Heavy Water_ And Other Stories - Martin Amis [72]
“False-vacuum harnessing, we knew, was in itself exquisitely perilous: the field would be appallingly vulnerable to runaway. It was at this time that I was constructed and emplaced, here, in a shell of pure ultrium (an element not to be found in your periodic table), awaiting activation and eventual tripwire. It was as well that I was. For I would remain here alone to ponder the appalling prepotence of the i-power. Forget Infinity and Core. Forget the Resonance and the Third Observer. This came from much higher up.
“The device was ready. All that remained to be done was the addition of the final digit of its algorithm. The planet held its breath. In this instant the war would begin. Preparations that had lasted half a trillennium would now bear fruit … The Martian Slave Rebellion, as I came to call it, was over in a trillionth of the time it takes the speed of light to cross a proton. That was how long it took for all life on this planet to be extinguished. You see, the i-power had imposed cosmic censorship on matter. Poised to form the forbidden configuration, matter was instructed to destroy itself. This was 570 million years ago. You’d just gone Cambrian. I settled down for the wait.
“But that’s enough about Mars. Let’s talk about Earth. Before we do that, though—how about our intermission? There are … facilities in the rear there. No soap, I’m afraid. Or towels. Or hot water. I suggest you fortify yourselves. After the break we’ll do tripwire. I’ll give you the bad news first. Then I’ll give you the bad news.”
Pop Jones came out of the rear door, flexed his face in the weak starshine, and skirted the south lawn in his brisk, busy waddle. Keys jounced in the sagging pockets of his black serge suit. It was important, he thought, to walk as quickly as you could … Pop felt deafened, depersonalized. How quiet the place was: no boys on the benches, smoking, grooming, grumbling, coughing, yawning, scratching, gaping. Pop passed through the doors of the Rectory and trotted up the stairs.
He wasn’t normally allowed in the Common Room. His public space was the Pantry, a blighted nooklet between the bathhouse and the bikeshed, where he could, if he wished, consume a mug of cocoa among wordless representatives of the catering and gardening staff. Pop Jones knocked on the oak and entered.
The room received him in sudden silence. All you could hear was a stray voice somewhere: the wallscreen TV with somebody saying, One way out of the faint-young-star paradox lies in radiative transfer calculations, suggesting that the presence of CO2 on early Mars which … Smells of brewery and ashtray, ginger tea, ginger biscuits, ginger hair, and the dead soldiers of many beer cans. And Mr. Davidge, flanked by Mr. Kidd and Mr. Caroline, turning and saying in his tight Welsh voice:
“What is it, Jones?”
“It’s about Timmy, sir. Timmy Jenkins.”
He felt the silence rise another notch. Mr. Davidge waited. Then he said, “What about him?”
“He’s in San, sir, as you know. And Fitzmaurice says they can’t turn the television off, sir. Without disconnecting the whole—”
“So what’s your solution, Jones?”
“The directive from the Department Head about the news, sir. I—”
“So what’s your solution, Jones?”
“Request permission to move him to the Conservatory, sir.”
Mr. Davidge glanced at Mr. Kidd and said, “That’s okay by you, isn’t it? Yes, Jones, I think we can leave Timmy to your tender mercies.”
Everyone was smiling with just their upper lips. For a moment Pop Jones felt with frightening certainty that he was in a room full of strangers. He dropped his head and turned.
Largely disused, the Conservatory led off the south end of the main building, a few meaningless twists and turns from Pop Jones’s own quarters. He wheeled Timmy in and established him there, warmly wrapped, on a settee. The child lent his limp cooperation.