Angels in the Architecture (5 page)

At the village
of Nocton Fen, several miles directly the other side of Lincoln from Torksey, young Timothy Watson made his first really noticeable acquaintance with an Angel.

Hello, Timmy
. We’ll start soon. Are you ready?

Timmy looked at the light. He liked the light. It made him laugh. So he started looking for it as often as he could. It was very playful with him, hiding and then coming back out again.

He’d seen the light before – often in fact – but today it was brighter than usual, and he eyed a reflection of himself in the angles the light struck, and along which he liked to stare. Tim wondered how he might get that particular light to play with him; it didn’t seem too hard because after a while he could tell that it very much wanted to.

Not that he knew it, but with this
exchange Timmy had just taken part in the most important scientific discovery of the twentieth century.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

Ronald Reagan, fortieth US president (1911–2004)

If Faith was the essential element of religion, so it was also with science.

Dr Alicia Watson
lived on what she liked to refer to as the dark side of physics. Her bright office walls were a testament to it. Two vivid blue walls, two crisp white ones, with low bookcases all around, all evidenced a desire to clear the rubble of the true theoretician in favour of newness and clarity – a blank slate.

Alicia felt any inspiration that came to her in her work came from a
universal ether of scientific truth, not from within her own head. She disliked the terminology of discovery. She knew all science already existed; hers was only to come to know it herself. That knowing came in part from experimentation, but more from her thoughtfulness about information known and consideration of other information that may be lying just beyond the known. She thus claimed her work not entirely as her own, although this was not a view she shared with those other devotees about her. She would never have said she had any belief in a god, but her own studies and research indicated the reality of a universal energy underpinning all things, that had will of its own and existed outside the minds of men. Some may have called this God, but Alicia was never so foolish as to cross over entirely from the dark side and into sheer quackery. She believed in what she saw, and what she saw was more than just particles and more than just light, and it did not conform to most of recent known science. She wondered at times that it had more to do with the ancients of Aristotle and Plato and Pythagoras whose science at least connected them with the universe instead of putting them apart from it, and whose search was one of heart and soul as well as mind. That they were philosophers as well as scientists – and philosophers first, and that these two departments were separated by most of the rest of the university – was an irony of history not lost on Alicia.

Alicia’s science required an
open-mindedness that would surely have been a prerequisite for any self-respecting scientist, except that in Alicia’s view this was shamefully not always the case. She tried to encourage that openness among her students, along with a sense of fun and adventure also not common among her profession. She fancied her office a breeding ground for young talent, with an odd kaleidoscope of thick felt-tip penned equations covering one white wall, a reward to creativity in students. Not just any old brilliance, but daring and imagination were the criteria for this privilege.

‘Write your favourite equation up – one that’s meaningful to you,’ she’d say
.

And if the offer baffled, clearly they were not, at least yet, of the chosen. Some needed encouragement not to write shyly, but in large and bold characters, and this was her spur to those she felt may benefit from such a declaration. Many were even given repeated opportunities. Similarly
, there was evidence of the mass of fondness for the same equations.
E
=
mc
2
was written several times over, in different colours and scripts. As was also
E
8

E
8
– string theory, an
d
x

p
≥
h
/2 – the uncertainty principle. Indeed, Einstein’s oft-quoted formula had rather poetically found itself in one instance at the centre of the wall scrawled largest of all in multiple colours, a spectrum of imagination and potential she sought to foster, mirroring the brightest of young students of her science.

Among the plethora of wan, consumptive scientists occupying the floor
that was the physics department, Alicia lived a relative aloneness she relished.
The irony of her criticism of science was that her inner rebel dictated others would never meet her standard anyway. Far from wan herself, Alicia boasted a style reminiscent of the philosophy or religious studies departments with a head of wildly curling red hair and a fashion sense of gypsy proportions. Despite the staid environment of the university, it was as any other in the Western world a place of diversity, as indeed universities had always been; the oddest mixture of conservative and liberal. Anything goes.

‘You know, that’s not at all sound theory. Just guess work at this point
, I really feel.’

Dryden Cooper
leant in the door of Alicia’s office. He was Head of Programmes in the physics department and had come to respect Alicia’s teaching ability. He was one of the few scientists on the floor who was friendly with her, one other even refusing to enter the lift at the same time as her and preferring to wait for another.
Bollocks to you,
she would say to herself, even as she would voice a determined and polite greeting, and always making
them
be the one that had to wait for the next lift.
Not my bloody issue.

‘Oh
and you would know. Don’t be so arrogant! You should be looking to every new development from such auspicious sources as Alain Aspect and his team. They’re not beneath any of us. See what happens, I say. And see what the international commentary is. You might be surprised. He’s not without respect and esteem among the World’s best.’

‘I’m not being arrogant. You’re making huge leaps of faith. No
one in their right mind will think Bell’s theorem has gone west yet. The Paris trials are only one set of experiments. And anyway they’re French – can’t trust ’em. And someone’s got to live in the real world, Alicia – we can’t all be travelling through time like a Tardis now, can we?’

They both grinned
and Alicia pulled a face. She was used to Dryden’s teasing.

