The Unquantifiable Variable
By BeckyS
April, 2005


The Eppes family and the characters and situations from the TV show "NUMB3RS" are the property of the Scotts and the creation of Cheryl Heuton and Nick Falacci. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.

Chapter Three, Part Two

Nolan was holding his earpiece close to his head when Don and Terry got back to him. He held his hand up, and they waited. A grin broke his face. "Someone just dropped something out the back door. I'm sending a man to pick it up."

"What kind of something?" Terry asked.

"My man said it looked like a folded up piece of paper. Maybe our first communication with the hostage-takers."

"What did the person look like that dropped it?" Don asked.

Nolan spoke into his mike. A few seconds of silence, then, "Wearing a white t-shirt with some kind of design on the front, with a button-down blue shirt hanging open over it, jeans, walking boots. One of the hostages, if they haven't switched clothes." He listened again. "Yeah, I think it's one of the hostages. The curly-headed man."

Terry looked at Don, and he knew she was judging his state of mind. She'd let him run with this as long as she could, but he knew she'd stop him cold if she thought his judgment was being affected.

"Is he okay? I mean, is he injured at all?"

Nolan lifted his mike again. After a moment, he replied, "Seemed in good shape, though he's got some blood on his forehead and a bloodstained rag around his left leg, just above the knee. My man said he was alert, looked like he had his wits about him."

Don blinked back the moisture that had suddenly gathered in his eyes. So if it was Charlie, he wasn't exactly unharmed, but he was okay. "Nolan," he started, "there's something I have to tell you." He was interrupted, though, by a young patrolman who ran up with something in his hand.

"Here it is, sir," he said, and gave it to the detective. "I think he left the door unlocked, too. It looked like he was checking out where we were, then he shot the deadbolt, but my partner thinks he drew it back again."

"I wonder if we can sneak in that way," mused Nolan.

Don considered it. "I don't think we'd better try a stealth entry from there. You can see that door from the front of the store if you're positioned right, and we don't know where they are in the building." He looked around. "Do we have a heat-seeker yet?"

"It's on the way," said Terry. "One of the teams at LAX just finished up with theirs, and they're sending it over."

"Equipment shortages," Nolan muttered. "I wouldn't think you guys would have to deal with them, too."

"Yeah," said Don. His hands were itching to take the paper from the detective. "So what does it say?"

Nolan unfolded it carefully and turned it. Then turned it again. He frowned. "This doesn't make sense."

"What is it?" Terry asked. She twisted her head around so she could see the page, too. Her eyebrows shot up.

He shook his head. "A bunch of math, I guess. Formulas. Equations. That much I get. I've got a nephew who's getting his bachelor's in this stuff. Looks like his homework. No note, though." He looked up, confusion plain on his face.

Don rubbed at his forehead. "Mind if I look at it?"

"Be my guest." He handed it to Don.

An older man in a dark suit with white air and an atmosphere of preternatural calm approached, and Terry distracted Nolan by introducing him to the Bureau's senior negotiator, Peter Jacobsen.

As soon as Don got a good look at the page, his heart dropped. Just what he'd been afraid of. Charlie's scribble. He handled it carefully, as much because it had just come from his brother as for purposes of maintaining any evidence such as fingerprints. "It's him," he whispered, and his hand dropped to his side, the paper brushing against his holster.

Jacobsen, who despite his age was built like a Navy Seal and had psychology degrees from two of the top universities in the nation, caught the change from his normal tone of voice. "Don. You know this guy?"

Don swallowed, but couldn't answer around the lump in his throat. He'd hoped, oh, he'd hoped he was wrong. "Yeah, Pete."

Terry took the paper from Don's hand and studied it. "You know we use math consultants sometimes."

Nolan nodded.

"We recognize the handwriting. Or whatever you call it. Even when it's equations, these guys have distinctive patterns to their writing."

"You think one of your consultants is inside?" Don could see Nolan running the implications. "He have any training in negotiation?"

"No," Don said. "No more than any genius can figure out on his own."

Jacobsen reached out to take the paper. He glanced at it, then looked again, harder. "Do you understand any of this?"

Terry laughed once. "Oh, no. No way. We're going to have to find someone to translate it for us." She turned to Don. "Didn't you say Amita—?"

