The Year of Rice and Salt

One day a group of the archaeologists who had used Idelba's work on dating joined Budur, and they crossed the campus of the madressa to attend a memorial session for Idelba put on by the physicists who had known her. This session was to consist of a number of eulogies, a presentation on the various aspects of her work, some presentations of recent work that referred back to hers, and then a short party or wake in celebration of ber life.

Budur wandered the rooms of this memorial session accepting praise for her aunt, and condolences on ber passing. The men in the room (for they were mostly men) were very solicitous of her and, for the most par', quite cheerful. Even the memory of Idelba brought smiles to their faces. Budur was filled with amazement and pride by this outpouring of affection, though often it made her ache as well; they had lost a valued colleague, but she had lost the only family that mattered to her, and could not always keep her focus on her aunt's work alone.

At one point she was asked to speak to the assemblage and so she struggled to pull herself together as she went up to the lectern, thinking as she walked of her blind soldiers, who existed in her mind as a kind of bulwark or anchor, a benchmark of what was truly sad. In contrast to that this was indeed a celebration, and she smiled to see all these people congregated to honour her aunt. It only remained to work out what to say, and as she went up the stairs it occurred to her that she needed only to try to imagine what Idelba herself would say, and then paraphrase that. That was reincarnation in a sense she could believe in.

So she looked down at the crowd of physicists, feeling calm and anchored inside, and thanked them for coming, and added, 'You all know how concerned Idelba was for the work that you are doing in atomic physics at this time. That it should be used for the good of humanity and not for anything else. I think the best memorial you could make to her would be some kind of organization of scientists devoted to the proper dissemination and use of your knowledge. Perhaps we can talk about that later. It would be very appropriate if such an organization came to be as a result of thinking about her wishes, because of a belief that she held, as you know, that scientists, among all people, could be counted on to do what was right, because it would be the scientific thing to do.'

She felt a stilling in the audience. The looks on their faces were all of a sudden very much like those on the faces of her blind soldiers: pain, longing, desperate hope; regret and resolve. Many of the people in this room had no doubt been involved in the war effort of their respective countries – at the end, too, when the race in military technologies had speeded up, and things had become particularly ferocious and dire. The inventors of the gas shells that had blinded her soldiers could very well be in this room.

'Now,' Budur continued cautiously, 'obviously this has not always been the case, so far. Scientists have not always done the right thing.

But Idelba's vision of science had it as being progressively improvable, just as a matter of making it more scientific. That aspect is one of the ways you define science, as against many other human activities or institutions. So to me this makes it a kind of prayer, or worship of the world. It is a devotional labour. This aspect should be kept in mind, whenever we remember Idelba, and whenever we consider the uses of our work. Thank you.'

After that more people than ever came up to her to speak their thanks and appreciation, displaced though it was from its absent object. And then, as the memorial hour wound down, some of them moved on to a meal in a nearby restaurant, and when it was over, an even smaller group of them lingered afterwards over coffee and baklava. It was as if they were in one of the rain lashed cafes of Nsara.