The God Patent (11 page)

“I have to leave a notice for your Mr. McNear, just in case. I sure hate going into a place of business and dragging someone out…”

Dodge gestured surrender with his hands. “Wish I could help.”

The agent took a sheet of paper from the folder. Dodge leaned over, close enough to make the man uncomfortable. The page was a map of Petaluma with both Nutter House and FiberSpec marked.

“Going over to FiberSpec then?”

“I have to.”

The agent took a long drink and set the coffee mug down. As he lifted the map, Dodge put his thumb on it and said, “Best way to get over there is to take the Rainier connector. It’s not on the map, but it’ll save you fifteen minutes and is much easier to get to.”

Dodge took a pen from the man and drew a nonexistent street on the map. The Petaluma City Council had been discussing construction of another freeway off-ramp and connector between the west and east sides of town for a decade but never built one. In the process, Dodge got enough ink on the map that there was no way the OCSE agent could reconstruct reasonable directions. The diversion would add at least twenty minutes to what was otherwise a ten-minute drive.

The agent gave a halfhearted thank-you, and Dodge walked him to the door.

Dodge was on the phone within seconds of the door shutting. Ryan picked up on the third ring. Dodge said, “There’s a federal agent on his way to arrest you.”

Ryan said, “What are you talking about? Arrest? What for?”

“McNear, you fucking idiot. Don’t you know that crossing state lines to avoid paying child support is a felony?”

“I didn’t cross state lines to avoid paying child support. I crossed them so that it would be possible for me to pay child support.”

“Maybe so, but the eyes of justice are blind to that sort of nuance.”

“The police are coming here?”

“McNear, you need to leave right now.”

“I’m in the middle of a—”

“Leave right now. You won’t be going back anyway, so just go. Tell them something has come up. Tell them the feds are onto your ass and you need to leave.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because in fifteen, maybe ten minutes, you’ll be in handcuffs.”

As Ryan hung up the phone, Dodge heard him whine, “Oh fuck.”

Less than ten minutes later, Ryan walked in the door and threw his tired, patched-up briefcase against the stairwell.

“If I don’t work, I can’t pay my child support. Everything was coming back together. Why would they destroy me? How can I pay child support from jail? What do they expect me to do? Why on earth would…”

Dodge stopped listening. It all ran together anyway. He bent over and rubbed the tiny scratch from the briefcase collision out of the hardwood with a little piece of lapping paper that he kept in his pocket. As Ryan threw his temper tantrum, Dodge tried to give the appearance that he was listening. Staring at Ryan’s nose, he added together everything he knew. National Engineering Group, the conglomerate best known for supplying hardware to the world’s oil companies and refineries, was getting a larger and larger share of weapons research contracts since 9/11 and had met with Foster Reed. It was a nice card but not good enough to start the betting.

Finally, Ryan leaned against the wall and let loose a long sigh. With his tantrum complete, he was guided into the office by Dodge, who sat him down and said, “How many times have I told you that you have to work off the books?”

Faint lines etched up Ryan’s forehead, connecting the bridge of his nose to his widow’s peak. They added ten years. Perfect.

“McNear, understand this: I’m an attorney, an expert on these things. You know that IRS form, the W-4, you fill out before an honest employer can pay you?”

Ryan nodded.

“Next time you fill that out, you’re going to jail. It doesn’t matter whether you do it here or in Texas, you’re going to the big house.”

Ryan said, “What if I—”

“The slammer, the cooler, the hoosegow, the pokey, the pen—of course, you and your husband will call it home.”

“But if I got a job in Texas, at least—”

“Don’t drop the soap, Ryan. Your fine Irish ass is at stake.” Dodge waited for it to sink in and then tried not to laugh at
sink in
.

Ryan stared into the shadows under the desk. His fingers stopped tapping, and he let loose a long sigh, as though he were exhaling the last wisps of hope. Dodge tried not to smile, but it was impossible. Fortunately, Ryan didn’t seem to notice.

“This is how you’ll get your money,” Dodge said as earnestly as he could manage. “Your friend’s company, Creation Energy, is going to get some contracts for their technology, and, when they do, we will sue them and all your problems will disappear.” Dodge snapped his fingers. “Just like that—all you have to do is be patient and let me take care of it.”

“I’m not suing Foster Reed,” Ryan said.

“Of course you are. Otherwise you go to jail. Don’t you want to see your son? Besides, they’re your inventions. You have a right to that money.” Dodge still saw doubt in Ryan’s eyes. The solution was simple: stack the deck. It was time to con his science-zealot sister, Emmy, into coming up for a visit. She could beat any belief out of Ryan.

“You mean that I can’t get a job?”

“I mean you’re unemployable. But don’t worry about it. You can earn your money the old-fashioned way, through litigation.”

“What about my rent?”

“I’ll keep track of your debts.”

“What’s the point?” The line in his forehead looked more like a crease now.

“Listen, McNear, I’m going to have my sister visit. She’s a physics professor—a real physics professor, at a real university. She can help us understand what your chum is trying to do.” The best part of dabbling in the lives of others is setting them up and then watching them betray their desires. “She’s a beautiful girl. Course you probably wouldn’t be interested—she comes with a brain.” Ryan didn’t take the bait, though. He just sat there staring under the desk, a human-shaped pool of hopelessness.

F
reshly unemployed and basically unemployable, Ryan was spending his fifth straight day on Dodge’s couch when he heard someone walk up to the porch. Maybe it would be for the best. Maybe this federal deadbeat-dad office had a program to help guys like him get their shit together. Then he heard the muffled thump of Katarina tossing her skateboard under the bench.

