“Let’s go in, eh?” They all followed Phelps into a private office with a wall-sized view of the San Juan Islands, boats and ferries dotting dark blue Puget Sound.
“How have you been?” the professor asked when they were seated in the leather chairs surrounding the polished table. “Miss the campus?”
“Uh, I’m fine. Thank you. How are you?”
“Getting along.” The professor had never been a big talker and without a blackboard didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. Elliott thought with a start, He’s nervous! Which made Elliott more nervous, which made him wonder why he had ever let the professor talk him into coming over here when so much else was going on. “I’ve told Patty here what a fine student you were, your areas of interest, and XYC is looking for someone like you.”
“So this is-this is a job interview?”
“Not for a job where you’d ever have to leave home, Elliott,” Patty Hightower said. “Not that you wouldn’t be welcome on Route 128 anytime.” She sat down next to him, crossing her legs, which were encased in sheer black stockings. “We’re looking for consultants. Part-time, and you never have to go anywhere.”
“I’m not really looking-”
“People as accomplished as you rarely are. We have to talk to knowledgeable people, like the professor, and find you rather than the other way around.”
“What kind of business is this?”
“Internet security,” Patty Hightower said.
“Like RSA?” RSA was a well-known Internet-security firm.
“Right. We handle financial encryption for some customers you have definitely heard of.”
“What does the name ‘XYC’ come from?”
Patty smiled. “From the x,y axis. Plus ‘Corporation.’ We thought the abbreviation XYC would look good when the stock went public.”
“I mentioned your work regarding factoring large numbers to Patty,” Professor Braun said. “Not in any detail, Elliott. Just the general direction you’re heading in.”
Patty Hightower said, “We’d like to hire you to help us keep the Web safe for credit transactions, Elliott. And for many other purposes.”
“I don’t know a thing about that stuff,” Elliott said. “I do pure math. Combinatorics. Analysis. Number theory. I don’t even have a doctorate.”
“But you have some very promising results, don’t you? An algorithm that efficiently factors large numbers? That predicts the primes? I can hardly believe I’m saying this. It’s been a Holy Grail for mathematics for so long-my field is information technology. But my B.S. is in math. Princeton. I have to congratulate you, Elliott.”
“I haven’t even published any of my work. How do you know so much about it? Professor, what have you said about my work?”
“Just that I think it’s going to be ground-breaking, and that XYC would be smart to help you find the means to continue.”
“And we have a friend of yours consulting for us. She mentioned you independently of the professor. Carleen Flint.”
Carleen knew a lot about Elliott’s work, unlike the professor. She knew all about the blackjack, about Silke, about the function. She also knew about Elliott’s notebook. Elliott’s fright was increasing.
“I feel like you’ve been watching me,” he said. “Strange things have been happening lately.”
Patty looked at the lawyer, at the professor. “I’m not sure what you mean. You’ve come to our attention and we’d like to have you on board along with the many other very talented mathematicians who work for us. I’m not trying to overwhelm you, Elliott. As a matter of fact, I wish we hadn’t met in a big office, in such a formal way. Would you like to go down to the Market and have a little lunch? Just you and me? My treat.”
The professor was nodding, but Elliott said, “I’m sorry, but I have to get back across the bay soon. My father’s not well. Why don’t you finish saying whatever you came to say right here.” Patty looked disappointed for a moment, but she leaned forward so she was very close to Elliott and he felt suddenly hot.
“A million dollars for signing with us, Elliott,” she breathed. “And a million dollars per year salary for the next three years. Work under our umbrella, that’s all we ask.”
Elliott, stunned, said, “That’s a lot of money. I don’t understand.” Then he said, “You mean you would own my work?” He remembered Silke talking to him the afternoon of the shooting two years before. What had she said? That companies like XYC would want to suppress his work.
He recoiled, and Patty saw it; a pearly tooth bit into her glossy lower lip.
“Would I still be able to publish?” he asked.
“After our legal department has had a look. Perhaps not everything.”
“Would you want all my work to date?”
“That would be part of the signing bonus, yes. Payment for your work to date on prime number theory.”
“Your company would own my work? Have control over my work?”
“In a manner of speaking. And you would be free, in just a few years, financially secure, able to spend your life working without worries, your father taken care of…”
“Professor, you know I’m not worth that kind of money.”
“But you are, Elliott. You are working in precisely the most crucial field of applied mathematics right now. You are ahead of everyone else. I believe in you. I want you to succeed. Your work will be of enormous importance in keeping the Internet safe. The use of large primes for encryption is the basis of the whole emerging global economic system. There is no mathematician in the world today who has come as close to you to being able to decrypt our system by factoring the products of enormous primes. Frankly, I’m in awe. The Internet has come to depend on-”
“On keeping my work a secret,” Elliott blurted.
“Not at all. The focus of your work would change for a few years, to preventing attacks on public-key code systems. It’s a very laudable way of using your expertise. I’d enjoy working with you, and Carleen is looking forward to a collegial relationship. You’d have every resource imaginable. You’ll love being a part of XYC. Many MIT graduates have decided to join us. You’re a very lucky young man. And a very gifted one. We’d be proud to have you.”
It was a heck of a speech. Elliott looked at the professor, at the ascetic face with the high cheekbones and the long fingers that he had watched, mesmerized, through several seminars, performing magic with chalk. Braun was the only professor at MIT who had shown any interest in his work. He had tried to help Elliott when he was sick.
He imagined it, working through some of the problems he was having with the help of Professor Braun, having his full attention. He believed in Elliott, and had arranged for him to join him.
“I am grateful,” he said. “Professor, your interest means a lot to me.”
The professor breathed out and said, “You had me worried there for a minute.”
“I’m grateful, but I can’t join you, Professor.”
Braun said, frowning, “I don’t quite know how to respond to that, Elliott. Are you sure you appreciate what Patty has come all this way to offer you?”
“All she’s offering is money,” Elliott said. “I want to expand human knowledge. So this would include buying up all my mathematical work to date?”
“Only work related to prime numbers. The work summarized in the notebook you keep. Carleen mentioned it.”
Now he was fighting full panic. His notebook! Years of his blood!
“N-no way,” Elliott said.
“I beg your pardon?” Patty Hightower said.
“I’m going home. Please don’t contact me again.”
Patty Hightower held up a hand, and the professor sat back in his chair. She said, “Nobody else will make you a better offer, if that’s what you’re thinking. We could actually go higher. A two-million-dollar signing bonus. How’s that sound?” The atmosphere of the room had changed. Now Elliott saw the three of them very differently, as though they were shape-shifters who had suddenly become predatory, malign. He jumped up and grabbed his backpack.