Colin found himself thinking of the attractive daughter of the major benefactor. “Some are. Others definitely not so much.”
“Who teaches you the math there? Is it Braxos? I know him. Not a bad brain. Not so gifted, though. He teaches you what?” Fremdt directed that last question at the paper he took from a file on his desk. “So. Advanced algebra. Good, good, maybe you can come teach my first years how tocount. Limits, binomial theorem, complex numbers, integrals, you cover all this, yes?”
“I’ve been going a lot further on my own.”
Fremdt flipped to the file’s next page, ignoring the sheets that fell onto the floor. “Nothing is said of this.”
“I didn’t tell him. I haven’t told anyone.”
Fremdt shifted his head up, down, to the left, as if trying to fit Colin into his field of vision. “And why is this?”
“Last year I showed him an equation I didn’t understand. It made him mad.”
“What was this equation?”
“Using algorithms to calculate statistical trends.”
“Yes, I can see Braxos now. Not liking how an almost child is showing what he doesn’t know. And now? Where has this secret brain of yours taken you?”
“Linear and nonlinear differential equations.”
Fremdt fumbled for the chair behind his desk, seated himself while watching Colin. “The equation on the board there to your left. Do you know what it is?”
“Yes.”
“So swift he answers. All right, my young brain. Speak. The professor listens.”
“It shows limits and continuity in a multivariable equation.” Fremdt had become very still, like the energy inside was being compressed further and further. Tight and powerful, but not dangerous. Colin decided he liked this man. “There are scalar functions of two variables with points in their domain that give different limits when approached along different paths.”
He nodded. Once. An almost violent up-and-down motion. “You read this, yes? Which book?”
“John Hubbard.Vector Calculus.”
“An old work. Not up to date on many things.”
“It’s all the school had in its library.”
“And what are the variable limits?”
“Approaching zero throughyequalskx. But with the origin approached along the parabola, the function value has a limit of plus or minus point five.”
Another birdlike adjustment of his head’s position, then, “There on the shelf to your right. Shifrin’s book,Multivariable Mathematics. Yes, that one. You take and you read. Term starts next week. Advanced calculus meets Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, eight o’clock. All the students who are asleep when they arrive, I wake them up fast. Be on time.” He waved at the door, almost punching the air with his stubby fingers. “Now go. I must grade papers of these ones still learning how to count.”
CHAPTER12
Six-thirty that evening, Colin was seated on the same bench by the academy’s entrance where he had waited for his father. The other Sojourn students had been eating dinner when he slipped out. Mrs. Fitzgerald had left for the weekend, and Camila had merely looked at him when he said he was having dinner off campus. He left a note on the battered desk used by Grant, the night counselor, giving the Brooks’s address and saying he didn’t know when he would be back.
A solitary bird perched in the Carolina pine to his right, peeping softly as the twilight glowed against the streetlights. The highway’s noise was a faint whisper in the background. There was no wind, and the early spring heat still radiated from the earth at his feet. He wore the same outfit he had worn for his interviews. The feeling of weightless liberation that had propelled him through the afternoon meetings was with him still. Every blade of grass, every needle on the branches overhead, gleamed with a special light. Not eventhe memory of the dinner with his father’s new family could reach him. Nor the ticking clock. He knew what had to happen. Either he could find a way to move forward as he wanted, or he would confess everything to Arnold and Sandrine and Celeste. Even though that way carried a far greater risk of defeat. Just knowing the die was cast left him feeling calm. He would give it another three days, then go to the academy leaders and lay it out. Try to convince them that their natural reaction would lead to failure …
A horn beeped once as a Honda Pilot pulled through the entrance. Before it had fully stopped the passenger door opened. Then Mira popped out, shielding her eyes and pretending to gape at the arched entryway. “Where are all the other geniuses?”
“It’s Sunday. Genius gets the day off.” He waved through the open door. “Hi, Mr. Brooks.”
“Climb in, sport.”
“Sorry we’re late,” Mira said. She pointed him into the front passenger seat, slid open the side door, slipped inside, then leaned in close enough for Colin to smell the floral scent to her hair. “Daddy almost caught the house on fire.”
He pulled into traffic and replied, “Not even close.”
