The Eidolon (12 page)

“I’ll be home about six,” says the woman.

He kisses her on the cheek. “Okay. Have a good day.”

“Remember to pick up her gym kit,” she says. “She always forgets. Sophie, come
on!
”

Sophie is hunkered down, selecting pebbles from the ground and putting them into the pocket of her duffle coat. Banks crouches beside her. “That’s a good one,” he says, handing her a small stone. She pockets it and wraps her small arms around his neck. “Love you, daddy.”

“Have a good day, beautiful.”

“Let’s go, Sophie, we’re late,” says the woman, flashing a smile at me. “Nice to meet you – have a good meeting.” She bundles Sophie into the other car on the driveway as Banks holds open the front door. He locks it behind me.

I
WAIT IN
the hall as he goes into a room that looks like an office. He calls me in a moment or two later. There’s a bookcase against one wall lined with folders and rolled-up maps beside a desk with a computer.

“I’ll need your signature before we go on.” He hands me a pen and a document with the heading
Official Secrets Act
.

I look up at him without speaking.

“Some of what you’re going to see is highly classified.”

“I thought this wasn’t a government project.”

“It’s not. But we can’t go any further until you sign.”

I stare down at the paper without really reading it. I could back out, but what have I got to lose? I scrawl my signature and hand it back. “Now can you tell me what this is about?”

He leads me to the kitchen. I could use a cup of coffee, but he doesn’t offer. Instead he opens a door to a walk-in cupboard with a sloping roof. It’s stuffed with things that look like they haven’t been used for a while – a rack of old shoes, some rusty tools, a stack of pots and bowls layered with dust. He pulls back the linoleum, taps on an electronic keypad on the floor and and pulls a handle next to it. Light floods in from below.

“What’s going on?”

He looks up. “This will take you to Amos.”

“What? I’m not getting in there!”

“Look, I know it’s unusual, but this will all make sense when you speak to him.” He checks his watch.

I draw closer to the opening, expecting to see a cellar room, perhaps with Amos inside. Instead a ladder stretches down about thirty feet into an illuminated tunnel.

He steps aside. “Come on. We don’t want to keep Bishop waiting.”

This could be a big mistake. Unease and intrigue wash over me, and intrigue sticks. I find myself gripping the rails of the ladder and climbing down.

The tunnel is big enough to walk inside, well lit, warm and dry. Banks has closed the door above and follows me down, shutting out the world above us. No one knows I’m here.

“This way.” He leads me to the left.

“What is this place?”

He stops in front of a recess in the wall, where a silver door slides open. We step into the clean white lift and he pushes the button marked Sublevel One. We descend smoothly for what feels like too long.

“How deep are we going?”

“Ninety feet.”

“Is this a mine?”

“No. It’s not a mine.”

“What then? A military setup?”

The lift glides to a stop and the doors open. We step out into a white tunnel twice as big as the one above, lined with fluorescent panels every ten feet or so. It curves into the distance in both directions.

“Bishop will be here soon. Good luck with your project, Robert.” He pulls his phone from his pocket, and something falls to the ground as he heads back into the lift.

“Bishop? Wait a minute! How do I get out?” The doors glide shut between us.

What the fuck am I doing here?

I stoop to pick up what’s on the floor: a photograph of three women. Their woolly hats are dusted with snow and they’re laughing. The woman in the middle has arresting blue eyes, with a hint of bridled wildness in them. It’s signed on the back:
To lifelong friendship.

A hum comes from the right. I pocket the picture as an electric buggy, driven by an older man, appears round the bend and whirs to a stop beside me. A pair of silky heeled legs swings out from the back.

“Mr Strong? I’m Dana Bishop.” She extends a slender, sleeveless arm and shakes my hand. Sleek, bobbed black hair and bold red lipstick: Dana Bishop is striking and comfortable with it. She lets her gaze run over me, then meets my eye. “I’m the Project Director for Mr Amos. If you agree to assist us, you’ll be working with me.”

