Then the renaissance and a wave of analysis-what you’d call calculus. That opened up steam power and how to use it, mechanical engineering, electricity. The wave of modern mathematics since say eighteen seventy-five gave us atomic energy. That boy upstairs may be starting off the next big wave.” He got up and reached for his hat. “Just a minute,” I said. I was surprised that my voice was steady. “What conies next? Control of gravity? Control of personality? Sending people by radio?” Dr. Mines wouldn’t meet my eye. Suddenly he looked old and shrunken. “Don’t worry about the boy,” he said. I let him go. That evening I brought Gomez chicken pot pie and a nonalcoholic eggnog.-He drank the eggnog, said, “Hi, Beel,” and continued to cover yellow sheets of paper. I went downstairs and worried. Abruptly it ended late the next afternoon. Gomez wandered into the big first-floor kitchen looking like a starved old rickshaw coolie. He pushed his lank hair back from his forehead, said: “Beel, what is to eat-” and pitched forward onto the linoleum. Leitzer came when I yelled, expertly took Gomez’s pulse, rolled him onto a blanket, and threw another one over him. “It’s just a faint,” he said. “Let’s get him to bed.” “Aren’t you going to call a doctor, man?” “Doctor couldn’t do anything we can’t do,” he said stolidly. “And I’m here to see that security isn’t breached. Give me a hand.” We got him upstairs and put him to bed. He woke up and said something in Spanish, and then, apologetically: “Very sorry, fellows. I ought to taken it easier.” “I’ll get you some lunch,” I said, and he grinned. He ate it all, enjoying it heartily, and finally lay back gorged. “Well,” he asked me, “what it is new, Beel?” “What is new. And you should tell me. You finish your work?” “I got it in shape to finish. The hard part it is over.” He rolled out of bed. “Hey!” I said. “I’m okay now,” he grinned. “Don’t write this down in your history, Beel. Everybody will think I act like a woman.” I followed him into his work room, where he flopped into an easy
chair, his eyes on a blackboard covered with figures. He wasn’t grinning any more. “Dr. Mines says you’re up to something big,” I said. “Si. Big.” “Unified field theory, he says.” “That is it,” Gomez said. “Is it good or bad?” I asked, licking my lips. “The application, I mean.” His boyish mouth set suddenly in a grim line. “That, it is not my business,” he said. “I am American citizen of the United States.” He stared at the blackboard and its maze of notes. I looked at it too-really looked at it for once-and was surprised by what I saw. Mathematics, of course, I don’t know. But I had soaked up a very little about mathematics. One of the things I had soaked up was that the expressions of higher mathematics tend to be complicated and elaborate, involving English, Greek, and Hebrew letters, plain and fancy brackets, and a great variety of special signs besides the plus and minus of the elementary school. The things on the blackboard weren’t like that at all. The board was covered with variations of a simple expression that consisted of five letters and two symbols: a right-handed pothook and a left-handed pothook. “What do they mean?” I asked, pointing. “Somethings I made up,” he said nervously. “The word for that one is ‘enfields.’ The other one is ‘is enfielded by.'” “What’s that mean?” His luminous eyes were haunted. He didn’t answer. “It looks like simple stuff. I read somewhere that all the basic stuff is simple once it’s been discovered.” “Yes,” he said almost inaudibly. “It is simple, Beel. Too damn simple, I think. Better I carry it in my head, I think.” He strode to the blackboard and erased it. Instinctively I half-rose to stop him. He gave me a grin that was somehow bitter and unlike him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t forget it.” He tapped his forehead. “I can’t forget it.” I hope I never see again on any face the look that was on his. “Julio,” I said, appalled. “Why don’t you get out of here for a while? Why don’t you run over to New York and see your folks and have some fun? They can’t keep you here against your will.”