Bubble Chamber

By S.C.H. Thurston

Simon Mills had never actually planned to become a scientist. But he hadn't managed to avoid the eventuality either. As with most things in his life, Simon's drift into academia just sort of happened, the result of a series of coincidences and twists of fate over which he seemed to exert minimal control, regardless of whatever alternative path he might have preferred.

So, instead of spending his early twenties enjoying a slow, predictable existence in the English countryside of his youth, Simon finds himself first as a reluctant post-graduate student in London, working for a quintessentially eccentric professor, and then and much to his chagrin - propelled across the Atlantic to the USA, to pursue some harebrained experiment or other. All in the name of science.

Simon lurches from one unsolicited career opportunity to another, finally getting himself caught up in an academic political battle going on half a world, and a whole scientific dimension, away from his own. Not that distance or relevant experience appear to be factors when it comes to Simon Mills vocation. It seems fortune just wont leave him alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 3, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462820191

Book preview

Prologue

The University of London is a federal university. Like its venerable counterparts in Oxford and Cambridge, it comprises twenty-odd colleges and institutes that are governed formally by a single authority. In all other respects, however, the constituents function autonomously. The colleges have their own budgets, their own admissions standards, their own research specializations, their own idiosyncrasies. And, of course, they have their own, distinct reputations.

Within the University of London there are many luminary establishments, such as King’s College, University College, the London School of Economics and the Royal Academy of Music. Each has its own pedigree and its own benefits for the academic or student affiliated to it.

Take King’s College, for example. The main campus is located on The Strand, in the heart of London’s arts scene. It’s handy for a lunchtime jaunt to Covent Garden, say, or an afternoon stroll along the River Thames at the Embankment. In the evening, wander over to see a play at one of the dozens of theatres around Leicester Square.

More than just the arts are well served at King’s though. The author and science visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke read physics and mathematics there. The great Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell was a King’s professor. And Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize winners, was a King’s student in theology. The King’s alumni registry is littered with such distinguished individuals.

Or consider University College, the largest in the federal university.

Located in Bloomsbury, UCL is on the same road as the impressive British Museum. The college is surrounded by a blend of handsome, grassy squares, majestic Georgian architecture and quaint pubs, making West Central London an easy sell for academics and students alike. Black cabs, Jaguars and Bentleys populate the streets and there is an abiding sense of appreciation for the finer things in life. Even so, UCL lists among its notable alumni one Mahatma Gandhi.

And then there is Queen Mary College.

QMC is the third-largest college in the University of London, after UCL and King’s. But it isn’t on your tourist maps because it’s not in close proximity to some world-famous landmark. Nor is it in a salubrious London borough. It’s several miles east of Tower Bridge and most visitors to London don’t bother to venture past St. Katharine’s Dock. Why would they?

Still, should you decide, on a whim, to head out of the capital’s financial heart—the City of London—and wander east through Aldgate, past Brick Lane and into Whitechapel, you’d witness quite a transformation as you cross the invisible barrier which separates affluent, financial London from the working poor. It’s as if the Roman city wall has been reincarnated as some sort of modern economic force field.

Make your way through the rows of utilitarian concrete flats that were built to reconstitute the East End after its near destruction during the Blitz. Here and there you’ll find a Victorian terrace the Luftwaffe missed, or spot a trendy warehouse conversion that’s testament to the resurgent Docklands to the southeast. This is genuine London. The atmosphere is palpable; good-natured Cockney banter mixed with a hint of potential violence that could erupt at any moment, for any number of reasons.

Walk on past the Blind Beggar, the pub where Reggie Kray shot George Cornell in the head three times. (That’s East End notoriety for you.) The Whitechapel Road becomes the Mile End Road. Keep going east for another three quarters of a mile until, on your left, you come across the site of the former People’s Palace. Here, you find Queen Mary College.

Now, it might be reasonable to expect a university college in London’s East End to stick out like a bikini model at a Star Trek convention. But it doesn’t. Other than the Queen’s Building, QMC’s humble façade blends in with the barred windows of the urban concrete with consummate ease. In fact, QMC bears as much resemblance to its more refined siblings as Cockney rhyming slang does to the Romance languages. Queen Mary is the grubby miscreant of which the rest of the university family is understandably a little embarrassed.

To the surprise of many people—not least its own students—QMC has actually managed to generate a diminutive list of noteworthy contributors to the betterment of humanity. The satirical novelist Sir Malcolm Bradbury did a master’s degree at QMC. And Sir Peter Mansfield, who shared a Nobel Prize for the development of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, obtained bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in physics there.

