by Erich Segal
The old man smiled. “It isn’t the harem I would have constructed, but it’s something, sonny boy.”
It took longer to get the planning permission than for the industrious crew of Mexican–Americans to erect the imposing low-roofed laboratory building in a vaguely Spanish style, set in a secluded corner of the estate. Before he moved in, Sandy, ever in the vise of paranoia, took steps to protect his future inventions, hiring a security company to patrol his grounds at all times.
He even installed a direct phone line to his office at Cal Tech to reduce his on-campus time to the barest minimum.
His daughter’s visits were the high point of Sandy’s year. And yet, in a way, they also saddened him. For Olivia had grown up so swiftly that he wished he could make time stand still and have her be his darling little girl forever.
Yet he had also used their time together for propaganda purposes. The two of them played a special game in which they made up songs composed of the silliest-sounding scientific words. For example, to help her learn physics, Sandy boned up on the latest advances and wrote ditties like “If You Knew SUSY,” the name standing not for a girl, but for supersymmetry theory.
There was also “Every Quark Needs a Squark,” not only a love song, but an accurate physical statement. Their subatomic bestiary included everything from particles and sparticles to winos and zinos. It was a hightech Alice in Wonderland.
Young Olivia had laughed with delight at his true tales of left- and right-handed genes, the fingers on a flu virus, and even the adventures of the scientists working on gloves for them.
“Did you know, honey, that the smell of oranges and lemons is due to the right- and left-handed forms of an otherwise identical molecule?”
“Actually, I did.”
“What?”
“Yeah, you taught me that last summer.”
His indoctrination had worked.
“Guess what, Dad,” Olivia exclaimed the very instant she deplaned on her next visit. “My science teacher says I have real aptitude for chemistry. Doesn’t that make you proud?”
“I was already proud, honey,” he replied, inwardly congratulating himself. Then, unable to keep from testing the waters, he remarked, “Besides—your grandpa Greg’s a Nobel Prize winner.”
“I know,” she retorted. “But you should hear the way he talks about you.”
I’m not sure I should, Sandy thought to himself.
“He says you’re the brightest scientist he’s ever met in his life.”
Jesus, the sonovabitch never ceases to surprise me, he thought.
In the corner of his own lab-within-a-lab, Sandy installed a special bench for his daughter, who, by force of circumstances or by nature, had become a deep thinker at a remarkably early age. She also showed an interest in her father’s private life, although this was an area where she had to tread lightly.
One day she came up to Sandy in the lab with a tattered movie script under her arm.
“Hey, Dad. You should really read this. I mean actually read it.”
“What is it honey?”
“One of Grandpa’s old screenplays. He asked me for an opinion because he’s thinking of shopping it around again. Remember ‘Frankie’?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sandy remarked. “Musical chromosomes. That project was before its time.”
“Right,” his daughter agreed. “But I was thinking of the love interest.”
“Did it have one?”
Olivia’s eyes twinkled. “If you believe Grandpa, every good story has to.” She hesitated and then braved, “Even yours.”
Aha, so that was where it was leading. Sandy laughed to himself.
“Frankie’s way of finding a wife should appeal to you,” she continued.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. He concocts her in a test tube. Sound interesting?”
“Sort of,” Sandy equivocated. “But what makes you think I would do it that way?”
She smiled wistfully. “Because honestly, Dad, you don’t seem to want to try any other.”
He was touched and amused. Clearly his daughter understood that he was still so affected by the betrayal and acrimonious divorce, that even after so many years, the only partner he might trust was one he himself could create in the laboratory.
By now the new science had even permeated the awareness of schoolchildren. Olivia’s generation had grown up knowing what DNA was, and she also knew about the Genome Project, and took pride in the fact that her father was contributing to the great undertaking in Washington.
“Tell me, Dad, when you guys finish mapping every single gene in the human body—all hundred thousand of them—does that mean every disease will be cured?”
“Oh, we’d still be a long way from that, honey. Having a map doesn’t mean we’ll have a vehicle to get there. But sometime in the next century, when you’re a full professor, you might be able to perform the last act of curing ever necessary.”
Olivia secretly resolved to do just that.
Even prostrate on the Hollywood scrap heap, Sidney remained ever hopeful, and still held captive by the Hollywood myth that just one picture—just one—could reverse the tide of his fortunes.
Naturally, Sandy offered to bankroll one of his father’s cinematic projects, but the older man was a proud patriarch.
“No, sonny boy,” he insisted. “Like Sinatra, I gotta do things my way.”
Father and son now shared a curious trait. They were each preoccupied with showing Rochelle that she had been wrong to underestimate him.
At the outset, Sidney had found it difficult to find a company that would employ him even without a salary, and with just an illusory promise of points of the profit.
And yet he was a veteran with a track record. Admittedly, it was for what the trade regarded as “schlock,” but that was precisely what the television industry demanded. And with the passing of time, the stigma of Kim Tower’s banishment began gradually to fade.
One of the network chiefs, whose first job in the business had been as Sidney’s office boy, sensed what a potential treasure the old man still was.
