The Great Escape Chapter 15, Part 6 of 11

The Great Escape
Chapter 15, Part 6 of 11

"We can help," Danielle said. "Roger and have a twenty-four-hour stopover in Capella on our way to Celetaris. We can try to find Yumi; if she's not there, we can learn where she's gone."

"We will always be grateful to you," Itsuki said. "If you are willing to act as agents for our family, I've brought a document giving you power of attorney over Yumi. I got my father to sign it when we talked to a private investigator, but we couldn't afford his fees. It will allow you custody of her."

Itsuki found he couldn't say the word 'remains.'

"Of anything of hers if they're in the hands of the police or a coroner."

"It won't come to that, Itsuki, I'm sure," Danielle said softly. "We will find Yumi for you."

"Certainly," said Roger. "Don't give up hope. We'll do our best."

"Thank you," Itsuki said, feeling more confident than he had for a year. "I'm sending you the document."

He typed on his communicator, and Danielle received a dual-language document with Hayate
Takahashi's ID stamp. Itsuki was relieved when Danielle put her ID stamp on the document.

"I have to go," he said, checking the time. "I have a class soon. Thank you for seeing me and for all you're doing for Yumi."

He shook hands with them, retreated, bowed, turned, and ran off.

Danielle and Roger remained on the bench for a few minutes, silently mulling over the information, taking it all in. Then Roger said:

"Darling, do you ever feel that you're just a character in a novel?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"I mean the coincidences. Yumi works on the hyperdrive engine that inspires your engine.

Then she meets your brother on Capella, and they both go missing. It's like a narrator is moving pieces across a chess board."

"If we were characters in a novel, then you'd be the hero, and I'd be your glamorous sidekick who always gets herself kidnapped, so you have to save her at the last minute."

"Nonsense! If it were a novel, you'd be the heroine, and I'd be the straight man who feeds you lines to highlight your brilliance."

"Now that's nonsense! We'd probably both be peripheral characters, put in to add color or with a minor but important function."

"You'd always be a pivotal character, Danielle," Roger insisted. "I'm just here for exposition."

She smiled at that image and didn't respond. Instead, she asked:

"What shall we do now? We have hours before our flight goes."

"More shrines, temples, and gardens, or are you hungry?"

"Hungry after last night? No. I think one more shrine and then a long stroll in a garden."

After walking around a temple with a handsome pavilion and a water garden, they sat in the shade of a willow, enjoying the scent of blossoms and the gurgle of a stream that was said never to have dried up. Small birds chirruped in the trees. The whoosh and clomp of a cleaner's brush sweeping dust from the stone steps up to the temple was a pleasant continuo accompaniment.

Danielle's communicator buzzed. She had forgotten to silence it. When she checked the message, she thought it was Itsuki with something he had forgotten to say.

"Oh, it's from Jonathan. He sends us belated congratulations: he's only just heard about our marriage."

"Who's Jonathan?" Roger asked.

"Jonathan Wright, an old friend from university."

"Old friend, eh?"

"No, he wasn't, and it won't."

"What?"

"No, he wasn't my boyfriend, and no, it won't be awkward when I invite him to join the
Samothea Project. Assuming he's free, he's exactly the man we need to configure the beacon."

"Darling, aren't you getting ahead of yourself? Now, the Samothea Project is just you and some students. It's a little precipitate to recruit an old boyfriend."

"A-ha! I knew you were jealous. Don't worry. Jonathan and I went out several times, but nothing was serious between us."

"I'm not jealous."

"There's no need to be, Darling: he wasn't as good in bed as you."

"Danielle!"

She laughed.

"I'm joking; I'm joking. He was much better than you. And he had an enormous."

She stopped.

"An enormous 'd'?" he asked.

"Diaphragm."

"That was the word on the tip of your tongue?"

"It's your fault, Roger," she pouted. "You were supposed to interrupt me. You spoiled the joke on purpose."

"I apologize. Go on with your tease."

"No. The moment's gone. I'll have to get back to you another way. As for Jonathan, he was as much a rival as a friend and colleague: we vied for the top place in the department. I won, of course."

"I'd be surprised if you hadn't."

"It's a shame you won't be jealous, though. I've never had two men fighting over me. I always imagined it would be a turn-on."

"Tell me about your rivalry. It sounds as though there's a story there."

"There is a story, but it's a long one that involves a curious event that made me change my mind about an important topic. Do you want the whole story?"

"Yes."

"All right. It begins with a confession: " I once belonged to a feminist society."

"You make it sound like you joined one of those demented religious cults."

"Didn't I? I had a single ready-made answer for everything - the patriarchal conspiracy - and a
convenient scapegoat to blame - all men. I had a set of pre-packaged arguments and a foolproof way of avoiding answering criticism. That is, anyone who disagrees with a feminist is a chauvinist. It sounds like a demented cult to me."

"But I'm a feminist," Roger protested.

"No, you're not, Darling," Danielle was unimpressed. "You pretended to be one because you thought it would help you get into women's knickers."

"Well, that plan didn't work, then."

"Of course not. Women prefer manly men, not antiseptic ones."

"Is that why you married an effete academic?"

"Manliness is not measured in muscles and aggression, as you well know, husband, but in the quiet strength men have more than women. Manly men are firm, solid, reliable, and chivalrous, especially chivalrous. You're the most chivalrous man I know."

"I'm sure I'm not such a paragon."

"Don't worry; you will be when I'm done with you. No man is perfect until a woman has licked him into shape, as my mother says. And if you don't take a compliment, then you'll agree that my dad is very manly, but I've never once heard him raise his voice in anger. Real manliness is moral certainty, confidence, dependability, and courage."

"Women have all those virtues," Roger said.

