The Thing Itself Page 8

  ‘Of course you’re married,’ I said. ‘You’re beautiful, assured, intelligent. How could you not be married?’

  She replied: ‘Kant believed he had achieved a Copernican Revolution in human thought. Any astronomer has got to be excited at the prospect of that. Yeah?’ A quick sideways look at me, in the passenger seat. ‘Up to now, he said, everyone has assumed that our cognition must conform to the objects of the external world. But all attempts to find out something about our cognition from first principles have come to nothing. Come to nothing because of this presupposition. So, he said, let’s try it the other way around. Let’s see if we can’t get further with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition. Like Copernicus, who said: I know what it looks like, that the stars go around the Earth. But let’s imagine it’s the other way about, and see if that doesn’t explain things better.’

  She was silent for a bit, and then said: ‘Copernicus isn’t a good analogy. We thought the cosmos revolved around us, and Copernicus came along and showed this wasn’t true. Kant is like an anti-Copernicus. We used to think we were just a part of a pre-existing cosmos, until Kant comes along and shows that, no, actually we make the universe by perceiving it. A better comparison would be Einstein, maybe. If Kant had lived long enough, he’d have talked about how he wrought an Einsteinian revolution upon thought. The big bang – that’s not a little knot of dynamite, hanging in the middle of a huge empty cavern, exploding to fill it with stars. The cavern, its space, its time, was what was created by the big bang. Every time a consciousness comes into awareness and self-awareness, it’s a conceptual big bang. Space and time structure the reality of things anew with each perceiving mind.’

  ‘Don’t buy it,’ I said.

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Common sense.’

  ‘You can do better than that.’

  ‘It just feels – wrong.’

  ‘It’s logic. You can’t see behind space, or beyond time. Everything you think and feel and perceive happens in those terms. We’ve looked into it. In some detail, Charles. It turns out there is something in the real reality, outside of our minds, something our minds perceive in terms of space and time. The thing itself, whatever it is, isn’t metres and kilometres, seconds and hours. Not that. It’s a mode of – amplitude – of a different kind. We look at the universe and see that it is vast, and that spatial vastness reflects something important about the thing in itself. It’s not a literal mapping from its spatial scale to our sense of space, though.’

  Finding all this a little hard to follow, I looked outside the car. We drove through a lit-up gateway and were rolling along a crunchy drive that seemed, in the darkness, to go on and on.

  ‘So,’ I said, suddenly aware that our journey was coming to an end, and that I had to say something – I didn’t know what – so that she remembered me. I went with: ‘So you believe in God, now?’

  She glanced at me, by way of reply, but didn’t speak.

  I panicked a little bit. I tried: ‘What do you do?’ A rather better way to start a conversation than end it, I thought, cursing myself. ‘At the Institute, I mean. What do you work on? Not just’ – I laughed three precise and utterly unconvincing separate laughs – ‘chauffeuring?’

  ‘Do,’ she said.

  ‘It’s research and development. Didn’t you say that? The Institute? What are you personally developing? Or researching? Or …?’

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘Instantaneous communication. I’m seconded to the astrophysics team. We’re hoping to set up a remote viewer and position its focus on or above the surface of the planets Kepler-438b, Kepler-442b and Kepler-440b.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘OK then.’

  :4:

  My first glimpse of the Institute was indistinct: a three-storey block in the darkness with some windows illuminated, a curving drive that hissed its snaky tyres-on-gravel hiss as we rolled to the garage. Impossible to gauge how extensive were the grounds in the darkness. Dwarf lamps set in the lawn traced the edge of the driveway. Black flame-shaped absences cut into the starry sky at the edge of vision: cypresses. It was a fine, clear night on the cusp between spring and summer, and none of what was happening to me felt real.

  We sat, the engine idling, as the garage doors retreated slowly upwards, the smell of the unsullied car plastic and leather in my nostrils. I got the sense of other unlit wings to the building, away to the right, before the garage lights came on and I could see nothing but the brightness inside. Irma parked the car carefully, and we both got up.

