In his senior year Jamie was elected president of the student council. When he learned that his most trusted friend was suffering through Ferraro’s course and that the midterm would again be on Othello, very quietly Jamie asked his friend to copy out his old Shakespeare blue book and hand it in as his own. The student received a B-plus. Jamie confronted Ferraro in his cramped, book-strewn office with the evidence. No one knew except the assistant professor, Jamie, and his student henchman.
Jamie’s old C was upgraded to a B-plus. He graduated with honors. All his friends congratulated him, but Jamie took no pleasure in his victory. The memory still troubled his dreams.
ROME
The meeting was raucous, almost chaotic. Six dozen of the world’s top scientists, representing disciplines in geology, biology, physics, chemistry, and astronomy, were behaving like six dozen unruly children.
Father DiNardo ran a hand over his shaved pate as he tried to close his ears to the din of the arguing voices. Emergency meeting indeed, he thought. This meeting is becoming an emergency in its own right. Not even Brumado himself can keep order in this crowd.
The meeting was taking place in an auditorium graciously offered to the Mars Project by the Italian Institute of Aeronautics. Heavy drapes were drawn across the windows of the big chamber, but DiNardo knew Rome so well that he could practically see through the drapery. The railroad terminal was across the Via Praetoriano, and beyond that monument of nineteenth-century architecture rose the tired old seven hills, with the ancient Forum and Colosseum hinting at the glory that was Rome. The Vatican was all the way on the other side of the huge city, as far away from the Institute of Aeronautics as possible.
DiNardo longed for the quiet of the Vatican. Even with tourists streaming through St. Peter’s, it would be quieter and more orderly than this near riot. But then, most of these men and women had interrupted their usual work to hurry to the Eternal City. DiNardo wondered how composed he would be if he had been suddenly called to an urgent meeting and had to spend nine or ten hours on an airplane and then more hours of sweaty rigor getting his baggage through customs.
He groaned inwardly as a florid-faced man, whose lapel badge identified him as a geologist from Canada, tried to outshout an intense young astronomer from Chile who had interrupted him.
Alberto Brumado, standing at the center of the long table that had been placed on the stage at the front of the auditorium, suddenly banged his fist on the table so hard that the six men and women flanking him on either side jumped with shock.
“You will both sit down,” Brumado shouted into the microphone before him. “Sit down. Now!”
The room suddenly fell silent. The Chilean astronomer sank down into his chair. The florid geologist glared at him for a moment, then he sat down also.
Brumado ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “Our tempers are overcoming our good sense,” he said, in a more normal tone. “We will take a fifteen-minute break. When we return, I suggest that we each try to remember that we are men and women of science, not politicians or street hawkers. I will expect a rational discussion, with the normal rules of order and politeness to be strictly obeyed.”
Like sullen, guilty students the scientists filed out of the big auditorium. Leaders of their fields, all of them, DiNardo knew. World-class researchers. There were at least four Nobel Prize-winners in the group, by the priest’s informal count. The best of the best.
He headed for the men’s room, one flight down. He had to push his way past the crowd at the refreshment table, noting absently which nationalities were lining up for coffee, which for tea. The Americans went mostly for soft drinks, of course. With ice.
Sure enough, Valentin Grechko was already at one of the urinals. The Russian physicist had a reputation for drinking tea constantly and then racing for the toilet. DiNardo pretended to be finished as Grechko turned toward the sinks, zipping the fly of his dark blue trousers.