THE STERADIAN TRAIL: BOOK #0 OF THE INFINITY CYCLE (3 page)

4

‘Y
es, young lady,’ Joshua said and the mike made its way to her.

She grabbed it and said: ‘May I use the board, sir? It’ll be easier for me that way.’

‘Well, that’s a first,’ Joshua said. ‘Sure, come on down.’

Lakshman turned around with a sudden rush of energy and chimed in, motioning her towards the podium. ‘Come down, come down.’

She put the mike down, stole one quick glance at the crumpled sheets of paper on her desk and briskly marched down the steps, her olive-green dupatta fluttering in the wake.

There were two whiteboards in the auditorium, one on each flank of the screen. Joshua had used the right one for his genomics example. The one on the left remained untouched, and she picked up a marker from the desk and homed in on it. She sketched out a modified version of the radix bucket data structure on one frame of the whiteboard. On the next frame, she scrawled out a series of mathematical expressions with so many exotic symbols that they held Joshua in a hypnotic thrall.

‘Sir, it seems to me, if you change your radix bucket data structure like this,’ she pointed at the first frame, ‘and apply a non-Robinsonian push-pop slash index operation like this,’ she pointed at the second frame, ‘the algorithm could be speeded up further. . . . Is that correct, or am I going wrong somewhere?’

Joshua stood frozen, staring at the whiteboard like it were a piece of sculpture.

Some of the students, getting a tad impatient, not in the least because they couldn’t make head or tail of what the crazy girl had scribbled on the board, started slinking out of the hall through the rear exits.

Lakshman noticed the silent exodus and looked at the clock. Dinnertime was approaching and if he waited any longer, only a sprinkling of the audience, if any at all, would be left to applaud when he delivered the vote of thanks and handed over a memento to Joshua. Not wanting to be caught skimping on formalities, he decided to step in and expedite the proceedings.

‘Why don’t we take this offline? It’s getting late,’ he said and walked down to the pit.

Frowning, the girl returned to her seat.

Lakshman made a little speech thanking Joshua for taking the trouble to come and deliver the talk on campus, mouthing the usual platitudes about how students would have found his talk interesting and useful and stimulating and things to that effect. He handed over the memento and the audience dispersed after obliging with a final round of applause.

The rituals over with, Joshua turned to the whiteboard and resumed his owlish stare. The girl hesitantly made her way back to the podium, having consulted her scrap-work once again. Two minutes of pin-drop silence followed, with Joshua goggling at the whiteboard, Lakshman at Joshua and she at both of them, brimming with anticipation.

Neither Lakshman nor Joshua showed any sign of snapping out of their silence. Unable to bear it anymore, she stepped in and broke the silence herself. ‘Sir, I think we can try comparing the number of steps before and after the change. I can try counting them if you want,’ she said and picked up the marker.

Joshua finally stirred. ‘No need for that, young lady. You’re absolutely right. I wasn’t sceptical about what you said. I was only wondering why I hadn’t thought of it myself . . . God,’ he said with a sigh of resignation, ‘I must be getting old. What’s your name again?’

‘Divya, sir.’

‘Pleasure to meet you,’ Joshua said and shook hands with her. ‘What do you study? Not economics, I’m sure.’

‘No sir, I’m in computer science.’

‘Why doesn’t that surprise me,’ said Joshua. ‘Which year are you in?’

‘Second year, sir.’

‘For some strange reason, we call that the sophomore year in the US.’

‘Yes sir, I’ve heard that.’

‘Don’t tell me you work for this fellow here,’ Joshua pointed an accusing finger at Lakshman.

‘Sorry Josh, she’s guilty as charged,’ Lakshman said.

‘In that case,’ Joshua said and turned to Divya, ‘you wouldn’t mind doing me a favour?’

‘Yes sir?’ Divya said.

‘Could you type all this up in LaTeX,’ Joshua said, circling a finger over her handiwork on the board, ‘and email it to me? I’m in the process of submitting the paper after the second round of revisions. I’ll now rejig the whole thing with your non-Robinsonian push-pop operation before sending it. You will of course be my co-author if that’s all right with you.’

