile wouldnt look any better because hed tracked down Duggansbooks. He could almost hear Mihalotov on Friday asking him ifhed made any library fine collars. He could see Mihalotov lookingup at him with his tired, old Russian eyes.

Now, on Monday, with the autopsy report perched in front ofhim and the coffee steaming in his cup, Chu had begun to notice atouch of panic entering the case. Maybe the creeps not going toturn himself in, he muttered to himself, humorlessly.

The telephone on his desk buzzed, and he pressed down theflashing button. Sergeant Chu speaking, can I help you?

Hullo, this is Alexi Plotin. You left a note for me to call.

Oh, right. Yes -- Chu hesitated a moment to consider the rightform of address. He decided on Mr. -- Mr. Plotin, thanks for

calling. Chu composed his speech. Youre probably aware thatProfessor Robert Duggan was a homicide victim last Friday. In anycase, Chu continued without a pause, Im one of the peopleassigned to the case, and I wanted to read over some of Duggansworks just to get a sense of them.

The word works was a little too strong, both Chu and Alexithought at the moment it had been spoken. Otherwise, the speech

was about right. You have checked out...lets see...WilliamWhistons Comets or something, right?

Uh-huh, said Alexi.

I wonder if youd mind letting me have a look at the book for afew days?

No problem, how do you want to get it?

If its all the same, Ill pick it up on my way home from work,say five-thirty at your address? said Chu.

Okay. Is that it then?


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Yes, thats it. Thank you.

Sure, see you then, said Alexi and the conversation ended.Guess Chu already knows my address, Alexi thought to himself.


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VII

By Monday noon Alexi had read theDaily Californians accountof the Duggan murder and the announcement that a memorialservice would be held on Wednesday at 4pm in 145 Dwinelle Hall.145 Dwinelle, Alexi thought, big crowd. Cook, the headhoncho of the history of science group, would officiate. Briefremembrances would be contributed by fellow faculty. The Daily

Cal concluded by mentioning that friends and students ofProfessor Duggan were invited -- perhaps to keep attendance downor to keep it honest, Alexi thought. But the article contained nomore about Duggans death than the Friday Gazette. The oneremaining bit of new news was that Duggans history of biologyclass -- History 132 -- would be assumed by Mr. Bronte.

Alexi had a lecture to prepare for Tuesday, and he was havingtrouble sticking to the job. The morning had been pissed away

entirely on a meeting among the researchers in his group. Four newRequests For Proposals (or RFPs) on child abuse had beenpublished in the Commerce and Business Daily of last Friday. Thefour principals of Alexis group had gathered together to decidewhich or how many RFPs should be responded to. Alexi had tunedout early; in principle he disliked the Request-For-Proposal systemand preferred a system in which researchers submitted proposalswhen they got good ideas. He had picked his way through theDaily Cal throughout the meeting; hed said nothing except GoodMorning to the groups other researchers and to its PrincipalInvestigator, Connie Demeter, when the meeting had begun.

At noon he had taken up the lecture preparation by reading overthe journal articles that the class had been assigned for thismeeting. He scribbled notes on a single white 8 X 11 sheet as heread -- he was trying to reconstruct his motivations for giving the

assignment in the first place. He searched into his file headedLecture Notes and fished out the notes he had prepared for the


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same session last year. He read them over, decided they read prettywell. He would add only a couple of new thoughts.

So much for the lecture. Alexi now considered going to lunch --not hungry enough, too expensive. He had vowed that this monthhe was not going to expend his whole food budget by the 10th. Heconsidered walking home for a sandwich and a beer. He alsolooked up at a small piece of yellow paper pinned to a corkboardon the wall above his desk. On the paper was a list of his weeksduties: (1) Finish review of Palekka, (2) write Mccaffery, (3) finishchapter on Barriers, (4) look over Jims piece, (5) editEvaluation Standards. But Alexi felt too distracted to take up oneof these tasks.

