Zig Zag (18 page)

Elisa
thought that if Valente had noticed the look she'd had on her face
ever since she walked in, he certainly wasn't letting on. He sat down
at the computer, but turned the swivel chair to face her.

"This
is a safe room," he said. "What I mean is it's not bugged.
Actually, I haven't found any bugs in the whole house, but they put a
transmitter in my cell and they've been tapping my phone, so I'd
rather talk here. When they tagged me, they tried to claim that the
electricity was down. But I sealed this room off and gave Faouzi
strict instructions. When they came, we convinced them that this was
just a storage room with no outlets or anything. And I have a few
surprises. You see that thing in the corner cupboard that looks like
a radio? That's a microphone detector. It picks up all frequencies
from fifty megahertz to three gigs. These days you can get them on
the Internet. The green light means we can speak freely." He
rested his pointy chin in his hands, fingers laced together, and
smiled. "We really ought to decide what we're going to do,
sweetheart."

"Well,
I still have a few questions." She was irritated and anxious—not
just by everything he'd told her, but also by the loss of her phone,
which she was now starting to regret (though he hadn't even mentioned
it). "How did you even get in touch with me, and why did you
pick me to begin with?"

"OK.
I'll tell you what happened. First, they made me fill out the
questionnaire at Oxford; that was what first got me suspicious. They
said it was a 'vital prerequisite' in order to attend Blanes's
course. When I got to Madrid, I started seeing beggars everywhere,
and it seemed as if they were spying on me, and then came the power
outage ... But I'm forgetting something. Weeks before that, a bunch
of U.S. universities called my parents to ask questions about me,
claiming to be 'interested' in me. Did that happen to you? Did anyone
ask your family about your life, or your personality?"

"One
of my mother's clients," Elisa recalled, growing pale.
Very,
very
well
connected.
"She
just told me about it today."

Valente
nodded at her approvingly, as if she were a diligent student.

"My
father had already told me about that. They're well-known strategies,
though I never thought they'd try them on me. Anyway, so I made a
simple deduction: all of this started happening after I decided to
sign up for Blanes's course, so the surveillance must be related to
the course. But then I spoke to Vicky ... Oops, my mistake"—he
gave a childlike, apologetic look and corrected himself—"...
to my friend Victor Lopera, I think you know him, we've been friends
since we were kids and I really trust him. But don't call him Vicky
or he'll get really pissed off. Anyway, when I asked him about it, he
said they hadn't made him fill out any forms. I was curious to find
out if I was the only one who was being spied on, so the next logical
step was to ask you, since we got... about the same score on the
entrance exam." She smiled to herself, thinking that those four
one-hundredths of a point really killed him, but she kept quiet.
"Then I saw you talking to that guy at the party at Alighieri,
and that pretty much clinched it. But I couldn't just stroll right up
to you and say, 'Hey, are they watching you, too?' I had to prove it
to you, because I was sure you were an innocent little lamb and
wouldn't believe me just because I told you to. I had to discard the
possibility of any normal form of communication..."

He
paused, stood up and walked toward the corner of the room, where
there was a tiny basin, a faucet, and a glass. He turned on the
faucet and filled the glass.

"All
I can offer you is water," he said. "And we have to share
it. I'm an appalling host. I hope you don't mind putting your lips on
the same glass as me."

"I
don't want any, thanks," Elisa replied. She was starting to get
hot and took off her cardigan. All she had on underneath was a
sleeveless T-shirt. He glanced at her for a split second as he drank
and then returned to his seat.

"So,
then I remembered a trick my father taught me. 'When you want to send
a secret message, use porno.' That's what he told me. Only idiots
send secrets in inconspicuous e-mails. In his world, anything
'inconspicuous' is conspicuous. But nobody really investigates spam,
especially pornographic spam. So that's what I did, but I had an ace
up my sleeve. I was sure that some pictures based on Euclid's
diagrams would look like porno to anyone who didn't have
comprehensive knowledge of math. And as far as the ad and
'mercuryfriend,' those were just arbitrary details, like hacking into
your computer."

"Hacking
into my computer?"

"Easiest
thing in the world," Valente said, scratching an armpit. "Your
firewall is Stone Age. Or should I say Abacus Age? Besides, I'm a
pretty decent hacker. I've even started creating my own viruses."

Despite
being impressed by his brilliant plan, Elisa felt exceedingly
uncomfortable.
So
that's it. He has no scruples about rummaging around in my private
life and he wants me to know it.

"So
why bother to tell me? Why would you care whether or not I knew I was
being watched?"

"Oh,
believe me, I wanted to meet you," Valente said, adopting a
serious expression. "I find you very interesting, as does almost
everyone else... Yeah," he admitted after a second, "I'm
sure Blanes finds you interesting, too, even though he always calls
on me. There aren't too many girls in theoretical physics, and at
Oxford there are even fewer than in Madrid, believe me, and even
fewer like you. I mean, I've never seen a girl who knows as much as
you do
and
has
a hooker's mouth, with tits and ass to match."

