Isabel da Costa woke up one morning to find herself living face-to-face with harsh reality.
Throughout the first sixteen years of her life, Raymond had succeeded in cocooning her from intrusions and distractions. Indeed, that was the source of his greatest pride.
To the best of his knowledge she had never known pain, denigration, or hostility of any sort, although, to a large extent the secret talisman had been her precocity. But it was no protection from attacks on her intellect.
As Raymond rightly expected, the publication of her article on the Fifth Force had created a storm. But however magisterial her argument, it did not convince those scientists who had spent their working lives trying to prove precisely what she had demolished.
Pracht kept a respectful silence, but colleagues in universities all over the world did not feel any such noblesse oblige. If the girl was old enough to attack, she was old enough to be attacked.
For young Isabel, the articles published in the International Journal of Physics as well as in other distinguished periodicals were tantamount to hate mail. It was not merely that her adversaries were trying to refute her conclusions, it was the style in which she herself was referred to.
Some of the essays reeked bile. One went as far as to sneer, “But what can one expect from a mind so young? She has not had time to learn her physics properly.”
Naturally she would be accorded space by the editors of these various publications to defend herself. But who could assist her?
Raymond could not really be of any help. In fact, un-wittingly, he increased her tension by voicing his worries. And Karl Pracht, who had so magnanimously allowed her to dig his scientific grave, could not be expected to help pour earth on it as well. Besides, he and his family were caught up in the complexities of moving their household across the American continent.
She felt isolated, except for what moral support Jerry—who was away at a tournament—could give her by telephone.
At the outset, the newspapers had once again trotted out the old stories about the Berkeley Child Prodigy and updated them. But this time they were not all patting a bright little girl on the head. Her antagonists had their own conduits to the press, who were more than willing to quote them when they spoke daggers.
Isabel was so busy formulating her counterattacks that she decided not to attend the ceremony to receive her master’s degree and thereby risk exposure to the media.
Indeed, the storm dissolved Isabel’s aura of infallibility and replaced it with one of controversy. She was now perceived as such an enfant terrible that some members of the Physics Department let it be known that under no circumstances would they supervise her doctoral dissertation.
But of course not all the reaction was negative. A good many scientists wrote to congratulate her on her achievement, and the journals printed many replies from distinguished physicists who were won over by her arguments.
Just prior to his departure for Boston, Karl Pracht invited Isabel to lunch at the faculty club. He could not hide his astonishment—nor mask his displeasure—when he saw that Raymond had come along as well.
“With due respect, Mr. da Costa,” he said with exaggerated politeness, “this was supposed to be a meal for a student and her adviser.”
It suddenly dawned on Pracht that Raymond was desperately anxious to make sure that he did not divulge to Isabel anything of the unpleasant altercation that had taken place between the two of them. And realizing that he could never dislodge the adhesive father, Karl relented and asked his nemesis to join them.
The conversation was friendly, though delicately avoiding any mention of the Fifth Force debate. Over coffee, Karl revealed the principal purpose of his invitation.
“Isabel, I have a gut feeling that you’re going to find Berkeley a little less congenial from now on. Obviously, I’m pitching for my new team now, but I really think you should let me arrange that fellowship for you at MIT. I promise you’ll find somebody world-class to direct your thesis, or failing that, humble has-been that I am, I’ll do the job myself.”
Raymond listened in contemplative silence. Yet he could see on his daughter’s face a certain unmistakable reluctance, and knew when she told Pracht “We’ll think about it,” it was something she definitely did not want.
His instinct was confirmed when they walked out into the bright summer sunlight and Isabel did not say a word. Something made him suspect that although the youngsters had not seen one another, she was somehow tied to Berkeley by the idea of the presence of Jerry Pracht.
“I think he made a lot of sense, Isabel,” her father commented. Thinking to himself, not only is MIT the Olympus of science, but I’ve outmaneuvered the guy after all. Instead of having his son shipped to Cambridge, we can go there ourselves and leave him here.
He then remarked out loud, “I’d say if Pracht comes up with a big enough offer, we should take it and go to greener pastures.”
June 28
A new book. And in a new medium: I’ve just opened a file in my very own laptop computer, for which I now have to provide eighty megabytes of my own memory. From now on, the saga of my personal life should be easier to keep private since I have encrypted the file and no one can access it without the password “sesame”—it’s hardly original.
I was desperate to talk to Jerry about Karl’s invitation, especially since Dad was putting unbelievable pressure on me. At first I was disappointed when Jerry gave me a pep talk about doing “what was the right thing for myself” I guess I was hoping he would get all passionate, and beg me to stay.
But it’s typical of his generosity. I always know that he wishes only the best for me and would never make any selfish demands—although a part of me wishes he would.
“Look at it this way, Isa,” he explained. “Starting this spring, Berkeley is going to be just a mailing address for me. So, the only difference in our currently un-satisfactory relationship will be in the size of the phone bill. Right?
“And frankly, I can see a lot of advantages in your going East. First of all—and I guess you never thought of this—MIT has practically a club or—perhaps I should call them a play group—of prodigies there. Granted, you’ll be a graduate student, but at least there’ll be a lot of undergraduates your age and I think that might make a major difference to your social life.”
I felt like shouting no, Jerry, you make the only difference that matters.
After we hung up, I thought a lot about what he said and realized that if he was in fact going to be on the road so much, I might as well go and do my doctorate at the school Dad refers to as “the top of the mountain.”