Read Out of the Sun for Free Online Page A

times' sake and it looked pretty hopeless to me. I mean, nobody actually said so, but you could see that's what they thought. It must be hard for Iris. Only child and all. But you have to face it, don't you? For David more than anyone, life with half a brain would be infinitely worse than death."
    "Why more than anyone?"
    "Because thinking's what he's spent most of his life doing. Resolving all those damned equations in his head. Searching for the answers to questions most of us don't even know how to ask. Math, math, math. There never was room for much else."
    "You're not a mathematician yourself?"
    "What do you think? Do I look like a mathematician? Maybe if I had been .. . But you don't want to hear about that."
    "If it helps me form a picture of what David ... what my son is really like, I do want to hear."
    "Ask his mother. You'll only get a biased picture from me."
    Harry grinned ruefully. "Iris hasn't exactly been forthcoming."
    "Come to regret involving you, has she?"
    "She didn't involve me. An anonymous informant told me about David. Any idea who that might have been?"
    "Somebody who knew more than me. Who cared more than me, maybe." There was a hint of resentment in her voice.
    "You have somebody specific in mind?"
    Hope paused to sip her drink, then clunked the glass back onto the table with exasperated force. "Listen, Harry. You want to understand the son you never knew you had? Obsession's the key to it. The man I married was charming, witty, good-looking, sharp as a nail and fun to be around. That's what attracted me to him in the first place. But then there was his other side. His mind." She tapped her brow. "Out of this world. Literally. Complex numbers. Higher dimensions. Quantum physics. And something wrapped up in it all that he was looking for. Something that always drove him on. You could say I never understood a word and that would be true. But then he didn't deal in words. Numbers. Symbols. Equations. Formulae. Sometimes not even that. Sometimes he'd sit for hours, not speaking, not moving, just thinking. His "unwritten theorems", he called them. After a while, I couldn't cope. With Steve, I only have to worry about the latest actress who's trying to get into bed with him. With David, things were more complicated. If you want to know what made him tick, look through his notebooks. He carried them with him wherever he went, page after page crammed with his damned mathematical hieroglyphs. Why, I've even known him bring them to the dinner table in a restaurant." She sighed. "Yeh, you take a stroll through them, Harry. Iris should have the latest set. They'll have been in his hotel room. Probably under his pillow. You'll need a mathematician to interpret them for you, of course. And even then .. ."
    "Who would I ask?" Harry enquired, doing his best to suggest he was motivated by intellectual curiosity rather than an eagerness to glean as much information as he could about David's circle of friends.
    "You're serious?"
    Harry shrugged.
    "Well, the Dane, I suppose. Torben Hammelgaard. A physicist rather than a mathematician, but it comes to the same thing. He and David worked together at Globescope."
    "On what?"
    "Forecasting, I guess. Isn't that what Globescope do?"
    "You tell me."
    "Well, forecasting covers it. Economic projections. Climatic predictions. How many more billions there'll be to sell cheeseburgers to in 2020. It's pretty big business. If David had taken it more seriously, he might never have ended up like this."
    "Why not?"
    "Because he'd have been in Washington earning good money, not skulking in a hotel room at Heathrow wondering where his next fund-raising scheme was coming from."
    "Iris said he'd secured the backing to set up some sort of research institute."
    "That's what he told her. Who in their right mind would fund research into higher dimensions? What you can't see you can't sell. It's a lesson David never wanted to learn. But since he was fired from Globescope '
    Tired?"
    The way I