L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 35

by L. Ron Hubbard

  “Leave Isobel out of this—Hey!” Pietr had withdrawn his hand, the pocketful of coins clenched tight in his fist.

  “Only what you owes me. And a little extra for the trouble you’ve put me to.”

  Maybe it was better to let him take the money. It didn’t do to cross Pietr. The man had connections. Let him have it all, and the gods be damned! Belgrum was tired of living like this: a trapped rat running and running and always turning someone else’s wheel. And with that thought came sudden clarity as he reached a decision. “Take it then! I want no more of this. As long as I never see you again.”

  “Don’t work like that, does it?” Pietr gave a little grunt. “And funny you should say that, ’cos I’ve had a special request for your … services. Some posh gentleman’s club. Asked for you by name, they did. Not the sort of people to go disappointin’.”

  Belgrum struggled in his grip. “I told you—I’m through. I won’t do this anymore.”

  “Ho-hum,” Pietr said, sounding unconcerned. “I must not be hearin’ you clear enough. Thing is, hop joints are dangerous places, aren’t they, ’specially for a lady who visits regular-like? All kind of rough folks go there. Wouldn’t want nothin’ to happen to her. Nothin’ bad.”

  Belgrum plucked at the arm still throttling him, feeling righteous anger mount inside, but Pietr only tightened his grip. “I’ll get more money,” Belgrum wheezed. “Buy my way out. Name your price—but leave Isobel out of this.”

  “Reckon that girl’s capable of takin’ care of herself, don’t you? All you have to do”—the pressure on his neck loosened and a piece of paper was stuffed into his pocket—“is find this address. Ten o’clock tomorrow night, and don’t keep ’em waiting. Then maybe we’ll talk.”

  “Give me your word Isobel won’t come to any harm.”

  “She won’t. Not if you honour your contract with me.”

  “Honour? What would you know about that? Besides, I have no contract with you.”

  Pietr relaxed his grip and pushed Belgrum away roughly, a wide grin on his face. “You do now.”

  Reuben Belgrum walked for hours, going wherever his feet took him, trying to outpace his worries. It wasn’t working. Then he heard distant voices. He rounded a street corner and ran straight into the mob.

  A lookout on the edge of the crowd passed an appraising eye over Belgrum. He seemed satisfied that Belgrum was no Enforcer come to break a few dissident heads and resumed his surveillance of the crowd. Turbulent times, Belgrum thought. He needed to be careful.

  The soapbox figure haranguing the crowd was petite and well-wrapped against autumn’s dreary cold, her face safely hidden by a veil. Even with lookouts, there were sympathizers everywhere, ready to inform. “Learning is for everyone, isn’t it, my friends?” she exhorted the crowd. “Why should you be state-registered and state-approved before you’re allowed to lift the covers of even the most basic mathematical texts? That learning and understanding is our birthright!”

  Belgrum was intending to hurry on, but he recognized the woman’s voice and it drew him closer.

  “Are we so feebleminded,” she continued, “that we are not to be trusted with the enjoyment of even the simplest mathematical truth in the privacy of our own homes? Yes—there is ecstasy to be found in the purity of arithmos! It exerts a strong and undeniable attraction upon us. But surely this is no more dangerous than other kinds of experience? When we fall deeply in love, don’t our thoughts become less focused, our attention more easily distracted—yet the experience is still a wondrous thing. Do we become any less human when we experience such euphoria? Are we a danger to others, or to the society in which we live?” The crowd was stirring restlessly, its mood roused by the woman’s words. Someone near the front of the crowd shouted out, “No!” and it was echoed by others.

  Oh Isobel. You’re treading a dangerous path. He had tried to warn her before. There were rumours of imprisonments, beatings. Some even said the Fishmonger killed those who dabbled too deeply in arithmos. But Isobel only laughed when he said that. “My father’s influence always protects me. Do you see the irony?”

  “If he knew the truth, would he be so understanding?” Belgrum had asked, knowing full well her father would not. He was, after all, the very symbol of the establishment that was trying to stamp out these underground movements. “Oh no,” she’d answered with a twinkle in her eye, “that’s what makes it all such glorious fun!”