  There was space for half a dozen cars in the garage, though Irma’s car was the only occupant. Up some steps and through into the main building. Along a corridor and round the corner. Irma took me to a room – mine, she assured me – and told me I had half an hour to settle in. ‘I don’t understand: what’s to settle?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll be here for a few days at the very least.’ She didn’t meet my gaze.

  A flush of anger. ‘The bollocks I will,’ I replied. ‘Is this a kidnap?’

  She didn’t shrug with her shoulders, but there was no mistaking the shrug-like expression on her face. ‘Walk back, if you like. It’s seven miles to the station. I’ve no idea what time the first train runs, but you could catch that.’

  ‘So you drive me here,’ I said, my anger a weird tangle of resentment and desire, because she was standing in the doorway and I wanted to beg her to come in, to join me on the bed. ‘But you won’t drive me back? Is that it?’

  ‘I’ll drive you back,’ she said, looking away. ‘But Kos wants to have a word first.’

  She went, ignoring my ‘Who is Cause?’, which became, as she turned the corner and vanished, ‘Or is it what is Cause? Shouldn’t I speak to Peter?’

  ‘Kos first,’ she said, without looking round. ‘Peter later.’

  I gave up, shut the door, lay on the bed. It was a single, though comfy and spacious enough. Like a hotel bed. Then I got up and showered. My sense of cleanliness was compromised by the fact that I had to get back into my old clothes. I turned on the telly and watched a documentary about badgers. Then she was back, knocking at my door with a woodpecker rattatta.

  ‘Come meet Kos,’ she said.

  Half an hour had been long enough for me to forget how beautiful she was. In the way of these things, my craving sense of desire got diverted through those masculine circuits that convert love into bitterness. ‘You’re working on extrasolar planetary science, yet they’re using you as some kind of PA, then? Secretarial staff, chauffeur? Because if that’s really it, I’d like a coffee: could you fetch me one?’

  ‘You,’ she said, ‘are quite the charmer.’

  We walked down a long corridor past a series of shut doors. Blandly abstract art on the walls.

  ‘Shouldn’t I just speak to Peter?’

  ‘Nobody just speaks to Peter,’ she replied. ‘You speak to Kos first, and we’ll see.’

  ‘He sounds suspiciously precious,’ I said, ‘this Peter.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘It’s ah. It’s not err.’ I had no idea what she meant.

  Up a staircase, past the angled slide for a wheelchair lift. A dark door. Another brisk little drum tattoo on the wood from Irma’s sharp little knuckles, and an indistinct syllable uttered from within. Beyond the door was a large office: bookshelves, one wall dedicated to high-tech objects of various kinds, a desk. The curtains were undrawn, so the windows functioned as a dark mirror as I stepped through. I looked like a scruffy old man, but then again: that’s exactly what I am.

  ‘Hello, Charles,’ somebody said in a helium voice. A woman sitting in one of a pair of sofa-chairs. She stood up. The door clicked behind me, and I was alone with her.

  ‘I’m Paulina Kostritsky,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘My friends call me Kos.’ I’ve always thought people misuse the cliché a cut-glass accent; because the best way to cut glass is with a fine-calibre drill, and that whining dental equipmen
t is not what people mean when they use that phrase. But Ms Kostritsky – Professor Kostritsky, I later discovered – had exactly that combination of upper-middle-class English chill and slight nasal high-pitch. Small larynx, I suppose. Grating.

  ‘I don’t usually shake people by the hand,’ I said. ‘On account of my fingers being all fucked up.’

  Kostritsky was a little under my height; but something about her long neck, or perhaps the combination of a large round head with small-set features clustered in the middle of her face, made me feel that she was looking down at me. I flushed, on one side of my face only. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Didn’t mean to— Sorry for swearing. I’m a bit cranky.’

  ‘Like a toddler who hasn’t had his nap,’ she said. Perhaps the single most condescending thing anyone has ever said to me. And this woman, with her mosquito voice and big, ugly head, had only just met me. Crankiness sublimed into anger, which, as an Englishman, and according to the logic of my tribe, I expressed through exaggerated politeness.

