A Doubter's Almanac (20 page)

“What’s this about, please, dear?”

“Are you really trying to challenge my work, Biettermann?”

His old nemesis set down his fork. “All’s fair in love and war,” he said finally.

“At last then,” said Andret, “a little poetry. Thank you.” He rose, took Helena’s arm, and tossed his glass of wine across Biettermann’s suit.

Back at the hotel, he twisted himself into a rage. He was grateful for Helena’s presence, grateful that she’d gone along with the charade, grateful that she’d left the dinner with him and stormed out beside him into the night. He wanted to show his appreciation. He truly did. But his brain was unspooling. In the cab he’d been spun by all the glinting raindrops on the glass. Inside the hotel lobby now, his eye fell on a brass urn that immediately bulged into a spheroid. The spheroid elongated. At the elevator, he kept his gaze to the carpet. But the elevator wouldn’t come. He stepped forward and kicked the planter. Dirt covered the floor. The metal doors began to emit winks of light.

He lit a cigarette and sucked at it.

“What are you doing?”

“Calming myself.”

She pointed. “You’re already smoking one.”

“Fuck that.”

“You’re not supposed to do that in here, Milo.”

“The hell I’m not.”

She took his sleeve and whispered something. Oh, that mouth. He leaned in. That luscious hair. At last, the elevator. More sensation. The lurch of ascent on cables. The spinning, weather-pattern burls gyrating in the wall panels. The columns of smoke sewing themselves into uncurling maps. He reached his nose up into one of them. At her floor, they exited, and at the door to her room he crushed out his cigarettes into the rug. When he raised his head again he felt a gust of warmth from her skin. He closed his eyes and began kissing her neck. She stepped back and worked her key into the lock.

“Please,” he moaned.

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk.”

He moved down, grasping at the buttons of her dress.

“Milo,” she said. “I’ve done my best to care about you.” She pushed him away. “But you don’t let me. You’re dead drunk.”

“I’m not drunk, Helena. I’m lost. Help me.”

She twisted free and squeezed through a crack in the door. It swung shut.

“Please help me!” he wailed as he rattled the knob. “Fuck you!” he shouted, sliding to the carpet. “Let me in!”

Silence.

He yanked off his shoe and began pounding the wall with it. “Open the goddamn door, Helena!”

From down the hall a man yelled, “Shut up already!”

“Fuck you,” Andret shouted back. “And fuck Helena Pierce!” He started in with the shoe again. “Fuck all of you!”

“I’m calling the cops,” came the voice.

“Shut up and call them then!”

That’s when he heard the bolt unlock behind him. Helena leaned out, thrust her hands under his shoulders, and pulled him into the room.

Welcome to the Future

“W
ELL, WOULDN’T YOU
like to know whether you got it?”

Hay hadn’t offered drinks. “Why don’t you call me about it tomorrow?” Andret said, reaching for the doorknob.

“Okay, Milo, fine—yes, you did. You got it. Congratulations.” Hay smiled perfunctorily. “These are the appointment letters right here, one from me and one from the dean. You certainly don’t make it easy, you know.”

“My job isn’t to make it easy.”

Hay tilted his head. “That’s your sense of humor,” he said thoughtfully. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s my sense of truth.”

“The Hyun Chair in Experimental Mathematics, Milo. Tenure in the finest department in the country. A subchairmanship. Not a bad day, even for a man who doesn’t give a damn. Congratulations again, my friend. But still, you really do need to be more careful.”

“Of what?”

Hay leaned forward, squinting now, as though trying to see something that Andret wouldn’t show him. Finally, he said, “I understand that you were at Hans Borland’s memorial.”

“What if I was?”

The appraising gaze continued.

“What?” said Andret.

“I’m not exactly
sure,
” Hay said slowly. “Are you
actually
belligerent? Or do you truly not understand the way you appear to your colleagues? I mean, to the whole world. I heard that you didn’t say hello to a single member of the department in Berkeley. Not to a single one of your old professors. Were you even aware of that?”

“They’re no friends of mine.”

“Perhaps not. But you know that
I
am, don’t you? I’m your
friend,
Milo. You must understand that.”

Andret reached. “Can I see the letters?”

