32. Welcome to Serendipity - Lords of Serendipity

PART FOUR

Standing behind a group of Sri Lankan and Chinese men gathered at a common sink brushing their teeth with their fingers and fixing their hair with spit and plastic combs, Jack washed his face. He’d just arrived in Sri Lanka. It was the middle of the night. The airport bathroom smelled like camphor and cheap cologne. He felt tired and crumpled. During the last leg of the flight, from Dubai, he’d been wedged between a large older woman who’d brought her own food and watched a Bollywood movie on a tablet without headphones, and an even larger Russian man who tore open his duty-free bag and drank cinnamon schnapps straight from the bottle. Both offered to share with Jack, who declined and tried, and failed, to sleep. And so, when he finally arrived in Colombo, he wanted to splash cold water on his face to wake up before he met the university’s representative. With a wet face he felt at least more raw than groggy, but he still thought he was delirious when he heard his name on the PA system.

This is a message for Professor Jack Bayern, repeat, Professor Jack Bayern. Sir, kindly, you are asked to identify yourself to an airport official at your earliest convenience. Professor Jack Bayern. Professor Jack Bayern, repeat, kindly is asked to identify himself to an airport official.

Excuse me, sir, please. Is that you? Are you the professor?

Jack turned and looked down at a thin young man in a bathroom attendant’s uniform.

Yes, that’s me, he said. I’m being paged?

Please, sir, follow me. I would be honored.

They walked out of the bathroom and through the arrivals and departures hall, which was full of very tanned white people sleeping across hard plastic seats, their carry-ons and shopping bags stuffed beneath them. The bathroom attendant walked erectly, with a swagger, just in front of Jack. Devi’s father would have approved. The young man turned around frequently to make sure Jack was still following and fended off other airport workers who approached to take over the escort.

Eventually they reached an information desk. A security guard chased off the bathroom attendant with curses and the threat of his baton. The young man lingered near a tea shop, squeezing around his crotch and trying to catch Jack’s eye. The woman behind the desk, who was wearing a gray beret over long black hair and a matching gray military blazer and skirt, asked Jack to please wait a moment. She made a call and a few minutes later a tall blond man rushed up. He was wearing a tight blue suit and a white shirt unbuttoned to the top of his hairy golden chest. He had a beardless, boyish face and blue eyes, and was all smiles and frowns, like sunshine and shadow.

Mate, I’ve been tearing this place apart! I didn’t see you come off the plane with the others. I was about to create an international incident, I was so worried. How did I miss you? I was standing right at the business-class exit.

I didn’t come off the plane with the business-class passengers.

Why not?

I flew economy.

The man put a hand to his mouth, horrified.

Heads will roll for this, I promise you. I have no idea how that happened, Professor Bayern, but trust me, as long as we’re working together, never again. Shall we get you out of here?

I take it you’ve been sent by the university? And you can call me Jack.

Damn. Right. Typical Australian me, already on the honeymoon and we haven’t even had our first date. Yes. Properly, my name is Quinn. I’m here on behalf of the office of the vice chancellor of Serendipity University to welcome you to Sri Lanka as you take up your appointment in our new data science research institute. Follow me!

Serendipity University? My letter of appointment is to the National University of Sri Lanka at Kurunegala.

Right. That’s the official name, but we’re in the midst of changing it. Helps with recruitment and marketing. It’s also kind of a nice throwback, you know what I mean?

No, said Jack.

The Australian clapped.

This is why I love you STEM types. You’re even blunter than us Australians. But listen, you’re exhausted. You flew bloody economy from America to Sri Lanka, which gets you martyr points certainly, and probably Covid, but let’s get out of this chaos and over to your hotel. After a hot shower, a good meal, a nice drink, all the sleep you need, maybe a swim, a massage, all that stuff, we’ll get into it. All right?

Jack looked around. The bathroom attendant was still watching from a distance, hoping for an American-dollar thank-you. He waved with his free hand. Otherwise the place was a moving mess of arriving and departing people. No one appeared to know where they were going. Jack suddenly wanted to get back on an airplane and go home. What was he doing in Sri Lanka? But he was tired, and a hot shower sounded better than getting back on a plane.

He was guided out of the airport by the tall Australian. Breathing through his mouth in the sudden, thick, warping nighttime heat, Jack followed him across laneways of idling scooters, buses, vans, cars, and people carrying luggage and crying babies and drivers honking and traffic police yelling and motioning in all directions. They reached a quieter area where Jack was helped into a black Range Rover by a suited driver. Inside, waiting for him, was a warm towel that smelled of eucalyptus. He buried his face in it. The driver reached back and took it from him and offered him water and fresh juice and a charging cord for his phone. On the seat between him and the Australian were folded copies of China Daily.

