IGMS Issue 42 Page 8

  The professor followed the line of my outstretched arm, squinted. He paled. "It's Dr. Cheng. Come, Ismail, help me." He took a couple of steps forward, then twisted his head. "And Ismail, count in your head the whole time."

  He hurried over to his colleague, not waiting for a reply. I didn't have time to ask why I had to count or what would happen if I didn't, so I began counting in my head: one, two, three . . .

  When I got to Dr. Cheng's side, Professor al-Wahab had already pulled the man to his feet. His flesh had a sickly pallor and he was barely conscious. As I stared at him, I stopped counting. The presence came back, a terrifying, howling gale where before it had been a mere breeze. A wave form sprung up in my mind's eye, extending to the mental horizon --

  "Count, Ismail! Count!"

  Eleven, twelve, thirteen . . . as I moved through the numbers the wave trembled, then disintegrated . . . fourteen, fifteen, sixteen . . . this time I didn't waver, scared that if stopped the wind would come back, even more violent than before.

  "Take some of his weight," Professor al-Wahab said. "We need to get him out of here."

  It was lucky Dr. Cheng was a small man, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to provide much support. I wrapped an arm around his belly, and between us, with stuttering steps, we walked him towards the exit. When we got to the turnstile, Professor al-Wahab called the guard on the other side.

  "Why did he collapse?" I asked, as we waited for help.

  "Dr. Cheng got careless," Professor al-Wahab replied, breathing hard. "It won't happen again."

  Professor al-Wahab wouldn't speak further about the matter, but I could tell that it deeply troubled him. As for myself, my encounter with the object (as I would learn to refer to it) had left me badly shaken. I didn't know much then, but even I understood that the object was the reason I'd been brought here, and that it wouldn't be the last time that terrible wind would tear through my mind.

  After letting me rest in my room -- where I passed up the bed for the floor, but still didn't manage to sleep -- he came back with a hard chick pea like thing. I rolled it in my palm, unsure what to do with it. Did he want me to eat it? It didn't look much of a meal.

  "It's an interpreter," he said, as if that explained anything. "Put it in your right ear."

  Uncertainly, I did as he instructed. The chick pea felt cold and hard, an intruder in my ear. Then it warmed and softened, accompanied by a pins and needles sensation.

  "You'll get used to it," the Professor said, laughing.

  It took me a moment to realize he hadn't spoken the last words in Arabic, yet I had still understood him.

  Afterwards, he led me to a communal lounge.

  "Everyone," Professor al-Wahab announced at the threshold, "I want to introduce Ismail Dhu-Nuwas, a promising young mathematician from Saudi Arabia."

  A mathematician? Me? I'd barely ever heard the word before, never mind being one. I glanced between the dozen or so faces that were staring at me, feeling like a deceiver.

  How could they not see me for what I really was? Right then I wanted the floor to split and the earth to swallow me whole.

  "Another kid, Muhammad?" a grey-haired man leaning on a cane said with a sigh. "We'll be overrun with the tykes soon."

  Professor al-Wahab rubbed his temple. "We've been over this before, Ed. Two years ago the steering committee asked us to look at alternative methods --"

  "I know, I know!" The grey-haired man brandished his cane at Professor al-Wahab, "And we let you talk us into this harebrained scheme! We've got boys and girls who know tensor calculus, but can't tie their shoelaces." He nodded at a frail kid in an oversized sweater beside one of the many whiteboards that lined the room. "No offence, Lukas."

  "I use Velcro now, Professor," the kid replied, grinning.

  "Ismail," a woman with a red bow in her hair said from a round table in the middle of the room, "excuse Professor Wheater's rudeness. He forgets people have feelings. I'm Hilary Stamp. It's a pleasure to meet you. Is that traditional dress?"

  I looked down at my 'abya. It was filthy. "Yes, I'm a Bedouin," I said, ashamed that I looked so dirty. I felt I was letting down my tribe.

  Judith, the girl from the swing ball game, said, "I didn't know the Bedouin taught themselves mathematics." There was a mean edge to her voice.

