"Yes."

"There's just a gap," I suggested. "A lack."

"Hah! Very good. Yes. A lack, exactly. A potential event horizon. Everything is only potential until consciousness wakes up and says, let me have a look. Take for example the big bang. We explore the history of the creation of our universe, so the big bang becomes real. But only because we investigate. Another example: There are subatomic particles as far as we are willing to look. We create them. Consciousness writes reality, in any direction it looks-past, future, big, small. Wherever we look we find reality forming in response."

"Why?"

"Ah, why. This is my life's work, Mr. Engstrand. I think there is a principle of conservation of reality. Reality is unwilling to fully exist without an observer. It can't be bothered. Why should it?"

"I can relate to that," I said.

"So, it's no simple thing, then, the creation of a universe. If consciousness is required to confirm the new reality, you have to provide the consciousness too. You can't make just a whole new universe full of reality, without making the commitment to look at it. You've done only half the job. That, my dear fellow, was Soft's mistake."

"Lack, you mean."

"Lack. My theory is the first good explanation for Lack. Listen. Soft creates a new universe, of potential reality. But no intelligence to fill it up. Fine, it collapses into nonreality. Perhaps someday consciousness will evolve, like here, and it will become real. A long slow road."

"Every universe has to wait for observers to evolve, you're saying."

"That's right. Except for Soft's. Soft's had a shortcut. Because it was created in Soft's lab. It is attached, it finds out, to a gigantic reservoir of nearby consciousness. Us. It thinks, I could exist if I hold on to this, you see? So it refuses to part with the mother universe. It is drawn to us, moth-to-flame-like. That is why it would not detach. That is how Lack was formed."

"So Lack is hungry for meaning. Awareness. It's his only hope."

"You could say that. He could wait for evolution, but that is a long time. Some more?" He pointed at his empty gla.s.s.

I looked down. My gla.s.s was empty too. Braxia took them and went into the kitchen. In another minute he was back with more.

"But what about the effects?" I said. "Lack's personality. His choosiness."

"Ah." He smiled into his gla.s.s.

"What do you mean, ah?"

"I lied to you just now, my dear fellow."

"Lied?"

"I did not forget about your friend Alice. She is central to my problems. She is the reason I have to pack up my team and-" He moved his arms, imitating airplane takeoff.

"What do you mean?" Was he about to reveal his own love for Alice? A pa.s.sion that was driving him from the continent?

"It is hard to explain. Another theory."

"Tell me."

"Lack, in his hunger for consciousness, grabbed on too strong to one that was near by. Professor Alice, I think, was the one. Lack borrows her opinions and tastes. They make him imbalanced."

"What?"

He sighed and closed his eyes, as if he had to remember to be patient with me. "You see, Lack should be impartially hungry. But no. Instead he is making his stupid selections. Based on Professor Coombs, I think. Very unfortunate."

"You're saying Lack's personality is borrowed from Alice?"

"Yes."

"But then-"

Braxia wouldn't meet my eye. He drank instead. "You see why I lied to you, my dear fellow."

It was too much for me. My responses came in a crazy jumble. "I still don't understand why you have to leave," I said.

"This Lack is tainted by the persona he has adopted. Therefore he is useless. Professor Coombs' tastes are too limiting. Especially one in particular."

"Which one?"

"Against science. Against research, scientists, physics. I think she picked it up from you, and pa.s.sed it on to Lack. You have this element in your personality, you will have to admit. And Alice adopted your prejudice, despite herself. Because she was so close to you. So now, Lack resists all attempts."

I was stupefied.

"So now I go back to Pisa." Braxia raised his drink, like he was making a toast. "I will make my own Lack. If I impart it with biases, they will be my own. Against the social sciences, perhaps. And American wines. Then we will see what can be done. Then we will accomplish some physics."

"You're going to repeat Soft's experiment?"

"Sure, why not? I think this Lack will close up soon, anyway. It can't stay open forever."

"It can't?"

"No. Violates the laws of physics. Hah!"

Braxia found this hilarious. He laughed obnoxiously. As he drank his face turned red, dispelling my black-and-white newsreel respect for him. I nursed my drink.

I wanted to deflate his smugness, but he was the only one who'd even claimed to have solved Lack. It was nothing to sneeze at. He was so sure of himself that he was leaving. Now Lack was no international prize, just a pothole malformed by subjectivity.

"Then Alice is in love with a reflection of herself," I said. "She's Narcissus."

"Sure," said Braxia. "But who isn't?"

"No, it's more than that," I said. "She was drawn to Lack from the beginning. So it's a combination of things. Her obsession with the void."

"Maybe. Here." Braxia jumped up, retrieved the vodka from the kitchen, and sloshed it into my gla.s.s undiluted. It combined with the residue of orange juice to form a blend resembling Tang, the drink of the astronauts.

"So Lack only takes what Alice likes," I said, still working it out in my simpleton way.

"I guess so. Hah! She didn't like me."

I looked up. "You only stuck in your hand," I said. "Lack takes whole things."

"No, my friend. I gave him the chance. I went on the table too. But I couldn't go in. Lack said no."

"What about Alice, then? If Lack won't take Alice herself-"

"So?" Braxia shrugged. "Alice does not approve of herself. Is not unprecedented, I think."

"So Lack knows things about Alice that she doesn't know herself. About her tastes. Lack could be used as a way of testing Alice's judgments, in an absolute sense. Even if she's denying the part of herself that feels that way-"

"Maybe. Who knows? Hah. Once we used scientists to learn more about physics. Now we use physics to learn more about the scientists! Forget it. Very inefficient. I'll go to Pisa and start over."

