Tess and Harry on the Dock
“Did you finish your mystery book?” asked Harry, nodding at the Agatha Christie paperback on the dock.
“I did,” said Tess. “Do you want to know who did it?”
“Don’t spoil the surprise for me.”
“Are you going to read it?”
“Probably not.”
“You don’t like mysteries, do you?”
“On the contrary, I have dedicated my life to mysteries.”
“But I never seen you read anything but science books.”
“Exactly, and what is science?”
“Explaining how the universe works?”
“Solving mysteries! Why do certain bright objects in the sky move in certain ways? Copernicus and Kepler and Newton solved that mystery. How are mass and energy related? Einstein solved that mystery. How can we send a man safely to the moon? It took a lot of people to solve that mystery.”
“That’s not the same as who killed Roger Ackroyd,” said Tess.
“No, it’s better, because planets and orbits and gravity and relativity and the moon are real. Roger Ackroyd is made up. When you solve the mysteries of science, you can make the world a better place. When you find out who murdered Roger Ackroyd, you just have to start another book.”
“But science doesn’t always make the world a better place, does it? You said because of Einstein they made a big bomb that killed a lot of people.”
“Science is not to blame because people misuse it. You need to understand, Tess, that almost any scientific discovery can be used to do good things or to do bad things. And sometimes, especially in the beginning, it can be hard to tell which is which. People still argue about whether the atomic bomb was a good thing or a bad thing. And that can be the biggest mystery in life—what’s good and what’s bad.
But you have to try to solve that mystery, Tess.
You have to try, no matter what you’re using—whether it’s a baseball bat or a bicycle or the theory of relativity or a hydrogen atom—you have to try to use it for good. ”