Prizes

  They fumed in silence for a moment, each waiting for the other to lash out.

  Sandy was gradually coming to an agonizing realization.

  He suddenly did not recognize the woman he had married.

  “I’ll tell you one more thing,” he said quietly. “You can’t have it both ways anymore. You can’t be his daughter and my wife.”

  “Good. I agree,” she hurled back.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

  “Isn’t it clear?” she answered, softly but sternly. “After what you did today, I don’t want to be married to you, Sandy.”

  42

  ISABEL

  Isabel da Costa woke up one morning to find herself living face-to-face with harsh reality.

  Throughout the first sixteen years of her life, Raymond had succeeded in cocooning her from intrusions and distractions. Indeed, that was the source of his greatest pride.

  To the best of his knowledge she had never known pain, denigration, or hostility of any sort, although, to a large extent the secret talisman had been her precocity. But it was no protection from attacks on her intellect.

  As Raymond rightly expected, the publication of her article on the Fifth Force had created a storm. But however magisterial her argument, it did not convince those scientists who had spent their working lives trying to prove precisely what she had demolished.

  Pracht kept a respectful silence, but colleagues in universities all over the world did not feel any such noblesse oblige. If the girl was old enough to attack, she was old enough to be attacked.

  For young Isabel, the articles published in the International Journal of Physics as well as in other distinguished periodicals were tantamount to hate mail. It was not merely that her adversaries were trying to refute her conclusions, it was the style in which she herself was referred to.

  Some of the essays reeked bile. One went as far as to sneer, “But what can one expect from a mind so young? She has not had time to learn her physics properly.”

  Naturally she would be accorded space by the editors of these various publications to defend herself. But who could assist her?

  Raymond could not really be of any help. In fact, un-wittingly, he increased her tension by voicing his worries. And Karl Pracht, who had so magnanimously allowed her to dig his scientific grave, could not be expected to help pour earth on it as well. Besides, he and his family were caught up in the complexities of moving their household across the American continent.

  She felt isolated, except for what moral support Jerry—who was away at a tournament—could give her by telephone.

  At the outset, the newspapers had once again trotted out the old stories about the Berkeley Child Prodigy and updated them. But this time they were not all patting a bright little girl on the head. Her antagonists had their own conduits to the press, who were more than willing to quote them when they spoke daggers.

  Isabel was so busy formulating her counterattacks that she decided not to attend the ceremony to receive her master’s degree and thereby risk exposure to the media.

  Indeed, the storm dissolved Isabel’s aura of infallibility and replaced it with one of controversy. She was now perceived as such an enfant terrible that some members of the Physics Department let it be known that under no circumstances would they supervise her doctoral dissertation.

  But of course not all the reaction was negative. A good many scientists wrote to congratulate her on her achievement, and the journals printed many replies from distinguished physicists who were won over by her arguments.

  Just prior to his departure for Boston, Karl Pracht invited Isabel to lunch at the faculty club. He could not hide his astonishment—nor mask his displeasure—when he saw that Raymond had come along as well.

  “With due respect, Mr. da Costa,” he said with exaggerated politeness, “this was supposed to be a meal for a student and her adviser.”

  It suddenly dawned on Pracht that Raymond was desperately anxious to make sure that he did not divulge to Isabel anything of the unpleasant altercation that had taken place between the two of them. And realizing that he could never dislodge the adhesive father, Karl relented and asked his nemesis to join them.

  The conversation was friendly, though delicately avoiding any mention of the Fifth Force debate. Over coffee, Karl revealed the principal purpose of his invitation.

  “Isabel, I have a gut feeling that you’re going to find Berkeley a little less congenial from now on. Obviously, I’m pitching for my new team now, but I really think you should let me arrange that fellowship for you at MIT. I promise you’ll find somebody world-class to direct your thesis, or failing that, humble has-been that I am, I’ll do the job myself.”

  Raymond listened in contemplative silence. Yet he could see on his daughter’s face a certain unmistakable reluctance, and knew when she told Pracht “We’ll think about it,” it was something she definitely did not want.

  His instinct was confirmed when they walked out into the bright summer sunlight and Isabel did not say a word. Something made him suspect that although the youngsters had not seen one another, she was somehow tied to Berkeley by the idea of the presence of Jerry Pracht.

  “I think he made a lot of sense, Isabel,” her father commented. Thinking to himself, not only is MIT the Olympus of science, but I’ve outmaneuvered the guy after all. Instead of having his son shipped to Cambridge, we can go there ourselves and leave him here.

  He then remarked out loud, “I’d say if Pracht comes up with a big enough offer, we should take it and go to greener pastures.”

  June 28

  A new book. And in a new medium: I’ve just opened a file in my very own laptop computer, for which I now have to provide eighty megabytes of my own memory. From now on, the saga of my personal life should be easier to keep private since I have encrypted the file and no one can access it without the password “sesame”—it’s hardly original.