  ‘You will have to excuse me, I’m afraid,’ I said, pushing my smile that extra distance into grimace territory. ‘Plucked from my flat in the middle of the night. I really have no understanding of what is going on, here.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve deduced some key things. Once upon a time you were a high-flying astrophysicist. PhD, junior lecturer. Then it all went a bit wrong for you, didn’t it?’

  ‘Are we having a chat then, are we? Are we, now? Because I was told I should speak to Peter.’

  She angled her head a little. ‘What was it that sent you on that downward spiral, Charlie?’ Oh she was annoying me now. ‘What traumatised you so, in Antarctica, that it has ridden your whole life into the garbage?’

  ‘I didn’t see anything,’ I said, stiffening internally, and feeling very much like a drink. It’s a yearning that never goes away, that. My jaw throbbed and buzzed. ‘I hallucinated. I survived attempted murder. You could show a little fucking compassion. Or not, of course. It’s entirely up to you.’

  ‘I apologise,’ she said stiffly. ‘Please, sit,’ she added, encouraging me to follow suit by flopping back into her seat. ‘Sit down.’

  I contemplated saying I prefer to stand, but decided it would sound petulant and prissy rather than dignified. So I sat. There was, I saw, a silver cafetière of coffee on the low table, and two porcelain cups. Sugar, milk.

  ‘Help yourself,’ she said. ‘And to answer your question, no: I’m not in charge. I suppose you’d say Peta is in charge.’ I again heard this name as Peter, and she didn’t correct me.

  ‘Peter, eh. So he’s the big cheese? Is it governmental, Peter’s institute?’

  ‘We are not governmental. We do have some board members who also sit in both the British and the EU Parliaments. And the nature of our research – or, to be precise, the way our research has evolved over the last few years – has necessitated clearance from the Prime Minister’s own office.’

  ‘I feel like I’m being softened up prior to a sales pitch from some Ponzi scheme. Ms Kostritsky, you need to know: I’m poor as a church mouse.’

  ‘We’re not interested in your money, Mr Gardner,’ said Kostritsky, smiling. ‘Money is not a problem for us. We have many investors with very deep pockets. And to speak truthfully, if our research pays out, money really will be the least of it.’

  ‘Shall we cut to it?’ I almost added: and tell me if Irma is single and might go on a date with me, but I had – just about – enough self-respect not to do that.

  Although it was a close-run thing.

  ‘The total picture, everything at once,’ agreed Kostritsky. Then she yawned.

  ‘You do look tired,’ I said.

  She nodded.

  ‘He works you hard, then? Peter?’

  At this she laughed, a strange, strangulated sea-bird noise. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘You don’t want me to drip-feed the info. You want the total picture, all at once. Here it is: the Institute was set up a little over a decade ago to develop hyperfast computing models. The fastest computer in the world has been China’s Tianhe-2 for the last seven years running: this year it managed 8.57 petaflops a second. We were working out way up the TOP500 list, and performing pretty well: spitting out various marketable by-products along the way, keeping our investors happy. Then our research veered in a totally new direction.’

  ‘Astrophysics?’ I said.

  ‘It’s an odd story. One of our researchers had a nervous breakdown. He was being haunted by the ghost of a boy.’

  I experienced an unpleasant little adrenalised jerk inside me at that. ‘Say what?’

  ‘We had to let him go eventually. But before he left he came across an account by an early programmer – ancient history, really. Somebody who worked on computer programming in the early days – the 1980s.’

  I intuited what she was talking about moments before she said it.

  ‘Roy Curtius,’ she said. ‘You know him.’

  ‘I’m here because of Roy?’

  ‘You want the total story, Charles,’ she said, rubbing her eyes and looking so exhausted I actually wondered if she was about to fall asleep right in front of me. ‘A total portrait with no omissions. You are intensely important to this project. And therefore you are intensely important to the future of the human race.’

