IN APRIL, YOSHIKO FINISHED her treatment and was released from the hospital. I got the medical waiver for her and shortly afterward received my master’s, snapping my own graduation picture with a tripod. I only wished I could see my family’s reaction when Yoshiko showed them the picture.
I took Beck’s advice: I would work as a School of Mines professor during the year and study at Michigan over the summers. My income was enough to satisfy immigration requirements for extending my visa, and the extra years under Beck’s Socratic tutelage would help me with my coursework at Michigan. If I studied at the rate of a certain Chinese Student Association president, it would take me twenty years to prepare for the qualifying exam, but my colleague who studied at Michigan, Tom Reynolds, believed I could do it in three.
“We’ll take the exam then, at the same time. We’ll be in the same position. I’ve already gone for two summers. I can’t do it any longer—I’ll be up to my ears in loans.”
After graduation I gave him a lift to Michigan so we could split the drive and the motel bills, and we moved into a two-room apartment near North Campus. I had a desk and a refrigerator. That was all that mattered.
I found Wen-chong in the laboratory, working the ionosonde. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms. “Ah, it’s you! Got your master’s, I heard!”
I would be working on a project with him during the summers while I was taking courses. I planned to improve their rocket’s telemetry design and somehow develop that into my doctoral thesis once I’d passed the qualifying exam.
As I spoke, the hallway door opened, and Li-wen’s friend the Professor walked in carrying a clipboard. He smiled widely on seeing me and waved.
I stopped talking midsentence.
Wen-chong turned around. “Ah, you know Sun-kwei?”
“I do,” I said.
“He’s a good number cruncher,” Wen-chong said.
I FOLLOWED WEN-CHONG down the hall to his office. His shoes made sharp clicking sounds on the linoleum, while mine, worn out from walking through mud puddles and clambering over rocks and snowy fields, were silent. “His best friend is a Nationalist agent,” I whispered to him.
“Really?” he said, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t believe it. He’s harmless as a mouse.”
“Perhaps he is,” I said. “But he makes me nervous.”
“Well then, be careful what you say. By the way,” he said, “we have a launch in December. Can you make it?”
“I’m a professor now,” I said. “I can arrange my own schedule.”