"I believe the salt is three, maybe four inches to the right of your plate."

"More like five."

"That's probably closer to my plate, then."

"It's a problem of subjectivity, really. How can the observer make an objective observation? It's impossible."

"A problem of subjectivity. Huh."

I wanted to interrupt. Alice's effort seemed hopeless. I hadn't learned yet that Evan and Garth were listening.

"We spoke about this before, didn't we?" said Garth. "In her office, last Friday."

"Yes, that's right," said Evan. A grain of rice clung to his upper lip. "In her office."

"About what time?"

"About three in the afternoon."

"Roughly ninety-six hours ago. Is that what you're saying?"

"That's about right."

"Huh." Garth raised his head, aimed his eyes at the ceiling. Alice and I looked at him.

"Well," he said, "we got a book."

"From the library," said Evan.

"We read about it. The observer problem."

"That's wonderful," said Alice.

"She says it's wonderful," said Evan, as if Garth couldn't hear anyone but him.

"I think I understand," said Garth. "It's a problem of subjectivity, knowing. Thinking. Observing is like thinking."

"Yes."

"Except for me. I can see without thinking. That's what they mean by blindsight. Not that it's doing me any good. Huh."

"Yes," said Alice again. The white man and the black man smiled. Some kind of understanding had been reached. I was alone in my confusion.

"What's blindsight?" I said.

"He wants to know what blindsight is." They snorted over private ironies. "Do you want to tell him?"

"I'll tell him. What time is it?"

"Five-fifty-seven. What time is the last bus?"

"Eleven. I've got five-fifty-eight."

They reset and corroborated the bulky braille watches. Garth leaned back in his chair and fixed his ungaze on a point a foot or so to the left of my face. "Evan and I are blind in different ways," he said. "Evan has eyes that don't work. There's nothing wrong with my eyes."

"I'm amaurotic," said Evan, with a hint of pride.

"My eyes work fine," said Garth. "But I have an atrophy of a part of my brain a.s.sociated with visual awareness." He was quoting some text, I could tell. "My eyes work fine. I can see. I just don't know I can see."

"He can't know."

"My brain doesn't understand sight."

"Blindsight," said Alice excitedly, "is when you trick Garth into forgetting he doesn't know he can see. The doctor commands him to reach for an object. He grabs it without hesitation. When the doctors trace the vectors of his hands, arms, fingers, and the movement of his eyes, they're all precise. He still doesn't experience sight, but he's unquestionably seeing. Making an observation."

"Not that it does me any good. Huh."

It slowly sank in. "Observation without consciousness," I said.

"Observation without subjective judgment," said Alice.

"The spin of a particle," I said.

"Physics," said Alice.

"Your office is in the physics building," said Evan.

"We were there," said Garth. "It's about five blocks from the bus stop."

Alice and I had s.e.x that night. For a long time afterward we didn't talk. The bedroom was dark and cool. Light leaked in from the hall and outlined our bodies in the darkness as we lay still, sweating where we overlapped, goose-pimpled where we didn't. The quiet was rich with things unsaid.

We didn't speak of Soft's experiment, the breach or portal. We didn't mention the blind men, or Alice's dream of a perfect, sightless physicist.

Soon Alice was falling asleep, and I wasn't. I heard the air flutter between her lips.

"Alice."

"Philip?"

"Where do I stop and you begin?"

She hesitated. "You mean what is the cut-off point?"

"I mean if you went away what would be left of me?"

"I'm not going away." Her voice was very quiet.

"But answer anyway."

"All of you would be left," she said. "None of me. I would be gone and you would still be here."

I could tell she wanted to sleep. But it was as though letting her sleep tonight was the same as losing her.

"You complete me," I said. "I'm not sure I really exist, except under your observation."

She didn't say anything.

"If you left me," I said, "you'd take so much of me with you that I'd be inside you, looking back at what was left-the husk of Philip Engstrand we'd abandoned."

She stared at me across the pillow. "That's actually beautiful," she said.

