The Mouse on Wall Street

by Leonard Wibberley

  To Tully then the Count of Mountjoy went, finding him in the little hut in the forest which he used as an office. The Count said he was beginning some preparatory work on the budget for the coming year and that this would be a good time to spend rather heavily on the needs of the forest, hinting that considerable revenue was available from the wool and grape crop, for he wished for the time being to keep secret from all the news of the windfall from chewing gum.

  But Tully disappointed him. All, it seemed, was well in the forest. No major expenditures were called for. A nice balance had been achieved between birds, insects and vegetation, and neither fertilizers nor insecticides were required for the health of the trees. Two thousand pounds, the equivalent of six thousand United States dollars, would be ample for the coming year.

  “There will be no need for any great expense in the forest for some years,” Tully said. “If we are going to have a budget surplus, why not remit some of the taxes? Many of our young people are prevented from attending universities abroad for lack of funds. Reduce the taxation of their parents and we will benefit as a nation from a rise in the educational level among our people.”

  “A reduction of taxation and an increase in the educational level are not necessarily beneficial,” said Mountjoy testily. “I would remind you that very few people with a college degree turn to farming, and we are a nation which without farmers cannot exist. I dread to think what would happen to our sheep and our vineyards if the sons of yeomen such as Clemens, Whittakers and Asgood received degrees in philosophy, engineering and nuclear physics. Higher learning, as it is called, of immense benefit in urban societies, can be disastrous in those with an agricultural base.”

  With that he left, having once more failed to find a method of ridding the Duchy of its unwanted windfall. There remained to him but one further resource, after which, should he fail here, he would have to inform the Duchess Gloriana at a meeting of her Privy Council both of the windfall itself and of his lack of success in formulating any plan for disposing of it.

  His last hope was the eminent physicist, Dr. Kokintz, discoverer of the element quadium and therefore father of that most potent of all the atomic weapons, the quadium or Q-bomb. Kokintz had been born in Grand Fenwick, had been taken to the United States in his youth, and had returned to Grand Fenwick as a prisoner when the Duchy had captured the quadium bomb in its invasion of the United States, as is related elsewhere. He had remained voluntarily in the Duchy as the guardian of the Q-bomb and had found in the tiny country the freedom from pressures which he needed for his continuing research in physics. Scientific research being an increasingly expensive profession because of the high cost of the various tools used in investigating, Mountjoy had some confidence that Kokintz, offered a million dollars, would embrace the gift.

  Dr. Kokintz had his laboratory in the Jerusalem Tower of Fenwick Castle. Here two airy apartments had been handed over to him, one for his paraphernalia and another, adjoining it and separated from it only by a sliding partition of golden oak, for a study and library. The great scientist shared with Pierce Bascomb a devotion to birds, and in the sunnier part of his laboratory, near the window, he had several cages of finches, goldfinches, canaries and little black and white Javanese ricebirds. Kokintz (when he had no noxious chemicals about) would often open up the cages and let his birds fly about and roost and twitter as they wished. He fed them with care and they were deeply attached to him. It was remarkable that when he entered the laboratory in the morning (or indeed at any time, for he visited his place of work whenever an idea occurred to him, day or night) the birds greeted him with a chorus of chirps and twitters like merry children seeing a favorite uncle at Christmastime.

  Kokintz was no narrow scientist of the modern sort, with an eye on a Nobel prize or at least a book which might become a lucrative college text. He belonged to the larger age of Darwin, having a love for and a curiosity about all forms of learning. He was preeminently a mathematician, so his approach to all subjects tended to be mathematical in the first instance. But he was capable both of imagination and of daringly original thought and had produced as a hobby a little book, beloved by the Senior Wranglers of Oxford, called Mathematics for Fast Curves—a sort of five-dimensional geometry in which, to the concepts of length, breadth and thickness, had been added the two dimensions of Time and Notime. The title was the publisher’s. Kokintz had proposed “Calculating Principles for Nonrelated Absolutes.”

