“An interruption,” Charlie sighed, sitting straight. “Short but sweet, I hope.”
After glancing over his shoulder—two newer boys labored with a Marchant calculator, a cumbersome but useful device—Santangelo opened the folder to reveal a map. Unfolding it end over end, he spread the sheet atop Charlie’s work.
“I have to finish this pile today,” Charlie protested, tapping his pencil on the gray metal in-box.
“Half a minute.” Santangelo pointed to the top of the map: New Mexico.
Charlie sighed. “Are you chasing Mather, so he can annoy us one last time?”
“That’s the whole thing.” Santangelo was still whispering. “I’ve gone over this map twenty times. I can’t figure out where they sent him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s one university physics program, in Albuquerque, but it’s all astronomy. A guy on my high school’s national science fair team, two years ahead of me? He’s in the graduate program there. I phoned him, and they have no math boys there. Not one.”
“So?”
“So look at this map. There’s Holloman Air Force Base. Opened last year.”
“In the middle of nowhere.”
“Yup. No town nearby, nothing on the map but blank space. I doubt there’s electricity out there, much less physics labs.”
Charlie raised one corner of the map, eyeing his unfinished work beneath. “What’s your point, Santangelo?”
“Don’t be thick. Something enormously secret is going on down there. It all lines up, see? Mather—smartest guy here, I hate to admit it—gets promoted to a place that is practically invisible, on the same day we become top secret, on the same day we become military guys. We are in the war now.”
“We have always been in the war.”
“No, I mean in it.” Santangelo checked on the far-desk boys again, then leaned closer. “This New Mexico deal is so big it’s entirely secret. Either they told Mather, or he figured it out like Cohen was trying to help us do—”
“Cohen wouldn’t help a cat out of a tree if its fur was on fire.”
“Except for all those hints he gave. If we shared the problems we’re solving, we’d be able to piece this together.”
Charlie tilted his chair back. “Uncle John said we’d learn what’s up soon enough.”
“Yes, and wish we hadn’t. But Mather knows now.”
“No offense, Steel Wool. But I really need to get today’s arcs sorted out.”
“Fine.” He snatched up the map, trying to fold it brusquely but finding the creases uncooperative. “Somewhere in the middle of all that nowhere, our boy Mather is living the high life, thanks to our drudgery right here.”
“What makes you think it’s the high life? Two days ago, you were saying it was some place horrible.”
Santangelo paused in his folding. “Didn’t you see how furious Cohen was not to be picked? He knows what’s out there, he wants a piece of it. Frankly, Fish, so do I.”
“You are letting your imagination run way ahead of you. Blank space on a map, if it means anything, certainly does not signal a luxury resort.”
“After this December Chicago weather, I would be happy with a dose of sun and the rest would be gravy.” The map accordioned into itself at last, closing neatly. “I’ll tell you what else.” He poked Charlie’s papers with one finger. “The answer to every arc question is the same. Sooner or later, everything falls down.” He tucked the map back into his folder. “Then it goes boom.”
“I’m not interrupting anything here, am I?”
Both boys whirled to see Professor Simmons in the doorway, a smile on his face.
“No, sir,” Charlie said. “Only a bit of collaborating.”
“Glad to hear it.” He hooked a thumb at the air over his shoulder. “Say, Charlie, when you’re all done collaborating, would you stop by my office?”
Charlie gave Santangelo a look of fire. “Be right there, sir.”
Simmons swept away down the hall.
“Collaborating?” Santangelo snickered, but Charlie ignored him. He had evening plans with Brenda, and work had made him late way too many times. He would rather arrive in her good graces, and not have to spend the evening apologizing. But any chat with the boss was bound to eat time. As Cohen had trained him, he turned the pages on his desk facedown, then hurried after his uncle.
The metallurgy program was spread all over the university. The math building was not fancy: drab walls, bulletin boards with little on them but thumbtacks—evidence of announcements for students before the war all but emptied the campus. Charlie hustled down the hall, humming to keep his courage up. All the classrooms he passed were dark. In fact, the only light came from the department chair’s office at the end of the hall.
There was no secretary at that hour, so Charlie knocked on the outer door.
“Come,” Professor Simmons said. He waved a hand in welcome.
“Hi, Uncle John,” Charlie said. “Sir.”
“Hello, son.” The professor gestured to a chair and Charlie sat. “Let’s get right to brass tacks, shall we?”
“Yes, sir.” He thought the office smelled of bay rum cologne.
Simmons lifted a sheaf of papers, a thick folder of problems worked and solved. “Your work here has been careful and accurate, Charlie, with very few errors.”
“Thank you, sir. I—”
“But slow. It’s too . . . you’re too slow.”
“That’s my strength though, Uncle John. No matter how hard a problem is, I keep at it, keep plugging away.”
“But our work is urgent. And when I see you lollygagging, chatting away—”
“He came over to my desk uninvited, sir—”
“Please.” The professor held up a hand for silence. “I want to keep you here, Charlie. You’re a good boy, and I don’t see you as much of a fighting man . . .”
“Probably not, sir.”
“I promised my baby sister I would look out for you. But your work? It has to get speedier, or you’ll have to go.”
Charlie nodded, his mouth gone dry. He’d turned eighteen six weeks ago. Army or navy, he could guess what a future outside of the math team would be. The war took what it needed, and didn’t care what opinions an eighteen-year-old boy had on the topic.
“May I ask one question, sir?”
Simmons folded his hands on the desk. “Of course.”
“Well, pardon me if it sounds impudent, but everyone else is dealing with rational numbers. I have all these complicated fractions of curves.”
“Yes. I’ve been quietly making sure you get the work that matters.”
“But arcs, Uncle John? They’re impossible. What makes them so all-fired important?”
At this the professor smiled. “Charlie, Charlie.”
“Like I said, no disrespect meant.”
“You need a bit of history.” Simmons stood, and went to the blackboard. “Trajectories have been a concern of war makers since . . . well, since the Middle Ages.” He drew a primitive catapult, with a dotted line that ran from its bucket, over a wall, to the ground on the other side. “If you have to dig up your ammunition, heave it onto a cart, haul it to the battlefield, and only after all that work can you fire it at your enemy—knowing that if you miss, he’ll fling it right back at you—well, pretty soon you realize that trajectory is one of the most important concepts in warfare.”