Out of the Sun (10 page)

"Let me see .. ." said Dr. Tilson, lowering herself into a swivel-chair behind the desk and pausing to recover her breath. "Where did I put that diary?"

Equations, written in a swirling hand, filled the greater part of the blackboard. Harry ran his eye over their familiar but impenetrable form, the brackets and braces, the pis and psis, the signs and symbols of a language he could not speak. Then he moved across to the blocked-up fireplace and leant against the mantelpiece, waiting as patiently as he could while Dr. Tilson prised a desk diary from beneath a sheaf of computer paper and began leafing through its pages. His gaze shifted to a framed photograph hanging above the mantelpiece. It was of a gathering of middle-aged and elderly men, lined up in two rows for the benefit of the camera, one standing, the other sitting. They were dressed in the fashions of forty or fifty years ago and looked as if they might be the staff of a down-at-heel public school. Then, almost simultaneously, Harry noticed three things. Firstly, there was a woman among the baggy-suited males, a slim but not particularly elegant young woman dressed in tweeds and brogues, with a severe hairstyle and a stiff smile. Secondly, he recognized her, by the set of her features and the intensity of her expression, as none other than Athene Tilson. And thirdly, he recognized the man seated next to her. Because he was the one mathematician whose face everybody knew. He was Albert Einstein.

"Tuesday the twentieth of September, Mr. Barnett."

"Sorry?"

"Mr. Hammelgaard came to see me on Tuesday the twentieth of September."

"Oh ... Right."

"Which rather supports your contention that his plans to return to Princeton could have been abandoned in the light of Monsieur Mermillod's death two days later."

"Yes. I suppose it does."

"Strangely enough, though, you don't seem to be particularly interested."

"No. I am. Honestly. It's just .. . This is Albert Einstein, isn't it? And this is you next to him."

"Yes. On both counts."

"How did you ... I mean, where .. ."

"Einstein spent the last twenty-two years of his life at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. I was there in the early fifties. That photograph was taken in, oh, 1953,1 think."

"And this is where Hammelgaard's based now?"

"No. Mr. Hammelgaard is or was at Princeton University. The Institute for Advanced Study is an entirely separate establishment. No students, you see, Mr. Barnett. No teaching. No time tabled work of any kind. Only thought. Pure and profound thought. In theory, at any rate."

"You knew Einstein well?"

"He was good enough to spare me some of his time. That book of mine I mentioned to you contained some material he found interesting. It was what led to my invitation to join the Institute. I jumped at the chance, naturally. Some of the greatest scientific brains of the century were there during that period. On my other side in the photograph you'll see a thin not to say gaunt gentleman doing his best to fracture the camera lens with his glare."

"I see him."

"Kurt Godel. Most famous perhaps for his Incompleteness Theorem. But also notable for his alternative solutions to Einstein's gravitational field equations. He demonstrated the mathematical consistency of a universe that is homogeneous but not isotropic. His paper on the subject had just taken the scientific world by storm when I joined the Institute. Are you with me, Mr. Barnett?"

"None of the way, I'm afraid."

"Never mind. Elsewhere in the photograph you'll find John von Neumann, the man who developed the first electronic compute rand Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractal geometry. Great names." She sighed. "With which you appear to be unfamiliar. Well, look at the middle of the front row. Somebody tall, lean, flinty-eyed, short-haired and evidently angst-ridden. Got him?"

"Yes."

"J. Robert Oppenheimer. Director of the Institute. Formerly '

"Father of the atom bomb."

"Well, midwife, let's say. Also philosopher to his ultimate detriment. But enough of my past. What about your future? What do you propose to do next?"

"I don't know. I'd like to speak to Hammelgaard. Or Donna Trangam. But I've no idea where they are."

"You think they're in hiding?"

"I think it's possible. But in hiding from what?"

"Mr. Hammelgaard did have the air of a worried man. Perhaps even a hunted one. And that was before he knew about either Mermillod or Kersey. You seem to be onto something, I can't deny. But to pursue it you'll surely have to find Hammelgaard. He's David's closest confidant. If anyone knows what's going on, he does."

Harry shrugged. "Exactly. Hopeless, isn't it?"

