Sputnik Caledonia

by Andrew Crumey

  The professor raised his voice again to address the whole audience, though all the volunteers knew by now that for the experts, the performance was purely rhetorical. This show was for the recruits, and perhaps for Davis at the rear. ‘I feel the need of a diagram,’ Kaupff said, going to the blackboard and drawing a small rectangular pillar above a large circle. ‘This is the lift,’ he said, pointing to the chalk rectangle; and then, indicating the circle beneath, ‘Here is the Earth it falls towards.’

  A symbolism as crude as that of last night’s iron governor displaced Robert’s effortful attentiveness: the pillar was a rigid phallus, the circle its desired destination; and while Kaupff explained the inevitable effects of downwards acceleration, he extended from the pillar two thick white lines converging on the central point. ‘All matter is stretched and squeezed by tidal forces,’ he explained.

  Robert raised his hand. ‘Is that how the Moon can move the sea, even though astronauts orbiting the Earth are weightless?’

  Kaupff nodded.

  ‘And if we were to fall onto the Red Star, would we be turned into spaghetti Bolognese?’

  A burst of laughter from one or two recruits, then silence as the thought struck home.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Kaupff. ‘The Red Star could reduce any man to a limp string of blood and tissue. But those tidal forces, in far weaker form, are present everywhere in the universe, even here in this room – this is Einstein’s answer to the riddle of empty space. The stretching and squeezing of freely falling matter is an effect we can never exclude. But can we be sure that gravity is always attractive?’

  For every attraction there is a corresponding repulsion: it was a political formula Robert had learned at Cromwell. It was also a way of picturing his desire for Rosalind and the anxiety it instilled in him.

  ‘Let’s return to electromagnetism,’ said Kaupff. ‘Imagine two charged particles, an electron and a proton, held completely immobile in space. Think of them as being like two flies on the surface of a smooth pond.’

  One of them was Rosalind, the other was Robert. The laws of evolution dictated that he had to get to the other side of the pond and put his thing in her, or on her, or whatever it is that flies do. Then she’d lay eggs which would turn into maggots.

  ‘One of the flies begins to buzz – the water ripples. This trembling surface is the electromagnetic field. Motion in one particle has caused excitations of the field, and these propagate towards the other fly or particle, so that it too begins to move. Soon the two of them are dancing together, linked by the field. The speed at which these waves move through space is the speed of light, and when we look at a star twinkling in the night sky, the electrons in our eyes are set dancing by ripples first produced tens or hundreds of years earlier by charged particles vibrating at the star’s surface.’

  Robert was still stuck to the pond – his fly-legs were adhering to its viscous surface and his fly-brain was beginning to feel as if it were made of glue. Kaupff’s lecture was evidently aimed at a higher form of life – Robert might as well resign now from the mission and concentrate his efforts on getting a date with Rosalind. Except that once he resigned he would never see her again.

  ‘Notice that in order to produce electromagnetic waves it’s enough simply to make charged particles dance up and down. Take a long piece of wire and entice electrons to waltz from one end of it to the other – this will create radio waves which pass through space until they meet another piece of wire, a receiving aerial, whose electrons obediently perform the same dance, creating a varying electric current which we can amplify strongly enough to push a loudspeaker back and forth, making sounds in our ears.’

  Miriam and her boyfriend might have turned on the radio to hide their own sexual grunting. But Mrs Frank said not to use it after ten, Robert recalled, and if she and her husband had heard the radio they would have known Miriam was in there.

  ‘Let’s apply this to gravity,’ said Kaupff. ‘The Red Star and our own planet are two bugs on a bigger pond whose smooth surface is the gravitational field. Give the Red Star a shake, and gravitational waves could propagate – again at the speed of light – towards Earth. The difference now is that gravity’s dance is more complicated; it’s the stretching and squeezing of tidal forces. Electromagnetic waves are a dance of one dimension, gravity’s happen in two. Coyle, are you feeling all right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You look pale – do you need to go outside for some air?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘As I was saying – we’ve been searching for electromagnetic waves from the Red Star and have found none. We’ve also tried looking for gravitational waves, but these would be extremely weak, and our detectors are insufficiently sensitive. What, though, if there were a third option – a dance of no dimensions? I am talking about a scalar field.’