Katrina called and woke him the next morning. He was in a hotel suite overlooking Colombo. Construction cranes were turning in the harbor, traffic was inching along swirl-shaped roads, and people were walking everywhere, bare-chested workmen in ragged pants with T-shirt turbans, police wearing white belts cinched over heavy linen uniforms, office workers in collared white shirts over dark pants and skirts and black shoes, old men and women in faded brown suits and green saris, carrying canes and wearing blue surgical masks, crocodiles of schoolchildren in navy and burgundy. The city looked peaceful from high above and behind smoked glass. Enjoying the reversal for a moment, Katrina lectured her father for failing to let her know he’d arrived safely. She told him to send lots of pictures and got off the phone quickly because she was packing to go back to Haven for her junior year. Martin also messaged, asking for a Zoom from the new lab when he was set up and ready to go.

Jack shaved and showered and met his Australian host for lunch in a dark-walled private dining room, where they were served steak and prawns and tall, beaded glasses of cold beer followed by glasses of red wine. Quinn asked if Jack wanted to stay a second night at the hotel before going on to the university. It was Saturday afternoon, and Jack’s first meetings on campus were scheduled for Monday.

He was tempted. He’d never stayed in such a fine hotel, and this one was close to the airport, in case he still wanted to leave.

He’d been so excited in the lead-up to the trip, after Martin had formally asked him to analyze the data sets that an international research consortium’s new telescope in a desert in northern Chile had started producing and so become the associate director of the data science lab he was starting in Sri Lanka. The international research group was searching the skies for evidence of colliding stars and the birth of black holes. The only condition of his joining Martin’s team was that Jack spend the year in Sri Lanka, where he would help open a data science institute at a local university where this analysis would take place. Arcadia extended his leave by a second year almost automatically, at full salary. Jack’s entire salary from the Sri Lankan university would go toward covering the cost of Katrina’s final two years at Haven. He was fairly confident that Katrina’s university experiences, so far, wouldn’t encourage her to take a fifth year. But even if they did, he could take care of it, as long as he did this work in Sri Lanka for the year.

But could he actually do it? Beyond what had amounted, in retrospect, to training work with the material Martin had been sending him since their springtime lunch in Italy, could he work with Martin’s data sets at the level Martin expected, and also lead the opening of a research center at a university in a very different part of the world? If she were alive, Elizabeth would say yes, of course he could, he always could but was only now getting the chance, and he should take it. Jack agreed with all of this, in theory, but now that he was just about to start, he wasn’t exactly scared that he would fail, but he didn’t know that he would succeed, either. A younger man, a different man than Jack, would have found this exhilarating. He did not.

Rupee for your thoughts? said Quinn.

Sorry?

Even I don’t mind a quiet lunch now and then, and you’re still jet-lagged, I’m sure. Just curious about what’s on your mind. I bet I can guess.

Can you?

Mate, you’re sitting there, eating a steak in a luxury hotel far from home and wondering, is this what I got a PhD for?

Not exactly, but yes, I am admittedly wondering what I’m doing here. Did you have the same experience?

Not at all. Mate, eating a steak in a luxury hotel is exactly why I got a PhD!

Quinn’s PhD was in higher education consulting. He had worked for a series of educational companies that promoted Australian universities to students from Asian countries. He eventually found his way to Sri Lanka, where he opened several successful branch campuses in a Colombo office park. He must have been good at it, because he’d very quickly been approached by a colleague who worked for the Chinese government’s secretariat for global higher education, and now he was working on the reinvention of Serendipity.

Because, as you probably know, Quinn explained to Jack, Serendib was the original name of Sri Lanka itself, when European and Chinese explorers first found it and were so unexpectedly happy and amazed by their discovery. See the idea with the Chinese taking it over now?

What does that mean, exactly? Taking it over?

Quinn nodded, sympathetically, and leaned across the table.

Listen, you and me? We’re just academics, right? What do we know about the real world? But my sense is this. Sri Lanka had that whole awful civil war, and then the tsunami, and now all these economic problems. A few years ago, while the West banged on about human rights violations, such hypocrites, by the way, including, I add, my own country—Timor-Leste, hello?—China stepped in, in a big way, to help here. New roads, new airports and cricket stadiums, all really great stuff and really needed, too. I mean, they’re basically building a brand-new harbor next to the old one, right here in Colombo. You can see their cranes from your window. The bright red ones. Now they want to help make one of Sri Lanka’s universities the envy of Asia. And you’re part of this amazing project!

I’m not sure it’s that benign, said Jack.

Quinn shrugged and finished his glass of wine. He pressed a button, and the server appeared immediately and refilled his glass. Jack put a hand over his own glass, declining more. Quinn shrugged again.

