Out of the Sun (9 page)

Avocet House was a high-gabled Victorian villa set behind gale-carved hedges at the southern end of the town. It looked more like some whiskery admiral's final mooring than an academic's hideaway. Why Dr. Tilson should prefer this patch of salt-sprayed obscurity to the wood-panelled college rooms Harry found it easy to imagine she had left behind in Cambridge was at first sight a mystery.

The mystery did not evaporate when Harry was greeted at the door by the housekeeper he had spoken to on the telephone. Younger than he would have predicted, she was short and plump, with a startlingly clear-skinned face and a mass of marmalade-coloured hair. The plain dress and headband were consistent enough with the position Harry had assumed she held, but the quivering air of insecurity was not.

"You must be Harry Barnett," she said in a breathless voice. "Come in." Harry stepped into the cavernous hallway. "Athene's in the conservatory." Athene, Harry noted. Not Dr. Tilson. "Come on through."

He followed her along the hall and into a dowdily furnished drawing room which gave onto the conservatory. She left him at the doorway with an offer of coffee. He accepted, failing to specify the strong black brew that he badly needed, and went on alone.

The conservatory was clearly contemporary with the house; terra cotta lozenge tiles underfoot, grimy glass and cast iron overhead. Cacti and assorted frond-leafed exotics occupied most of the floor space, their thick green stems planted firmly in fat red pots. There were no statuettes or figurines, no grinning gnomes or frolicking cherubs. The place would, in fact, have seemed more like a working greenhouse than a domestic conservatory but for the wicker chairs and table set in a kind of arbour at the far end.

Seated on one of the chairs was a thin grey-haired woman who looked up as he approached. She was wearing stout shoes, corduroy trousers and a guernsey, with what looked like a tennis shirt underneath. Her hair was short, her face lined and free of make-up. She made no effort to rise, which Harry assumed the pair of walking-sticks propped against the table explained, but her dark piercing eyes engaged him more directly than any word or gesture.

"Mr. Barnett?"

"Yes. Dr. Tilson?"

"Indeed. Come and sit down." There was a hint of sharpness in her voice that made the invitation sound more like an instruction. "Has Mace offered you anything?"

"Er .. . yes. Coffee."

"Coffee? How unexciting." She watched him closely as he sat down. "Well, it can't be helped. We have no beer in the house. And cigarette smoke would disturb the plants." Catching his frown, she added: The waistline is a giveaway, Mr. Barnett. And I have a keen enough nose to detect the aroma of a cigarette recently smoked. Not English, I think. Italian?"

"Greek, actually."

"Really? How disappointing. For me, I mean. For you, I imagine, it was a considerable pleasure." She smiled with surprising warmth. "A touch of emphysema means tobacco is a banned substance in this house, I fear. And it's a ban Mace polices rigorously."

"Well, the sea air must be ... good for .. ."

"Clarity? Yes, it is." She glanced out through the window, where the fall of the land and the lie of the garden hedge disclosed a sun-winking wedge of the North Sea. "Clarity of thought as well as respiration." She looked back at Harry, then down at the book she had been reading. Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness by Roger Penrose. It looked a fat and formidable work. "I don't suppose you're familiar with Professor Penrose's .. . No, of course not. You're not a mathematician, are you, Mr. Barnett?"

"No. I'm afraid not. But I'm here about a mathematician."

"David? Yes. Poor boy. I really was so very sorry to hear what had happened to him. It would always be sad, naturally. But for the possessor of such a first-class brain .. . Well, you're a friend of the family, so I need hardly elaborate."

"Actually, I don't know David at all. To be honest, I don't think you could really call me a friend. Of any member of the family."

"Could one not? Well, well. You do intrigue me." She grinned mischievously as Mace brought in his coffee. "Mr. Barnett is here under false pretences, Mace. What do you think of that?"

"I think it's not so unusual," said Mace. She placed the cup at Harry's elbow and left again without looking at either of them, the hem of her dress brushing past the plants like a forest breeze.

Dr. Tilson chuckled. "You didn't want sugar, did you, Mr. Barnett?"

"Er .. . No."

"Just as well. Mace obviously decided it would be bad for you." Her gaze narrowed. "But don't let me distract you from explaining yourself."