  A basic principle demonstrated by Kokintz in this little book was that in both eternity and infinity nothing moved or could move. No change was possible in either of these states and no physical or chemical law of the finite and noneternal dimension could apply in them.

  The book had been examined with interest by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the hope that a mathematical proof of the existence of Paradise would now be brought forward, but he bogged down hopelessly on page two. The Vatican, having examined the book carefully, accepted the recommendation of Cardinal Bruzelini of the censor’s office, himself a noted theologian and mathematician, that the book be examined once every century.

  “There is no heresy in it now for the reason that no one can understand it now,” said the Cardinal. “But that may change later.”

  Kokintz was currently interested in one aspect of a field already widely investigated—the DNA molecule. By carefully cadging marbles from the boys of Grand Fenwick he had managed to construct for his amusement an excellent model of the DNA helix with some important variations from that offered by Nobel prize winners Crick and Watson. He was absorbed in the tautometric shift of hydrogen atoms in the sugars from the enol to keto configurations. And this in turn had led him into a new investigation of the “glue” or bonding force of hydrogen atoms and other atoms as well. This work, however, was now in abeyance, for Kokintz and the boys of Grand Fenwick had run out of marbles. This did not bother Kokintz. While waiting for more, he turned to other matters; for he took the large view that what one scientist did not discover, another certainly would, and science should not become a race to be the first with a discovery—an undignified scramble to publish before someone else published something on the same subject.

  Kokintz was then, when the Count of Mountjoy called on him, busy with paper and pencil at a table in his study, the table itself overwhelmed by equipment of a formidable variety which had been pushed aside to make a little area to work at in the center.

  “Evening,” said the Count, sniffing the air a little. Then, removing a rack of test tubes from a comfortable leather chair, he sat down in it. Kokintz, busy with his paper, made no reply. “Bit stuffy in here,” said Mountjoy. “I was wondering whether you wouldn’t appreciate having the place air-conditioned. We could air-condition the whole castle, come to think of it. If the Americans are able to air-condition those enormous hotels of theirs, the castle should be quite easy.”

  “Why not open a window instead?” said Kokintz, peering up over his thick rimless glasses. “That window over there,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of the window. “But be careful of the distillation unit.”

  “What are you doing?” demanded Mountjoy, moving to the window. “Making your own gin?”

  Kokintz ignored this. He was aware that Mountjoy regarded all science with suspicion as being beneath the dignity of gentlemen and beyond the comprehension of peasants. Science had summoned into being, in the Count’s opinion, a third social class which was learned, humorless and dangerous. He did not quite regard Kokintz in these terms, but there was no doubt at all that scientists as a class constituted a threat to the world, largely because they kept fiddling around with things that were much better left alone.

  “Excuse me just a moment,” said Kokintz. “I am at an important little point here. If I fumble, I have to do everything over again.”

  “Take your time,” said Mountjoy. “I’ll just look around a bit if you don’t mind.” He left the chair and started to poke about the study, examining vacuum bells and cabinets containi
ng balances and cupboards full of glassware of the most unlikely shapes. When he got to the model of the DNA helix he recognized it immediately as a modern sort of Christmas tree. He uncovered a very stale sandwich in a corner with next to it a pad of paper on which were written some cabalistic symbols and the words neon, argon and trace. When he got back to his chair he had estimated the cost of replacing the total equipment in Kokintz’s study and laboratory at a hundred thousand dollars. He felt a little more cheerful and was prepared to be grateful to science as a sort of rubbish dump for excess money.

  “B flat, C sharp, and then D,” said Kokintz. “The harmonic minor. Of course.” He reached into the pocket of the old knitted cardigan he was wearing, took out what appeared to the Count to be a toy whistle and played three notes on it. “You see,” he said, beaming. “It came out exactly as it should.”