"Yes. Do that."

"Be happy, my dear fellow. The term is over. Drink up. Oh boy. You think they will let me on a plane like this?"

I didn't say anything. I was fathoms deep in my own sea.

Braxia's inane grin slipped away. "What's the matter?" he said. "You still love her? After this?"

"I still love her, Braxia."

"Okay. But you worry too much." Drunk, he was more perfunctory with his English. "Lack will close. You will have her back. If you want her."

"She doesn't love me anymore."

"You explain what I said, explain everything. Tell her my theories. Claim as your own. Then you will have her back."

"I don't want to tell her what you said."

"Okay, okay." He put down his gla.s.s and got off the couch. "Come here." He tugged at my sleeve. "Come." He led me to the bathroom door, which was backed with a mirror. "Look at yourself, Engstrand. You are a mess. It's been a long term, yes? Take yourself home now. Go to bed. You will feel better."

I looked. There stood a mess. The self-unmade man. Just a question of composure, though. I patted down my hair, practiced a smile. Outside was fresh air, elixir. I had things to do tonight, and the fresh air would help me.

But I wanted to conceal my intentions from Braxia. The party, and the destination beyond.

"So," he said, his point proven. He led me through the obstacle course of his luggage, to the door. "Go home. Think nice things. Have a dream. Forget about her, if only tonight. Think again in the morning."

"Yes," I said. "I'll think in the morning."

He unlocked the door, then pushed me through with a series of hearty slaps on the back. "Go home," he said, like he was talking to a wayward dog. "I see you later. We can have an international conference or something. Good-bye!"

"Okay," I said. "Good-bye."

The air was invigoratingly cold. My drunken eyes couldn't adjust to the darkness, but it didn't matter. I knew my way. I wobbled away from the porch, back toward my apartment. I wanted to mislead Braxia. I wasn't sure he knew where I lived, but I wasn't taking any chances. My legs buckled once, and I adjusted, compensated for the handicap. I was okay. I turned to see Braxia smiling at me from the door, a black smear in a blinding frame. He waved. I waved back. When I heard the door shut behind me I swerved, and headed, through the darkness, in the opposite direction. Toward the party.

"Philip! I was afraid you weren't coming. Have a drink."

It was Soft. Unaccountably gleeful, he grabbed my arm and led me to the makes.h.i.+ft bar. The room was already br.i.m.m.i.n.g, the air filled with a gabble of overlapping conversations that peaked and ebbed like automatic gunfire. I entered a maze of bobbing and ducking heads, with faces that crunched up with ironic anguish or jawed open wide with laughter, nostrils flaring, ears burning red, cigarettes and gla.s.ses and food s.h.i.+fted from orifices to holders and back again by subservient hands. Every head made up the maze, the remorseless consensual nightmare, and every head wandered through it, lost, frightened, alone.

Here I'd find a parting taste of the human world, perhaps even a voice to call me back from the brink. At the very least, a chance to stall.

"No," I said. "I've had a drink already."

"It's Christmas."

"Yes."

"Eggnog, Philip."

He handed me a plastic cup full of frothy nog and hollow cylindrical ice cubes. I tasted it, to be polite, and a surprising amount entered my mouth. Soft grinned, happy to see me drink. I grinned back, happy to see him happy.

"What's the good word?" I said.

"It's almost over."

"It is is over." over."

"I don't mean the term." He grinned again, as if that were sufficient explanation. I wondered if I'd missed something in the din.

"What do you mean?" I said finally.

"Lack. He's closing up. Going away."

We were attacked by a costumed waitress with a tray of hors d'oeuvres, tiny wrinkled crackers s.p.a.ckled with phosph.o.r.escent pink mortar. She wore a dewy black nose. She was forced to carry the tray so high that her face appeared situated there itself, offered with the food. Soft turned and the tray came up under his chin. He reached around and guided a cracker into his mouth. With their chins each resting on the tray it looked like a s.e.xual act, the pink smears surrogate tongues.

She turned to me. "No, thank you," I said. I ducked to open a route of escape for her tray. She jostled past us. I looked at Soft, who was chewing with his mouth open. "You were saying something about Lack."

"Yes," he said, swallowing. "Braxia told me this afternoon that he thought it would close up. Lack, that is. So I went down an hour ago and took some measurements. Sure enough. He's attenuating. I estimate another week or so."

He lifted his cup, beaming. I raised mine, and we drank.

"Attenuating," I said.

Soft nodded.

So Braxia was right. Lack would go away. It didn't change my plan, only made it more urgent and absolute. A shudder of fear went through me. I tipped my cup back, and drained away the last of my eggnog, then let a piece of ice slip into my mouth and sucked it clean of the sweet residue.

Soft finished his own nog and smiled at me dizzily, a smear of cream on his upper lip. It clearly wasn't his first gla.s.s. He was drunker than I was. And happier. Maybe that was the answer for now. I should be as drunk and happy as Soft.

"He's fabulous when he gets behind the wheel," came a voice out of the crowd. Then a roar of admiring laughter. I took Soft's cup away with mine, to get a refill. The bartender was one of my students. He filled the cups from a bowl, then made a show of splas.h.i.+ng in an extra portion of rum from a concealed bottle. He winked, and I winked back. I was planning to fail him. He handed me the cups. They were too full to carry. I took a sip from the top of each and inadvertently slurped off the two mouthfuls of undiluted rum that floated there.

I brought them back to Soft. He smiled. I leaned in close to his pale, small face, and whispered, "Let's turn this party on its ear."

He raised his eyebrows, looking stricken. "I don't know how," he said.

"Just follow me."

"Okay."