there can be no doubt. No speculation. No jeering from the audience.”
“Do you wish to capture a ghost?”
“Good Lord, no! Well, perhaps. That's a thought I hadn't entertained. But, no, my plan was, and still is, to use a scientific approach. And this must be the next stage of my plan, for without the likelihood of successive encounters, there is no way I could draw any definitive conclusions.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“In this line of work, conclusions are everything. Even if a subject were to float up to me, sit on my lap and recite a rib-tickling limerick, I could no more count it as anything more credible than the photograph of the orb.”
“Still, it would be exciting, wouldn't it?”
His eyes were lost a little behind his perfectly round spectacles, “Yes. Yes I dare say it would be.”
He muttered to himself, as he would so many times in the coming years, and hypnotised himself with his words, “Such an amazing prospect! Such an exciting idea!”
With a yank of his beard he brought himself out of his stupor, “That's lost to the future. I must follow my plan of experimentation. Statistics and observation. Yes. Can you grow a beard?”
I was taken aback by his sudden question, and I frowned, “Um, no Professor.”
“No? That won't do.”
“Well, I've not tried, but I think that the most I can muster at my age is a dusty coating.”
“Well work on that in your spare time. If you cannot get a beard, then try for mutton-chops, or a moustache. You need something to stroke when you're thinking,” he ordered, sizing me up as if for the first time even though I had been working with him for over a week, “I won't have a fellow scientist walking around clean shaven.”
For the record, the Professor is one hundred percent right in this respect. I do believe that God gave men moustaches, beard and side-burns for the express purpose of thinking.
I have since grown a full beard, trimmed down on my cheeks, that I can rub and strum while in thought. I have, however, kept the top of my lip clean, at the insistence of my wife. Science and romance, it can be shown, are not wholly compatible.
I should have enjoyed to have compared the aspects of facial hair and cognitive ability, but that would be in another lifetime.
But I digress.
I said, “But, Professor, I'm not a scientist.”
“What? What are you doing here then?” he roared, “Is this just another job to you?”
“No, Professor,” I squeaked.
“Jolly good! Because with this game, either you're in or you're out.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“I haven't time to waste on bumbling upstarts. I need an observant, trainable student.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“And in order to capture the evidence I so desperately need, I need an assistant and an observer and a fellow scientist. That's you!”
So struck was I with his words, that my mouth only made the soundless impression, “Yes, Professor.”
He began tidying up, organising this and that. I thought about all he had said. While being his assistant was not formal training, not a university or a guild school, it would certainly be an interesting career choice. I made my mind up then and there to give this job everything I had.
“You need to collect evidence. What more evidence can you gather,” I said, and I motioned to the photograph, “Isn't this enough?”
“Far from it! Far from it! Oh, you haven't been in this game long enough to understand how intense the scrutiny is, how ruthless the criticisms! Peer review, they call it, and it's a circus!” cried the Professor, gesticulating wildly, “They'll snatch and catch and chew on anything you've got! They'll turn your words about and around and twist and turn them into unintelligible gibberish, and throw it back at you to sort through. It's all part of the process, to a degree, and I confess to having criticised unfairly myself in the past, but that doesn't make it any easier. They're ravenous beasts, all of them!”
“Must it go through peer review? Can't you simply take what you have to the press?”
“And rely on popular opinion? Posh! Haven't you heard a word I've said to you? If I am to bring this field, the field of paranormal science, any credulity or meaning, then it must not be a mere side-show to be paraded before the public's eye. It must be done methodically, with care, attention to details. It's a burden I must face!”
I implored, “But if the review is so fierce, and the evidence is so scarce, then how can you hope to prove anything?”
This made him stop his wild motions and settle some. I was not sure if he was building up to a raging tirade, which I had witnessed a couple of times before in previous employers, or if he was sitting in defeat. Either way, I stayed where I was and waited to see, be it an explosion or an implosion.
It was neither.