When pictures for the tube have schedules of fifteen days, they must be shot in precisely that time and not an hour more. Sidney had a reputation as a dependable producer who got pages filmed. His former assistant signed him on.
Sidney was so stirred emotionally when the young man reached across the desk and shook his hand, that he was unsteady on his feet. Though he tried to drive home carefully, he could barely keep his mind on the road.
When the electronic gates opened, he drove straight to Sandy’s lab and hurried in without even knocking. He burst into his son’s inner sanctum and blurted out, “Hey, kiddo—great news—I’m in business again!”
Sandy was elated. “Oh Dad, that’s wonderful.”
As he embraced his father, they both broke down and began to sob.
Sidney was a man reborn. He tackled his new duties with gusto. Though he had his own kitchen, he and Sandy dined together most nights. With persistent frequency, Sidney would turn the discussion to the latest medical therapies.
“The audience loves diseases, kiddo. They can’t get enough of them—as long as the people get cured in the final minute. That’s why we stockpile AIDS stories—as soon as the doctors lick it, we can be on the air within a week.”
His father went wild when Sandy told him of the true case of a woman in South Africa who had given birth to her own grandchildren. He had read about it in one of the journals.
“Can you believe it, Dad—a woman gave birth to her own grandchild?”
Sid’s eyes widened. “What’s that, sonny boy? Can you run that by me again?”
“It was in South Africa. It seems her daughter couldn’t have kids, so the doctors took out the girl’s ova, fertilized them in vitro, and then implanted them in her mother. Nine months later—”
Sidney’s expanding imagination finished the thought. “I dig, I dig. The baby’s not just a double daughter, she’s also
a grandchild—and her own aunt!”
The thought suddenly sent them both into hysterics.
“Isn’t that wild?” Sandy gasped.
“Yeah. It’s absolutely dynamite.” He then leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, “Who else have you told about this, sonny boy?”
“No one, Dad. But I told you, it was published in—”
“I’ll take down that stuff later. Right now, you have another 7UP, while I go and make some calls.”
Fifteen minutes later a radiant Sidney reappeared.
“Did it, kiddo—did it. I caught Gordon Alpert at home and cut a deal with CBS to develop ‘My Mother Had My Baby.’ Like the title?”
“Yeah, Dad. It’s neat.”
“Well, I got you to thank for it, sonny boy. I owe you one.”
“Forget it, Dad. You already gave me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look at it this way,” Sandy reasoned. “That film and I have something in common. We’re both Sidney Raven Productions.”
The old man beamed with love.
54
ISABEL
It scarcely made a column of newspaper space, but it wrote headlines in their lives.
When Jerry Pracht, citing cartilage problems, withdrew from the 1991 Wimbledon tournament, there were modest expressions of disappointment, of curiosity deceived and hopes frustrated. But hardly an uproar or a dirge.
After all, 127 other players did appear, and there was no guarantee that he could even have gotten through the quarterfinals. On the other hand, Michael Stich, the underdog, not only reached the finals, but defeated Boris Becker to win the title that year.
“You see, Pracht,” Isabel chided him playfully. “That could’ve been you out there after all.”
“Would you believe I’m happier right here—next to you?”
She smiled at him, and answered, “Yes.”
So much had changed in just a single night.
As Isabel slept in a flat infused with genuine and profound affection, Raymond was alone in the cold, impersonal atmosphere of Cambridge City Hospital.
Unlike his previous experience, he was not eager to go home. He realized how irrational—and foolish—his behavior had been. Part of him was terrified that he had already lost Isabel for good. But it was unmistakably clear to him that if henceforth he was to play any part in her life, it would be a minor—and supporting—one.
At one juncture in his sleepless wanderings in the long corridor of the night, he was tempted to call her up and plead forgiveness. But he could not muster the nerve. Now he prayed for only one thing—the dawn, and an end to the ordeal of uncertainty.
In the natural order of things, this was the moment when girls of Isabel’s age would ordinarily be leaving their own families. They, in turn, would then have to suffer one of the normal traumas of parenthood, the empty nest.
The only problem was that Raymond da Costa had no nest of his own.
She officially became Dr. da Costa in late June. In two separate communications she was notified that although she would not receive her Ph.D. till the next graduation ceremony, she was already entitled to the privileges of that rank.
She also received an offer to be instructor of physics at MIT, effective immediately—with automatic elevation to assistant professor when her degree was awarded. The starting salary would be $45,000 per annum.
Isabel knew that the charade of parent and child to which she had been a willing accomplice for so many years had inevitably to end.
But how?
Ray returned from the hospital chastened and docile. But he had nonetheless returned.
He still spent his time taking care of the household chores—even reading and going through the journals to mark articles for her to read. But Isabel was too young and energetic to need a maid, and too junior an academic to need a research assistant, a post for which, in any case, her father did not have the credentials. Still, his behavior made it very clear that he was grateful to be welcomed on whatever level she would take him.
