Zig Zag (11 page)

Blanes
himself was the only one who kept quiet on the subject. His strange
silence lasted almost ten years, during which he ran the lab that his
friend and mentor Albert Grossmann (now retired) had left in his
charge. Due to its great mathematical beauty and fantastic
possibilities, the sequoia theory still interested scientists, but no
one could prove it. So it slid into the "let's see"
category that science so often uses to place ideas in history's
freezer. Blanes refused to speak in public about it, and many people
assumed he was embarrassed by his errors. Then, in late 2004, his
course was advertised—the first one in the world he'd ever give
about his "sequoia." He had chosen Spain, of all places, to
teach it: Madrid, to be exact. As a private institution, Alighieri
would cover all the costs and was willing to accept the scientist's
rather odd demands: that the course be taught in July 2005, in
Spanish, and that twenty places be awarded strictly on the basis of
scores on a rigorous international exam on string theory,
noncommutative geometry, and topology. In theory, they'd only accept
graduate students, though graduating seniors would be allowed to take
the exam if they had a letter of recommendation from their
theoretical physics professors. That was how people like Elisa had
been able to give it a shot.

Why
had Blanes waited so long to give his very first classes about
sequoia theory? And why now? Elisa had no idea, but she didn't really
care, either. What mattered to her was that she was there. She felt
lucky to be in that unique position, in the kind of class she'd only
dreamed about.

By
the time that first session was over, however, she'd changed her mind
considerably.

SHE
was
one of the first to leave. Without even stopping to stuff her notes
into her backpack, she slammed her books and notebook shut and sped
out of the room.

As
she was walking down the steep road toward the bus stop, she heard a
voice.

"Hey
... Excuse me ... Can I give you a ride somewhere?"

She
was so pissed off she hadn't even realized there was a car beside
her. Victor "Lennon" Lopera was poking his head out from
within it, like an awkward turtle.

"Thanks
anyway, but I've got a long ways to go," Elisa said
disinterestedly.

"Where
to?"

"Claudio
Coello."

"Well...
I could take you if you want. I... I'm going back to Madrid, anyway."

She
didn't feel like talking to him, but she thought he might distract
her.

She
climbed into his messy car, which smelled like mildewed upholstery
and was littered with loose papers and books. Lopera drove the way he
spoke, slowly and cautiously. But he seemed pleased to have Elisa as
a passenger and gradually began to warm up. As with all great
introverts, his chatter would at one point suddenly get out of
control.

"What
did you think of what he said right at the start, about reality?
'Equations are reality' ... Well, if he says so ... I don't know, I
thought it was pretty reductive, a real positivist
oversimplification... I mean, that right there is rejecting the
possibility of revealed truths and intuitive truths, the foundations
of religious belief and common sense, for example ... And that's not
right... I mean, I suppose he says it because he's an atheist... But
in all honesty, I don't think religious faith has to be incompatible
with scientific proof... It's just on another level, like Einstein
said. You can't just..." He stopped at an intersection and
paused, waiting for the road to clear before he drove or spoke again.
"You can't just convert metaphysical experiences into chemical
reactions. That would be absurd ... Heisenberg said..."

Elisa
tuned him out and stared at the road, grunting from time to time. But
then later, he murmured, "I noticed it, too, you know. How he
treated you, I mean."

She
felt her cheeks burn, and thinking about it made her want to cry all
over again.

Blanes
had asked a few questions in class, but he called on someone sitting
two seats to her right to answer them every time. Someone who raised
his hand as soon as she did.

Ric
Valente Sharpe.

Then,
at one point, something happened. Blanes asked a question and she was
the only one to raise her hand. Yet instead of calling on her, he
prodded the rest of the class to answer. "Come on, what's wrong?
Afraid they'll take away your degrees if you're wrong?" A few
tense seconds went by, and then Blanes pointed to the same seat once
more. And Elisa heard that smooth, soft voice, the almost amused
tone, the slight foreign accent. "There's no geometry that's
valid on that scale because of the quantum foam phenomenon."

"Very
good, Mr. Sharpe."

Five
years in a row at the top of her class had turned Elisa into a
fiercely competitive woman. There was no way to be number one in the
world of science if you didn't possess a predator's instincts, the
desire to pick off you rivals, one by one. And that made Blanes's
bizarre disdain for her totally insufferable. She didn't want to
expose her injured pride, but she couldn't hold it in anymore.

"It
was like he couldn't even
see
me,"
she muttered, holding back her tears.

"Well,
the way I see it, he couldn't
stop
seeing
you," Lopera replied.

She
looked at him.