T
HE BUGGY TAKES
us deeper into the complex, through a network of interlinking tunnels. I lose track of where I’ve been.

“So how long has this place been here?”

“Since the Second World War.”

I glance up at the smooth white walls. It looks much more contemporary, out of character for a wartime construction.

“It’s been upgraded over time,” she says, watching my face. “It needs to be fit for purpose. Cigarette?”

She offers me an unmarked open green packet.

“I don’t smoke.”

“They’re antioxidant cigarettes – meant to improve your neutrophil function. We’ve been trialling them for a month.”

“Health cigarettes? Do they work?”

She takes a drag and closes her eyes. “They taste like shit.”

The buggy draws to a halt as the tunnel opens into a wide well lit atrium fed by seven main corridors, marked Sectors A to G, and populated by busy looking staff in suits and shirts. Far from the cellar room I expected when Banks pulled back the trapdoor, this is an underground colony. Dana strides past them, ignoring their acknowledgements, apart from the occasional nod. I pause and glance back.

“You won’t be going back that way,” Dana draws on her cigarette with a faint look of amusement. “You really think that’s the only way in and out of here?”

She leads me into G Sector, which seems quieter than the others, past a door marked ‘D Bishop Director of Operations’, towards the one at the end, which simply reads ‘VICTOR AMOS’. Dana pauses outside and breathes in, composing herself. She knocks then opens the door.

The room is spacious, white and sparsely furnished. A wide desk sits at one end with a leather seat on each side. Victor Amos is standing in the middle of the room, facing a large balcony window, watching a flock of birds moving over the rooftops below. It takes me a moment to process that it’s not a window, but a projection. He turns as we enter.

“Ah, Mr Strong, good morning. I’m delighted you decided to come. Thank you Ms Bishop, I’ll take it from here.”

When Dana closes the door, he asks. “Have you heard of stigmery?”

“No.”

“It’s a key concept in swarm intelligence.” He turns back to the projection, which has morphed into a swarm of bees moving across a field. “I could watch them for hours. It’s as if they are one entity, each responding to the same thought. But that’s an aside.” He walks behind the desk and lifts a slim silver pot as the projection becomes a view over mountain ridges capped with snow. “Please, take a seat. Would you like some coffee?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

As he pours, he says, “I suspect you found your journey here to be somewhat unconventional. Given what we do here, I’m afraid it’s necessary.” He smoothes out his silk tie and settles into his high-backed leather seat. “So, Mr Strong. You must have been disappointed about the SightLabs closure. How long were you with them?”

“Five years.”

“That’s quite a long time. Your journal submission suggested that you were making some good progress with your research.”

I take a drink. Proper coffee, not the instant crap I usually buy. “We were close. The last thing we were expecting was that they would pull the funding.”

“It’s most unfortunate. But I suppose, in the current climate of recession, it is science and the arts that are the first casualties. And I am a great believer in both. Do you like art, Mr Strong?”

I glance at the abstract picture on the wall behind him: a grey background with what looks like the silhouette of trees at the bottom and a solid black circle at the top. “I don’t know a lot about it. But I can appreciate a good painting when I see one.” And I don’t like that one.

“Well, that’s what matters. I am not a musician, but I find music touches the soul like nothing else can. Perhaps one day science will tell us why that is.”

“Not if they keep interfering with research.”

“Ah, yes. Indeed. Tell me about your research into dark matter. How did you go about it?”

“We were looking for evidence of WIMPs – Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. We can’t see them directly, but in theory we can infer their presence when they collide with other nuclei. We were using various approaches: semiconductors, crystals, gases, xenon – as the paper outlined. We had some provisional results that we were close to verifying, only we didn’t get the chance.”

“It’s fascinating, isn’t it? To think that there is so much out there that still evades us. If I’m not mistaken, the dark universe constitutes most of what is around us.”

“Ninety-five per cent of it.”

“Really? Why is it so difficult to measure?”

