Music, in a Foreign Language

by Andrew Crumey

  ‘Thanks, Charles. I feel such a fool, really. Coming round here in a panic like that.’

  ‘It’s not very pleasant to have them spying on you. But it’s happening all the time; it’s only alarming because you know they’re there.’

  Robert raised his glass again to his lips. He was beginning to look flushed and slightly drunk. ‘Who was the girl?’

  ‘Jenny? I told you, a friend of mine from London.’

  ‘What does she do?’

  ‘Some kind of clerical job.’

  ‘Is it civil service?’

  ‘She’s with the Electricity Board. Don’t worry, she’s not a spy!’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. But she wouldn’t be able to tell them much, even if she was.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her anything about me, did you?’

  ‘Of course not. She said you were a bit abrupt, though.’

  ‘Abrupt?’

  ‘She could tell you were nervous about something.’

  ‘What else did she say?’

  ‘Nothing. I told her you’re always an awkward bastard, which you are, and she didn’t mention the matter again. Please, Robert, don’t get so paranoid. Just because somebody has a sniff around in your office, you think the whole world’s watching you.’

  ‘All the same, don’t say anything to Jenny, or anyone. This is all strictly between the two of us.’

  ‘Yes, of course Robert. You know, with your suspicious mind you ought to be working for them, you’d be ideal.’

  Robert drank the last of his brandy. ‘I’d better be going.’ He stood up and handed the empty glass to King. ‘Thanks for listening, Charles. I don’t like to rush away, but I didn’t want to leave Anne on her own. Duncan’s got a cold and she’s got her hands full looking after him.’

  ‘He’s a lovely boy. You’re very lucky, Robert.’

  ‘I know. I sometimes forget it. You should get yourself a wife, Charles.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’ He put the glasses on the table and fetched Robert’s coat. Then he saw Robert to the door and wished him goodnight.

  King went back inside and took the empty glasses to the kitchen, where he washed them in the sink. He returned to the sitting room, still thinking about Robert. Flood was nothing. Only two fools who thought that intellectual argument could have some effect on the world.

  On his desk, the paper lay neatly typed. He still needed to write in all the equations, but he didn’t want to start doing that tonight. It was late, and he could feel the brandy in his head. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. Perhaps they would come and interview him. He would say nothing. Could Robert ever have believed otherwise?

  Jenny had left her toothbrush, and a small washbag. He picked up the bag and opened it. There was a bottle of shampoo, and some soap. A flannel, a piece of sponge. A jar of something. Perhaps he should have let her stay. Next week he would take her a present. She’d like that.

  7

  On Monday morning, Charles put the pages of his paper in a large manilla envelope, along with the carbon copy Jenny had made, and went to his office in the Department of Theoretical Physics. Going in at the side entrance, he passed Joanna. ‘Won’t be needing your services now,’ he told her. ‘The typing, I mean. Did it myself.’ Joanna scowled at him. ‘Hope you like the stockings,’ he said, and skipped up the stairs two at a time. When he checked his pigeonhole, King found a brown envelope similar to the one he was carrying. Someone had sent him a paper. He looked at the sender’s name, but didn’t recognize it. In his office, he examined the contents.

  A Vision of the Universe

  by E. Warren B.Sc.

  Dear colleague and (I hope) friend,

  I send you this in the sad expectation that you, like all the others, will see fit to reject out of hand all my ideas; ideas which are the result of fifteen years of thought. But I earnestly hope that you will at least spare a moment to read my work, to give it a fair hearing, since you are a scientist and a scientist must always approach every new problem objectively. I believe that if you, like me, are prepared to be truly objective then you, like me, will be forced to reject some of the fundamental principles of physics as currently taught, and you will see that the ideon theory provides a new, simpler, unified explanation. As some of the consequences of this theory, let me first list a few:

  1. That the speed of light c is not constant, but is a variable c(x,y,z,t), and as a consequence is not the greatest possible velocity;

  2. That there are particles (ideons) which can travel faster than light and are the fundamental constituents of all things;

  3. That the soul is composed of two types of ideon held in a certain balance, and that death occurs when there is a net flux of life force away from the host;

  4. That the infiniteness of the total life force of the Universe proves the existence of God.

  In addition, it is easy to derive all of the fundamental constants of nature and the values of the fundamental variables such as c(x,y,z,t). Moreover, given a sufficiently powerful computer, one could calculate precisely how long a given individual will live.

  Colleague, I know that my ideas may seem strange, even revolutionary, but do not allow the fear of the new and the love of tradition to colour your assessment. I earnestly hope that you will assist me in finding a journal which will publish this work. The truth can never be suppressed; you may choose to ignore me, the World may choose to ignore me, but I fear that the consequences for the World could be very grave indeed.

  Yours sincerely, Edward Warren B.Sc.

