Chapter 89

What are my options?

Not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I tap in the number. "Hello, I'd like to speak with Chancellor Wilmore, please. Tell him it's Beth Haswell."

A routine, 'One moment. I'll see if he's available,' is followed by a tinny rendition of 'The Four Seasons', then a cheerful voice. "Beth, good to hear you. I did wonder if you would call. I imagine I can guess what this is about?"

"Hello, Leo. I'm sure so. You offered me the services of your math department in a possible traffic modelling exercise…"

"That's right. As I mentioned to you when we first met, your project would be an ideal exercise for some of my post-grads. It's a variation on a knotty mathematical puzzle known as the Travelling Salesman Problem…"

My brain glazes… "Sorry?"

"The travelling salesman problem," he repeats. "The question seeks an answer to this dilemma: Given a list of cities, what is the optimal route to include all destinations, taking into account the distances between each city, while visit