Absorption (21 page)

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Authors: John Meaney

BOOK: Absorption
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FOURTEEN
 
EARTH, 1926 AD
 
Migraines, and the hints of memories of dreams. For the past week or longer, Gavriela had been finding it hard to focus during lectures. Or perhaps that was partly due to Lucas Krause’s habit of sitting near her, his intent look so compelling.
 
Today, as Professor Hartmann wrote on the blackboard, her mind drifted from thoughts of electrons and current flow, remembering the strangest thing, a being of crystal who could move and talk and—
 
‘Fräulein Wolf?’
 
‘Um, excuse me, Herr Professor.’
 
‘And your explanation, please?’
 
His diagram showed a curving track of varying width. Inside the chalked track were small circles containing minus signs - electrons, obviously - while off to one side was an equation,
I = dq/dt
, defining electric current as the rate of flow of charge.
 
‘Er . . .’ She struggled to reconstruct his half-heard original question. ‘You want to know how current can be constant everywhere in a circuit, even with a twisted wire, squeezing electrons closer together in tight turns, farther apart elsewhere. ’
 
‘So you heard what I asked, but I have not yet heard your answer.’
 
There were rueful looks around her - sympathy from her fellow students, none of whom looked to have a solution. But when she stared back at the diagram, it came to life inside her mind, a moving picture of jostling pearls inside a curved pipe, and the answer
felt
so obvious, but she could not put it into words.
 
She gestured with her hands.
 
‘The closer the electrons get the more they, um, push against each other - inverse-square repulsion - so they have to spread out. It balances the curvature exactly, and the, um, well . . . It’s
obvious
, isn’t it? But I just can’t, um . . .’
 
Then Professor Hartmann did an unusual thing.
 
He gave a broad, happy smile.
 
‘So you
are
a physicist, Fräulein Wolf. You feel exactly what’s going on. All we need do is add some conversational skills - a minor matter - and you will do very well. Excellent.’
 
Lucas winked at her.
 
Afterwards, she went off to study by herself, but every few minutes she found herself looking up from her book, and seeing not the library but a transparent woman whose name was Kenna, while other tangled images fell through her awareness, too fast to interpret.
 
In the evening, she went to play cards with Petra, Inge and Elke. It was Elke’s apartment, and she owned a card table covered with green baize. Their stakes were matchsticks, and often they would place all the cards face-down, suspending the game in order to chat.
 
‘Are they giving you a hard time, Gavi?’ asked Petra. ‘I mean the professors.’
 
‘Oh, no. Today Professor Hartmann picked on me, but he knew that I knew the answer, while no one else did. At least I think he knew. He’s quite a sweet old man.’
 
‘Picking on you is sweet, huh? Well, good for you.’
 
‘And there’s no boy in class distracting you?’ asked Elke.
 
‘Um . . .’
 
‘Tell us his name,’ said Inge. ‘And how he’s hurt you.’
 
‘Hurt me? What do you mean?’
 
‘You’ve not been yourself.’ Petra patted her hand. ‘We’ve noticed, haven’t we, girls?’
 
‘Oh.’ Gavriela blinked, feeling black pressure over one eye. ‘It’s the headaches and the, um, the dreams. Lucas hasn’t . . . We’re just acquaintances, really.’
 
Her friends looked at each other.
 
Then Inge said: ‘There’s a family friend visiting from Vienna, and he’s rather famous. Do you really have bad dreams that upset you, dearest Gavi?’
 
‘Just . . . recently.’
 
Gavriela’s right hand, still holding her cards, began to tremble. It was awful, because she could not control the motion. So she put down the cards and placed both hands in her lap, squeezing them together, using pain to fight back the shaking.
 
‘You’re very pale,’ said Petra.
 
‘I’m sorry.’
 
‘You need to see him, the Herr Doktor.’ Inge touched Gavriela’s upper arm. ‘My family has a good relationship with him. Some of his ideas are deliciously racy, but—Never mind. My mother will make the arrangements.’
 
‘No, sorry. I can’t afford—’
 
‘Excuse me, but I said my family will arrange everything. There will be no charge.’
 
Gavriela swallowed salt tears.
 
‘Thank you.’
 
She needed help. Suddenly it was obvious.
 
‘Thanks . . .’
 
Then she was crying, and the worst part of it was, she had no idea exactly why.
 
 
Two days later, she knocked on a front door, and a short maid opened it.
 
‘Good morning,’ said the maid. ‘Are you Fräulein Wolf, please?’
 
‘Um, yes. Your employer’s daughter, Inge Scholl, arranged for—’
 
‘So, please come in. Herr Doktor Freud is expecting you.’
 
The maid showed her to a small drawing-room, the cupboards decorated with Delft plates and jugs. There were two high-backed armchairs, one of them occupied. The man rose, and shook her hand, sniffing a little.
 
‘You must be Fräulein Wolf?’
 
The voice was higher than expected, and his eyes were bright with energy.
 
‘Yes, and I’m pleased to meet you, Herr Doktor.’
 