  Emboldened now, Isobel continued to address the crowd. “Imagine a world where we could not experience arithmos! Where all those beautiful theorems and proofs, those humble equations which embody such universal truths, appear as no more than squiggles on a piece of paper! Where such powerful ideas have no capacity to inspire the minds of ordinary men and women. Where not even the simple elegance of an arithmetic progression is appreciated!”

  “Shame!” the crowd chanted at her.

  “Yet that’s precisely what those in power wish to achieve! They would drive all but the commonest, basest mathematical learning underground. They would outlaw those with the gift of explaining, those elucidators who merely help others to appreciate the beauty. They wish to restrict the advancement of learning to a select few, rob the common man of the simple pleasures of comprehension, deprive the—” Her eyes found Belgrum by chance and she stumbled over her next few words. Belgrum wished he could see the expression on her face. Guilt or defiance, he wondered?

  She recovered, and her voice grew more strident. The crowd were with her now, shouts of encouragement punctuated every other sentence. But Belgrum noticed there was one man she had left unmoved. He stood near the far edge of the crowd. His back was to Belgrum, but something about his stance marked him out. A large, powerful man, expensively dressed. He stood motionless while all around him jostled and fidgeted. On his right hand he wore a leather glove, the fingers of which seemed abnormally slender. Belgrum began circling the crowd to get a better look at his face—but by the time he had done so, the man had slipped away and Belgrum could find no trace of him.

  Pietr’s slip of paper took him—reluctantly—to an address in the eastern quarter of the city: broad boulevards and terraced rows of anonymous white-stone buildings, where the paved streets were shovelled clear of horse dung each day. A clutch of expensively tailored gentlemen and ladies strolled in the evening air, having no pressing business to attend. It was a place of wealth, privilege, and power. Belgrum felt completely out of place.

  His knock was answered by a bellboy who fetched the gentleman in question. Lars Eysenck was a tall, wiry man with a thinning pate and such nervous energy that he hopped from foot to foot like a robin in search of worms.

  Eysenck led him into a grand drawing room panelled in dark mahogany where towering glass-fronted bookcases climbed into the shadows. The gaslights were dim, almost to the point of gloom. A gathering of perhaps twenty-five gentlemen were ensconced in clusters of easy chairs. At the far end of the room, gilded portraits glowered down on the gathering, and a lectern awaited.

  Belgrum was not expecting to speak to them as a group. “That’s … that’s not how I do it,” he stammered.

  “Then what is your method?”

  “Individually. I will speak to each of you in turn.”

  A portly gentleman levered himself out of an armchair and approached. “Oh no,” he said. “No, that will not do. We cannot be kept waiting for our satisfaction while you work your way around the room.”

  “I think what Mr. Belgrum is trying to say—” Eysenck began, but the portly gentleman interrupted as though Eysenck had not spoken.

  “Besides, there is the matter of precedence. We shall never be able to agree upon the order in which you serve us. No, I must insist that you address the entire room.”

  “I cannot possibly—” but Belgrum’s response was lost in the general babble as all the gentlemen began to express their views at once. It was not a happ
y room, Belgrum observed glumly. That was going to make his job as elucidator twice as hard. If not for Pietr’s blackmail, he would have foregone payment and left that instant.

  Suddenly the hubbub died away. From the shadows at the edge of the room, a figure raised a hand for silence. It was the slightest of movements, no more than a gesture of the wrist. Yet somehow everyone noticed. The man was nestled deep in a wing-back chair. Belgrum couldn’t see his face but the raised hand wore a black leather glove. The slender fingers were stiff and freakishly long—unquestionably the same man he had seen in the crowd, the man who had been watching Isobel.

  Absolute silence had fallen on the room. Into it, the man spoke with the voice of one who expected to be obeyed without question. “Begin.”

  What topic should he choose? His arithmos was self-taught and he feared he might be exposed as a fraud before such an august group—no matter that he had spent countless nights slaving over his mathematical texts with a kind of manic intensity.

