Part 9 (1/2)
”I understand. My height and so forth,” I said.
”Yes. How old are you now, biologically?”
”Forty.”
”I could have. . .” he murmured.
I understood what he was thinking.
”Do not regret it,” I said firmly. ”You should not regret it. You should not regret a thing, do you understand?”
For the first time he lifted his gaze to my face.
”Why?”
”Because there is nothing for me to do here,” I said. ”No one needs me. And I. . . no one.”
He didn't seem to hear me.
”What is your name?”
”Bregg. Hal Bregg.”
”Bregg,” he repeated. ”Bregg. . . No, I don't remember. Were you there?”
”Yes. At Apprenous, when your father came with the corrections Geonides made in the final month before takeoff. . . It turned out that the coefficients of refraction for the dark dusts had been too low. . . Does that mean anything to you?” I broke off uncertainly.
”It does. Of course,” he replied with special emphasis. ”My father. Of course. At Apprenous? But what were you doing there? Where were you?”
”In the gravitation chamber, at Janssen's. You were there then, Arder brought you in, you stood high up, on the platform, and watched while they gave me forty g's. When I climbed out, my nose was bleeding. You gave me your handkerchief.”
”Ah! That was you?”
”Yes.”
”But that person in the chamber had dark hair, I thought.”
”Yes. My hair isn't light. It's gray. It's just that you can't see well now.”
There was a silence, longer than before.
”You are a professor, I suppose?” I said, to say something.
”I was. Now. . . nothing. For twenty-three years. Nothing.” And once more, very quietly, he repeated, ”Nothing.”
”I bought some books today, and among them was Roemer's topology. Is that you or your father?”
”I. You are a mathematician?”
He stared at me, as if with renewed interest.
”No,” I said, ”but I had a great deal of time. . . there. Each of us did what he wanted. I found mathematics helpful.”
”How did you understand it?”
”We had an enormous number of microfilms: fiction, novels, whatever you like. Do you know that we had three hundred thousand t.i.tles? Your father helped Arder compile the mathematical part.”
”I know about that.”
”At first, we treated it as. . . a diversion. To kill time. But then, after a few months, when we had completely lost contact with Earth and were hanging there -- seemingly motionless in relation to the stars -- then, you see, to read that some Peter nervously puffed his cigarette and was worried about whether or not Lucy would come, and that she walked in and twisted her gloves, well, first you began to laugh at this like an idiot, and then you simply saw red. In other words, no one would touch it.”
”And mathematics?”
”No. Not right away. At first I took up languages, and I stuck with that until the end, even though I knew it might be futile, for when I returned, some might have become archaic dialects. But Gimma -- and Thurber, especially -- urged me to learn physics. Said it might be useful. I tackled it, along with Arder and Olaf Staave, but we three were not scientists. . .”
”You did have a degree.”
”Yes, a master's degree in information theory and cosmodromia, and a diploma in nuclear engineering, but all that was professional, not theoretical. You know how engineers know mathematics. So, then, physics. But I wanted something more -- of my own. And, finally, pure mathematics. I had no mathematical ability. None. I had nothing but persistence.”
”Yes,” he said quietly. ”One would have to have that to fly. . .”
”Particularly to become a member of the expedition,” I corrected him. ”And do you know why mathematics had this effect? I only came to understand this there. Because mathematics stands above everything. The works of Abel and Kronecker are as good today as they were four hundred years ago, and it will always be so. New roads arise, but the old ones lead on. They do not become overgrown. There. . . there you have eternity. Only mathematics does not fear it. Up there, I understood how final it is. And strong. There was nothing like it. And the fact that I had to struggle was also good. I slaved away at it, and when I couldn't sleep I would go over, in my mind, the material I had studied that day.”
”Interesting,” he said. But there was no interest in his voice. I did not even know whether he was listening to me. Far back in the park flew columns of fire, red and green blazes, accompanied by roars of delight. Here, where we sat, beneath the trees, it was dark. I fell silent. But the silence was unbearable.
”For me it had the value of self-preservation,” I said. ”The theory of plurality. . . what Mirea and Averin did with the legacy of Cantor, you know. Operations using infinite, transfinite quant.i.ties, the continua of discrete increments, strong. . . it was wonderful. The time I spent on this, I remember it as if it were yesterday.”
”It isn't so useless as you think,” he muttered. He was listening, after all. ”You haven't heard of Igalli's studies, I suppose?”
”No, what are they?”
”The theory of the discontinuous antipole.”
”I don't know anything about an antipole. What is it?”
”Retronihilation. From this came parastatics.”
”I never even heard of these terms.”
”Of course, for it originated sixty years ago. But that was only the beginning of gravitology.”
”I can see that I will have to do some homework,” I said. ”Gravitology -- that's the theory of gravitation?”
”Much more. It can only be explained using mathematics. Have you studied Appiano and Froom?”
”Yes.”
”Well, then, you should have no difficulty. These are metagen expansions in an n-dimensional, configurational, degenerative series.”
”What are you saying? Didn't Skriabin prove that there are no metagens other than the variational?”