The Eidolon (22 page)

“Nice to meet you,” says Frank, smiling. I shake his hand. “I didn’t think they were allowing any more transfers in at this stage.”

“I just got lucky.”

“You must be. So, are you in ATLAS too?”

“Yeah. It’s quite something.”

“I know. I’ve been here for five years now and it’s still exciting. After the success of the last run, this next one should be something. We’ve had our share of challenges too, though. I was there when we had our first major disappointment, before the switch on.”

“The magnet quench?”

“Yeah,” he says. “A tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel.”

“Didn’t they have to evacuate the place?”

“No, that was 2007. A magnet ruptured during a pressure test.”

“Oh, right.” At least they’ve tested their evacuation procedures.

Rene returns, balancing a tray laden with drinks and begins distributing them. Some of mine sloshes out of the glass. “Oops,” says Rene.

“That’s okay,” I take the glass from him and hold it to my lips to salvage as much as I can of what’s left. He grins and disappears into the crowd again.

I turn to Frank. “Does it worry you, all those safety breaches?”

He shrugs. “No, it’s all part of it. I suppose there’s an element of risk, but it’s small and, anyway, it will be worth it.”

I don’t think you mean that.

“So,” says a voice from behind me. “Where did you say you were based?”

I turn to see Helena, her head cocked to one side as she appraises me.

“Romfield Labs in the UK.”

“That’s what I thought. I worked there until last year.”

Bollocks.

“How come I never saw you?”

“I only just transferred in – I was working in SightLabs before that.”

“Oh, I read what happened – I can’t believe they closed it.”

“Tell me about it.” There’s a bag of worms writhing in my stomach. “So, eh... are you all set for Monday?”

“Well, it doesn’t feel like it. There aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the things on my list. Then again, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. Have you met Tony Maddox yet?”

“Who?”

She stares at me. “The Chief Scientist for Romfield?”

“Oh... no. Not yet.”

“He’s my ex-husband.”

Well, that’s just great.
“Really? Do you two... still keep in touch?” I’m feeling uncomfortably hot.

“Yeah, every so often. He’s still a prick, but he’s not my responsibility anymore.”

“Oh. Right. Listen, would you excuse me? I need to go and make a phone call if I want to hang on to my relationship.” Another lie. It’s funny how easily they trip off the tongue with a bit of practice.

She rolls her eyes. “I’m so glad I’m out of all that.”

I make my way through the throng as the music changes and the crowd begins to bounce in unison. Brownian motion in action. I weave between them, suffering a few bumps and elbowings, before breaking out into the cool night air.

Rain glistens in the white glow from the streetlight. A car swishes past on the wet road and a couple scurries away, huddled under a coat spread over their heads. I pull up my collar and set off to the apartment.

Betrayal swells in my gut. This was never going to be easy.

My footsteps echo on the damp pavement as steam jettisons from a vent in a wall, smelling of grease, and a siren whines in the distance. The street is dark, mostly warehouses locked up for the night. The street lights seem dimmer than they should be, and too far apart. I glance back. There’s someone behind me; jeans and a hooded top. Probably nothing, just keep walking. But the quickening pace of his footsteps and the discord in my gut tells me it’s not nothing. He’s gaining on me. I glance back again – he’s ten feet away now.
Fuck
, he’s holding a handgun.

There’s nowhere to run – he’d take the shot – so I open my hands, a gesture of surrender. He’s agitated, and he looks like a druggie: pale and thin, his bony hand shaking as he steps up and points the weapon at my head. Black, unblinking eyes. A trickle of sweat escapes from his temple and leaks down his cheek. He says something in French, but I’m rooted to the spot, quivering.

He speaks again, raising his voice, his finger closing round the trigger, and the gun begins to tremble. Slowly I lower my right hand, reaching into my pocket and pull out my wallet. He’s welcome to my credit card with the measly limit and my supermarket clubcard. My CERN security card and Amos’s bank account details are in the apartment. I hold the wallet towards him, but he’s not looking at it. He’s looking past my right shoulder, his eyes widening, not just crazed, but scared. The shake in his hand gets worse. He might just kill me by accident. I have a thought then that surprises me. I don’t care. I’m not afraid. For the first time since the mountaineering accident, I glimpse that feeling of certainty. A memory of calm. A flash of white light – was that lightning? He backs away, his eyes still pinned to something behind me, mumbling, before he turns and stumbles into the shadows.

