Variable Star
Another blind alley, another dead end, and Charlie threw his chalk down in disgust. The research on mirror neurons was not only fascinating, it had direct applications to his Cognitive Emergence work, but it was a new field--he'd read every paper he could find, and he still didn't have enough information. He had to admit he was stuck waiting for the experimentalists to catch up. Considering how much research was being conducted into the brain and its functions, Charlie was afraid of how long he'd have to wait.
Time for a beer. Maybe he could kill a few brain cells, drive his own current cogitations back into the dark cave from whence they came. Larry knew his moods but had known him for too long to respect them, and chattered on as he followed Charlie from the garage.
"I must admit, I'm feeling some difficulty in conjuring up any sympathy for you, Charles. Just think what astrophysicists and cosmologists are faced with in the gathering of data. Our only resources are photons and our brains, and yet we can still tell you the age of the universe."
"Your point being what, Larry?" Charlie pushed through the screen door into the house, let the door slam back toward Larry. He caught it, oblivious to the subtext. Don, head bent over a crossword with their father, Alan, looked up. He saw Charlie's face, stood without a word, and disappeared into the kitchen.
"My point being--extrapolate! Think of our sun, Charles."
Even Alan looked up at that.
"Our sun is many things--foundation of all life on this planet, roiling ball of radiative and convective energies, source of the streams of solar particles that impinge upon our atmosphere to grace us with the glory of the auroras--borealis and australis--"
Charlie opened his mouth, but Larry trumped him with an upraised finger. Don reemerged from the kitchen with a beer for Charlie and a glass of milk for Larry. Don offered his brother a sympathetic smile along with the bottle, already damp from condensation. Then he turned to Larry and deftly slid the glass into one gesturing hand.
Larry stared at the glass of milk in bemusement for a moment before continuing. "The sun is also the only star that's close enough to truly study. We have a sample set of one, here, Charles. All other stars are framed in terms of our own dear Sol. Mass, radius, temperature, chemical composition. Luminosity, flux, bolometric magnitude, optical depth. For every star we study, we couch all these attributes in terms of what we know--our own sun."
Charlie flopped onto the couch, already washing the chalk dust from his throat with a deep pull on the bottle. The carbonation bit at his sinuses and he sighed contentedly. "Larry, I can't afford to continually revisit and tweak vast portions of my work."
Larry seated himself more gingerly and eyed the milk. He took a tentative sip. "Charles, have you never faced a globular cluster with only a single star to guide you?"
Something in his words resonated with Charlie and he looked up, straight at Don. His older brother was trying to wrestle the crossword puzzle book away from their father, and Alan was just as determinedly holding onto it.
Charlie grinned. "I guess you could put it that way," he murmured, and took another swig from his bottle of beer.
Charlie had to admit that Larry's analogy seemed rather apt. As a young child, Charlie hadn't really been a solitary child, but he'd rarely interacted with anyone but adults--tutors, child psychologists, his parents. And adults were Other. Don had been his only real example of what a child was supposed to be like, and to be honest, Don--as an example--had kind of sucked.
Charlie did have some sweet memories from very early childhood of piggyback rides and games of catch and bedtime stories, and other memories transmuted by time from frightening to thrilling--memories of bullies faced down, nightmares chased away, skinned knees kissed and bandaged. But some memories were not so sweet, and they gained ascendance as Charlie and Don grew older.
Even now, Charlie thought, his memories of Don were all over the map. From Don's anger and pain as their mother lay dying to his unnervingly intense relief when the sniper's bullet missed. From Don's pride in Charlie's accomplishments to his casual expectations that Charlie would drop everything and come running when he called.
Don, on many levels, was still an unknown.
Charlie had to admit the thought saddened him.
He studied his brother and the memories that spilled through him until, for no reason that he could fathom, his mind fastened on one particular scene.
