Page 14 of Apt to be Suspicious
Chapter 10
Thursday, January 22nd at Oxford
Pen found being back up at Oxford both delightful and frustrating. It varied depending on the minute, the hour, and the day. Possibly also the week, but she did not yet have a sufficiently large data set to be certain. But at least her uncertainty had a rhythm to it. She had the lectures she ought to attend. She had problem sets for tutorial to work on. And she had whatever else she wished to fill her time with.
Today, she’d attended a lecture before hall, and then come back along to the Academy after supper to look at books in the library. She was still trying to decide which she wished to borrow. Some had only a few pages relevant to her particular interests of the moment. Others, she probably wanted handy to look at some morning before dawn when she’d had an idea. If she had ideas. Such things couldn’t be forced. They could only be coaxed by a combination of attempting to do something else, going across the quad for a bath, or getting caught on the wrong end of Oxford from a notebook.
At the moment, she was contemplating her particular puzzle. It was one big tangle of a problem, like unsnarling necklace chains or yarn. And right now, she couldn’t see a way through it. Not enough metaphorical light, or from the wrong angle. She could, she supposed, think about writing a very polite letter to Professor Acharya and Professor Wain at Schola, and see what they recommended. People did. But it felt as if it were overstepping.
The lecture that afternoon had been given by the esteemed Professor Born. He’d been a refugee before the war, a theoretical physicist. He’d taught first at Cambridge, and now at Edinburgh. But this term, he was at Oxford for a series of seven weekly lectures. Tonight had begun with an introduction and the topics of chance and causality.
Future weeks promised a lecture on astronomy. Actually, perhaps she would write Professor Wain. The Waynflete lectures were open to the public if space allowed. Pen could at least offer to take detailed notes and pass them along. That made her feel rather better about writing and about asking if Professor Wain had suggestions.
Professor Born had begun by laying out how he intended to proceed. That was not, interestingly, principally with the maths. As he had pointed out, that was too technical a language for the audience. Instead, he had approached it as much as a philosopher, raising questions of free will and predestination almost from the first minutes. He’d even touched on the distinctions between astronomy and astrology. Specifically, proponents of astrology held that the movements of the stars had a causal impact on the world. But since it could not be measured or replicated, scientists ignored it.
That rather left out magic, at least as Albion used the term, and that was the part she was going to be thinking about for a long time. Oh, they’d touched on some of this in their courses on the Trivium and Quadrivium at Schola, and in some of the Time and Place work, her last two years. But no such class could cover all the details. Pen believed that magic, the magic she had in her hands and her breath and her body, worked by rules, much as the other things she did had rules. Throwing a ball or shaping magic to do a task had a response in the physical world, even if the means of activation were different.
Professor Born had gone on to define his terms. Those were all familiar to Pen, thanks to her training in rhetoric and logic. Schola had prepared her well on that front, something she was grateful for many more days than not. She had not truly appreciated the rigours of either field at the time, but as Aunt Agnes said, all thirteen or fourteen-year-olds were young savages. Proper understanding came later.
It was not just the content of his lecture that Pen had appreciated, though she’d scribbled down many notes in shorthand. It was also the way Professor Born had framed it. Anyone could convey knowledge or information. Rather fewer could speak compellingly, especially on a dense topic such as natural philosophy and mathematics. Pen had sat through many abominably given sermons in her day. At any rate, she looked forward to the future lectures, and to the conversation she expected to have with her tutor about it.
Just as she was packing up her things, there was a touch on her arm. Audrey grinned at her. “Walk back?” She kept her voice low. The Academy had good charms to muffle the sorts of casual sounds that could be a bother in the various non-magical libraries, but the librarians did not approve of disruptions. Pen nodded, and finished packing up her things, leaving the books she’d been looking at to be re-shelved.
Once they were outside, in the courtyard, Audrey slipped her arm through Pen’s. “You were gone both before and after hall. Oh, right, that lecture?”
“I’m glad I went. It was fascinating. Not too much maths, actually, he said he intends to talk more about the philosophy of it, with many explanations of the maths. You ought to come along.”
“Maybe. And after?” Audrey seemed about to say something else, when she paused, waving decorously at one man nearby. They’d come out onto the main street by then, but the man wasn’t anyone Pen knew.
“Audrey?” Pen waited until they’d got about half a block down. “Someone you know? Someone you want to know?”
“Want to know better. You really ought to come to the O.U.D.S. with me. So many interesting people.” Audrey had taken up rather whole-heartedly with the university dramatic society that autumn. Pen was not sure where she found the time. Pen was certain she couldn’t make that happen.
Oh, they seemed congenial enough as a group, but also entirely capable of taking up whatever space they spotted with their own desires. Besides, Pen did not much want to deal with that set of egos. Doing it about maths was one thing. Doing it about theatre was another. It would also involve arguments with Grandfather that she didn’t much want to have, though that was in fact a side consideration here.
“I’m glad you enjoy it, but thank you, no. I’ll come see the performance, though. Whatever it is.”
“Good. You ought.” They walked along for a bit more, past the Bod, until Audrey bumped her once. “Don’t you want to meet someone?”
Pen did not have a quick answer to that. She shrugged. “Not something I want to talk about on the street, honestly, Audrey.”
Audrey predictably took that as a challenge. “Come to mine, then. Or do you have more maths to do?”
“I can come chat for a few.” It was the right thing to say. The people were at least a third of the reason to come to Oxford. It was spoiling the experience to always have her nose down in her books or her maths or whatever she was focusing on. Besides, Audrey was right. Pen had found none of the societies particularly worth her time, and that meant finding other ways to be social.
Twenty minutes later, she’d dropped her satchel in her own rooms, changed out her shoes for slippers, and put on a different jumper. By the time she knocked on Audrey’s door, the fire was comfortably going, and there was a mug of mint tea waiting for her. Pen cupped her hands around it— her fingers were still chilled from the walk— and sat.
“So. Men.” Trust Audrey to get right to the point. “Are you interested in anyone? You could be.”
“I’m not.” Pen had to figure out how to talk about some of this, because actually, rather a lot of it had been complicated by Bletchley. Though maybe that gave her a general way to get at it. “During the war, I was working somewhere with mostly older men. Not necessarily old, but you know. Been at university and finished, up to actually old.”
“That is remarkably numerically imprecise for you, Pen. Go on.” Audrey leaned forward.
“So now, some of the men are— well, my age. Our age. Went into the war straight from school or what have you. And that’s all right, I suppose. But some of them, just coming up, our year or the year before, they’re awfully immature. I don’t think I have it in me to deal with that. I don’t know that I want a man with vast experience with other women, but I don’t see why I should have to do the housebreaking.”
The way Pen put it did at least get her friend to giggle. Audrey went on once she’d had a sip from her mug. “There are, in fact, plenty of men our age handy. Or a little older. Some of them are quite good looking and confident. Watts, for example.”
“That’s who you’ve had your eye on?” He was magical, Pen knew that, though she forgot at the moment what he was reading.