  "We don't," I said. The room went very still and quiet at my words.

  "Do you know topology?" Judith asked.

  "No."

  "Set theory?"

  I shook my head.

  "Do you even know algebra?"

  "That's enough!" Professor al-Wahab glared at Judith. "You'll find Ismail a very accomplished natural thinker, I'm sure."

  There were murmurs, shakes of the head.

  "Who's going to teach him, Muhammad?" asked a tired voice from the back of the room. I craned my neck to see Dr. Cheng slouched in a high-backed armchair, a patterned blanket over his body.

  "We're going to try something different this time," Professor al-Wahab said. He rested his hand on my shoulder. "The object will teach him."

  Professor al-Wahab led me around the room, introducing me to each of the mathematicians in turn. Five minutes later, in my unease, I would be unable to name half of them. There were five children, the eldest being Wai Tat, who was fifteen, and the youngest being Lukas, who was eight. There were eight adult mathematicians, all professors or doctors from all over the world. All the contents of the whiteboards and sheaves of paper scattered around the room were filled with meaningless squiggles, unintelligible to me.

  I didn't even think I could operate the coffee machine.

  From the children I could sense disdain, from the adults, a condescending sympathy.

  Later, I approached Professor al-Wahab. He stood alone by the window, frowning. Far off, occasional streaks of light lit up the night skies.

  "Are they fireworks?" I asked.

  He turned to me, ruffled the hair at the back of my head. "No, Ismail. They're rockets."

  "Are we under attack?"

  "In a sense." He smiled. "Don't worry. We're quite safe here."

  I wanted to know more. "Why do they fire rockets, Professor?"

  He sighed. "It's complicated. Congolese guerillas -- a private army if you like -- don't like the international presence here. This is how they let us know their feelings." He glanced around. Most of the mathematicians were involved in lively conversations, gesticulating expansively or jotting ideas on the whiteboards. Wai Tat sat apart, staring at me. Professor al-Wahab returned his gaze to the world outside. "I think it's time I explained this place."

  After grabbing some bread and fruit from a small kitchen, he took me to a dining room and pulled out two chairs from the long table -- one at the head, one to its immediate left. "Sit," he said, seating himself at the head. "Eat."

  I sat, reached for a crust with my right-hand. I was hungrier than I realized, and I quickly devoured the piece. I reached for another.

  "Six years ago," Professor al-Wahab began, "something fell from the skies."

  At first, as the object streaked over Africa, he explained, the scientific and military agencies tasked with watching the heavens, tagged the object as an unusual, though not remarkable, meteor. That changed when the object reached its anticipated impact site. There was no impact. Seismologically, the object was invisible -- and it shouldn't have been. Of course, at that stage nobody thought anything as exotic as the strange, telepathic, rippling black sphere would be found.

  The astronomers expected to find a cometary fragment with an atypical composition or abnormal geological strata to account for the lack of a collision.

  The military agencies didn't second guess.

  The Americans, the Chinese, the Russians, the Arab Bloc, and the E.U. all offered assistance to the D.R.C. within the hour. What with the combustible state of international relations over carbon, water, and the rest, the object's arrival almost ignited another world war. Fortunately, a compromise was reached.

  I blinked,
trying to keep up with Professor al-Wahab's account. The world was getting bigger and more messy all the time.

  "Forgive me, Ismail," Professor al-Wahab said, rubbing an apple against his sleeve. "I'm confusing you. The bottom line was that the Congolese couldn't control the site themselves, even though the object was on their land. Before a day had passed, all the major nations had sent representatives."

  He took a crisp bite of his apple. "As you can imagine, the discovery of the sphere was very exciting for everybody. It was clearly not a natural phenomenon." His eyes were wide, his expression angelic.

  Even then, I could see that the object still generated an almost religious awe in the professor. Over the coming months I would learn that he, more than anybody else, had made the object his life's obsession. An obsession that had come at a great personal cost.

  "Do you know what that means, Ismail?" he asked, grasping my forearm.

