Absorption: Ragnarok v. 1 (Ragnarock 1)

by John Meaney

  ‘My father studied with her, I believe,’ said Stef.

  Did that mean they were students together, or that Dr Helsen had taught her father? Roger was about to ask when a faint musical chord stopped him. Then it was gone, and he had no idea why it had caught his attention, or why his stomach had felt curdled, just for a moment.

  ‘He was under her, your daddy?’ said Rick. ‘She seems the kind of person who’d like to be on top, right enough.’

  Stef’s chin went down and one eyebrow went up.

  You’re braver than me, Rick Mbuli.

  Roger took a swig of sweet citrola, filling his mouth with cold effervescence, letting his tongue absorb the taste before—

  ‘If you love me, you’ll swallow,’ said Rick.

  And Roger’s head jerked forward, drink spurting through both nostrils, spraying down. Then he began to laugh, at himself and at the three girls’ shocked faces; and in a moment everyone was laughing - Stef included - while he was convulsing with it, tears down his face.

  ‘I guess that settles your orientation,’ Rick went on. ‘Sadly enough.’

  That seemed just as funny, and laughter took hold again.

  ‘Shit. I need to wipe myself down,’ said Roger.

  ‘I like to leave ’em wet and sticky.’

  ‘Somebody save me.’

  He pushed back from the table, crossed to the balustrade, and leaned against it, still chuckling as he rubbed his face. Someone was saying something behind him, but there was a flicker off the edge of his vision, and a repetition of that strange musical chord followed by another, a cold vibration along his back. He turned his head from side to side, not quite catching the dark movement that was just beyond what he could see.

  Suddenly he zeroed in. Across the plaza, by a settled bronze aircar, two people were talking. One was a bearded man, holding a foreshortened silver trident in one hand; the other was a slender woman, blond hair tied back. Around them, darkness was twisting.

  He triple-blinked his smartlenses, zooming in, but the darkness failed to magnify while the faces grew clearer. Shadows rotated at right angles to everything. This was no optical effect, but something different. And from the casual-looking passers-by around the plaza, it was something only he could see.

  ‘You okay, Roger?’

  ‘Sure.’ He rubbed his face, blinking his lenses back to normal. ‘I think I’ve recovered.’

  Except his old vertigo was back, powerful now, accompanied by the sense of music playing in his bones: da, da-dum, da-da-da-dum, da-da.

  Then, from the other side of the plaza, the blonde woman turned to stare straight at him. Even without magnification, he could tell.

  ‘Oh,’ said Rick. ‘Is that Dr Helsen over there?’

  ‘Where?’

  But Rick meant the blonde woman.

  It’s like the outdoor nightmares.

  Twice when he was young, he’d seen dark shadows like this, both times in public places with Mum. She’d wanted to take him to see neuromedics, despite the risk of revealing his true nature; but Dad had talked calmly on both occasions, questioning him and then reassuring Mum there was nothing wrong, that it was a child’s active imagination, nothing more.

  ‘I’ve seen the same kind of thing myself,’ he had said. ‘Though maybe not as strongly.’

  Now, replaying the old memory, Roger decided that Dad had told the truth, but that what it meant was different from Mum’s interpretation.

  It’s something real.

  He rubbed down his clothes as the fabric cleansed itself, then returned to the table. Rick and the three girls stared at him for a moment, then Stef said: ‘So what’s Petra Helsen like, Rick?’

  ‘She’s a little different,’ said Rick. ‘That’s all I can say.’

  Roger tapped the table, ordering himself a fresh citrola, confused by the images twisting in his head.

  In the great airy atrium, a newly extruded quickglass table held Rashella’s find: a slick black cylinder the size of her forearm, still speckled with soil. She stood there regarding it, her clothing cycling through many colours, reflecting her indecision. For her, hesitation was unusual, therefore a worry in itself.

  She tuned her gown to black, ordered her thumbnail to razor sharpness, and slit through the null-gel coating. Revealed, the cached object was a silvery cylinder, looking too big for what it surely was.

  ‘They put things like this inside themselves?’

  Several drones entered the atrium, directed by the house system that was unused to hearing Rashella speak rhetorically aloud.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, sticking with ordinary speech. ‘I just can’t believe what my ancestors went through.’

  Touching the golden studs on her forehead, she called up a mental schematic, a virtual holo displaying the plexnodes webbed throughout her body. They were part of her nervous system, as much as the natural organic brain and neural cords, the ganglia and synapses, and the receptors of all the major organs, the orchestra that played the peptide symphony of human emotions.

  Imagine having to extend your brain with clunky plexcores embedded in your body . . . but that was what the oldtime Luculenti had to do.

  This cylinder was inert . . . but once powered up, what inchoate fragments of thoughts and feelings and memories might it possess? She reached forward, then stopped herself and pulled back. And flinched, feeling or hearing a wisp of sound.

  ‘Why not?’

