The Eidolon (14 page)
I have attached the paper again for your appraisal, and await your response. I would prefer that the Council takes it upon itself to act on the basis of our findings, but you should know that I am willing to make these results public if I am left with no other choice.
Regards,
Nathanial
There’s a response.
From: [email protected]
Sent: 13th Feb, 08.47
Subject: Re
Dear Professor Thorpe,
Thank you for your resubmission, but I regret to inform you that, while you have some encouraging results, the Council feels that there are still some queries regarding your methodology and as such we cannot endorse the course of action you suggest. If anything, the forthcoming experiments could help to validate your findings. As you know, we undertook a painstaking safety analysis before embarking on this project, and remain persuaded that the collisions are safe. Whilst we cannot comment on the decisions taken regarding other colliders, our collisions will continue as scheduled. I would remind you that, under contract, any work you produce in CERN remains copyright of CERN.
Sincerely,
Jose Javier
Director of CERN Council
I open the attachment and read his paper.
The methodology seems sound. And the results, a five sigma effect.
Holy fuck. Am I missing something?
“W
E NEED TO
get that paper out there.”
“It’s too late for that, Robert. Thorpe already tried that, but his colleagues didn’t want to listen. The Council didn’t want to listen. They’ll reach their target energies next week. We don’t have time for persuasion.”
“Then I need to speak to him.”
Amos is sitting behind his desk. “Of course.” He reaches out and taps the intercom. “Rachel, get me Professor Nathanial Thorpe’s secretary at CERN.”
“Of course, sir.”
Amos passes me a handset. It rings, a continental tone. After a minute or so, a woman answers, her accent American, with a hint of something Mediterranean. “Professor Thorpe’s secretary. May I help you?”
“I’m looking to speak to Professor Thorpe, please.”
“Can I take your name please?”
“My name?” I glance at Amos, who nods. “It’s Robert Strong.”
“Mr Strong, I’m afraid he’s not available for the foreseeable future, but I can put you on to Professor Stiller if that would help?”
“No, no that’s OK. Where can I find Professor Thorpe? I was one of his students and I need to speak to him about his research.”
“Erm...” Her voice tails away, as if she’s considering whether she should tell me. “They flew him back to England three days ago, after he became unwell. I think he’s still in hospital.”
“Hospital? Which one?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t give you that information.”
“Okay. Thanks for your help.” I hang up. “He’s here in the UK. In hospital.”
“If you still feel you need to speak to him,” says Amos, “my staff will find him.”
N
ATHANIAL
T. T
HORPE
is in a side room on Ward 3 in the Neurology Unit at The Royal London. Without hesitation, Amos arranged for me to get there and for Dana to go with me. We took a buggy to an exit concealed in a small substation in a field, where a helicopter was waiting. It flew us to the helipad on the roof of the hospital.
“He’s in Room Three,” says the nurse, who’s scribbling in a set of notes. “Third on the right.”
“I’ll wait here,” said Dana.
There’s a faint smell of urine in the air and some old woman, just a bag of bones with skin stretched loosely over them, is shouting from the first room, “Help me! Please help me! HELP ME!” over and over and over.
Nathanial T. Thorpe is lying on his bed, glazed in sweat. His eyes are closed and his limbs are twitching; his mop of black hair plastered to his head. Even the muscles in his neck and face seem to be jerking. Christ, do they know he’s doing this?
“Nurse?” I stick my head out and call down the corridor, over the old woman’s cries for help.
“Is he fitting?”
The nurse drops her pen and hurries towards me. She pauses as she reaches the door. “No, he’s not fitting; it’s muscle spasms. He’s been like this since he got here.”
“Muscles spasms? What’s wrong with him?”
“Well, the nurse who’s looking after him is on her break.” She reaches for a piece of paper in her uniform pocket and scans down the scribbled notes. “Mr Thorpe...”
“Can I help you?” says a voice from behind me. Another nurse, tall and Asian, with a soft accent. “He’s my patient. Thanks, Ellen.” Ellen goes back to writing her notes.
“I’m a friend of Professor Thorpe. We worked together.” A loose association with the truth, but I didn’t come all the way here to be stonewalled. “What happened to him?”
