Читать книгу The Sons of Scarlatti - John McNally - Страница 14

Al looked up, as if to a classroom of kids.

“Anyone know what this is?”

“It’s an atom,” said General Mount, irritated by Al’s playful tone.

“Is this a physics class?” asked the American President.

“Yep. Everyone needs to get a handle on this. It is indeed an atom,” said Al. “Which one?”

Hydrogen! Finn wanted to say, itching to put his hand up.

“Hydrogen,” muttered the US Chief Scientist.

“Good, a hydrogen atom, nice and simple: a nucleus in the centre and one electron spinning around, with a constant spatial relationship between the nucleus and the electron – this distance, this distance right here.” Al drew a dotted red line between the dot at the centre and the dot on the outside.

He then tapped the two spots again, the nucleus and the electron. “Now these two dots are something, matter, stuff,” he explained, “but this –” he waved around inside the circle all over the place – “is absolutely nothing.”

“Me, you, everything around us is more than 99.9 per cent nothing, because every single one of the atoms we’re constructed from is more than 99.9 per cent nothing, with only a tiny bit of actual atomic stuff. Everyone got that?”

Al looked up at the world leaders, then glanced across at Finn, to make sure they were all still with him; with furrowed brows and a big grin respectively, they were.

“I will never understand this,” said the British Prime Minister.

“There’s a whole quantum dark energy/dark matter thing we could go into, but it’s better to think of it as a beautiful mystery. Think of atoms as being balloons rather than building blocks, balloons filled with nothingness and a tiny nucleus.”

“Bravo,” said the French President. “But this not catch flies.”

“Not yet, no. But my Big Idea, known to a select few as Boldklub, was –” he pointed again to the red dotted line denoting the distance between the nucleus and the electron – “to see if we could create a magnetic field that could reduce this distance and—”

And before Al could say the next word a neural synapse fired at the speed of light in Finn’s brain and a conclusion so fantastic occurred it smashed any last compunction to stay quiet.

“You’re going to SHRINK stuff?”

Everyone turned. Finn’s eyes were as wide as wonder.

Lit from below by the iPad, and looking 99.9 per cent mad scientist, Al pointed straight at him. “Ta-da!”

“WHAT?”

“What did he say?”

“Shrink stuff?”

“C’est impossible!”

“Mein Gott, was that a child?”

Commander King let his eyelids drop in momentary exasperation. This really was all he needed.

“That’s my nephew,” said Al proudly.

“Young Infinity is here contingent upon Dr Allenby’s cooperation,” King declared. “We really must move on…”

Heads were shaking, voices rising, English, American, French, German – all demanding answers, all offended by such an absurd suggestion, at being caught out by a child.

Finn didn’t give a damn. He was staring at Al in open-mouthed wonder.

“Shrink? Is that really what the boy said?”

“This is flat out impossible,” the US Chief Scientist advised her President.

Al overheard. “No! Possible –” he insisted, adding a much smaller atom to his diagram – “by exploiting a chain reaction at the quantum level, you can create a new type of magnetic field, a ‘hot area’ within which all matter can be reduced, sucking the electron right up tight against the nucleus.”

“That is totally absurd!” the US Chief Scientist responded.

Voices immediately started to rise again.

The entomologists were stunned.

Finn’s mind was spinning. He wanted to ask a million questions. He wanted to understand every impossible detail. He wanted to know about the who and the why and the how. He wanted to know it all and yet somehow, right now, it was all so much to try and take in and he was just thinking: I Want A Go.

He walked straight up to his uncle through the babble, looked into his eyes and asked in wonder and for a second time, just to make sure, “You’re going to shrink stuff. You’re going to shrink some soldiers and get this thing?”

“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.