As an aging mathematician and his coterie of friends begin to decipher the language of humpback whales they find their discoveries lead to new insights into the nature of numbers, the structure of matter, and even the origin of the universe. They also lead to conflict with the U.S. Navy and the whales themselves.
As an aging mathematician and his coterie of friends begin to decipher the language of humpback whales they find their discoveries lead to new insights into the nature of numbers, the structure of matter, and even the origin of the universe. They also lead to conflict with the U.S. Navy and the whales themselves.
I would like to get to the point quickly because I do not know how much time I will be given, but unfortunately my point is more of a saga, a saga through a vast landscape with obscure landmarks, much like the prairies where I grew up. So, because the path I want to take you down is circuitous, I will need to be patient. I hope I have time.
My name is Joseph Tenatt. I’m a problem solver, and my milieu is mathematics. You might say I’m a mathematician, but mathematics requires stamina and a good memory, so it is a young person’s game and I am far from young. Still, I’ve acquired some knowledge and a favorable reputation over time, and am often yet called upon to point others in the right direction or even recommend a working mathematician whose talents might be suited for a job at hand.
I’ve lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, since I caught the bus out of Draper, South Dakota, to attend Boston University as an undergraduate. If I had been considered of sound health I would have been conscripted for the war, but I have Tourette’s and the head of our local draft board, who was also my high school’s basketball coach, was so unnerved by my twitches and random guffaws he did not think I should be allowed anywhere near the military. I had already learned to live with a certain amount of rejection and decided I might help our country in other ways.
I left Draper full of hopes and ignorance and wonder. I remember staring out of the bus window for hours the first day of my trip onto the familiar and friendly fields of wheat, imagining they were waving hello to me, or goodbye, as the bus rushed past. The wheat fields of the Great Plains were soon replaced by the sterner corn sentries of the Midwest. The fields no longer waved, they only watched in stillness as I passed through their territories. They in turn were eventually replaced by the massive, uncaring forests of the Northeast. These forests have been here since the ice age, and though they have been cut down many times by humans, they just grow back in their own time, unbowed. Here even the roads could no longer travel directly from point to point as I was used to in South Dakota, but gave way to the rough dictates of the eastern terrain.
Perhaps I have grown used to a disinterested universe, maybe I have fewer hopes today than I did then. Certainly the form of my ignorance has changed, but I think the wonder I experienced when I was young has not left. It just moves at a slower pace, as do I.
I’ve since also obtained degrees at Harvard and Northeastern, and taught at both of those schools as well as MIT, Tufts, Lesley, Brandeis and a few more. I’ve worked as a research mathematician in many of the private and semi-private concerns scattered throughout the area in medicine, defense, technology and manufacturing. To an outsider this may sound impressive, and they are all fine institutions where I feel I did credible service, but the fact of the matter is I have never stayed too long in any one setting. I’ve bounced from one job to another as a matter of choice, both my own and my disparate employers’. I feel I didn’t become so much unwelcome as bored anytime I decided to move on.
I live in the same second floor condominium I once shared with my wife, in an old house on the Somerville side of Cambridge. The area is an old working class neighborhood full of boxy wooden two-story houses that were built close to the streets as a matter of economy because they were meant for factory workers, but in today’s atmosphere it sometimes appears to me they are willfully crowding forward to better catch the latest local gossip. They are slowly being converted into upscale condos for folks who cannot afford more expensive neighborhoods of Greater Boston, but many are still unrefurbished places for students and even poorer immigrants from outside the United States. My place is in between, which means my home is comfortable and I can afford it.
My wife passed nearly fifteen years ago, much too soon. Breast cancer. I guess I live as if she only died yesterday, though the grief has attenuated some. I think the only new piece of furniture in my apartment is my easy chair. It is just about the only piece of furniture I use, in fact, as I eat, read and sleep on it. The only other change is the addition of a microwave. And my two cats, Cleo and Ranger.
My wife, Georgiana, and I had a Jack Russell terrier. We called him Spike, and he was the love of her life, as she was of mine. When she passed I was left with Spike and we soothed each other for several years, but then he also died. I was too broken-hearted to get another dog and too lonely to live alone, so I got Cleo, a ravishing Calico. Then Ranger showed up at my door, half-starved and looking miserable as only a feral tom cat or fox with mange can. He is entirely black, with long, and now lustrous, fur and eyes as yellow as the center disks of daisies. It took him a few weeks to get used to being inside, but he never asks to leave the apartment anymore. Cleo and I nursed him back to health and the three of us get on quite well. Cleo likes to sit on the left armrest of my chair, Ranger on top of the back. They occasionally take turns purring in my lap.
