War any day.
Hoping my British citizenship application gets through otherwise I'll be an enemy alien and God knows what will happen then. Colleagues very supportive.
Newspapers full of the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviets. I think Russia is trying to buy time, and Germany doesn't want to fight on two fronts again. It won't last. Still, it's hard not to feel let down.
Ph.D. exam next week, Nevill Mott from Bristol the external examiner. Good choice. He's studied at Gottingen, speaks fluent German and has left-wing sympathies. He's my age and a full professor!
Wednesday, 10 October 1939
Citizenship tribunal went OK. Told them I'm full of hate for the Nazis and that I still see Lisa's broken face in my dreams. Max Born had written to confirm I was an active anti-Nazi in my Leipzig days. No mention of any communist ties, but Max wouldn't have known about that. They said I should expect category C, which will mean I'm not subject to any restrictions, Russian pact with the Nazis notwithstanding.
My first paper, jointly with Max: On Fluctuations in Zero Point Energy. I feel like the father of a new baby! Great prestige being linked with Max Born, who's talking about getting me a Doctor of Science at Edinburgh.
Sunday, 29 June 1940
Writing this three days after the event. A policeman knocked me up at dawn and told me to pack whatever I could carry. Taken to police station, herded with others on to the back of a lorry and taken to an army barracks at Bury St Edmunds. Then for some reason separated from the others and driven off to Glasgow. Then put on board an old steamship in pitch-black. It sailed us down the Clyde, hugging the coast going south until we reached the Isle of Man. So much for category C–I'm an enemy alien and that's that. The camp is huge. There are about thirteen hundred of us. German offensive has now given Hitler the whole of Western Europe and it can't be long before he crosses the Channel. I want to use my mathematics and physics to defeat him, but how?
I haven't even had time to contact the department.
Thursday, 3 July 1940
The general feeling amongst the internees is that the British are finished. But the British attitude, which we're getting from our guards, is baffling — they don't seem to know when they're licked.
Personally I'm not so sure they're washed up. There's still no sign of a German invasion, a month after Dunkirk. If the Huns couldn't do it then, they can't do it now. Just possibly the war isn't lost.
A big worry. Suppose I'm wrong and that the British surrender. They might have to hand over internees to the Germans as part of the deal. What would the Nazis do to people like me?
Again writing this up after the events. Taken to Liverpool on a steam packet, then herded on to the Ettrick with over a thousand German and Italian prisoners of war. Then out into the Atlantic. Swastika flew under the red ensign to show we're carrying prisoners but when we heard that hadn't saved the Arandora Star three days earlier the captain did an abrupt about turn. Now the British are putting their trust in a destroyer escort. A bad crossing made worse by having to share it with arrogant Nazis.
Saturday, 29 November 1940
We're being moved to Camp Sherbrooke to escape the Canadian winter. Sad, because we all feel settled in Camp L. I'll miss the wonderful view from the Heights of Abraham over the St Lawrence. Food and washing facilities have been much better than in England, so we've been doing rather well as enemy aliens. Spacious huts, and we could have stuck the bitter Canadian winds.
And the cultural life has been fantastic. Friedlander was even elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge last month. I've made friends with some terrific people. Hermann Bondi, Tommy Gold, Klaus Fuchs and Jurgen Rosenblum especially.
'Klaus Fuchs?' Romella asked, her brow wrinkled.
Findhorn said, 'The atom spy.'
'What about the others?'
'Some of them ring bells too. I think Bondi became Chief Scientist at the UK Ministry of Defence some time after the war.'
'Not bad going for an enemy alien.'
Findhorn frowned. 'Gold rings a bell too. Yes, got it. Bondi, Gold and Hoyle came up with the steady-state theory of the Universe. I read that in Scientific American. Rosenblum I don't know. Do you think the contacts are significant?'
'I'm just the translator, remember?'
'So why have you stopped?' Findhorn asked.
9
The Temple of Celestial Truth
Jesus Christ Incarnate, corporeal vessel of the soul of Tati from Sirius. Transmogrified from the world of the ethereal to that of base matter. Messenger from the Higher Level and conduit to the transcendental. And leader of the Apostles, who alone will attain Heaven.
The executioner was first to arrive. She was a middle-aged, motherly woman, of the type one might associate with coffee mornings and home-made jam. She was wearing a red anorak and a long, black skirt, and was carrying a large but featureless black leather handbag. Her taxi driver turned right at the village of Maybole, away from the traffic heading south for the Irish ferries, and drove for some miles along a quiet stretch of road along almost uninhabited countryside, towards the sea. The entrance to the Castle was blocked by traffic cones, and a notice said 'NO ENTRY DUE TO STORM DAMAGE', but a storm-swept gatekeeper removed the cones and waved the taxi in.
Heaven? The dwelling place of the Angels, located amongst the awesome halls of the Milky Way. Its specific location, the innermost planet orbiting the white dwarf companion of Sirius.
The extraordinary proof to match this extraordinary claim? Listen to the prehistoric stories handed down by generation after generation of the Dogon, the Saharan tribe contacted by the first wave of extraterrestrials. Listen to them repeat the ancient Dogon myths that describe the white dwarf orbiting Sirius in a fifty-one-year period, a star discovered by the astronomers only last century. How else to understand this except as information given to the primitives by visitors from that binary system?
And how else to understand the Book of Revelation's 'mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire', except as a visiting UFO, glowing with the heat of re-entry, smoke and flames pouring from its nozzles?
The Castle faced the Atlantic Ocean on an isolated rocky promontory in south-west Scotland. In spite of this isolation, it was only ninety miles from Edinburgh where, somewhere within that city, the diaries were located. Cannons faced landwards from the front of the Castle but to ensure privacy Jesus preferred to rely on men who stood under golf umbrellas in glistening raincoats and spoke to each other through mobile telephones.
The south wing contained private apartments, and these had been prepared by the Outer Circles, the trainees and ordinary faithful, for the arrival of Jesus and the Inner Circle.
By nine p.m., as the evening flights from Europe started to land at Glasgow, Edinburgh and Prestwick, an unusual traffic began to flow along the narrow access road: taxis, hired executive cars, the occasional chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce.
Jesus Christ arrived at midnight. His helicopter, glistening wet and windblown, landed on the broad lawns outside the castle, on a landing pad hastily improvised from sheets weighed down by stones and lit up by spotlights.
Prophet of Apocalypse, as announced by the Seven Angels from Sirius. How else to understand 'thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou should give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and them that fear thy name, and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth', except as a second coming, and a call to destroy those whose unbelief is preventing the arrival of the second wave of UFOs which will transport the Apostles to Heaven?