  “What came out exactly as it should?” asked Mountjoy. “My little musical experiment,” said Kokintz. “You are aware that all music is basically mathematics?”

  “I’m not aware of anything of the sort,” said Mountjoy. “I am aware that music is a form of communication which transcends language, is common to all humanity, and soothes the savage breast. If you have decided that it is all mathematics, spare me the explanation. I will not tolerate the conclusion that Mozart’s Magic Flute is nothing but a mathematical formula.”

  “Oh no,” said Kokintz. “But mathematics is the base. The art rests on a mathematical base—so many vibrations per second; so many beats to a bar. Birds have not found out about bars yet. When they make that discovery, they will be superb musicians because it is certainly the rhythm that makes music so appealing. The pitch I have discovered is secondary. All that birds have is pitch and an undeveloped sense of rhythm. If they could be taught to count—what melodies!” “I suppose so,” said Mountjoy. “But that isn’t what I came here to talk to you about.”

  “You have a problem?” asked Kokintz, taking out his Oom-paul pipe and groping around for the tobacco pouch in his cardigan pocket.

  “In a way,” said Mountjoy. “In a way.”

  Kokintz waited and Mountjoy, seeking for a graceful way of introducing his subject, wished he knew more about the work of the great physicist. Since he didn’t, he started with generalities.

  “There are times, my dear Kokintz,” he said, “when I have severe pangs of conscience concerning you and your work. I wonder whether I and the Duchy at large will not be held by posterity responsible for the projects which you were able to initiate and complete while living here. I wonder whether I and the Duchy will not be accused of unwittingly setting limits to what you are able to do, and that would be a heavy blot on our record in centuries to come.”

  “I will not leave,” said Kokintz suspiciously. “I have as much right to stay here as you. Besides, you forget that it is part of our treaty that I must remain to see that the quadium bomb remains in good shape and is not interfered with by others.”

  “My dear fellow,” said Mountjoy, “you completely mistake my meaning. Nobody in the Duchy wishes you to leave. Everybody would be highly distressed if you were to do so. No. No. I am concerned only with the limitations put on your work by our lack of financial support.” He made a gesture which took in the whole of Kokintz’s study.

  “Little as I know about science,” he said, “it seems to me that your equipment is all old-fashioned and that you need a completely new laboratory with electronic microscopes or whatever they are called, cloud chambers and cyclotrons and so on, so that you are not handicapped in devising and carrying out your various experiments. In looking around while you were busy with your little musical problem, as you call it, it occurred to me that perhaps you should be working on something of greater importance but could not do so for lack of facilities. I noted a great number of slips of paper lying around here and there, with scientific notations of one kind or another on them.

  “Possibly they are of no importance. But possibly they and others like them are the kind of information that should be stored in some kind of memory bank for the use of future generations.”

  To this Kokintz said nothing. He gathered that Mountjoy was in a generous mood and willing to spend some money. This was not unusual. The Count had erratic bursts of generosity usually around election time which were succeeded by equally erratic bursts of austerity. But he had never spoken before of memory banks. Kokintz didn’t need a memory bank. Anything he wanted to remember he wrote on a slip of paper as the Count had seen and left it on one of his worktables. He always found it again, though sometimes it took a day or two. But in that time his memory and indeed his mind were stimulated by the information on all the other pieces of paper he had had to shuffle through first. And that was the way he liked to work.

  “There are some excellent memory banks available now, I am told,” said the Count. “Information from every part of the world and upon every subject can be fed into them and is instantly available to anyone who requires it anywhere. The saving is tremendous. Scientists are no longer in deep ignorance of each other’s work. They can find out on the moment who is working on what and what has been achieved. The saving in time and work is enormous.”