The phone rang, and unlike his usual gut response to it, Alexiwas almost grateful. Yeah?

Alexi? said the voice at the other end.

Yeah, said Alexi, recognizing Harry Lewiss exuberant phone

voice.

Alexi. Listen. Were running down the whole History ofScience mailing list, phoning everybody and asking them to givesomething toward a reward for catching the guy. What can I putyou down for?

What have you got so far?

Well, Were down to the Ps...

No shit, Alexi contributed.

...and weve got about nineteen hundred bucks.

On first hearing the figure sounded substantial, then Alexiconsidered the context. The figure seemed ridiculously low. Hecould see the account in the Gazette tomorrow: Faculty andstudents in the History Department have posted a $1,900 reward

for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. Itdidnt sound right at all.


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I dont know, Harry. Put me down for ten bucks.

Ten bucks! Harry shouted. This isnt his Christmas present,the guys dead!

Alright, Harry, Alexi responded, make it five then.

Shit, all right, ten bucks. Harry was annoyed.

Harry, you know how broke I am. Take it easy on me, Alexiresponded.

There was a brief pause.

Harry?

Yes. Okay. Ten bucks.

No. Harry, tell me something. Did you ever read Duggansdissertation?

No, whats it about?

Whiston.Whiston Churchill?

No -- get serious for a minute, Harry -- William Whiston,17th century mathematician and biblical apologist.

Never heard of him, Harry replied. Listen I got to keep onphoning. You have no idea how many people on the list havenames beyond P.

Okay, Harry, Ill put a check in campus mail this afternoon.

Thanks Alexi.

Alexi opened his top drawer and pulled out the new notebookrecently devoted to Duggan. He looked over the questions he hadlisted the night before. Then he wrote in a new entry. Harry neverheard of Duggans dissertation. (Whats Harrys dissertation

about?) Then Alexi returned to the list of questions in thenotebook. He put a check next to number (4), How wereWhistons reviews? Gathering up his notebook, the lecture notes,


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and the xeroxed copies of the students readings, he made his waydownstairs. On his way past the typists desks he asked Louise if

the galleys got mailed to Columbia this morning. Natch, shesaid, raising a thumb and cutting loose a big smile. Im going towork at home, Alexi said as he walked past the desks toward thefront door. It was his codeword for excusing himself that he wasnot obliged to punch the clock. Everybody knew he was not goingto work at home.


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VIII

Once again at the library, Alexi made his way to the Q sectionon the eighth tier. It was the territory of history of science journals.Alexi checked the 1968 to 1971 volumes ofIsis,History ofScience,Journal of the History of Ideas, Synthese,British Journalof the Philosophy of Science,Journal of the History of Philosophy,Centaurus,Eighteenth Century,American Historical Review,Science,Astrophysics, and thePhilosophical Review. Though the

undertaking took time, and occasionally Alexi was required to goup to the ninth tier or down to the fourth, Alexi tackled the job likepiecework and buzzed through the journals year-end indexes at arapid and steady clip. There was not a single review ofWhistonand the Discovery of Comets.

In the course of the search Alexi did turn up a total of ninereferences to Whiston himself or to 17th century cosmology. These

he noted in his notebook. Two of these he had had time to scanbefore he thought it time to leave for his meeting with Chu: R.P.Estebans The place of comets in 17th century cosmogony inIsisand Barry Rothmans paper entitled Isaac Newton, WilliamWhiston, and the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics atCambridge in Synthese.

More interesting, perhaps, was that Alexi found in Estebans andRothmans papers three citations of papers written on 17th century

cosmology before 1957. These, Alexi immediately decided, basedon their titles, should appear in Duggans bibliography. Alexi alsomade a mental note to check for Duggans dissertations listing inDissertation Abstracts, just to make sure the conscientiousresearcher could find it if he put in the appropriate effort.