  It was what Robert had seen erased from the blackboard in the briefing room yesterday: this name suggestive of a snake in long grass. Kaupff had probably given his lecture already to Brigadier Archibald, to Rosalind, even to the bus driver or the tea lady. Volunteers like himself were the last to know everything.

  ‘A scalar field would be something else we could never remove from inside a jam jar,’ Kaupff explained. ‘At every point in space it has a certain strength, measurable by its interaction with matter, and changes in strength could propagate through space as a wave. According to the theory of quantum gravity I have been developing, the Red Star ought to generate scalar waves, detectable here on Earth.’

  Davis spoke. ‘Is your theory verified?’

  ‘The Red Star will be its verification: our mission is to detect and interpret the waves.’

  Macleod raised his hand. ‘Sir, you spoke of a capsule. Do you mean we’re to fly close to the Red Star and pick up its signals?’

  ‘All in good time,’ Kaupff said soothingly. ‘At this stage let me say only that we have made enormous advances in detector technology, but one crucial element remains to be added. You, my fine young men, are that final, indispensable component.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Now we must begin the technical part of the seminar. Rosalind, you will please take the volunteers downstairs for some refreshment before they commence the exercise.’ Appearing to know exactly what Kaupff was talking about, she rose and bade the recruits follow her out of the room while the experts – and Davis – remained seated. Leading them back along the corridor to the lift, she waved the men inside the waiting compartment where Robert found himself squashed against one wall, while Rosalind, when she followed them in, became pressed against Forsyth. Thus their descent was a further disappointment to Robert in addition to the renewed suspicion he now harboured that the mission Kaupff proposed was not really a journey into space at all, but only an Earth-bound twiddling of knobs on a scalar-wave receiver. Perhaps, in the end, the only signals to be detected would be the fugitive emissions of the Installation’s own frustrated inhabitants.

  6

  They came out of the lift into the foyer where a new set of students were waiting. Rosalind led her charges to the trolley and greeted the woman at it.

  ‘Hello, Dora.’

  Dora nodded in response, a silent gesture curtly indicative of acquaintance, subordination and dislike.

  ‘Serve the boys well,’ Rosalind instructed her. ‘They need something strong inside them for what’s coming up.’

  ‘And what would that be, miss?’ Dora said, beginning to fill cups for the recruits and speaking as if to her elder and superior, though she and Rosalind looked to be of similar age.

  ‘You know I can’t tell you,’ Rosalind replied, her smile inhabiting only her mouth, while her eyes sent a different message. As soon as the volunteers were all supplied with refreshment, Rosalind beckoned them to come with her to the open doorway of Auditorium B.

  ‘Do you see that man there?’ she said quietly, indicating a portly, bearded and somewhat self-important-looking figure who was leafing through his notes at the front of the empty le
cture theatre in readiness for a forthcoming talk. ‘That’s Brian Willoughby.’

  ‘Who?’ said Lachlan Macleod, giving voice to what all the recruits were thinking as they looked at the short, fat man, rendered even smaller by distance, who was scratching at his greying beard in response to some difficulty apparently thrown up by his own lecture notes.

  ‘Brian Willoughby, the famous writer,’ said Rosalind. ‘You surely must have heard of his novel Shipbuilders?’

  ‘It rings a bell,’ Volunteer Harvey admitted.

  ‘I’m not much of a reader,’ said Beatty.

  ‘Me neither,’ Forsyth added.

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Robert, trying to equate the diminutive middle-aged figure with the correspondingly fat but for that very reason far more impressive novel he was sure he had seen in the Cromwell University library, and had never read.