Hay pulled them back. “You’re lucky I recognize your brilliance, Milo. You’re lucky I can handle it. And you’re lucky I understand that the rest is just the price. I go out of my way to protect you, you know. I’m your ally. And not everybody thinks I should be.”

“Just show me the letters, please.”

“Yes, yes. All right—and there’s a third one here, too.” He slipped a business card into an envelope. “This fellow’s an acquaintance of mine, Milo. Dr. William Brink.”

Andret peeked at the card, then burst out laughing.

“It’s nothing to laugh at. Bill’s a psychiatrist. A very good one.”

“Dr. Brink, the shrink.”

“You might at least consider calling him.”

“I don’t need a shrink.”

“Then what exactly
do
you need?”

“I’m not going to answer that, Knudson.” He thought for a moment. Then he added, “But it does rhyme with
Brink.
”

—

H
IS DIFFICULTY HAD
begun to surface more regularly now. Not just the star in the streetlamp or the bulging urn in the lobby, but other more complex, transitory shapes. As he went about his day, his eye would light on some ordinary entity—a metal mailbox or a kite in the sky or a brick chimney spilling smoke—and his brain would instantly fling itself into weird geometries. The mailbox, melted like toffee, would become a teacup; the kite, a two-ended, bulbous vase; the chimney, an undulating trapezoid. He could never predict it. Once, as he was walking home, a line of geese transformed itself into a sliding, anfractuous matrix of single-sided, single-edged spirals, the distant black curves burrowing into themselves like the blades of a windmill. Then, in another moment, the whole scene turned back to normal again. He blinked.

And soon he’d noticed something else, as well: that whenever one of his visions occurred, he’d be struck soon after with the old sensation that someone was watching him from behind. And later in the day, he would suffer from a particular headache—as though his skull had shrunk until it was just slightly too small for his brain. Still later, a queer residue of feeling would center itself at some odd spot in his body. Sometimes he would feel it in his fingers, which would seem to have inverted themselves, often in a shifting manner. His pinkie would now be his thumb, for example—for the most transitory fraction of a second—or his knuckles would now be attached on the wrong side of his palm. It was as though a telephone operator had patched a cord into the wrong line; then, while trying to correct the mistake, had moved it fleetingly—but to another false position—before at last yanking it out. Yet this wasn’t exactly it, either. The feelings—actually, they were more like the
memories
of feelings—never lasted long enough to summon. In this sense, they were very much like his visions. And if he drank a glass of water before the next bourbon, they would generally subside. Certainly he’d be fine by the next morning.

He never mentioned his problem to anybody, though. Not to Helena, certainly, who on the plane trip back from California had sat rigidly in her seat three rows ahead of him and paid for her own cab ride home from the airport; not to Knudson Hay, who, peering in closely, would now and then inquire about his health; not to Annabelle, who would no doubt have pressed him for details; not to Olga, who wouldn’t have cared at all; and never to a doctor, of course. For Andret was not in the habit of seeing doctors.

—

T
HE CALL CAME
one morning in the fall of his thirty-eighth year, not long after his birthday. He was slouching at his desk in Fine Hall, preparing a class as well as trying to bring to a point a spate of recent ideas on the Abendroth. He was in a vulgar mood, frustrated in his attempts to sustain order in his life. He wanted to be at Clip’s, but it had become difficult to prepare a lecture in a bar. Hay had mentioned his teaching—there had been complaints. He hadn’t had a drink since the night before, and when the phone rang he spilled coffee all over his sleeve.

A foreign accent. French maybe. “Professor Andray?”

“No. Andret.”

“Professor Meelo Andray?”

“
My
-lo An-
dret
. Who
is
this, please? I’m working.”

“Congratulations, Professor Andray. I have an important news.”

He pulled his feet together and sat up in the chair.

—

A
T
C
LIP’S, HE
closed the side door and crossed to the rear, where one of the tables was hidden behind a pillar. Sure enough, he could see the back of DeWitt Tread’s suit at the bar. But he knew his friend could sit for an entire night without turning away from his glass.

It was a Friday evening. Hay had obviously been surprised by the invitation; but he’d accepted, and now Andret was here for a warm-up. He ordered a double. At exactly the appointed hour, Hay entered, glancing around. He was well dressed, of course. Andret raised a hand and beckoned him to the table.