Neither Estebans nor Rothmans papers cited Duggansdissertation, though they both had extensive bibliographies and

were written well after Duggans dissertation was accepted. Noneof the pre-1957 references on Whiston or the cosmology of thetime could Alexi specifically remember in Duggans bibliography.


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He had not brought Duggans book with him; he felt for a momentlike dashing home to check for the citations. But Alexi resisted the

urge long enough to go back out to the card catalogue for twoadditional works: He wanted to look over Whistons book,A NewTheory of the Earth, in the flesh, and he wanted a first edition ofVelikovskys Worlds in Collision to see how Velikovsky citedWhiston in the books first form.

The latter question Alexi addressed as he sat in an unspoken-forcarrel on the 8th tier. For an instant Alexi Plotin got the little rushof excitement he felt when a prediction he had made came true:instead of three references to Whiston, as in the Dell 1957 edition,the first edition contained only two. But a little more checkingshowed that the relevant texts were identical in the two editionsand only the indexing had been corrected in the later one. Easycome, easy go, Alexi thought to himself.

Alexi checked out the volumes ofIsis and Synthese containingEstebans and Rothmans papers and Whistons book, though he

did not take with him the first edition of Velikovsky. As he walkedtoward home, Alexi took inventory: Duggans dissertation had notbeen reviewed. Who the hell had published the damn thing?Maybe it was a loss-leader on the part of the publishing company -- maybe they had merely tried to land the author for all of hisfuture books rather than in order to sell the book at hand. Aleximade a second mental note to check who published Duggansfollowing two books, too. As Alexi mulled over the facts

surrounding Duggans dissertation he considered as well his ownmotivations for spending so much time on the matter. Why? WhyAlexi? Why another wild goose chase? What is it with you, Alexisaid to himself as he walked, Are you avoiding work? Cant takethe child abuse biz? Or are you avoiding some sort of private life,or a woman friend, or what, Alexi? Answer me. You must beavoiding something or you wouldnt go off on these things thatnobody in his right mind would bother about.

By the time Alexi reached his apartment he was resentingDuggan, Whiston, Velikovsky and the lot. A tan Berkeley squad


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car was parked in front of the building. Seeing the driver wasAsian and not wearing a patrolmans uniform, Alexi approached

the car and said -- Am I late, Sergeant Chu? Chu looked at hiswrist. Nope, youre four minutes early, Dr. Plotin.

Chu changed the form of address for no reason at all. But theswitch in title made Alexi feel immediately that Chu had checkedhim out. I am a suspect, he thought to himself. Berkeleyparanoia, Alexis other side said in reply. The books inside --cmon in, said Alexi. Chu got out of the car and followed him intothe studio.


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IX

Inside, Alexi went straight to his bed, next to which layDuggans book open to about the 200th page. He had fallen asleeplast night at that point.

Chu was standing in the middle of the room. As Alexi movedtoward him he glanced at the books frontispiece making a mentalnote that the publisher showing at the bottom of the page was

Schooner Press of Ponca City Oklahoma. Jesus, thought Alexi,what the hell is Schooner Press? Why didnt I notice that before?

Sidown, Sergeant, Alexi said, Want a beer? Alexi crossedinto the kitchen area and took out two beers from the refrigerator.Chu said sure, thank you, and took up a seat on one of the twobarstools. Alexi decided not to bother with glasses. TheBallentines Triple-X was cold and gave the sense of a cascade ofpinpoint bubbles as it rushed down Alexis throat. He took twolong pulls on the can and then, standing next to the bar leaning hiselbows upon it, thought of Docs assertion in Cannery Row (or wasit Sweet Thursday?) that there was nothing like the first taste ofbeer. Chu spoke first:

Good book?

Alexi was startled a little by the question. That it was theordinary and appropriate remark for the occasion of a book passingfrom one person to another made it seem all the more out of place.Alexi said yes, it was a good book, as much of it as he had had thechance to read. Chu asked what it was about.