“I don't need to prove anything, lad,” he said, “Not yet. I only need to gather as much data as possible, reaped with scientific methods, compiled and processed transparently. I need quantifiable, reviewable measurements that can stand up to being picked at by the sharpest, most critical minds in the business. Then, lad, once they have accepted that there may be merit to further investigations, then the field will grow in acceptance and be seen as a mature endeavour by my peers.”
“Surely you won't convert them all?”
“Not all, not all, hardly any, if at all, and that's the truth. But then I don't need to convince them all. I don't need to convince even half. I only need a handful to nod, lend their intellectual weight to a few discussions without resorting to snide remarks and dismissive hand gestures. It will be a slow process, you see, and perhaps I be will among those we seek before I get to see any real progress,” he sighed wearily, suddenly showing his age, “And that would be a shame. Still, the rains of April do not taste the fruits of May.”
I shook my head, “I'm sure it won't come to that, Professor. From what you have shown me here, there's little more to it than being in the right place, at the right time with, perhaps, the right equipment. Is that not so?”
“That is true, to an extent, but you've gone and missed the fundamental point of it all, that is there is the necessity that accurate records are taken from which conclusions can be derived. Can you aid me in this?”
“I can, Professor. I'm ready to do whatever it is that needs to be done.”
“That's the spirit, lad!”
“Ha! Um. Pun intended?”
“Naturally. So, clear your schedule for tonight, and for tomorrow morning as well.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Of course. This experiment will go well into the night.”
An experiment? To look for evidence of supernatural activity? My tasks, as described when I took the job, was that I'd be compiling notes and cleaning equipment, readying the laboratory space.
“But, I, er...”
“Had a prior engagement? Lad, to be the man who helps push forth the boundaries of science, you must be willing to be separated from worldly comforts once in a while.”
I blushed, “It's a little embarrassing to say, but, I've started my jobs before the sun comes up, or I've finished them well after it's gone down, but I've not been out all night since, well, ever!”
“Aha! There's a first for everything, then! Now trot home, rest up and ready yourself. I'll need you with wide eyes and wider ears.”
Grosvenor Lane
The Professor, I had decided early on, was not what I would define as a typical employer, and I should know. My poor family, in a bid to get me employment, had called upon all of their resources, and those of family and friends, to pull whatever strings could be pulled.
I had set out under my first employer, the Baker, with great enthusiasm. I woke up early to haul bags of flour and mix gigantic bowls of dough for the morning rush. Under close scrutiny I kept the ovens stoked, the flues clean and the shelves stacked. I pride myself on being a fast learner, and this is undeniable. My problem lies, however, in
my inherent clumsiness.
One might consider it a family tradition: My father has fallen off more horses than he has ridden. My mother keeps a pot of glue handy for the plates and bowls she breaks on a daily basis. My brother retired from the army with two bullet wounds to his foot, self inflicted.
Apparently he did not learn the first time to ensure that his musket was empty before cleaning it.
I, on the other hand, was determined to hold my family name high and dispel the notion that our fingers were all thumbs, that our feet were clubs. My second week on the job, however, proved the inescapable fact that a trait is a trait, ingrained into the flesh of the family, and cannot be removed with the sharpest scalpel.
Carrying a bag of flour one morning, the top of the sack came open. Perhaps a rat had nibbled at it, or perhaps the knot was not as securely tied as I thought it might have been. In any case, when I plonked the bag of flour onto the ground, a plume of white dust billowed into my face.
Naturally enough, I staggered about trying to clear the dry, stinging dust from my eyes, clumsily stumbling here and there. In my throes I knocked over a pitcher of oil upon the floor. Without labouring too much on the story, which, I must admit, is one of the most shameful episodes of my life, I slipped on the oil, bumped into the other apprentice who was coming in behind me, sending him sprawling across the floor.
I tripped over him, headlong into the shelves upon the wall, sending huge pots and metal poles clattering down onto the oven, one of which must have knocked the flue which sent a dark cloud of burning