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CHAPTER SIX

  Lost Paths

  As he lay dying, Joshua Fflowers could not pursue his interest in Prissi, but the same could not be said of Prissi’s interest in Joshua Fflowers.

  The day after the Bissell dedication, Prissi, along with a scattering of students and a smattering of Dutton faculty had listened while Vartan Smarkzy had given a Sunday Series lecture called False Paths. Smarkzy’s talk focused on some of the heralded scientific theories or paradigms which had led to little or nothing—humouristic medicine, a geo-centric solar system, alchemy, the id/ego/superego trinity, and dark matter.

  After the lecture, on a beautiful balmy afternoon with a soughing wind and dumpling clouds, Prissi was taking a necessarily slow walk across campus with Dr. Smarkzy—slow both because of her teacher’s infirmities and because Prissi herself was still sore from hurting her shoulder the day before. Smarkzy was adding to the false paths he had mentioned in his lecture—phrenology, natural design. Prissi was listening but she also was feeling a sense of loss because Spring Break was to start in just two more days.

  Even though she would be relieved to get through the rush of work Dutton teachers assigned to be due just before break, if she couldn’t be out of the country vacationing on an island as seemingly most of her friends were scheduled to do, then Prissi would rather be at Dutton than home. Although it was almost three years since her mother had died, Prissi thought that her father now was even more wounded by grief rather than in the days and weeks immediately following the accident. From Prissi’s view, the time healing all anodyne wasn’t working for Beryl Langue.

  Noticing that Prissi was favoring her shoulder, Smarkzy gently tapped it

  “This, this whole process of fledging—the meta-mutancy, the timing, and the intricate biochemical processes— also might prove to be a false path.”

  Intrigued with the man she had met yesterday who had discovered the process that allowed fledging, and interested that there might be a better way to accomplish the transformation she had undergone the year before, Prissi asked, “Why? We fledge. We fly. What’s wrong?”

  Smarkzy’s gnarled hands did a tortured pas de deux in the air. “Well, perhaps it’s not so much a wrong path as a less than optimum path. A young person or that person’s parents must decide whether to have wings at a period in life when much, if not most, is still in shadows. The wings one chooses may not fit what one becomes. In other words, the wings choose the life rather than the life choosing the wings. How many thousands, if not millions, of people lose ten, twenty or more years of flying because they have a mis-match between wing style and somatotype?

  “Eons ago, in my fabled youth, I was asked to help out with did some interesting work being done by a former student of mine. She was working with a group that was being funded by a well-known scienpreneur, one whose acquaintance you recently made.”

  “Joshua Fflowers.”

  With his head so big, his body so frail, and his balance suspect, Prissi tentatively held out a hand when her teacher began vigorously bobbing that head.

  “Although, at the time, as a field of study, meta-mutancy was more than twenty-five years old, most of the theorizing still ran down just one, albeit admittedly somewhat wide, path. Joshua Fflowers was already famous, honored and immensely rich. But, if you knew Josh as I did, you would know that wouldn’t be enough. He was driven to do more than he already had done—which was no less than the gift of flight to mankind—if gift it truly be.”

  After a pause, Smarkzy chuckled, “To wealthy mankind, anyway. From what my former student told me, my old classmate was frustrated, pent-up. He was driven to go someplace new and exciting—perhaps akin to the irresistible force that drove the 15th century explorers. I could understand this because he and I had been fair friends when we were at Bissell together. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a more driven man…and, my dear young lady, I’ve known a few Nobelists as well as many Duttonians in my many years.”

  He nodded in thanks at Prissi’s snort.

  “That distinguished Bissell alumnus put together a group of people—a group of scientists—very bright, very well-educated, but, unfortunately, not well-socialized to the norms and rules of mainstream science—a group the likes of which probably had not been seen since Josiah Wedgwood, Newton and their group, or, perhaps, the Oppenheimer team.”

  Smarkzy stopped dead in his tracks and rubbed the slight stubble that rimed his chin.