"Not necessarily. Apply some simple logic to the problem. If Mr. Hammelgaard is in hiding, where would he be most likely to have chosen to go to ground?"

"Search me."

"He's Danish, Mr. Barnett. A little conspicuous in Princeton, I should think. But not in his native country. He had a glittering career at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen before he moved to the United States. If he couldn't return to Princeton, why not Copenhagen instead?"

"Yes, why not?" Harry frowned. "You could be right. But .. . it's a big city."

"With a small academic community. I would start at the Niels Bohr Institute. You might learn nothing, of course, but

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

"Mathematically as well as proverbially, that is axiomatic. But before I forget .. . Would you be so kind as to fetch a book for me?" Dr. Tilson pointed at the bookcase, to which Harry obediently crossed. "Fourth shelf down. Far end. A slim volume. Buff-covered. The Implicate Topology of Complex Numbers. You have it?"

Harry pulled the book out and checked the title. "Yes. I've got it." Then he saw the author's name: A. H. Tilson.

Take it as a gift, Mr. Barnett. I have several spare copies."

That's very kind of you. But ... I won't understand a word. Let alone a number. Complex or otherwise. I never got past differentiation at school."

"Perhaps you were a late developer."

"Very late. It still hasn't happened."

Dr. Tilson chuckled. "There's always time."

"Not enough for me, I'm afraid. But .. . you said David read this?"

"Yes. It was one of the stimuli of his interest in higher dimensions."

"Then I would like to have a look at it. Thanks very much."

"Let me autograph it for you."

Harry took it to the desk and watched as Dr. Tilson turned to the title page and signed her name in brown ink with a large old fountain pen. She added a dedication which Harry was unable to decipher before she closed the book and handed it back to him.

"Will you go to Copenhagen?"

"Probably. It seems I've already come too far to turn back. I may achieve nothing, but that'll be better than wondering what I might have achieved."

"Good luck."

"Thanks. For the book, too. Very generous."

"Not really." She smiled. "But if you want to repay the favour .. . Come back and tell me what you find out. That's all I ask."

"I will. It's a promise."

"And one piece of advice .. ."

"Yes?"

Try the Lord Nelson before you leave town. I believe they keep an excellent pint."

Half an hour later, with Athene Tilson's recommendation amply vindicated and the question revolving in his mind of whether there would be time for a third pint of Adnams' Broadside before the Ipswich bus pulled out, Harry remembered to look at the dedication in his copy of The Implicate Topology of Complex Numbers. He pulled the book from his pocket and turned to the title page. For Harry, Dr. Tilson had written. May you find as well as seek.

FOURTEEN

"Why couldn't we meet at the hospital?" Harry complained when he returned from the buffet queue to the corner table Iris had selected. Tea and biscuits in the no-smoking zone of the British Museum cafeteria was not his idea of fun, although for confidentiality it was probably unrivalled. The dozen identically dressed French teenagers gathered round the nearest occupied table were all speaking at once and very loudly.

"I'm sorry," said Iris. "It's just... Well, you'll think it stupid, but ... I sometimes feel I can't speak freely ... in front of David."

Harry smiled sympathetically. "I don't think it's stupid. I talk to him as if he can hear and understand what I'm saying. I know you do too. It's only natural. But... what is it you can't bring yourself to say in front of him?"

"Never mind that for the moment," she said briskly, sipping at her tea. Tell me about Dr. Tilson."

"There isn't much to add to what I said on the phone. She doesn't have David's notebooks. She agrees their absence is suspicious. She confirms Hammelgaard thought the same. And she thinks he may have gone to ground in Copenhagen."

"With Miss Trangam?"

"Maybe. Either way, he must know where she is."

"I still can't believe she can help David in any practical way, Harry. If she could, she'd have told me when we met."

"She did offer Baxendale some advice, didn't she?"

"Yes, but of a highly theoretical nature. The findings of some research she'd done into the meaning of consciousness. According to Mr. Baxendale, it was all about precisely where and how in the brain consciousness functions. Given enough precision, it might be possible to stimulate those areas surgically and snap a patient out of a coma. But the necessary techniques simply don't exist. And won't for the foreseeable future."