Katarina walked in and tossed her backpack to the bottom of the stairs, took the TV remote from Ryan, switched it to MTV2, and sat down. Ryan stared out the window and pondered his next move. There weren’t many available. Waiting for a federal agent would be stupid. It would be much better to get busted trying to solve his problems than hiding. He laughed at himself—so this is how martyrs are made.

“What’s so funny?” Katarina asked.

He looked at the TV, a heavy-metal video that, for no discernible reason, was on MTV2’s heavy rotation. “How does a song this bad ever get on TV?”

“Trivium kicks ass,” she said, but she turned off the TV. “Doesn’t matter, though. I’m late for mentor torture.” She picked up her backpack again and headed for the door but stopped and looked back at Ryan. “Why do I have to go to a
mentor
? All she does is bitch at me about my clothes.”

Still staring out the window, Ryan said, “Being bitched at by adults is an important part of your childhood.”

“I’m not a
child
.”

“Sorry, I meant, adolescent-hood.”

“You should be my mentor.”

“What?” He looked at her. “I’m not qualified. I don’t like to bitch at people.”

“You already
are
my mentor.”

“What mentoring have I done?”

“You delivered the helmet and wrist guards.”

“You don’t wear them.”

She stepped away from the door and climbed back out from under her backpack. “You can do this, Ryan O’you-think-you-can-ahan. Mentoring is one part fake homework help; two parts complaining about my clothes, friends, the music I listen to, the amount of TV I watch; and one generous helping of philosophical criticism about my being ‘obsessed with death’—she even said I was spiritually empty. Deliver me, Ryan, deliver me from that bitch.”

“That bitch? Isn’t your mentor the lady who does yoga with homeless people?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Katarina, that woman would never criticize a child—”

“I’m not a child.”

“—the yoga lady is the most tolerant person on Earth, how could she possibly annoy you?”

“Hearing how wonderful the world is, how lucky we are to be alive, how she doesn’t want me to make the mistakes she made with drugs and sex—she’s beyond freakishly annoying.” Dragging her backpack into the living room, she flopped down hard on the couch. “I could actually benefit from some homework aid…”

“You need more than that.” His tone was flippant.

“Please?” She opened her backpack and pulled out a binder.

He’d known Katarina for a year but still didn’t know how her mind worked. She wasn’t any more or less “obsessed with death” than any other kid who’d watched her father die. Ryan considered it. He did have flexible hours, after all. “If I were your mentor, you’d have to agree to a few things. First, you have to wear your helmet; second, no late homework—”

“Never mind.” She started up the stairs. “And don’t try to be my fucking father—he’s dead.”

Ryan called after her, “Third, don’t say fuck.”

An upstairs door slammed her response, and as it did, Ryan realized the magnitude of this moment. Katarina had just peeled back her obnoxious-kid veneer, and as she laid herself bare, he’d maintained the same banter they used to discuss bad music videos. He groaned, mentally kicked himself, and then scrambled to recover.

Her backpack was still next to the couch, and a binder was sticking out. He grabbed it and flipped through: one half-completed math assignment after another. She was doing algebra in eighth grade, already starting analytic geometry—she must have aced the placement exam. A sheet of paper was folded into her math textbook, an old homework assignment that she obviously hadn’t turned in. The chapter’s exercises were all word problems, the hard part of algebra. She’d drawn little curlicues and dragons in the margins. He noticed that she had set up most of the problems but hadn’t bothered to finish them.

Except for one that was worked out in detail.

He found the problem in her textbook. It was marked with three red stars, extra difficult. And it was.

Since Ryan’s college degree was in applied math, he should have been able to figure out how she’d solved it, but he didn’t
recognize her notation, much less her technique. He glanced through the text; it used standard notation.

He took a blank sheet of paper and tried to solve it. It was hard, even when he used calculus. Without calculus, it looked impossible. He looked at the cover of the book—yep, algebra. He went back to Katarina’s solution and followed it step by step. Her solution was shorter than his—half a page to his two pages. Then he recognized it. She had set up the problem as a differential equation: an elegant linear nonhomogeneous differential equation with nonconstant coefficients. She used neither Newton’s nor Leibniz’s notation; she’d invented her own.

He stared at the ceiling, as though he could see through it to Katarina’s apartment. That kid had intuited calculus. Invented it for herself. It’s one thing to write down a DE, altogether another to solve it.

Brilliant
wasn’t a strong enough word.

Ryan grabbed her binder and the textbook and went upstairs. He knocked on her apartment door.

Katarina said, “What do you want?”

The sound came from behind him, down the hall a dozen steps. She was in Ryan’s apartment. He walked over and opened his door. She was sitting on the kitchen counter with Sean’s football in her lap.

Ryan held the book and binder out like a waiter with trays of food, turned on a big fake grin, and said, “I’m your guy. BS applied math, UMass.” He set the books on his desk and pulled the beach chair out like a maître d’ seating a debutante.

She slumped off the counter, said “Whatever,” and sat at the desk. She opened her binder and pointed at a pencil scrawl. “How can this one equation describe every one of those things?”

He looked over her shoulder. It was the expression for conic sections, not easy stuff but should be trivial for someone who
could invent calculus. He looked at Katarina from the corner of his eye as though expecting her to have transformed into some sort of math-breathing dragon. It was just Katarina being lazy, though. “You mean the bowl-ofs?”

“What?”

“You don’t know about bowl-ofs?” He knelt next to her and opened the textbook. “You know, hyper-bowl-ofs, para-bowl-ofs…”

Katarina elbowed him. “Ryan van Dweeben, they’re called parabolas and hyperbolas.”

Ryan elbowed her back. “No,
you’re
saying it wrong. They’re bowl-ofs.”

“Never mind, you don’t even know.”

He took a mechanical pencil from a tray and demonstrated the algebraic steps to convert the expressions for each shape into the common form. Then he asked, “Did you read the book?”

She curled her lip. “The math book?”