  King was always coming across nonsense like this; people claiming to disprove Einstein, or use quantum mechanics to calculate the day of the Last Judgement. It seemed that for every professional physicist, there were goodness knows how many oddballs working away feverishly in their spare time – working with all the dedication and enthusiasm of their ‘respectable’ counterparts – to create their own bizarre alternatives to orthodox science. And King couldn’t help admiring such single-mindedness, such confidence in the validity of their efforts in the face of all the evidence. He liked coming across this mad stuff; it provided him with some light relief. But he had never had one sent directly to him; usually he got them second hand from the secretaries when they were addressed to Professor Saunders.

  Introduction

  This theory is the result of fifteen years of thought, of study, of experimentation, and of persecution. Anyone who has trodden the path of knowledge will know that it is a stony and difficult one, and that there are many pitfalls along the way. Happy the man who can reach the final destination! I should like to begin by mentioning some of those who have helped or hindered me on my solitary journey. First I thank my physics teacher Mr Jack Price, whose chance remark one day long ago concerning the speed of light was the starting point for all that follows. Since then, I have drawn inspiration and infuriation from many sources, among them Einstein, Bohr, Newton, Maxwell, Mach, Schopenhauer, Kant, Plato, Shakespeare and Christ.

  No living person has been of any assistance to me whatsoever in my work; among my more vicious and narrow-minded opponents I include Prof. F. Barlow, Prof. T.S. Goodfellow (was ever a surname less appropriate?!), Dr. M. Smith and Dr. P.C. Osborne. The vindication and general acceptance of the ideon theory will be ample compensation for the attacks of these people and others.

  This work is dedicated to the memory of my mother.

  King’s phone was ringing. He heard Joanna on the line:

  ‘Call for you Dr. King …’

  Then another voice:

  ‘Hello, Charles?’

  ‘Jenny. What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing. Just thought I’d say good morning. I didn’t have your extension so I got to you through two switch-boards. Bit of a palaver.’

  ‘Oh. So you got back alright last night?’

  ‘Yes, no problems. Can’t talk much now, Charles – I’m at work. And I suppose you’re busy. I just wanted to say tha
nks. It was a nice weekend.’

  ‘Yes, I enjoyed it. And thanks for all your work, it’s great.’

  ‘The paper? Oh good. It was nothing, really. Let me know when you’ve got another that needs typing.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Charles, are you alright?’

  ‘Of course. Not the best place to talk, that’s all.’

  Jenny said she understood, and she’d better go. And she gave King her work number, in case he ever needed it. Then she rang off.

  King heard the click of Jenny’s receiver, and then the second click as Joanna hung up. And then he put down his own phone and glanced again at the ‘Vision of the Universe’.

  Chapter 1

  The speed of light is not constant!

  Einstein’s theory of relativity is regarded as a cornerstone of modern physics. Certainly, Einstein was a very great thinker, and he was right to see the fundamental importance of light. But what he was never able to realize is that in fact the speed of light c is not constant.

  The scientific proof of this is so blindingly simple that it seems to me a little strange that Einstein should never have noticed it. But perhaps he was too absorbed in theory to pay attention to the evidence of nature. Think of a lens. The light passing through it is bent – and why? Because it has been slowed down! And so the speed of light cannot be constant! So from now on, we must disregard all this nonsense about relativity, and start from scratch.

  What an idiot. King brought out his own paper and began the laborious task of writing in all the mathematical symbols and equations which it hadn’t been possible to type. When he was finished he checked it through, then took it downstairs to the photocopy room, handing the eighteen pages over to the girl at the counter who gave him the request form to fill out in duplicate. Then she took everything from him and told him to come back in the afternoon.

  Charles felt bad about the way he had spoken to Jenny. He had been surprised to hear her voice; it was an intrusion into a place where she didn’t belong. And he had responded by being cold and abrupt, when she had come all the way from London to do him the favour of typing his paper. And Joanna had heard everything, so that in addition to feeling guilty he felt foolish as well.

  Back in his office, King tried to do some work. For a while he played with an idea which had been in his mind during the weekend; he pushed the symbols around on paper, looking for the spark that would make them start to do something and take over for themselves. But every few minutes he would stop and gaze out of the window, or play with the cap of his pen, or stop to clean the dirt from his fingernails. He had another look at the ‘Vision’.

  Chapter 4

  The life force

  We have already considered the quantum values of mass, charge and spin for the fundamental ideons. We now introduce a new quantum number L, which corresponds to the life force.

  Any observable can take one of two life-values (alive or dead), and so we suppose these to be analogous to the eigenstates of a spin [image] particle; i.e. we assume that the life force corresponds to a kind of angular momentum in life-space.

  King was forming a mental image of Warren. He must have done a degree in physics, and he’d probably also been reading some popular books on the subject; enough to be able to pick up the language, mix it up in his head with some kind of quasi-religion, and then regurgitate it like this. So much effort! The ‘Vision of the Universe’ ran to no less than forty-six pages. Had he typed it all himself? And this was a top copy. Did he perhaps prepare a new version for every physicist whose name he came across?

