The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(85)

–?29?–


The Answer


As Tom’s ashes dissolved into the Pacific, Hazel made her way toward the boat’s cabin. She had to stop and grab hold of the starboard rail for a few breaths. She couldn’t let herself fall apart right now. It would only draw unwanted attention. It was true that the memory of her foster father on that train platform had stirred within her a level of compassion that surprised her, but it was Gregory who was making her struggle now. Despite the fact that they had grown apart in recent years, his sudden removal from the real world left her feeling disoriented—the lone survivor on their isle of two.

She paused at the cabin door to make sure she hadn’t been seen. Still huddled along the port side were Philip, Jane, Jane’s sister, and the twins, looking out at the ocean, where some of the ashes had scattered to the crosswind. Paige sat nearby, scribbling notes to herself and every so often speaking in slow, enunciated tones to her mother. Jack, Goldie, and Fritz Dornbach formed an unlikely trio at the bow. Last, there was the hired skipper, busy managing ropes and canvas.

Alex had not shoved off with them that morning. Hazel hadn’t seen him since the night at Union Station, where she had watched him lift his camera to his face for a moment to document Tom’s position on the tracks. But he had hesitated, finally letting the camera drop to his chest. Last she remembered, he had walked slowly but deliberately toward the station exit. For all she knew, it would be the last she saw of him.

Hazel closed her eyes and gripped the book she had been carrying around for the past several days.

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel . . .

She had wasted so much time, but at last she knew what her grandfather had intended for her to do. All along, the equation had been waiting patiently for her to show up, to hold out her hand and ask for it. Hazel wondered how many things in life could be ours if we only knew whom to ask. Ask. She took a deep breath, grabbed hold of the door latch, and swung herself inside the cabin.





–?30?–


The Recruit


On a gray morning in early December, Nellie Booth Lyons stood at the window of her upper-floor library waiting for the newest member of GSR to arrive. She glanced anxiously from the street to her watch. Late.

Just last week, Nellie had stood at this same spot and watched one of her best people climb into a hired car, likely never to return. “I can’t do this anymore,” Alex had told her that day. “I need to get back.”

“Back to where? Doing what?” she’d demanded.

“There are other things besides mathematics, Nellie.”

“Really. Playing at being a photographer? Dating? You need structure. We can give you that here. There are plenty of attractive women in Malibu, Alex, just as beautiful as the women of France.” But he didn’t appear to be interested in the beautiful women of Malibu. And having replenished his bank account during his time at GSR, he was ready to float across Europe again, sipping cappuccinos and practicing “freelance mathematics,” whatever that meant.

The real reason for Alex’s departure was more complex, of course. After the thrill of hunting down the ultimate mathematical treasure, there was something wrong with the spoils.

Alex had managed, after snooping through Isaac’s study—and absconding with a revelatory bit of typewriter ribbon—to track down the equation to a room 137 and to a certain unmathematical cousin of his. After keeping an eye on her, he had obliquely charmed the poor girl into revealing the hotel room in which the treasure was hidden. On the following night, Alex had circled back to claim the computer and map for GSR, but not before waiting for the cousin to circle back herself and then leave again. He had been briefly troubled by the entire episode—the sneaking around, the betrayal of a family member. “A family member I happen to like,” he told Nellie. But at that point, who betrayed whom among the Severys was for her a tiresome detail when she had finally gotten what she wanted: the mathematics of a lifetime.

However, one day, while Nellie and Alex picked through the equation, a fissure appeared, and from that fissure erupted ever-smaller cracks—until a full-blown fractal disaster appeared before them. But she and Alex had disagreed about what these fissures meant:

“The equation is a fake, Nellie, an illusion designed to distract us from the real thing.”

“What about the map? It works.”

“Of course it works, because Isaac is dangling the results of the true equation in front of your face, to show you what you can’t have.”

“Fake or not, there is truth in it, Alex. Truth enough to convince Philip Severy, who sat here not long ago and gaped at it. It may take years, but from this illusion, we can reverse engineer the original.”

Nellie had hoped Alex would stay and help her untangle the whole mess, but he had come down with a last-minute case of mathematical morality. “For argument’s sake, say that I stay, Nellie. For what? So you can sell the equation to the Pentagon? The Federal Reserve? The banks? Does the future belong to them? I signed on for the thrill of finding the thing—to see it for myself—not so that you could make a slightly taller stack of cash.”

She sighed at the memory. How benighted of him to suppose she did this for the money. Nellie would have to manage without him. She had spent too many years trying to wrest mathematics from Isaac Severy, and she’d be damned if she was going to give up now just because the dead man was still pulling pranks. It wasn’t fair of Isaac to have shown her what he was capable of, to have given her the suggestion of his brilliance, and then to have backed out on their verbal agreement simply because he objected to the general idea of winning wars and making money. Isaac had developed a particularly severe case of mathematical morality, and had died for it. More precisely, she had killed him. There was no point in trying to forget, especially on a day like this, with a heavy marine layer lingering, as it had on that morning in October.