“Well, well,” Hay said, sliding into the chair across from him. “This should be fun. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“What are you looking for from your life?” said Andret.

“What am I looking for from my
what
?” Hay shimmied out of his jacket and hung it on the peg. “How about I start with a drink?”

“Of course. Sorry.”

The waitress arrived and took their order. To Andret, she said, “Another?”

While they waited, Hay started in on a story. As he rambled on, Andret glanced toward the bar, where DeWitt Tread was talking to the man next to him. The other man was of the same ilk as Tread—a maniacal-looking academic in a pilling sport coat—and even from a distance it was clear that the two of them were not much better than bums. Andret was shaken. Was this what he himself looked like when he was here? Tread’s head bobbed when he spoke and sunk slowly toward his chest when he listened. As Andret watched, the bartender leaned over and plucked a bill from Tread’s shirt pocket, then poured.

Hay was looking expectantly across at him. “Well?” he said.

“Well what?”

“You asked me what I was looking for from my life.” He tapped the table. “Now tell me what you’re looking for from yours.”

“I’ve been thinking about that a little, Knudson. I had some news recently, and I guess it’s made me philosophical.”

Hay raised his eyebrows. “May I ask what kind of news?”

“Nothing I can reveal at the moment.”

“About the Abendroth conjecture, perhaps?”

“I said I really can’t say. Not now, anyway.”

Hay sipped his drink. “I guess I don’t know what to think then.”

“Of what?”

“Of you, Milo. Sometimes you’re perfectly discreet and charming. Like tonight, for example.”

“Thank you, Knudson.”

“Other times, you insult everyone in the department.”

“
I
do?”

“Yes, Milo, you
do
—with the things you let yourself blurt out.”

“I speak the truth, that’s all.”

“Well, the truth isn’t always what needs to be spoken.”

Andret thought about this.

“Look, Milo, it appears to be good news that you’ve heard, am I right about that much, at least?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought it all the way through. It might be.”

“But look at you—you can’t stop smiling.”

“Is that right?” Milo touched his own face. Yes, Hay was right—it felt different. He must indeed have been smiling.

—

H
E NEEDED A
signature on some arcane departmental form and finally found Hay in his satellite office, a small, chilly room in the warrens of Fine Hall where Hay worked on his own mathematics. Andret knocked, then pushed the door partway open.

His chairman stood at the far wall, concentrating on something on the desk. From beyond him came the clicking sound of a small machine, like a bicycle with a chipped gear tooth. “Absolutely remarkable,” Hay said, without turning. After a moment, he added, “Come in and take a look, Milo.”

“At what?”

“It’s a TI-99. Come have a peek.”

Andret stepped over. “It’s a 99/8,” Hay said proudly. “The public can’t even get them yet. Not the 8 anyway. Not for a while.”

Andret knew what he was looking at. He’d seen computers before, but large ones, in the engineering department.

“This little machine in front of you is the most powerful portable ever built,” Hay said. “At least for civilian use. Fifteen megabytes of silicon memory. I imagine there’s a general over at the Pentagon who’s got more”—he lowered his bifocals—“but I’m not even sure about
that
. And it’s damn spectacular for a mathematics department.”

The computers Andret had seen in the engineering building ran the length of the room, their tape spools stuttering behind mirrored panels. This one now was the size of a cereal box. The keyboard looked like one of the slanted beige Selectrics that the secretaries used in the office. From the rear, a cable ran to a TV box on a pedestal. Hay tapped a few keys, and a row of blue letters flickered onto the screen.

“So what?” said Andret. “I’ve seen computers before.”

“Not this small. Not this powerful. And it sits right here on my desk. I could have one in my house if I wanted. This thing is going to change
everything
.”

“Don’t be so sure, Knudson.”

“My God, Andret. What are you talking about? Don’t be a fool, man. It’s already got a language on it called Pascal—a bit ironic, no? And I can put any other languages on it I want, any time I need to. That’s the beauty of it. I’ve already ordered Fortran and C and Simula.” He smiled mischievously. Then he rummaged in a bag on the desk until he found a thick envelope, covered with stamps. “An old friend of mine at Cambridge just sent me this.”