Nolan broke in. "CalSci's right next door. They've got an incredible mathematician over there. Charles something-or-other. My nephew's in his class right now, in fact." He pulled out his cell phone. "I'll just call him—"

Don shook his head. "Don't bother."

Nolan kept dialing. "Look, I know you guys have your own experts, but from what my nephew says, this guy can figure out anything."

"Yeah, he could," Don sighed, "except he's the one who wrote the message. And it's Dr. Charles Eppes."

"My nephew's math teacher is your consultant?" Then the name sank in and Nolan's eyebrow slowly raised. "Eppes. As in . . . ?"

Don nodded. "My brother."

"Don . . ." Jacobsen warned.

The detective very deliberately put his phone away. "And you were going to tell me this . . . when?"

"Actually, that's what I started to say when I walked over here." He jammed his hands in his pockets. "Look, I know what both of you are thinking. In your position, I'd think the same. But setting aside the actual negotiations," he nodded at Jacobsen, "I'm the most experienced agent we've got right now to run this, and I've got something the rest of you don't. I know Charlie. Inside and out. I won't say I always understand him—" he nodded at the paper Terry still held "—but I've got the best chance of figuring out what he's going to do next. I'm not going to do anything to jeopardize this operation."

Jacobsen sighed. "I'll bet he's not one of those hostages who'll just sit there and wait for us to do our job?"

"I don't think so," said Terry. She waved the paper. "Witness this. He's already made a successful effort to get information to us. Don wasn't kidding when he called him a genius. Charlie is probably the most brilliant man I've ever met, and he's a master in a world that most of us can't even begin to comprehend. He appears extraordinarily intuitive, but most of the time that's simply because he's thinking so much faster than the rest of us, weighing and processing in seconds more data than we can hold in our heads. Every conclusion he comes to can be documented down to several decimal points."

"She's our profiler," Don inserted. "And she's worked with Charlie enough to have him pretty well figured out."

"It'll be a long time yet before anyone really figures out that brother of yours," Terry said, then turned back to Nolan and Jacobsen. "He thinks in a different way than what you'd expect. I'd call it thinking sideways, but when he explains it to you, you realize that it's very straightforward, very logical. Physically, though, he's not intimidating in any way. Has that sad-eyed puppy look."

Don jerked back and stared at her. "Puppy?"

She raised her eyebrows in apology. "He might be about to hit 30, but he still looks like an undergraduate." She paused and qualified, "A smart undergraduate."

"So the hostage-takers are unlikely to view him as a threat?" Jacobsen asked.

"Unless they try to outthink him," said Don. "He can get kind of obnoxious if he thinks you're ignoring his conclusions."

"My nephew says he's a great teacher," said Nolan. "His favorite professor."

Don nodded. "He'll spend hours with someone who's really interested, even if they don't know plus from minus."

Terry nodded. "I've watched him brief people who have a solid grounding in math. You should see the jaws drop when they get what he's talking about. Suddenly there isn't a word in three that you understand, but they're all nodding and grinning like they've just been given the key to the universe."

"Entertaining as hell, if you aren't trying to get them to figure something out on a deadline," said Don.

Terry scowled at him. "But what's more relevant to our situation," she continued, "is that he's also obsessively oriented to problem-solving."

Don rolled his eyes at the word "obsessive."

Nolan picked up on his reaction. "You mean he won't be able to resist working the situation."

"No way," said Don. "That's one reason you need me – to give us a chance to figure out what he might do." He dropped his gaze to the ground for a minute, then looked up them, decisions made. "Tell you what. I'll run the CP, coordinate the intel; Nolan, you and Pete here work directly together, and when and if the time comes, you take the number three slot on entry and clearing."

Terry shot him an approving look. Heck, he knew better than to lead a team into a situation where he might find his brother dead. For extra reassurance, he said, "Terry'll be with me all the way, and if she sees anything out of order, she'll kick me out."

"All right," said Nolan, "but I reserve the right to kick you out myself, if I see you doing anything stupid."

"Double-check is always good," Don agreed. "Now all we have to do is figure out what the heck Charlie's trying to tell us."

Terry nudged him. "Your dad's here."

"Oh, boy," Don swore.

"Amita's with him – I'll take the paper to her; you take your father."

"We don't need more family involved in this," said Nolan, his voice and body rigid. He glanced at the black-haired beauty who was walking next to an older man. "Who's this Amita? Your sister?"

