Umberto’s Office - Brunnhold
The Forenoon of the 12th day of Yaris, 2719
The Forenoon of the 12th day of Yaris, 2719
A
t least they had given him an office. It appeared to have begun its life as a storage closet, but that did not signify. It was an office, and it was his. There was one high window that let in a diffuse, faintly greenish light from somewhere outside, though it was too high to make it clear what the view would have been. Probably the back side of one of the antique ivy plants that grew along the north western wall. If he stood on the desk, and then leaned across, placing a delectate foot upon the fourth shelf of the book case, and then chimneyed up the gap between the it and the wall . . . Ridiculous idea. It would get footprints on the shelves, and there was the risk of scuffing either the bookspines, scratching the varnish, or putting marks on his new shoes.
His new, professorial shoes. Too tight still, too square toed, and far too sensible. Still, it seemed to be best to keep his eccentricities, and the pointed Bastian ankle boots he preferred, out for sight, at least for the present. He had nothing like tenure, and if things went as they usually did, he never would. Did he even want tenure in this place? It would mean staying in and among the redstone lanes of Brunnhold. It would mean being just a bit too close for a bit too long to his father.
It was not that he disliked Professor Laurence Stapleton Bassington-Smythe, far from it; but he was still not used to living in close proximity to the man. During his first sojourn at Brunnhold they had tried to live together. It was a disaster. His father was too set in his ways. And, he had to admit, he was fast becoming so in his own. One of his fathers settled ways was having his beetle collections spilling over into every room of his house, periodically covering chairs, sofas, and occasional tables. There was nothing to sit down upon and rarely anywhere to eat. And then there were the moths. Beautiful things from all over, and if they had the decency to keep to the little glass butterfly house that had been made out of converted solarium, they would have been very pleasant fellow lodgers. Having a large and exceedingly dusty atlas moth perch upon his breakfast fruit was a bit much. And then there were his own habits. Irregular hours, days when he preferred not to arise from his reading couch (he only rarely slept in his actual bed), or weeks wherein he hardly slept at all, and then there had been the chalkboards. He’d filled his rooms with them, and they’d spilled out into the library. Covered in monic utterances, semantic parses, and attempts at the embedding mathematics that was so much the rage at Thul’Amat, the chalkboards had irritated his father, and in the battle between the chalkboards and moths, the moths had won.
At first he’d crammed his own office with the customary chalkboards, but that had made maneuvering about rather more of an exercise in contortion than he was prepared to make daly. So he had moved them to his house. His absurdly over-sized house. At least he’d found a use for the whole of the second floor. What else was he supposed to do with all that space? A small, well situated townhouse, that is what he’d asked his estate agent to find. Instead, she’d found a three-story affair fit for a family. For one man alone, it was like rattling around in a damned palace. “Where will you house your servants?” the agent agent has asked. Servants? What servants? He did not have servants. He’d never been able to keep them. He thought he’d found a decent vallet once, but the man kept stealing his socks. The replacement was worse. A meddlesome busybody who thought himself capable of sorting out any little affair through labyrinthine schemes. The man had not lasted a week.
So, now the house was full of his chalkboards. They were like a gas and had expanded to fill all available space. Equations and incantations, complex diagrams and dimensional reductions. The second floor of his house was a much more congenial space in which to work. And it was his preferred haunt. And yet, there was something magnetic about having a real office in the university itself. And today he had to be here. Some administrative meddler in the mode too reminiscent of the former valet, had insisted that he take on some middling student as an advisee. His only proper advisee to date. What was the student’s name? Sutherland something or other. He really was terrible with names.
He checked the clock on the wall. This Sutherland irritation was not due for another twenty minutes. That was time enough to try and work out the view from his window. Surely.
His new, professorial shoes. Too tight still, too square toed, and far too sensible. Still, it seemed to be best to keep his eccentricities, and the pointed Bastian ankle boots he preferred, out for sight, at least for the present. He had nothing like tenure, and if things went as they usually did, he never would. Did he even want tenure in this place? It would mean staying in and among the redstone lanes of Brunnhold. It would mean being just a bit too close for a bit too long to his father.
It was not that he disliked Professor Laurence Stapleton Bassington-Smythe, far from it; but he was still not used to living in close proximity to the man. During his first sojourn at Brunnhold they had tried to live together. It was a disaster. His father was too set in his ways. And, he had to admit, he was fast becoming so in his own. One of his fathers settled ways was having his beetle collections spilling over into every room of his house, periodically covering chairs, sofas, and occasional tables. There was nothing to sit down upon and rarely anywhere to eat. And then there were the moths. Beautiful things from all over, and if they had the decency to keep to the little glass butterfly house that had been made out of converted solarium, they would have been very pleasant fellow lodgers. Having a large and exceedingly dusty atlas moth perch upon his breakfast fruit was a bit much. And then there were his own habits. Irregular hours, days when he preferred not to arise from his reading couch (he only rarely slept in his actual bed), or weeks wherein he hardly slept at all, and then there had been the chalkboards. He’d filled his rooms with them, and they’d spilled out into the library. Covered in monic utterances, semantic parses, and attempts at the embedding mathematics that was so much the rage at Thul’Amat, the chalkboards had irritated his father, and in the battle between the chalkboards and moths, the moths had won.
At first he’d crammed his own office with the customary chalkboards, but that had made maneuvering about rather more of an exercise in contortion than he was prepared to make daly. So he had moved them to his house. His absurdly over-sized house. At least he’d found a use for the whole of the second floor. What else was he supposed to do with all that space? A small, well situated townhouse, that is what he’d asked his estate agent to find. Instead, she’d found a three-story affair fit for a family. For one man alone, it was like rattling around in a damned palace. “Where will you house your servants?” the agent agent has asked. Servants? What servants? He did not have servants. He’d never been able to keep them. He thought he’d found a decent vallet once, but the man kept stealing his socks. The replacement was worse. A meddlesome busybody who thought himself capable of sorting out any little affair through labyrinthine schemes. The man had not lasted a week.
So, now the house was full of his chalkboards. They were like a gas and had expanded to fill all available space. Equations and incantations, complex diagrams and dimensional reductions. The second floor of his house was a much more congenial space in which to work. And it was his preferred haunt. And yet, there was something magnetic about having a real office in the university itself. And today he had to be here. Some administrative meddler in the mode too reminiscent of the former valet, had insisted that he take on some middling student as an advisee. His only proper advisee to date. What was the student’s name? Sutherland something or other. He really was terrible with names.
He checked the clock on the wall. This Sutherland irritation was not due for another twenty minutes. That was time enough to try and work out the view from his window. Surely.
