The Eidolon

by Libby McGugan

  “This is the address.” Jack peers at the street name at the corner of the building as I glance down at the card in my hand. His eyes scan the sandstone, the black iron window railings trailing like dark rose tendrils at the base of the tall, wide Georgian windowpanes.

  “Looks cosy enough,” he says. “You friend’s friend must be doing alright for himself.”

  “He must be.”

  “You need a lift in tomorrow?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” I step out of the car and retrieve the rucksack from the back seat.

  “Give me a call if you’re stuck.” He scribbles his number of a piece of paper and hands it to me.

  “Will do. Thanks, Jack.”

  The car horn meeps as he pulls away. Above me, the streetlamps flick on as dusk settles and the light fades. I climb the stairs to the double entrance doors and punch the code into the keypad on my right. The doors click open. A plush cream carpet leads down a wide hallway to a staircase ahead and, to the left, two elevators.

  The elevator I take pings as it reaches the top floor and apartment number twelve.

  The apartment is like something from a showroom. Pastel white decor, open plan kitchen and living space. A sleek white sofa faces a wall with two black wall-mounted oblongs. I pick up the remote controls lying on a low table in front of the sofa and experiment with the buttons. The larger oblong is a TV the size of a small cinema screen. The smaller one, below, turns out to be a gas fire whose flames come and go at the touch of a button. The floors are polished wood. The kitchen has one large granite worktop the length of the wall. Utensils line the rail on the wall above and all of it looks untouched. If someone did live here before, they didn’t cook their own meals. To the right two large latticed windows open out to a view of the Jura mountains, hazy in the evening sunset.

  My suitcase rumbles on the floorboards as I drag it behind me to the bedroom: a cream dream plucked from some magazine. There’s an en-suite dressing room. A dressing room with ten deep shelves, two double wardrobes and a stack of drawers, stocked with clothes. I check the labels. They’re all my size.

  It takes me a good twelve strides to reach the kitchen again, and each one of them makes me feel like I’ve broken in. I make myself a coffee and stand there, alone in the large, perfect room, feeling empty. I miss our torn couch with the rug thrown over the top. I miss the messy bookcase; I even miss the bloody Buddha statue.

  Before I’ve had time to reason it out, I’m listening to the long beeps of an international phone connection. It won’t do any harm to speak to her, now that I’m here.

  “Hi, Cora.”

  “Robert?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. How are you?”

  “I’m okay. Where are you? I called a couple of times.”

  “I lost my phone,” I lie. “I’m in Geneva.”

  “Geneva?”

  “I’m working in CERN. Just for a few days.”

  “So you took the job?”

  “Yeah.” I press on before she can object, because it’s welling up in me to tell her. “Cora, there’s something I found out. Something huge.”

  She waits for me to continue.

  “My dad’s alive.”

  “What?”

  “He’s here. He’s working in CERN.”

  “But I thought...”

  “I know. So did I. It’s complicated – I’ll tell you sometime, but not over the phone. Listen, don’t say anything to my mum. Not yet.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “I know.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  “Not properly. I should see him tomorrow.”

  “God, Robert, how do you feel about it?”

  “I... I don’t know yet. I want to speak to him, but I’m nervous about it, you know?”

  “Yeah, I can imagine. Are you okay?”

  I sit on down the sofa. “I’m not sure.”

  A pause. “Are you still getting the dreams?”

  I hesitate. Maybe I shouldn’t tell her any of this, but she did ask – she’s the only one I can talk to. “Yeah, almost every night since I came back from Tibet. God, you know, today, I thought I saw her reflection in the mirror. I know it sounds crazy, but...” Silence. “Cora, look, I’m not making this up – you know I wouldn’t do that, don’t you?”

  “What happens in the dream?”

  “Nothing much happens, but...” I don’t want to tell her about the feeling it leaves me with.

  “Are you sure it’s just a dream?”