“They think it’s new variant CJD. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.”
“What does it do to you?”
“It’s a disease of the brain tissue, causing dementia and muscle spasms. His case is one of the most progressive we’ve seen.”
“When will he get better?”
“I’m afraid he’s not going to get better. There’s no cure for CJD.”
“What?” I glance back into the room, where he’s twitching and moaning like a rabid animal. I wonder if he knows what’s going on. Part of me hopes he doesn’t.
“Do you think he can hear me?”
“I’d assume that he can, so don’t be afraid to talk to him,” she says gently, before she leaves me alone with him, closing the door behind her.
I stand there for a moment, staring at the horror of it. He was a brilliant man, and now...
“Nathanial?”
He seems to turn a little towards me, and his eyes open slightly.
“Can you hear me Nathanial? It’s Robert Strong... you probably don’t remember, but you were one of my tutors.”
He tries to speak, but only manages to spill frothy saliva down his chin. He turns away.
The door opens behind me and a wave of perfume suffuses the room. A woman in her late thirties walks in: blonde, slim, striking, dressed in jeans and high-heeled boots, carrying a large black leather handbag.
She stops and stares at me. “Who are you?”
“Eh, I’m, eh... my name’s Robert Strong. I used to work with Nathanial, in Cambridge.”
“Oh.” She closes the door. “He won’t remember.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. Are you his...?”
“I’m his wife.” She moves over to the empty chair on the other side of the bed, sits down and takes his hand.
I shouldn’t be here. “I’m sorry, I’ll leave you.” I turn and push the handle of the door downwards slowly, then pause. I won’t get another chance.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say, turning back.
“Yes?”
“Did he ever mention his work at CERN?”
She holds my gaze. “Sometimes.”
“Did he mention anything that he was worried about? Anything to do with the experiments?”
She stares at me. “Did they send you?”
“Who?”
“CERN Council? Did they send you?” She gets to her feet, and I can feel the edge of aggression in the room.
“No! No, I... I came across something Nathanial was working on. That’s why I came here, to talk to him. I think he was on to something.”
Her eyes slide over me, as if she’s considering where I stand. “He was,” she says. “But they wouldn’t listen.” She glances down at him.
“Did he believe they produced strangelets in the experiments?”
She nods. “He couldn’t tell me much about it, but he wanted them to stop.” She shakes her head and strokes the hair away from his eyes. “He didn’t sleep for months, he hardly ate. It scared me before, but now this has happened...”
I stare at them, the pretty blonde woman and her ghost of a husband. It’s not the answer I was looking for; it’s not an answer at all – just one unpublished paper from a man with dementia, and his wife’s testimony – but I feel the tide beginning to turn.
A
MOS IS STUDYING
a shoal of fish on the projection when I get back, watching the flecks of sapphire and ultramarine drift and flicker.
He turns to me. “Did he speak to you?”
“He’s got CJD. He can’t give me anything.”
“So where does that leave us, Mr Strong?”
“Look, I admit that his paper looks solid. If he’s right, then CERN’s in a lot of trouble.”
“If he’s right, and I believe he is, we’re
all
in a lot of trouble.”
I stare at the blue glow on the wall, the artificial tranquillity. How the hell did I get myself into all this? If Amos is wrong, I’ll go down in history as the second Judas, and no amount of money will make up for that. How I felt when they shut down SightLabs – betrayal, injustice, bitterness – it still burns inside me. Years of work swept aside in one morning. Can I really do that to them? They must have people at CERN who’ve looked at this, who’ve weighed it all up. They can’t be foolhardy enough not to take it seriously. But Thorpe’s paper, and everything his wife said, and what they were beginning to find at the American collider...
“I’m not a hacker, Mr Amos. That’s not what I do.”
“But you know the software system through your work with the Grid. I need you to identify a weakness, that’s all. Our ethical hackers and programmers will take care of the rest.” He walks over to his desk, sits down and gathers together a few papers.
“Look, I admit that some of the work produced in the States is persuasive, and if they’re accurate, so are Thorpe’s findings; but if he was your mole in CERN, who’s to say he wasn’t biased?”