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Twelve-year-old Charlie Eppes stands just outside the open door of his brother's bedroom, clutching the list of approved texts from Washburn's junior English class and hoping that when he finally gets the guts to talk to Don his voice won't crack. By this point in his life Don frankly scares him. At school Charlie barely sees his brother, and when he does Don is never without some of his baseball buddies, or a cheerleader or two hanging on his every clever word--and his biceps, Charlie thinks miserably, don't forget the biceps--but at home Don is prickly and withdrawn. Volatile. Charlie has just learned that word in Chemistry class, and rarely has a mere word been so well-suited to expressing a concept.
But Charlie is desperate. The rest of the kids think that because numbers flow into his mind like rain into the freshly-turned soil of his mother's garden, he must do equally well in all of his classes, but it's not true. He does find the rest of his science classes easy, and he even plods along at an acceptable level in his history classes because he can remember the dates.
The social science classes, the political science classes--they're about people, and people confuse him. And English is his downfall. Words cannot communicate like numbers can, and he would prefer not to deal with the ambiguities of literature at all.
Charlie's smart. He's a genius, for Pete's sake. Yet Charlie suspects that in some classes his teachers are making allowances for him, and he hates it. He has one more chance to write a decent book report before the end of his junior year, and he's going to do it, even if he has to ask Don for help.
"So come in or buzz off, Nerd Boy. You're starting to give me the creeps." Charlie starts. The words are spoken without heat and he thinks that Don might actually be in a pretty good mood. He sidles through the door and stops, watching his brother. Don sits at his desk, book opened flat before him, working on his own homework.
Don doesn't look bother to around. "So what do you want? Cheryl Bowman is expecting me at her place pretty soon. We're gonna be working on our French."
Charlie can hear the smirk in Don's voice. He almost doesn't answer; Don with his back turned is an open invitation to soak up as much detail about the contents of his bedroom as possible. "Do Mom and Dad know you're going out so late?" he asks, eyes restlessly roving all the while. He thinks Don's a pretty typical teenager, with pretty typical interests. This room is probably full of topics for Charlie's abortive attempts to talk to his classmates.
"No, and they're not going to find out, are they." Don slams the book shut, sighs, rubs his eyes. "They don't need a reason to get on my case, anyway."
The room is something of a let-down. All the baseball stuff has been in here forever, and the poster of the monster truck tacked above the headboard of Don's bed is--disappointing. But on the far wall he catches sight of something much more interesting...he gives a little gasp. It's another poster, a black and white one of a beautiful young woman with short dark hair who is lying on a bare floor and wearing nothing but a very large snake.
The poster makes Charlie feel kind of funny.
"Do Mom and Dad know you have pictures of naked women on your wall?"
"Charlie! What--do--you--want?"
Don finally turns around to look at his brother and Charlie drags his gaze away from the poster. Don looks annoyed, but still not really angry. Charlie waves the list of books at Don and hurries up to the desk. "I need a book to write about for our last report but I can't decide which one. I thought you might have a suggestion."
Don's eyebrows go up. "Charlie, you should have picked something at least a week ago. You know how long it takes you to read a book, and we've only got two weeks left to write the report as it is."
"I thought I had a book picked, but it's boring. I don't want to finish it."
Don leans back and studies him, and Charlie can feel the temperature in the room drop. "Why don't you just wave your magic math wand? You won't flunk. You'll never flunk. They wouldn't dare."
Don knows, too. "I don't want to do it that way," Charlie says. "I know I'm not very good at English, but I want to try." He looks down miserably. "I thought--maybe you could help."
He feels Don studying him and risks a peek up through his lashes. Don's fidgeting; he checks his watch. Charlie gives himself five more minutes, max, before Don brushes him off and heads for the door. Don sighs heavily. "Okay. First of all, what book did you pick, and are you sure you hate it that much? It'd be better if you didn't have to start from scratch."
Charlie sets the paper down on Don's desk and points. "That one."
"Catcher in the Rye? Why in the world did you pick that one, Chuck?"