  And then they would all take a moment’s look, as King had, and wonder how far they would have to read to find the flaw that would allow them to dismiss it. The first page! Then forty-five more of futile typing, dreaming all the while that he was another Einstein. He must spend all day scribbling and typing, this Warren. What sort of work might he do? Probably something where he didn’t have to talk to many people; sitting at a desk, hatching wonderful ideas that would fill him with such excitement. Then back to some flat where he lived alone with his typewriter and his library of popular physics books, and his endless rewrites of the ‘Vision’. A pity to break in on his dreams. Why go to the trouble of explaining that his life’s work, this bundle of fantasies which he had spent so much time assembling, was fit only for the waste paper basket?

  How strange, though, that every piece of pseudo-physics is essentially the same; the same preoccupations, the same defiant tone, the same rambling style. Just as all physics papers have a required dryness and detachment, this alternative literature has a corresponding passion and urgency – these ‘papers’ churned out by solitary men who have no contact with the rest of their pseudo-scientific community. Perhaps they should have a journal all to themselves, and conferences, and even a research institute somewhere safe where they could compare notes, and decide amongst themselves what it was that might make one wrong theory better than another.

  In the afternoon, King went back to the photocopy room. He showed his identity card to the girl at the counter, and she checked his name on the card index beside her. He watched her as she stooped over it, her varnished fingernails flicking through the cards.

  ‘King. Here we are. Four copies. I’ll go and see if it’s ready.’ Then he watched the rhythmic oscillations of her mincing walk as she went to the storeroom behind. She was out of his sight for some time, hunting for his papers. When she brought them back – the copies and his original – he signed the duplicate receipts and wished her a pleasant day.

  Three copies would go to the journal, the original would go for preprinting, and the other copy was a spare. They weren’t good – black shadows at the edges of the pages – but they would have to do. He stopped off at the secretaries’ office, where Joanna was typing something. He laid the paper on her desk.

  ‘Preprint?’ she asked.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Fine. Leave it there.’

  Then in the corridor, he bumped into Henry. ‘Afternoon Charles. Going to the seminar? Might be your sort of thing – something about chirality.’

  A stilted conversation with Henry, then back to his office – he had left the door unlocked in his haste. He put his copy of the paper, and the carbon, in the top drawer, and tried to do some more work. But there was only half an hour until the seminar, and it seemed so little time in which to get anything done that he soon found himself picking up the ‘Vision’ again.

  and so we see that the ideon field is not unitary, and hence has complex eigenvalues. The imaginary part is responsible for the proof of reincarnation! And this will also be consistent with what was proved earlier; that the time field consists of an infinity of overlapping loops.

  The phone rang again. Now it was Robert’s voice.

  ‘Charles? Has anyone been to see you yet?’

  ‘No, haven’t heard anything about it.’

  ‘I got a call from the police station; they want me to go there.’

  ‘For the vetting?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’d better not talk now. They said they want my “assistance”. I don’t think we’d better discuss things over the phone. Sure no-one’s been asking you anything? Been in your office? No? I’d better go, Charles. Talk to you later.’

  After Robert had hung up, Charles waited but heard no other sound on the line. He stood up, walked to the window, and looked out onto the lawn below. The police wanted Robert’s ‘assistance’. It had an ominous sound. He turned and went to the door – locked it, and then began to go through every drawer in his office, and every shelf, for any sign that someone might have been there. But how could he tell if things now were any different from before?

  He thought about his chair; had it been in an unusual position that morning, relative to the desk? And the waste-paper basket – but the cleaners move that anyway, and the chair. And if someone had gone through his drawers, what might they have found? The only thing with any personal information was his address book, and that
was harmless. He took it out and read through it, page by page. If Robert hadn’t mentioned Flood he wouldn’t even have thought about it; he could have faced any interview with a completely clear conscience, simply because he had forgotten all about it. But because of Robert’s paranoia and his bloody book, he was now infected with suspicion. Why had he locked the door?

  There was a knock, and he gave a start. When he opened it, he saw Henry. ‘Seminar time, Charles.’

  8

  Charles King and Robert Waters first met five years earlier, in a cafe in Cambridge. It was winter, and the cafe was only a little less cold than the street outside. King was having breakfast, though it was already after ten. He had been with a woman the previous night. When he had first gone to bed with her two months previously, it had been a night of little sleep, and then coffee at seven a.m. in a workmen’s stand-up place. Now he would sleep heavily beside her until half past nine.

  Sitting at a table, he saw Robert walk in – a young man of similar age to King, slightly nervous in his movements. He seemed to be searching for someone; scanning the dirty tables, then looking at the counter, and asking the girl what they had today. And King saw him glance over his shoulder, in his direction. For a moment, their eyes met, and King felt the stranger searching his face, and he wondered if this man ought to be familiar. He tried to remember where he might have seen him.

  King was twenty-seven, and still young enough to be idealistic about the waves of political reform which had begun to fill so many people with hope. Three weeks earlier, he and everyone else had watched on television the speech which now seemed to suggest the genuine possibility of change. Why had one speech been able to have such an effect?