Iain Pears - Arcadia

He nodded, looking around him to see if there was anyone he could summon for protection in case I got too vehement.

‘Wrong,’ I went on. ‘Wrong, wrong. It’s all wrong. I know it is. Think. In theory, we should be able to access any number of universes. So why can we only seem to access one, eh? No one has thought about the implications of that. I think the whole alternative universe theory is complete nonsense. We would be moving in this universe. The only one there is. Time travel, to put it bluntly. If that is the case, we have to stop now. We need to start again. From the beginning. Immediately.’

‘We can’t possibly start again,’ he protested. ‘Think of the cost. Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because I’m right. I feel it.’

At this point, you see, I could not explain properly. Still, I didn’t understand why he was so keen on dismissing my concerns. He knew how I worked, and knew that my instincts were fundamental. Besides, I thought he would be happy about overturning two centuries’ worth of physics. What better way of making a name for yourself?

Instead, he took refuge in pomposity, muttering about budget projections. It didn’t make sense until I realised that he was negotiating to sell everything to Oldmanter. A functioning, usable device that gave the possibility of infinite space and resources at no risk was his central selling point. Quite a good one, if only what he was telling them had any truth to it.

Something too dangerous to use except for small experiments would have opened no wallets. Besides, he was terribly conservative in approach. Faced with a choice between my hunch and generations of scientific labour, his only response was to demand proof. It was part of his character I never understood or appreciated. Why wouldn’t he just take my word for it?

The summons to the emergency meeting arrived at four o’clock in the morning, an event rare enough to cause all concerned to wake, dress and move with remarkable speed. Even rarer was the way it was done; no dream to jerk the sleeper awake with images of what was needed; not even a message coming through the communications system. No; a person, an individual, actually hammered on the door, and kept hammering until the occupant on the other side was sleepily, confusedly awake.

There was no explanation for such bizarre behaviour, so the six people who arrived at the anonymous underground office were suitably worried in advance. What could possibly have happened? Some speculated about a reactor melting down; the more bureaucratically minded gloomily decided it was a test of emergency procedures launched by some over-enthusiastic zealot.

Jack More thought none of these things. He didn’t think at all, and not simply because he was tired; he was the only person who had no obvious reason to be there. He was merely a security officer. He was curious, certainly, but he did not jump to conclusions. If there was any need to panic he was quite happy to let others worry themselves silly. Whatever had gone wrong couldn’t possibly be his fault. It was one of the virtues of insignificance.

His presence was enough to make the others worry all the more. They looked at him, half wanting to ask why he was there. A meeting, in person, in the middle of the night, was a good reason to think there might be something to worry about.

‘Sit down, please.’ Robert Hanslip had walked in. The boss who controlled the money, the individual on whose approval depended the lives and careers of every person in the room, everyone on the island. No one liked him, although whether they did or not was irrelevant. All admitted that he was very efficient. Some believed he was highly intelligent, although few would say so, lest they get a lengthy — and, recently, obsessive — diatribe from Angela Meerson on the precise size of the large hole where his intelligence should have been located. No one in the room really knew him anyway. He never mixed with people of a lower grade, and they had noted already that no senior figures were at this strange meeting.

Hanslip’s weakness was a somewhat ostentatious self-presentation. He affected an old-fashioned style, and had had his metabolism tweaked so that he stabilised at about ten per cent overweight: enough to give him a more solid look without requiring frequent adjustments to the heart. Not for him either the dandyish ways of the modern or the austerity of scientific garb; he preferred the carefully crumpled look, harking back six decades to his youth when such things were briefly fashionable.

He never talked loudly, but suffered no opposition. Anyone who annoyed him would soon enough find their assistants taken away, their budget cut. All done with a smile designed to make his victim feel somehow grateful the punishment hadn’t been worse.

Part of his authority lay in ensuring that everything ran smoothly, so any sort of crisis damaged him; certainly, his appearance now caused a shiver of alarm to pass through the little meeting. He looked shaken; whatever had happened, they knew the moment he walked in that it was going to be bad.

‘Forgive me for disturbing your beauty sleep,’ he said. ‘Three hours ago a serious power surge caused electricity supplies in northern Germany, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Scotland to fail for 0.6 of a second.’

Jack looked around him, wondering what it meant. Everyone else went suddenly still.

‘How much of a surge?’ one asked.

‘We’re still trying to get the precise figures.’

‘You are going to tell us it originated with us.’

Hanslip nodded. ‘I am going to tell you exactly that. The official analysis is not yet in, but I am sure it came from here. Needless to say, I have already sent out a report denying it was anything to do with us, and demanding an apology from whoever was responsible.’

‘That’s one hell of a lot of power,’ a young man remarked, after he had goggled at the figures on the paper Hanslip handed round. He must have been fairly new, or he would have known Hanslip did not approve of any sort of swearing. ‘Are you sure it was us? How could it have happened?’

‘I am sure it was us. Otherwise I would not have disturbed your rest. As for what caused it, that will be your job. There is no need to find out who caused it. That, I fear, is obvious already.’

Hanslip’s concern communicated itself to the rest of the meeting. ‘Time,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much time.’ But bureaucracies move in their own stately way, however urgent the situation. The main result of the meeting was to form a committee. Several committees, in fact; one to analyse the data to find out what the power was used for, another to investigate how someone had managed to bypass some of the most sophisticated security systems on the planet. A third took charge of destroying all evidence implicating their institute. The checks necessary to establish that their troublesome star mathematician had indeed vanished were quickly enough performed.

‘A moment, Mr More,’ Hanslip said as the meeting broke up. Jack had not said a word throughout the discussion, nor had anyone else even looked at him. ‘I imagine you are wondering what you are doing here?’

‘Yes, but I decided that you would tell me soon enough, and would ignore anything I asked until you were ready.’

‘Well judged. I may need your assistance. The closure of this facility and all of us landing in jail is one of the better options open to us at the moment. A rapid and unorthodox response may be called for. That is your department.’

‘What exactly is so bad about a power surge?’

Hanslip peered at him scornfully. ‘It blacked out a billion people, many of whom will have had panic attacks. There will undoubtedly have been many suicides and murders as a result of the chaos. We know of two airliners which crashed because all controls and backups shut down simultaneously. The death toll already is more than two thousand and rising. More to the point, our authority rests on the efficient management of society. It is a very serious disaster, and someone is going to be blamed for it.’