Divya looked at him, stunned. Co-author of a paper? With Joshua? Joshua Ezekiel?
The
Joshua Ezekiel? The Alfred P. Sloan Chair Professor at MIT? The world-renowned authority on algorithms? She couldn’t believe it. ‘This, in a paper, sir?’ she said, pointing at the whiteboard.

‘Yeah,
this
,’ said Joshua with a smile. ‘Why do you look so surprised? You know what you’ve done? This fellow won’t let me tell you, but I’m going to anyway. You’ve pulled off a major coup under our very noses, that’s what you’ve done.’

Divya, beginning to feel awkward, blushed.

Lakshman beamed at her, proud beyond words. ‘She won a gold medal at the math Olympiad, Josh,’ he said. ‘So you shouldn’t be too surprised.’

‘I’ll try,’ Joshua said and turned to Divya. ‘I’ve got to go now, but we’ll be in touch on email. Here’s my card, and I’m sure I can reach you through this guy here.’

‘Yes sir,’ Divya nodded, her face all a-flush.
Oh my God! I’m writing a paper with Joshua Ezekiel!
‘I also have another question, sir, if you don’t mind.’

‘Sure, if you don’t mind me packing up my things as we speak,’ Joshua began unplugging the wires from his laptop.

‘You said the RAND Corporation had the shortest path algorithm before Dijkstra. Why didn’t they publish it first, sir? Why did they keep it secret?’

‘Know anything about RAND?’

‘No sir, never heard of them.’

‘Look them up. They’re a military research organization, though these days they’re also into policy analysis and stuff to make up for all the bad press they got during the Cold War. If I have to guess, the army was using the algorithm for logistics, for planning the movements of troops, weapons and supplies; it was classified information. Today it’s a silly algorithm you find in every textbook, but fifty years ago it was a powerful secret that determined the course of a war.’

‘Why do you have to
guess
, Josh?’ Lakshman butted in. ‘If I remember right, you went to work for RAND right after your PhD.’

‘Shh,’ Joshua said, bringing a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t go raking up my past. Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.’

Divya laughed. ‘I also have another question, sir. Not really a question but a doubt in my mind.’

‘As long as it has nothing to do with RAND or what I did for them,’ Joshua said, stuffing the laptop into a bag and strapping it in place.

‘No sir. It’s something do with your algorithm,’ Divya said. ‘You talked about how it can find the shortest paths between many origin-destination pairs. Can we also use it in a situation where we don’t want to just go from A to B but want to start at A, visit some other nodes, B, C, D, E and so on, and then finally come back to the starting point A as quickly as possible?’

‘Aha,’ said Joshua with a twinkle in his eyes.

Lakshman smiled as well.

‘Well, I can assure you that this algorithm will never be able to handle the problem you describe. For that matter, no algorithm on earth can,’ Joshua said. ‘Because you’re no longer dealing with the warm and fuzzy domain of the Shortest Path Problem, you are now in the whole squalid world of the Travelling Salesman Problem. Heard of it?’

‘No sir,’ Divya said apologetically.

‘That’s surprising,’ Joshua said.

‘Come on, cut her some slack, Josh. She’s only in her third semester,’ Lakshman said.

‘I was kidding,’ Joshua said. ‘The complexity of the Travelling Salesman Problem goes up steeply with the size of the problem, sort of like the old Indian grains-on-the-chessboard story; no algorithm can rein that in. If you have ten nodes to visit you have ten factorial, or millions of possible routings to consider; if you have fifteen nodes, they run into the billions; by twenty you have trillions. Even the world’s most powerful computers can’t cope with that kind of exponential growth in complexity, so it makes no sense for you to waste your time on it. Just send me what you’ve got here,’ he pointed at the board, ‘and I’ll take it from there.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘When you email me, do me a favour and cc it to my personal ID as well – it’s on the back of the card I gave you. I have tons of emails sitting in my MIT inbox I still need to plough through; I don’t want yours to get lost in the deluge.’

‘Okay sir,’ Divya said. ‘I’ll send it to both IDs.’

Divya took leave of Joshua and Lakshman and bounded up the steps, her face glowing like a beetroot.

‘Well, Lax,’ Joshua said once Divya was out of earshot, ‘my last day in India has turned out to be the best. I wasn’t too keen on this talk to start with, but you really made it worth it. I owe you one.’