  ‘To which, from my throne of importance, I can declare,’ I said, ‘pigshit, am I.’

  ‘It’s the plain truth. You and Mr Curtius both are. The two of you together.’ Ugh! The thought of Roy somehow shading into me, me into him. Horror. ‘The two of you,’ Kos stressed. ‘What’s become apparent – Peta is insisting upon it, in fact – is that we need you both.

  ‘You need Roy, and you think I’m the way to get him. Or else you would’ve approached him directly. He’s in Broadmoor, you know. He’s a dangerous man.’

  ‘We know where he is,’ she said. ‘We’ve been in touch. Peta would like him moved from his current incarceration to rooms here. I think our security would be up to keeping him safe. But even our high-placed friends can’t order the release of somebody detained under section 3 of the Mental Health Act. Especially not considering the … crimes he has committed.’

  ‘You mean, against me?’

  ‘Since then,’ she said darkly.

  I elected not to poke this metaphorical spiders’ nest. ‘So you’re interested in my bin-man expertise only to the point where I can get you access to Mad Roy?’ I had a sudden insight: ‘He’s made it a condition, has he? Christ on a quasar.’

  ‘You want the full picture and I’m keen for you to have it. This is not about increasing our shareholder value. This is about taking us over the threshold of the single most significant advance in human history. More so than the wheel, than printing, than the internet. The biggest leap forward imaginable.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t have to believe it. You only have to persuade Roy Curtius that we believe. He won’t talk to us, but he will talk to you.’

  I thought of all my high hopes, in the car driving over – a new career, the new love of my life in the driving seat – and a debilitating sense of my own foolishness entered into my soul. ‘You want me to be a messenger boy,’ I said.

  ‘Mr Gardner,’ said Kos. ‘You and Mr Curtius are the only two people in the world to have shared the experience, whatever the experience was. The thing that— The thing in itself in Antarctica.’

  ‘A hallucination, is what that was.’

  ‘We’ve been working with Kant,’ said Kostritsky. ‘If you’ll pardon the apparent non sequitur.’

  ‘You’ve been infected with Roy’s madness,’ I said. I put my coffee cup down. It was making my tooth twinge. ‘Look, I wish you all the joy of your insanity, I really do. Curtius tried to kill me. I’ll say it again: to murder me. Kant addled his brains. You’ll excuse me if I don’t want to hang around to see what effect it has on yours.’

  ‘Kant,’ she said mildly. ‘It’s just philosophy.’ />
  ‘It’s ordure,’ I said. And then I did stand up, aiming for the maximum dramatic effect. ‘Please drive me home. You brought me here, you can take me home. Or do I have to go wake up Peter himself and make him order you?’

  ‘Charles,’ said Kostritsky, putting the palms of both hands over her face, as if weeping. I think she yawned again, it was hard to see. ‘Too late to drive you back to Berkshire tonight. Please. I’ll take you back to your room, and you can sleep here. First thing in the morning, I give you my word, I will have a driver take you back.’

  I thought about putting my foot down, making a scene. But the truth is: I was tired. I didn’t get out much, and this little adventure had drained me. My jaw still ached. I daresay a residuum of anesthetic was still in my system, tangling strangely with the caffeine. Back in my youth, as an academic going to conferences and the like, I would sometimes stay in hotels; and the thought of sleeping in a bed not my own, with clean sheets stiff as parchment and a power shower instead of the dribble at my flat, was appealing to me. Nostalgia. So I said: ‘First thing? You give me your word?’

  ‘My word.’

  ‘Liberties have been taken.’ I felt an inward flutter. This physically unprepossessing woman, and her whiny little voice, and her evident exhaustion, and the lateness of the hour, and my own bruised ego all came together in one awkward urge to apologise. ‘Look I’m sorry. Don’t pin your hopes on Roy. He’s, look, he’s not reliable. I’m sorry I can’t help you.’

  She took her hands away from her face. Bleary eyes. She stood up, and then she led me wordlessly back down the stairs and along the corridor to the door of my room.