But the QMC alumni best known to contemporary society—and held in highest esteem by the college’s undergraduates—are Bruce Dickinson, lead singer of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden, and David Sullivan, a soft porn baron and publisher of the Sunday Sport tabloid newspaper.

Nobody has ever accused Queen Mary College of being pretentious.

 —1—

OCTOBER

Ya jammy bastard, said John, shaking his head.

He sat down on the chair opposite Simon then spun a coaster expertly onto the table before setting his pint of lager on it.

Simon continued to stare blankly into space, ignoring the pint of bitter John had placed in front of him a minute ago.

Is that all ya can say? John continued, attempting in vain to get a response from the cataleptic body on the other side of the table. Blimey, mate, yev just won an all expenses piss-up to America. Nobody’s askin’ ya for a kidney or summink.

Simon’s brain was far from idle, in fact going about a million miles an hour wondering whether he’d get shot dead on his first day in America. Or get badly injured. Perhaps paralyzed. God, he hoped not. At worst just a minor flesh wound and a bit of a scar in an innocuous place. Yes, he’d let the carjacker or the mugger take whatever he wanted quickly, with minimum fuss, and make sure there was no need for gunfire or violence of any sort.

He just had to hope he didn’t get caught up in a gang war by accident; perhaps drug lords fighting over turf. Simon made a mental note to check on the Internet for the colours worn by the local gangs. He’d take only neutral black clothes. Unless, of course, black was what one of the local gangs wore.

The panic subsided momentarily and Simon looked across to John’s quizzical face, then back down to the top of his pint that had yet to be touched.

Mmm, he murmured.

That’s the spirit! Get it down ya, mate, ordered John, lifting his own glass. This is a celebration! I mean, it ain’t every lucky fukkah gets ta chase Yankee skirt around Florida, izzit? Besides, while you’re lordin’ it up over there, I’m stuck ’ere in the poxy lab wiv Big Dick. John paused to sink half his pint in a single, massive gulp. Yep, if ya wanna swap, I will gladly let you stay ’ere wiv ’im and I’ll swan around Florida workin’ on Anglo-American relations, if ya know what I mean.

At this, the content of John’s pathetic joke began to feed back into a real idea. His laugh subsided into a serious look that suggested, at a minimum, he’d just realised how to cure one form of cancer.

Yeah, if ya wanna swap I will gladly suck it up an’ go in your stead, mate, he added after a few moments’ reflection.

Mm. Mmmmm.

Simon’s vivid imagination had started to replace the Miami gang-bangers with new scenarios involving shaven-headed rednecks driving beat-up trucks to pursue hapless English tourists for ‘sporting purposes.’ Bull whips, electric cattle prods and hunting dogs featured prominently. The banjo player from Deliverance provided the score. It was not a good development.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Simon trying desperately but unsuccessfully to eliminate the pictures of grievous bodily harm circulating in his head. John continued to think of ways to get himself a trip to the United States on some trumped-up academic junket.

The pub was quiet, which was to be expected early on a Monday afternoon. One old geezer sat at the bar reading a newspaper. A fruit machine broke the peace every now and then with an unrecognizable electronic melody as it tried to attract custom.

Simon looked at his watch: ten to two. Another hour had passed and he was another hour closer to the nightmare trip.

Yep, we’d better be off, eh? suggested John as he drained the last of his pint. Simon’s was still almost full.

Yes, said Simon pensively. Better be off.

He took a mouthful of beer and swallowed slowly, placing his glass back down with the care of a transplant surgeon.

John reached over and poured half the contents of Simon’s glass into his own.

Shall I ’elp? he asked redundantly.

Five minutes later they were walking down the Mile End Road, past the concrete jungle of graffiti’d council flats and run-down shops with barred windows, back towards the college.

An autumn wind whisked crispy leaves past their feet as they walked in the patchy sunshine. Bulbous clouds sped by overhead. If it weren’t so cold it would have been a fair October day in East London.

The two PhD students walked the ten minutes back from the Three Crowns making occasional small talk unrelated to their separate preoccupations, neither wishing to discuss what was really on his mind. John continued to plot a foreign sojourn of his own while Simon’s thoughts finally moved on to the experiments he was to run once abroad. Thankfully, the rednecks and the gang-bangers were taking a siesta.

