that there is an apparent structure to the ball. Yes? It has a geometry!”
I took my time examining his evidence. Certainly this was no speck of dust, nor a clumsy reflection. The question had to be asked, however, and I was more than a little afraid to do it. He sensed my hesitation and, no doubt, knew what I was thinking.
“As for being some kind of double exposure, yes, I can see how one may think that it would be possible. But here's the thing: With a double exposure you include a bunch of artefacts into an image with the express purpose of defining a disembodied face for the fancy of a wealthy client. Do you see a face? No. Do you see a floating white sheet? No. That's because there isn't one. If you're looking for something like that, I'm very happy to disappoint. That's showmanship. It's charlatanism. It's dishonourable and disrespectful to the field and I simply won't do it,” he sniffed, “It brings everything down to the level of mere money grubbing, whereas I am a man of science. If those boobs stumbled upon the genuine article, they'd just as soon sell it to make a buck. If I make no pennies tomorrow but uncover undeniable proof of the existence of such beings that would start up this field in earnest, I will die a happy man.”
“So you say,” I said, a little more familiar than I would like.
As it was, the Professor did not take it the wrong way.
“I do say. And it is natural for you to be sceptical, for that's what happens when you let a bunch of no good, blind, frivolous, money-hungry gypsies run the show,” he seethed, “I was sceptical myself. I have to be, being a man of science. But there are two things to which I can attest that will allay you of any suspicions. Firstly, that cannot be a double exposure, for the paint flecks on the door to be visible, for that embossing to show up, for the handle to reflect the light like that, overlaying a glowing dot would do no such things.”
“Yes, Professor. I have worked with a photographer once,” I said, immediately regretting my words.
I hoped that he would not ask me why I was no longer working with the photographer. He did not.
“Hmm? Oh. Good. That may come in handy.”
He looked a little peeved that he had lost his train of speech, so I prompted him, “So, what's the second reason?”
“Ha! The second is that I consider the taker of this photograph to be credible. Very credible. Almost infallible. You see, I was the one who took the picture.”
“You?”
“On my word, I saw this very orb with my own two eyes! And this can be shown by the nature of the photograph once more: The angle of the door frame is not square to the edges. There is nothing of interest in the shot itself, no stairway or mantle-clock or fireplace or whatever the tricksters prefer to use in their images. The dot itself is close to the centre of the frame, but this is only because I turned the camera at the last instant to capture its image!” he said with a laugh, “A second later and you'd be looking at black plate. You see, it was all I could do to hit the shutter when I saw the spectacle, it moved so fast...”
“You saw it?”
“Yes! Keep up, now! I saw it, with my own two eyes, I saw it! One moment I was taking shots in the dark, testing a new plate that I've been working on. It works on the lower end of the spectrum, you know, in what is known as infra red.”
“Infer red?”
“No, no. Infra. If we look at the spectrum as the rainbow – you do know that colours of the rainbow, don't you?”
I immediately felt a little silly, “Of course! There's red and yellow and pink and green and purple...”
“Stop there. Stop, stop, stop! I know the rhyme. Well. It might interest you to know that there isn't really a red, a yellow, a pink and a green.”
“What?”
He rummaged underneath his desk and came up empty handed. Cursing quietly to himself, he left the room to fish about in his study, clanking and clattering away as he searched about. I took the opportunity to look at the photographs again.
My initial misgivings slowly gave way the more I inspected and compared the shots. While I am no photographer, and cannot profess to be anything remotely close to an expert on the topic, as an observer who has used his eyes his entire life and has relied upon them for many different thing, I would argue that my opinion would be as good as any other layman's in judging the artefacts before me.
The light coming from the dust reflecting back to the lens was evidently a common problem with photographers taking images of old houses or castles. Time had allowed copious, uncountable drops of dust to settle about, ready to fall and tumble through the air should a bumbling oaf come stomping through.
The one plate of interest, however, was nothing like this. The crispness of the ball, the definite glow that it emitted, the form! It had a geometry to it, that was striking. It was positioned quite close to the door, almost like it was resting against it, like it was making its mind up whether to enter the room or leave again.
