but the blue is a lovely blue), but still it’s a pattern to watch.
“Your table’s ready,” Hi-I’m-Sylvia says, and I try not to twitch as I shift my attention from the beer sign to her.
We arrange ourselves around the table in the usual way and sit down. We are having the same thing we have every time we come here, so it doesn’t take long to order. We wait for the food to come, not talking because we are each, in our own way, settling into this situation. Because of the visit to Dr. Fornum, I’m more aware than usual of the details of this process: that Linda is bouncing her fingers on the bowl of her spoon in a complex pattern that would delight a mathematician as much as it does her.
I’m watching the beer sign out of the corner of my eye, as is Dale. Cameron is bouncing the tiny plastic dice he keeps in his pocket, discreetly enough that people who don’t know him wouldn’t notice, but I can see the rhythmic flutter of his sleeve. Bailey also watches the beer sign. Eric has taken out his multicolor pen and is drawing tiny geometric patterns on the paper place mat. First red, then purple, then blue, then green, then yellow, then orange, then red again. He likes it when the food arrives just when he finishes a color sequence.
This time the drinks come while he’s at yellow; the food comes on the next orange. His face relaxes.
We are not supposed to talk about the project off-campus. But Cameron is still bouncing in his seat, full of his need to tell us about a problem he solved, when we’ve almost finished eating. I glance around. No one is at a table near us. “Ezzer,” I say. Ezzer means “go ahead” in our private language. We aren’t supposed to have a private language and nobody thinks we can do something like that, but we can.
Many people have a private language without even knowing it. They may call it jargon or slang, but it’s really a private language, a way of telling who is in the group and who is not.
Cameron pulls a paper out of his pocket and spreads it out. We aren’t supposed to take papers out of the office, in case someone else gets hold of them, but we all do it. It’s hard to talk, sometimes, and much easier to write things down or draw them.
I recognize the curly guardians Cameron always puts in the corner of his drawings. He likes anime. I recognize as well the patterns he has linked through a partial recursion that has the lean elegance of most of his solutions. We all look at it and nod. “Pretty,” Linda says. Her hands jerk sideways a little; she would be flapping wildly if we were back at the campus, but here she tries not to do it.
“Yes,” Cameron says, and folds the paper back up.
I know that this exchange would not satisfy Dr. Fornum. She would want Cameron to explain the drawing, even though it is clear to all of us. She would want us to ask questions, make comments,talk about it. There is nothing to talk about: it is clear to all of us what the problem was and that Cameron’s solution is good in all senses. Anything else is just busy talk. Among ourselves we don’t have to do that.
“I was wondering about the speed of dark,” I say, looking down. They will look at me, if only briefly, when I speak, and I don’t want to feel all those gazes.
“It doesn’t have a speed,” Eric says. “It’s just the space where light isn’t.”
“What would it feel like if someone ate pizza on a world with more than one gravity? ” Linda asks.
“I don’t know,” Dale says, sounding worried.
“The speed of not knowing,” Linda says.
I puzzle at that a moment and figure it out. “Not knowing expands faster than knowing,” I say. Linda grins and ducks her head. “So the speed of dark could be greater than the speed of light. If there always has to be dark around the light, then it has to go out ahead of it.”
“I want to go home now,” Eric says. Dr. Fornum would want me to ask if he is upset. I know he is not upset; if he goes home now he will see his favorite TV program. We say good-bye because we are in public and we all know you are