Page 36 of The Paradox Club

“Exactly, and what is science?”

“Explaining how the universe works?”

“Solving mysteries! Why do certain bright objects in the sky move in certain ways? Copernicus and Kepler and Newton solved that mystery. How are mass and energy related? Einstein solved that mystery. How can we send a man safely to the moon? It took a lot of people to solve that mystery.”

“That’s not the same as who killed Roger Ackroyd,” said Tess.

“No, it’s better, because planets and orbits and gravity and relativity and the moon are real. Roger Ackroyd is made up. When you solve the mysteries of science, you can make the world a better place. When you find out who murdered Roger Ackroyd, you just have to start another book.”

“But science doesn’t always make the world a better place, does it? You said because of Einstein they made a big bomb that killed a lot of people.”

“Science is not to blame because people misuse it. You need to understand, Tess, that almost any scientific discovery can be used to do good things or to do bad things. And sometimes, especially in the beginning, it can be hard to tell which is which. People still argue about whether the atomic bomb was a good thing or a bad thing. And that can be the biggest mystery in life—what’s good and what’s bad. But you have to try to solve that mystery, Tess. You have to try, no matter what you’re using—whether it’s a baseball bat or a bicycle or the theory of relativity or a hydrogen atom—you have to try to use it for good.”

THE BIG BOARD

Bleary-eyed and exhausted, Valentine 6 sat on the downhill side of a double shift, this one from midnight to eight a.m. She had not brought her iPad today, had not whiled away the hours with Scrabble or sudoku or the crossword. She had spent the past six-and-a-half hours staring at the green lights on the big board, one hand on the red rotary phone that sat in front of her. She had hardly moved, so she thought it unfair that she should feel so tired. But her focus on the board over so many hours, along with the worries that crowded in on her closer and closer as her shift wore on, had drained her of all energy. What if she blinked and missed something? What if the change on the board President Calvin 4 was so worried about happened after her shift ended? Worst of all, what if she passed information to Calvin 4 and she got caught? Expulsion from the club would probably be the least of her concerns.

Why the hell hadn’t they added sound to this display? she thought. That way she could rest her eyes, secure in the knowledge that an alarm bell would alert her when the board changed. She was just imagining the ways that Pilgrim 3 might punish her if she got caught spying for the president—empty her bank account, make sure she could never get a job, frame her for some heinous crime—when she saw it. One of the steady green lights on the big board switched to blinking red. Her pulse raced and her hand trembled as she watched the numbers at the bottom of the display flip over until they came to a rest. Two sets of three two-digit numbers, each followed by a letter.

The red phone on the table in front of her seemed to expand to threatening proportions, but Valentine 6 pulled her hand away from it. Her job was to pick up that phone immediately and call Pilgrim 3 if anything changed on the big board. But her shift didn’t end for another hour and a half, and she wouldn’t be able to safely contact the president until after she had left the club. She didn’t know what that light and those numbers meant, but she hated the idea of Pilgrim 3 knowing about them before the president did. But how long could she delay calling Pilgrim 3 without raising suspicion?

She had disliked Pilgrim 3 the first time they had met. It wasn’t that Valentine 6 didn’t care for powerful women. She loved powerful women. The chair of her physics department, the president of her university, her first boss, and of course her mother—these women had been her idols, her role models, and her friends. Her mother worked as a corporate consultant, sat on the boards of six different companies, and had single-handedly raised Valentine 6 after her father had gone off to Bermuda with the person she and her mother had always referred to as “that woman.” The one powerful woman in her life that Valentine 6 did not admire. Until she met Pilgrim 3.

Just because Valentine 6 had spent most of her life either in a science lab or with her nose in a book didn’t mean she didn’t understand human nature. She could tell by the way Pilgrim 3 held the handshake just a beat too long when they met, by the dismissive look in her eyes, by the way she brushed past her out of the room as soon as the introduction of the new member had been accomplished, that the keeper of the vault of the Paradox Club thought of Valentine 6 as an automaton to be programmed by her superiors at best and as a wholly dispensable pawn in Pilgrim 3’s plans for the club at worst. Valentine 6 had met, admired, and befriended several powerful women during her months as a member of the club. Pilgrim 3 was not among them.

Nor did she admire the way Pilgrim 3 posed as president. Yes, Pilgrim 3 was the highest-ranking officer to daily grace the offices of the Paradox Club, but as keeper of the vault she had a job, and it was not to conduct unscheduled meetings announced so late that only her closest allies attended. And Valentine 6 had not failed to notice that Pilgrim 3’s group of allies was just enough to make a quorum. She wondered if the news of the red light she would deliver to Pilgrim 3 would bring those allies running to vote on some emergency measure that would give her even more power than she had already usurped.

Valentine 6 thought of her mother and suddenly flashed to the memory of a day in high school when a boy had called her a bitch because she got an A on a test. She had come home in tears, but her mother had put an end to that.

“You’re a bright, powerful young woman,” her mother had said, “and men are going to resent you for that because we live in a system that was designed by men for men, and every time a man sees you succeed, he sees a little piece of that system fall away. I’ve dealt with it my whole life, but do you think I cried? Hell no. When a man called me a bitch, or ignored my idea in a meeting, or didn’t invite me to the golf course where the real business happens, I didn’t go home crying. I fought back. I came up with a better idea that couldn’t be ignored; I became a better golfer than anyone in the company; I chipped away at their system. And now all those men work for me. So you go back to that school and you don’t get an A on the next test, you get an A-plus, and someday that asshole kid will be working for you, if he’s lucky.”

It hadn’t exactly happened that way, but after Valentine 6 had graduated from college summa cum laude, she had come home for a summer and that “asshole kid” had bagged her groceries at the FoodMart.

As she stared at the blinking red light, she thought that maybe someday she’d be the leader of the Paradox Club, and she’d certainly do a better job than Pilgrim 3. But soon, she would have to pick up the red phone, dial the three-digit extension for Pilgrim 3’s office, and inform this arrogant, dismissive woman that one of the lights on the big board had turned red. Could she wait ten minutes? Twenty? An hour? Would Pilgrim 3 even know that she had delayed? Probably so, she thought. She decided she would wait a half hour, claiming she had dozed off if Pilgrim 3 confronted her about the timing.

“What’s the situation?” said Pilgrim 3 as she paced in front of the fireplace. The fire leapt behind her and, in her red dress and with her eyes alight with anger, she looked like a demon.

“We’ve got a light on the big board,” said Lidenbrock 2.

“Where are the coordinates?”

“Just a few miles from Marie Maxwell’s house.”

“A few miles? Not at her house?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Does she have a storage unit? Or an office?”

“It’s a residential neighborhood,” said Lidenbrock 2. “There’s something else. I went down to the big board when Valentine 6 called. I didn’t want to wake you until I saw it for myself. But I noticed something strange. The signal had a pulse to it.”

“What’s odd about that?”

“The signals are usually steady. We’ve only ever seen one other signal that pulsed like that.”

“And what signal was that?”

“The radio,” said Lidenbrock 2. “I was there when Harry Maxwell turned it on here at the club just before the Great Debate to see how the big board would react.”