A Conspiracy of Friends (29 page)

“I’m not sure how much you know about this project, ladies and gentlemen,” Dr. Ferman began. “As you know, we get a lot of press coverage, but we do not always find that the public grasps exactly what we’re about. Not that anybody can blame them: our work is very much at the cutting edge of modern physics, and there are plenty of people with degrees in physics who might be quite hazy on what it’s all about. So please don’t hesitate to ask questions.”

There then followed a half-hour presentation on electroweak forces, the discovery of the W and Z bosons and the hunt for Higgs. Some of the MPs followed the lecture, but most quickly became lost. Oedipus followed nothing at all, though he did recognise references to gravity, with which he, like most of us, was familiar. References to antimatter intrigued him, and in the question time at the end he took up Dr. Ferman’s comment about the explosive potential of a pound of antimatter.

“It would be a substantial bang,” said Dr. Ferman. “The equivalent of about several thousand atomic bombs. But I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I were you.”

Oedipus assumed a severe expression. “You’ve heard of the precautionary principle, Dr. Ferman,” he said. “It’s our job as politicians—and especially those of us who happen to be government ministers—to be prepared for all eventualities. I don’t think we should make light of the threat that antimatter could represent to democracies if it got into irresponsible hands.”

Dr. Ferman said nothing for a moment, which make Oedipus look about him with a slightly superior smile. The other MPs waited for the physicist’s reaction.

“By all means, take precautions,” said Dr. Ferman. “I would never encourage anybody to be foolhardy in these areas.”

“Exactly,” said Oedipus. “I’m glad that you take my point.”

“Of course, it would be a long-term threat,” continued Dr. Ferman. “It’s not short-term.”

“Ah, but that’s what we need to guard against,” Oedipus crowed. “Short-termism. We need to take the long view.”

Dr. Ferman shrugged. “By all means,” he said. “But it would take all our collider resources about sixty billion years to produce enough antimatter to make one bomb. I assume that even your planning horizons, Mr. Snark, do not extend that far into the future. Or am I doing you an injustice? I am aware, of course, that you are a member of a government that is deliberately taking the longer view. Perhaps, therefore, you’re correct, and we should plan for the next sixty billion years.”

There was a snigger from one or two of the MPs, and Oedipus turned red.

“So,” Dr. Ferman went on, “are there any other questions—short-term or long-term?”

The jibe brought another burst of laughter. “It’s going to take your party at least sixty billion years to get into power on your own,” said a sharp-faced MP, pointing a bony finger at Oedipus. This brought even greater laughter from everybody present, except from Dr. Ferman, who clearly wanted to laugh too but decided that tact precluded it.

They now left the conference room and moved towards a large metal door marked
Hadron Collider: No Admittance
.

“I’m happy to say that this sign doesn’t apply to us,” said Dr. Ferman. “We don’t want just anybody wandering around the collider, but the director and I are allowed to take groups in. Please put on this protective gear, though—these plastic hats and shoe covers. We don’t want the wrong sort of particle getting in there!”

Dressed in their special outfits, the MPs followed Dr. Ferman through the door and into a high tunnel stretching into the distance on either side. There were great magnets on the side of the tunnel and a bewildering array of scientific hardware—wires, switches, large metal boxes.

“We can take a brief walk down the collider,” said Dr. Ferman. “If you see anything that interests you, just ask. Not even I know what everything does in this box of tricks, but I have a general idea.”

They walked down the collider, speechless at the size and majesty of the great instrument. Then the party returned to the door by which they had entered and were led off to the control room. Standing in front of a bank of screens and switchboards, Dr. Ferman explained that it was very fortunate that the visit coincided with an experiment being conducted that day.

“We’re actually going to be switching the thing on,” he said. “Then we’re going to accelerate two streams of particles and bring them into collision. This will release an extraordinary amount of energy, but only for a very short time.”

“What about the danger of black holes?” asked one of the MPs. “Couldn’t they swallow us all up?”

“There’s no real danger of that,” said Dr. Ferman. “If we create any, they’ll be terribly small and short-lived. Please don’t worry.”