  I shrugged. I was still feeling too overwhelmed from everything I'd seen and heard to think clearly.

  Professor al-Wahab said, "It means there's intelligent life elsewhere." He looked up as if he could see straight through the sloppy whitewashed ceiling to the constellations above. "It means we're not alone."

  I don't know if it was the Professor's intention, but his words made me feel smaller and more alone than ever.

  "Of course," he said glumly, returning his gaze to me, "the powers that be saw this as a grave threat. A threat to be kept secret from the world at large. Warmongering idiots."

  "But, Dr. Cheng --" I began, thinking of his prone body beside the object.

  "The object is powerful, certainly." Professor al-Wahab got up, paced up and down the length of the table. "Powerful, but not hostile."

  "Why did it come here, Professor?" I asked.

  "That is a very good question." He stopped pacing, gripped the back of the nearest chair. "If only we knew, Ismail."

  He went on, describing how the assembled military had poked and probed and prodded the object, while their parent nations squabbled over who should be in charge. "They learnt nothing. The weapons experts, the materials scientists, the language specialists. Nothing. The object seemed impervious to any kind of interaction -- they couldn't even move it. The only thing they learnt was that they were just as bad as each other. The site would've been shutdown if it wasn't for the visit of a young F.S.B. agent."

  "Eff-ess-bee?"

  "The Russian Intelligence Agency -- it's a special part of their police force. The important thing was that Dmitri Mirolevich experienced a telepathic connection with the object."

  "Like me?"

  "Yes, like you, Ismail."

  Professor al-Wahab continued, spelling out how a second wave of excitement had energized the community when they realized that the mathematically gifted were able to interact with the object. "They opened up the site to some of the world's leading mathematicians -- and some of the lesser ones too. We learnt that the object had a playful nature, that it offered a mental gymnasium for those who had the requisite skills. Everyone came away changed by their encounters. Some were humbled. Some went insane. Some fled back to their ivory towers, inspired and terrified in equal measure."

  At his words I recalled the alien wind that had streamed through my mind earlier in the day. I shuddered.

  "The politicians grew impatient, though."

  "I don't understand."

  Professor al-Wahab slumped back into his chair. "The world is a very difficult place these days, Ismail. An age of gluttony is coming to an end, and countries are fighting over the bones. Some leaders saw the object's arrival as divine -- Allah's -- intervention. When it didn't smite us down, they imagined that it might be our salvation." He held my gaze for a long while. "It isn't."

  I thought about the overgrown grass and the dilapidated buildings. "Is that why this place is so --"

  "Run down?"

  I nodded.

  "A few leaders still think the object is a weapon -- a spearhead of a future assault. If it can't be reverse-engineered they want to bury it. Others think it is a gift for humanity -- a tool to enlighten us. But most now think it's just a curiosity. No more interesting or consequential to their power games than the black hole at the heart of the galaxy."

  "The black hole?" The only black holes I was familiar with then were the near-empty wells in the desert.

  "When gravity --" Professor al-Wahab sighed, then smiled. "I'm envious of you, Ismail. You're at the beginning of a marvelous adventure."

  I tried to share the professor's optimism, but all I could feel was a sense of foreboding. I wanted to learn, but not with that invading wind as my teacher.

  "Anyway," the professor went on, "after three years when the object hadn't brought us to Armageddon or led us to nirvana, the politicians gave us mathematicians free reign. They keep an eye on us, but they don't expect their problems will be solved here. Maybe they're right."

  "What do you think, Professor?"

  "I don't know, Ismail. I believe we've only scratched the surface of this thing. And we'll only learn more by pushing further." He stared at the lone banana in the bowl in the middle. "Had enough to eat?"

  I nodded.

  He got up again, pushed his chair under the table. "I think it's bedtime -- for both of us."

  I got up. "Professor al-Wahab?"

  "Yes?"

  "Is that why the children are here? Is that why I'm here? To push further?"

