Of Broken Things

Chapter 2 - scene 3.

Aiden’s first impulse was to drive up to the space port and pound on the door of Safe Haven until Old Jack let him in and pored him a drink. In fact, he was half-way to the space port when he thought better of it and changed course. The month of drowning his grief at the bottom of a bottle was over, and that had been all the weakness he would allow himself. He had decided to rebuild his life. Getting drunk at two in the afternoon wasn’t part of that plan.

So he drove to the university campus instead and sat down in a local restaurant with a bowl of soup and a club sandwich he didn’t really want. He forced himself to eat every single bite anyway.

He arrived at professor Weatherby’s office ten minutes before the scheduled time, gratefully accepted the cup of coffee offered by the receptionist, and sat down in one of the beat-up chairs in the waiting area.

Twenty minutes past four, professor Weatherby burst into the room like a small hurricane, bringing chaos and destruction in his wake. He opened the door with such force that it bounced off the wall. A hologram showing a view of the Planetary Capital fell off, landed on the floor with a crack of breaking glass, and went dark. The professor didn’t seem to notice.

“I am so sorry, Mr. Stapleton. I got into a discussion with a post-grad student about his research thesis. It’s on the influence of low and nil gravity on neuro-transmitters in the human brain. Most fascinating subject! Anyway, I’m afraid I lost track of time.”

Professor Weatherby didn’t look like a dignified member of the Board of Directors of a renown College. He wore a very conventional semi-casual outfit. Only the tie was askew, the sweater had a coffee stain on the front, and the trousers were wrinkled and a bit shorter than normal, showing his socks. The socks were in different colors - one dark blue and one dark green. The professor seemed to also have forgotten to comb his hair that morning and it stuck at odd angles. But his eyes were full of intelligence and sharp wit, and his handshake, when he finally reached Aiden after bumping into a chair and the coffee table, was very firm. Aiden found himself instantly liking the man.

The receptionist seemed nonplussed by the trail of destruction, which led Aiden to conclude that this was  a usual occurrence. She just ushered them both into professor’s Weatherby office, promised to bring tea and biscuits, and quietly shut the door behind her.

It was a decent sized office, but it seemed much smaller because every horizontal surface was covered with books, journals, datapads and papers. There were small mountains of paperwork on the professor’s desk and both visitor chairs, leaning at odd angles and threatening to unleash a landslide at the slightest touch.

“Oh, just toss that on the floor, don’t worry about it.” The professor waved towards one of the buried chairs. “My assistant will sort through all that when he returns from vacation. So Denise told me that Mrs. Fortworth hired you to investigate poor Steven’s murder?”

“Yes, sir. She finds it hard to believe that her husband was killed over some gambling debts.”

“I don’t blame her.” Weatherby tossed two datapads and a journal from his chair and sat down. “Steven wasn’t the gambling type. He was too much of a scientist for that. He dealt with facts and hard evidence, not luck. He had always been methodical in his research, no matter how far-fetched some of his theories had been... Oh, thank you, Denise, put them on my table please… somewhere.”

The last sentence was directed at this receptionist who chose this moment to bring a tray filled with a teapot, two cups and a plate of biscuits. She eyes the table sceptically, pushed aside some books, and put the tray on a more or less flat surface.

“So, what did you want to ask me Mr. Stapleton? I already told the police everything I knew.”

The professor pored Aiden a cup of what smelled like very Earl Gray. Aiden gratefully took it and tried to organize his thoughts. Some of the questions he wanted to ask were of rather delicate nature.

“As a member of the Board, you determine the renumeration rates for all staff and faculty members, is that correct?”

“Oh, I hardly act alone! The Board approves the annual budget and determines salaries and bonuses.”

“Was Professor Fortworth drawing a regular salary? Did he receive extra renumeration for consulting work?”

“The University paid Steven a salary of 150 000 credits per year. When he had to do outside consulting work, the renumeration was determined case by case between him and the institution requesting his expertise.”

“Was he paid on a weekly or bi-weekly basis?”

“All our staff members are paid twice a month, no exception. Is that important?”

Professor Weatherby shifted his attention from his tea cup to Aiden. The cookie he had been dipping in it chose that moment of distraction to break up and crumble. The professor swore under his breath and tried to fish it out of his tea with his spoon.

“I don’t know yet what’s important and what isn’t,” Aiden replied.

But I’m glad I asked Hank to look at those deposits, because something is definitely off.

“You think that Steven had been receiving pay offs for some shady deals?” the professor seemed genuinely surprised by the idea.

“You would be surprised what people are capable of doing for money…”

“Not Steven,” professor Weatherby said with conviction. “He might have been a bit eccentric, but he wouldn't have gotten mixed up with criminals for any money in the world. Now if they had offered him funding for his crazy research, that would have been a different matter altogether.”

“What kind of crazy research?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Steven was a good scientist and extremely knowledgeable in his field. But his talent was wasted on chasing after some rather… eccentric theories.”

“Such as?” Aiden found it funny that someone looking like a mad scientist would find any ideas eccentric.

“Steven was obsessed with things like telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance. For a neuro-scientist, that’s pretty eccentric.” Professor Weatherby’s tone turned derisionnal.

“Is it really that ridiculous?” Aiden said incredulously. He would have thought that someone like Weatherby would have embraced an idea like that wholeheartedly.

“But of course, my dear lad! Real science deals with facts. We formulate theories and design experiments that would prove or disprove them, and which can be replicated with consistent results. In Steven’s case, he had plenty of theories, one crazier than the next, but he simply couldn’t prove them. His results were inconsistent at best, and in most cases could not be replicated.”

The professor was gesticulating violently, his tea sloshing from his half-empty cup. This was obviously a sore subject.

“Steven was obsessed. He wanted more and more funding for his research. I was forced to tell him that the university didn’t have any money to spend on silly experiments.”

“How did he react to that?”

“Oh, he was mad! Even complained to the Board, but they took my side – we are a respectable university, we don’t study cheap parlor tricks.”

“Did he ever bring the subject again?”

“No, I think he finally realized that he would not get any support for his ideas here.”

But something tells me that he didn’t give up on them. I wonder if he went somewhere else for funding.

He didn’t have any more questions, so they finished their tea chatting amicably about the professor’s work until he got so technical that Aiden lost track of the conversation.