They crossed Bancroft Road and turned onto college grounds at the School of Biological Sciences, towards their own department. A few tardy undergrads were scurrying to 2 o’clock lectures a few minutes late.

Reaching the Department of Physical Sciences, John stopped suddenly and grabbed Simon’s shoulder.

Let’s go in the main entrance. I don’t want Big Dick ta see me. ’E’ll only want ta know ’ow me polarization’s goin’. I need a coffee.

That’s probably a good idea, agreed Simon, who wasn’t used to lunchtime drinking like John.

Without caffeine Simon would almost certainly be asleep by three o’clock. Besides, he too had no desire whatsoever to run into Professor Merrington again that day. Once, to be informed of the distressing news that Prof wanted him to travel to Florida to conduct some experiments, was more than enough.

They went in the main entrance to the department and turned right past the lifts, then on down the corridor past a small lab and a couple of offices, to the room that functioned as the ground floor tea room. It was actually, technically, an office designed to accommodate three students and an assortment of journals on shelves, but because it was the only room on the floor with a sink it became the communal space, and tea room, by default.

Their lab was farther down the corridor, at the end of which was Prof Merrington’s office. They could have saved themselves thirty seconds going in through the side entrance next to Merrington’s office, but there was no way to avoid being seen if the office was occupied, which John assumed it was.

Arriving at the tea room, John got the coffee pot going.

I think I’ll just check my spectra, said Simon. I’ll be down at the 7 T.

Fair enough, acknowledged John, sounding distracted as he poured ground coffee into the filter paper.

Simon’s research wasn’t going well. He had just started the third of what was supposed to be a three-year PhD. So far, though, he had nothing novel to show for his efforts. All he’d managed to do was replicate some studies from the literature. And it was going to take more than revisiting old ground to get him through.

It was partly the worry that a perfectly good experiment could be going down the pan at that very moment, but mostly to avoid having to discuss the nightmare Florida trip, which prompted Simon’s departure from the tea room and back to the unlikely sanctuary of the laboratory.

He unlocked the lab door and wandered over to a computer on a desk in one corner. In the very centre of the room a shiny silver cylinder, six feet tall, some four feet in diameter, mounted on a tripod which boosted it three more feet off the ground, sat there in expensive glory and apparently did nothing. Simon rastered his gaze across the operating computer screen to see what was happening inside the silver behemoth; a 7 tesla superconducting electromagnet.

All seemed well at first. He looked at the experiment monitor window that told him how long the experiment had been running, how long there was to go, and how much signal had been detected so far. Two hours down, one hour to go. Signal to noise ratio: three to one.

Simon sighed a low, resigned sigh. He’d become accustomed to null results months ago. Signal increased over noise as the square root of time elapsed. Allowing the experiment to proceed for the final hour would net signal intensity only four times the noise level. Barely detectable. Barely worth the last hour of data acquisition. Another day had drifted by with no significant results.

Simon’s melancholy deepened.

The lab door opened and John entered with two mugs of coffee, handing one to Simon.

Any joy? he enquired, genuinely interested.

Simon shook his head and exhaled. There’s not enough signal to get a proper spectrum in less than a day. It would take a month to acquire an image. A lousy image.

He took a big gulp of coffee and stood staring at the computer screen as if, at any moment, some crucial insight might be revealed or some fantastic new signal would appear by magic. Nothing happened.

Simon looked across to the huge silver magnet in the middle of the lab.

I think hyperpolarization is going to be essential. The fluorine is just too dilute, he said ruefully.

Yep, John agreed. He had his own experimental difficulties to contend with, but didn’t want to disparage his friend unnecessarily. Good job yer off to Florida then, innit? he added helpfully.

There was a long pause.

Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. Really, Simon said to himself, and to John only incidentally.

 —2—

It was almost seven o’clock by the time Professor Merrington locked his office door and strode purposefully out to his car in the darkness.

It had been a good day! He’d coordinated a visit to a lab in the United States for one of his students, as cover for himself, and had reviewed two excellent manuscripts submitted for publication in the Journal of Metabolic Neuroimaging, of which he was a deputy editor.

He hadn’t been able to track down either of his post-graduate students all afternoon, which was a tad inconvenient, but he’d popped into the lab just before two o’clock and found an unattended experiment running away on the 7 T spectrometer. Things were clearly progressing! He reminded himself to sit down with Simon first thing in the morning to discuss the Florida experiments. There was much literature to peruse and a detailed plan to make.

