The woman smiled despite her face, as Rosa would put it. But she said, “Very philosophical, Nate,” and the way she said it, it wasn’t a compliment. The boy went on, excitedly talking with his hands.
“On the other hand, take a mostly negative act such as a young girl being murdered by a serial killer. The act itself might be ninety-five percent evil or trough. But under the influence of the one-minus-one, it’s neutralized a bit. Maybe it brings the victim’s family closer together, or maybe the mother of the dead girl starts a support group. Something positive comes of it. You know: ‘in every cloud there’s a silver lining.’ ”
Dr. Talcott arched an eyebrow. “But—”
“And that’s just considering how the event and the one-minus-one interact. In reality, the event also interacts with a billion other waves, the waves of all the people involved, of the locations where the action occurred, of the police, and so on. Any of those waves has the power to influence the wave of the original event toward being slightly more negative or more positive. But underlying absolutely everything like… like a heartbeat there’s the one-minus-one, always operating to moderate it all, to generalize the gross effect of everything back toward fifty-fifty. The law of good and evil. And the metaphysical concept of ‘angel’ or ‘demon’ could be just another way of representing the basic idea of crest and trough, the positive and destructive forces.”
The woman waited to see if the boy was done or what, her mouth drawn in a line that reminded Aharon of Hannah. He waited, too. Personally, he thought Nate was leaving something large out of the picture—like God. But as the sages say, “if you keep your mouth shut, even a bird can teach you something.”
“Your brainstorming is very creative, Nate,” Dr. Talcott said slowly. “But we don’t know that events per se have waves, or that the crests and troughs of the waves would represent what you’re implying they do. We’ve only begun to test the one-minus-one, and we have to be careful not to get carried away.”
The boy sank back, looking unfazed by this censure. Aharon supposed he had heard it all before.
“So!” Aharon said. “I think perhaps we should hear what Kobinski has to say on the subject, nu?”
“You have that material here? The manuscript Nate was talking about?”
She had definitely heard that part. Aharon gave her what he had, the six notebook pages from Yad Vashem. She went over them, ignoring the Hebrew and turning each page this way and that to examine the mathematical scribbles. Nate peered over her shoulders and several times they pointed things out to each other. She made notes, getting more absorbed. Aharon held his breath, anxious to see what a scientist, especially this scientist, would make of Kobinski’s work.
He could see the woman’s interest regenerating itself along with the color in her cheeks and brightness in her eyes. So angels she didn’t get, but numbers, that she understood.
“Is there more?” Dr. Talcott demanded when she’d assimilated all there was. “He mentions two pages of equations. Do you have those?”
Aharon stroked his beard. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Can I see them?”
“Naturally you may see. But first we have to fly to Poland.”
13
They said to Moshe:
Is it because there are no graves in Egypt
that you have taken us out to die in the wilderness?
What is this that you have done to us, bringing us out of Egypt?
Is this not the very word that we spoke to you in Egypt,
saying: Let us alone, that we may serve Egypt!
Indeed, better for us serving Egypt
than our dying in the wilderness!
13.1. Nate Andros
Nate hadn’t heard word one about Poland until Rabbi Handalman mentioned it to Jill. He hadn’t even planned to spring Jill from the hospital. He’d just gone there to talk and events had taken on a life of their own, kind of like a car plummeting over the side of a mountain—a few seconds of spinning wheels on gravel and then bingo, every priority you had takes a sudden and dramatic shift.
So here they were. Officially on the lam. But Poland? Go to Poland? That was way beyond the scope of things he was willing to consider for his immediate future.
Except… Jill was seriously thinking it over. He could see the wheels churning as she ran through the possibilities. Nate waited for her to cleave Handalman in two with one snap of those mighty jaws.
Instead she asked, “How much more of Kobinski’s work is in Poland?”
“A complete draft of this manuscript, The Book of Torment. Yes, including those two pages of equations. One of Kobinski’s followers lives near Auschwitz. I telephoned him already. Unfortunately, he will not send it. We’ll have to go to him. Given the state of things, he is probably right not to let it out of his grasp.”
Jill fingered the pages absently, like a baby fingering a blankie. Unbelievable. She was seriously considering it.
“Okay. But we have to go right away.” She looked at Nate. “Are you going to go?”
“Who… me?”
“Yes, you, Nate. Will you come?”
“Well…” He was trying to figure out what was going on. Why was Jill, who was pissed at him for taking her from the loving arms of the DoD at all, now willing to go to Poland?
And then, looking at her, he knew. Jill wasn’t agreeing to go because anything he’d said had been compelling. He was intrigued by all this Heaven and Hell stuff, good and evil, the things Handalman had found in the code, and how it related to the one-minus-one. Jill, however, would not take a trip to Tacoma for more of that malarkey. No, it was Kobinski’s math that had gotten her. And Nate knew her well enough that he could read the tense set of her shoulders, the drawn look on her face, and the faraway, calculating look in her eyes.
She wanted Kobinski’s work. She wanted it for herself, for her project. Because, according to these scribbles, Kobinski had known. And—damn, he knew her so well—she figured if she could get her hands on his manuscript, she could come back to the DoD at her leisure and they would welcome her with open arms, just as she’d figured Chalmers would absolve her once she’d published.
She was still going for it. God help her. God help them all. Especially him, because he was the poor sap who was in love with her.
“Yeah, I’m going,” Nate said.
“All right. So how do we go about it?” Jill went into lecture mode. “I say the sooner we leave the better. The DoD will be looking for me. I’ll need my passport. It’s at home. I don’t have my wallet, which means no ATM card. Damn. My wallet was in my briefcase. I can get cash off my credit card, though. It’s at home, too. Nate?”
“Huh?”
“Do you think you can get into my house?”
Nate looked at Handalman, who was shaking his head. The rabbi looked at his watch. “They’ll know she’s missing. If they’re not at her house already they soon will be.”
“So go!” she said, shooing Nate. “Go to my house; get my passport and credit card. The card’s in the filing cabinet in the living room and the passport’s in the table next to my bed. Hurry.”
“Oh. Right.” He jumped up.
“And get yours, too,” she said as the rabbi handed him the keys to the rental.
“Right.”
“And, whatever you do, don’t get caught! Don’t take any chances!”