скачать книгу бесплатно
“Yes I am,” said Al, delighted with Finn, who then all but burst with questions.
“Won’t you still be the same weight when you’re tiny as when you’re full size?”
“No, because there’s a proportionate shrinking of dark matter…”
“Will you be really dense and super tough?”
“Theoretically, no, though of course power-to-mass ratios are different and gravity won’t break you so easily…”
“Will bacteria and diseases be able to eat you, like, really easily, like flesh-eating bugs chewing off your face and arms and ears and nose and— Hey! Will you be able to smell?”
“The rule of thumb for nano-to-normal interaction at the molecular level is that complex compounds don’t interact, though atoms and simple molecules do, so you can relax about contracting the Ebola virus…”
They were having to raise their voices as the meeting was all but out of control, until the chilling opening bars of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ emerged from Al’s jacket.
It was the ringtone he had assigned to one very special caller. For the first time, Al looked scared. He checked the time again – nearly two o’clock – and began to panic.
“Shush! Shut uuuuuup! SHUT UP!” he shouted at the room.
The room gradually fell silent as everyone looked at Al, frozen in terror. Once again Finn got there before everyone else.
“Grandma!”
“Is his Grossmutti there too?” the German Chancellor asked.
“Nobody say a word!” insisted Al.
The leaders of the free world, along with their best and brightest, followed orders and “shut up” as Al interrupted The Phantom and took the call.
“Hey! Mum! How’s Oslo? I know I promised, I’m sorry, I lost track of time… No, don’t call the police, we’re fine! That’s ridiculous… Have you transferred to the ship?”
With his outstretched arm, he indicated that everyone could relax a little; he had the situation under control.
“He’s fine, he’s right here, he can tell you himself… oh, school? School’s clo— canteen! No! School canteen’s closed, they were sent home for lunch – no food. Wasp infestation. Astonishing… No, he’s fine! Here…” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and handed it to Finn, whispering, “Speak! Just tell her everything’s fine.”
“I can’t lie to Grandma,” Finn tried to insist. “I promised Mum I’d…”
“I order you to lie to your grandmother!” snapped the Prime Minister in a loud whisper.
Al looked at the Prime Minister like he had no idea what he was getting into.
Finn took the phone and accidentally pressed the ‘speaker’ button on the touchscreen so that everybody got the benefit of – “Grandma?”
“Do you need me to come back? I’ve unpacked but we’re still in port…” came her voice.
“No, no, I’m fine, everything’s fine.”
“What a lot of nonsense about the canteen! Tell him to take you straight back right now!”
“We’re going! We’re just getting in the car.”
“He will starve you to death! Neglect… Did he do any vegetables?”
“What…? Yes.”
The watching experts and world leaders – who had grandmothers of their own – were nodding him along.
“Exactly which vegetables?”
Finn’s mind went blank. There was a terrible, panicked silence.
“Broccoli?” mouthed the US President.
“Broccoli! And… just broccoli. What’s your food like? What’s the ship like?”
“Food is tepid, the cabin is cramped and I have to share a bathroom, but there’s a lovely woman from Godalming on our corridor who, would you believe it, went to the same boarding school as Jennifer – second cousin Jennifer not Jennifer from the Hartford Pottery who I don’t think you know her grandson wants to be a solicitor it’s good to have ambitions but as I told her not a solicitor Jennifer not at twelve… anyway I—”
“Grandma, I think we’d better go or we’ll be late.”
“Oh… all right, dear. Please don’t trust Al, he’s already missed one call.”
“OK, Grandma, love you, bye!”
“And keep safe!”
Finn killed the call and everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief.
The Prime Minister gave an order to someone off-screen. “Get on to the Norwegians. Upgrade Mrs Allenby’s cabin and get her, and the woman from Godalming who knows Jennifer, on to the Captain’s table. Now.”
“Would someone please explain to me what the hell is going on?” said the US President.
DAY ONE 14:13 (BST). Siberia
Deep in the Siberian permafrost, 2,546 miles away, east by northeast, Kaparis watched the scene via his agent’s spectacles.
Everything was going according to plan. They were falling into his trap.
1 The beast was at large.
2 The ‘pheromone hypothesis’ had been successfully introduced by his agent at the meeting.
3 Boldklub had been established as the only viable response.
Kaparis was where he liked to be: in control. And yet… he was overwhelmed.
The boy.
Kaparis stared.
“My goodness, he looks like his father.”