  Perhaps a simple proof to start them off? Yes. He would gauge their learning and their mood. Change up a gear or down, as necessary. He had barely begun to speak when—

  “Enough!”

  The cry halted Belgrum in mid-sentence. The man with the gloved hand sprang from the chair and strode into an adjoining private office. “Come!” he called over his shoulder, before disappearing.

  Eysenck looked meaningfully at Belgrum, gesturing with his head that Belgrum should follow. “Who is that?” Belgrum whispered.

  “Lord Felton-Oriel Urquhart is a founding member of the society.” Eysenck touched his arm lightly and lowered his voice. “An important man. Be sure to give him whatever he asks for.”

  Belgrum found Urquhart seated behind a broad desk, copious paperwork of some kind ordered in neat piles like army battalions being readied on the battlefield. A gas lamp turned low provided the only illumination. Urquhart’s gaze was intense, like the hawk observing its prey, calculating the moment for its swooping dive. Belgrum took a seat opposite. “Shall I begin?” he asked hesitantly, assuming a private audience was required after all.

  Urquhart studied him a moment then barked a laugh. “Indeed, no! I doubt there is any mathematical wonder you could describe that is not already familiar to me a dozen times over. Don’t confuse me with those feebleminded dilettantes out there.” He leaned forward. “I am a connoisseur in these matters.”

  “Then—?”

  Urquhart regarded him steadily for a long moment. “Tell me, Master Belgrum. From where do you obtain your knowledge of mathematics? Such materials are closely guarded by the University, yet you seem in possession of quite advanced concepts.”

  Belgrum had no answer, at least none that he cared to voice. Urquhart shrugged as if the lack of an answer was of no consequence. “I’m given to understand there is a certain young lady of your acquaintance. Her father is an important man, a sitting member of the University Senate. Was he not also a promising mathematician in his youth?” An eyebrow raised quizzically, but still Belgrum gave him no reaction. “No matter. Instead, let me describe the purpose for which I brought you here. I have a small task for you to perform. A book I would like you to obtain.”

  Now Belgrum could see where this was going. There was a small but thriving black market for mathematical texts. Elucidators such as himself depended on them for source material. Most were tatty handwritten copies of copies, harmless primers and instructional texts barely more potent than the basic arithmetic a child might learn in the classroom. But a small number were lifted from under the noses of the University’s theoreticians, those talented few who worked in the most challenging of circumstances. Years of training had built up their mental tolerance to arithmos, working as they did at the cutting edge where new theorems were patiently honed. Their chalkboards were filled with eigenvectors and Bessel functions and nonlinear transformations that verged on the esoteric. They dealt in equations of such beauty that they risked their own sanity in contemplation of them. Belgrum had glimpsed enough of those materials to know his limits. He took from them only what he thought was safe—both for himself and for his clients. In the hands of a skilled elucidator such as he, they brought an hour or two’s bliss to the mind of the common man. And he was careful to keep his descriptions simple—because at the heart of everything, there was beauty in simplicity.

  But Urquhart didn’t strike him as a man to be satisfied with the pedestrian.

  “Ah! I see by your expression you have misunderstood,” Urquhart said. “This is a book of poetry I’m seeking. Nothing underhand, you see. A volume published privately in a very limited edition and consequentially quite rare. Dark Equations of the Heart. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

  Belgrum shook his head. “Surely any reputable bookseller can obtain such a thing?”

  “No. Quite impossible.” Urquhart’s tone became weary, as though he tired of explaining the obvious. “This particular volume was personally inscribed by the author not long before his untimely death. Such an exceptional man, a true polymath. Poetry was but one of his talents, and not the greatest by any means. You have, I believe, various channels for obtaining unorthodox works? Certain … contacts?”

  “Your interest in poetry must be compelling.”

  Urquhart frowned. “Compelling … Yes, a most appropriate word in the circumstances.”

  Belgrum thought of the debt that Pietr held over him, and his promise to Isobel to guard her secrets from her father. Neither had he forgotten Eysenck’s words. Be sure to give him whatever he asks for.

  Belgrum gave a barely perceptible nod. “I will make enquiries.”