  She whirled, trying to locate the whisper’s source, seeing nothing save the drones that awaited her command.

  ‘This is stupid.’

  With her thumb, she pushed the null-gel back in place. Perhaps a hundred years ago, when it was fresh, the material would have sealed up; but now the slit remained, revealing a sliver of plexcore.

  ‘You want to try,’ came the whisper that was not there.

  ‘Shut up.’

  The drones backed away as she stalked from the atrium, gown whirling, odd patterns spilling across the fabric as her concentration wavered.

  ‘Just leave me alone.’

  She commanded the carpet beneath her feet to carry her, then ordered it to flow faster, then faster again, until she was speeding along the east wing’s main corridor, artwork a blur on either side.

  ‘You know you do.’

  The whispers followed her.

  ‘No. This is stupid.’

  She raised her hand, and the carpet stopped flowing. Then she turned, faced the way she had come, and ordered it to carry her back toward the atrium.

  For she was Luculenta Rashella Stargonier, and this was her home, where she was always in charge, and the most intimidating thing around was herself.

  So what harm could an old plexcore do? Just how twisted and dangerous could its stored thoughts be?

  She stopped a metre from the null-gel capsule, and stared at it.

  FOUR

  EARTH, 1926 AD

  So here she was, in this long neo-Renaissance hall, beneath balconies forming galleries on either side. Black ironwork, globular white lights, a gleaming floor: everything polished and strong, suiting such a place of learning, for this was the Erdgenössische Technische Hochschule, where only a few decades before, Einstein himself had been a student. Now she, Gavriela Wolf, was here as an undergraduate to follow the same ambition: to determine how the universe worked, for the sheer joy of discovery.

  This morning she had sent a letter to her parents, whose little shop in Sendlingerstrasse, in the heart of Munich, had been just around the corner from Einstein’s childhood home. It was only five years since the Wolf family relocated to Berlin.

  Dear Mutti and Vati,

  Zürich is such a pretty town, like our old München but with the broad flat lake, and such icy mountains all around. The trams, too, are cheerful as they wind their way up and down the cobbled streets. You would like to take your Sunday promenade here by the Zürichsee!

  The road up from river level had been a steep climb, but those same trams she had written abo
ut were expensive, and the Polybahn funicular from Central would have been an extravagance. Still she had enjoyed the walk, listening to people greet each other with a gruff Schweizerdeutsch Grüezi !, smelling fresh-cooked Berliner doughnuts from a bakery, breathing cool air blown in off the glacial lake.

  Two men in long brown work coats, one with mop in hand, were standing at the edge of the flow of students, watching them. It was like laminar flow in a river: moving fastest in the centre, diminishing to zero velocity at the edges. Except that these were people, not water molecules, and perhaps they could tell her where she was supposed to go.

  ‘Excuse me, please. Could you tell me where Lecture Theatre 3 is?’

  ‘Ah, with the thunder and lightning machine. The big metal lollipop.’

  The incomplete sentences sounded rude, but perhaps her Hochdeutsch sensibilities were not appropriate. On the other hand, while the man might be uncertain about her Jewishness, her gender was undeniable. It was an attitude she had hoped not to find, not here.

  ‘Do you refer, sir, to a Van de Graaff generator that might be used for electrostatic investigations?’

  The older man smiled.

  ‘She’s got you there. Sorry, miss, but my young colleague is unfamiliar with the name of the apparatus. Are you attending Herr Professor Möller’s lecture?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Then it will be our pleasure to help you, in order that you might get there on time.’

  There was nothing unusual in the answer’s precision - the use of the subjunctive was an everyday courtesy - but in contrast to the younger man’s abruptness, it was reassuring. She nodded, memorizing the directions, and was gently formal in her thanks.

  Two minutes later, she was settling herself among thirty young men in a lecture theatre that smelled of beeswax and chalk. She made no attempt to introduce herself; none of the men tried to talk to her. Since she was joining late, three weeks into the semester, the others would already have made acquaintance with each other.

  No matter. She was here to learn.

  In front was a bench, currently supporting the upright metal lollipop - not a bad description, really - that was the Van de Graaff generator. The vertical shaft contained a drive belt, and friction inside the metal sphere on top would generate an electrostatic charge of some considerable - and dangerous - magnitude.

  Had Einstein sat in this room, or even in this seat?

  My life is amazing. I’m so lucky.

  She was poor only in her lack of money. The opportunities before her, and the family love behind her, were treasures that she had done little to deserve, however hard she worked. Neither her mother nor any of her earlier ancestors could have dreamt of being here, in Zürich’s finest centre of scientific learning.

  Sunlight like pale honey shone through clear panes, highlighting the random dance of dust in the air, the Brownian motion that Einstein had shown confirmed the existence of atoms.

  Professor Möller was broad-shouldered, with a large beard, a far-receded hairline but with a mass of fine grey-white hair, worn shoulder-length. He looked like the leonine illustrations in the Conan Doyle books that Gavriela enjoyed so much: Professor Challenger, scientist and adventurer.