Several minutes later, they were seated - he at a reassuring angle, rather than facing her straight on - and she was telling him about the shards of remembered dreams.
 
Then she paused.
 
‘Transparent people?’ Doktor Freud prompted.
 
‘I know it sounds crazy, wide awake in the everyday world. It’s as if the dreams are trying to break through. And there’s pain inside my head.’
 
‘Such small derangements, or
neuroses
as I prefer to call them, are perfectly common, dear Fräulein. I notice you’ve not mentioned your father.’
 
‘Papa? No, he’s got nothing to do with it. There’s a crystalline woman, a stranger whose name I almost know, and sometimes hints of a young man . . . No. I just don’t know.’
 
‘Hmm.’
 
‘Sorry.’
 
After a few silent moments, Doktor Freud nodded.
 
‘With your permission, it is time to try something different. Just one moment.’ He stood and crossed to the drapes, then pulled them closed, leaving a slit of daylight. ‘Yes, this will do nicely.’
 
There was a glass paperweight on a shelf, and he manoeuvred it until it sparkled, catching the sunlight.
 
‘Now focus only on the brightness, that’s right, Fräulein, and now your vision begins to defocus as you relax, so deeply relaxing now’ - at some point his voice had slowed to an odd cadence, rising and falling in unusual ways, like waves - ‘as you go deeper and deeper inside your unconscious mind, where you can tell me clearly what you see.’
 
The room looked odd as her eyelids flickered, then she was in a dreamlike state, understanding she could move if she wanted to, yet feeling so odd, with no desire to do anything but remain like this, in a stillness beyond sleep.
 
A hand - the Herr Doktor’s - took her wrist and raised it, then let go. Her arm remained suspended, catatonic with no sensation of gravity.
 
‘And the part of you controlling dreams,’ came his odd voice, ‘as I address you now, the Id, can relate in every detail what you see.’
 
‘Yes . . .’ came a tiny voice from Gavriela’s mouth.
 
‘As you agree to do that now.’
 
She sank inside her dream.
 
 
There is a leafy avenue. A young man escorts her - his suit has oddly wide lapels, and his tie is a long strip, not a bow - and then he stops, removing his hat.
 
‘
There they are, ma’am. You want I should introduce you?’
 
The language is . . . for a moment, she’s not sure. It’s her second tongue, that’s all she knows. Her escort is indicating two gentlemen farther along the sidewalk, strolling this way.
 
‘No need, thank you. The professor and I are old friends.’
 
‘You know Professor Einstein?’
 
The young man’s voice is hushed.
 
‘Why else would they have asked you to take me here?’
 
‘I thought—’
 
‘I’m not familiar with Princeton, that’s all.’
 
‘Then, um . . . Do you want me to wait for you?’
 
‘You’ve been kind, but there’s no need.’
 
‘Um . . . Okay.’
 
After a trembling moment, the young man - with an awed glance back at the approaching figures - is on his way.
 
Overhead is a plane. Automobiles are parked along the street, bulbous and closed in, their design strange; and yet she accepts it all.
 
‘Gavi.’ Professor Einstein’s moustache is greyer than before, but his eyes still sparkle.
 
She trembles as she kisses his cheek.
 
‘Kurt,’ continues Einstein, ‘allow me to make introductions. Herr Professor Gödel, meet Fräulein Doktor Wolf.’
 
Of course they are speaking German now, so comforting.
 
‘We’re discussing the existence or otherwise of time,’ adds Einstein.
 
‘In the context of entropy?’ asks Gavriela.
 
Gödel raises his eyebrows; Einstein grins.
 
‘A lifeline,’ says Gödel, ‘is a fixed geodesic in a four-dimensioned continuum.’
 
‘There are six million murdered Jews,’ she says, ‘that you can’t have a conversation with now.’
 
Einstein half-smiles, as if he expected this.
 
‘I beg your pardon,’ Gavriela adds. ‘I feel so stuck in the past at times.’
 
Gödel opens his mouth to speak, but the world is spinning away, is gone.
 
 
In the gloom, Herr Doktor Freud leaned closer.
 
‘Back into the dream, that’s right, as you go back—’
 
‘I don’t . . .’
 
‘—more deeply now.’
 
 
The wheelchair responds to a tiny gesture of her fingertip. It’s just as well, for she’s capable of little else. Whining softly, the motor engages and carries her closer to the desktop, then stops.
 
Her skin is old and blotched with brown, her hands fragile memories of youth.
 
‘Tell me,’ she whispers.
 
‘Sure, Gran. See here?’ The bearded man is pointing at a glass pane containing a picture, like a cinema screen, but the glowing picture is in focused colour. ‘There’s the event.’
 
Three scarlet dots shine in a starfield.
 
‘Finally,’ she whispers.
 
‘What do you mean, finally?’ asks the young man.
 
‘Never mind.’
 
Beneath the screen, a simple folded card bears the label:
Property of Project HEIMDALL. Please leave running.
 

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