What just happened? Suddenly aware of my vulnerability, I turn, slowly, not sure if I want to see what scared the shit out of the druggie with the gun. There’s a man standing just a few feet away, slim, medium height, his arms by his sides, his loose dark hair falling to his shoulders. Beetle-black eyes. The rain patters on his dark T-shirt and baggy trousers, on the leather bands round his wrists and the tattoo on the side of his neck – a spider’s web, from what I can make out in the dim light. I didn’t hear him arrive.

I breathe out, a slow, juddering breath and start shivering, more than is justified for the temperature. “Thanks,” I mumble. “Whatever you did, thanks a lot. Merci.” He smiles with his eyes then turns and walks away. I watch him disappear down the street. Maybe he’s a gangster and the druggie was on his patch. He must be a hard man, to scare off a druggie with a gun. I turn and head home, with a note to myself not to come this way again after dark.

T
HERE’S A MESSAGE
on my voicemail, which I must have missed with all the noise in the pub. I hold the phone to my ear with one hand and pour a whisky with the other, something to steady the nerves. It’s Cora.

“Hi Robert, I need to ask you something. Can you call me back?”

I dial her number and it rings out. I give it a few more whiskies before I try again, then stumble off to bed.

I
DIDN’T SLEEP
well. Odd dreams about dark streets. Death dressed up as a drug addict. And then...

I’m sitting alone on a bench by a small cemetery. In front of me, the hillside sweeps down to the valley below, where the collider lies under the fields, and at the edge of my vision, larch branches gently sway. A soft breeze picks up from the slopes and ruffles the blades of grass. I close my eyes and let it wash over me. A million leaves move with the wind, and the birdsong hushes to stillness. There’s no sound, apart from the breeze, but I know something is there, to my right. Coldness sweeps through me. Slowly, I open my eyes.

She’s there.

“What do you want, Sarah?”

Her lips move, but there’s no sound. She turns and walks into the forest. My breathing quickens, my body feels like it’s taken root, and I have to push through to get it to respond. I cross the cemetery, stepping around the broken monuments to people I never knew, avoiding the shallow grassy mounds where the dust of their bones mingles with the soil. She fades into the dimness of the trees. I stop just short of the edge of the forest, halted by a certainty. I don’t want to go in there. I peer into the half-light, but there’s no sign of her. I back away.

A
SHARP BUZZING
and painful beep, over and over and over, an assault on my ears. My senses reassemble themselves from wherever they were scattered. I emerge bleary and confused, slapping at the source of the insult until it falls and thuds on the floor. A phone. My phone. Answer it.

“Hello?”

“Robert? Can you talk?”

Not very well. “Uh-huh.” I’m lying back with my hand over my eyes. Why’s my head pounding? Oh, yeah. The whisky.

“Robert...” It’s Cora. She sounds upset. I lift myself up onto an elbow. “Are you alright?”

“I’m sorry to call you so early, it’s just...” I glance at the alarm clock. Six forty-two. Could be worse.

“No, that’s okay. What’s up?”

“It’s the dreams, Robert.”

“What?”

“They’re getting worse. I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept properly for days.”

I rub my fingers across my forehead. “Well maybe it’s just because we were talking about it. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“Have you had any more?”

The memory of Sarah walking away, and the feeling I got at the edge of the forest... “Well...”

“You have, haven’t you?”

“Look, Cora. It’ll go. They’re just dreams, that’s all. Everyone gets weird dreams sometimes. Don’t worry about it.”

“You think so? How come we’re both getting them, then?”

“I think you got them because I talked about it.” I pick up the glass of water on the bedside table. Must have had a few sensible neurons still firing last night before I poured whisky on them and they fizzled out.

“So,” she says, “in your dreams, is she waiting for you at a forest, beside a cemetery? Or does she take you to where she’s tied to a tree?”

The glass of water falls from my hand.