"I
mean, it seems like ... I think he saw you and thought, you can't
have a girl who looks so ... well... you can't be both ... Well, I
mean, no matter how you look at it, it's sexist. Maybe he doesn't
realize you're the one who came in first on the exam. He doesn't know
your name. He thinks Elisa Robledo is ... well, that she couldn't be
like you."

"And
what am I like?" She didn't want to ask that question, but she
no longer cared if she was being cruel.

"Well,
there's no reason it's incompatible, really...," Lopera
blathered on, without addressing her question, as if he were talking
to himself. "Though genetically it
is
unusual
... Beauty and brains, I mean ... They don't often go together. Of
course there are exceptions, Richard Feynman is very good-looking,
right? That's what they say, anyway. And Ric is, too, in a way, don't
you think? A little?"

"Ric?"

"Ric
Valente, my friend. I've called him Ric ever since we were kids. I
pointed him out at the party yesterday, remember? Ric Valente."

Just
hearing his name was enough to make her gnash her teeth.
Valente
Sharpe, Valente Sharpe ...
The
name took on a mechanical sound in her brain, like an electric saw
shredding her pride.
Valente
Sharpe, Valente Sharpe...

"He's
good-looking and very smart, too, like you," Lopera went on,
oblivious, it seemed, to her feelings. "But he also knows how to
wrap people around his finger, you know? He's a real snake charmer
with his professors ... Well, with everyone, really." His throat
gurgled in what was seemed a bizarre laugh (Elisa would hear that
laugh for many years to come, and would come to find it charming, but
right then she found it repulsive). "Girls, too. Yep, girls,
too, yessiree."

"You
act like you're not friends."

"Like
we're not...?" She could almost hear Lopera's hard drive
whirring into action as he processed the banal comment. "Of
course we are ... Or, at least, we were ... We met in grade school,
and we were going to go to college together. But Ric ended up getting
one of those killer scholarships and went off to Oxford, lucky duck,
to Roger Penrose's department, and we sort of fell out of touch ...
He wants to go back to England when Blanes's course is over... if
Blanes doesn't take him back to Zurich, that is."

Lopera
gave a fleshy smile with that last sentence, and Elisa disliked it
intensely. Her darkest thoughts crept back and she felt totally and
utterly dejected, almost comatose.
Blanes
will choose Valente Sharpe, obviously.

"We
haven't really seen each other the last four years..." Lopera
went on. "I don't know, maybe I feel like he's changed. He's
more ... more sure of himself. I mean, he's a genius, there's no
doubt about that, a genius to the third degree, since his father and
grandfather are geniuses, too. His father's a cryp ... a
cryptographer who works in Washington at some national security
organization or something ... His mother's American, she's a math
teacher in Baltimore. She was nominated for the Fields Medal last
year." Elisa was impressed, against her will. The Fields Medal
was awarded in the United States every four years in recognition of
outstanding mathematical achievement in the best and most promising
mathematicians in the world; it was almost like a Nobel. She wondered
how she'd feel if
her
mother
had been nominated for the Fields Medal. But right then, all she felt
was rage. "They're divorced. And his mother's brother..."

"Wait,
let me guess ... Won the Nobel Prize in chemistry?" Elisa
quipped, feeling petty. "Or maybe Niels Bohr is his uncle?"

Lopera
emitted that weird sound again; it had to be a laugh.

"No.
He's a programmer for Microsoft in California... What I meant is that
Ric's learned a lot from all of them. He's like a sponge. When you
think he's not paying attention, he's actually analyzing everything
you do and say ... He's a machine. How far up Claudio Coello do you
want me to drop you off?"

Elisa
told him not to take her all the way home, but he insisted. Stuck in
a lunchtime traffic jam in Madrid, they had plenty of time to stop
arguing and stew in silence. She spied a couple of books on top of
the glove compartment, half hidden under some dog-eared folders. She
read the title of one:
Mathematical
Games and Puzzles.
The
other one was weightier:
Physics
and Faith: Scientific and Religious Truth.

As
they were making their way up Claudio Coello, Lopera broke his
silence.

"You
sure pissed Ric off when he saw you beat him on the entrance exam."
And he burst out with another gurgle-giggle.

"Really?"

"God,
yes. He's a sore loser. A very sore loser." Suddenly Lopera's
expression changed. It was as if he'd thought of something else,
something he hadn't considered until right then. "Be careful,"
he added.

"Of
what?"

"Of
Ric. Be very careful."

"Why?
Can he sway the Fields Medal selection committee, so I'll never get
the award?" Lopera ignored her sarcasm.

"No.
He just doesn't like to lose." He stopped the car. "Is this
your building?"

"Yeah,
thanks. Hey, listen, why do you say I should be careful? What do you
think he'd do?"

Instead
of looking at her, he stared straight ahead, as if he were still
driving.