Tadeusz and Marta Witkowski live in the unit below mine. Teddy is a professor of particle physics at Northeastern, and a good violinist, as am I. Marta teaches music theory at the New England Conservatory and is an excellent cellist, a far more accomplished musician than either Teddy or myself.
The Witkowskis escaped with their two young children from Soviet controlled Poland in a small dinghy they managed to navigate from the East German coast to Denmark. I like to think we are all refugees from an alien world, but my monotonous bus trip through the American Midwest has little in common with their harrowing and occasionally ludicrous journey across the Baltic Sea in a leaky boat with a fitful outboard motor. We all love Mozart, though, and I spend more evenings as part of a musical trio in their cozy apartment than I do in my own abode. Marta has created a piece of Szczecin in their flat, from the Old World furniture, intricate wall tapestries and brightly painted ceiling, to the delicate fine china and delicious otherworldly aromas of her Polish cooking.
Teddy has a broad, pale, calm face, and his voice is usually quiet as well. There are evenings when I’m not sure he has spoken at all, but when he does, his words are usually infused with meaning that, like poetry, can come back to me days later from new directions. Marta is also free of pretense, but she is as elegant as Teddy is plain. Her speech is more voluble than Teddy’s, as is her visage, but even so there are few excesses in her speech, just wisdom and warmth.
To an outsider we likely appear as three intellectuals who have forgone physical health for the rigors of our mental pursuits, but to me the Witkowskis are more like a couple of laughing Buddhas who have come to understand what is important and what is not. I wouldn’t tell them this, but I consider myself their student in the meaning of life.
As I mentioned, I’ve had a long, peripatetic career in math, so I’m unusually suited to matching younger colleagues to appropriate employment. Sometimes I’m hired and even get paid for my efforts, often I merely pass a few names to an acquaintance over a stein of beer. I don’t need much in the way of income as I own my place and my violin, and can walk most anywhere I want to go. I’m happy to just keep stirring the coals.
The path I wish to lead you down began with a call from an old friend, Major Clive Bernard. I’m sure Clive was a real major at some point, but I met him at the Lincoln Labs in Lexington in conjunction with work we did on information theory and artificial intelligence. We were part of a team working on autonomous vehicles, but as with so much of the work I have done, the team disbanded when the money ran out. It may have been picked up later by another team, but I will likely never know. Clive and I both had peripheral roles. His expertise was in what types of obstacles such a vehicle would likely encounter, and to a lesser extent what kind of intelligence information would be needed from it. I developed mathematical algorithms for the computer programmers.
Clive and I gravitated toward each other because we clearly did not belong to the social scene of the rest of our team. Our humor was too pointed and our social graces too coarse to be included in their camaraderie. I believe he is now associated with the CIA, but he claimed to be working for DARPA when we met on the occasion in question. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, was created to ensure the United States military always has an eye on the most recent scientific research. It has had a finger in just about every new technology since the fifties, and allegedly a bunch of stuff that never made it. I’ve even heard stories DARPA has worked on paranormal phenomena, but I doubt you could get anyone to officially admit it.
Clive and I have a good relationship, probably because when I ask him about his ongoing endeavors I know his answers will be meaningless, but I do not mind being lied to — I prefer just to observe the context. In turn, Clive appreciates my acceptance.
Clive had called me up and asked me to meet him at Huxley’s Coffee. That was a sure sign he wanted me to come, as I feel about Huxley’s Coffee as Ben Franklin did about beer — it might be the best proof God exists and loves me. Huxley’s is almost as famous in Cambridge for its ambiance as for its coffee. The pastries, though also excellent, come in third. It’s located in a kind of basement in an old three-story brick building not far from Harvard Square. One needs to descend half a flight of worn stone steps from the sidewalk to reach the entrance, which graciously has the name stenciled on the door glass. No sign is visible from the sidewalk, but the place is almost always busy, so more advertising is not needed. The coffee bar guards the entrance, and there is a potpourri of rooms arranged like small caves further inside, each filled with large and small tables of no discernible pattern with similarly unmatched chairs clustered around them.