Annoyance flairs at the hated nickname, but Charlie has already learned on some level to pick his battles. "I dunno. It sounded like it might be about baseball. I thought maybe you'd pick the same one and we could--could--kinda work on our reports together."
Silence. Now Don's looking away. He scrubs at his mouth with one hand. "Sorry, but I already did that one last fall. It was a good idea, though, buddy," he says quickly as Charlie's shoulders slump.
Charlie straightens at that and looks Don full in the face for the first time since he's entered the room. "Well--maybe we could pick a different one to do." He thinks he sees his brother's expression soften for an instant before the usual "Don Eppes is in the house" look slams back down.
"Maybe we could. C'mere."
Don beckons Charlie closer and studies the list of approved books, deep in thought. Charlie knows he should be doing the same, but his fascination with the room and its contents pulls at him again and again he looks around. He realizes that there's even more baseball stuff than the last time he was in here--the trophies just seem to keep accumulating. And there's the boombox Don got for his sixteenth birthday, and his treasured collection of tapes, and the autographed picture of Wayne Gretsky, and boy that snake is really big--
"Charlie!"
"Huh?"
"That does it. You want me to help you, you gotta focus." Don shoves back from his desk, stands, grabs Charlie under the armpits, and hoists him up. Charlie yelps, afraid Don is going to throw him bodily from the room, but Don just swings him around and around until Charlie is giggling and breathless, and then dumps him unceremoniously on the bed. Don pulls the pillow from under the comforter, plumps it up against the headboard, and hauls Charlie up until his back is propped against it. "Do I have your attention now?" he asks sternly. But Don is grinning, and Charlie has to clap both hands over his mouth to keep the giggles in. He nods.
"Stay put." Don retrieves the list and hops onto the bed next to Charlie. He palms the top of Charlie's head and swivels him around until Charlie is looking down at the list. "Stay with me here, Charlie. I wasn't kidding when I said I have to leave pretty soon."
Charlie nods. "Did--did you already have a book picked?"
Don sighs. "Yeah, I was gonna do Moby Dick but it's too long, and the last time I tried to do a book report just off the movie I got in trouble. I don't mind switching."
"Was that when Mom made you read To Kill a Mockingbird out loud to us for an hour after dinner--"
"Charlie."
Charlie looks down at the list. "Are plays shorter? We could do a play."
Don sounds dubious. "Well, most of them are Shakespeare, and they're pretty cool, but--"
"You mean you've read them?
"Yeah. I've read a lot of the stuff on this list already."
"Why would you want to do that?" Charlie is appalled. It's bad enough to have to read for class.
Don shifts uncomfortably, and Charlie realizes it's not just the biceps. Don's chest has filled out quite a bit, too. Charlie's feeling a little squished. He can't wait for the next five years to go by. "Well, Mom keeps slipping me books," Don says. "And I figured that--if Mom likes 'em, I might as well try 'em." His voice is soft.
"But you like the Shakespeare stuff."
"Some of it, yeah."
"The words are even weirder than the ones we use now."
Don rolls his eyes. "There are definitions in the book."
"But I get distracted having to look back and forth," Charlie whines. "Why do they do it like that?"
"It's sorta like--like--" Don smiles. "Like solving a system of equations."
Charlie stares at him, baffled both by a math analogy coming from the lips of his brother, and the analogy itself. "What does Gaussian elimination have to do with anything?"
"What the hell is Gaussian elimination?"
They stare at each other. Don shakes himself first. "Look, Charlie, isn't that what you do when you have two equations and you have to find both x and y? You figure out one in terms of the other and then you use--uh--back substitution."
"Oh." Don is functioning at a rather more rudimentary level. Charlie should have remembered that. "Yeah. Back substitution. So?"
"So, when you're reading something like this, you sort of keep the word we use today in your head and you substitute it as you go along."
Charlie nods. It kind of makes sense, but-- "Why don't they just print the plays with the words we use now, so we can understand them?"
