The Valley of the Ancients

by David Alric

  None of Chopper’s criminal colleagues ever came to see him for fear of being recognized by the prison authorities, and his only visitors during his year in prison had been his twin brothers before they left for Africa. He was, therefore, somewhat mystified as he went down to the visiting hall. There, to his astonishment, was his brother Sam.

  When Chopper and the twins had been arrested during a drugs raid on their remote jungle camp, Sam had managed to escape. They had all assumed that he was dead. Nobody believed that without weapons, food or water he could possibly have survived the perilous journey back to civilization through the greatest jungle on earth.

  Chopper gaped at his brother. Sam looked self-satisfied and fatter than ever, and sat fingering a large new gold stud in the side of his nose.

  ‘Sam!’ Chopper spluttered, ‘… Where? … How? … What?’ It wasn’t often that he was lost for words.

  ‘Hi, Chopper,’ said Sam. ‘How’s tricks?’

  Chopper recovered rapidly from his initial surprise. He knew that their conversation would be monitored and recorded by the prison authorities and that neither of them must give anything away.

  ‘Hi, Sam, thanks for visiting. How did you get on after I last … er, saw you leaving?’

  ‘Well, as you may remember, I had an urgent appointment and had to leave the meeting in a bit of a hurry,’ Sam replied. ‘I nearly had a very nasty accident shortly afterwards but luckily avoided any harm and eventually made it back to some friends.’ Chopper knew that Sam’s house would have been under surveillance by the police and he must have contacted some other criminal friends after escaping from the jungle.

  ‘I then visited a spot that we both fell in love with some time ago but haven’t visited since,’ Sam continued, ‘and that turned out to be very helpful.’

  Chopper knew that his brother was talking about a large stash of cash that they had hidden together after a spectacular bank robbery and decided to leave as an emergency reserve until interest in finding the stolen currency had died down.

  ‘I’ve ordered some new machinery for the farm,’ Sam went on, ‘but I’m a bit worried about the pigs. The new tractor is very big, in fact it will only just fit through the gate. As you know, their enclosure is right next to the front gate and if the new tractor bumps into it some of the animals might get out.’ Chopper sat forward intently. The ‘pig enclosure’ must be the prison (‘pigs’ was what the prisoners called police and prison officers) and Sam was clearly planning a break-in to get his brother out. He tried to sound as casual as possible for the benefit of the microphone he knew must be hidden in the grating that separated them.

  ‘Er, when’s the new tractor arriving?’

  ‘It looks like Tuesday next,’ said Sam, equally casually, ‘but it’s the last delivery of the day so it probably won’t be until the evening. That’s part of the problem: if any of the animals escape they could be tricky to find in the dark. I think, to be on the safe side, it would be best if I drove the last few yards myself.’

  ‘I think that’s a good plan,’ said Chopper, ‘and I can’t wait to see the new tractor.’

  ‘Well, you never know what’s round the corner in life,’ said Sam, with the merest suggestion of a wink. ‘Let’s just hope your sentence is unexpectedly shortened and you get to see it sooner than you think.’

  They talked a little longer of Sam’s plans for the farm and then he got up to leave.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s been such a long time since we met, I promise to come and see you again soon – but it won’t be until after a short break.’

  He gave Chopper a warm smile, and the guards scrutinizing the CCTV images were touched to witness this display of brotherly affection by an honest, hardworking farmer for his criminal brother.

  5

  An Invisible Surprise

  Professor Lucius Strahlung, Luke to his very few friends, drove his immaculate, ageing, green Jaguar XJ12 carefully through the traffic towards the university. The early-morning rush in Rio de Janeiro was appalling and the brash owners of other imported cars such as BMWs and Mercedes, flashed at him, hooted at him and overtook him under entirely inappropriate circumstances, but he completely ignored them. He regarded them, and indeed, most other people, as being fundamentally inferior members of society and to prove his case he would, this very day, close a deal that would enable him, at the tender age of fifty, to retire to a life of luxury in Hawaii; a life in a beach mansion interrupted only by occasional trips to London when he felt in need of some culture in his life. Rome, New York, and Paris were other possibilities, if he became desperate.

  Professor Strahlung was a scientist and the head of a department studying the physics of light at one of the leading universities in the country. His late father had been a scientist who had fled from Europe to South America at the end of the Second World War to escape accusations of war crimes. He had built a new life under an assumed name and had passed on to his son a number of qualities including scientific aptitude, apparent respectability, insatiable greed for money and a ruthless criminal streak.

  Luke was internationally renowned for his work on laser beams, but had been unable to resist the temptation to share his knowledge with criminals prepared to pay a great deal for his discoveries. He had recently made a breakthrough in laser science that would revolutionize the ability of the police and armed services to protect the public against terrorists. The leader of a group of terrorists based in neighbouring Bolivia was coming to see him that day to discuss the purchase of this secret device which would then be available to terrorist groups around the world, and enable them to take countermeasures against the authorities.