“How did you know that?” I whisper.

“Because I had the same dream.”

“That’s impossible.”

“What did you say your address was again?”

“Eh, four-four-six Rue de la Croix.”

“I think we need to talk face to face. I’ll see if I can get a flight.”

“What? Wait, no!” I’m on my feet, pacing. “Eh... it’s just that I’ve got a lot of work on over the next few days.”

“You’ve always got a lot of work on, Robert. This is important.”

“Cora, this really isn’t a good time. I do want to see you, I really do, but how about we leave it for a few days?”

“Please, Robert, I don’t know if I can take much more of this. Something’s wrong – I can feel it. I’ll keep out of your way and I’ll sleep on the couch, but I really need your help with this.”

“Cora, this isn’t a good idea.”

“Just for a couple of days.”

I let out a long sigh. “Alright.”

W
HEN
I
GET
to the docks at Versoix, I’m irritated, hungover and uptight. Partly it’s Cora’s insistence, or my inability to say ‘no’, but mostly it’s the dream. Who the hell has the same dream as someone else? It would be pushing it to say ‘coincidence’ with
one
dream, but two?

My dad’s loading the rods and a few supplies onto a small white rowing boat. I’m going fishing with my dad. It sounds like it should be a normal thing to do, but I’m so far removed from normal that it just seems absurd. Only when we row out away from the docks and the bustle of the small town fades does my mind begin to settle. I even begin to enjoy it. Overhead, the gulls are calling and the clouds are ripples of white and grey low in the sky. The lake is a mirror of them. We let the boat drift and cast off, side by side.

“Have you done much fishing?” he asks.

“I used to, when I was younger. There was a guy, Michael Casimir, who lived in the same village as us. He used to take me out. Sometimes the Crinan Canal, sometimes Lochgilphead.”

“Were you lucky?”

“I usually caught a few, and sometimes we’d make a fire and cook them on the beach. It tasted great, fresh from the water.” A gull dives into the lake ahead of us, disrupting the stillness. The ripples glide out from its epicentre and the boat rocks a little. “It was never about the fishing, really. What I enjoyed most about those trips was that we got to talk about physics.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I think he’s the reason I got into all this in the first place.” I steal a glance and see him frowning. “The first time I heard about black holes, I was eating flakes of white coley from tinfoil on a rock. I stopped chewing when he told me that the event horizon was the line beyond which our understanding of physics breaks down. I’ll never forget it. I was hooked on the idea that it was out there, waiting to be figured out. My coley was cold by the time I got round to finishing it.”

“Sounds like you owe Mr Casimir a great deal.”

“I do. He died last week.”

“I’m sorry. You must miss him.”

“Yeah. He was just like a... I do miss him.”

“Were he and your mother...?”

The thought makes me laugh. “God, no. He was a lot older – eighty-two when he died. He was just a good friend, to both of us. Kind of a grandfather.”

“Oh.”

We stare out in silence for a while. “There was never anyone else,” I say. “It was always you.”

He sighs and I don’t know whether it’s what he wanted to hear or not.

“What about you?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“Is there anyone else? Do you have a family?”

He lowers his gaze. “No. It was always her, and you.”

It’s odd to hear him say it. I still feel some bitterness that he could have done things differently, but I don’t want to spoil this. I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life. “It must have been lonely.”

“More than I could tell you.” He straightens up, shaking his head. “They have these family events they run at CERN, you know; barbeques, hillwalks, picnics, that kind of thing. I used to go at the start, but it just got too painful.”

We turn back to the view. Sunlight catches the tree line at the other side of the lake, vibrant green against the backdrop of the shadowy mountains. The reflection, in the stillness of the water, is another world like this one, only not quite.

“Do you think anyone suspects what we’re about to do?” I ask.

“In CERN? No. Why, do you?”

“I don’t know. There’s a guy who I’ve seen a few times – the first time I went into ATLAS, and then he was there in the cemetery after we met. Dark-haired, walks with a limp, and his face is drooped on one side, like he’s had a stroke or something.”

He frowns. “I don’t know anyone who fits that description. And I’ve been here long enough to pick out the new faces.”