Even a Mastermind Has a Story (5)
It all began with a single phone call.
I was working alongside Folton as usual, waiting on the society's review, when a call came in for him. The voice on the line put him on edge. He answered, and before long he hung up and slipped away somewhere, his face gone dark—without a single word to me.
I watched the door he had vanished through, then decided my free time had arrived and took out the spirit stones I had been quietly skimming off, a little at a time.
"What could it be?"
"Hard to say. It wasn't a pleasant look."
"You don't think something's happened? An accident?"
Fretting over it alone was never going to give me an answer. Better to focus on my own work and ask Folton when he came back.
I had just set the spirit stones out and was hunting for a cage to hold them when the phone rang again.
"Hello. Is this Dr. Raynant?"
I lifted the receiver to my ear, and a slender woman's voice came through. It was, of course, a call for Folton. I raised my voice as much as I could, doing my best to pass for an adult.
"This is his assistant."
"He seems to be out at the moment. Understood. The test results you requested have been sent to the doctor's email."
My worry that she might suspect a child was on the line proved pointless. The woman said only what she had called to say, and hung up. That was the end of it.
"Whew. She didn't catch me."
I let out a breath of relief and turned my attention to what she had left behind. Test results Folton had requested himself. There was only one thing it could be—the mana-wavelength analysis of the Primal Spirit Stone he had been waiting on so desperately.
"I should check the email."
"You know how?"
"Where Folton's concerned, I even know his account password."
"Nothing you don't know."
"For a genius, it's nothing special."
I signed straight into Folton's email, opened the attachment, and went through the data. Just as I had guessed, it was a mana-wavelength analysis of the spirit stone. Reading carefully from the top, I caught on a striking line near the end.
No alpha wavelength was detected.
It repudiated every result the research had produced until now. So this was why Folton had left the lab with that dark look on his face.
"Doesn't seem it was the result he wanted."
"......Something's off."
Even so, a sense of wrongness clung to it. Setting credibility aside, the figures themselves were far too unnatural. If I had to put it in a single phrase, it felt as though the alpha-wavelength values had been cut out whole.
"What's wrong with it?"
"It feels like someone deliberately omitted only the alpha wavelength."
It was entirely possible the Primal Spirit Stone differed from other spirit stones. Even so, something was still wrong. The total of the mana-wavelength ratios in the data added up cleanly, but the ratios of the other wavelengths didn't agree with one another.
"You're certain?"
"Sigant-Lear wavelengths and gamma wavelengths can't be detected at the same time inside a single spirit stone. Interference makes it physically impossible. But inside the Primal Spirit Stone, they're both present."
"The Primal Spirit Stone could simply be special."
"And if you take only the share assigned to the Sigant-Lear wavelength and swap it for the alpha wavelength, it falls inside the margin of error Folton calculated for alpha in the first place."
When Folton got home, I would have to talk this data through with him. I sat down in the chair and waited quietly for him to come back.
He didn't return until late evening. I had been nodding off in the chair when he came in, a plastic bag crammed with liquor bottles hanging from one hand.
"......They say no alpha wavelength was detected from the Primal Spirit Stone."
That was the first thing out of him—thoroughly drunk, the rims of his eyes red.
Where had it gone wrong?
Looking back, persuading Folton—who had meant to publish only once he was thoroughly prepared—might have been the mistake. I knew for certain that something had gone badly wrong the moment a news broadcast came on the television.
The Spirit Society had refused to publish Folton's paper in its journal. The stated grounds were that the contents were absurd, and that Folton himself lacked credibility.
I had watched most of the process by which that paper was made, and I knew the material was credible enough on its own. But that was not the only problem. Allegations of plagiarism had erupted over his earlier papers as well, and every outlet in the media was condemning Dr. Raynant in a single voice.
Revolting. I thought I might be sick.
I couldn't watch any more of it, and I shut the television off. Whichever channel I turned to, whatever hour I switched it on, it was all the same story. The whole country had become of one mind, lining up to drag Folton through the mud.
"This is pissing me off."
"Where are you going?"
"The lab. I have to see Folton."
I clenched my teeth and started for the lab.
I took the dark stairs down to the basement with care, and found the laboratory door standing open. Once I had thought it a beautiful place, full of spirit stones. Now bottles of liquor stood in rows where the stones had been.
The moment I stepped inside, Folton met me with his face flushed red.
"Junia! You're here!"
"......You reek of alcohol."
"Haha, I'm sorry! Your dad tried his best to hold it together in front of you... but I just couldn't manage it."
Everything he had built across a lifetime had come down at a stroke. Anyone would have despaired. Folton Raynant was no exception. The man was coming apart.
"Dad."
"Yes, my girl. What is it?"
"Are you going to give up like this?"
It wasn't only today. Ever since the journal had refused him and the condemnation had gone nationwide, Folton had been crumbling by the day. I could see it happening in real time.
"Give up? Give up what?"
"I'm telling you the research data... might have been fabricated."
"That damned research data! Even if I say so—who, who is going to believe me? I'm already a liar who plagiarized even his doctoral thesis!"
Folton glared at me, his eyes sharp. It was a brittle, neurotic look I had never once seen in all my eight years. The fatherly warmth and the keen light were gone from those once-brilliant eyes, and only a deep fury at the world remained in their place.
"......I'll believe you."
"What?"
"I said I'll believe you. Whatever you say, Dad, I'll believe you."
"Haha, Junia...... You still didn't know, did you."
The laugh rang bright, but his face was crumpled as if he might cry.
"......"
"Yes. Your father is that kind of man."
And then he drank again. It was harsh stuff—heat climbed into you after only a mouthful—but the Folton of now drank and drank without seeming to feel the burn at all.
"You don't know anything either, Dad."
Whether it was the truth or a lie, the results Folton and I had built together were a fact no one could deny. His reputation was already gone. I refused to let the time we had spent together be thrown into the pit after it.
"......Junia."
"I'll come back a little later."
In the end, I would have to go myself. With that resolve, I left the lab.
"Shame I don't have a space-type spirit."
"Where are you thinking of going?"
"The museum. I'm going now."
What the Primal Spirit Stone actually was. Whether Folton's claims were truly hopeless. I didn't think I would be satisfied until I had seen it with my own eyes.