Anthem's Fall

Chapter Thirty Seven

They strolled into one of Columbia’s older dining halls. Long rows of worn cafeteria tables and service counters were packed with students waiting in line or helping themselves to an uninspired salad bar. Ryan and Kristen made their way to the coffee dispensers and poured steaming French roast into styrofoam cups.

“Second cup of the day for me,” Kristen said, mixing some skim milk into her cup and reading fall announcements on the nearby bulletin board. “I’m averaging over three cups these days.”

Ryan shrugged. “Better than an Adderall addiction.”

“Ha,” Kristen laughed aloud. “Too true.”

“Ryan! Hey, Ryan!”

Ryan turned around to see his friend Tim Richard. Tim was in several of Ryan’s freshman-year courses. They shared a European History class on Friday mornings, and swapped notes when either of them missed one of the early morning lectures. Tim played rugby.

“This is the guy I was telling you about,” Tim said to his tablemates. They were all thick-shouldered and bruise-covered rugby players. “When are we going to get you to come out to some practices?”

Ryan shook his head, putting a lid on his coffee cup. “Yeah, right. I’ve seen some of your injuries—no, thanks. How is your lip healing by the way?”

“Please,” Tim said. “They sewed it back up fine. Fifteen stitches.”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m all set.”

Tim’s teammates vocalized disapproval, and Tim talked through a mouthful of tuna sandwich. “Are you sure that’s the reason, and not that our practices would interfere with your nerd club meetings?”

“It’s the debate team, don’t disrespect. Broken lips heal quick—a broken ego doesn’t.”

“Whatever, man.” Tim waved a dismissive hand. “I know you’ll come around eventually. See you in class tomorrow?”

“For sure,” Ryan nodded. “I’ve got to run though.”

Tim’s gaze hesitated for a moment on Kristen. He nodded to Ryan with a conspicuous thumbs-up before turning back to his friends. Ryan pretended not to see the gesture, and he perceived that Kristen did the same.

“Sorry,” Ryan said. “Tact isn’t really his strong suit.”

“No worries.” Kristen smiled. When they were out of hearing range and leaving the dining hall, she turned to him with a mocking expression as she adjusted the lid on her cup. “So rugby doesn’t interest you, huh? You don’t want to get out there and show everyone what you’re made of? Smack some skulls around and so on?”

Ryan made a sheepish face. “Eh, the whole no helmet idea just seems ill conceived. The last thing anyone would want is for me to somehow harm my facial features.”

“Yeah, a broken nose would be far worse than permanent brain damage.”

Ryan had an athletic build, and it did not require too much imagination to envision him catching a football or driving a basketball down the lane. It had not been the first time someone encouraged him to join a club team, but Ryan had never been very interested in organized sports. Cerebral pursuits had always struck him as more engaging.

“Did you play any sports before college?” Kristen asked. “I need to know if I’m getting familiar with a jock-type here.”

“None worth noting,” Ryan shook his head. “Never been much of an athlete.”

“Oh, well, me neither,” Kristen said, her tone casual. “I’m a train wreck when it comes to athletics. I did winter track my junior year in high school. Hated every minute of it. Asthma and the four-hundred meter aren’t a good mix. I ran junior varsity, and it was not a pretty sight.”

Ryan envisioned her running laps at a high school track and saw the odd mismatch. “Well, you must be a world-class biologist.”

“True, I suppose.” Kristen shrugged, a breeze lightly moving her hair. “I guess we all have different skill sets. Where others are good at rugby, you are good at arguing against lobbyists.”

“Please don’t think of me as a good arguer. Being argumentative is an annoying trait. I just happen to get fired up when people in positions of power twist facts for special interests.”

“Fair enough, argue was a poor word choice. But you have to admit you can rock a debate. I mean you practically sent that lobbyist running from the podium.”

Ryan shrugged. “I suppose if I feel strongly enough about a subject I can defend my stance. But seriously, please don’t think of me as someone who is talented at being a dogmatic arguer. Argumentative people frustrate the hell out of me.”

“Deal.”

“Well, this is me,” Ryan said, coming to a halt at the wide marble stairway that led up to the doors of a stone lecture hall. Droves of students, some Ryan recognized from his class, were entering the dignified building.

“Cool,” Kristen said with a smile. “I don’t think anything’s ever brought me in there. I haven’t been in most of the undergrad lecture halls, actually.”

“Ah, you’re missing out,” Ryan said. He wanted to see her again and was now being careful not to allow an awkward moment to rear its deflating head. “What’s your schedule like tomorrow?”

Kristen raised a slender hand to her chest. “My schedule? I’m not sure. I’ll probably be at my lab for most of the morning. Beyond that, I don’t really have anything planned. I more or less make my own agenda.”

Ryan took a shallow breath and held it, his chest filling with cement.

“You know . . .” He tried to make his voice sound casual, but was fairly certain Kristen could see his heart beating through his shirt. “We should hang out tomorrow. That is, if you have nothing to do during the afternoon—or night, or whatever.”

“Hang out?” Kristen looked up at him with a questioning, almost goading expression, taking some amusement in his fumbling. “Hang out as in give you an interview about the Vatruvian cell? Or like a date?”

“Well, now that you mention a willingness to discuss the Vatruvian cell,” Ryan pretended to mull it over. “Nah. Let’s say a date.”

Kristen laughed and nodded offhandedly. “Yeah, sure. I’d like that. But I really should be getting back to my lab; things are kind of crazy today. And you need to get to your class.”

They took out their cell phones and exchanged numbers. To his contacts Ryan added the name Kristen Jordan.

