Part One
1.
There was a ringing sound. Having spent half an hour exchanging rather forced, joking remarks to calm their nerves, the candidates were now silent. In spite of their usual self-control, all of them had experienced the same emotion, the same beating of the heart. The heavy door of the institute was pushed open by an usher in his vestments. They followed him along a dark corridor and then entered the large amphitheatre where the examinations were to take place. There were thirteen of them, ranging in age from thirty-five to fifty.
Fawell was one of the first to enter the arena. Like the others, he was not carrying any documents or instruments. Logarithm tables and even simple calculation rules were prohibited. For this final examination they were only allowed to use the resources of their memory, their culture, their intelligence and their imagination.
This examination, or rather this competition, for it was a matter of selecting the best of the thirteen, was the final round in a serious assessment of their knowledge. It had been going on for three months and included an impressive series of tests, some of which had been eliminatory.
The candidates, who were numerous at the beginning, found themselves presented by turns with problems in higher mathematics, theoretical and experimental physics, chemistry, astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and questions on diverse branches of biological sciences. In short an impressive range of subjects, requiring in-depth knowledge of the most noble and most diverse fields in which the human mind can be trained.
As the average level was very high (they all came from world-famous schools and many had already distinguished themselves with their important research or original theories), each of the examinations was fraught with difficulties. Not only did they require the solving of challenging problems, but they also demanded a considerable personal contribution, so much so that the compositions were of doctoral thesis standard. Thus they were authorised to make use, at their convenience, of all sorts of tables and calculating machines and could even use the Institute’s computers and consult all the works in the library, which contains almost all human knowledge. It was not a question in any way of cramming. The examination was conceived to emphasise genuine scientific knowledge. The subjects were established by an assembly comprising undisputed world authorities, known as the Nobels, that is to say those who had received the supreme recognition of being awarded the prize.
During the three long months of the preliminary examinations, the candidates remained cloistered in the Institute, with access to laboratories, computers and the library, but without any communication with the outside world and sleeping in cells which were monastic in appearance, constructed for this event in the same building.
The examiners were also Nobels. No one else could have replaced them in their functions, given the transcendant nature of the subjects chosen by them. They had judged without leniency, imbued with their immense sense of responsibility. The several thousand candidates who had presented themselves had seen their ranks thin out gradually. The first three compositions, those of mathematics, theoretical physics and chemistry had narrowed the field immediately: any candidate who did not attain the grade of sixteen was eliminated. This was the case for most of them. The rest, about a hundred, were subjected to all the following examinations, and were then given permission to leave the Institute, while the Nobel jury in its turn retired to a cell to discuss its verdicts.
The results of these debates were published a few days ago. Only thirteen were fortunate enough to qualify. This had been clear since the beginning of the competition, as there were only thirteen places. Fawell was among the chosen ones.
He reached the bench which had been assigned to him. His companions did the same and everyone sat down, silently awaiting the distribution of the envelopes containing the topics. The great amphitheatre, which could hold about a thousand people, seemed to him strangely empty. The thirteen survivors had been placed as far as possible from each other, not to avoid possible copying (the nature of the final examination made such actions pointless and the honesty of the candidates was not in doubt), but to allow them to concentrate. In fact Fawell felt this isolation weighing on his shoulders in an unpleasant way. In spite of his experience of innumerable examinations which he had passed before, and all brilliantly, he felt a sudden attack of nerves, the like of which he had not experienced since he was young. He observed his companions, trying to detect if they felt the same unease.
The two nearest to him were two friends of long standing: Yranne and Mrs Betty Han. They had attended the same university previously and had never lost contact with each other. Yranne was a pure mathematician, a Frenchman, who often stayed in the United States. Fawell, an American himself, called on his talents from time to time to resolve certain difficulties in calculation, which he happened to encounter in the course of his research. He always appreciated collaborating with Yranne due to his logical mind and the force of his deductions.
Fawell’s speciality was nuclear physics. On leaving university he had initially worked under the direction of one of the greatest masters, the Nobel called O’Kearn. Then, by his own efforts, he had got himself noticed by the academic world for his interesting discoveries concerning anti-particles. Like Yranne he was a little over forty, the average age for the competition. The regulations fixed strict limits for the candidates: thirty-five and fifty years. The tasks to be carried out by the thirteen chosen ones, and especially the final winner, were not compatible with being too young, nor with the sclerosis of extreme old age.
Mrs Betty Han, Betty to those who knew her intimately, was sitting on a lower tier. She was the only woman admitted to the final examination, which did not fail to give rise to several malicious remarks by the other candidates who had been eliminated. But there was scarcely any echo of such things here: the conscience and objectivity of the Nobel jury had never been generally in doubt. Fawell was happy and surprised to see her there because he had been afraid that she had been eliminated. He certainly considered her to be of superior intelligence, but mathematics and physics were not her speciality. Although she had started by undertaking serious scientific studies, she had abandoned them after passing the examinations with flying colours, in order to tackle other fields considered frivolous by certain scholars. Thus she had become infatuated with literature, only to turn soon after to philosophy. Finally she had devoted herself to psychology. She had gained significant honours in this field, but many of her former student friends joked with her about such decadent indulgence. That she had been successful in the pure science examinations, while the specialists had failed, was a new sign of her profound intelligence, and of her diligence too, for she had relearned long-forgotten subjects during the few weeks prior to th
e competition.