  Luke arrived at the university early, well before most of the other staff. He wanted to download his secret information onto computer disks before other members of his team arrived. As he walked to his office he had to pass one of the light research laboratories and noticed that he was not the only one to make an unusually early start that day. Through the half-open door of the laboratory his attention was caught by a young scientist called Lucinda Angstrom. He knew that though she was only a relatively junior member of his department she was already beginning to cause a stir in the scientific world with her innovative ideas. He was intrigued by her current behaviour and stepped back a little so she wouldn’t see him. She was walking sideways and moving slowly towards a large machine while looking at herself in a very wide mirror that covered the whole of the adjacent wall. At first Luke thought she was admiring herself in a new outfit; he vaguely remembered that there was a Faculty Ball that evening. Suddenly, however, she disappeared. Luke rubbed his eyes in astonishment and pushed open the door to get a better view. She was nowhere to be seen in either the room or the mirror. Then, as he watched in disbelief, the young woman gradually reappeared, first a hand and an arm, then her entire body. Suddenly she became aware of his presence and turned. As she did so she flicked a switch on the wall and something that looked like a blanket hanging on a washing line appeared behind her. She recognized her head of the department immediately but was clearly very upset about having been observed.

  ‘I … Did you? …Was I?’ she stuttered in confusion.

  ‘Did I see you disappear? Yes, I most certainly did.’ He walked over and pointed to the blanket which was suspended from a rope between two stands, resembling a high jump. ‘And I presume that this is some kind of invisibility cloak?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. The professor’s heart was pounding with excitement.

  ‘Why am I able to see it?’ he asked.

  ‘At present I have to energize it to get the full effect.’ She pointed to the machine and the nearby switch on the wall. ‘That’s obviously a serious problem – you can’t cart a giant machine around. But I’m in the process of developing a portable energizer which will work off a torch battery and fit into a pocket.’

  Luke turned to look at her. His expression was stern.

  ‘This is a major development. As head of department, I think I
should have known about it a little earlier, don’t you?’

  He saw her dismayed expression and hurriedly continued. In his mind he was feverishly assessing the implications of what he had just witnessed and he needed her total cooperation. He relaxed his expression a little to reassure her.

  ‘… But let’s not worry too much about scientific protocol. You’ve clearly made a significant breakthrough and I need to know all about it. You’re going to need advice and funding to take this further and …’ he paused almost imperceptibly, ‘your instincts to keep this discovery secret were absolutely right. For the moment you shouldn’t discuss it with anyone else. Now I think it’s best if you come to my office, have some coffee, and enlighten me.’ She relaxed on hearing his little pun and followed him to his office.

  ‘Now,’ said the professor once they were settled down with cups of coffee and he had flicked on a switch under his desk activating the DO NOT DISTURB UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES sign outside his office door, ‘tell me all.’ He could be a charming man when he chose and he gave her a disarming smile. ‘They all told me that you had brains as well as beauty and I’m beginning to realize that it’s true.’

  The young doctor blushed and hurriedly started to talk to cover her embarrassment – just as Luke had intended.

  ‘One of my first childhood memories was of playing with a kaleidoscope and whenever we did drawing or painting at playschool I always did a rainbow while the others were drawing animals and cars. At secondary school my classmates were astonished to learn that my favourite subject was physics – the one they all hated – mainly, I think, because nobody taught it properly, but that’s another matter. Although I was born in Brazil my parents travelled a great deal and I went to university in the UK. At St Andrews in Scotland I became fascinated by some research going on into ways of making things invisible and I was lucky enough to win a scholarship to Duke University in North Carolina where I was able to specialize in this field. As you know, we are talking about one of the Holy Grails of physics; for centuries men have dreamed of becoming invisible with all that it implies in terms of power and riches, and I saw an opportunity of combining my childhood interest in light with a fascinating field of research in modern physics.’

  ‘How does it work?’ asked the professor with barely concealed impatience.

  ‘At present we know of several possible theoretical ways to make something invisible. These include the use of active camouflage; plasmons – electron configurations that can cancel light; super lenses which create local areas of resonance that affect light; and metamaterials. The last of these methods is the one I found most exciting and which I believed had the greatest potential for achieving invisibility in practice. Basically it depends on surrounding an object with a cover made of a special material that can bend light around it. As you know when we see something we are actually seeing light that has reflected off it. If the light never touches the object but simply flows around it like water round a fish in a stream, or air streaming round a rocket then we won’t see the object. For several years we have known theoretically that metamaterials could do this. They can change the direction of electromagnetic radiation in a manner similar to that described by Einstein in his theory of general relativity almost one hundred years ago.’

  ‘If we’ve known about it for years, how come nobody can become invisible?’ asked the professor.

  ‘Until now, the calculations suggesting it should be possible only apply to tiny molecules. We didn’t in any case have metamaterials of the right sort that we could construct into a sheet or cloth. These materials aren’t found in nature. That’s where I was extraordinarily lucky.’

  The professor leant forward, listening intently.

  ‘A few months after I started work here I started going out with Peter Flint, one of the geologists.’