  I was desperate to talk to Jerry about Karl’s invitation, especially since Dad was putting unbelievable pressure on me. At first I was disappointed when Jerry gave me a pep talk about doing “what was the right thing for myself” I guess I was hoping he would get all passionate, and beg me to stay.

  But it’s typical of his generosity. I always know that he wishes only the best for me and would never make any selfish demands—although a part of me wishes he would.

  “Look at it this way, Isa,” he explained. “Starting this spring, Berkeley is going to be just a mailing address for me. So, the only difference in our currently un-satisfactory relationship will be in the size of the phone bill. Right?

  “And frankly, I can see a lot of advantages in your going East. First of all—and I guess you never thought of this—MIT has practically a club or—perhaps I should call them a play group—of prodigies there. Granted, you’ll be a graduate student, but at least there’ll be a lot of undergraduates your age and I think that might make a major difference to your social life.”

  I felt like shouting no, Jerry, you make the only difference that matters.

  After we hung up, I thought a lot about what he said and realized that if he was in fact going to be on the road so much, I might as well go and do my doctorate at the school Dad refers to as “the top of the mountain.”

  43

  ISABEL

  September 11

  Jerry was right. Moving to MIT turned out to be a good idea in more ways than Dad and I had ever imagined. First of all since I’m grown-up now (five foot five and a half in track shoes), nobody on the campus whispers, raises eyebrows, or points fingers as I walk past. A lot of freshmen look my age, and one or two of them are actually younger.

  There’s a math whiz from the Bronx High School of Science who’s only fifteen and—lucky guy—he’s got at least half a dozen kids his age to talk to. Probably the most amazing thing is that he lives in the dorm with other students.

  Also I’m here incognito. This I owe to Karl, who arranged with the MIT press off
ice not to make any noises about my arrival.

  In a highly charged community like Cambridge, Mass., there are not as many undergraduates eager to pay thirty dollars an hour to be tutored by Isabel da Costa’s father. But fortunately, one of the conditions of the offer Karl struck for me with Tech (which is how the locals refer to MIT) is that—despite my dad’s objections—I’m obliged to work two afternoons a week as a teaching assistant instructing kids in the Intermediate Physics labs. My course work to prepare for the Ph.D. won’t pose a problem. The real challenge will be the dissertation. My M.A. thesis was a pretty hard act to follow. But I’ve got to come up with something even better—hopefully less controversial, if the two don’t necessarily go hand in hand. I find it incredible, but even now letters attacking me continue to fill the journals.

  Dad says—not entirely in jest—that now I know how Galileo felt.

  In a sense, Isabel da Costa was living a double life. First, her assault on the Fifth Force theory had given her a worldwide reputation. There were scientists both pro and con, and she was variously regarded as illustrious or notorious.

  Yet, on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology she was just another grad student sweating out the requirements for her doctorate.

  Perhaps her most significant accolade was a follow-up article by Karl Pracht in The Physical Review reporting that he had repeated the various experiments and that her refutation of his argument had been correct.

  Although some of the students occasionally invited Isabel to join them for a dinner or the movies, she was forced to limit her social activities to Kaffee and Klatsch in the common room, which housed what passed for a coffee machine. Isabel’s day was divided between supervising and being supervised.

  At MIT she encountered an array of new minds, if not more brilliant than those at Berkeley, at least with refreshing new hobbyhorses, for the university had no fewer than fifty full professors of physics.

  Everyone on the faculty wanted to be her thesis adviser. For they knew wherever Isabel excavated, she would find gold and some of its glitter would inevitably shine on them.

  As usual, she was breezing through her course work, and keeping the profs who taught her seminars on their toes. But they seemed to enjoy the challenge as much as she. In fact, Isabel could not recall ever being happier.

  At least intellectually.

  Even as a lowly T.A. she was granted a cubicle, grandiosely referred to as an office. But since it had a telephone and her very own computer terminal hooked into MITNet, the room had a legitimate claim to officiality.

  In direct contrast to the unchanging routine of Isabel’s life, Jerry’s schedule was highly erratic: different cities, different time zones, different motels. But he never failed to phone her at a time when she would be able to talk privately.

  Though they had not met face-to-face since midsummer, an astonishing intimacy was growing between them.

  Jerry was young to be making the tour—especially on his own.

  He was getting beaten fairly regularly, and began to count it a victory when he was not totally shut out by the big boys or speedily aced into oblivion.

  Though not rising in the rankings, Jerry was nonetheless gaining a following—at least in Pracht’s lab. For his career gave the scientists an aura of athleticism by association. Whether he knew it or not, he was fast becoming a hero to dozens of sedentary physics types, for whom he was their vicarious Sir Lancelot.

  Also, even when he appeared briefly on the Cable Sports Network enacting the minor role of straw man for superstars like André Agassi to dispatch, Jerry was holding his own in another department.

  A great many of the female sports fans were more interested in the good looks of the players than the quality of their play. And here Jerry Pracht gave even the flam-boyant Agassi a run for his money.

  Imagine the cannonade of emotions hitting Isabel all at once as she sat in the lounge watching him play, and hearing coeds sigh about his blond good looks.