"So when I feel distance between us it's like there's something wrong between me and myself. I feel a gulf in myself."

Alice closed her eyes. "Nothing's wrong," she said.

"No?" I said.

"I was up all night. I have to sleep. That's all."

"Okay," I said. "I just-"

"Philip, stop, please."

I held her while she cried. When her body stopped trembling, she was asleep.

Days pa.s.sed. Cla.s.ses were taught, seminars held. Papers were handed in, graded, and returned. The team won something, and the trees filled with garlands of toilet paper. It rained, and the toilet paper dripped to the pathways, and into the wiper blades of parked cars. A group of students seized the Frank J. Bellhope Memorial Aquarium to protest the treatment of Roberta, the manatee savant. The protest was a failure. I called a symposium on the history of student seizure of campus buildings. The symposium was a success. In the larger world, the team invaded something, some hapless island or isthmus. A letter of protest by the faculty was drafted, revised, and sc.r.a.pped. Bins of swollen pumpkins appeared in the produce sections of Fastway and Look 'n' Like.

Alice went on demolis.h.i.+ng particles. When I saw her she was distracted, absent. She worked long days with her graduate students and with Garth Poys, Blind Physicist, readying a series of proton runs. Nights she spent huddled with Soft in the Cauchy-s.p.a.ce observation room, following the progress of the breach or portal. I sometimes brought sandwiches to her in the long chilly arm of the accelerator, but I drew a line at descending again into that dark heart where Soft's monster lurked.

I first heard the name Lack Lack in the campus barbershop. The barbers there specialized in crew cuts and baldings for the campus athletes, the swimmers, wrestlers, and football players. The walls were layered with programs and posters, autographed by college stars long since graduated into painful, grinding NFL careers. When I strolled in, maybe six times a year, my barber would sigh, put down his electric clipper, and search out the misplaced thinning shears. in the campus barbershop. The barbers there specialized in crew cuts and baldings for the campus athletes, the swimmers, wrestlers, and football players. The walls were layered with programs and posters, autographed by college stars long since graduated into painful, grinding NFL careers. When I strolled in, maybe six times a year, my barber would sigh, put down his electric clipper, and search out the misplaced thinning shears.

Today Soft was sitting in the waiting area, his hands folded primly. I hardly recognized him without his lab coat and pointer, his n.o.bel aura. He was a pale underground thing wandering in the upper world. It was a shock that his hair grew.

"Soft," I said.

"Engstrand."

"The breach is untended," I said playfully. "You've left it."

"Students are there around the clock," he said.

"What if something happens?"

"Nothing will happen. The lack is stabilized."

"The lack?"

"We're calling it that." He sounded a little uncomfortable.

"So it's stopped being an 'event,'" I said. "Now it's defined by it's failure to 'happen.' An absence, a lack."

"We're no longer defining it as a failure. Just a lack."

"Gentlemen."

"He was first," I pointed out.

"We can take you both."

Soft and I climbed into adjoining chairs, and were cranked into position. The long mirror framed us together, sitting pa.s.sively with white bibs tucked up around our collars. The bottom edge of this picture was littered with gels, combs, and sprays.

"Style or trim?"

"Short back and sides."

"Trim, just around the neck and ears. You mean to say it's not a breach anymore?"

"Breach was a misdefinition. There was a lack all along. It was initially accompanied by a gravity event, which in turn resulted in a time event."

"Not too much off the top. But it's not accompanied by a gravity event now?"

"It's no longer accompanied by any type of event. It's entirely clean."

"Lean forward."

"Clean how?"

"There's nothing but the lack."

"Nothing but the lack," I repeated. "How do you know you've got the lack, then?"

"Particle counts, particles that should be there but aren't. A trace imbalance in the M's and H's in the lab."

"G.o.d, that's short. You mean it's eating particles?"

"Mr. Engstrand, in a week you'll thank me."

"In layman's terms, eating them, yes. They drift toward the lack and fail to appear on the other side."

"What does it mean?"