At the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Johannesburg, Hennie Swart looked at the lines scrolling up his computer screen with disbelief. The head nurse of Wits Hospital in Elizabethtown, a good friend of his aunt, had allowed him to use her credentials to log in the hospital’s main computer when he had told her that it was for researches related to his work. Hennie could no longer believe in coincidences. Things were happening that had no physical explanations and all of them had happened in Elizabethtown except for one case in Pretoria and that case had come with other mysteries. A temporary paraplegia and heartbeats that doctors could not bring down to a normal level. And what to make of the latest cases? Images burned into retinas and an ex-boxer breaking his fingers after punching another man half his size. According to the testimonies of witnesses the other man didn’t even flinch. A lone white man walking inside a shebeen in a black township.
Hennie drummed his fingers pensively. If only he knew who was the woman walking along the road from Johannesburg to Elizabethtown last Friday.
A meeting alarm bell rang in a corner of the screen. Hennie printed out the hospital reports, grabbed his notebook and headed for the elevator. He had been waiting for this meeting the whole week after having learned of the coming of Richard Greene at the Institue like most of the physicists upstairs. And today’s the day. Greene was to give a lecture at the Institute in half an hour. Hennie pressed the elevator button that would take him up to the Lecture Room.
Inside the Institute Lecture Room, scientists, physicists and a few outside distinguished guests were milling about, making idle talks or commenting about the latest experiments and theories. An air of anticipated excitement filled the room. Secretaries in their best suits or dresses walked among them offering coffee and pastry. Pieter Coetzee could be seen ordering the seats chart. Each desk from across the podium had a name tag. Hennie looked for his and was glad to see that it was right next to Charlize.
– “Hey, ready for the ultimate lecture?” he said, dropping his notebook on the desk.
– “Wouldn’t wanna miss this.” Charlize said with a smile.
Hennie looked around the hall. “What’s the row of desks in the back for?”
– “That’s for the scientific press.”
– “Woah, and look at all those in the front seats, who are they?”
– “The cream of South Africa scientists from Cape Town and Pretoria.”
– “No, is that who I think it is?” said Hennie pointing at a tall black man in a tailored suit having a discussion with Coetzee.
Charlize nodded. “The man himself, Trevor Plato.”
– “Did Greene allow to this?”
– “Even if he didn’t I don’t see how he can avoid it. This is after all a lecture for South African physicists and last I heard Plato is still the head of the physics department at the University of Pretoria.”
Before Hennie could ask Charlize another question, Kayla, the office receptionist came in, drawing all the men’s eyes to her short, tight, miniskirt.
Hennie whistled. “Woah, Kayla. Is that skirt legal in the streets?”
– “Shut up, Hennie. Liz, there’s someone asking for you at the front desk.”
Charlize looked up, surprised, because she did not have any appointments for the day.
– “Who?”
Kayla blushed. “A very, very handsome man. A man to die for. My God, Liz, who is he? How can you hide someone that good-looking?”
– “Did he say his name?” Charlize asked but by Kayla’s reactions, she already had an idea of who that might be.
– “Clark. He said he had some papers for you to sign.”
Hennie grabbed her arm before she could stand up. “Liz. What’s this? You have a secret man in your life I don’t know about?”
Charlize rolled her eyes and stood up.
Kayla too stopped Charlize before she could leave her desk. “Liz, I hope you don’t mind but I asked him and he told me he’s only working for you. Would it be alright if I asked him out?”
Charlize smiled. “Uh yes, Kayla. Absolutely, but what makes you think he doesn’t already have someone?”
Kayla laughed. “For a man like that. Do you think I’d care about who he dates?”
– “Jeez, I wish women would feel that way about me.” said Hennie.
Charlize shook her head and walked to the elevator.
When the elevator doors opened, the scene at the front desk was so ludicrous that it made Charlize laughed. Somehow, all the secretaries, feminine personal and female colleagues seemed to suddenly have things to do at the front desk. Clark was sitting at a corner surrounded by women walking back and forth for no reasons, pretending to do this or forgetting to do that. All had their eyes on him. There were even a group of girls outside the Institute looking at him through the glass window.
Clark saw her and stood up.
– “Clark? How did you get here?” Charlize could feel the envy around her.
– “I walked.”
– “You walked all the way from Elizabethtown? Why didn’t you ask Kwanele to drive you?”
– “That’s all right, Miss de Vries. Ma sent him on some errands. I hope I haven’t disturbed you from your work.”
– “No, it’s okay. What is it?”
Clark pulled out a piece of paper. “It’s the Child Welfare Service’s paperwork for Maggie. It just needs your signature. They said it would be best if we could mail it today.”
– “Of course.”
Charlize walked to the front desk where a woman in her twenties did not seem to be able to stop looking and smiling at Clark. Charlize took a pen from her desk and signed the paper. She handed the paper to the girl. “Emma, could you mail this today? The address is on the form.”
– “Sure, Lizzie.” Emma said, and managed to put the form in an envelope, write the address on it, place it on the outgoing mail box without once taking her eyes off Clark or losing her smile.
Charlize turned to Clark. “Are you going back to Elizabethtown now?”
He nodded.