  I snort. “Yeah, I’m sure. There’s been a lot happening. It’s just knocked me sideways, that’s all.” I’m talking myself into this.

  “I’ve been having dreams about her too.”

  “What?”

  “At first it felt good, but now I wake up feeling uneasy. It feels like they’re changing. I’m not sleeping so well, again.”

  I shouldn’t have mentioned any of this.

  “Don’t you think that’s weird?” she says. “Both of us getting dreams about her?”

  This is beginning to creep me out. “Maybe we’re both open to suggestion, Cora, and we’ve both been under pressure. Listen, let’s not talk about it.” I want to change the subject. “I, eh... I’ve got a good apartment.”

  “Oh?”

  I get up and glance out of the window, to the street below. “It’s near the centre – Rue de la Croix. It’s got a great view of the mountains and...” Someone’s standing on the pavement opposite, leaning against the wall at the edge of the shadows. Slightly hunched, a tangle of dark hair above the collar of a long coat. He’s looking up. I step back and pull the curtains shut. Is it my imagination, or is that the guy I saw in ATLAS today?

  “And?”

  “And it’s... it’s great. It’s like a five star hotel. Wall mounted TV.” I move away from the window. “So anyway, I just wanted to call. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “No. I’m glad you did.”

  It’s funny, but with everything that’s happened, she’s feels like an anchor, a safety line to the life I used to have, and I don’t want to let it go. Ironic, given that, not so long ago, I couldn’t wait to cut loose.

  “Listen, when all this is over...” My fingers find her silver ring in my pocket and close round it.

  “Yeah?”

  When all this is over. Could she ever understand why I’m doing this? What will she think of me? Maybe she won’t have to know.

  “Well, it would be good to meet up sometime,” is all I can say.

  “Yeah, it would.”

  “Well, I’ll, eh... I’ll let you get on.”

  “Let me know how it goes. I’ll be thinking about you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Take care, Robert.”

  “You too.” It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her how I’m feeling, but before I can bring myself to say the words, she hangs up. I berate myself for having the moral fibre of a noodle.

  I step back to the window and draw the curtain aside, just a crack. The man’s still there, leaning against the wall, looking up. I pull back. Who the hell is he? He turns and walks away, blending with the darkness.

  I tell myself it’s probably nothing, and it probably is, but I’m on edge. I flick through the channels of Swiss television, the same stuff – soaps, docudramas, ads – just in another language. I finally settle on a music channel. I take out the notebook. The hours slip away as I trawl the CERN site and the web for anything I can find on Professor P. Stiller. The fifteen-year-old malt I find in one of the cupboards accompanies me as I’m introduced to the man my dad became. Hard working, plenty of publications on all kinds of things: ‘Superbeam studies at ATLAS’, ‘The Expected Performance of the Muon Detector’, ‘Oscillation Physics at ATLAS’... the list goes on. Lots of hard facts, lots of papers. Nothing personal, not a single thing. Maybe this is all he is.

  But what if it isn’t? For the first time it occurs to me that he might have another family. What if he has another son? Someone else w
ho’s looked to him for guidance and direction all these years? Or a wife he comes home to every night, who never knew the whole story? I push the thought from my mind, close the notebook and go to bed.

  IN THE DARKNESS, there’s a soft, cool breath on my neck. I turn to see the silhouette of her slim figure. She reaches towards me with a slender hand and I’m compelled to reach out to her too, although I know I don’t want to. But I can’t resist. Our fingertips touch.

  Darkness falls.

  I’m gliding beside her, and she’s taking me somewhere I don’t want to go.

  A mist lies low, stretching out for miles in all directions towards a grey horizon with a black sun. Something is rising out of the mist, withered and gnarled. A tree, leafless, with something tied to it. We’re drifting side by side just above the mist. She leads me to the tree and shows me. The figure tied there looks up at me and I see her face, pleading...

  “Sarah!” I’m gasping for breath, sitting bolt upright in the bed. My phone pings beside me – a text, from Cora.