“Okay, well, I should be going. Good luck with your essay.” Kristen turned with a wave.

“See you,” Ryan said, watching her disappear into the crowd. Satisfied, he turned and climbed the stairway. Ryan hurried into a small softly lit classroom on the first floor that smelled faintly of old books and citrus wood polish. A mahogany table, looking nearly as old as the university itself, dominated the room, and around it sat a dozen of his classmates and the imposing Professor Hilton. With his smart herringbone blazer and discerning glower, Professor Hilton was not easily contended with. He led a discussion-based class—a Socratic seminar of the most stressful variety.

“Ryan Craig. You are late,” Professor Hilton said without lifting his gaze from his reading.

“Sorry, I got caught up at the student debate.”

Professor Hilton, whom Ryan guessed to be in his late fifties, ignored his apology. He cleared his throat and looked up. “You all were to have your essays prepared for today. The topic, globalization: should a native population’s cultural independence be protected through governmental law? Why or why not? We will go around the circle, and discuss each of your points. We’ll start with you, Jennifer. When you are ready, you may begin.”

Jennifer Graham was sitting to Ryan’s right. She sat up straight and calmly flattened her hands on the paper-clipped essay in front of her.

“I based my essay on the idea that, if left isolated, indigenous societies will only fall further behind the modern times. As pleasing a fiction as it would be to not interfere with indigenous societies, it’s ultimately not a feasible solution. Eventually they will be displaced or disenfranchised. Assimilation, to some extent, with the expanding modern world is unavoidable. This is especially true if children within indigenous populations are to be given a modern education and healthcare. With that said, I think legislation should be in place to protect indigenous and impoverished individuals’ rights to their own cultural traditions and beliefs.”

Although his face elicited none of his internal disdain, Ryan groaned soundlessly. Jennifer Graham’s essay was taken virtually word for word from Professor Hilton’s lectures over the previous few weeks. Ryan had a sudden feeling he was about to be put through an academic crucible for straying from the table’s decidedly well-established ideas.

“Good, Jennifer.” Professor Hilton nodded. “Questions anyone?”

He was met with silence. All the other students were clearly preoccupied with the brief presentations they were each going to imminently make. Ryan’s peers stared unflinchingly at their essays before them.

“Very well. That sounds well conceived, Jennifer. I look forward to reading it.” Professor Hilton said and jotted something down on a pad of paper. “Mr. Craig, you’re next.”

Ryan shifted in his chair, fairly certain his paper would not escape the scrutiny of the table with the ease Jennifer’s had. Sitting up, shoulders tense, he prepared for the worst. “I proposed that it’s the inherent responsibility, and even the duty of any globalizing power that stakes any claim on morality to allow for the cultural independence of any group of people, indigenous or otherwise. If not, the globalizing power is an imperialistic entity. An encroachment of any form on the belief system of an indigenous society or enclave of people is simply invasion with a more socially acceptable euphemism attached.”

“Interesting,” Professor Hilton said. He adjusted his glasses. “Would anyone like to comment?”

“I would.” Bobby Clark, a student directly across from Ryan, raised his hand. Ryan knew Bobby Clark all too well. They had butted heads all semester over every subject imaginable. Ryan had heard from another classmate that Bobby was the son of Robert Clark III, a prominent banking executive down in the financial district. Ryan despised the certainty and lack of reservations with which Bobby Clark imbued his arguments.

“How can you possibly support that stance?” Bobby stared at Ryan contemptuously, allowing the silence in the room to humiliate him. “Let’s say oil is found underneath some random village in an impoverished South American country. The government that owns the land over the oil has the right to ask the people living on the land to move out. Is that not true?”

“At this point of time in history, yes, that is true in most countries.” Ryan said.

“Please. At any time in history a controlling power would displace a group of people for the greater good of the nation as a whole.”

“The greater good is an opinion, and a dangerous one if it’s used to force a group to act against its will,” Ryan said cautiously. “It’s even more dangerous if that group doesn’t have a voice in the government.”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “Either way, you’re arguing that a specific group of people should be given more rights than another group. If we were given enough notice, no one would get in an uproar if, say, the federal government forced my family in Connecticut to relocate against our will to build a highway. Yet if an indigenous family in South America or Africa or Eastern Russia is forced to move, it suddenly becomes an international human rights issue. That is inequality.”

“Bobby,” Ryan said. “Your entire world view doesn’t revolve around your local surrounds. Your fundamental metaphysical beliefs—everything you hold true about existence itself—doesn’t depend upon your neighborhood in New Canaan. Many groups’ entire realities revolve around the localities in which they live. To take away their land, which in some cases has belonged to them for thousands of years, would be to execute their very way of life. You in turn murder more than the people themselves, you murder the perspective they brought to the world.”

“Come on,” Bobby stared at Ryan with condescension. “Like Jennifer said, it’s a simple inevitability that indigenous groups will have to join the global world eventually. There’s no such thing as geographical barriers anymore. The world can only push on their boundaries for so long before the bubble bursts and the industrialized world crashes through. It might be unfortunate, and sad in a romantic sense, but that’s how it is. Why not take the time to foster a viable infrastructure first?”

The words simple inevitability rang through Ryan’s ears like a hissing gunshot. He opened his mouth in disbelief, staring at his essay on the polished table with anger. “Indigenous groups don’t have to do anything. They are being forced into the global world. And they are being forced by the exact perspective that you are espousing as common sense.”

Bobby Clark gave a mocking and sardonic chuckle. “My perspective is based in reality, man.”

“And what, amid your pampered upbringing,” Ryan said, his tone dropping and his gaze turning on Bobby Clark, “would you know of reality?”