It was a no-win situation and Tim just had to sit there and take it. Fitz felt his stomach sink. He couldn’t have explained what it was or exactly how it had come about or what it meant, but at that moment, more deeply than ever, he felt a bond with Tim, with Ken and Charlie and Fanchon and all the rest of the crowd he’d shared the experience with—Joanie, of course, even Maynard Ferguson—a bond that excluded everyone else in the room. They were wrong, he saw that clearly. They were misguided and shortsighted and protective of their own little fiefdoms no matter the cost in terms of academic freedom or the advancement of knowledge, and what was supposed to have been an equitable airing of concerns had turned into an all-out assault on the new, on Tim and Dick and by extension on himself too.

When Mortenson was finished, he sat heavily, slapping his notes down on the desk and pointing a shaking finger at Tim. “I’d be interested to know, Professor Leary, just what you have to say for yourself.”

All the while Tim had been sitting there looking unconcerned, as if all this was to be expected and there was no way he was going to play the penitent’s role for them or have his knuckles rapped or conform in any way to their expectations—these people, all of them, were squares, after all, the unenlightened, the uninitiated, and he, alone among them, was in possession of the truth. His smile was florid, his shoulders square, his tie perfectly knotted. He was about to respond when Dick rose beside him and in a voice so choked with outrage he could barely get the words out, blurted, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing here. Let me remind you, Professor Mortenson—and you too, Herb—that this is not an inquisition, that we are all colleagues and there is nothing more or less at stake here than the issue of academic freedom itself. We’re not answerable to you. We’re conducting research about which you, as can plainly be seen, have little or no knowledge, dynamic research that’s at the forefront of the field today, and we—I—very much resent the tone of these proceedings.” His glasses flashed under the glare of the overhead lights. “So much so that I think you owe us an apology—no, I demand an apology.”