Charlize looked at the time. 10:00 a.m. The lecture supposed to last two hours.
– “Clark. I have to attend a lecture that should end around noon. If you want to wait, we can have lunch after and then you can go home with me.”
Clark looked around. “Here?”
– “I have an idea. Why don’t you attend the lecture with me? It’s about string theory. I think you’ll enjoy it.”
– “I’ll be glad to.”
Charlize smiled and led Clark to the elevator under the covetous looks from the female staff, knowing well that she would be talk of the Institute for the next coming weeks.
In the Lecture Room, Charlize had made Clark sat at a lone desk in a corner. The desk was mostly used by lecturers to leave their handouts for the audience. She went to talk to Coetzee who quickly glanced at him and nodded. Charlize went back to her desk by Hennie’s.
Ahead of them, Coetzee was joined by Hoskins.
– “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seat.” Coetzee announced, “Please welcome Professor Greene.”
A long and loud applause erupted in the room as Richard Greene stepped behind the podium.
An hour went by where Greene made his lecture without interruption. Behind him, the three large blackboards were already full of mathematical symbols and equations. Most of them well beyond the grasp of the erudite audience. Hoskins watched the whole scene from his desk by the podium with an obvious satisfaction.
Greene wrote one final equation on the main blackboard that all the audience hurried to take down on their notebooks.
Greene, his two hands leaning on the podium, raised his head. “If any of you ladies and gentlemen have questions about the final equation, I’m willing to answer them.”
One of the physicists raised his hand. “Prof. Greene, I don’t understand that part of the equation where you’ve introduced rho.” he said by pointing at the top of the main blackboard.
– “That’s not a question, that’s a statement. Next?” said Greene looking straight at the audience. He waited for a moment then straightened himself up, satisfied.
– “So, as you can see, my equations based on the works of Juan Malena’s breakthrough of unprecedented magnitude and Edward Ritten’s M-Theory show that—”
Greene stopped and looked curiously at one corner of the room. Everyone in the room followed his look and turned their heads at the same time.
– “Do you have a question?” Greene asked, raising his voice a little so that Clark could clearly hear him.
Greene pointed at him. “Yes, you. You look dissatisfied of sort. Is something wrong with what’s on the blackboard?”
Clark looked at Greene timidly.
– “Come on. Don’t be afraid. Enlighten us. We’re among friends here. Tell us what bothers you.” Greene had raised his voice a pitch louder.
Charlize was going to interrupt Greene to tell him that Clark was not a physicist, but Greene continued in a tone full of venom.
– “Well, I see our friend has nothing to say, so next time, I’d suggest you don’t try to be smarter than you are.”
Everybody looked at Clark, most of them wondering who he was. The same interested look came from the press bench who smelled a good story.
Coetzee stood up, “Professor Greene, I apologize for that. That man is not—uh—that man is a… nobody. He’s just Miss Charlize de Vries’ domestic. He’s waiting for a ride home.”
Polite laughters ran through the room. Greene held up his hands to calm down the commotion and turned to Clark saying between bouts of laughing.
– “I’m sorry… I should have guessed… that you were asleep. If I were you, I know I would be too.”
The laughters in the room doubled.
Charlize could no longer take this. She was ready to say her mind but Hennie pinned her down hard to her seat and whispered, “Liz, no.”
The laughters continued but then stopped abruptly when Clark slowly stood up and approached Charlize’s desk.
– “Miss de Vries, with your permission, I’ll walk back home. Jakobus might need me at the farm.”
Knowing that everyone was watching them, she simply nodded. Only Hennie had seen the note Clark slipped in Charlize’s hand. Clark, eyes still lowered on the floor, quietly left the room while Charlize read the note.
It was Greene who broke the uncomfortable silence that permeated the room. “Well, now that the intermission is over and the farmer has gone back to his farm, let’s continue our discussion. As I said earlier—”
Charlize’s raised her hand.
Greene looked at her with a smile. “Yes, Charlize. Do you have a question?”
– “Yes, professor. Is there any guarantees that the Malena-Ritten method will work as you had intended in the third term of your equations?”
A stunned silence followed. Everyone’s attention moved to the blackboards while Greene stood motionless, a forced smile on his face.
He turned around, ran his eyes through the written equations on the blackboards and stayed mute for a considerable amount of time.
Mathematicians and physicists in the room looked at the very innocent-looking error and began to realize that this was just not a minor difficulty but a fundamental flaw.
Coetzee did not know what to say. The press people were on edge in their seats. Hoskins stood up to look at the blackboard while Hennie stared ahead dumbstricken.
Finally Greene slowly shook his head and with his back still to the audience said, “Well, good catch there, Miss de Vries. You’re right. I… uh… somehow, I’d missed that…” and he proceeded to erase the equations.
Greene turned to face his audience not losing one ounce of his arrogance. “Ladies and gentlemen, please note that this error does not mean that my work is beyond salvation but that it only requires a stronger proof.”
The journalists in the back row were already calling frantically their editors on their cell phones before the Lecture Room broke out into incomprehensible chatters. Among the commotion, only two people sat still at their desks. Charlize, looking down at a note in her hand and Hennie Swart, staring at a printed hospital reports.