“Dark matter isn’t visible. It’s not like ordinary matter. Everything around us that we see and feel and hear, it’s all perceptible to us through electromagnetism. Dark matter speaks a different language, even though it accounts for most of the matter out there. The best evidence we have for it is Cosmic Background radiation, or the afterglow of the Big Bang.”

“And what about dark energy?”

“We know the universe is expanding, which you’d expect after the Big Bang, but if it were down to only the gravitational effects of galaxies, the expansion should slow down.

What we’re seeing is the opposite: the expansion is speeding up. Galaxies are accelerating away from each other. So either gravity is misbehaving or there’s a propulsive force that’s driving the expansion. Most scientists think it’s the latter, and they’ve called it dark energy and reckon it makes up over two thirds of the universe. There are different schools of thought – some people think it’s a fifth fundamental force, called quintessence, but nobody really knows yet.”

“I can imagine it would be quite a breakthrough, if we were to discover what they are. You must have found it difficult to lose your position, given the implications of your work.”

“It was a bit of a kick in the teeth.”

Amos nods. “They say that losing your job is one of the biggest life events one can face, after bereavement and separation. But a combination, such as you have had to deal with, can make it particularly stressful.”

You’ve no idea, Mr Amos.
“I’ve had easier times.”

“I’m sure. But it undoubtedly helps to have the support of someone close. Are you lucky enough to have a wife or a partner, Mr Strong?”

“Eh... not any more, no.”

Amos bows his head a little. “Forgive me. I did not mean to pry. All I will say, through personal experience, is that there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I was in a position once, not dissimilar to yours. Many years ago I was employed as a research assistant in an environmental agency that worked to protect endangered marine species. It didn’t pay much, but when I lost that job, after the agency’s financial position became untenable, it put a strain on my marriage that was enough to break it. It was a difficult time. But sometimes you need to hit the bottom before you can find your way out of the pit. I knew then that I had the opportunity to invest my time in creating something worthwhile, something that channelled my passions.”

“And what was that?”

“I have always been fascinated by science, but I am not a scientist. What I care about, above all, is the future of Earth and the species that inhabit it. Science is a hugely important part of that future, but it has to be the right science that will take our planet forwards, not destroy it. We have seen already the ugly face of scientific discovery, and it’s something we can ill afford to see again. Whilst the physicists have given us the beauty of string theory, they have also given us the atomic bomb. So, I began with only a few like minded people to help me, and it has gone beyond anything I could have imagined.”

“What exactly do you do, Mr Amos?”

Amos places his cup to one side and clasps his hands loosely in front of him on the desk. “I am the director of a global corporation, called ORB – the Observation Research Board. Its purpose is to monitor the world’s scientific progress. We oversee projects ranging from nano-therapy and quantum technology to climate modification and space exploration. Our role is to ensure that progress continues, but in a controlled and measured way which will enhance rather than endanger the future of our species. We do not recognise political or geographical boundaries, but rather take a view of the planet as one.”

I stare at him, feeling a twist in my gut. “So you’re the global science police?”

He smiles. “I prefer to think of us more as guardians. ‘Police’ has connotations of enforcement that I find a little distasteful. We are more of a guiding hand in keeping our progress on the straight and narrow, as it were.”

“I like to think I’m pretty well informed in my own field, Mr Amos. Why haven’t I heard of ORB?”

“You are well informed – that’s why I invited you here. But there is more going on around you than you know, Mr Strong, and some if it would leave you with sleepless nights for many years to come. No. No one outside of ORB knows we exist, apart from a few highly influential international advisers. It works better that way. In order to make an accurate assessment of what is really happening in the field of scientific research, scientists must be allowed to proceed without hindrance or interference or an awareness of being observed. We strive to eliminate the observer effect.”

“So what do you do if you don’t approve of the research?”

“We steer it in a more positive direction.”

I lean forward; I want to be sure I hear his answer to this. “Mr Amos, did ORB close down SightLabs?”

He laughs. “I’m not aware of any destructive potential in dark matter research, Mr Strong. At least, not yet. I’m sure you would be in a better position than I am to comment. No, that was a political decision taken for financial reasons. Nothing more.”