"We do, but less so than men; that's why we admire men and look up to them. Women specialize in different virtues: endurance, resilience, loyalty, putting up with pain and loss, and making the best of a bad thing. It's the difference between us that makes us compatible."

"Well, that's an interesting philosophy."

"Besides," she continued, "now you've got me; you don't need to pretend to be a feminist anymore. You can get into my knickers any time you want."

"All right, I surrender, convinced," he said.

"Good. I'll continue with my story, which has both muscles and chivalry in it."

"I'm listening. I love your stories - though they rarely reach an end and never go by the shortest route."

She laughed.

"I'm a woman. Being direct is a manly virtue."

"So," she went on, "although my flirtation with feminism didn't last long, and I never took it too seriously, at the time I did my doctorate, I was a paid-up member of the cult, and my friend Eva Welwyn was one of its leaders."

"As you know, I finished my doctorate six years ago at Caltech, where they had an excellent post-doctorate program. In conjunction with some other universities, a team of post-docs would collaborate on a project for three-quarters of their time and teach for the other quarter. I thought it was ideal, so I asked my supervisor to propose me for the program."

"He advised me not to bother, saying I wasn't suited to that kind of work and wouldn't fit into the team. He was quite explicit: he said I wasn't the right man for the role."

"He said 'man'?" Roger was shocked.

"Oh, yes. He repeated it because I asked him who would be a good candidate, and he said,
"Jonathan Wright is the best man for the job."

"Jonathan and I had collaborated on a project, though we had completely different working methods. Jonathan was fastidious, precise, and clinical. To write a paper, he would sit in his chair and think, then dictate the paper fluently from beginning to end. Afterward, he would check it, make minor changes, and perfect the result."

"As you know, I'm the opposite. I start with a blank page and write down my ideas as they come, but they come in the most haphazard and idiotic order. I start somewhere in the middle and then work a little forward, then I leap backward, and the paper looks like a jumbled mess until, near the end, it all comes into focus. I love that feeling of order emerging from chaos. I also think my wild way of working produces new ideas because I see links that I wouldn't see if my ideas ran on rails."

"Anyway, the post-doc position depended on results, not on conforming to any particular method, and my results were better than Jonathan's. I pointed this out, but my supervisor insisted I wouldn't fit into the program, so it was a waste of time for me to apply."

"What did you do?"

"I applied, of course."

"That's my girl!"

"I also wanted to Eva, who offered to mobilize the sisterhood on my behalf, but I declined. I could fix the problem myself."

"It turned out that Jonathan and I were the only two candidates of that year's intake to make it to the interview stage. I prepared for the interview by studying what the team was working on and speaking to some team members until I knew the subject inside out."

"When the date for the interview was published, I learned that my supervisor was leading the panel of examiners. That was unusual."

"It was very unusual," Roger agreed. "So, tell me, who was your supervisor?"

"Professor Jakovs."

"Hendrik Jakovs? The man who recommended you for the academic position on Celetaris?

The man you're now going to work with?"

"The very man."

"What changed his mind?"

"Why is he recommending me for an academic position now, though he refused six years ago? I guess because he's seen my work. And, of course, he was right all along. He knew I needed to make an impact first, and then I could go into teaching with some real-life experience. But we're getting ahead of ourselves."

"Professor Jakovs offered to recuse himself," Danielle continued, "but I told him I trusted him to be fair. Then came the examination, which was the hardest test of my career. There were three examiners: Professor Jakovs, a man from Harvard and Oxford. The other two barely spoke. The Harvard man looked at his computer the whole time."

"Professor Jakovs did the interview and was the most ruthless questioner I've ever met. All my preparation was useless. He asked me nothing about the project the team was working on but launched into the most complex subjects at the cutting edge of science. He demanded I do huge calculations and solve equations in my head."

"One of the equations was so monstrous that I asked for a computer and was told to make a guess. I did guess, and they nodded, except for the Harvard man who tapped away. A few minutes after I'd solved the equation, he looked up and said: 'Only 2% out, not bad.' Then he went back to tapping on his computer."

"That was the high point. As the difficult questions flowed, I got angry. Anger helped me. It made me try harder. You know I like a challenge. I like a challenge even more when pushed, and Hendrik Jakovs pushed me hard."

"At the end of the grilling, I was relieved, but what made me angry again was the calm way they simply said, 'Thank you' and dismissed me as if it had been a normal examination. They must have known it was an extraordinary performance."

"Anyway, I meekly left, but I was fuming an hour later when I met Jonathan and learned he'd sailed through his examination. He answered a few easy questions and then talked about how the team worked and what he hoped to gain from the next few years."

"When Professor Jakovs told me they'd selected Jonathan, I asked him point blank if I ever had a chance. 'No,' he said, repeating what he said before: I wasn't the right man for the job."

"I needed to vent, so I wanted Eva again. She insisted we make a stink about it, and having refused before, I now went along with it. It seemed no coincidence that all the members of the selection committee and the project team were men. A couple of days later, I got three job offers. They were all industry jobs, all of them cutting-edge science and engineering, and all of them well-paid with sweeteners.

The most curious one was from Oakeshott Industries. It had the lowest salary and wasn't specific about the work, but it contained the equation I had tried to work out during the examination. Besides the equation, Stephen Oakeshott had written:"

"Dear Goldrick, if you can solve this equation to 2% in your head under stressful conditions, you're perfect for us. We can give you harder tasks under worse conditions and a sense of satisfaction limited only by your ambition."

"That got me: it was a challenge. I told my feminist friends to drop the case: I was leaving Caltech and going to work in Cambridge. I left without saying goodbye to either Professor Jakovs or Jonathan."


To be continued