Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [51]
‘I am a genius!’ Unwin roared, startling both Ethan and Brett. ‘All I want is to do my work! It is not my fault that I can’t without ugly things happening. I don’t want them to happen. I only want to do my work, and it’s not possible without. . . ’ He shot an anguished look at Ethan. ‘Without things like this. I didn’t want it this way. The agency wouldn’t listen to me I’m going to solve the problem of existence itself, and all the support I can get is. . . is. . . ’
‘An unpleasant fellow like me,’ Brett finished calmly. ‘It’s a difficult life, but someone has to live it.’
‘I don’t want to live what you call life,’ Unwin spat. ‘I never have. All I want is the equations. They go on forever, and this ball of mud is nothing but a mote in the eye of eternity.’
Brett smiled, not entirely mockingly. ‘You’re a mystic, Pat.’
Unwin, stopped, flustered. He ran a hand through his hair. ‘. . . Yes.’
‘Still, you shit just like the rest of us.’ Brett took Ethan’s collar and gave him a little shake. ‘So, was it the Doctor’s idea?’
‘The Doctor isn’t important,’ Ethan said. ‘The numbers are what matter. I won’t talk to you; I’ll talk to Unwin.’
Brett raised an eyebrow at Unwin, who looked equally surprised. ‘Very well, then. Enjoy yourselves.’
When he was gone, Unwin was perplexed. ‘Why will you talk to me?’
‘It’s rather horrible, actually.’ Ethan snickered and a little blood ran from his nose. He wiped it on the sleeve of Unwin’s fine linen shirt. ‘You remind me of myself.’ He bent, very slowly, and retrieved his glasses from the carpet. ‘Show me what you’ve been doing.’
Ethan went over Unwin’s latest computations. After sitting and thinking for another half hour, he returned to the beginning and scrolled slowly through.
Chapter Twelve
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Then he sat back with his arms folded, carefully so as not to press any burns, and mused some more.
‘Brilliant work,’ he said at last. ‘It had to be the primes, of course. The immutably random element in the orderly realm of numbers.’
‘If we work together. . . ’
‘We’ll do some very pretty maths, and in the end it will come to nothing. Why can’t you understand that? Equations describe the physical world, they don’t create it.’
‘All matter,’ Unwin said seriously, ‘can be reduced to mathematics.’
‘No it can’t!’ Ethan yelled, surprising himself with his vehemence. ‘A quark is not a mathematical entity. You can’t create it or nudge it or bounce it up and down or turn it into rice pudding with numbers, no matter what hoops you make them jump through. You might as well try to push reality around with words –’ He faltered, remembering his conversation with the Doctor about exactly the power that written words, nothing more than collections of symbols called letters, could in fact have on reality. And Unwin nodded.
‘But we do,’ he said quietly. ‘All the time.’
‘It’s too many twists,’ Ethan objected, almost desperately. ‘Words have mean-ings from which we can derive abstractions. Or else they form a pattern of self-referential hermetic relationships that. . . ’ Again he trailed off. Again Unwin nodded.
‘You can’t do it.’ Ethan was fixated on the equations; he couldn’t seem to look away. ‘You can’t do it. You haven’t the power. Unless. . . ’ His hot dark eyes shifted to Unwin, ‘unless you have help. From outside. From very far outside.’
Unwin looked at his hands. ‘I wouldn’t tell Sherry you’ve worked that out.’
‘Why not? He’s going to kill me anyway.’
‘Well,’ Unwin’s eyes remained down, ‘there are ways to die, and then there are ways to die.’
Neither of them said anything for a while. Ethan again became distracted by the sunlight, until he rested his cheek on his hand and jerked back with a hiss of pain. ‘What’s wrong with him anyway?’
‘Sherry?’
‘No, you bloody fool. Ken Livingstone.’
Unwin’s mouth twitched in embarrassment. ‘Sherry hates the world.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Not just the human beings. Everything.’
‘Everything alive?’ Ethan gaped. ‘But that’s –’
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The Algebra