Well, between us, and obviously I don’t have a direct line to the Zhongnanhai, but do you want my personal take?

I do.

Forgive my language, but your government’s been so bitchy about China’s scientific research—and by the way, all through the Cold War, American scientists and mathematicians worked closely with their Soviet counterparts, because they cared more about research than politics—that American academics aren’t allowed to collaborate with people at top Chinese universities. And the leadership sees this as a real problem, for the entire world, frankly. Take someone like your colleague Martin, a major, major name in astronomy. He can’t work with the top people at Tsinghua and Peking without getting in shit with your government, which obviously would also get him in shit with his home institution. But now, say there’s a university in a place like Sri Lanka that could be set up to let him do his work here with a lot less red tape and no government pressure. And from what I know about work in astronomy, it’s not just about him, but about dozens and dozens of researchers at universities around the world who collaborate on projects. And Martin’s some kind of super-fast key to unlocking the secrets of the universe for the rest of them, I understand. So all of that would be at risk, for all of those people, except that the Chinese have stepped in to help. And the help they’re giving, because it’s happening here in Sri Lanka, also means local students get a chance to work with a world leader in the field, which is so, so great for them. And if this works, the university’s ranking goes up, and suddenly you’ll have students and professors from around the world wanting to come to Serendipity. I mean, do I really need to keep explaining why this is so great, Jack? This is a win-win, for everyone, mate, including you. But look, you’re not the first person to show up at one of China’s amazingly generous research institutes and then reconsider. Trust me. If you want to leave now, you’re welcome to do so. I mean, if you did, you’d probably never work in the field again.

I’m a professor of statistics. Analyzing astronomical data is a new area for me.

Great! So then you’re fine walking away, just like that?

I’m just reconsidering this whole idea, as exciting as it seemed before I got here.

You’ve been taken in a luxury car to a luxury hotel for a luxury meal, but now—just before you’re about to be taken by that same car to your fancy lodgings on a campus that’s being rebuilt to the top standards in the world, where you’re going to be a leading figure in cutting-edge research alongside a major international scholar, and where you’ll probably change the lives of a lot of real people on this island who don’t have a lot to look forward to these days, and get paid pretty well for it—now you’re reconsidering? Really?

I don’t have the kind of profile that would justify my being involved in all of this.

But you already are! And remember, it was Martin who chose you, and my Chinese counterparts agreed. Also, I should probably say, if you try to back out of the contract now, God help you, because no one else will when the Chinese come after you with New York lawyers. But they won’t, mate, if you just stick around. They’ll just shower you with money and gifts for whatever you do, as long as you do it in ways that advance the overall goals.

But whose overall goals?

Trust me. I trusted the Chinese, and it’s working brilliantly. As you can tell. Can I offer you another glass of this excellent, excellent wine?

Jack spent another day at the hotel before he and Quinn were driven to campus on a smooth and empty highway that cut through fields of deep green and passed over rushing brown rivers and curved around treed mountains, some with shock-white temples and massive Buddhas carved into them. Shanty houses and market stalls had been set up in the shade beneath every new highway overpass, with rope lines running between pillars, where people sold rugs and hung laundry. Jack couldn’t see much more than that, because of all the billboards advertising English-medium schools, overseas universities, immigration consultants, and skin-whitening creams. He fell asleep and woke up when the car slowed down.

Welcome to campus, Professor, said Quinn.

They drove down a sloping, curving main road that bisected dozens of university buildings, all of which had peaked roofs covered in orange barrel tiles. The buildings were lime white, pink, yellow, and baby blue. They were connected to each other by bricked walkways flanked in flowering bushes. There were fountains in front of residence halls. In the distance, rolling greens and sports fields were framed in by dark mountains. Students read and checked their phones on benches and blankets beneath massive, ancient-looking trees.

It’s so beautiful, said Jack.

Is it? said Quinn. Look closer, mate. This is the old university. Driver, slow down.

The students were drawn and glum, their clothes worn or shiny. Only the saffron robes worn by a few young Buddhist monks looked bright and new. Most of the buildings were missing tiles. Peeling-paint walls were stained brown and black by water damage and mold. Walkways were cracked and overgrown with weeds. The fountains weren’t working. Garbage blew into the bushes and around the scrubby fields. Stray dogs slept under cars and poked at overflowing trash barrels outside the residence halls. Laundry, men’s underwear and undershirts, was strung up everywhere. Close up, only the old trees still looked grand and beautiful.

Passing all of this, they reached an array of flat and shiny buildings.

Welcome to the new university. Welcome to Serendipity, said Quinn.

Jack’s phone buzzed. It was a message from Helen, asking him to check his email.