It was July, but it had been raining for days and was just the kind of weather fit for a hot drink. I entered alone and ordered a cappuccino, but when I went to pay the barista waved me off. “Major Barnard has taken care of it,” she said with no uncertainty. She looked like a high school student and was cute enough to be a cheerleader, but was just as likely getting her PhD in world affairs. It was typical of Clive to have taken care of my check in advance.
I wandered through the collection of dark rooms until I spotted Clive at a small table in a short hallway between two larger rooms. It was also typical of Clive to pick a spot that wouldn’t have neighbors sitting nearby.
“It’s been a dog’s age, Joey,” Clive said when he saw me. He is the only person in my life who calls me Joey, he has never called me anything else. He rose from his seat as I approached his table and extended his massive right hand. He grabbed my hand in his, then covered it with his equally large left. His blue eyes stared directly into mine and he grinned as if were the happiest moment of his life. I couldn’t decide if he reminded me more of JFK or Burt Lancaster. Maybe Lancaster playing JFK as a war hero.
“It’s been a few years. How are you, Clive?”
“Great! I’m great. How the hell are you?” If you did not know Clive Bernard you could be offended when he greeted a convenience store cashier he had never met before with the same exuberance as he did you, but that would be a mistake. As I said before, with Clive you watch the context.
“I woke up this morning, so I’m doing fine.” I don’t usually share Clive’s exuberant manner. I’m not an unhappy person, but I guess I just don’t have his energy.
We chatted about a few old friends, and a little about world politics. He told me he had just returned from Southeast Asia.
“Were you in the Philippines when Marcos was kicked out?” I enjoyed asking Clive pointed questions about his activities to see how he wouldn’t answer them.
“That is highly classified information Joey. More than a few of Marcos’ cronies would love to know that. Some of his friends are pretty sore losers.”
“Did Imelda really have that many shoes?”
“Not sure, everything was packed by the time we started moving their stuff out of there. But there was a shitload of cartons in their rooms.”
This was typical of Clive — to let me know more than any news source but never give me anything specific. He filled me in on what would happen for the next six months in the Middle East. “We’re concerned some of the remaining American hostages in Iran might not last much longer. Frankly, I think Ollie and Bob are screwing this thing up.” Clive paused for a second, then continued, “I should have been there last year, but what can one man do?” He was as nonchalant as if he had told me the sun would shine the next day.
After ordering another of Huxley’s heavenly cappuccinos and biscotti for each of us, Clive got around to business.
“I’m looking for a mathematician, Joey.”
“Not me, I hope.”
“No, you old war dog, you and I are past our prime. I need someone young.” It was amusing being put in the same class as Clive physically. He is at least twenty years my junior and built like a linebacker. I’m built like a retired professor whose most physically challenging activity is rosining a violin bow. “I need a mathematician who’s a musician, or vice versa, with no personal life. A good mathematician.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard. Most mathematicians have no personal life,” I joked. “We’re all a little too crazy for that.”
Clive ignored my humor. “And can pass a strict security clearance.”
“What’s this all about?”
Clive engulfed me in his broad smile. “You know I can’t tell you that. Let’s just say I’m working for the navy, so it involves long tours on a crowded ship.”
“So this person can’t get seasick either.”
“Most people get over that.” Clive treated my irony the same way I treated his exuberance — he tuned it out.
“I’ll think about it. What’s the pay? How long is the tour?”
“Tell you the truth, Joey, the pay’s lousy and the work can never be put on a resume. I’m looking for an adventurer.”
“That should help me whittle it down. Too bad I’m too old, it sounds like my kind of project.”
“It would have been, Joey, it would have been. That’s why I thought you could help me find someone suitable.”
I promised him I would think about it.
“Don’t think too long, Joey. The ship’s due to sail.” He surrounded me with his smile again. “Of course, I can’t tell you when.”
I filled my thermos with coffee on Clive’s dime before I left Huxley’s. I knew it would be the only payment I received, even if I found the perfect match for his project. On the plus side I didn’t feel any obligation to start calling around for a music lover looking for a chance not to play for months at a time.
I related my conversation to Teddy and Marta that evening during a break from a Brahms trio.
“Code-breaking,” Marta said.
“What?” I asked.
“He’s looking for a code-breaker. The best code-breakers are mathematicians who are also musicians. The British found that out during World War II.”