Dr. Ferman went over to confer with a small group of scientists. He nodded and one of the scientists flicked a switch. There was a humming sound, and rows of instruments began to blink red and green. “Any moment now,” said Dr. Ferman. “There we are. Here they come. You’re witnessing something significant here, ladies and gentlemen. Here they are. Whoosh! Bang!”

“Technical terms of physics,” whispered one MP.

There were further reactions from the instruments. Then Dr. Ferman turned to face his guests. “Any questions about what
you’ve just seen? Are you reasonably clear on this, Mr. Snark? Mr. Snark … Has anybody seen Mr. Snark?”

“I saw him in the tunnel,” volunteered one of the MPs. “But that was about fifteen minutes ago.”

Dr. Ferman gasped. “Oh no!” he wailed. “He will have been atomised.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Ferman,” interrupted one of the scientists. “We have a rather curious burst of particle activity on this screen here. Look, just about junction forty-six in the accelerator. All these quarks and stuff here flying off in every direction, quite an explosion. Look at that. Very unusual.”

“His final photograph,” muttered Dr. Ferman, staring at the screen, at the delicate dancing lines of sub-atomic activity, like a burst of miniature fireworks against a small square of velvet sky.

“Oh dear,” muttered an MP. “Bye-election.”

B
ASIL
W
ICKRAMSINGHE WAS
a man of private and scholarly pursuits. He occupied the ground-floor flat in Corduroy Mansions, a fact which meant that all the other residents had to walk past his front door on their way in or out. For the most part, he kept to himself, although on the rare occasions when there was what William called a “house party,” he came along and appeared to enjoy himself. For the rest of the time, he was hardly to be seen, slipping out of the house in the morning rather earlier than anybody else and returning in the late afternoon, shortly before everybody else came back from work.

Basil was a High Anglican, a member of the congregation of a
nearby church where mass was said, incense used and devotees of the Blessed Virgin Mary exchanged their arcane messages. Basil approved of incense, the smell of which he liked and had sought to emulate in his choice of aftershave lotion, and he had no objection to the use of the term “mass.” He was less enthusiastic about the cult of Mary, which made him feel somewhat uneasy, but, being of a tolerant disposition, he accepted that those who found something in such areas of interest
needed
whatever it was that their practices gave them, and it was not for him to pass judgement. In particular, he remained silent when two middle-aged ladies claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary
and
St. Anne on Ebury Street. Their claim was taken seriously by other mariologists on the vestry committee, but Basil had his doubts. These were based on the patent unlikelihood of the Virgin Mary, and indeed St. Anne, feeling the need to manifest, on a Tuesday of all days—in Pimlico of all places—and on the fact that the visitation was supposed to have taken place on the pavement directly outside the ladies’ small—and struggling—gift shop. If the sighting were to be confirmed, of course, it would undoubtedly be good for business. This consideration had not escaped other traders in the area, who had been quick to report that they had themselves seen two unusually dressed women on the street early on the morning in question, one of them, significantly, wearing a long blue robe.

But where Basil did have strong views was on the subject of liturgical language. Basil believed in the English language, and its ability to express spirituality in a particularly effective register. He knew all about James VI and I, and about his sponsorship of the Authorised Version. He had read and appreciated Adam Nicolson’s
Power and Glory
, which was all about the process of translation. Somehow the language had been just right, encapsulating the full beauty of the English of the time—a language both majestic and poetic. As a boy in Sri Lanka, a third-generation Anglican, he had read a copy of the King James Bible given to him by an uncle
and thrilled at the language. When he first encountered the
New English Bible
, he could not believe the contrast: the poetry had gone, completely, to be replaced by the language of the call centre, the morning bulletin from the meteorological office or the assembly manual accompanying an item of do-it-yourself furniture. Why had they done this? he asked himself. Why had they rooted out all sense of mystery, of immanence, of solemnity, when everybody had been capable of understanding it? The answer was depressingly clear: this was done precisely to get rid of mystery, immanence and solemnity. And the same thing had been done to the
Book of Common Prayer
—with its echoing, resonant Cranmerian prose; the enemies of linguistic beauty had had a field day there, thought Basil.

