"Obviously the things we have heard this morning are not for publication or for discussion outside this room for the time being, to insure Sir Charles's peace and privacy if for nothing else." He glanced at Charles, who was sitting next to him, as he spoke. Charles acknowledged his words with a slight nod of his head. Courtney concluded, "We will have to leave that side of things with Brussels as a policy issue. Yes, Simon?" He looked at Vickers, who was moving to speak.
"I agree with you that we should keep the whole thing quiet for the time being," Vickers said. "But we'll need an official story to explain the postponement. I mean, with all the publicity that this place has had, we can hardly just refuse to say anything at all. And the people who work here will want an answer as much as anybody else."
"Any suggestions?" Courtney invited, casting his eyes around the table.
"I'll talk to a couple of people in my department who can be relied upon to cooperate without asking questions," Elizabeth said from the far end. "We should be able to put together a story about some piece of equipment needing to be redesigned and modified, or something like that. I'll see if I can get a statement circulated by this afternoon."
"Very well. We'll leave that one with you, Elizabeth. Thanks." Courtney raised his voice slightly to address the whole meeting again. "There is another item that I would like to propose. As you have heard, the physical theory that underlies our work here appears to have converged with the remarkable line of research that Sir Charles Ross has described to us. As soon as the appropriate people within EFC have been made aware of these developments, the next step will almost certainly be a call for a detailed reexamination of the theoretical foundations of high-energy plasmas by our senior physicists. After that, I don't know who might get involved.
"From the purely practical point of view, the first goal must be to determine if, and if so how, the heavy-ion system can be modified to avoid the kind of hazard that appears to have afflicted some"—he frowned for a moment as he sought for words appropriate to a formal meeting of the Board, to express what he still couldn't help feeling was something out of fairyland—"some future universe. Clearly it would be of great help to our scientists if they had access to the knowledge which at present only Sir Charles and his colleagues possess. My proposal is, therefore, that we instigate at once a program of collaboration between a selected group of our research people at Burghead whose discretion can be trusted and Sir Charles's team, acting, for want of a better word, as consultants. There's no reason why we shouldn't begin that straight away on our own initiative without waiting to hear from Brussels. I have already discussed such an arrangement with Sir Charles, and he has stated that he is more than willing to help us in any way he can. Could I have your views on that, please?"
"Good idea. Do it," Vickers murmured.
"Have we any idea how long this could go on?" somebody asked. "It could become rather embarrassing. I mean, here we are with this whole ruddy shooting-match ready to go after damn near fifteen years of designing it and building it, and now we don't even know when it's going to work."
"Or if it will ever work," somebody else tossed in. A murmur of endorsement rippled round the table.
Elizabeth leaned forward to answer. "I don't want to play down the seriousness of the situation," she told them. "But let's be thankful that we've only an embarrassing delay to worry about, and not the catastrophe we would have had if we'd gone ahead in complete ignorance. From what Sir Charles and I have been able to work out so far, the problem seems to lie in the energy-balance equations that describe the plasma phase at the implosion core. To put it simply, the equations as they stand fail to take account of an additional energy-transfer mode, which Sir Charles's theory describes, but conventional theory does not.
"Putting it all in perspective, my opinion at this point is that it should be possible to guarantee hazard-free operation of the reactors as they exist now simply by altering the intensity profiles of the beams, and perhaps by using a redesigned pellet. There's no question of our having to tear the whole plant down and rebuild it from scratch, or anything like that."
"That sounds very reassuring, Elizabeth," one of the former questioners said. "But how can you be so sure of that so soon?"
"I said it was simply my opinion at this stage," she reminded him. "We won't be in a position to make definitive statements until we've done a lot more work."
"And that's exactly why I'm saying we should get Sir Charles and his people involved as soon as possible," Courtney said. "The sooner we make a start, the sooner we'll have some answers."
Colin Harding, Director of Engineering, had been looking thoughtful throughout the exchange. When a lull occurred, he sat forward, cleared his throat, and frowned uncertainly for a moment.
"Look," he said, turning his head from one side to the other to address everybody present. "This may sound a bit ridiculous because I don't pretend to understand very much about this… this 'time machine' yet, but it seems to me it could save us a lot of trouble. If somebody in May could use it to send a message back, why couldn't we use it to send questions forward? After all, it must be reasonable to assume that months from now we'll know a hell of a lot more about this business than we do at the moment." He shrugged. "So why can't we simply ask 'us' months from now what the answers are, instead of spending lots of time finding out the hard way?"
"That's got to be preposterous," Vickers said, but the confused expression on his face added that he wasn't exactly sure why.
Charles answered the suggestion. "That may not be as daft as it sounds," he said. "There are probably all kinds of strange possibilities that we can't even imagine yet. There's a whole new realm of physical phenomena to be investigated, and at this stage we're not even in a position to describe their effects, let alone explain them. I would prefer us not to go meddling with things that we are still a long way from understanding fully. At the moment we are in the process of preparing a schedule of rigid tests for the machine at Storbannon, designed to provide more data on what these effects are. For now and for the foreseeable future, I would like to use the machine for that purpose and for nothing else."