  Robert, are you awake? Just had another dream – it’s getting worse.

  I stare at the message. Breathless, I get up and turn the lights on. I go into the bathroom, avoiding the mirror, and splash cold water on my face. I pick up the phone and select Cora’s number, but hesitate. Talking about it will only keep it going. I put down the phone, go into the kitchen and pour a whisky. I need to bury this.

  Chapter Ten

  I WAKE UP early with a crick in my neck from falling asleep on the couch, get dressed and go out in search of breakfast. I need the walk. The aroma of hot bread teases me long before I reach the boulangerie. The woman behind the counter is petite, middle-aged and smiley beneath her blue paper hat, and although I don’t know what she’s saying, it doesn’t matter much. In an exchange of sounds and hand signals, she gives me a croissant and I give her some money, after she counts out the right amount from my palm.

  The streets are quiet in the shadow of the mountains. I can just see the snow-capped peaks coming and going in the gaps between the buildings. A delivery man unloads boxes of vegetables to a grocer across the street. The men banter as one unloads the van and the other ferries the crates inside, a conversation that no doubt has gone on for years. A flock of sparrows gets itself in a tizzy as I pass a tree growing up through the pavement.

  On the surface, my life is looking up. I’m walking back to my luxury apartment in the early morning sunshine eating a hot croissant. In a matter of days, I’ll have more money than I know what to do with. If I just forgot about everything else, I could get used to all this. But in a funny way, the comfort seems to make things more unsettling. I’d trade all of it right now for a full night’s sleep and a pint with my dad.

  I stop at a crossing. It’s a safe bet that jaywalking isn’t tolerated in a country in which you can set your watch by the buses. A black Lamborghini draws to a stop as the traffic light turns to red. Maybe I should have asked Amos for one of those, rather than the bike, but that would arouse too much suspicion. A physicist who drives a Lamborghini must have a sideline in atomic weapons production, or some other prostitution of the profession. I step onto the road as the green man gives me the signal to cross, but someone grabs my jacket, yanking me backwards. “What the hell...”

  There’s a screech and the smell of burning rubber as the car jumps the red light, passing within inches of me. I stare after it, my heart thumping in my chest, mouth dry at the thought of what could have happened.

  When I turn around, the first thing I notice is her eyes: large, the colour of the shallows of a tropical ocean, with something unbridled, barely hidden in the depths. I have the vague feeling that I’ve seen her before. “Thanks...” is all I can manage.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  She looks as though she’d like to smile, but she’s forgotten how.

  “Wait,” I call as she turns away, but she doesn’t look back. I stare after her – her head slightly bowed and her hands in her pockets. I stand there, dithering for a moment, debating with myself whether to follow her.

  I gain on her as she turns into the next street. At the corner, an old woman stands scattering breadcrumbs to a flock of cooing pigeons, but there’s no sign of her. Where the hell did she go? I toss my flat croissant into a bin and walk home.

  THE BIKE IS in the car park under the apartment block, between a Mercedes SLR and an Aston Martin Vanquish. Whatever my neighbours do for a living, they’re clearly very affluent.

  The bike handles like a dream. Everything’s tuned to perfection – it has a full tank of fuel and forty-seven miles on the clock. The drive to CERN takes fourteen minutes, nipping in and out of traffic in the city centre until I’m out on the Meyrin highway. The Jura mountains glisten in the morning light. The farmers are out in the fields in their tractors, working with the earth, while beneath it, the beginnings of everything are being recreated to satisfy our curiosity. How much time will we have before the meltdown? Enough time to figure out what’s happening? I think of the grocer and the delivery man and the woman who sold me the croissant, the rhythm of their lives blown apart by our insatiable desire to know more.

  When I pull past the dark, wooden globe and into the ATLAS car park, I see Rene walking towards the entrance, his helmet under his arm. He waves as I pull to a stop and blows a long whistle as his eyes glide over the bike. “This is yours?”