Basil was an important member of the James VI and I Society, which he had helped to found, and which met every two months in his flat in Corduroy Mansions. The society’s purpose was to preserve the memory of that unusual monarch, celebrating his writings and achievements. Their annual party took place on the anniversary of the death of Elizabeth I, whom the Society did not like because of her role in the death of James’s mother. One might have thought that the elapse of a considerable number of centuries would be sufficient to allow forgiveness to take root, but not in this case. Elizabeth I had a lot to answer for, and the James VI and I Society was not going to let her off the hook so easily.

Basil had a sweet tooth, and one of his favourite ports of call was William Curley’s chocolate shop, not far from the shop where William had bought his ill-fated Belgian shoes. Mr. Curley’s creations existed for the temptation of the likes of Basil, and virtually every day he called in there on his way back from work to buy a small selection of handmade chocolates. From time to time he would take a seat at one of the tables and order a cup of chocolate, which he would consume while reading the newspaper or correcting the proofs of the
James VI and I News
, of which he was the editor.

On this occasion, though, Basil had neither newspaper nor proofs with him when he went into Curley’s. He had left his newspaper in the office, having lent it to one of the trainee accountants who had yet to return it, and there would not be another issue of the James newsletter for another three months. Nursing his cup of freshly made hot chocolate, he looked around the shop. There were a couple of young women gossiping at a nearby table, but their conversation was discreet and he could not hear what they were talking about. Basil liked women—and women liked him—and there was nothing he enjoyed more than being invited to participate in a conversation with women. But it rarely happened; the human world, he reflected, was divided into little clusters of people—tiny tribes, small groups of friends, families—and if you belonged to only a few of these, then your life was circumscribed. He would love to have a gossipy conversation with people he simply bumped into, but he lived in the wrong world for that.

Noticing that somebody had left a magazine on the chair beside him, he picked it up and read the title:
The World of Dogs
. Basil smiled. There was a magazine for every interest, he thought; the other day he had paused in front of a newsagent at Victoria station and seen the bewildering array of magazines. He had been amused by the newsagent’s shelf categories: Women’s Interests; Lifestyle; Men’s Interests. The magazines under Men’s Interests were all about cars, motorbikes and DIY. Limited, he thought, but probably commercially astute. Other categories might be just as descriptive, but risked offending the customer. Computer magazines, for example, could be filed in a section labelled Geeks, and some of the more esoteric titles—were people really interested in
that
?
—
could be filed under Freaks. Mountaineering magazines, of which he noticed there were several, would of course go under Peaks, and ornithology magazines—again there was more than one of these—would be best placed under Beaks. The magazine for DIY
plumbers,
Home Plumber Today
, would naturally be placed under Leaks … He stopped himself. The anarchic, inventive excursus was his weakness and could go on for hours, if he allowed it.

He began to page through
The World of Dogs
. There was an editorial on obedience issues and an article on the economics of setting up a grooming parlour. There was “A Vet Writes,” a column of queries about canine complaints, all answered in measured, sensible terms. And then there was a double-page advertisement for a dog food. It featured, not surprisingly, a dog. The surprise came, though, in the face of the dog staring out at the reader.

Basil recognised him.

B
ASIL STARED AT
the glossy photograph of Freddie de la Hay. The dog looked familiar, but it took him a while to establish why this should be. Dogs of the same breed were all very much alike, in his view; how would one tell one Labrador from another? he wondered. And yet presumably owners of Labradors could pick out their own dog in a crowd of other Labradors. He thought that this might be on the basis of facial expression, or something to do with the eyes, but he was not sure.

A dog, of course, could identify its owner in a large group of humans. Basil knew that there had been a lot of research into how people recognised one another, but he doubted whether anybody had been able to understand how it worked for dogs. They probably used the sense of smell more than visual clues; that, he had read, was how they remembered—the smells were filed away in a massive olfactory memory. How weak was our own memory of smells,
Basil reflected. What did he remember? Incense, truffle oil, vanilla, cardamom, thyme, freshly ground pepper.