‘Hey, I didn’t do anything,’ Lakshman said.

‘We can squabble about it over beer. The dinner plan’s still on, right?’

‘Any plan that involves beer is always on,’ Lakshman said. They wiped the boards clean and made their way out to execute it.

My last day in India has turned out to be the best.

Joshua was going to regret crowing like that before long. Wheels were already in motion to prove him wrong on both counts: the day was neither going to be his last in India nor his very best.

5

T
he passport confiscator led Joshua from the teeming chaos of the departure area to a relatively calmer spot a few yards away. After looking around and making sure there was no one else nearby to disturb them or listen in, he motioned away the four cops escorting Joshua. Although the officer looked a bit younger than the other cops, the flippant manner in which he waved them away and the servility with which they responded told Joshua that he held a fairly senior position. Curious, Joshua ran his eyes over his badge. It read: ‘Joyshankar Banerjee I.P.S.’.

‘Sorry sir, you cannot catch your flight today,’ the officer said to Joshua, firmly but politely.

‘Why not?’ Joshua asked.

‘We have strict orders.’

‘From where?’

‘You’ll find out soon.’

‘Why can’t you tell me?’

‘Sorry sir. We’re not privy to that information. All we know is, we have to stop you from boarding your flight; that’s all.’ Joshua was now convinced that Banerjee was placed fairly high up the hierarchy. He had to be, to use lines like ‘not privy to that information’.

As Joshua mulled how to pry Banerjee’s clamp-stiff lips open, he noticed a cop with a trademark potbelly hurtling towards them, gasping for breath. He saluted Banerjee and said something in Tamil. Joshua could catch just a few stray words: Ceegee . . . parking . . . wait . . .

‘Can you come with us?’ Banerjee said to Joshua. ‘We’ll take you to someone who can answer your questions.’

Three more cops joined in and they escorted Joshua to the far end of the airport’s parking lot.

This part of the parking lot stood in stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of the arrival-departure area. Plunged in eerie silence, filled with banks of neatly parked Ambassadors, Joshua felt as if he were entering a cemetery at midnight.

The monotony of the creamy Ambassadors was broken by what looked like a shiny black marvel of American engineering: a limousine custom-fitted with a right-hand-drive. Standing by its side was a tall Caucasian woman in her early fifties, dressed in a formal suit, her blonde hair flowing in what passed for a nippy winter wind in Madras. Banerjee led Joshua to her while the other cops stood back at a respectful distance.

‘Good evening, Ma’am. I suppose this piece of property belongs to your government,’ Banerjee said and handed over Joshua’s passport to her.

‘Thank you,’ the woman said and turned to Joshua. ‘Hello Dr Ezekiel,’ she said, extending her hand. ‘Thelma Paterson, consul general, United States.’

Joshua shook hands, still mystified.

The consul general turned towards Banerjee. ‘Thank you so much. Your department has been most helpful. Please give my regards to the commissioner. I’ll personally write to him as well.’

Banerjee took leave of her and walked up to the other cops. Soon Joshua could see all of them trooping out of the parking lot. Only a few guards from the consul general’s own security detail remained. They stood in a ring a few yards away, well out of earshot.

‘You’re probably wondering what this is all about, Dr Ezekiel,’ the consul general said to Joshua in a whisper, instinctively looking around.

‘
Wondering
would be putting it a little too mildly,’ said Joshua.

‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Let me get to the point then. Does the name Jeffrey Williams ring a bell?’

Joshua flinched. The laptop nearly slid off the shoulder and his face clouded over in a second. The name sure did ring a bell. An alarm bell. But he collected himself quickly. ‘Jeffrey?’ he said. ‘Yeah, sure, I know him. What about him?’

‘Well, he’s dead.’

It hit Joshua like a kick in the gut. ‘Eh . . . what?’ he gasped.

‘Yeah, Jeffrey Williams is dead. . . . Killed or murdered is more like it.’ The consul general eyed Joshua for his reaction and continued: ‘Someone shot him.’

A vague fear took over Joshua. ‘I hope you don’t think . . .’

‘Of course not, Professor. That’s not where I’m coming from.’

‘Then?’