The lung breathed in. The lung breathed out. And for a moment his heart swelled with nostalgia as he was transported back nearly twenty years to a Cambridge University of scarves and bicycles, lectures and tutorials, girls to fall in love with and limitless early promise… before, inevitably, his mind went to his moment of glory.
Why Does Grass Grow In Clumps?
A General Theory on the Development of Super-organisms
A lecture by D.A.P. Kaparis
St Stephen’s Hall, 10am, Wed 4th May 1993
And to how it was stolen from him.
In front of everybody.
In front of her.
And, as quickly as it had swollen, Kaparis’s heart emptied of blood and once more beat acid revenge.
“Our proposal,” said King, “is this – one: shrink a tracking device and fit it to the American Scarlatti and release it to find its missing clone.
“Two: shrink an attack helicopter and its crew…”
Eyes popped around the world.
“…all their equipment, including all tracking, transport, communications and weaponry…”
“Woah! Shrink people! Weapons?”
“…to the scale 150 to 1…” continued King.
“One hundred and fifty times!?”
“…and three…”
“Hang fire! Why not just shrink the tracking device and track the thing? Why shrink people?” asked General Jackman.
“Without going into too much classified detail,” said Al, “it’s to do with changes in waveform when you collapse the electromagnetic spectrum. A nano-transmitter produces a nano-signal that can only be picked up on a nano-receiver with a very limited range, perhaps 800 metres at the most. You can’t just amplify the signal in the normal sense. That’s why we’ll need a hunter crew at nano-level as well. Their transport can be fitted with a tiny ‘full-scale’ radio for communication, although again it will have a very limited range and we can’t bank on constant contact.”
The General looked like his brain ached.
King continued. “And three: the crew are to pursue the second Scarlatti to the first, then destroy both adults and any eggs or nymphs they find.”
“Whatever else it is, this whole scheme is crazy! At the very least untested. The risks to any participants must surely be suicidal,” said the American Chief Scientist, shaking her head.
“We have to measure the risks against what’s at stake, and against the only viable alternative,” said King.
“Which is?” asked the German Chancellor.
“Go nuclear. Displace a million people. Lay waste to part of London for generations to come.”
There was a long pause.
Finn suddenly realised something and looked back at the map that King had marked up earlier. The area of destruction included the village of Langmere.
“Grandma’s?” Finn said.
“I know,” said Al. “It’s personal.”
The US President was incredulous.
“And who’s going to take on this mission?”
“Given the unknown physiological risks, we propose just a three-man team led by Captain Kelly from our informal military cohort. Captain Kelly and Engineer Stubbs – both with nano-experience – plus a pilot.”
“Wait! Nano-experience? You’ve done this before?” asked Finn.
“Roll the film,” said Al.
Up on the screen appeared some scrappy, hand-held digital footage of a goat on a lead. At the other end of the lead was Al. Both looked like they’d been partying for three days straight. A time code ticked over along the bottom.
Captain Kelly walked into shot and spray-painted ‘Good luck’ on the goat’s hide.
The image cut to the Fat Doughnut Accelerator operating with a loud hum. Outside, Engineer Stubbs sat at a desk crammed with laptops. Al tethered the goat in the centre of the Fat Doughnut.
The time code jumped forward a few minutes to a more distant shot of the accelerator. The camera zoomed in on the goat as it became increasingly disturbed. Wheeling around its tether until… the screen went suddenly and completely white.
The camera pulled out to reveal the Fat Doughnut now contained a ball of perfect, intense white light. It seemed to ripple and spin for a few seconds before it faded, leaving behind a party of blinking observers and… no goat.
Al ran into the centre of the Fat Doughnut. On hands and knees he searched for something. Kelly and Stubbs crowded in.
Very carefully, Al picked something up. The camera zoomed in on his hand. Trying to focus. All blurry, unfocused skin tone. And then – finally, shakily – in the rivulets of Al’s skin, in the lifeline, stood a rather confused, silently-bleating, 4.5mm goat.
“Me next,” said Kelly off-camera. “I’m next!”
“Hey! Who did all the work?” protested Stubbs.
“Back away!”
The argument raged. The goat didn’t join in. It was all way over its head.
DAY ONE 14:19 (BST). Willard’s Copse, Berkshire
Lay lay lay lay…
Smallpox had laid waste to the badger and left its corpse a wretched thing, barely identifiable, pustulated and leaking the gall the Scarlatti found so conducive.
For fifteen hours more the Scarlatti would continue to produce fat white eggs from its abdomen, straining to evacuate them, planting each one carefully in the decaying flesh, its insides a furnace of reproduction.
