Xiu reached out, but Lena's hand was back in her lap. Never mind. There were things that had to be said. "Robert was brutal in the beginning, but look how he has helped Juan. I have a theory." She flicked the Nature citation across the table at Lena. This wasn't really her own theory. "Robert has had the equivalent of major trauma, the sort of thing that rebuilds a personality's worldview."
"You read too much crap science, Xiu. Leave that to us professionals."
"It's as if he's been all unwound. He has his memories, but physically he's just a young man. He has a second chance to get things right. Can't you see that, Lena?"
Lena flinched at the words, then hunched forward even more. She was silent for a long moment, staring down at her twisted body, her head swaying in gentle negation. Finally she cranked her gaze up to Xiu's. Something that might have been a tear glinted in her eye. "You have a lot to learn, my girl."
And with that Lena backed away from the table, her chair making an agile rise and turn." 'Fraid I'm done for the evening." She rolled off toward her bedroom.
Xiu took care of the dishes. Usually Lena insisted on doing the kitchen work. "That's something I can still do with my own hands," she often said. Not tonight. And if I were just a little more clever about people , thought Xiu, I might know why .
35
The Missing Apostrophe
Zulfikar Sharif was no longer in the graduate program at Oregon State. Robert encountered a very old-fashioned error message: "No longer a registered student, no longer at OSU." Even Sharif's enum was a stub labeled "vacated." That was a little scary. Robert hunted around. Worldwide, there were about a thousand matches for "Z* Sharif." None of the accessible ones were a good match. The rest were people trying with various degrees of competence to keep their privacy.
But the Zulfi Sharif whom Robert sought was still a techno-bumpkin. After an hour or two, Robert had tracked him down to the University of Kolkata.
Sharif was very subdued. "Professor Blandings dimissed me."
"From the OSU graduate program? In my time, we professors were not so powerful."
"Professor Blandings had help from your authorities. I spent several weeks trying to explain myself to some very insistent U.S. government agents. They couldn't believe that I was an innocent who had succeeded in being multiply hijacked."
"Hmm." Robert looked away from Zulfi Sharif, at the city all around them. The day looked hot and muggy. Just beyond their small table, crowds swirled, young people laughing and smiling. The skyline had its share of tall and ivory towers. It was the Kolkata of modern Indian vision. For a moment he was tempted to open a second, naysayer channel and try to figure out what was real and what was hype. No, concentrate on figuring what part of Zulfi Sharif is real and what is hype . "I suppose the best evidence the cops think you're innocent is that they let you return to India."
"Indeed so, though sometimes I wonder if I'm not just a fish on a very long line." He gave a wan smile. "I really did want to do my thesis about you, Professor Gu. In the beginning, it was academic desperation. You were the trophy I could sell to Annie Blandings. But the more we talked, the more I — "
"How much was you, Sharif? How many — ?"
"I wondered that too! There were at least two besides myself. It was a most frustrating experience, sir, especially at the beginning. I would be in the middle of speaking with you, going through the questions that I knew would impress Professor Blandings — and then at a whack I was a mere bystander!"
"So you could still hear and see?"
"Yes, often that was so! So often that I think the others were using me to generate some questions for inspiration, and then warping them to their own purposes. In the end — and my confessing this to your police was a great mistake — in the end, I came to treasure these bizarre interventions. My dear hijackers were asking questions I would never have conceived. So I hung around throughout your Librareome conspiracy, and in the end I looked the perfect foreign provocateur."
"And if you hadn't been there the night of the riot, my Miri would have died. What did you see, Zulfi?"
"What? Well, I had been most thoroughly locked out that evening. The other players on my persona had agendas that did not include any discussion of literature. But I kept trying to get through. The police claimed I never would have succeeded without terrorist assistance. In any case, for a few seconds I could see you lying there on the floor. You asked for my help. The lava was creeping up against your arm…" He shivered. "In truth, I couldn't see any more than that."
Robert remembered that conversation. It was one of the sharpest fragments in the jumble.
The two of them, eight thousand miles apart, sat in silence for a few moments. Then Sharif cocked his head quizzically. "Now I am well quit of my perilous literary research. And yet, I cannot resist asking: You are at the beginning of your new life, Professor. Can we expect something new under the sun? For the first time in human history, a new Secret of the Ages?"
Ah. "You're right, there is room for something more. But you know — some secrets are beyond the expression of those who experience them."
"Not beyond you, sir!"
Robert found himself smiling back. Sharif deserved the truth. "I could write something, but it would not be poetry. I got a new life, but the Alzheimer's cure… it destroyed my talent."
"Oh no! I had heard of Alzheimer failures, but I honestly never suspected you. Thinking there might be another canto of the Secrets was about the only good thing I still hoped to come out of this adventure. I am so sorry."
"Don't be too sorry. I wasn't… a very nice person."
Sharif looked down and then back at Robert. "I had heard that. In the days I couldn't get through to you, I interviewed your former colleagues at Stanford, even Winston Blount when he wasn't making conspiracies."
"But — "
"It doesn't matter, sir. I eventually realized that you had lost your sadistic edge."
"Then surely you would have guessed the rest!"
"Do you think so? Do you think your talent and your malevolence were a package deal?" Sharif leaned forward, engaged in a way that Robert had not seen since their interviews of weeks before. "I… doubt that. But researching the issue would be intriguing. For that matter, I have long wondered — and been too timid to ask — what really changed in you? Were you a decent fellow from the time of your dementia cure? Or was the change as in Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol,' with new experience making you kindlier?" He rocked back. "I could make such a splendid thesis out of this!" His eyes swept back to Robert, questioning.
"No way!"
"Yes, yes," said Sharif, nodding. "It is such a great opportunity that I almost forgot my resolutions. And the first of those resolutions is no more activities that get me mixed up with the security authorities." He looked up, as if at unseen watchers. "Do you hear that? I am clean, clean in body and soul and even in my fresh fried clothes!" And then addressing Robert once more: "In fact, I have a new academic major."
"Oh?"
"Yes. It will take several semesters of prerequisite fulfillment, but that will be worth it. You see, the University of Kolkata is starting a new department with new faculty, real go-getters. We have a long way to go considering the competition from the universities in Mumbai — but the people here have funding, and they're willing to take on fresh faces such as myself." He grinned enthusiasm at Robert's puzzled look. "It's our new Institute of Bollywood Studies! A combination of cinema and literature. I'll be studying the influence of twentieth-century lit on the latest Indian arts. And much as I regret our lost opportunities, Professor Gu, I am so happy to be in a major that will keep me out of further trouble with the authorities!"