Without stopping to think it through, Alexi delivered up about atwo and a half minute talk on Duggans dissertation -- thehistorical period it dealt with, the problem of the comets, the viewof scientific explanation in the seventeenth century, and Duggans

almost daring analysis. Chu listened carefully. Blinks were hisonly movement.


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This was not the Alexi Plotin that had approached the police caroutside; instead it was a thorough and practiced scholar. How

many times, in one seminar or another, at roundtable conferences,or standing in the front of a lecture hall, had Alexi Plotin had toreach back into his mind for a three-minute summary of somebooks historical context, central themes, or perhaps tidbits fromthe authors life? How many times? Alexi did it now as if slippinginto a trance -- even his voice seemed to change tone. And at theend of this impromptu talk Alexi looked upon what hed saidalmost as not inside or part of his conversation with Chu at all.

Sounds like its a little outside my league, said Chu, dealingwith the gap between them that Alexis lecture had created. Alexi,for his part, felt a gap too, though for a different reason. As he hadextemporized on Duggans book, Alexi had fixed on the notionthat Chu on any given occasion might be expected to get in agunfight with a desperado. It was not so much that Chu had hadsuch an encounter, but that he had to be willing to participate in

one that made Alexi marvel to himself about Chu. Chu, if the topichad been raised, might have explained that he regarded gunfightswith desperadoes the same way Alexi might regard the possibilityof head-on collisions on the Nimitz Freeway: if it comes along,you live through it, and otherwise you never think about it.

Alexi suddenly felt embarrassed. He had been pedantic to thecop -- hed appeared to snow him. Out of a sensed obligation to re-establish a less academic tone, Alexi went on to list some of the

oddities of the book for Chu.

You know, its a funny thing, began Alexis vernacularrapprochement, this book was acquired by the library ten yearsago and I am only about the seventh person to check it out since itarrived. At the moment he said this Alexi mentally correctedhimself: Of course, I meant to say its been checked out only sixtimes previously -- the same person may have checked it out all

those times.


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...and its not a bad book...Duggan should have been prouder ofit, said Alexi. I probably would have forced everybody in all my

classes to read it. Maybe I still will, he finished with a smile.But youre in Public Health, right, not in History?

Once more, Alexi experienced the slight nausea associated withthe sensation that he was -- however distantly -- a suspect in thecase and someone on whom Chu would collect information.

Maybe Ill assign it to them anyway, responded Alexihumorlessly.

Holding up the copy ofA New Theory of the Earth, Alexicontinued: Now this is the guy Duggan was writing about andhes been checked out, lets see, Alexi counted the stamps on theregistry, ...11, 12, 13, 14 times in the last four years. So Duggancouldnt even scrape together the audience that Whiston himselfhad. Alexi had taken the chance that Whiston would have at leastas many checkout stamps as Duggan, and now he was a little

relieved that he had not been shown up on the guess.

Are you working on Whiston, too? asked Chu.

Again, Alexi felt under scrutiny: Not really. I was at the libraryand Id read the night before about Duggans death and so I lookedhim up in the card catalogue. The rest is just the time-filler of adivorced guy with a lot of it on his hands. It rolled out of Alexiunthinkingly, and he could see that Chu had not noticed the

surprise Alexi felt at having made so candid an appraisal.

Did you know Duggan well?

I didnt know him at all really. I saw him occasionally atdepartmental events, Alexi said, but I dont think we were everintroduced or exchanged words.

Well I wont take up more of your time, said Chu.

Would you mind giving me your home phone number? Alexiasked Chu as he rose to leave.


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Sure, said Chu, Why?

I dont know, Alexi responded, himself a little perplexed at therequest. Maybe something will turn up.

549-0103.

Alexi put it down in the Mead notebook on Chus note.