"It's at least worth talking to her, isn't it?"

"I suppose so. But you must understand just how long a shot it is. David stopped breathing shortly after the chambermaid found him. It was twenty minutes before the paramedics got his heart beating again and put him on a respirator. The consensus of opinion is that there's nothing to revive."

"Why didn't you agree to let him die some time ago, then?"

"Because a mother can't help hoping."

"Well, believe it or not, Iris, neither can a father."

She looked at him for what seemed a long time without speaking, then said: "This isn't really about saving David though, is it, Harry? This is about blaming somebody for what's happened to him."

"It's about both."

"Ken has been very generous, you know. All Claude left me was a bungalow and a widow's pension. Without Ken I wouldn't be able to pay for David's room. Let alone the twenty-four-hour care he receives. But I can't impose on his generosity indefinitely. Not when there's no reasonable prospect of an improvement in David's condition. It simply wouldn't be fair."

"Would leaving even a single stone unturned be fair to David?"

"Put like that.. ."

"All I'm asking you to do is nothing until I've had a chance to speak to Hammelgaard and Donna Trangam."

"You've got to find them first."

"Which is why I'm going to Copenhagen."

"When?"

"As soon as possible. Next week, I suppose. I'll have to give my boss a few days to arrange cover for me."

"Your boss at the garage?"

"The very same."

"It didn't look much of a place."

"And it's not much of a job. But it's the only one I've got."

"What's the pay like?"

Harry grinned. "Put it this way. If Labour ever get in and introduce a national minimum wage, I'll be due a substantial rise."

Iris chuckled. "You always did have a good sense of humour, Harry. I remember that. David would have She broke off and flushed, then reached evasively for her tea.

"Would have liked me?"

She swallowed some tea and clattered the cup back into its saucer.

"You never mentioned I have his smile."

"What would have been the point? You're never going to see him smile, are you?" She closed her eyes tightly for a moment, then opened them and said: "I asked about your wages in case you need some money. Travelling expenses. That sort of thing. I mean, in a sense you'll be going to Copenhagen on my behalf, won't you? So '

"I don't need to be paid to help my son, Iris. Keep your money. Put it towards the hospital bill." Their eyes met. Thirty-four years of mutual indifference contended with the bonds and necessities of the moment. And a silent truce was concluded. "I'm sorry. There's no point us arguing. That won't help David."

"I'm sorry too. I never meant to suggest.. ."

"It doesn't matter. What matters is whether you'll give me the time I need."

"I'll do nothing until I've heard from you. Nothing without..." She paused a long while before using the word that somehow dignified their pact. "Without consulting you first. Good enough?"

Harry nodded. "Good enough."

They parted in the gateway leading from the museum forecourt into Great Russell Street, where Harry proposed to wait until Iris had set off by cab for Marylebone before sliding into the pub on the other side of the road. But Iris hung back, as if there were still something to be said.

"I have a present for you," she said, delving into her handbag. "I wasn't sure if ... But I think you should have it ... It's not much, but .. . Like what we're doing, I suppose. Better than nothing." She handed him a small brown envelope, its flap unsealed, its contents thin to the touch. "It's a photograph of David. The most recent I have. Taken at Edale. We went there for a walk when he came up to see us last month. Just the two of us. David used to love the Peaks, you know. Anyway, I got a duplicate for you in case .. . Well, in case you wanted it."

Thanks, Iris. I appreciate this. I really do."

"It's only a snapshot. And .. . Well, you'll see." She turned and hailed a cab. One pulled in immediately. As she opened the door, she looked back and said: "Be in touch soon, Harry."

"I will be."

The door slammed, the cab pulled away and Harry slid the photograph out of its envelope. David, tousle-haired in jeans and a skiing jacket, was pictured leaning against a dry-stone wall with some slab of Pennine scenery behind him, bathed in watery sunlight. It was, as Iris had implied, an unremarkable snapshot. But the event it had preceded by only a few days gave it a patina of un attainability a quality of longing as well as loss. And something else struck Harry at once. Something he knew must have made Iris wonder in the end whether she should hand it over after all. David was smiling. Broadly and affectionately. As a son would at his mother. Or his father.