  ‘He won the Dickens Prize twice,’ Rosalind whispered, with an inexplicably possessive pride that sounded almost maternal. ‘I must have read Song of Freedom at least five times. Take a good look at him – there’s a man who understands a woman’s heart.’

  Robert felt a twinge of jealousy. This corpulent, pug-nosed and frankly ugly little man meant more to Rosalind than he ever would. He reassured himself with the thought that it was only Willoughby’s status that made him impressive. Take away his books and prizes and what was there left of him except a fellow with an unpleasant habit of scratching at his bearded chin?

  ‘Professor Kaupff invited him here,’ Rosalind explained to the recruits. ‘He thinks scientists should spend as much time thinking about art, politics and philosophy as they do on science. The more rounded the person, the better the results.’

  ‘He looks rounded, all right,’ said Robert, causing laughter loud enough to make the overweight writer look up from his notes. Rosalind drew her charges away from the novelist’s view.

  ‘That’s an impertinent and unpatriotic way to speak about one of our greatest living treasures,’ she admonished, leaving Robert feeling instantly humbled. ‘In the war of ideas, one novel by Brian Willoughby is worth an aircraft carrier. So I never want to hear another disrespectful word about a man who has served the motherland so well.’

  The tannoy announced the imminent start of Willoughby’s lecture; the waiting students extinguished and stored their cigarettes for later reuse, returned their coffee cups and began converging towards the open door. The volunteers found themselves at the focus of this activity; Rosalind said, ‘Let’s go inside – I’m sure Professor Kaupff would wish you to hear at least part of the talk, and the simulator exercises can’t start without us.’

  The volunteers shrugged with deference rather than eagerness. Only Robert resisted. ‘If you don’t mind, I prefer to wait here for you. I have a headache.’

  ‘We shall attend to it later,’ Rosalind said briskly. ‘I hope you are in a better state when we come back out.’ She led the others inside, the door swung closed, and Robert was left alone in the quiet foyer with only Dora for company. She was leaning gently on the trolley, one elbow delicately placed on its handlebar, watching him silently. He walked over to her.

  ‘More?’ she said with a glance at his empty cup.

  ‘No, thanks.’ He put it on the trolley, the clatter exaggerated by the lack of other sound. ‘So you’re Dora?’ he said with a boldness born of a lack of any desire, and a curiosity inspired by nothing more than idleness and the thought of a long wait.

  ‘Yes, I’m Dora,’ she said coolly. ‘I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.’

  Robert shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘In the Town, I mean.’

  ‘It’s a small place,’ Robert conceded.

  ‘I work nights at the Blue Cat,’ she explained. ‘I’m a waitress there.’

  It was what the soldier on the bus had mentioned. ‘Is it a restaurant?’

  Dora’s plain features became animated with a hint of mischief. ‘Oh, you can get a meal at the Blue Cat,’ she said non-committally, ‘if that’s what you really want. Not many people do, though.’

  ‘You mean it’s a bar?’

  ‘You can drink, too. Listen to music.’ She was still leaning casually against the trolley and appeared to be enjoying this chance to play the role of expert. ‘The Blue Cat’s the sort of place where every need is catered for.’ It sounded like an erotic hint but there was also a note of apathy in her voice, the tone of someone reciting a mundane fact.

  ‘Needs?’ said Robert.

  From between her pursed lips a puff of breath escaped, somewhere between a sigh and whistle. ‘You know what I mean, soldier. It’s a whorehouse.’

  ‘And you’re a waitress there?’

  ‘That’s what I said. I expect I’ll see you and your friends there sometime soon – and I won’t mind if you don’t say hello. It’s that kind of place. In the Blue Cat, other rules apply – people you never speak to in the street are suddenly your best friends, and the people you know on the outside turn into strangers who look the other way when you meet them coming out of a love booth. It’s like they always say – discretion is the better part of valour. And you’re such brave men here, aren’t you?’

  Robert resolved never to visit the place – but why would Rosalind go? ‘You know a lot about what goes on here,’ he said.