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X

Alexi opened the notebook and under the last entry wrote,Schooner Press, Ponca City, Oklahoma. Next, Alexi picked thecampus phone directory out of his lowest bookshelf. He looked upthe Earth Sciences Librarys number, dialed it, and as it rang,contrived his approach:

Earth Sciences Library.

Hello, Sergeant Chu of the Berkeley Police Department was byyesterday in order to ascertain the name of the person who hadborrowed Professor Robert Duggans book, Whiston and theDiscovery of Comets. Well, it was noticed that the book wasntchecked out very often. I wonder if you or any of your peoplewould remember or could find out whom it has been checked outto in the past?

Who is this please?

Shit, I blew it, thought Alexi. Now Chu will hear of it, theChancellor...SHEE-IT!

Alexi Plotin.

Well, yes, Officer Plotin...

Alexi sighed relief.

...as a matter of fact Professor Duggan used to check out thatbook. Ever since it was donated to the library he seems to have hadit checked out. In fact, youd think he didnt even own his owncopy. Weve billed him for replacement costs a couple of times,but he ignored the invoices.

Thank you, and who is this Im speaking to, please?

Yes, Mrs. Douglas. Im the Earth Sciences reference librarian.

Well, thank you again, Mrs. Douglas. Good-bye.


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Bye-bye.

Alexi noted down the name in the notebook. He also noted thatnot six but only one reader had checked out Whiston. RobertMitchell Duggan.


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XI

Alexi was annoyed at the books departure with Chu. Certainly amystery was accumulating around it, and Alexi would have likedto keep it in reach. Moreover, Alexi wouldnt have a chance nowto check the references hed found in the library. He had broughthome with him the bound volumes ofIsis and Synthese, containingEstebans and Rothmans papers on Whiston with relevant pre-

1957 citations. In addition he had brought home a fourth edition(1725) of WhistonsNew Theory of the Earth.

Alexi opened the Whiston volume to the frontispiece. The titletook up a little more than half the page. Each of its lines wasprinted in a different typeface and point. The full title read:

A New Theory of the Earth, From its Original [i.e origin] to

the Consummation of All Things, Wherein The Creation ofthe World in Six Days, The Universal Deluge, And the

General Conflagration as laid down in the Holy Scriptures,

are Shewn to be Perfectly Agreeable to Reason and

Philosophy

Not too catchy, thought Alexi, but you cant accuse him ofoverspecialization, either. The remainder of the page was divided

into four equal sections. The first announced a large introductorydiscourse concerning the Genuine Nature, Stile, and Extent of theMosaick History of the Creation. The second gave Whistonsname, degree, and current position. The third, the edition number,and the fourth, the publishers particulars.

Alexi fumbled with the book. It was thick, and he felt reluctantto begin it. He got himself a glass of applejuice from the

refrigerator. He noticed a column of tiny ants making its way up asecluded piece of kitchen wall. He soaped a dishrag and wipeddown the column, quickly rinsing out the dishrag under the tap.


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God, what losses theyre willing to take, he thought to himself.Returning to the table Alexi picked up the book once more. It

would be full of f-style ss, which would make it slow going. Heran his thumb across the deck of the books pages, letting them fallaway in rapid succession. Alexi was stalling, sniffing around forawhile before he worked up the concentration to read it.

Whats going on? thought Alexi. Did Duggan think he haddone such a bad job on Whiston that he was embarrassed by hisdissertation? Why would he keep it checked out so much? Was hekeeping it out of circulation, or did he just like having a copy -- anextra copy? -- around? Alexi thought of his own craving to read hisown prose in print; he also wondered if Duggan didnt own hisown copy of the book. Is that possible? And if Duggan didnt likethe dissertation very much, why in hell would he have it publishedas a monograph? And once it was published -- and published aslate as it was, when Duggan was already a professor -- why hadntanyone in any of the journals reviewed it? The book just wasnt a

turkey, Duggan should have had enough clout to get it reviewed.Alexi stoked his motivational furnace with these interrogatives. IfDuggans dissertation had handled Whistons book badly, then thebest way to find out was to readA New Theory.