  Kokintz shook his head. “You have a wrong view of scientists,” he said. “Ninety percent of them are but very highly trained mechanics. They are not all busy originating research. The greater part are nothing but culture farmers raising generation after generation of bacteria in little dishes and counting the differing kinds. And it is necessary that this work be done—and not once but many, many times. Of the original scientists in the world, however, there are scarcely a handful in any field, and you can be sure that they keep in close touch with each other regarding their work. Why, I have letters here from Intohaji in Japan and Bujorn in Finland gladly giving me details of their experiments and conclusions in a field in which we are all engaged.”

  “What field is that?” asked Mountjoy.

  Kokintz sighed. “It is difficult to explain,” he said. “When you were at school I am sure you often heard the formula ‘acid plus base gives salt and water.’ ”

  Mountjoy recalled the rule, drummed into his head by a chemistry professor who had always, at the corner of his mouth, a tiny white spot of saliva. He remembered the spot of saliva far more vividly than interactions of acids and alkalis and the chemistry of the multitude of carbons with which the whole world seemed to be infested, from lamp black to marsh gas.

  “Yes,” he said. “I remember that. Something about putting litmus paper in and it comes out blue.”

  Kokintz shook his head, but in resignation. “Yes,” he said. “You put in litmus paper and it comes out blue. I know, as you know, that certain elements have an attraction for other elements. I know, for instance, that almost all metals have a kind of hunger for oxygen, which is why iron rusts and brass and copper tarnish, brass less than copper because it contains tin, which is less hungry for oxygen than copper. But it is the why that is always important. Why are so many elements hungry for oxygen? Why is there an affinity, as we call it, between some atoms and repulsion between others? Oh yes, we know now about atomic fields and nuclei. We know about the attraction between protons and neutrons and the other atomic particles.

  “But I ask myself, ‘Is it possible that in the nucleus of the oxygen atom there are certain particles, individually or in combinations, which are missing but which are common to the metallic atoms? Is it possible that the forces which result from such a theoretical absence of particles demand that atomic oxygen unite with a great variety of other elements to produce oxides of various kinds?’ Of course, whatever goes on is likely to be much more complicated than this. I have selected a relatively simple starting point on which a great deal of work has already been done and is available to me. . . .”

  The rest of the exposition was mere sound to Mountjoy, who wondered now, as he had often wondered before, whether Kokintz was entirely sane. He did not subscribe to the theory of the vulgar that all scientists are m
ad, or that all scientists are absent-minded—though Kokintz very often was quite unconscious of what was going on around him. Many scientists he knew were not mad at all, particularly the English ones like Priestley and Rutherford. The French scientists like Pasteur and Lavoisier were, of course, a bit cracked as a result of being French.

  But Dr. Kokintz at times showed signs, to Mountjoy’s mind, of mental instability. Birds, penny whistles, mathematics, and whatever sort of messing around he was doing with the insides of atoms, made a curious melange. Each was, in itself, probably a perfectly sane and reasonable field of endeavor. But to mix them all up together in the way Kokintz did was eccentric, to say the least. Mountjoy, having endured an incomprehensible flow of words on the perfectly ordinary and acceptable fact that metals of all kinds rust, was a trifle impatient.

  “Well/’ he said with a touch of sarcasm, “I don’t want to detain you, but I think that you ought to seriously consider one of those memory banks of which I spoke. And perhaps several electron microscopes of various sizes of whatever they come in, and a completely new laboratory. Perhaps a computer would be of service. I believe they can now be built to individual specifications. You don’t have to accept a stock model.”

  Kokintz shook his head. “No,” he said. “Any time I have a problem I can refer it to Cal Tech or MIT and they solve it for me. A computer in Grand Fenwick? That’s ridiculous.”

  Mountjoy had noted that one of the large stones of the walls had been removed, apparently by Kokintz, and was lying on top of a cardboard folder. “What’s that for?” he asked, pointing to the stone.

  “Oh, I am using it to make some pressings of leaves and flowers.”

  “We could buy you some kind of a press for that purpose, you know,” said Mountjoy.