  ‘You bet I do. Five years is plenty of time to get to know everything worth knowing. Not about the work that’s done of course I don’t know any of that, and I don’t care. But I know about people and how they operate. I know that everyone has an inside and an outside, and what you see on the surface usually has very little to do with whatever’s underneath.’

  ‘Can’t you leave?’

  She tutted as if in pity and amusement at his ignorance. ‘I’m Category O. The only way out for me is if my sentence gets commuted.’

  ‘You’re a prisoner?’

  Dora shrugged. ‘Not officially – I don’t get locked up at night. I’ve got my own place and I earn a wage. But nobody does what I do out of choice. It was either a jail term on the outside or community service here. And now that you know, I suppose you’re going to stop talking to me, because nice people like you aren’t meant to fraternize with O’s. You’re allowed to ask me for milk and sugar but anything else is a bad idea.’

  ‘And in the Blue Cat?’

  ‘It’s like I told you,’ said Dora. ‘Different rules apply.’ She began to push the trolley away from him. ‘Got to go upstairs now to serve the seniors. Expect I’ll see you again, soldier. Don’t suppose we’ll have many more conversations, though.’ She wheeled the urn towards the lift.

  ‘Wait,’ Robert called, hurrying after her and reaching the lift door which he pulled open, as well as the inner cage.

  ‘How very kind of you, sir,’ she said, backing into the compartment with the trolley.

  He still held the door open. ‘How long do you have to be a prisoner here?’

  ‘Forever.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what any of us did,’ she said. ‘We’re all prisoners here, one way or another. Now let me get on with my work. It was nice knowing you.’

  ‘I want to see you again,’ he blurted, immediately surprised by what he had said.

  ‘You’ll see me here every day.’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’

  ‘Then come to the Blue Cat,’ she told him. ‘Ten till two a.m., any night of the week, and you can see as much of me as you want. Bring your friends if you like.’

  Robert let his grip loosen. ‘Goodbye,’ he said weakly. The lift sealed with a thud, and through the frosted-glass window he soon saw the cabin begin to ascend.

  The lecture was well underway by now; Robert went across the foyer to the closed door of the auditorium and put his ear to it. Brian Willoughby was in full flight.

  ‘We have to consider the significance of King Lear’s actions within the historical class struggle. Shakespeare’s character is in effect a bourgeois
revolutionary, trying to modify the existing feudal system without overturning it: he thinks he can create a kind of family democracy over which he will still preside. We are left in no doubt as to the folly of this political experiment. Lear himself admits that “nothing will come of nothing”, a remark suggesting not only Aristotelian physics but also the symbol 0, the female orifice. Lear is a nothing born of nothing – “the quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself”.’

  Two women were in Robert’s mind, Dora and Rosalind; two hidden nothings combined in the vacuous jar of Kaupff’s earlier discourse, the plummeting container which had resurfaced in altered form as the bobbing subject of Willoughby’s disquisition. Something will come in something, Robert thought, imagining the plump, self-satisfied celebrity strutting as he spoke, scratching at his bristly beard, watched by Rosalind with crossed legs and a warm glow of hero-worship rising through her body. Robert tried to follow the lecture, straining to hear the passage of Henry V that supposedly demonstrated an understanding of materialist necessity, and the remark about an elephant in Troilus and Cressida that prefigured Darwinism. None of it made any more sense than Kaupff’s tadpoles and flies, though it lasted a lot longer.

  Footsteps – light, rapid, feminine – disturbed Robert, coming from the other end of the foyer. It was Miriam, dressed in the grey suit he had seen her wearing this morning at the breakfast table, carrying a pile of books. Robert was dumbfounded and stood open-mouthed as she came near. ‘I thought you worked in the library.’

  ‘I do,’ she said. ‘There’s one here in the College, another in the Town.’ She raised her chin with a superior air. ‘You’re not the only one with a high security rating.’

  ‘But your father …’

  ‘Is Category A,’ said Miriam, ‘and so is Mum. But I’m B. And now I have to get on with my work.’ She began to move away.