As he drove his twenty-year-old Renault 5 out onto the Mile End Road and headed east, hunched improbably inside the tiny capsule as only a man of six feet four could be, Prof Merrington’s thoughts drifted off towards various new avenues of research the present crop of experiments might sprout.

For a man of seventy-two progressing rapidly towards the twilight of life he still had youthful exuberance for his science. You had to give him that. If he lived five lives he couldn’t possibly tackle—let alone solve—all the questions he’d managed to generate in his one life so far. But that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm any. The mere process of thought and the stimulation of new ideas was reward enough.

Intellectual masturbation was what his wife, Helen, termed it, somewhat harshly.

You sit and think because it feels good. It doesn’t fulfill any useful purpose! she’d accused when she’d challenged him on his not having pruned back their overgrown garden one spring, as he’d promised he’d do the previous autumn.

The professor had attempted a brief, pathetic defense along the lines of having been engaged in some highly critical new experiments that couldn’t wait. But she knew him too well. Those new experiments were just embryonic theories and half-thoughts that had no chance of becoming any sort of reality.

So he’d gone out and hacked and slashed and weeded indiscriminately for a while to placate her. It turned out the garden was a most excellent place to think undisturbed, and the professor took to his task with abandon. The majority of the plants had recovered sufficiently from the massacre for the garden to look halfway presentable two summers later, after Helen had hired a landscaping company to perform resuscitation.

Professor Merrington stopped and started through Bow into Stratford in the late rush-hour traffic. He pushed ‘play’ on the old radio-cassette. Haydn’s Symphony No. 60 temporarily masked the London hubbub, creating a little oasis of calm in which he could talk to himself without reprisal.

With the intricate harmonies nullifying the chaotic traffic outside, the professor found it easy to lose himself in his thoughts. His wife detested being his passenger because he never seemed to be paying any attention whatsoever to the task at hand. Yet, in well over fifty years of driving he’d had barely a scrape, and the two previous cars he’d owned had been retired only when their engines finally gave up after some hundreds of thousands of carefree miles.

Merrington just had to pay sufficient attention to his present location so that he didn’t drive past his house and on into Epping Forest when he got to Woodford Green. It had happened on more than a few occasions.

That evening, as most weekday evenings, Prof Merrington’s dinner, covered with a plate and a cloth to keep it warm, was waiting for him on the dining room table.

Helen Merrington had retired almost a decade ago but she kept herself extremely busy with the St. John’s Ambulance and other voluntary work. Their busy professional lives—she had been head of paediatric medicine at the Royal London Hospital—had always meant little to no structure at meal times, so whoever got home first prepared dinner. That tradition persisted, when she beat him home four days out of five. She didn’t mind. In her earlier career, when she was often on call, she sometimes went weeks at a time coming in around midnight, to the point where she practically forgot what their kitchen looked like.

The professor stashed his briefcase under the dining room table for immediate access after dinner. He found his wife in the living room with a large glass of red wine and a National Geographic.

Evening, dear, he said.

Oh hullo, Richard. I thought I heard you come in. Good day? she asked routinely without taking her eyes off the text in front of her, prepared to feign interest for the next few minutes’ monologue.

The professor’s days were always filled with stimulating cogitation and were thus always generally agreeable to him. The only real question was how excited he’d got himself.

Mmn, yes, really quite good. Though the memorial service for David Rickinghall means I won’t be able to go to the Magnet Lab in Florida this year. Most inconvenient the old codger died when he did.

Yes, I dare say it was, dear.

The Royal Society’s having a thing for him on the twenty-fifth, up in Nottingham. I really do have to go, said the professor with more than a hint of indignation.

You might have had your disagreements over the years, Richard, but you don’t want to be the only Fellow not there. It would be frightfully rude, Helen advised.

It is a shame. I’ve had to ask Simon Mills to run the experiments at the Magnet Lab for me. He’s a reliable enough sort of chap, but I do wish he’d show more enthusiasm sometimes.

What about John what’s-his-name? You could send him, Helen offered helpfully, just glad to see the conversation take on a human element instead of plummeting into technical jargon, as it so often did. I recall you saying he’s as sharp as a tack.

John Eaton? Oh no, quite impossible! He’s bright, but quite unreliable. No, he wouldn’t be a good ambassador and I couldn’t rely on him to do the experiments properly. He seems to spend the majority of his time in a public house or at one of those gaudy nightclubs in the West End.