  She was at times joyful, proud, lonely—and embarrassed. For in one early qualifying round when Michael Chang took a mere forty-five minutes to relegate Jerry to the showers, a female graduate commented loudly, “Just imagine, that gorgeous hunk’ll be hanging around Houston with nothing to do. I feel like calling him up and offering my company.”

  “You mean your services?” quipped a waggish undergraduate.

  “Why not?” the girl replied. “He’s fair game, and so am I.”

  “Well don’t get too excited, honey. A guy like that has probably got his choice of half a dozen consolation prizes waiting outside the locker room.”

  This ostensibly harmless banter upset Isabel terribly, and she was barely able to reach the safety of her office before breaking into tears. To her delight, virtue was rewarded. Less than ten minutes later the phone rang.

  “God, am I glad you’re there, Isa,” Jerry said with great relief as her heart soared. “I’m as depressed as hell. I just suffered a particularly ignominious defeat. Dink could have done better out there without a racket.”

  Her instinct told her it would be prudent not to mention that she had seen the match. “Want to talk about it?” she asked.

  “I really want to forget it,” he replied frankly. “But quite honestly, if I don’t at least bitch a little, I’ll never get it out of my system.”

  He launched into a self-deprecatory tirade about his bad performance, which lasted almost as long as the game he had actually played.

  “Hey, Isa, I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I know I’m boring you to stupefaction—”

  “No, Jerry, that’s fine,” she reassured him.

  “Part of the reason I was so upset,” he continued, “was that I knew Paco was watching the game. The minute I hang up he’ll chew me into little pieces. If I keep playing like this, I may not even get my job back at the club.”

  “Now you cut it out, Pracht,” Isabel chided him. “I don’t know anything about sports, but I know everybody has a bad day. Tonight was just your turn.”

  “Why is it, Isa,” he asked affectionately, “that even though that kind of pep talk is as stale as a week-old bagel, coming from you it somehow makes me feel good?”

  His compliment thrilled her.

  “Do you think it has something to do with the way I feel about you?”

  I hope so, she thought to herself.

  “Anyway,” he continued. “I know Paco’s going to pull me off the road for a week of drills. I’ll call you when I know where I am. By the way, if you ever feel as crappy as I did and want to lean on my shoulder—even over the goddamn phone—Dad can always get me.”

  He was reluctant to end the conversation, for he had another reason for calling. Finally, he confessed softly, “Isabel, I really miss you. Sometimes I get these fits of insanity that make me want to smash all my rackets on the floor and fly to see you.”

  She tried to conceal her excitement by joking, “And go back to school, of course.”

  “No.” He laughed. “I haven’t gotten that crazy yet. Good night, girl wonder.”

  As was their routine, Isabel would call Ray when she was ready to leave the lab, and he would come and walk her home—a prudent urban practice regardless of age.

  “Get much done?” he asked as they strolled through the empty streets.

  “A little,” she murmured, omitting to mention how much her heart was full of Jerry’s words.

  “By the way,” her father remarked ingenuously, “I saw your old friend on television tonight.”

  “Who’s that?” she asked offhandedly.

  “Why, none other than young Pracht, who got positively blown off the court. I must say he’s not much of a tennis player.”

  That’s okay, Dad, she thought. He’s a hell of a human being.

  By contrast with his daughter, Ray had a great deal of time on his hands—from the moment he accompanied Isabel to the door of the lab until he picked her up at whatever hour they would arrange.

 
True enough, he occupied himself with all the domestic chores—cleaning, shopping, preparing the food—and then sitting down to read through the mass of publications Isabel now subscribed to, abstracting for her those he thought of importance.

  Yet it was hardly a fulfilling life, and he knew it. Still worse, it became increasingly clear to him that Isabel knew it as well.

  One morning when she arrived at the lab at eight o’clock, Isabel found a Post-It notice from Karl Pracht fluttering on her door, asking her to come and see him at her earliest convenience.

  Puzzled, she hurried to his office. Befitting his rank, the spacious room had a panoramic view of the Charles and the shining towers of the city beyond.

  He offered her a cup of real coffee from his percolator. She took a sip and then asked, “What’s this about?”

  “Your dissertation, Isabel—or more specifically, lack of it. In all the time we’ve known each other, you’ve positively effervesced with theories, ideas, concepts—enough challenges to occupy the entire American Physical Society for a century. Isn’t it strange that you can’t settle on just one topic?”

  Isabel shrugged.

  “May I offer my own hypothesis?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s Ray, isn’t it?”

  He looked at her, but she offered no comment.

  “Isabel, sooner or later you’re going to write your thesis and you’ll be offered a cavalcade of professorships. At that point there’ll be no evading the fact that your father will have played out the last syllable of his role. He’ll have done his job brilliantly, and can rest comfortably on your laurels. But what the hell are you gonna do about him?”

  For what seemed like an eternity, Isabel was mute. At last she protested weakly, “He needs me. He really needs me.”

  “We both know that,” Pracht answered sympathetically. “The problem is, you no longer need him.”