believed in?"
"That's the way she described it to me, back when she was going to college."
Gideon looked at the description of "Life," and thought of Julia's own computer. Why leave it there unless it was some sort of message? A message to the people she knew would be going over her hard drive with a fine-toothed comb.
'"This is what I'm doing,'" Gideon said, still staring at the chandelier. '"This is what I'm interested in.'"
"What?"
"That's what she was telling them. I have a feeling about this. I think she might have modified her thinking about computers, about the data inside them, at least."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't think she sees them as a window on her mathematical world," Gideon turned to face Ruth. Her face was half shadow and half rose from the ambient light reflecting off the woodwork. "I think she might see them as that world."
Ruth looked at him. "Come on, that's crazy. Julie knew—even when she talked about God in the numbers—that we're only talking about mental constructs here. She knew that there could never be a 'real' physical representation of it. There's even a theorem that proves that we can't have a complete picture of the mathematical world."
"What's that?"
"I don't quite understand it, but she told me about it the last time she talked to me about her work. It's called Godel's Incompleteness Theorem—I think it says that it's impossible to prove all true statements in a logical system, even if the system is consistent. Julia thought that it proved that we can only glimpse the perfection of the mathematical."
Gideon nodded. "What that means is that there's still room for faith in Julia's religion."
Ruth stopped short. "What do you mean?"
"What's faith, but the acceptance that some things are true despite lacking the proof for them? Despite the impossibility of proving them . . . When did Julia tell you about this?"
"Just before she went to MIT. What are you thinking?"
Gideon looked at the computer in front of him, then past it at the series of terminals ranged along the reading tables. It's gotten to the point where we see them, but we don't see them. The computer was ubiquitous, everywhere . . . and most of them were connected to each other. The space, the environment that existed inside those machines, was just on the edge of comprehension. It was very easy to think of it as another world, an alternate universe.
And if he was thinking along these lines with just a brush against Julia Zimmerman's ideas, what was the impact of the woman herself? Someone everyone acknowledged as a genius . . .
"She stopped talking to you about the time she started working at MIT, didn't she?"
Ruth nodded.
"You said she took a page from the Greeks . . ."
"Yes, the Pythagoreans. Where are you going with all this?"
Gideon pulled a paper out of his pocket. It was the copy of the campus paper he had taken from MIT. He showed it to Ruth, reading the caption, '"Assault on Mt. Riemann; Drs. Nolan and Zimmerman stand with their New Pythagorean Order—members of the ET Lab— show a printout of a possible proof,' have you heard that phrase before? 'New Pythagorean Order?'"
Ruth shook her head.
Gideon bent over the computer and called up a new search. The term "Pythagorean Order" brought a series of documents. The content wasn't that surprising. . .
"According to Aristotle, the Pythagorean Order, first to develop the science of mathematics, revered number as the origin of the cosmos. The Order, a religious cult founded in Croton on the coast of Italy around 530 BC, was founded by Pythagoras of Samos, a mathematician, philosopher, and religious leader."
Gideon looked at the screen and said, "Nolan said that they were almost a cult."
"I'm not following you."
"I'm talking about what every religious leader needs." Gideon turned and looked at Ruth. "Disciples."
"Are you serious?"
Gideon took the article back and started hunting down some on-line telephone directories. "She told you her beliefs; she doesn't seem shy about voicing them."
"Yes, but I mean, they're off the wall. What are you talking about? A cult at MIT?"
Gideon started getting phone numbers matching the names in the article. He scribbled on the article as he paged through a series of names. "Is it so unlikely that she'd manage to find people who'd give some kind of weight to her beliefs? Look at how she left MIT. She erased all the ongoing work at the ET Lab. Could she do it all herself? We're talking about the efforts of a dozen people. Wouldn't that require some complicity from the people who worked in the lab?"
"I'm certain that a few people supported her . . ."
"The only member of the ET Lab who's still there was the one tenured professor. Not a one ended up with a teaching position, or even continued their studies there past the demise of the lab." Gideon shook his head. "And I know at least one of those people is helping Zimmerman right now." Gideon scribbled a final number and stood up. "Come on, I need to get to a phone."
Ruth stood up, and they started heading toward the end of the reading room. They had only gone a few feet when Gideon slowed to a stop. There were two men standing at the end of the room in front of them, both converging on the exit.
Gideon turned around to head toward the other end of the room, and another set of doors. At that end of the room, there were two others. A pair of guys, one who'd been sitting at a terminal, another who had been reading at a table—both were just standing.
Gideon had been keeping an eye out for people who were out of place. But these guys hadn't been. They'd been filtering into the reading room, one at a time, over the past half hour. They were all dressed differently, one was in a suit, another in jeans and a flannel shirt, another in Dockers and a turtleneck. Gideon kept turning and Ruth gripped his arm.
Everyone who had been in the room with them—reading or perusing the computer network—they were all standing, facing the two of them. Gideon put an arm around Ruth, as if he could protect her from the people surrounding them.
Of the people surrounding them, one of the two or three women stepped up toward them. She wore a navy suit and Gideon found himself looking for where the gun was holstered. She stopped about twenty feet away.
"Gideon Malcolm, Ruth Zimmerman?" she asked. It was just barely a question.
"Who are you?" Gideon asked.
"Tracy Davis, I'm a federal agent. I'm a negotiator."
"Can I see an ID?"
Davis obliged by pulling one out and opening it for him. Gideon looked and noted, with some irony, that she was Secret Service.
"What's to negotiate?" Gideon said. "You have us surrounded."
"I'm going to try and make sure no one gets hurt." Davis smiled weakly, and Gideon could tell, by looking in her eyes, that she was unsure how this was gong to go down. They were treating this like a hostage situation, which suddenly made Gideon feel very nervous.
"No one's going to get hurt," Gideon said. He said it to reassure Ruth and himself as much as the folks surrounding them. "I'm letting her go now, okay?"
He waited for Davis to say, "Okay," before he started moving, very slowly. Right now there was no doubt in his mind that there were snipers in place somewhere beyond the arched windows that overlooked the reading room. None of whom he wanted to spook.
Once his arm was free and Ruth was standing beside him, he held his hands out in front of him. He said, "I have a gun in my pocket. Are people going to be nervous if I hand it over?"
Davis pulled out a walkie-talkie that was the size of a small cellular phone. She spoke quietly back and forth for a few moments, then she said, "Is it in your jacket?"
Gideon nodded.
"What you want to do is take off the jacket and toss it over here by me."
At this point, Ruth said, "What's going on?"
Gideon shook his head as he Slowly began removing his jacket. "You wanted to talk to the Feds? Here they are."