‘It so happens that just before he died, Mr Williams called 911. He seems to have mentioned your name.’

‘Mentioned
my
name? Are you sure?’

‘That’s what it looks like. At least that’s what I was told. Apparently it was all a bit incoherent, so no one is sure what he said exactly, but all the speech recognition software keep spitting out your name with high probability. The cops suspect that it might be a warning for you. In other words, you too may be, may be, at risk if you returned home. Again, no need to get alarmed. They’re not saying that is what it is for sure; it’s only a vague suspicion. But they feel it would be better if you stayed put here for some more time till things cleared up a bit.’

The blood drained out of Joshua’s face.

Thelma Paterson continued: ‘They’re also trying to alert your wife and daughter as a precautionary measure. The message should reach them anytime now.’

‘They’re not even in the country,’ Joshua said. His wife and daughter had gone to Israel on a kibbutz adventure. They had planned to return to Boston a day after Joshua.

‘I know, Professor. They’re going to track them down through our consular offices in Israel. There is no specific threat to them – their names didn’t even crop up – but no one wants to take any chances. They’re going to reach them in Israel and ask them to sit tight where they are till the coast is clear.’

Joshua heaved a sigh of relief. ‘So what exactly do you want me to do now?’ he asked helplessly. It seemed like he had no choice but heed her advice. Consul’s counsel. How very poetic.

‘Could you postpone your trip back to the US and return to your hotel? You can be a guest of the government if you choose. The cops are working hard to solve the case. Once they give the all clear, you can return home with your family. . . . We’re all very sorry for the inconvenience, but like I said, no one’s willing to take any chances. That’s why we had to stop you so rudely. You are too precious an asset for us . . . our government, Professor.’

‘That’s gratifying to hear,’ Joshua said. ‘But how did you manage to track me down all the way here?’

‘The cops on the case tried to reach you in Boston and your assistant told them where you were. Now don’t be surprised if they start calling you directly in your suite; they may have things to talk to you about.’

‘How long am I expected to stay back here?’ Joshua asked, somewhat resigned to his fate.

‘As long as it takes the cops to give us the all clear.’

‘That’s what I’m asking. How many days will that take?’

‘Probably a few days – perhaps a week. I can’t get any more specific than that because I don’t know, and I suspect, neither do the cops. We just have to wait and see. In the meantime don’t hesitate to contact me if you need anything. My officers are standing by to help you.’

She handed his passport back to him along with her card.

He took leave of her and walked back to the main building with worry lines furrowing his forehead, the laptop dangling off a shoulder.

The departure area was teeming with life as before but there was no trace of the cars and jeeps that had come screaming wildly a few minutes ago. But Durai Raj was there, standing guard over the luggage cart, the Expanzo waiting nearby.

The cops had taken down Durai’s name and number plate
and asked him to watch over Joshua’s luggage till he returned. He had been holding an anxious vigil, wondering what all the fuss was about. He was both pleased and puzzled to see Joshua come back to the car. Joshua opened his mouth to say something but checked himself at the last moment. He looked at his Rolex and then made a dash in the direction of the travel bureau counters, ignoring Durai altogether. He returned to the car in a few minutes, cradling a wad of rupee notes in his hand, wearing an inscrutable expression on his face. Durai knew it was not for the sake of tipping him that Joshua had changed his money. He knew Joshua was generous tipper, but he wasn’t out of his mind. He began wracking his brains as to why someone travelling to the US would want to carry so much money in Indian currency.

Joshua tucked the money into his pocket and put him out of his misery. ‘Change of plans, buddy,’ he said. ‘It turns out I’m not going to be travelling today. Could you take me back to the hotel?’

Durai was taken aback. He had sensed something fishy in the air, but he wasn’t prepared for anything as drastic as this. He was itching to ask Joshua what happened, where the cops had taken him, what they’d said . . . But the embodiment of tact and discretion that he was, he knew when to open his mouth and when to keep it shut.

‘Yes sir, no problem,’ he said with quiet dignity.

Within moments, Joshua and his luggage were back in the Expanzo and on their way to the hotel. It had barely wound its way out of the airport and joined GST Road when Joshua had a sudden flash.

Oh my God! Could that be something? . . . He would soon find out.