Now Don looks appalled. "Because that's not the way he wrote it, Charlie. A lot of the time he picked the word he picked because it has more than just the meaning you'd substitute in, or because it's a wicked pun, or because it sounds right, or because--"
"You mean, like using 2 times pi in a trig function instead of six point two eight three?"
"Uh--I guess."
Charlie nods. Yes, it makes sense, though it doesn't help him. He watches Don's forefinger trail down the list of plays, slow at one called King Lear, and move on again. "You want to do that one?" he asks.
"What one?"
Charlie points to King Lear.
"No." Don's answer is quick and hard. "That's a stupid one."
"What's it about?"
Don shakes his head. "A stupid parent. We don't need to read about stupid parents."
Charlie's eyebrows go up but he doesn't press. "You know, even if they're shorter, I'd probably just mess up on one of these because I couldn't understand it. Why don't we look at the books?"
Don shrugs. "Okay," he says, "but some of these are kind of nice." He taps the line that says, Shakespeare's Collected Sonnets.
Charlie gapes at him. "That's poetry." Don shrugs again, looking faintly embarrassed. "Do you really like poetry?" Charlie leans in close. "Donnie--are you sensitive?" Charlie hasn't heard of Shakespeare's Dark Lady, hasn't heard Don mention Val Eng, doesn't yet know Val Eng exists.
Don glares at him. "Shut up, nerd," he snaps, "or you're going to be sitting on something sensitive in a minute. Do you want to do this, or not?"
Charlie struggles to banish his grin. "I'm sorry, Donnie. You pick, okay?"
Don mutters something and goes back to trailing a finger down the list. He stops, and Charlie hears him take a deep breath, as though he has something he wants to say, but he's just not certain--
Don's finger stabs down. "How about that one?"
He's pointing at Flatland.
My, Don is full of surprises tonight.
"You'd really want to read that one?" Charlie's stomach is full of a queasy, butterfly feeling of hope, surprise, and--sadness.
"Already read it. Wasn't that bad. It's pretty short, and I even thought the math in it was pretty cool--you'd probably have to talk a lot about the class conflict stuff and the gender stuff or Washburn would tell you you're not pushing yourself, but I can help you with them--"
"Donnie," Charlie asks quietly. "Why'd you read this?"
Don clears his throat. He shrugs again, supremely casual. "I just thought that you'd pick it sooner or later and then maybe we could work on our reports together--"
"Sorry, but I already did that one last fall," says Charlie. His voice is gentle. He has never, ever imagined that he would speak gently to his brother, but--here it is. It makes him feel a little strange.
Don looks at him incredulously. "While I was doing Catcher in the Rye?"
Charlie nods.
Don stares at him for a moment, then chuckles. He slides down the pillow until he's stretched out on the bed. "Ever hear of O. Henry?" he asks.
"I like Milky Ways better."
Don laughs out loud at that. "Oh, well. Dumb idea anyway. No matter what I wrote they'd think you did it for me."
Charlie shakes his head vigorously. "No, Don, it was a good idea. I would have liked to do that with you. And there must be something else on that list we'd both be interested in."
Don studies the list once more. "I've got it," he says, voice excited. Charlie suddenly realizes he hasn't checked his watch in several minutes. "The Alice books."
"What?"
"You know--Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. It says here if we pick one we have to do them both, but that's okay. They're quick reads, and I've already read them a ton of times, anyway."
"But they're kids' books, Don."
Don eyes him, a smug smile curling the corners of his mouth. "You really don't know, do you."
"Know what?"
"They were written by a mathematician, doofus."
Charlie frowns down at him. "You're kidding."
"No. Seriously. Lewis Carroll was the pen name of some English guy who taught math. I can't remember his name right now, but the books are full of logic puzzles and word games."
Charlie feels his grin stretch wider and wider. "They sound perfect," he says.
"That's it, then." Don smacks his knee just a little too hard, but Charlie knows it's an accident and he doesn't even wince. Don rolls off the bed and trots over to his desk. "I've got Mom's copies right here. Be nice to 'em, because I'm not taking the fall for you if you crack the spines or anything." He hands Charlie the books. "You might even recognize some of the stuff."