Well, he has to apply himself at some point, Richard, scorned his wife. Otherwise, what’s he doing a PhD for?

That’s just the point. His father’s funding it to keep him out of trouble. Apparently, Mr Eaton the younger had plans to be a disc jockey on one of the Spanish islands, but his father wouldn’t wear it. His father’s big in the City, I hear.

Deejay, dear. You don’t half show your age sometimes, said Helen impassively.

I think it’s Lloyds-TSB, actually, said the professor with a puzzled look. Had I already mentioned it?

"Yes dear, you had. I was referring to the modern parlance of calling a disc jockey a deejay. But you’d also mentioned John’s father and his failed attempts to get John into banking. Or any other form of actual work come to that."

The professor’s expression eased with the relief that he wasn’t going senile quite yet.

Oh, he said. Well, Mr Eaton’s a bit of a lost cause in my lab. No, I’ll send Mr Mills. He’s a steady enough experimenter. At least he can follow instructions and I know he won’t spend the entire trip drunk. He’s not the brightest student I’ve ever had, but he is perfectly harmless.

 —3—

If Professor Merrington felt paradoxical indignation that Monday evening on account of the death of a man he didn’t even like, the death of a man Simon didn’t even know was being appreciated by him like sticks of dynamite on a bonfire.

Simon got back to his flat in Stepney at six o’clock and immediately called his parents up in Suffolk.

"Hullo, buh. Hoew’s ut goun’? Any stunnun’ breakthrews this week?"

His dad was always so upbeat and proud of his neophyte academic offspring.

Simon tried to sound nonchalant.

Same as usual, thanks Dad. No new results to report.

Luckily, his dad liked to get to the crux of the conversation quickly, establish that Simon was alive and well, and whether he might need any money, then pass the phone over to his wife so he could get back to whatever it was he was busy doing. Telephone conversations weren’t his thing.

"Hoew’d that polar hibernation work oewt for yuh?"

Ah, the hyperpolarization, corrected Simon without inflexion. We don’t have all the equipment to try it out yet. But I tried the normal chemical today. It was too weak for an image.

This was probably just as well because it was impossible for Simon to relay what he did in any meaningful way to his parents, especially his father. His parents weren’t thick, but whereas the acorn might not fall far from the tree it does have the capacity to roll away afterwards.

His mother, who’d possibly been clever enough to do A-levels but had also left school at 16 to become a hairdresser, fared marginally better. At least, she could remember some of the terms correctly and put them in a reasonable-sounding order in conversation with the neighbours, to whom she described her son as a nuclear physicist because it was the most impressive term they might have heard before. It was, however, technically inaccurate.

"Ah well, yew’ll git ut sorted, buh. So will we see yuh before Chrissmas?"

His father’s mind was elsewhere and he was sounding keen for his body to follow it.

Um, don’t know yet, Dad. I have to go to the United States next week for an experiment, said Simon without enthusiasm.

"America? Wow. That’ll be fun. Yur mum’ll be thrilled tuh hear that. Here, hang on a mo . . . . Jen?

JENNY

! his father bellowed into the kitchen. Soimon’s on the phone. Hiz gut some news. Simon’s father returned to a normal speaking voice and redirected his attention to his son. Shiz just cum’n, buh. Yew caught us gittun’ dinner ready."

Oh, sorry, I forgot about dinner. Um, Dad, could you dig out my passport and post it to me first-class tomorrow?

"Ah hang on, buh, here’s yur mum. She’ll do ut. I don’t knoew where she keeps papers an’ ’at. Alroight mate, give us a bell before ya head off to America. And lemme know if ya need a spot o’ dosh. Cheerio!"

Thanks, Dad, I’m alright. Bye, said Simon cordially.

"Hullo Soimon! Hoew are yuh? Hev yu had yur dinner yet? What’s all this aboewt America?" inquired his mother in rapid succession.

Simon’s conversations with his mother generally took the form of an inquisition, with him on the back foot immediately.

I had a late lunch with John, I’ll get dinner in a bit, he countered, evincing minimal truth.

In fact, he’d been unable to swallow any of the sandwich he’d bought at the student union restaurant so John had suggested a liquid lunch at the Three Crowns instead. It hadn’t helped. The knot in his stomach proved immovable. Even dinner was looking tenuous.

"Yur dad said yev got some news. Oi heard ’im say somethun’ aboewt America," she continued, subconsciously expecting, hoping, to hear she was about to become a mother-in-law whenever Simon had any sort of event to report.

