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to finish the argument, all tightly reasoned mathematics—tipped his hand. He had anticipated this question and prepared, deliberately left a hole in his argument. Or so the guy in the back would think— was thinking, from the deepening frown Benjamin saw now on the distant, narrow face—and knew that he had stepped into a trap.
    Only it wasn’t so. Benjamin had not really intended it that way, had left the three viewgraphs out because they seemed a minor digression of little interest to the hard-nosed astrophysicists who made up most of the audience.
    “So we can see that this minimum level is quite enough to later on confine the jets, keep them pointing straight, solve the problem.” He added this last little boast and stepped back.
    The Brit face at the back curled up a lip, squinted eyes, but said nothing. A long moment passed as the colloquium chairman peered toward the back, rocking forward a little, and then saw that there would be no reply. Game, point, match , Benjamin thought, breathing in deeply of air that seemed cool and sharp.
    There were two more questions, minor stuff about possible implications, easy to get through. In fact, he let himself strut a little. He expanded on some work he contemplated doing in the near future, once he and Channing had the wedding business over with and he could think, plan the next step in his career. He felt that he could get away with a slight, permissible brag.
    Then it was over, the ritual incantation from the chairman, “There is wine and cheese in the usual place, to which you are all invited. Let us thank our speaker again…”
    This applause was scattered and listless, as usual as everybody got up, and the crowd left. His major professor appeared at his elbow and said, “You handled that very well.”
    “Uh, thanks. Who is that guy?” Benjamin glanced at the crowd, not letting any concern into his face.
    “Dart. Kingsley Dart.”
    “The similarity solutions guy from Oxford?”
    “Right. Just blew in yesterday afternoon, visiting for a few days. Thought you had met him.”
    “I was squirreled away making viewgraphs.”
    “You sure nailed Dart with those last three.”
    “I hadn’t really planned it that way—”
    An amused grin. “Oh, sure.”
    “I didn’t!”
    “Nobody gets timing like that without setting it up.”
    “Well, my Benjamin did,” Channing said, slipping an arm around his. “I know, because he had them in the very first version of the talk.”
    Benjamin smiled. “And you told me to drop them.”
    “It worked perfectly, didn’t it?” she said, all innocence.
    He laughed, liking the feeling of release it brought, liking that she had made him seem a lot more the savvy Machiavellian than he was, liking the whole damned thing so much it clutched at his heart somehow in the frozen moment of triumph. Off to the side two of the big names of the department were talking about the implications of his work and he liked the sound of that, too, his name wafting pleasantly in the nearly empty room. He could smell the aging, polished wood, the astringent solvent reek of the dry markers from the blackboard, a moist gathering in the cloying air of late afternoon. Channing kept her arm in his and walked proudly beside him up the two flights to the wine and cheese.
    “You were great .” She looked up at him seriously and he saw that she had feared for him in this last hour. Berkeley was notorious for cutting criticisms, arch comments, savageseminars that dissected years of research in minutes of coldly delivered condemnation.
    She had kept close to him through the aftermath, when white-haired savants of the field came up to him, holding plastic glasses of an indifferent red wine, and probed him on details, implications, even gossip. Treating him like a member of the club, a colleague at last. She had tugged at his arm and nodded when Dart came into view, earnestly talking to a grand old observing astronomer. Dart had a way of skating over a crowd,