  “Hmmm. That’s a new thought. Fflowers might even have seen himself as Oppenheimer—you know of Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the Manhattan Project— a brilliant physicist and an even more brilliant strategist, administrator and motivator?”

  When Prissi shrugged, Smarkzy mimicked her.

  “No? Well, that’s a pity. I’d say he’s well worth a look…a long look. My former schoolmate brought together a collection of people who were almost guaranteed to do brilliant science. But, it was almost as sure a bet that the light they brought to their work would be outshone by the light and heat of their personal frictions. I remember Roan, that was the name of my student, described it once as a place where big, bright labs were filled with bigger, brighter egos. They came together at a place Fflowers had built just outside the research center at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island—a hallowed place where some very serious science, including, perhaps, some of my own, had been getting done for many, many years. Fflowers drew them in with a dream, fabulous tools, gave them long leashes and lots of money—all of which comes very close to a scientist’s definition of paradise.”

  “And?”

  “And?”

  Rather than show her pique, Prissi smiled, “What happened?”

  “Actually, no one seems to be quite sure what happened. My friend broke a very serious oath of secrecy to tell me that the group, or a portion of the group of which she was an integral part, had made a very important discovery. But what that discovery was I surmised but never really knew for sure. Soon after, there was a disaster, an explosion. The work was lost; the scientists dispersed.”

  Prissi’s eyes glowed like a dwarf star with interest.

  “A lost, rather than false, path?”

  Smarkzy’s eyes twinkled, “Yes, an apt description.”

  “Like a lost treasure?”

  Smarkzy’s head snapped around to look at Prissi.

  “Why would you say that?”

  Prissi’s hand fluttered as she talked.

  “Because there was a major discovery. And, somehow, it was lost. I wonder what it was.”

  “You seem intrigued.”

  “I am.”

  The old man stood lost in thought for several moments before he held out his crippled hands, studied them and, then, reached out and touched Prissi’s shoulders. When he spoke his voice seemed to Prissi to be coming from a space farther than a step away. “Well, youth is a time for great enthusiasms, but, unfortunately, here, at Dutton, we purposefully leave you very little time to pursue those enthusiasms. Hmmm…why don’t we do this. See if your interest in this lost path waxes or wanes over the next few months. If you have a spare moment over Spring Break, do a little preliminary poking around. If, when you return, you want to pursue this, I’ll try to help you out. But….”

  The old man stopped.

  “But what?”

  “But…please keep your interest quiet…no…forget I said that.”

  Prissi was unclear what she was supposed to forget…and why.

  Dr. Smarkzy took his hands from Prissi’s shoulders and began to walk.

  In a voice not much more than a whisper, the old man said, “My experience is that young people are easily attracted to Science with a capital S; however once they do science, with a lower case s, many are quickly dissuaded. The essence of science is frustration, and if you decide to go forward, you may and should expect to find your own endeavors frequently frustrated. There very likely was no major discovery. And that is why it has remained dusty on a shelf for so long. But, who knows? You live in New York, if I
remember?”

  Prissi nodded.

  “The New York Public Datarium has an immense collection of Fflowers early papers, papers which he graciously donated at the time he gave the billions to have the building renovated. They are not open to the public, but…hmmm…Pequod…an old colleague, now a research librarian…he might…I suppose I might be able to help you get some access to those…, or, if I get the urge to come to the late great metropolis, I might poke around a bit myself. Seeing my old school mate yesterday has stirred my juices a bit. There were a number of stories started back then that never were finished to this reader’s satisfaction. Hmmm.”

  “Could you ask your friend?”

  “Yes, I’ll see if we can get you a peek.”

  “No, the other one. The one whom you said I remind you of.”

  The old man’s head tilted far back and, again, Prissi threw out a hand in support. He stared at the flock of docile clouds overhead for the longest time.

  “Roan Winslow. Another lost path. With the accident, my friend…” Smarkzy waved his hand as if dispersing a cigarette’s smoke. “…disappeared.”