Well, Simon began, it’s just that Prof has to go to a memorial service in Nottingham, so he’s sending me to Florida for a week of experiments. I don’t really fancy it, to be honest, but Prof is really keen on it and I don’t want to let him down.

It was the only reason with which Simon had managed to rationalize the situation so far.

"Oooo! Floruda! Hew lovely. Yu’ll meet some noice girls there, Soimon. On them holiday programmes they’re all very pretty and hev lovely sun-tans."

Simon resisted the bait.

Yes, I dare say, Mum. I doubt there’ll be much time for socializing. Prof has a lot of experiments for me to do.

"Where exactly is ut you’re goun’? Oi’ di’n knoew there wuz any scientific research in Floruda. I thought ut was all beach un’ Mickey Mouse. ’Least that’s what Oi’ve sin on the telly."

There’s also NASA at Cape Canaveral, Simon amended objectively. But I’ll be inland in a small town called Gainesville, at the University of Florida. Prof goes for a week every year. I don’t really know too much about it yet.

"Yew can gaggle ut," offered Jenny Mills helpfully.

Google. Yes, I have to sort out the travel arrangements tomorrow so I’ll look at the Magnet Lab’s website then.

"When is ut yew goew? Oh damn, the potaytuz are boilun’ owvuh. Hang on a sec, Soimon, said Mrs Mills as she turned and called out to her husband to turn the gas down and to check the chops weren’t burning, and to turn them off if they looked ready. When is ut?"

I leave on the twenty-second.

"That’s a week tomorruh! Wow. How excoitun’. Yur in the big toime noew, Soimon. The globetrottun’ scientist!" said his mum, genuinely happy for him but also chuffed at the new conversation-dropper she had for the other members of her book club—a weekly gathering of village women at which gossiping was generally pursued more vigorously than literature.

Mmm, Simon murmured in a way that could have been interpreted as agreement to his mother’s preceding positive statements, or as indifference, or as sheer dismay as was actually his feeling on the matter.

"Yew’ll need yur passport then. Oi’ll get ut out and stick ut in the post in the mornun’. Do yuh need travelers’ cheques or anythun’?"

No thanks, Mum. Just my passport. First-class please, he said hastily, in the knowledge that he was about to get a long list of items reeled off as she thought of anything her son—who’d only achieved three A-levels and an upper second-class degree in chemical physics, after all—might not have thought to take for himself. He really didn’t want to discuss the infernal trip or packing for the blasted thing.

"Suitcase? Snacks fur the plane? Sun tan lotion? You knoew how yew burn at the seasoide."

No, thanks Mum, I’ve got everything else already sorted, Simon interjected before the list could get past the letter S and on down the alphabet.

In the event, he was saved by the pork chops that were starting to burn on the edges.

"Moike?

MOIKE

? Jenny called to the kitchen, but got no reply. Yur bloomun’ father has left the grill on. Oi bet he’s in that bloody shed tinkerun’ with that motorboike. Oi’d better goew."

Righto, Mum said Simon with tactful disappointment. I’ll call you over the weekend.

"Yia, lovely. We’re oewt Saturday in Bury, shoppun’. We should be home by foive, foive-thirty."

Ok, I’ll give you a call Sunday. Bye, Mum.

The usual pleasantries exchanged, Simon put the phone handset back onto the charger and stood watching the little battery symbol flashing on and off for well over a minute.

It had been good to talk to his parents. He wished he were up in Suffolk now, sitting down to dinner with them. After dinner perhaps he’d go out to the shed and pretend to help his father with something or other. Or maybe they’d all watch a classic film together for the evening; his parents loved Cary Grant. And tomorrow he’d go to work with his dad at the local sugar factory. A decent wage, a small car, save for a deposit on a house on the new Rougham Estate on the outskirts of Bury St. Edmunds, as many of his school friends were doing. A simple life back up in Suffolk would be so much more agreeable than risking life and limb traveling across the Atlantic to do Prof Merrington’s bidding.

So, his passport would arrive midweek and then he’d have all the essentials to make the trip to Florida. Damn. His memory drifted back to the French exchange he’d gone on at school. It was the only reason he even had a passport. Otherwise, when asked by Professor Merrington—somewhat rhetorically now that he came to think about it—whether he would like to dash off to America and run some experiment or other, he would have been able to feign an apology at not having the requisite travel documents and decline in good grace. Why couldn’t John go? The lazy shit was obviously the cleverer of the two of them. And