A child with two brilliant parents has a double handicap, and the Craigs had made life even more difficult for their daughter by naming her Ada. This well-advertised tribute to the world's first computer theorist perfectly summed up their ambitions for the child's future; it would, they devoutly hoped, be happier than that of Lord Byron's tragic daughter: Ada, Lady Lovelace.
It was a great disappointment, therefore, when Ada showed no particular talent for mathematics. By the age of six, the Craigs' friends had joked, "She should at least have discovered the binomial theorem." As it was, she used her computer without showing any real interest in its operation; it was just another of the household gadgets, like vidphones, remote controllers, voice-operated systems, wall TV, colorfax . . .
Ada even seemed to have difficulty with simple logic, finding AND, NOR, and NAND gates quite baffling. She took an instant dislike to Boolean operators, and had been known to burst into tears at the sight of an IF /THEN statement.
"Give her time," Donald pleaded to the often impatient Edith. "There's nothing wrong with her intelligence. I was at least ten before I understood recursive loops. Maybe she's going to be an artist. Her last report gave her straight A's in painting, clay modeling -"
"And a D in arithmetic. What's worse, she doesn't seem to care! That's what I find so disturbing."
Donald did not agree, but he knew that it would only start another fight if he said so. He loved Ada too much to see any faults in her; as long as she was happy, and did reasonably well at school, that was all that mattered to him now.
Sometimes he wished that they had not saddled her with that evocative name, but Edith still seemed determined to have a genius-type daughter. That was now the least of their disagreements. Indeed, if it had not been for Ada, they would have separated long ago.
"What are we going to do about the puppy?" he asked, eager to change the subject. "It's only three weeks to her birthday - and we promised."
"Well," said Edith, softening for a moment, "she still hasn't made up her mind. I only hope she doesn't choose something enormous - like a Great Dane. Anyway, it wasn't a promise. We told her it would depend on her next school test."
You told her, Donald thought. Whatever the result, Ada's going to get that puppy. Even if she wants an Irish wolfhound - which, after all, would be the appropriate dog for this huge estate.
Donald was still not sure if it was a good idea, but they could easily afford it, and he had long since given up arguing with Edith once she had made up her mind.
She had been born and reared in Ireland, and she was determined that Ada should have the same advantage.
Conroy Castle had been neglected for over half a century, and some portions were now almost in ruins. But what was left was more than ample for a modern family, and the stables were in particularly good shape, having been maintained by a local riding school. After vigorous scrubbing and extensive chemical warfare, they provided excellent accommodation for computers and communications equipment. The local residents thought it was a very poor exchange.
On the whole, however, the locals were friendly enough. After all, Edith was an Irish girl who had made good, even if she had married an Englishman. And they heartily approved of the Craigs' efforts to restore the famous gardens to at least some vestige of their nineteenth-century glory.
One of Donald's first moves, after they had made the west-wing ground floor livable, was to repair the camera obscura whose dome was a late-Victorian afterthought (some said excrescence) on the castle battlements.
It had been installed by Lord Francis Conroy, a keen amateur astronomer and telescope maker, during the last decade of his life; when he was paralyzed, but too proud to be pushed around the estate in a wheelchair, he had spent hours surveying his empire from this vantage point - and issuing instructions to his army of gardeners by semaphore.
The century-old optics were still in surprisingly good condition, and threw a brilliant image of the outside world on to the horizontal viewing table. Ada was fascinated by the instrument and the sense of power it gave her as she scanned the castle grounds.
It was, she declared, much better than TV - or the boring old movies her parents were always screening.
And up here on the battlements, she could not hear the sound of their angry voices. |
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