by Tim Neilson
“All of us had assumed,” James explained, “when in the late 1950s Burnet made reference to Isaac Asimov, he meant Isaac Asimov the well-known science-fiction writer, because today that’s how he’s mostly remembered. Same way as people assumed Conrad had always been ‘Conrad, the famous author’. But when we checked up some more, we realised that in the late 1950s Asimov still had a day job as a biochemist.”
“So,” Daniel speculated, “you were hoping to find a research paper he’d written speculating about the kinds of things that would have helped Crick?”
“Yes, but that’s not what we found at all. What we found was a satire by Asimov on scientific research papers, which described a make-believe molecule that existed partly in the present and partly in the future, so that the molecule would dissolve itself before it actually came into contact with a solvent. He published it in a science-fiction magazine, along with a couple of follow-up pieces that he wrote about his imaginary chemical. But importantly, those pieces became popular with Asimov’s fellow scientists. That was good enough. We could assume that Burnet may not have been rubbishing Crick’s ideas as science fiction, but may have been giving him a serious tip, even if it was phrased in a flippant way.”
“Very clever, James,” said Daniel.
“Not at all,” James replied. “I should have got onto it earlier. I asked the Champ about it the wrong way. I didn’t give him an explanation of why I was asking, so when I asked him about time travel being used to solve problems, I sent him down the wrong track. I referred only to short stories and novels, rather than just asking about anything Asimov had written.”
“Well, no one’s perfect, and you ended up getting the answer,” Daniel reassured him.
That’s true, thought Anna, and glanced further down the table.
“But what is it with those suits?” Tina asked.
“Company policy,” Steve told her resignedly. “Mr Derwent said he didn’t mind what we wore but we didn’t want to risk someone snapping a picture of him with us in the background, which then ended up in the media or all over the internet and got seen by our boss back in Connecticut.”
“It’s not that bad,” Richie pointed out. “We can wear ultra-lightweight summer suits and very soft-collared shirts.”
“I’m glad to have met Daniel,” Claudia remarked to Anna, “but he needn’t have travelled all this way. I could have done that last part of the work.”
Anna shook her head.
“No, you’d made such a show of meeting James all over the place that once we knew he was under surveillance we had to assume you were as well. We didn’t know the criminals were out of action and nor did we know that Chester and his team were on our side,” she added, looking across at Derwent.
“Jimmy didn’t look after himself too good,” Derwent was telling Cam. “He smoked two packets a day, just about lived on burgers, fries and pizzas, and never had a bottle of bourbon that saw its fifth sunrise.”
“It’s funny isn’t it?” James said to Daniel. “I mean, what happens to a subatomic particle when it goes forwards and then backtracks through time. During that process it isn’t actually in any time that we know of. It isn’t the present and certainly isn’t the future, and it isn’t really the ‘past’ in any way that makes sense. If it is ‘time’ at all, it’s a different sort.”
Anna wondered whether she should interrupt the two of them. Once James and Daniel started speculating about some unknown and unprovable abstract concept there was no telling how long the conversation would last. Let them go, she thought. Everyone else is enjoying themselves, and they don’t have to listen to it.
And there was no need to intervene anyway. Tina had leaned across and said something to James, and, wonder of wonders, he had turned his attention to her. Excellent, Anna thought. James’s initial stupefied acquiescence to Tina’s attentions had rapidly morphed into acceptance and was now clearly progressing to genuine enthusiasm.
“Do you think I should say something to her?” Claudia asked, noticing that Anna was contemplating her sister.
“No,” Anna advised. “She’s realised now that she’s made a complete idiot of herself, and she won’t want anyone else to focus on that. Just be totally natural to her and she’ll forget all about it soon enough. Far too soon, probably,” she added wryly.
In any case, she, Tina, Daniel and James would soon be on their way home. She and Daniel would pick up where they had left off, probably including, Anna sighed inwardly, Daniel’s obsession with our research paper. Although perhaps, she thought hopefully, seeing him interacting cheerfully and spontaneously with the others, not as intensely as before.
For Steve and Richie this had been just another assignment, though perhaps an unusually colourful one, and they would no doubt return to business as usual. Claudia, too, would probably resume life as it had been before this strange intrusion. So would Derwent, to whom this heavy isotope project would be a very small project in the context of his company’s mammoth enterprises.
For Cam, by contrast, the recent events might turn out to be life-changing, though he wouldn’t know that for certain until more research had been done. But at least he would have a chance to make change happen.
Anna’s eyes turned to Tina and James. One thing was certain. James’s life was not going to return to normal. Anna had a premonition, though, that James might find that he enjoyed things that way.
About the Author
This book has emerged from the author’s immersion, over many years, in the history behind many of the places described in it, and his interest in some of the activities in which the book’s characters are engaged.
Tim Neilson’s connections with Cambridge University have been only social and sporting, and infrequent, but they do extend over a long period of time. He was a student at Geelong College when Conrad’s bell was hanging in the quadrangle, its true identity still unknown. He was resident at Ormond College some years after the elderly Sir McFarland Burnet had moved out, and studied at University College London before the Francis Crick Institute was built but when Crick was already a revered alumnus.
He has been enthralled by history since he was a small child. His accomplishments in science and in intellectual property law were never more than slight, but in the course of his day job as a taxation lawyer and from a number of his friends he has learned something of the fascination of those disciplines.