Though
Elisa had heard him perfectly, her brain took a moment to process the
information. Valente's tone hadn't changed one iota; it was almost
hypnotic. And her trancelike state was not helped by his marshy eyes,
staring out from that gaunt, lean face. When she finally realized
what he had said, she didn't know how to respond. For a second, she
felt paralyzed, like the woman in the painting, with her hands tied.
Certain people, like certain snakes, had that power over others.

At
the same time, though, she was sure that he wanted to offend her, and
deduced that he would chalk up a victory for himself if she reacted
to his vulgarity. She decided to bide her time.

"I'm
serious," he continued. "You're fucking hot A little weird,
like me, but hot. I have a theory about it. I think it's all organic.
The best physicists have always been pathological. Admit it. The Homo
sapiens brain can't take in all the profundities of the quantum or
relativistic world without serious side effects."

He
got up again and pointed to his portraits, one by one, as he spoke.

"Schrodinger:
sex fiend. Discovered the wave equation while screwing one of his
many lovers. Einstein: psychopath. Left his wife and kids and married
another woman, and when she died he said he was glad, because he
could work in peace without her around. Heisenberg: Nazi. Active
collaborator and the father of the H-bomb project under the Fuhrer.
Bohr: neurotic. Obsessed with Einstein. Newton: vile wretch.
Mediocrity incarnate. Lied and falsified documents just to offend
anyone who criticized him. Blanes: mentally disturbed misogynist. You
must have seen how he treats you. Probably jacks off thinking about
his mother and sister. I could keep going for hours. I've read about
all of them, even me." He smiled. "Yeah. I've kept a diary
since I was five, and I'm a very meticulous recorder. I like to
reflect on my own life. I swear we're all the same. We come from good
families (some, even aristocratic ones, like de Broglie); we have an
innate ability to reduce nature to pure math. And we're all freaks.
And I don't mean just mentally. Physically, too. For example, I'm
dolichocephalic, and so are you. In case you didn't know, that means
we have long heads, like cucumbers. Schrodinger and Einstein, too. My
body is more like Heisenberg's, though. I'm not kidding, I think it's
genetic. And you. Well, who knows who the hell you take after, with a
body like that. I'd like to see you naked. Your breasts are a little
weird, sort of long, too, like your head. 'Dolicomammaries,' we could
call them. I want to see your nipples. Why don't you take off your
clothes?"

Elisa
surprised herself, wondering if she should. Valente's voice was like
radiation: you suffered the consequences of it before you even knew
you'd been affected.

"No,
thanks," she said. "How else are we weird?"

"Our
families, maybe," he said, sitting back down. "My parents
are divorced. My mother even wanted to kill me. By having an
abortion, I mean. My father finally managed to convince her to have
me, and my aunt and uncle took me in. So I came to Madrid and lived
in this house for a long time before I went to Oxford. And even if
you don't believe me, I have actually spent quite a bit of time with
each of my parents." He smiled broadly, showing his eyeteeth.
"Turns out that once I was far enough away, Mom and Dad realized
they loved me. Let's just say we're good friends now. What about
you?"

"Why
ask me if you already know?" she replied.

Valente
snickered.

"I
know some stuff," he admitted. "That you're the daughter of
Javier Robledo, that your father died in a car accident. Just what's
in all the interviews."

She
decided to change the subject.

"You
were saying we should do something. Why don't we go to the police? We
have proof that they're spying on us."

"You
don't get it, do you, sweetheart? The police are the ones who're
doing the spying. Not just the regular police, or even the secret
police. The
authorities.
Bigwigs."

"But
why? What have we done?"

Valente
gave that irritating laugh again.

"One
of the things you learn with my father is that you don't have to have
done anything wrong for them to keep tabs on you. In fact, most of
the time, if you're under surveillance, it's because you've done too
many things
right."

"But
why us? We're students, we just graduated..."

"It
has to do with Blanes, somehow. I'm sure of that." Valente
turned around and typed something on his laptop. A series of
equations appeared, equations from the sequoia theory. "Something
to do with him or his class, but I have no fucking idea what. Maybe
he's working on some project. At first I thought it was because of
his theory, some kind of practical application or some experiment
related to it, but it can't be that..." He flicked his index
finger continuously, scrolling down through them. "The theory is
beautiful, but totally impractical." He turned toward her. "Like
some girls."

Once
again, she resisted the temptation to get angry.

"You
mean the trouble with solving the equation?"

"Of
course. There's an insurmountable predicament. The sum of the 'past'
end tensors is infinite. I've already calculated that, see? So,
despite your ingenious response about curls this morning (which I had
already thought of, by the way), there's no way to isolate the
strings as individual particles. It's like asking if the sea is made
of one single drop or trillions of them. In physics, the answer is
always the same: it depends on how you define a drop. Without a
concrete definition, it makes no difference whether the strings even
exist or not."

"Well,
this is how I see it," said Elisa, leaning forward to point to
the equation on the screen. "If we take the time variable as
infinite, the results are paradoxical. But if we use a limited delta
t, no matter how great it is—say, from the big bang to the
present—then the solutions are fixed quantities."