Revelation

Now Findhorn was beginning to remember the cosmologists' claim: that the Universe was created ex nihilo, that the Big Bang itself was a fluctuation in the vacuum. The ultimate free lunch, they said. The Creation was God's industrial accident, a vacuum fluctuation that had gotten out of hand.

And Petrosian, that November night in 1953, had become very excited about zero point energy.

Something was beginning to connect.

At a table in the Lodge, Findhorn wrote down some barely remembered numbers on the hotel stationery. In the beginning was the erg, about the energy of a small, falling feather. At a million grams to a ton, a fifty-ton express train moving at one hundred kilometres an hour carried — he did the sums — two hundred million million ergs, or two followed by fourteen zeroes, or 2 x 10¹⁴ ergs. He doodled a little more and finally wrote out a small table:

a falling feather — 1 erg

a gram of dynamite — 10¹¹ ergs

a bullet — 10¹¹ ergs

an express train — 2 x 10¹⁴ ergs

a naval gun — 5 x 10¹⁵ ergs

the Hiroshima bomb — 8 x 10²⁰ ergs

a medium hydrogen bomb — 4 x 10²² ergs

solar output (one second) — 4 x 10³³ ergs

energy to evaporate Atlantic — 4 x 10³³ ergs

energy of a moving galaxy — 2 x 10⁵⁹ ergs

So the energy coming out of the Sun, if suitably concentrated, would evaporate the Atlantic Ocean in one second. Not many people know that, he told himself with satisfaction. He hadn't known it himself until now.

Then he remembered the figure he was after. The Planck energy, the ultimate energy contained in a cubic centimetre of vacuum. He added to his little column:

energy per cc of vacuum — 10⁹³ ergs

He looked at the scribbled number, compared it with the others he had written. He thought: no, no way.

The number looked at him, hypnotizing him. 10⁹³ ergs. Per cubic centimetre. He ran from it, crossed quickly to the reception desk. The girl was very friendly, very smooth, very American. 'I need to do some e-mailing. Can I plug in somewhere?'

'Sure. Use the office. Round here.'

Archie — As a matter of top priority I need to speak to the best people going about the vacuum, about the energy it contains, and about the possibility of extracting energy from it. Can you recommend anyone? Or even fix something? I'll phone later.

Findhorn ordered another espresso and sat at the table. The afternoon sun briefly peeked out from below heavy cloud, changed its mind and disappeared again. He wrote out a one and followed it with ninety-three zeroes. Findhorn looked at it. It wasn't a number, it was a battering ram. It was power beyond imagination. It was the heat of God's forge.

'Hi, Fred.'

Findhorn's heart leaped. She was in a cream-coloured designer fleece with black jeans and black leather boots. The fleece was open and beneath it Findhorn glimpsed a Rennie Mackintosh necklace and a nicely rounded black T-shirt with an 'I Love ET' motif, complete with a picture of the cuddly alien. Somewhere she had taken time off from the mayhem to have her hair styled in a boyish cut. A casual black bag was draped over her shoulder. The bruise over her eye was well down and she was trying not to look too pleased to see him.

Findhorn caught a light whiff of expensive perfume. 'Hi, Romella. Any problems on the way here?'

'Nope. If there was surveillance I missed it.' She tapped her bag. 'I've got some goodies.'

'Would you like to walk?'

'Later. I haven't eaten since yesterday. And I'll want to spread some papers out, but not here.'

'Okay, let's visit the grocery store and go back to my car. You're sure we're safe here?'

At last she smiled, a sly, mischievous smile. 'Am I safe from you?'

At the little table in the RV, Romella produced a thick wodge of papers. The bottled-gas stove was bringing a pot of water to the boil and the little blue flames were warming the air. 'The FBI people couldn't have been more helpful,' she said.

Findhorn nodded at the papers. 'I can't wait to get into this. But it'll surely take all night.'

'Yes. It's almost their entire take on Petrosian.'

'Almost?'

'There are deletions, allowed under the Act. Where national security is involved, or innocent people still alive might be compromised in some way, they delete things.'

'Okay. I guess we now have about everything we're going to get.'

Romella pulled off her Muscovado boots with a sigh and kicked them into a corner. The Berghaus fleece was dropped on the floor, and she lounged back on a low, maroon-coloured sofa. The water was beginning to simmer and the windows were steaming up. Irrationally, the steamed windows gave Findhorn a cocooned, protected feeling, as if they somehow kept out a hostile world.

'I got three things out of the FBI,' she said. 'But first why don't you tell me how you got on at Los Alamos?'

He moved over to the cooker, tore open a packet of spaghetti and rattled plates onto a work surface. He poured olive oil into a little bowl, chopped basil into shreds with a gleaming kitchen knife and added it to the oil. He started on the pine nuts, chopping them finely. 'They think he was mad. No way could he have found anything they haven't. And they have fifty years of high energy physics since Petrosian to back them up.'

'What's your gut-feeling, Fred?'

'There's a cover-up.'

Romella said, 'Wow.' She tucked her legs under herself, gave Findhorn an astute look and said, 'And what about Petrosian's secret? You have the look of a man who's onto something.'

Findhorn was grating a little hard lump of Parmesan cheese. 'You must be CIA. How else did you get all that help from the FBI?'

'You're wrong, Fred. I work for Alien Abductions. You should know that, you've hardly taken your eyes off my T-shirt.'

'Sorry. It's the ET picture, I assure you.'

She laughed. 'Which would be damned insulting if true. I forgive you, Fred, you're just back from ten years at the north pole. And I notice you haven't answered my question.'

Findhorn was adding spaghetti to the boiling water. 'This will take a few minutes. Keep talking.'

'I think not.' She was looking in a compact mirror, gently prodding the bruise around her eye with her little finger.

'What?'

'Fred, I've come bearing three gifts. I want something in exchange. Tell me what you're onto.'

Findhorn stopped stirring. Romella's voice was cold. 'You don't trust me, do you?'

She snapped the compact lid shut, started to pull on her boots.

'What are you doing?' Findhorn asked in alarm.

'Enjoy your spaghetti.' She slipped into her coat, picked up her casual bag and slid the camper door open.

'Romella!' He grabbed her arm in panic. 'I can't do this on my own.'

She kissed the air next to his cheek. 'Goodbye, darling.' Then she was out and flouncing through the snow towards the chrome and purple monster.

'I surrender, damn you. I'll tell you everything.'

She turned, already shivering in the thin cold air. Findhorn was holding his hands together in an attitude of prayer. Inside, he closed the door, took her coat off, helped her off with her boots and said, 'I'm beginning to think that Petrosian thought of some way to extract energy from empty space. The amount of energy involved might be huge. Please don't leave me.'

'Energy from empty space? You surely don't mean from nothing?'

The water was spilling over the pot. Findhorn turned the gas down. 'I can't tell you more just yet. I'm waiting for Stefi to tell me what happened to HMS Daring in 1894. Now it's your turn.'