Skipping the lengthy introduction on biblical stile, Alexi turnedto page one on Book I. Whistons text began:

LEMMATAI. All Bodies will persevere for ever in that State, whether of

Rest or Motion, in which they once are, if no other Force orImpediment act upon them, or suffer by them.

II. All Motion is of it self rectilinear, and with the sameconstant uniform Celerity, if no other external Causedisturb it.Corollary 1. Tis evident from these two Propositions, thatMatter is entirely a passive Substance.


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Coroll. 2. No Spontaneous Motion or Action can be theEffect of mere Matter.

Coroll. 3. The Soul of Man, whose least Power seems to bethat of Spontaneous Motion, is incorporeal: Which is also anecessary Consequence of the first Corollary; for it Matterbe perfectly a passive Thing, the Soul, which is so active aBeing, cannot be material.

Coroll. 4. The Brute Creatures giving all possibleDemonstrations of Spontaneous Motion, and of a Principle

of Action, cannot reasonably be supposd merely CorporealMachines.

Celerity! What a fine word, celerity. Why dont they thinklike that anymore! It was when physics really meant something -- blueprints on the Divine mind and all that. Knowledge wasspelled in all caps in those days, man -- it told you how things

really stood. Hes gonna start at the beginning, thats for sure!These various thoughts ran through Alexis mind as he readWhistons opening LEMMATA and corollaries.

Two and a half hours later -- without having eaten or put musicon the turntable -- Alexi lay on his bed with copies of bothWhistonsNew Theory and Velikovskys Worlds in Collision openon his brown army blanket. Alexi had come about 150 pagesthrough Whistons book. In structure, Whistons volume was

divided into four books: Book I, Lemmata; Book II, Hypotheses;Book III, Phenomena; and Book IV, Solutions. In all, the work ran460 pages not counting the introduction and the figures added atthe back. Alexi had fallen into step with the formalities ofseventeenth-century prose style and had even begun to enjoyWhistons soaring picture of earth history. Most thoughts ofDuggans book had been set aside during the reading -- Alexicouldnt check details anyway since Duggans book was with Chu.

Alexi had gotten out Worlds in Collision again in order torecheck Velikovskys Joshua-and-Jericho reference to Whiston. It


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was a little askew, Alexi thought. Velikovsky had seemed to creditWhiston with the opinion that the whole story of the sun standing

still should be interpreted metaphorically. But Whistons writing,on the other hand, seemed to suggest that the story was sound. Themetaphor to which Whiston had referred was contained in the factthat the Holy Book had said it was the sun that came to a halt,when every good post-Copernican knew that it was the earth andnot the sun that would have had to stop. Whiston was trying toshow how the Holy Author had consistently used language Hethought his listeners could understand. Saying that the earth had

stood still would have sounded silly to the ancients, of course,because they believed the earth was stationary in the first place. Itwas that metaphor Whiston referred to, and not quite the samemetaphor Velikovsky seemed to have in mind. But retrievingVelikovskys book had led to another discovery as well:

On page 144 of Whistons book Alexi found himself at thebeginning of the authors eleventh major hypothesis: Namely,

The Most Ancient Civil Year in Most Parts of the WorldAfter the Deluge; and also the Tropical Solar and Lunaryears before the Deluge, containd just 12 Months of 30Days apiece, or 360 days in the Whole.

At this point Alexi had stopped for a moment to compare

Velikovskys text. The third of Velikovskys footnotes to Whiston,Alexi recalled, had concerned the 360-day year. Alexi found thepage; Velikovskys footnote read as follows:

W. Whiston, inNew Theory of the Earth (1696) expressedhis belief that before the deluge the year was composed of360 days. He found references in classic authors to a yearof 360 days, and as he recognized only one majorcatastrophe, the Deluge, he related these references to theantediluvian era. (Worlds in Collision, p. 333)


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Once more, not quite, Immanuel, Alexi said to himself.

