I wasn’t in a charitable mood; the three hours’ sleep I’d had after Lydia’s call had been about as refreshing as a blow to the head. I went through the motions, feigning fascination, and trying halfheartedly to steer the interview in a direction which might produce some material I could actually use.

“What kind of place in history do you think the discoverer of the TOE will attain? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate form of scientific immortality?”

Buzzo became self-deprecating. “There’s no such thing as immortality, for a scientist. Not even for the greatest. Newton and Einstein are still famous today – but for how long? Shakespeare will probably outlast them both … and maybe even Hitler will, too.”

I didn’t have the heart to break the news to him that none of these were exactly household names anymore.

I said, “Newton’s and Einstein’s theories have been swallowed whole, though. Absorbed into larger schemes. I know, you’ve already carved your name on one TOE which turned out to be provisional – but all of the SUFT’s architects said at the time that it was just a stepping stone. Don’t you think the next TOE will be the real thing: the final theory which lasts forever?”

Buzzo had given the question a lot more thought than I had. He said, “It might . It certainly might. I can imagine a universe in which we can probe no further, in which deeper explanations are literally, physically, impossible. But…”

“Your own TOE describes such a universe, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. But it could be right about everything else, and wrong about that. The same is true of Mosala’s and Nishide’s.”

I said sourly, “So when will we know, one way or the other? When will we be sure that we’ve struck bottom?”

“Well … if I’m right, then you’ll never be sure that I’m right. My TOE doesn’t allow itself to be proved final and complete – even if it is final and complete.” Buzzo grinned, delighted at the prospect of such a perverse legacy. “The only kind of TOE which could leave any less room for doubt would be one which required its own finality – which made that fact absolutely central.

“Newton was swallowed up and digested, Einstein was swallowed up and digested … and the old SUFT will go the same way, in a matter of days. They were all closed systems, they were all vulnerable. The only TOE which could be guaranteed immune to the process would be one which actively defended itself – which turned its gaze outward to describe, not just the universe, but also every conceivable alternative theory which could somehow supersede it – and then rendered them all demonstrably false, in a single blow.”

He shook his head gleefully. “But there’s nothing like that on offer, here. If you want absolute certainty, you’ve come to the wrong side of town.”

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