“Here! Sorry about that. You buy these things and use them for demonstrations, then they grow legs and walk off by themselves. I've got a mind that Miss Fitzgerald is playing games with me,” muttered the Professor, assembling a prism within a holder, “I've found so many things that I thought were lost, and I'm convinced that, unless I placed them away when I was under the effects of some opiate, which, mind you, I could never be since I do not partake in it, then she has been toying with me... the blinds, lad! The blinds!”
I, lost in his rambling words, looked up, startled, “I'm sorry?”
“Don't be, and pull the blinds down! We need darkness for this demonstration! Wait! Let me light this lantern first.”
After a few minutes to find the lantern, a few minutes more to refuel it, and yet another few minutes to find some matches, “I don't smoke any more,” he had added, and a few minutes more to attach an iris, he was ready to begin.
Finally, with the curtains drawn tightly, we sat in the hot glow of the lantern.
“Now watch closely, for this is the meat of the matter. Ha! Now to make it a little clearer, I shall put up this white piece of paper here. No, maybe a little further back. Yes, there. Now if I adjust his lantern to limit the light to only project this much, maybe less, you don't mind the dark, do you? Good.”
He adjusted the aperture of the lantern, slowly closing the iris until it let through only a thin stream of light. The blinds were quite effective, and I found myself captivated by the tiny emission, claiming my attention since it was the brightest thing in the room.
“Note the line produced by the beam of light is fairly invisible until it should strike another surface, like the paper. When it strikes it rebounds haphazardly, casting itself about the room. If I should sprinkle a little dust, there, you can see clearly the rod of light, yes?”
“Yes I can,” I observed.
“Good. And you'll notice, too, that the dust that might be present within the beam also acts to scatter the light about. From this we can surmise that one of the natures of light is that it prefers to continue as it is until something should present itself as an obstacle.”
I nodded, “So, similar to the momentum of a body?”
“How so?” he asked at my suggestion, eyebrows raised.
“Um. Well, I am not entirely familiar with the topic as you would be, but from what I understand, it was one of Sir Isaac Newton's famous statements, was it not, that spoke about a body in motion, and that the body prefers to maintain its motion unless acted upon by an unopposed force.”
My face went red. Here I was, a young, half-educated upstart talking to a seasoned Professor about a topic near to any Physician's heart.
He strummed his beard, “That's a good analogy, I should suppose, but there is more to that story. For it applies to a body at rest, you know, and from what we can tell, light is never really at rest. But I suppose if it aids your understanding, then you should stick with it.”
“Sorry.”
“Don't be! I use analogies all the time! So long as you do not carry them too far, or give them more credit than they are due
, they are very useful indeed,” he said, “Now let us continue. Bring that prism holder closer, will you? Keep it in the holder, it's expensive you know, don't drop it, a bit to the left...”
We adjusted the position of the prism until it interfered with the beam of the light, causing the homogeneous ray to separate itself into a rainbow, projected neatly onto the paper.
“And here is your spectrum.”
“I see.”
“Yes, you do. But note what I was saying before. What colour is this?”
I shrugged, “Red.”
“Very good. Very good. Now what colour is this?”
“Green, Professor.”
“And you are right again, full marks. Now here is a trickier question: Is red the same as green?”
I laughed spontaneously at his question, for I was expecting it to be something more scientific in nature.
He looked deadpan, “What is so funny?”
“Well, red is not green, Professor.”
“Then why not just say so? Why laugh?”
My face turned red, a hotness I sensed was plainly visible even in the darkness, “Well, I, er, I'm not sure. It's an obvious answer, isn't it?”
I could see his teeth from the lamplight leaking around the edges of the aperture, “My good lad, nothing is obvious. I'd be out of a job, otherwise. Even the simplest of questions can be broken down to find some very, very strange conclusions and some cannot even be answered definitively at all.”
I said what I said whenever I had nothing