  Urquhart clapped his hands together, one gloved hand onto bare flesh. “Excellent! I’m glad we have an understanding.” Urquhart’s gaze remained unrelenting, the dark eyes piercing. “Tell me—Did you ever consider, Master Belgrum, how different our world might be without arithmos? Suppose the human mind were not endowed with its instinctive appreciation of mathematical beauty, piercing straight to the pleasure centres of the brain?”

  The echo of Isobel’s words wasn’t lost on him. Was Urquhart testing him in some way, or merely making a point?

  “Were our rationality not so easily blinded,” Urquhart continued, “what great things might we have achieved? Would we have forged ahead in our understanding of the physical sciences, created great works of engineering? Instead, it’s as if we stare into the sun, our vision blurred as we fumble to make mathematics do our bidding. Oh, I’m sure those with the greatest resilience do what they can to develop the field, but it is little enough. I myself have tried, but I grow bored easily. I yearn to challenge my mind. Test my limits.”

  He grunted, as if in pain. With delicate, precise movements, Urquhart loosened each finger of the glove he wore on his right hand and slipped it off. He flexed the fingers as though chasing stiffness from them, but that wasn’t what fixed Belgrum’s attention. Where the last joint should be, each finger was topped with a long, thin blade, like that of a scalpel. They caught the light and made a soft rasping sound as they rubbed against each other.

  “These were … gifted … to me,” Urquhart said quietly. “The surgeon in question felt I had cheated him in a business matter and sought a means of redress. He drugged me and abused me thus. When I was revived, he said he wished to ensure no other businessman would shake my hand on a deal without first thinking very carefully.” Urquhart smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “His name was Dr. Amos. It is he who authored Dark Equations of the Heart.”

  Belgrum couldn’t wrench his eyes from those talonlike fingers. “Can’t the surgery be reversed?”

  “Oh yes. Easily.” Urquhart reached out and removed a single rose from a vase on the desk. He inspected it carefully, then inhaled its fragrance. “But they serve me in unexpected ways.” The fingers flexed. Two outer petals fell silently onto the desk. Belgrum was suddenly reminded of the old maxim: a blad
e cuts two ways. It could cut to save a life like the scalpel in the hands of a surgeon, or it could slash and pierce and drain away a life—like the callous blade of the Fishmonger.

  “Dr. Amos’s skills as a surgeon were never in doubt,” Urquhart continued. “He also dabbled in mathematics, but what began as a hobby soon became an obsession. I believe he learnt what he could from stolen texts—much as you do yourself—and what couldn’t be learned from books, he deduced from first principles. Away from the censorious meddling of the authorities, his prodigious natural talent led him in unexpected directions. Yet none of his discoveries entirely satisfied him. I’m certain he only turned to poetry as an expression of his frustrations. He sought ever darker, purer equations. Powerful, dangerous things.”

  Belgrum smiled faintly. “Such things don’t exist. Only as propaganda spread by the authorities to scare off the curious.”

  “You’re too quick to dismiss. Certainly, he believed such a thing might exist. And if it did, he decided he must be the one to discover such a truth. He craved the glory.”

  “More than he valued his sanity?”

  A finger flicked, and the bottom inch of stem fell to the desktop.

  “He had the strength of mind and the stamina. Years of constant dabbling with arithmos builds up a certain immunity. The ennui of commonplace arithmos becomes unbearable after a while—don’t you find that? But if Dr. Amos were to derive such an equation, who could he tell? To whom could he boast if the act of comprehension drove the unwary into madness?”

  Belgrum stroked his chin. “Once discovered, it would certainly be hard to keep it secret.”

  “Precisely! It would be too dangerous to commit to paper. Too easy for it to fall into untrained hands and destroy innocent minds. It could only be exposed to someone who had developed the necessary fortitude. Even then …” Urquhart looked up slowly from the flower.

  “You’d risk your own sanity?”

  “For the chance of such ecstasy? What man of learning could resist?” Urquhart drew the flower closer. For a moment he appeared to caress it. Then its petals fell in a shower.