  He stood by the door, hand hovering over the light switch. "Professor Wheater, Dr. Stamp, Dr. Cheng -- they're all brilliant mathematicians who've made wonderful contributions to the Edifice." I later gathered that Professor al-Wahab always referred to the sum total of human mathematical knowledge as the Edifice. "And they've all had successes with the object. But the truth of the matter is that, like me, they're ensnared as much as they're liberated by what they already know. That's why I started this program. That's why I brought Wai Tat and Judith and Lukas in. That's why I searched so hard to find somebody like you. Your minds are all potential. Potential that might make the breakthrough." The zeal was back in his eyes. "Especially you, Ismail. Especially you."

  As I left the room and the light blinked off behind me, I wondered how far he would push me in his craving for the truth.

  That night I couldn't sleep. The novelty of flying, of the soldiers in their camouflaged-blue uniforms, of the luscious jungle, quickly wore off as I stared at the shadows on the wall. The night was hot and sticky, completely unlike the cool air I was used to in the desert. There were no bleats or grunts of animals, only the incessant drone of the insects.

  I tossed and turned, my mind ablaze, only able to think of that otherworldly presence that Professor al-Wahab wanted me to submit to. I imagined the moment of contact, threads of cognition spinning into a spider's web from which I'd become hopelessly entangled. I was terrified that a piece of it would break off in my mind and stay with me forever.

  My feelings about Professor al-Wahab were confused. From the moment I'd met him he'd treated me with dignity and kindness. He seemed an honourable man, but could I really trust him? The passion in his eyes when he'd talked about the object had frightened me. Would he always put me before his own wishes?

  I sat up, tossed the thin sheet from my body that was slick with sweat. I had to move.

  Someone had left some fresh clothes for the morning -- Western style dress -- but I slipped on my dirty 'abya instead. I could still smell the last vestiges of the desert in its folds, and I took strength from that. I left my room, and tip-toed down the dark hallway back to the communal lounge. The moon, a thick oval in the night sky, bathed the room in a chalky light, and I didn't need any further illumination to navigate my way between the sofas and tables. I stopped at one of the white boards, squinted at the terse lines of mathematical script on its shiny surface. Even if the lights were on I would not have been able to make head or tail of it.

  Back then I could barely read Arabic.

  With a shaking hand I
picked up the marker pen that rested on the board's bottom lip, determined to write something. I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I just wanted to mark something that I felt would always be beyond me. I popped off the pen lid, raised the tip to the board --

  "Ismail?"

  I twisted round. Wai Tat stood in the doorway, robed in a silk dressing gown.

  "I-I-I-" I didn't know what to say. I clicked the lid back on the marker pen, gently placed it back on the lip.

  Wai Tat stepped over to me, studied the board. He looked much older than his fifteen years, his face thinner and more lined than it should have been.

  "I haven't touched it," I said.

  He smiled. "Don't worry, it's all up here," he said, tapping the side of his brow. His Arabic was clumsy, and I reached for my interpreter before I realized I'd taken it out before I'd settled down to sleep.

  "You speak Arabic?" I could feel my eyes stretching wide as I asked.

  "A little."

  "Allah has blessed you," I said, careful not to praise him directly for fear of the evil eye. I already knew how difficult it was to learn another language from my father's attempts to teach me a neighboring tribes' dialect.

  "My country has blessed me," he replied with a touch of annoyance. "Forgive me, I don't mean to insult your God," he quickly added.

  I shrugged. Allah's will was done, bidden or unbidden.

  We stood for a while, both peering at the mathematical lore, I with ignorance, Wai Tat with appreciation.

  "Could you not sleep?" he asked, when he was satisfied with whatever he was looking for on the board.

  I nodded.

  "I was the same when I first came here. I didn't think I belonged." He turned to me. "But I was wrong. I do important work now. I'm sure it'll be the same for you in time."

  I tried to take heart from his words, but my expression must've betrayed my true feelings.

  "Is it the object?" he asked.

  "It was like a gale in my mind," I said quietly.

  "You needn't fear it. It's strong, but it's not evil."