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to think of it

as his era. Explains a lot, don’t you think?”
    I did. She left and I shut the door to tidy up.
    When I returned to the lab, Bert had set out

the lunch and poured a finger of brandy for me. I sipped it and was surprised

by how much it helped. I’d never had brandy before. Wine was my drink—when I had

one at all.
    We settled into armchairs facing each other,

balancing sandwich plates on our knees. He seemed suddenly struck dumb, maybe

even nervous, so I asked the question uppermost on my mind.
    “Bert, you’ve said a couple times that you

wanted to talk about your work, so I assume I’m not prying too much…you

introduced yourself to me as a historian and Mrs. Peacock referred to you as a

historian, but you also called yourself a scientist more than once, and this

looks much more like a science lab than a historian’s study. What is your field?”
    He smiled, and some of the tension left him.

Maybe he had been looking for a way to open the topic. “Actually, I’m a

scientist with a good, working knowledge of the Progressive Era in St. Louis.

My scientific field is odd enough that it’s hard to find work, and although I

have an endowed chair, I do like to get out in the world, and work is the best

way to meet people and talk to them easily. History consultancy provides the

bridge I need.”
    Well that was a mouthful! The endowed chair

might explain the expensive house, I thought, but it still left a lot of

questions. I didn’t know what to ask next.
    He smiled again. “You look gobsmacked. Shall I

show you my experiments first, since you’re a scientist?”
    He led me around the room, showing me one

simple physics experiment after another. There were various models of the

universe, including a complex arrangement of Tinkertoys spinning on an old

record turntable. That was odd. I had switched my major to chemistry after

freshman year, so I didn’t claim to be anything like a research physicist, but

I was pretty sure nobody thought the universe was spinning on an axis.
    Another model seemed to show the universe

curving in on itself, and yet another was actually made of large pretzels glued

together in complex patterns. It was definitely supposed to be the universe,

though. For one thing, it had a label that said so, neatly lettered on a tape

stuck to its support. It also had various tiny spheres dangling from threads

here and there.
    Next we came to a large Mobius strip made of

metal. It was mounted on a stand, and it had various slender spikes running

through it, connecting the farthest parts of the metal strip, like shortcuts

connecting a loop of highway.
    As I said, I’m no physicist—those guys on The Big Bang Theory would laugh their

heads off at me—but I was pretty sure I recognized the next experiment as a

restatement of Einstein’s theory of relativity. It didn’t show the familiar

equation, and the wording of Bert’s explanation didn’t show any familiarity at

all with the famous wording about mass being conserved, but still…really, it

was as if someone very smart, but with absolutely no contact with standard

science curriculum, had thought up the basic E= MC 2 idea all by himself, and then had done a science fair exhibit about it.
    In keeping with the science fair feel , there was a diorama explaining light speed and the speed

of sound.
    Finally, there was an extravagant display about

tesseracts, which I remembered from Madeleine L’Engle’s children’s book, A Wrinkle in Time. It showed the same

idea, the basic idea behind “warp speed”—the notion that the best method for

fast travel across the universe was folding the section you wanted to cross, so

one location touched another that it wouldn’t ordinarily be near. This had

fabric models, with the cloth folded to show the notion of the wrinkle quite

literally, cardboard models, and equations on neatly posted cards. It was a

nice display, and kind of fun for someone who