A woman near the front of the public crowd heard him. She had been watching the competition with her husband and two teenage sons, both interested in engineering. "Why not let him explain?" she asked Victor. "He's not asking to run into the engine room with a hammer."
Her husband nodded uncertainly. A few other spectators turned, and someone farther back lifted a phone. Victor held out a hand to keep the lane clear, caught between the instructions in his earpiece and the increasingly public nature of the conversation.
Thornton came down from the platform himself. His shoes clicked against the temporary decking, and the sponsor badge on his blazer flashed in the sunlight. He took one look at Russell and made no effort to hide his distaste. "You clearly didn't understand the first answer," he said. "This is a professional competition. We are dealing with sophisticated propulsion equipment, not the outboard motor on somebody's fishing skiff."
"I've worked on diesels bigger than skiff motors," Russell answered. "My grandfather repaired marine machinery in the Navy. He taught me to verify what the sensors say against what the machine is doing."
"Your grandfather," Thornton repeated, giving the phrase the shape of a joke. "Wonderful. Perhaps he can write us a letter of recommendation."
The laughter that followed was scattered and uneasy. Russell felt heat climb his neck, though he kept his hands loose at his sides. The insult hurt less because it was new than because it sounded like so many things he had heard before: that his neighborhood settled what he could know, that his job settled what he could aspire to, that the effort of learning counted for nothing unless the right institution had stamped it.
"Five minutes," he said. "Please."
"You're wasting mine." Thornton took the microphone from a stage assistant and turned toward the crowd. "Ladies and gentlemen, apparently our new contestant is the young man who delivered today's seafood. He assures us he's going to solve a sophisticated engineering problem by listening to it through a parking lot fence. Shall we give the world a demonstration of imagination?"
The crowd's reaction was not the roar he expected. A few laughed. Others murmured in embarrassment, and several people raised their phones not to celebrate Thornton's joke but to preserve what was happening. Professor Webb leaned back in his chair with a look of unmistakable displeasure. At the end of the public barrier, Daniel Mercer from MIT quietly set down his diagnostic tablet.
"I asked for a chance to check a fault," Russell said. His voice was small through the microphones, but he refused to look at the decking. "I didn't ask you to make me a show."
Thornton gestured to security. "Remove him. We have actual competitors waiting."
Victor reached for Russell's arm, then stopped when Russell stepped backward on his own. A second guard approached from the other side, and for a moment they formed a wall around a young man who had not threatened anyone. Russell raised his empty hands. "I can leave," he said. "You don't have to grab me."