‘It’s not about
travelling
through time. It’s about communication; influence, synchronicity, and even those words don’t describe it. Look, it’s an equation okay, like any other hitherto unfathomable piece of physics we now take for granted, just some simple – well, no it’s not simple – but anyway it’s just maths, numbers on a page. And those numbers deserve our consideration, our response, whether respectful or not.’

‘You don’t believe that for a second. You don’t care about the figures. You’re a traitor to your
profession, Alicia. You’re looking for God in those numbers, and I’m telling you, you won’t find Him. So there, write your response. I’ll be happy to review it for you, but it’s not a focus of this department to consider the quantum, as you know. This is popular science, undeserving of serious attention. Let some other scientists risk their reputations on it. We can’t afford to be blasé.’

‘Now that’s just too extreme and you know it. The quantum underlies all else
.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Oh, c’mon, Dryden, it’s at least interesting, which is more than can be said for a lot else that goes on around here.’

‘And what makes it interesting, my dear? I’ll tell you what. You want your profession to give meaning to your life. And you’ll find that in
a Church or some such, not here. This is a job and you have a good head for it, but it’s not about your heart and soul. You need to leave them at the door.’

‘So you’re saying you have no passion for what you do here then?’

‘That’s not what I said.’

‘
That’s exactly what you said actually. You’ve got no desire at all to find something new. You don’t revel in the dream that some discovery one day is going to sweep everything you’ve always believed in aside. You don’t harbour any possibility of finding the answer to everything.’

Laughing.
‘Of course! I want international renown for being the best at being the same as everyone else!’

They both laughed.

‘Oh, Dryden, now you’re the one that’s joking. We’re not so different, you and I.’

‘I’ve always been afraid of that!’

Alicia’s sparring with Dryden allowed her at least some sense that she belonged in the field. Despite his show of cynicism, she knew Dryden meant in fact to demonstrate his support and that by this exchange he meant only to test her own conviction. It was worthy of him, and of her.

‘But seriously, it is time travel
, isn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, sort of, but not in some
popularist
Doctor Who
sense. It’s particle influence across space, but the particles have to have been in the same locale at some point.’

‘And a million miles away implies the possibility of bending time.’

‘Well, light theory is undermined by their results, yes.’

‘Theoretically.’

‘Theoretically.’

‘So you’re going to shout this from the belfry tomorrow?’ Dryden smiled.

‘Well I shall try and find a way to do so within the narrow confines of my profession as you’ve so clearly defined it, if that’s what you mean. Anyway while I’m up there – in the Belfry that is – I’ll try and get a book deal going with a few Angels shall I?’ They laughed again. ‘After all, our science still depends on the whim of the wider community and those that fund us. Ordinary people are interested in this stuff. We have to be able to communicate it in ordinary terms to them.’

‘This
stuff! Stuff!
We don’t do
stuff,
Alicia. We’re scientists.
Stuff
is for the management department and other woolly-headed so-called academics, trying to prove their righteousness to the economists. We’re above that sort of thing. Science is not dependent on ordinary people and their small-mindedness. We don’t subscribe to
Scientific American
around here. We’re publishers of serious, internationally reviewed and reputable work.’

‘Now you’re definitely being arrogant!’ She smiled as she said it.

‘Well, my sweet, you have a good day and I hope you’re still in this quadrant tomorrow,’ Dryden said, backing out of the doorway with a grin.

‘Oh ha ha!
’ Alicia turned back to her computer and her thoughts.

She wanted to be part of this exciting new world of science, and whil
e Lincoln had been good to her, aside from Dryden’s easy banter, she lacked the day-to-day conversation with others for whom the new science was stimulating. She was at risk of becoming bored, and she knew from experience that was not a good thing. She had to be engaged. It made her feel alive, and god knew everyone around her was a lot happier if she was.

In a sprawling cottage on the edge
of Nocton Fen, Pete Watson had emerged from his garage workshop, the BBC blaring from an old radio-tape player on a shelf in the corner. He was seeing off one of his son’s team of therapists after their morning play session.

‘
Thanks, Kaye. How was our wee sunshine today?’

‘He said
swan
.’

‘
Swan
? What’d ’e say
swan
for? Why can’t he say
Daddy
or
Shakespeare
or
steak ‘n’ chips
? How’d he get
swan
?’

‘Don’t know. Some picture he liked I guess. Boy, he’s into those chocolate chip biscuits
, isn’t he? I had to hide them. He was just about livid with me. It took all my effort to distract him.’

Pete was wiping grease from his hands on
to what was possibly an even greasier old cloth. He wore once-white overalls with the sleeves cut off at the elbows, and bare feet. Two-day-old stubble covered his rugged friendly face. At some point in the morning, he’d wiped sweat from his forehead or rubbed an eye since a sizeable oil mark ran solidly across one brow.

‘How was your morning?
’ Kaye asked. ‘Have you got that old crate running yet?’

Kaye was the chattiest
of Tim’s therapists, and Pete enjoyed her company. He was sure her garrulous humour was an enormous boon to Tim’s day as well as his.