I agreed she could be right, but we were more interested in mastering one of Brahms’s convoluted passages at the moment.
It must have been a few weeks later when an old neighbor of ours, Jeannie Mellon, dropped by the Witkowskis’ while we were practicing. I say old in the sense she had once been a neighbor. Jeannie has thick, long auburn hair and lively hazel eyes. She was in her late twenties at the time, and though she isn’t really plump, she is more round and rosy than svelte. She is the kind of person who would consider herself rude if she were less than cheerful. However, she is a serious and accomplished cellist and was just beginning her musical career. In fact, she had been a student of Marta’s and had often played with us when she lived nearby. Then she moved across the Charles River to Brookline and we no longer saw much of her. On this occasion she brought her fiancé, Matt, to invite us to their wedding.
At some point in the evening I turned to Matt. “I don’t imagine I have to tell you you’re a very lucky man.” Matt was professionally neat, polite, clean shaven and attentive to the Witkowskis and me, but I also saw he was quietly and comfortably self-possessed. He managed to be simultaneously reserved and yet relaxed among a group of people he had just met.
“No sir, you don’t. That’s why I proposed to her.”
“You proposed!” Jeannie broke in. We all laughed. Matt’s skin wasn’t black enough to hide his blush.
“Well, with a little prodding,” he admitted. “Jeannie was pretty insistent.”
We all turned to hear Jeannie’s explanation. “I guess I just didn’t want to end up like Sonya.” It was her turn to blush.
“Sonya?” I asked.
“You know her, Sonya Perez. Her boyfriend dumped her a couple of months ago. They had moved in together at his place, and one day without warning he told her she had to move out. She was devastated, still hasn’t gotten over it. I guess I wanted to pre-empt that from happening to me.”
“Not to worry,” Matt said. “I would never do that, I just wasn’t sure you felt the same way.”
I did know Sonya Perez and wasn’t surprised Jeannie did too. She had taken a graduate math seminar I taught one spring at MIT called Applying Pure Mathematics. When I first saw her in class I thought she might be lost, there weren’t that many female mathematicians then, but I soon found out she was a brilliant mathematician and we collaborated on a project when the seminar was over, I think for developing some sort of bomb-sniffing robot. I learned she was also a musician, a flautist, so we often played together at Magazine Beach on the Charles River during lunch break. Sometimes we felt we were playing to help the scullers rowing up and down the Charles keep time; sometimes we felt it was their smooth rhythmical strokes that kept time for us.
“What’s she doing now?” I asked Jeannie.
“Trying to find her feet. She had thought she wanted to apply for a professorship at some college up in Maine because Reynard, her boyfriend, wanted to move there, but that’s not in the cards now. You should talk to her, she’s very fond of you, you know.”
“And I of her. I’ll give her a call.”
I had the privilege of reviewing Robert Leet's first book, Timewise, and it has been an absolute delight to read and review Resonant. I greatly enjoyed seeing the ways that the author's writing and style has evolved over the last couple years and the results are marvelous. Leet's work is often more science than fiction, and with this thrilling adventure, the line between fiction and reality blurs.
Leet has a talent for integrating a cast of unique and charming characters while telling a compelling story full of science and adventure. From the next door neighbors who escaped the Soviet Union and play violin and cello with our protagonist, to the past students, all the researchers, and other cast members, each is a well-developed character with their own lives and concerns, woven together brilliantly. I thoroughly enjoyed the main character as a past musician and academic with, somehow, the same black rescue cat and a habit of relaxing to recordings of whale sounds. But, regardless of your own background, there is something to love in each member of this unlikely crew.
What Leet does really well is making science fiction that is more grounded in real science than most in the genre; however, you don't need to be a scientist or academic to understand and enjoy this book. In Timewise, the exposition and dialogue was good but more heavy-handed; it read like a physics textbook, which is excellent for some readers, like myself, and harder to engage for others. In Resonant, only a couple years later, Leet's dialogue is smooth and natural, as is our narrator's telling of the tale. The content is grounded in reality but accessible for most readers. The story flows well and is very engaging. I was hooked, hanging on to each twist and revelation.
Overall, I can easily add this book to my list of favorites and hope others will read and enjoy this wonderful book. And, thank you for the honor of being the reviewer for both of your releases; it has been a pleasure and I love your work.