"A very wise precaution," Courtney declared. He looked up and around the table. "So we've got a lot of work to do, and we'll do it in the way we already know how. The proposal is for Sir Charles and his team to begin working with us as soon as is mutually convenient. Those for?" One by one the hands around the table went up. "Those against?" Courtney asked. There were no hands. "Passed," he announced.
Chapter 27
During the weeks that followed, Charles spent a lot of time at Burghead and made several visits to the EFC Headquarters in Brussels, sometimes with Cartland, to discuss the new physics with a selected circle of EFC executives and senior scientists. The media carried an official version of why the much-publicized Burghead tests were being postponed; a brief flurry of cynicism and criticism from some sectors of the public greeted the news, but soon died away.
Murdoch and Lee were left to take charge of the extensive schedule of tests that had been drawn up for the machine at Storbannon. This turned out to be a tedious job involving days spent running variations of the same routines of complex computer algorithms and random-number-generator routines, most of which could be programmed to execute automatically. The two Americans thus found themselves with a lot of spare time. They used the opportunity to visit Burghead in order to look over the plant and meet some of the people with whom they would be working when Elizabeth and Charles had finished the groundwork. One of these was Mike Stavely, a physicist who worked with Elizabeth in the Mathematics and Physics Department of the facility, and one of the few who was aware of the real reasons for abandoning the plans to go full-power with the reactors. On a day in early February, they found themselves with Mike and Elizabeth in the Burghead cafeteria, finishing lunch after their first comprehensive tour of the plant.
"So," Elizabeth asked them. "What do you think of it?"
Lee turned his hands pa
lms-up and shrugged. "Impressed. What else do I say? Anything would be an understatement."
"Grandpa and Ted were pretty excited after they'd been taken around it the other week," Murdoch said. "Now I can see why."
"Where are they today?" Mike asked as he stirred cream into his coffee. "Back at the castle or traveling again?"
"Traveling," Murdoch told him.
"Where to this time? Another Brussels trip?"
Murdoch shook his head. "No, London. They'll be back sometime tonight."
"What are they doing there?" Mike asked, surprised.
"They've gone to talk to a Government advisory committee on technology and science. It looks as if everybody's getting in on the act."
"Government committee?" Mike looked puzzled. "Burghead's got nothing to do with them, surely. Why are they getting their oar in?"
"You're right, Mike," Elizabeth said. "The reactor problem is an EFC matter. But the chaps in Brussels are becoming concerned about the greater significance of the whole thing as a separate issue. They've more or less insisted that the Government get involved with the pure physics aspects."
"They may be a competitive corporation, but the idea of being the only outfit around that knows about messing with timelines is making them nervous," Lee explained. "This one's too hot to be holding."
"Mmm… I think I see what you mean," Mike agreed. Elizabeth leaned back to cast a wary eye around the tables in their vicinity
"We shouldn't really be talking about this here," she said, lowering her voice. "Save it until later."
"Sure;" Lee said. He sat back and fished a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
Murdoch propped his chin on his knuckles and gazed absently around. Suddenly his eyes came to rest on a girl who was setting a tray down and just about to join a group of people at a table on the far side of the cafeteria. There was something about the way she walked and about the long sweep of dark hair over her shoulders that seemed familiar. Then he remembered.
"Say," he said to Lee after a second. "Guess who I've just seen here."
Lee turned in his seat to follow Murdoch's gaze. "Where?"
"Over there by the window… just sitting down."
Lee spotted her and frowned as he tried to recall where he had seen her before.
"Kingussie," Murdoch supplied. "The day Maxwell took a walk. Remember?"
"Ah, yeah… " Lee said, nodding slowly.
"You know her?" Elizabeth asked, sounding surprised.
"Not really," Murdoch said. "We bumped into her briefly in Kingussie a few weeks ago. It's just that I didn't know she worked here. Any idea what she does?"
"She's from the Medical Department, isn't she?" Mike said to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth nodded. "She's Dr. Waring's assistant, I think." She glanced at Murdoch and Lee, and explained, "Dr. Waring is in charge of the medical facilities here. I'm not sure what her name is, though. Do you know, Mike?"
"No, I'm afraid not. Wouldn't mind finding out."
"We could no doubt find out for you if you wanted to say hello sometime," Elizabeth offered. "I wouldn't make it during office hours though. Waring can be a bit touchy."
"Oh, hell no," Murdoch said. "It's nothing important. I was just surprised to see her here, that's all."
While the others carried on talking, Murdoch's eyes strayed back to where the girl was sitting. Something about the way she sat with her body erect, about the way she laughed, and about the way she used her hands so expressively while she spoke mesmerized him. Never in his life had he found anybody so instantly fascinating. And he didn't even know her name.
Murdoch and Lee spent the rest of the day in the Mathematics and Physics Department with Mike. It was well after six o'clock when Mike suggested a drink for the three of them to finish off the afternoon. The other two agreed without much argument, and Mike suggested a place called the Aberdeen Angus, which, he said, was a popular place among Burghead people, just off the main road about three miles west of the plant and practically on their way home.