  Now, as the very real Professor Möller commenced his lecture, his gaze passed across the rows of faces, lingering on Gavriela no longer than on anyone else, as if unsurprised to find a young woman among his students. Nor did he look surprised when a door opened at the rear of the lecture theatre, and more people filed in, filling all the empty places behind the original twenty-seven students. Surely such lateness was a discourtesy? And could there really be this many first-year undergraduates? Some of them looked old enough to be faculty.

  A young man with curly hair leaned towards her.

  ‘You’re in luck. This is no ordinary lecture.’

  ‘Oh. It’s my first day.’

  ‘I thought so, but that’s not the reason you didn’t know about this. I’ve been talking to some of the older students.’

  That did not make complete sense; but most of the other first-years were looking as puzzled as she felt. So what was going on?

  ‘So, I wonder,’ mused Professor Möller from the front, ‘how many of you know what a Faraday cage might be?’

  At this, some two-thirds of the room erupted in cheers, wolf-whistles and applause, more like a beer hall than a staid lecture theatre, while the first-years mostly looked surprised. Then two men in brown work coats - the pair that Gavriela had encountered in the hall - came in, bearing a big greasy-looking slab between them. They placed it down on the parquet floor next to the demonstration bench.

  ‘This is made of wax,’ said Professor Möller, ‘which, as you know, is a poor conductor of electrical current. At least, I hope I have that right.’

  More cheers and laughter. Around Gavriela, some of the first-years were smiling, still puzzled but picking up the festive ambience. She thought of it as a form of resonance.

  Then the two men left and returned with a smaller wax block, plus a large wire basket, at least a metre and a half tall: the kind of thing you might find in a park, convenient for visitors who had rubbish to dispose of. Its purpose here was beginning to dawn on Gavriela - surely the Herr Professor could not be serious?

  He was starting up the Van de Graaff generator, so whatever the point of the preparations, everyone would soon find out. Then he beckoned forward one of the students: a burly, muscular fellow who stripped off his jacket at the Herr Professor’s request and rolled up his shirt sleeves. His revealed forearms were thick and strong-looking, his waistcoat snug around a barrel chest.

  ‘That’s Florian Horst,’ whispered the curly-headed student. ‘He served in the Army, so I guess the Herr Professor considers him trustworthy.’

  ‘Oh. I’m Gavriela Wolf.’

  ‘And my name is Lucas Krause. I’m honoured to meet you, Fräulein.’

  Seated, he gave a small bow as they shook hands. Meanwhile the burly man, Horst, was hefting the big wire basket - to him it appeared feather-light - then putting it down and nodding to Professor Möller.

  The Van de Graaff groaned and growled as it ran. The metal sphere on top was large, and Gavriela wondered what kind of potential it might reach. Ten thousand volts, a hundred thousand? It was possible to reach five million volts.

  With Horst’s assistance, Professor Möller climbed atop the wax slab and steadied himself. Then he nodded, and Horst stepped back.

  As the professor’s fingertips touched the metal sphere of the Van de Graaff, everyone - first-years included - raised a great cheer and applauded. Around his head, his long hair drifted upward and spread out in a nimbus, each individual hair repelling the others, for they were similarly charged, as was the whole of Professor Möller’s body. And without the insulation of the wax slab, the potential would connect to earth, causing a fatal current to flow.

  ‘You may be wondering,’ he said, ‘just how I feel today. Well, I’m—’

  Two-thirds of the students roared: ‘—feeling very positive!’

  Everyone cheered.

  Then Horst was carrying out his true task, raising the cylindrical wire basket, standing on the small wax block, and helping to lower the basket around Professor Möller, encasing him. As he did so, the hairs on the professor’s head drooped, no longer repelling each other, for the free electrons in the wire basket drifted under the electrical force, until all charges were balanced, cancelling out.

  Around Gavriela, the applause reached a crescendo, but she could only sit there, blinking with tears. You could read in a book that there could be no electrostatic field inside a conductor, but this was what made it real, brought understanding to life, in a way that demonstrated the courage as well as the perspicacity of science.

  She was stunned and honoured to be here in this moment. And it was so different from the stilted atmosphere of the German schools she had attended.

  Horst helped Professor Möller to remove the wastebasket Fa
raday cage - the professor’s hair once more spreading out, forming fine radii - and then to shut down the demonstration, the Van de Graaff generator whining, its drive belt shuddering, as it came to a halt.

  Then the professor supplied a surprising addendum. Pointing to the blackboard that showed Coulomb’s equation for electrostatic forces - like gravity, an inverse square law - he held position like an actor on the brink of soliloquy.

  ‘This is such a simple equation, is it not? You might think of it as a consequence of geometry, since a sphere’s surface area grows with the square of its radius. If we spread a constant amount of stuff across a growing area, its concentration must be diluted by the same factor.’