Chapter 47

Dr. Mayra Yolanda Darling, known to her colleagues as Darling Doctor and to her friends as MY Darling, was staring at William trying to figure out what planet he came from. She was well aware of his work in economics and had read every paper that he had published on the topic. She had not realized that he was so young. His staff had basically salvaged the conference from the brink of disaster. He had even arranged for this catered dinner for the last night of the conference.

William looked up from the sheet of paper on which he had been scribbling and said, "This is the result that I get, but I want you to double-check it for me. If I allow this parameter to get small, then this term here and that term there can be dropped. In that case, I get the same result of... uh... the German guy who presented this morning."

"It does look like Gunter's work does fall out from yours," Mayra said looking over the sheet of paper. William wasn't winning any points with her by showing that his work led to Gunter's result. She and Gunter Schmidt had been arguing for years.

"Right... Gunter," William muttered. He continued, "I'll talk to him in a little bit. If I allow this factor to become small then this term disappears. If I then normalize, I get your result."

She blinked and looked back down on the paper. She scanned through his equation for a second and saw what he meant. Surprised, she said, "You're right. You do get my result."

"Well, according to this equation here the two parameters are coupled such that only one of them can be small at a time. This suggests to me that your work and Gunter's work are two special cases at different ends of a continuum of behavior," William said. He sat back and looked at her.

Mayra had never seen anyone focus so fully on what they were working on and she had seen some pretty focused people in her life. Holding out her hand, she said, "Let me see that sheet of paper."

Handing it to her, William watched her as she read over the sequence of equations that he had jotted down over dinner. She shook her head in amazement and said, "You're right. It does follow that we are both right."

"That's what I thought and why I wanted you to double-check it," William said.

Mayra looked around and spotted Gunter over at the table with his crowd of followers. She sighed at the idea of having to sit down and talk with the man she had referred to as 'The Damned German' for the past five years. As if she had bitten into a lemon, she said, "I guess it is time to talk to Gunter."

"Yes," William said. He had noticed a significant level of tension between two groups that seemed to be centered on Mayra and Gunter.

Mayra stood and announced, "Gunter, if you would be so kind to join me at my table. We need to talk. It is time for us to bury the hatchet."

Gunter looked over at Mayra with a frown. He was sure that she was about to raise the argument to another level. He relaxed a little when he noticed that William was at the table with her. He was familiar with William's work in economics, but had never realized that he was so young.

Gunter sat down at the table such that William was between him and Mayra. William immediately launched into a discussion of the material on his sheet of paper. Ignoring Mayra, Gunter was immediately drawn into the mathematics. When William pointed out the conditions in which his work lead to Gunter's results, Gunter sat back and said, "See I told you."

"Wait a minute before you crow too loudly," Mayra replied with a grin.

William went through the argument that led to Mayra's work. Looking at the result, Gunter's mouth opened in shock. He grabbed the sheet of paper while saying, "Let me look at that."

With a frown, he read over the entire sheet of paper. His eyes kept returning to the one equation where the two parameters were coupled. He shook his head and said, "I find this hard to believe."

"Do you believe it?" William asked.

"Yes, I do," Gunter admitted. He sat back and asked, "Now what?"

Smiling, William said, "I thought that the three of us could publish this result. We could call it the Treaty of Seattle."

"Sounds good to me," Mayra said.

"Same here," Gunter said.

"Okay. Let's get up to my suite and get to work. We should be able to pound out a draft to distribute to the other conference attendees in the morning," William said while rising from his chair. He was excited and ready to work despite the late hour.

Mayra and Gunter were not so quick to rise, but they would follow him to his suite. The result William had identified was just too important not to participate in generating a paper presenting the ideas. While following William out of the room, Gunter asked, "I know about your doctorial work, but where did you do your undergraduate work?"

"Two years at the Native American College and then I transferred to the Druid College to finish my degree," William answered.

"You are a Druid?" Mayra asked nearly stumbling.

"Not yet. My father was John Carter."

"I did not make the connection with the names. I met a Druid once. His name was Oscar Meyers," Gunter said.

Surprised to hear Oscar's name, William couldn't resist the chance to find out more about Oscar. He asked, "Where did you meet Oscar?"

"You know him?"

"Yes, I do," William said.

"I am on a paintball team in Germany. My team went against him and his girlfriend. They were very good," Gunter said. The pair of them had managed to beat his team without much difficulty.

"I can imagine. Oscar is probably the most dangerous man in the world," William said.

"Dangerous?"

"He has well over three hundred confirmed kills. Some people in the know place it at over a thousand," William answered with a shrug of his shoulders. He said, "Georgia and he helped train our troops in fighting terrorists."

The discussion about Oscar, Druids, and politics continued until they reached William's suite at the hotel. Neither Mayra nor Gunter noticed the pair of bodyguards following them from a discrete distance. No one at the conference had realized that Rock and Natalie were anything other than conference attendees.

Once they reached his room, William's focus on the paper returned with jarring intensity. He ignored their questions concerning Rock and Natalie who entered the room before them and then disappeared into one of the suites. While Mayra and Gunter had both worked with intense people, neither one of them had ever encountered anyone like William. His fingers flew across the keyboard of his laptop as he wrote the paper. The short interruptions in writing where minor details were discussed were intense, focused, and direct.

They worked on the paper for three hours without break. Upon finishing typing the last sentence, William sat back and said, "The first draft is done. Why don't you two read it over and let me know what you think?"

Mayra and Gunter crowded together in front of the laptop reading what William had typed. At twelve pages the paper was not long, but the information content was dense. After twenty minutes, Gunter said, "I found a typo. The subscript here is wrong. It is supposed to be a k rather than j."

William moved in and made the correction noting that they had finished reading the first half of the paper. Once he was done, he stepped back and went to the bathroom. When he came out, Mayra and Gunter were relaxing in front of the computer. Gunter said, "That's a very nice paper."

"It's not very long," Mayra said. She couldn't help but think of just how significant of a result it presented.

"I like it," Gunter said.

"So do I," Mayra said nodding her head. She had discovered that working with Gunter wasn't nearly as bad as she had anticipated.

"It will be a very significant paper. It puts over five years of debate to rest in a most authoritative fashion," Gunter said looking at Mayra with more respect than he had held for her in years.

"It does at that," Mayra agreed.

William entered the discussion and said, "I'll have Sandra make a hundred copies of it in the morning. We'll distribute them when the conference starts."

"Sounds good to me."

William pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number for Sandra. From the second bedroom of the suite, he could hear her phone ring. He wondered when she had returned to the suite. A sleepy voice answered, "Hello."

"Sandra. I have a paper here that needs to be printed out, copied, and distributed to the conference attendees in the morning."

"It's one o'clock in the morning," Sandra said focusing on the clock beside the bed. Her brain was barely functioning. She'd been busy throughout the conference taking care of last minute details. As a result of the conference chairman's heart attack, many of the details for the conference had not been finalized. Even some of the arrangements that had been made could not be located in time to verify them. Sandra had to scramble to pull together the catering, the conference rooms, and equipment. Unable to rent the audio- video equipment, she had purchased them.

"Sorry about that. I kind of lost track of the time," William said glancing in surprise at the clock in the room.

"Put a note on the computer and I'll take care of it before breakfast," Sandra said.

"Okay," William said cheerfully. He closed the phone and turned to Mayra and Gunter. He said, "She'll take care of it in the morning."