  The professor nodded. Flint was a lecturer in the geology department on the floor below and the departments shared a common room and canteen.

  ‘One day he brought me a most unusual rock that had been sent to him for analysis. It had been picked up by a pilot who had found it in a remote crater in the Amazon and who noticed that it glowed in dim light. Peter thinks it was a mixture of fear and greed that brought him to the university: fear that he may have been in contact with radioactivity, and greed in that if he had discovered a secret source of uranium he might become rich.

  ‘The geology department soon established that the glowing in the dark was not radioactivity, nor was it some type of natural phosphorescence which had been Peter’s first thought. It was a curious effect produced by the concentration of light round the edges of the material. The substance itself is a completely unknown metallic crystal and is the first naturally occurring metamaterial ever discovered in significant quantities. I’ve called it photogyraspar. It’s impure of course, in an ore, which is why it only produces unusual light effects rather than total invisibility. The metamaterial distorts the light passing near it and concentrates it. This happens all the time of course but the effect is invisible in broad daylight. At dusk, the concentration of rays makes it appear to glow, and at night it disappears completely because there are no light rays to concentrate. It means that the glow is only visible for a very limited critical time at dusk. The pilot said he had passed the same spot for weeks without noticing it.

  ‘Knowing my special interest, Peter bought all the remaining rocks from the pilot and I have now created the world’s first invisibility blanket. When you came in just now I was testing it out in front of a mirror for the first time. As you saw, it works!’ she added, with a shy smile.

  The professor was stunned at what he had heard and his mind was racing ahead.

  ‘Where’s the pilot?’ he asked.

  ‘Unfortunately he’s in jail. Before we could ask him the exact location of the crater in which he’d found the rocks he was arrested for drug trafficking and got five years. I was going to approach you once I’d finished my preliminary experiments and ask if you could use your influence with the Vice-Chancellor to try and get his sentence commuted – apparently it’s his first offence and the whole future of light science depends on our getting more of this material. If the crater is situated in remote jungle there’ll be no way of finding it without the pilot. We know exactly where he is because the prison doctor was worried that he might be radioactive and rang us to get the results of the rock analysis.’

  The professor was relieved, though he didn’t show it. If the pilot was in jail, at least nobody else could be finding out the whereabouts of this mysterious crater. As Lucinda continued he casually scribbled on the pad in front of him, apparently doodling, but in reality making a note: ‘Find out which gaol from Peter Flint in geology.’

  When their discussion was over and Dr Angstrom had finally returned to her lab, Luke leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head, gazed out of the window and went over in his mind what he had just heard.

  It was almost unbelievable. One of man’s greatest desires now seemed to be actually achievable. He knew that many of the major technological advances seen in the past century or so had all seemed like magic when they had first appeared: the telephone, radio, television, space travel, the prodigious power of computers, had all enabled mankind to achieve feats that had previously been regarded as impossible, but this – the ability to become invisible – was surely one of the most astounding discoveries of all time. And, if Luke had anything to do with it, its very first practical use would be to make him the richest man on earth – the richest man, in fact, who had ever lived. He felt almost euphoric with elation as he turned over in his mind the limitless criminal possibilities created by the power to become invisible: robbery of all kinds, including theft from the most secure establishments on earth; fraud; access to any information being received by anyone whether in their own home, their business or their bank; the ability to use information gained in this way to blackmail the richest people in the world or to blackmail governments over commercial, politica
l or military secrets; the extortion of unlimited funds from banks and businesses; the list of possibilities was endless … and he and one young, somewhat naïve scientist, were the only people on earth to know about it.

  Well, that would soon change, he mused; soon there would only be one person who knew about it. She would have to suffer a fatal accident, which he would arrange as soon as he was certain he could fully understand and apply the technological principles of the discovery. His thoughts were interrupted by a call from the terrorist he was due to meet later that day. Using the language code they always employed on the phone the Bolivian said he wanted to postpone their meeting because he thought he might be under police surveillance. Luke was relieved; the last thing he wanted was the police taking an interest in him. The laser deal suddenly seemed much less important than it had done a few hours ago: he now had much bigger fish to fry!

  For the next month Luke stole every scrap of information relating to his discovery. Under the guise of making Lucinda’s computer more secure in order to protect their secret, he actually inserted an advanced bugging device into it which transmitted the entire content of her hard drive to his own computer. He kindly allowed her to store all her notes and files relating to the project in his own safe. This had been made particularly secure by government agents because it contained details of his confidential laser defence research, and nobody but himself had access to it. He consoled her when her personal laptop mysteriously disappeared from her office one day, and she counted herself fortunate to have such a kind and understanding head of department. He sacked her technician, Ray, after the professor’s wallet mysteriously disappeared and was later found in Ray’s locker. He copied all the information he gathered onto CDs and, as a precaution against ever being found out, stored them in the safe deposit boxes of a bank originally recommended to him by his father as being an institution that did not go out of its way to cooperate with police enquiries about the assets of criminals.