Whiston thought the 360-day year was post-diluvian too -- look athis damn section title forgodsake! How could Velikovskysfootnote misreport a point so absolutely clearly stated in Whistonstext? Alexi thought. Did Velikovsky ever actually read Whiston,or was he getting him from secondary sources?

But more interesting than the footnote was the fact that itappeared at the beginning of a full chapter devoted by Velikovskyto the 360-day year of old. Here, it seemed, a twentieth-centuryand a seventeenth-century author were about to take up the samehistorical contention. One could watch, as if it had been arrangedby a grand historiographic experimenter, how the two scholarshandled their arguments. Alexi cozied up to the comparativeanalysis. Whistons section on the subject ran from pages 144-182,Velikovskys from 333-361. Alexi had opened his notebook anddrawn a line down the center of a fresh page. At the top he wrote,

Arguments and Sources. He headed the left column with thename Whiston and wrote V at the top of the right column.

In this fashion Alexi listed the sources and arguments he foundin Whistons discussion of the 360-day year. It was an easy job,especially because of Whistons outline form of expositoryorganization. The arguments were memorable; Whiston had takendata from wherever he could get them: He reported, among otherfacts, that the walls of Babylon were one furlong for each day of

the year, and they measured 360 furlongs around. The Medo-Persian monarch, Cyrus, cut 360 channels to make the riverGyndes fordable for his army when he went on his expeditionagainst Babylon. Plutarch and Curtius affirmed that the Numberof the Royal Concubines to more than one of the Persian Kings,was just 360...Diodorus Siculus directly affirms that the RoyalConcubines were just as many as the Days of the Year. Exampleafter example were heaped on top of each other. Having finishedWhiston, Alexi turned to Velikovsky.


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Velikovsky wrote that he intended his chapter to show that in theperiod between the fifteenth century B.C. and the eighth century

B.C. the duration of a seasonal revolution appears to have been360 days. He continued: In order to substantiate my statement, Iinvite the reader on a world-wide journey. We start in India:

Velikovskys text read not wholly unlike Whistons. From India,Velikovsky took the text to Persia, then to Babylon, to Assyria, toGreece and Rome, and then to the ancient Mayans of CentralAmerica. It was here that Alexis sense of the vague similarities ofthe two chapters, Whistons and Velikovskys, was visited by avery close similarity indeed: Both Velikovsky and Whiston hadrelied on the sixteenth-century ethnography written by Joseph deAcosta in order to show the same point. Velikovskys paragraphwas as follows:

On the other side of the ocean, the Mayan year consisted of360 days; later five days were added, and the year was then

a tun (360-day period) and five days; every fourth yearanother day was added to the year. They did reckon themapart, and called them the days of nothing, wrote J. deAcosta, an early writer on America. (Worlds in Collision, p.341)

Whistons was:

There is also no small Probability, that the most ancientYear of the Mexicans in North-America (who seem to havehad their Original from some of the Eastern Nations) wasalso exactly 360 Days. This People (as Joseph Acosta,amongst others, informs us) divided their Year intoMonths, to (each of) which they gave 20 Days, wherein the360 Days are accomplished, not comprehending in any ofthese Months the 5 Days that remain and make the Yearperfect. But they did reckon them apart at the End of the


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Year, and called them Days of Nothing: During which, thePeople did not anything; neither went they to their

Temples, but occupied themselves only in visiting oneanother, and so spent the Time. The Sacrificers of theTemple did likewise cease their Sacrifices. (New Theory,p. 150)

Alexi rose to check the ants again. They were back, and in force,and he soaked the dishrag again for another attack. De Acosta?Alexi thought to himself, did Duggan talk about de Acosta?Alexi was unsure. Shit. I do

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