Two days after Jerry had called, a couriered package arrived for Isabel containing no fewer than five reels of computer tape. Her boyfriend had enlisted the help of a Physics Department computer consultant as they transferred the data into Isabel’s computer.
As he’d sat in Isabel’s office finishing the setup, Jerry murmured, “See how easy this is, honey? Electronics will do all the work for us. Say, I hope you don’t mind my bivouacking in your cell?”
“No.” She smiled. “It’s nice to have you in such close quarters.”
“Just to keep us both sane,” he suggested, “why don’t I work the night shift and you can have your own office during the day?”
“That’s very generous of you.”
“Isa, I’m a generous kind of a guy.”
She laughed. “You’re also crazy.”
“But crazy nice,” he responded, his eyes twinkling.
She and Jerry had a business meeting every morning at seven-thirty. He reported his progress as he went through the painstaking process of studying the Sanduleak tapes. Yet their conversation always seemed to come around to Raymond.
“My dad’s told me that from time to time he’s come across all sorts of jobs that would have suited Ray perfectly—stuff like technician or science teacher, but your father just didn’t want to hear about them.”
“That was in a different life,” Isabel observed. “I honestly think he’d jump at the chance to make a graceful exit. Anyway, I’ve got this sudden urge to have a place of my own with a view of the river. But I can’t simply ask him to move out. I mean, frankly, I’d be worried about him living alone.”
Their dialogue even spilled over into their lunch break.
“You know, strictly speaking, Raymond shouldn’t be your concern,” Jerry counseled gently.
“I know,” she conceded. “I’m just telling you straight out I’d be uneasy.”
Jerry nodded. “I understand, Isa. What you’re saying in so many words is that you’re a human being.”
“Then there’s the question of money,” she continued. “I have no idea what he has in the bank, but my salary will be plenty. And there’s also the cash from the Fermi Prize. I’ve got almost thirty-eight thousand left. What if I transferred it to his account?”
“I’d say it’s more than enough to ransom your freedom.”
“Do you honestly think so?” she asked anxiously.
“Isa, the real question is whether you do.”
By early July, Karl Pracht deemed the 985-word abstract of Isabel’s thesis suitable enough to qualify as a letter. He immediately faxed it off to the editor of The Physical Review, who—such is the speed of modern science—accepted it within the hour.
Its appearance a month later caused a stir that re-echoed in every physics lab in the world. The daring young girl on the flying trapeze had done it again. This time, at an ever greater height, and with no net below.
Isabel da Costa, former child prodigy, now grown-up and an assistant professor of physics, might have changed in many ways, but she had not lost her intellectual audacity.
And, in fact, her formation of the Unified Field Theory was the closest the human mind had yet come to solving this ultimate conundrum.
She was aware that her own sleeplessness would be matched by radioastronomy groups around the world, who were even now searching for the minutest telltale sign that would give support to her theory.
In the first weeks after publication, she lived her life on automatic pilot. She jogged at daybreak and stopped at the department on her way home, to await the morning mail and see if any of the journals had printed a response.
She would then meet Jerry in the lab to continue their frustrating investigation of every centimeter of tape. And yet the tension mounted to such a degree that Isabel could not even concentrate on the search for evidence that could silence her critics with irrefutable proof.
Sometimes she was so nervous by the aftern
oon that she would drag him to endless classic films at the Brattle, just to pass the time.
Since he knew she was worried about her father’s recuperation, Jerry always insisted that they rejoin him for dinner, and then pray that there was a ball game on TV so that he and Ray had something superficial to talk about.
Afterward, when he left the apartment, he was unable to go home. Instead he returned to study the microwave radiometer data.
When the bouquets finally came, they were all theoretical. In the ensuing months, scientists throughout the world, whether grudgingly or admiringly, came out in print to acknowledge Isabel’s brainstorm. But none was able to suggest an empirical manner in which to test its validity.
Jerry was nothing if not diligent. As his tennis rackets gathered dust in the closet, he continued his obsessive scrutiny—but without success. In fact he grew so monomaniacal in his quest, there were times when Isabel urged him to capitulate. As she joked, “Just let me be a genius in the abstract.”
“No dammit, remember Einstein.”
“Ohmigod, him again?” she cried with mock exasperation. “When in doubt—trot Albert out!”
“Listen, Isa, it took nearly forty years before his general relativity theory made it out of pure math into real physics. Then at last when they came up with the quasars, pulsars, and possible black holes, it suddenly became very relevant.”
“Okay, Jerry, maybe you’re right. If you want to keep on banging your head against a stone wall—keep at it, as long as it’s our stone wall. But I just don’t want to put the rest of our lives on hold even for the sake of proving the best idea I’ve ever come up with.”
“Even if it means a Nobel?”
“There are one or two more important things in the world,” she countered.
“Really?” he asked with a teasing smile. “Like what?”
“Like maybe having one or two nontheoretical children with you.”
“Oh.” Jerry beamed. “That’s a nice idea. But since I seem to be involved in both projects, I’d like to see you have your cake and eat it.”
It was nearly four in the morning when the phone rang. Isabel picked it up drowsily.