Amos stops arranging his papers and looks up. “Nathanial Thorpe wasn’t our mole.”
“You mean you still have someone there, in CERN?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then why don’t you get him to do your dirty work?”
Amos shakes his head. “He is an eminent physicist with a deep loyalty to CERN, borne of the many years he has invested in it. He has shown great strength of character to bring this information to light, but he does not have the computing skills for this task.”
“And I do.”
“And you do.”
So, not just Wenton and Thorpe. Someone else believes this too. A shoal of tiny, ultraviolet fish drifts along the wall. Shimmering simplicity. I glance back at Amos, who sits calmly, watching me.
“I’m not the man you want for this.”
“Robert, I believe you are.”
I walk towards him. “No, I’m not cut out for espionage. I know that Thorpe thought he was onto something, and maybe he was, but I think the people in CERN know what they’re doing.” I lean towards Amos, my hands resting on the desk. “Tell me this. Why should I trust that your mole knows any more than they do?”
Those eyes, clear and still, study my face for a long moment before he answers. “Because, Robert, our mole is your father.”
The silence rushes at me as the world shifts. Memories mug my attention, flashing a mishmash of images. The only ones I have of him. I’m on a blue climbing frame, I glance behind me to see my dad standing there, I stretch a hand to grasp the metal strut above, my foot slips from under me, I feel a rush of panic but he’s there, gripping my chest, lifting me gently to the ground. Then I’m lying on my front on the floor next to him, building a spaceship out of Lego. He’s reading me a story, and the sound of his voice is all that’s safe. I’m safe. I try to keep my eyes open under the warmth and comfort of a blanket, waiting for the end of the story that never comes. Men in flat caps shovel earth onto his coffin, soft thuds on wood.
“My father died when I was three.”
“Sit down, Robert,” says Amos. He watches as I sink slowly into the chair before he continues. “Your father, Elliot Strong, was one of the leading men in physics in our country. Thirty years ago, he became involved in a highly sensitive government project, the ethics of which became increasingly difficult for him to accept. ORB had been observing this project for some time and was aware of, and supported, your father’s concerns. We helped him distance himself from the programme.”
“If he’s still alive, why hasn’t he contacted me?”
“The nature of the project made that too risky.”
Is he lying? I search his face for any tiny inflection that might betray him, any shift of his gaze that suggests hesitation, but there is none. He looks back at me, still, certain. Perhaps even compassionate.
He opens a file and pulls out two photographs. The first one makes me freeze. It’s a copy of the picture I’ve kept in my drawer, taken in Cambridge on his graduation day. I slide it behind the second. It is a close-up of a man who looks like my dad, older, greyer, thinner with deeper lines around his eyes – but the same eyes, grey-blue, behind a pair of small, round specs, the same oval-shaped face. Oh, Jesus. It’s him
.
I hear the rushing of blood in my ears. I’m trembling.
Amos’s voice sounds like it comes from a great distance. “Your father sacrificed his identity to ensure your safety. And despite what that did to him, he carried on contributing to the greater good through his work in quantum physics. Yet with all of his loyalties to his field, he still has the courage to voice his true concerns. If he’s right, he knows he will be at the epicentre of the consequences, but his loyalties will not let him leave.” He lifts the photograph gently from my limp grip, and stares at it for a moment. “I have the greatest respect for him and I trust his judgement. If you had had a chance to know him, I’m sure you would too.” He raises his eyes to meet mine. “Perhaps, now, you can find out for yourself.”
He’s alive. And he believes Amos.
The tide turns.
“I’ll do it.”
Chapter Seven
“Y
OU MADE THE
right decision,” says Dana as we walk away from Amos’s office.
I say nothing.
“I’m glad to have you on the project. Let’s get started, shall we?”
“Where are we going?”
“D Sector.” She climbs into a buggy and I follow.
“Do you have a map of this place?”
“You won’t need it. You’ll be accompanied offsite, when you go. You’ll only need to find your way from the Project Hub to the living quarters. Other Sectors are off-limits. Understand?”