Fifteen minutes later, Murdoch was following Mike's somewhat battered VW wagon westward in manual-drive mode at one hundred and ten miles per hour despite the posted limit. Eventually they slowed down to something approaching sanity and turned off at a sign that said Achnabackie onto a narrow road that wound its way between stone walls in among wooded hillsides. After about half a mile, they came to a small village nestled in a fold in the hills and found the Aberdeen Angus right in the center. They parked next to Mike's wagon and joined him a few moments later outside the front door of the pub.
"What's up?" Mike asked cheerfully. "Leave your brakes on?"
"Does everybody drive like a maniac around here?" Murdoch asked. "That was a controlled highway. Why not relax a little and let the system take care of it?"
"Too old a model," Mike said, waving toward the wagon as they reached the door. "It hasn't got full auto. Anyhow, it saves on drinking time." They drew up at the Public Bar just inside the front door. "My round," Mike told them. "What's it to be, pints?" Murdoch and Lee accepted the offer. Mike called out the order, and the barman began drawing off three foaming mugs of dark ale.
"So, what were you saying just before we left the office, Mike?" Murdoch asked. "The next phase at Burghead will be to build a steel plant over the reactor site or something."
"That's right," Mike said. "And other things after that. It'll have a separate reactor system of its own that'll use the same beams. Steelmaking's already going nuclear in Japan and the U.S.S.R. It's about time we caught up."
They talked for a while about the attractions of using the high temperatures of nuclear plasmas as the basis for metal extraction and processing in the industries of the coming decades. Such a trend would render the whole cumbersome and relatively costly technology of traditional ore reduction and smelting methods obsolete, since the intense heat of a plasma torch would reduce everything—low-grade ores, desert sand and rock, scrap materials, construction debris—down to the atoms of its constituent elements, which would be ionized and could be separated, and concentrated magnetically. Cost-effective metal extraction would no longer depend on the availability of concentrated geographical deposits.
"And moonrock as well," Lee said. "Didn't they reckon once it'd never be any good for anything?"
"Absolutely," Mike agreed. "Once we've got the technology developed down here, we ship it up there. Then we'll really be able to start building things. I bet they'll start the space colonies inside twenty years. You wait and see."
While they were talking, a group of people had come through from the Lounge Bar and were trickling by in ones and twos to leave via the front door. Mike seemed to know most of them, which meant they were also from the plant. The last two of the group were a sandy-haired youth and a dark-haired girl, following a few paces behind the rest and talking together about something. Murdoch swept a casual eye over them as they passed, and suddenly something convulsed inside his chest. It was she!
For a moment his mind froze up. She was only a few feet away from him, and for some reason his idiotic brain couldn't put together anything to say. And then he realized that she had stopped and was looking at him curiously with a faint flicker of recognition on her face.
Suddenly she smiled. "Hello there," she said. "How's the kitten?"
Murdoch gasped in surprise. "I don't believe it!" he exclaimed. "You can't remember that."
"Why not? I don't see kittens under cars very often."
"That's incredible."
"I detect an American," she remarked. "Is your friend one too?"
"That's right… from California… both of us. We're over here for a while."
"With EFC?"
"No. As a matter of fact we're—"
"Hey, Anne," a voice called from the doorway out to the street. "Come on. We're all waiting. Some of us are getting hungry." Murdoch looked around and saw that it belonged to a tall, broad-shouldered, athletic-looking character with a reddish face who was wearing a
dark blazer.
"Stay on and have one with us," Murdoch suggested. "You can talk to that bunch any day of the week."
"It's nice of you to offer, but we're all together," she replied with a laugh. "I've got to go, I'm afraid." She turned her head and called to the door, "All right. Patience, Trevor. I'm on my way now." To Murdoch she said, "Take care of the kitten," and then she was gone.
Murdoch turned back toward the bar to find Lee and Mike sporting derisive smirks.
"She remembered me," Murdoch said defensively. "Didn't you see? She's in love already."
"Like hell," Lee told him. "She remembered Maxwell."
"At least I've got her name now," Murdoch said defiantly.
"Fast operator," Lee murmured. "I'd better go buy some flowers for the wedding."
They ate out with Mike and arrived back at Storbannon well after midnight to find Charles and Cartland back from London, and still up talking in the library.
"You two scoundrels look a little the worse for wear, if I'm not mistaken," Charles observed as they came in. "You've tracked down the local lassies already, I'll be bound."
"Wrong Grandpa," Murdoch said. "We had a night out with one of Elizabeth's physicists. Nice guy."
"Did you get the tour round the plant?" Cartland asked.
"Yes, we did," Lee told him. "Quite a place."
"How'd it go down south?" Murdoch asked, looking at Charles.
"Oh… we had a busy day, right enough." Charles replied. "What about the tests here? Have we got a complete set of preliminary data ready for analysis yet?"
Thrice upon a Time Page 23
