Without rucksack and name badge, Findhorn knew, he might as well have the word 'Intruder' branded on his forehead. In a dining room beyond the registration desk, tables were layed out with glasses of wine and plates with canapes, cheese and tomatoes. He wandered into this room and picked up a glass of white wine. The room was buzzing but he caught only snatches of conversation. He drifted, trying to look inconspicuous as he checked name badges. He spotted the name Aristotle Papagionopoulos from about ten yards, across a temporarily clear stretch of room. Aristotle's head was thrust forward, and he was listening intensely to a bald, bespectacled Englishman. His face was wrinkled; intense brown eyes spoke of a fanatical intelligence but, at the same time, a certain dissociation from the real world. Findhorn, not knowing what he would say to the man, gently pushed his way forwards, mentally bracing himself for the Ari Papa experience.
'Good evening, Doctor Findhorn.'
Findhorn turns, spills wine. The Revelation Man, Mister Mons Meg himself. Archie is at his side, wearing a white linen suit with the jacket over his arm. There is sweat under Archie's armpits and his bearded face is red with astonishment, dismay and consternation.
The expression on the Revelation Man's face, on the other hand, is approaching beatitude. 'And welcome to Patmos. This tiny island has been called the Jerusalem of the Aegean. If God spares you the time, you should enter through the walls which protect the Monastery, and see its extraordinary treasures: Byzantine icons, sacred vessels, frescoes over eight hundred years old, embroideries over a thousand. There are wonderful illuminated manuscripts and rare books.'
'Any old diaries?' Findhorn's voice is shaky.
Mr Revelation laughs. 'Patmos is where Saint John the Theologian, under divine inspiration, wrote his Book of Revelation. Is this not, then, the most fitting place on earth to contemplate John's vision of the Apocalypse?'
Findhorn takes a fresh look at the conference attendees. The biblical vision springing to his mind is Daniel in the lion's den.
22
Papa the Greek
Findhorn tried to stay calm. Without a word he turned away and pushed towards Papagianopoulos. The Greek was still listening to the Englishman, but now with a sceptical, irritated look.
Findhorn interrupted the conversation. 'I want to learn about the vacuum.'
Papagianopoulos didn't falter for a second. 'But to understand the vacuum, you must first understand time.' His strongly accented speech made him unmistakably Greek.
'My name is Cartwright and I'm a science reporter for The Times in London. May I call you Papa?'
'No, I am Aristotle, if you must be familiar at all. May I introduce my colleague, Professor Bradfield?' Bradfield was tall, nearly bald, dressed in a heavy dark suit and tie, and with a face beaded with sweat. He announced himself as John Bradfield from the Rutherford-Appleton laboratory. He had a limp, two-fingered handshake.
Papagianopoulos said, 'I can best describe Professor Bradfield as an excellent guide for beaten paths.'
'Beaten paths are for beaten men,' Bradfield said. 'And am I beaten? By some fringe eccentric from the Balkan hinterlands?'
Findhorn deduced from this exchange that the two men were friends. He said, 'I shouldn't be here. I've gatecrashed. I'm writing up an article on the nature of the vacuum and I want to speak to the best people going.' Experience had taught Findhorn that the way to an academic's heart was flattery, laid on with a trowel.
Papagianopoulos nodded his approval of Findhorn's judgement. 'You have come to the right person.'
'It's noisy in here. I'd be pleased to take you to dinner someplace where we can talk.'
'I'll join you,' said Bradfield. 'I can correct my colleague's errors.'
'An interview with The Times is worth a little yapping at the heels. But the dinner, Mr Journalist, is mine. I have friends on this island.'
Archie approached and mumbled something. 'By all means join us,' Findhorn said.
Aristotle glanced at Archie's name badge and nodded indifferently. 'At this time of the evening there is a cool breeze in the hills. I suggest we enjoy it.'
They followed Aristotle out to a small, tinny Fiat parked in the square, patches of bare metal showing through the blue. Findhorn glanced back. Mr Revelation was at the hotel entrance, gloating happily. Archie and Bradfield squeezed into the back. The air was humid and there was a smell of cats. Aristotle rattled the car out of the square and took it along a quiet road lined with trees and limestone outcrops. It eventually turned inland and wound its way steeply up into the hills. Near the top of a rocky summit they drove into a village — or at least a cluster of four or five houses — and stopped.
A black Alsatian, plainly dead, lay stretched out on a dusty track. Even in the dying light they could see flies swarming around it. An old woman, on a rocking chair under the shade of a tree, watched the visitors while knitting with effortless skill. The track went round to the back of a low, whitewashed house and Aristotle led the way. As they approached, the dead Alsatian jumped up and trotted off.
They sat on kitchen chairs round a small garden table at the back of a house. There was a cooking smell and dishes were clattering. Bradfield compromised his standards by removing his jacket, although the Brasenose College tie stayed tightly round his neck. The garden was bounded by a low limestone wall and fell steeply away. They sat under overhanging vines. A thin, stooped man emerged from a kitchen door with a white paper tablecover which he spread over the table. Aristotle seemed to be known and there was an exchange of noisy Greek banter. The man vanished and reappeared with big hunks of bread, goat's cheese and herb-sprinkled tomatoes, and two carafes of cold white wine.
Findhorn looked over the parched, stony land falling steeply away, and the dark sea glittering beyond; the sun was a large, scarlet ellipse just above the horizon, shining through thunder-laden clouds. He thought that the scene had probably changed little in thousands of years, and that in California or Nice a house with a view like this would set you back a million bucks.
He spoke to Bradfield. 'Thanks for sparing me your time.'
Bradfield said, 'Glad to help.' Even gladder to see his name in The Times, Findhorn suspected.
Aristotle waved his hands expansively over the darkening landscape. 'This is a magic place. Greece is where the nature of matter and the vacuum were first discussed, six hundred years before Christ. It was here that my namesake, the other Aristotle, argued that a pure void does not exist in Nature. His insight was lost for two thousand years. It was the twentieth century before the particle physicists discovered that the vacuum is indeed a sea of seething particles and radiation. We are therefore in the most natural setting on Earth for this discussion.'
Findhorn fired the opening shot. He sailed as close to the truth as he dared. 'I'm trying to check these persistent stories about Petrosian, the atom spy. You may have heard of them. The story that he had found some way to extract energy from empty space.'
Bradfield gave Findhorn a quizzical look. 'I don't recall any such tale.'
'Could there possibly have been anything to it?'
The Englishman tried not to smirk. 'Of course not. Some very strange ideas come out of America from time to time. Especially from that era, there were what I would describe as peculiar mental phenomena. Flying saucers, psychokinesis, the Red menace and so on. I believe they were all psychological responses to 1950s anxieties about a thermonuclear holocaust.'