Harry sipped evasively at the coffee before replying. It tasted insipid enough to be decaffeinated. "I'm David's natural father."

Dr. Tilson nodded reflectively as she absorbed the information,

then said: "Why don't I find that as surprising as I should?"

"A resemblance, perhaps. David's ex-wife thought she noticed something in my smile."

"Yes. I think she's right. Put three stones and twenty-five years on David and I suppose you're something like what one would get."

"Thanks very much."

"Take it as compliment, Mr. Barnett. I met Mr. Yenning once. David's legal father as I suppose I should call him. You represent an improvement, believe me. But let's come to the point. What brings you here?"

"Some of David's possessions seem to be missing. Which makes the circumstances of his insulin overdose look less straightforward than most people seem to think."

"Which .. . possessions ... in particular?"

"His mathematical notebooks. I gather he always carried the latest few around with him. Did he have them with him when he last visited you?"

"Yes. Most certainly he did. We glanced through some of his recent work. I'm flattered to say he still values my opinion. Mathematicians peak early, Mr. Barnett. David would be thought by some to be past his best already, even without ... As for a septuagenarian like myself, well, the present generation look upon me as a museum piece. Those that don't assume I'm long dead, that is. David is exceptional in his ability to disregard the fashions of the moment when assessing mathematical significance. It's an ability that did little for his career. But as for posterity, that could prove to be a vastly different matter."

"You mean David's on the track of some important discovery?"

"Maybe. To be honest, some of his calculations proved to be a little beyond me. My mind simply isn't as agile as it once was. I can't help hoping emphysema will claim me before Alzheimer's does."

"But you did see what he was working on?"

"Some of it. He was reluctant to show me everything. He said much of the material was too speculative to be shared. But there was certainly plenty of it. The freedom he's enjoyed since leaving Globescope had evidently been put to good use."

"Did he say why he left Globescope?"

"Not exactly. He was recruited by them a couple of years ago, along with half a dozen or so specialists from other disciplines, to work on the corporation's most ambitious project yet. Project

Sybil, it was called, presumably after the prophetess of antiquity. The objective was to assemble a detailed and accurate model of the state of the world fifty years from now. A consortium of international companies wanted to take a long-term look at where they should be going and how they should be planning to get there. Futurology is something of a fad in big business at the moment, I believe. Blame the imminence of the millennium. I dare say Ethelred the Unready was up to something similar a thousand years ago. But he didn't have Globescope to hire, did he?"

"Was the project finished, then?"

"I had the impression not. But David said very little about it. He referred airily to some sort of disagreement with the President of Globescope and left it at that."

The same disagreement that led four other scientists to leave, two of whom have since died?"

Dr. Tilson started with surprise. "Died?"

"A Canadian biochemist, Marvin Kersey, and a French sociologist, Gerard Mermillod. Within a fortnight of David's .. . accidental overdose. Their deaths were accidental too. Makes you think, doesn't it?"

"Yes. It does."

"Did David mention them in connection with Project Sybil?"

"Not that I recall. But then, you see, Globescope and Project Sybil were just means to an end to him. They paid well. And he needed money the sort of money only American entrepreneurs seem able to come up with to finance his brainchild: a hyper-dimensional research academy. HYDRA, it was to be called, appropriately enough. That's what was on his mind when he came here. The world of higher dimensions, not futurology."

"And that's what his recent work was about?"

"Of course. In a sense, it's what all his work's been about. Ever since he was an undergraduate. His promise was immediately obvious to me. But so was his interest in higher dimensions. Sometimes it... unbalanced his achievements."

"What are higher dimensions, Dr. Tilson?"

"They're what particle physicists tell us are necessary to explain the fundamental structure of matter. I don't suppose you're acquainted with super string theory?"

"You suppose right."

"Well, super strings are about the most satisfactory way physicists have come up with for harmonizing Einsteinian relativity with quantum mechanics, a difficulty that's dogged them for most of this century. For super strings to work mathematically it's necessary to accept the existence of dimensions additional to the four we get on with from day to day: length, breadth, depth and time. Superstring theory tells us there are at least another six out there somewhere."

Harry nodded. "I went to see Adam Slade's magic show. He claims to be in touch with them."