  “Borrowed, for a little while.”

  “It’s a beauty! Maybe I could take it out for a ride sometime?”

  “Sure.”

  Rene’s eyes are still on the bike as he walks beside me. When he tears them away, he says, “Listen, we are all going out for a drink tonight in Geneva. Why don’t you come with us? Eight o’clock in Lacont’s Bar, Rue De-Grenus.”

  “Oh, I don’t know...” I’m uncomfortable about getting too close to people. It’s like inviting the Grim Reaper to a christening.

  “Oh, come on. It’s a bit of fun. All visitors are obliged to come out on a Friday night – you can get to know the whole team.”

  Exactly. “Well, I’ll see...”

  “Oh, come on, make the most of it while you’re here.”

  I might draw more attention to myself by not showing up. “Alright, I’ll be there. Just for a while.” I swipe open the entrance and hold the door for Rene.

  I SCAN THE control room for Professor Stiller and see him on the other side of the room, in discussion with a woman whose back is to me. His eyes dart towards me briefly. You’re going to have to speak to me sooner or later, Professor; we’ve got four days left. I lower my eyes and walk to my work station. The atmosphere is charged, even more so than yesterday – anticipation tinged with anxiety. Even Jack looks swept up in it. His eyes twinkle when I sit down at the station next to him. “Sleep well?” he says.

  “I’ve slept better.” I scan the data on my console. “Did you get any confirmation from Fermilab about what they found?”

  “Not yet, but I’m working on it. I’ve got my own sources.”

  “Good morning!” Professor Von Clerk’s voice rises above the chatter. “I know we are very keen to get started as this is our last chance to test, before the experiments begin on Monday.” A few whistles and applause come from the crowd. “I’m sure you’d rather be here all weekend, but we have to give the engineers a chance to play.”

  The tests begin again. The hydrogen atoms are released into the source chamber, stripped of their electrons, and the proton packets fed into LINAC 2. The PSB acceleration goes smoothly, reaching 1.4 GeV easily. They reach the point of transition, the point when they can go no faster and so gain mass, and pass into the SPS successfully. Four minutes later, they’re all travelling, clockwise, round the main ring. After a tense wait, that seems to go on too long, signals confirm that the proton packets have travelled the full length of the collider. We repeat the process, this time feeding the packets counter-clockwise into the LHC ring. A cheer goes up when the signal from the last packet crosses the fin
ish line.

  If I don’t plant the worm, the next time we do this, the beams will cross and the particles will collide.

  I glance at Professor P. Stiller again.

  Jack leans across and whispers, “I could see if I can get you his number, if you like.”

  I snort and feel the heat rising in my cheeks. “I think I’ve met him somewhere before, that’s all.”

  THE MORNING WEARS on and my patience wears thin. Stiller won’t look at me. During a lull in activity, I see him leave the room and I take my chance. “Anyone want a coffee?”

  “Black, no sugar,” says Jack.

  “Black, lots of sugar,” says Rene.

  I get up and walk out to the atrium, but instead of going to the coffee machine, I turn left into the office corridor, my heart hammering inside my chest. Professor Rumsden on the first door, Professor Liebenberg on the second. On the third, the lie: Professor P. Stiller. The door is ajar and creaks a little as I push it open. I pause, and take a deep breath.

  A whiteboard scrawled with equations sits against one wall next to a small red armchair, a bookshelf lined with physics tomes against another. There’s a group photograph on the wall, taken at the entrance of ATLAS. He’s behind the desk, rifling through some files, frowning through his round specs. He freezes when he glances up, his hands poised holding a sheaf of papers.

  “Professor, do you have a minute?”

  He stares at me, then sets the papers down slowly. “Of course. Come in.”

  I walk into the office and we stand there awkwardly for a moment, facing each other, not quite knowing where to begin.

  “My name’s –”

  “I know who you are... Robert.” He swallows and I can’t tell if he’s going to smile or cry. “We need to talk.”