"Amita Ramanujan. She's a post-doc at CalSci – Charlie's her thesis advisor," said Don. "She works with him all the time; probably has the best chance of anyone to translate this page. She actually understands all this stuff. Give me a sec to talk to my father – you'll brief Pete on anything else?"

"We'll need you in the CP in about two minutes," Nolan warned.

"I'll be there." Don angled to intercept his father. "Dad! Over here!"

Alan Eppes broke away and barreled up to his son. "Is Charlie all right? Where is he? I want to have a talk with that boy—"

Don put what he hoped would be a calming hand on his father's shoulder and gave it to him straight. "He's okay, Dad, but he's one of the hostages. A policeman saw him and said he's okay. He's already sent out a message – Terry's giving it to Amita to try to figure out."

Alan seemed to shrink, right in front of him. "You know that Charlie's not so good at this kind of thing. If it was you in there, I wouldn't be half so crazy with worry."

He took that as the compliment it was intended to be. "I know, Dad."

Amita walked over, gazing at the paper with the same abstracted expression on her face that was all too familiar to Charlie's family. She tapped it with a long fingernail. "He's upset, Mr. Eppes, he's working equations like mad, but he's also thinking clearly."

Don grimaced. "You mean he's back to working out insoluble math problems because he can't deal?"

"I don't think it's that bad," she answered. She gave him a glance of apology. "The figures aren't small and all crammed together like that time before your mother died, but he only doodles equations when he's either bored or trying not to be upset."

"Of course he's upset!" Alan threw his hands up in the air. "How could he be not upset? There's a man keeping him in that store at gunpoint!"

"Dad," Don warned, "I only have a minute. Amita, are you telling me he risked his life to drop a paper full of doodles?"

She shook her head and flattened the paper on the hood of a nearby car. "No, there's something else here. Most of these equations deal with probability."

He nodded – that was the job he'd wanted Charlie for later in the day. Now, if he could just get his brother out of this, he was thinking more along the lines of taking him out for a beer. After he gave him hell for scaring them all half to death.

"But see this one here," she said, "it doesn't fit. In fact, it makes no sense at all." She pointed to a single line that didn't look any worse to Don than the rest of the page:

±3 : 5βμM55(0)+ςμF21(+3)+M35(-2)+χεM29(+1)+λγF7(+3)
2M26(+3)+ρικM23(-2)

"Why?" he asked. "What's different about it?"

"First thing, he's mixed Greek symbols from several disciplines. Along with straight mathematics and number theory, there are also symbols that are used for wavelength, electricity, photons, radiation, friction, electromagnetism . . . ." She shook her head. "Larry could tell you more, that all falls into his expertise, but I really don't think it's relevant to what's going on here. It's like this: If you were a German and reading an English newspaper, and all of a sudden you hit a paragraph written in pig Latin, it'd jump out at you, wouldn't it? And even if you weren't completely fluent in English, you'd know something was wrong with it."

Terry glared over her shoulder at the store, as if she could will Charlie to come out and explain himself. "It's that blatant?"

"To you and the robbers, no. To a mathematician, yes. It's set up almost like a legitimate expression, but it makes no mathematical sense at all."

"But Charlie doesn't do things for no reason," said Alan. "Sometimes we don't understand them, but the reasons are always there."

Don resettled his flak vest more comfortably. "I've seen him use equations to describe something. Is that what he's doing?"

Amita shook her head. "It's not an equation at all; it's nowhere near that cohesive. Whatever he's saying, he didn't use any mathematical system I've ever seen."

"We have to remember that he was doing it under the noses of the hostage-takers," said Terry. "If they thought he was writing a message, they never would have let him continue. Whatever information he's trying to get to us, he wanted it hidden."

Don rubbed at the back of his neck, trying to ease some of the tension from his shoulders. "Well, he succeeded. A little too well. Can you figure it out? I have to get to the Command Post, start trying to gather information on the hostage-takers and the hostages – who they are, how many, where they're being kept, what kind of shape they're in. I need to get a handle on what Nolan's men are doing, get things going."

"I'll work with them on it," said Terry. "You go ahead."

He nodded and caught them in his mind's eye for a moment; a snapshot in time. Amita, determined to translate this message from her mentor and friend; his father, perking up a bit at the thought there might be something even he could help with; and his partner, who would keep them on track and working quickly without them even realizing it. Satisfied, he jogged off to the Bureau's van.