Charlie shakes his head. "I've never read these."
"But Mom used to read them to us, when we were little. 'Twas brillig and the slithy toves--'"
Charlie makes a face. "That sounds worse than Shakespeare."
"No, it's fun." Don glances at his watch. "Crap. Gotta go, buddy. You know the rules. Outta my room." He drops into the chair at his desk and reaches for his sneakers.
Charlie sighs a little sadly. He feels as though he's spent the last half-hour with a ghost--the Ghost of Donnie Past--and now the surly teen who had taken over his sweet brother's body has come back to reclaim it. But Don's smile is still kind, and Charlie nods. He's got some reading to do, anyway.
"Oh, Chuck?"
"Don't call me Chuck."
"Why didn't you like Catcher in the Rye? I love that book."
Charlie stops to consider, and Don finishes tugging on one shoe and plants that foot against his rear, gives a gentle push. "I don't know," says Charlie. "Holden Caulfield is a whiner, I guess."
Don drops his foot to the floor with a heavy thud and stares at Charlie. Then he smiles, and there are things in that smile that Charlie knows he doesn't understand, is surprised that Don can even understand. "Yeah," says Don softly, "you're kinda young for that book yet, aren't you."
Charlie bristles and Don holds up a hand. "Charlie, that's just the way it is. Things are gonna change for you in the next few years. Change a lot."
Charlie is suddenly frightened. "But not everything, right?"
"What do you mean? What's wrong, Charlie?"
"You're still going to be my brother, aren't you?"
Don pulls back, sucks in a quick breath. Something haunts his eyes that frightens Charlie even more, but it's just as quickly gone and Don smiles. "Of course I'll still be your brother, buddy. That's not going to change," he says. He ruffles Charlie's hair. "Can't hardly get away from that."
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"Charles, I would ask you to forbear using your mental wormhole to escape this conversation, if only for the sake of politeness." Larry was glaring at him, and Charlie shook himself.
"Sorry, Larry--"
Don was also eyeing him, his expression a little annoyed but a lot more amused. "What are you looking at, Charlie?"
Charlie grinned. "Holden Caulfield is a whiner."
Don looked startled at that, then thoughtful, then a grin to match Charlie's spread across his face. "You're still not old enough to read that book, you know."
Charlie laughed.
"I guess some things really don't change, do they, buddy?"
Charlie nodded happily.
Now Alan had joined Larry in looking baffled. "What are you talking about?" he asked Don. Don shrugged and snatched the crossword puzzle book from Alan's hand.
"What I want to know," said Larry, "is how you can suddenly vanish from one conversation, only to reappear in another without so much as a by-your-leave. I feel as though I've just witnessed a conversational quantum tunneling event."
Charlie raised a hand in appeasement. "You're right. I'm sorry. It was very rude of me. But I was pondering your question."
"About stars and clusters?"
"Indeed."
"Well?" Larry leaned forward, palms cupping his cheeks.
Charlie shook his head. "Didn't work. Didn't work at all."
Larry leaned back, palms sliding down to squish his lips into a comical "o".
"The star was too variable. Erratic, in fact." He could feel Don's eyes on him. "Barely told me anything about itself, let alone any other stars."
Larry lowered his hands. "I'm very sorry to hear that, Charles."
"Don't be. It's a fascinating object of study in and of itself, and I expect it will continue to be so for many years to come."
Don snorted out loud at that. "Don," said Alan, "If you understand what your brother is talking about, I agree with Larry. The polite thing to do would be to enlighten us."
"Dad, it's just Charlie being Charlie." Don smiled, a smile that said Charlie being Charlie was fine with him.
"Donnie, you're not very helpful."
"What do you expect, Dad?" said Charlie. "That's just Don being Don." And, thought Charlie, Don being Don was perfectly fine with him, too.