Dr. Tilson clicked her tongue. "A charlatan, Mr. Barnett. Neither more nor less."

"Does David see him that way?"

"Not as clearly as I should like. David has always been eager to seize upon evidence of the actual physical existence of higher dimensions. It's a deeply unfashionable concept. Superstring theorists prefer to dispose of the problem by arguing that the additional dimensions were compactified at the point of origin of the universe into a space so minute that they can never be detected. Quod erat disponandum. Neat, don't you think?"

"Er ... I suppose it fits the facts."

"Quite so. But beware convenience. It's often a treacherous ally. If you really want to understand higher dimensions, without recourse to compactification, you could do worse than my own foray into the subject. It earned me a limited kind of fame when it was first published, but it was fame of an impermanent nature. David was the first undergraduate I came across who'd read it in, oh, ten years at least."

"But his recent work has gone beyond even your grasp?"

"Yes. Largely because of the new notational techniques he's been obliged to deploy as a consequence of .. ." She stopped and smiled. "I'm getting out of my depth as well as yours, Mr. Barnett. If I understand you correctly, what concerns you is the absence of David's notebooks from the hotel room where he was found in a coma. Did you wonder if he left them with me?"

"It'would account for them, certainly."

"Well, he didn't. I have to second your informant on that point. I doubt he'd be voluntarily parted from them. As I told Mr. Hammelgaard '

"Hammelgaard came to see you, then? Iris David's mother -said she'd referred him to you."

"Oh, he came. About a week after I heard of David's illness. He definitely worked on Project Sybil. And he was also familiar with David's hyper-dimensional speculations. He was almost David's equal in his enthusiasm to set up HYDRA. He could see and understand the potential of it, he told me. But where were the notebooks? The question troubled him even more than it troubles you. It left little room for other issues. He never mentioned these fatal accidents you referred to, for instance."

They hadn't happened then. If they had, Hammelgaard might have found the disappearance of the notebooks even more suspicious."

"You can't be suggesting .. . foul play?"

"I don't know what I'm suggesting. The fact is they've vanished. Along with Hammelgaard."

"You must be misinformed, Mr. Barnett. Mr. Hammelgaard told me he was returning to Princeton. I think you'll find '

"He's been absent without explanation since the middle of last month."

"Odd. I seem to recall he was quite specific about his intentions. And it was certainly later than the middle of the month when he came here."

"Mermillod died on the twenty-second, Kersey on the twenty-seventh. I think news of their deaths changed Hammelgaard's plans."

"Well, it's easy enough to check the sequence of events. Mr. Hammelgaard phoned ahead, as you did. I'll have made a note of our appointment in my diary. It's in the study. Let's go and take a look." Levering herself out of the chair involved such an effort that Harry jumped up to assist her. But she shook him off impatiently. "I'll make my own way, thank you, Mr. Barnett. Decrepitude's not to be appeased, but faced down." Grasping a walking-stick in either hand, she made a wheezy start towards the door. "Tell me ... about these .. . accidents ... as we go."

Harry had ample time to relate everything he knew about the deaths of Mermillod and Kersey during their creeping progress to the study, a journey which took them back through the drawing room and down the hall. Indeed, he was able to throw in a mention of Donna Trangam's disappearance and David's mysterious dinner date with Adam Slade before they arrived.

"Prima facie ... the connection with Globescope ... and Project Sybil .. . appears compelling ... Mr. Barnett .. . But it's all ... circumstantial .. . isn't it? Highly .. . circumstantial.. . Ah, here we are."

The study was not the book-lined retreat from the world Harry had unconsciously expected. Books there certainly were,

filling most of one wall. But the furniture was modern, with the contemporary appurtenances of computer and fax machine much in evidence. There were Venetian blinds at the window as well as heavy green curtains. A blackboard was fixed to the opposite wall, the narrow shelf beneath it crammed with sticks and stubs of yellow chalk. They must have been used recently, for there was a faint scent of chalk-dust in the air, a scent that instantly transported Harry back across the years to the classroom at Commonweal School in Swindon where Howell-Jones, the Welsh maths teacher, had striven by logic, sarcasm and occasional brutality to drum the basics of geometry and algebra into his recalcitrant charges. In Harry's case, as in most others, he had striven in vain.