“I’m concerned about his paper, Loughty,” the man said.
Royston held his tongue. The cluttered oak desk between them, stacked with papers and old tomes, might as well have been a battlefield drawn up between two armies. He had expected what was coming, and wasn’t about to back down one scintilla on this.
Not even to this man could make him: Dr. Sir Westfield van Duren-Abbott, PhD, FRS, GMU, KCB, GBE.
Fellow of the Royal Society. Past Guardian of the Mathematical Union. Knight Grand Cross, Order of the British Empire. Knight Commander, Order of the Bath. Even the best-selling author of a popular book on the shape of the universe and humanity’s place in it.
Sir West was probably the only mathematician alive that the man on the street might recognize by name. Professor Emeritus, King’s College, and all that.
Royston smiled grimly at his old mentor and set his teeth to prevent the growl from escaping his mouth. Now was not the time. Even with Sir West’s office door closed, this was not the place.
Royston leaned himself into the wingback chair and forced his muscles to relax. The walls on three sides of the oversized office were covered with bookshelves, and at least four of his books were in here somewhere, along with all twenty-three of Sir West’s.
When the man realized that Royston wasn’t going to rise to the bait, Sir West sighed.
The man looked every one of his eighty-three years, with a wild fringe of white hair surrounding a sea of liver spots on the bald top. Even his tweeds might be older than Royston. The eyes were hazel most of the time, and gave utter lie to the rest of the man’s unkempt appearance as a fussy old duffer headed down to the pub for a pint.
Sir West had lost barely any of the genius that put him at the top of the field sixty years ago and kept him there.
“Yes, concerned that you’ve gone about this all wrong, Loughty,” the man repeated himself.
“Why is that, Sir West?” Royston finally asked.
If they were going to have to play this game, he was going to make the old man work for it. Simple as that.
“Your co-author, Roy,” Sir West intoned in a severe, almost condescending voice.
“Oh?” Royston fired back innocently.
As if he hadn’t woken up this morning and spent his breakfast and the flight down here to England preparing for this battle.
“I appreciate that she is your daughter,” Sir West equivocated. “And a very sharp girl, but this paper has the potential to utterly destroy your reputation, Loughty. I wouldn’t want hers to suffer any collateral damage.”
“What’s wrong with the contents of the paper, Sir West?” Royston challenged, letting just the thinnest edge of his pique show through.
The man had been his mentor for nearly three decades now. Challenging his genius was like arguing with God himself about things.
“You claim to have invented an entirely new mathematics, Loughty,” the older man was exasperated. “As if your place in history is to rival Newton and Leibniz. Higher dimensions of space? Wormholes? Ye gads, man, that’s the fanciful conjecture of the worst speculative fiction writers. Newton was surpassed by Einstein, but nobody in the last five hundred years has been able to prove the German wrong. And everyone has tried.”
“I’m aware of that, Sir West,” Royston replied with a sniff.
“This paper will get you laughed out of the Royal Society, Loughty,” Sir West pleaded. “Burn it, before anybody else finds out, and I swear I will never mention it again.”
“I’ve already begun designing the first generator, Sir West,” Royston replied.
“You’ve what?”
“The theory supports a certain type of radiation, previously unknown anywhere in any proposed model of physics, being a residue from such a device as an electromagnetic signature,” Royston said.
“So?” the man shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“I’ve seen that radiation,” Royston replied, eyes squinting with fury. “Detected it under circumstances that were utterly impossible to explain. If the security clearance around the incident wasn’t so high, I could tell you about it. Instead I might suggest you ask the Queen when you next have lunch with her. Perhaps a tour of The Arsenal and a look at the bleeding edge of research might be in order, sometime soon.”
He left it at that. That was exactly as much hint as he could offer without getting himself in trouble, but Sir Westfield van Duren-Abbott was a bright enough fellow to understand the clues and follow the breadcrumbs to enlightenment.
If he really wanted to know the truth.
“And this?” he gestured at the folder between them on the desk.
The paper was amazingly thin, as those things went. More than half of it was an Appendix filled with the new vocabulary of terms and symbols Royston had been forced to invent, to try to explore the ideas that took shape under the influence of that young lady’s rock and roll.
The paper itself was an exploration of several higher orders of dimensionality, arranged like layers in a puff pastry and separated by walls of radiation that might be some bizarre, previously-unsuspected residue of the Big Bang itself.
That awaited a future paper to explore. And possibly entire generations of science fiction writers to prove right. He looked forward to dropping a small and rather polite bomb on the Royal Society sometime soon. Possibly by opening a wormhole across the length of a desk and rolling a marble through it. That demonstration might require an entire atomic pile to power it, but the expressions of shock on those old fart’s faces would be worth every pfennig.
“How would you classify this?” the older scientist pressed.
“A roadmap to the future, old man,” Royston snapped. “I don’t know what’s out there, or who, but I have strong suggestions that we’ll find someone when we get there. The rest is just the work of some extremely competent and creative mechanical engineers. I have a number of those on call, up in orbit.”
“So you’re going to go through with it?” Sir West demanded abrasively.
“Indeed,” Royston smiled. He leaned back again, when he realized he had leaned forward far enough to put his hands on the desk again.
“And you will share credit with a woman?” Sir West’s voice got ugly.
“Did you know that King’s College used to admit women into their doctoral programs, Sir West?” Royston purred icily. “That many schools did, back in the old days before Earth Force? Back at the dawn of the Space Age?”
“And next I suppose you’ll tell me that the Etruscans were a co-equal society. And the Vikings and so many others. Ancient history, and she has nothing more than a basic degree.”
“Truth,” Royston acknowledged. “And since no admissions council would grant her leave to attend, she has instead been my principal assistant for several years, when she might have been successfully pursuing such advanced degrees. After me, she’s the only other expert on the topic. If people intend to be snotty enough to me on the matter, I might send her to make all my presentations and remain in my lab in orbit.”
That got the man’s attention. Royston could see Sir West envisioning a woman standing before the Royal Society, dressed in that red skirt and tunic, representing Sky Patrol. They had admitted women once, as well. In the so-called Dark Ages of Technology.
Royston smiled at the possibility of her on the talk shows, describing the work as an equal partner, and not just the daughter of the inventor.
Sir West leaned back in turn, cooling his ardor by force of will. He could see the precipice that Royston had walked him to, like a bear trap hidden in the low grass.
“Let me make a few inquiries,” he half-promised, suddenly understanding the lever Royston held.
Archimedes had warned these bastards, but not enough of them had listened.
“How soon until you build a device?” Sir West asked carefully.
“This one will exceed my current budget,” Royston replied. “I’ll be sending this paper up the chain at Sky Patrol, requesting additional funds and assistance. They have a powerful, vested interest in the topic that I am not at liberty to discuss, currently.”
“Would you consider building it at King’s College?” Sir West asked, dancing expertly around the topic.
“When the Sky Marshal asks me to present my theories to the Secretary, it might be helpful if Her Majesty was willing to chat with the Chancellor on the topic,” Royston allowed.
The Americans would also be quite interested, and willing to throw money at him. And they dominated both Earth Force in general and Sky Force in particular.
Very interested.
Because someone had kidnapped Gareth St. John Dankworth.
The Americans would want to have a friendly chat with those folks.
At least it would start friendly. Americans were like that.
“I shall make some inquiries, Loughty,” Sir West finally temporized. “Will this really potentially give us the galaxy?”
“That is my hope, Sir West,” Royston replied. “That is my goal.”