‘So what’s the point of it?’ Dennis takes a dim view both of the theory and of Ruprecht’s obsession, which he suspects to be just another layer of self-mystification.
‘Well, I suppose the “point” would be a total explanation of reality,’ Ruprecht harrumphs. ‘I imagine that’s what the basic “point” would be.’
‘But it’s just a load of maths. How’s that going to help anybody?’
‘There is already too many maths,’ Mario chimes in. ‘More beaver, less maths, that’s what I say.’
‘Yes, well, if Newton had said that, we wouldn’t have the law of gravity,’ Ruprecht says. ‘If James Clerk Maxwell had said, “More beaver, less maths,” we wouldn’t have electricity. Maths and the universe go hand in hand. Formulae worked out in a single copybook with a single pencil can transform the entire world. Look at Einstein. E=mc2.’
‘So what?’ says Dennis.
‘So, if it weren’t for “a load of maths”, we’d all be living in shacks in fields, tending sheep.’
‘Good,’ says Dennis.
‘Oh, you’d like living in a world without phones or DVDs, would you?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘You’d like going to hospital and being operated on without an anaesthetic, in candlelight, by doctors who had no clue what was wrong with you because there were no X-ray machines?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘You would?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, good.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
The theory is not without its doubters, to be sure, and not all of them are as ill-informed as Dennis.
‘Mathematically, yes, it does have a lot of explanatory potential,’ Mr Farley says, after yet another Science class has been diverted into a discussion of the possible physics of other universes. ‘But that doesn’t actually make it true. A lot of people have very compelling theories about what happened to Atlantis. There’s even a theory that Ireland is the remnant of Atlantis. But unless they could verify it somehow, show you some sort of proof, you wouldn’t believe them, would you?’
‘No,’ Ruprecht admits.
‘The fact is that it would take a trillion trillion times more power than our most powerful energy source to find any evidence for M-theory. On those grounds alone, many scientists would say that it simply isn’t commensurate with twenty-first-century science. That is, even if it’s true, there’s not a lot we can actually do with it, any more than Galileo could have used, for instance, computer operating code if he’d stumbled across it back in the seventeenth century. So while it’s undoubtedly interesting, we shouldn’t let it obscure the less glamorous but just as important scientific work there is to do here on planet Earth. Does that sound fair?’
‘Yes,’ Ruprecht concedes.
No! The more arguments he hears against it, the deeper his adoration grows for this esoteric, unreadable scripture that the crude unthinking world will not take time to understand – the longer he spends in his basement lost in topologies, mapping out the imaginary surfaces that undulate beneath its hyperspatial penumbra, shunning human company except for other faceless devotees in sleepless Internet chatrooms, reciting back and forth those golden shibboleths, string, multiverse, supersymmetry, gravitino, the theory’s hundred names…
In fact, maybe it is love after all. Why can’t we fall in love with a theory? Is it a person we fall in love with, or the idea of a person? So yes, Ruprecht has fallen in love. It was love at first sight, occurring the moment he saw Professor Tamashi present that initial diagram, and it has unfolded exponentially ever since. The question of reason, then, the question of evidence, these are wasted on him. Since when has love ever looked for reasons, or evidence? Why would love bow to the reality of things, when it creates a reality of its own, so much more vivid, wherein everything resonates to the key of the heart?
Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl named Lorelei who lived on the banks of the river Rhine. She fell in love with a sailor who was going off to sea. ‘When I come back I will marry you,’ he said, so every day she would go up to the cliffs and watch out for his ship. But it never came. Finally one day she got a letter from him. He said he had married another girl, so Lorelei threw herself off the cliff and into the river. To this day she appears on a rock, singing her song and combing her hair. If you hear the song, you can’t escape it, you will sail onto the rocks and she will pull you underwater. If you see her, she is so beautiful that you go insane.
Focus, Daniel, focus! Coach calls from the side.
They are the first to use the pool since the holiday. The surface has been harvested of bluebottles and Band-Aids, it shines like amethyst. In the lanes around Skippy, the machine-like churn of the team, ploughing steadily up and down. But he can’t do it. It’s like the water is conspiring against him, like he can feel the individual molecules pushing him back. Like something is there, trying to take hold of him.
Come on, Dan, get it together!
He shakes it off, plunges back into the spell of chlorine, imagines himself surging towards a girl kneeling at the top, combing her hair as she waits for him, humming irresistibly, If I had three wishes I would give away two…
Dawn is just breaking, pinkening the perspex roof, as they climb out for the showers.
So where is the race taking place? Coach asks.
Ballinasloe, Antony ‘Air Raid’ Taylor says.
And when?
November 15th, Siddartha Niland says, his golden body rippling and glistening.
Wrong and wrong, Coach says. The race is going on this very minute, right here. He taps his head. In your mind, he says. That’s where a race is won or lost. If you don’t have the right attitude, it doesn’t matter how strong or how fit you are. From now until November 15, I want that race to be all you think about. Write it in your diaries, on your calendars, on the insides of your eyelids. Everything else comes second. Even girls. Girls will still be there when the race is over. And you’ll do a lot better with them if we win.
Everybody laughs.
Now I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. Not everybody’s going to make the cut. If you made it last time, don’t assume you’ll be selected this time. If you were left out last time, you could be racing this time. A lot can happen between then and now.
After training Skippy gets sick in the toilets by the Ref.
Later in his room he puts an X on the Garfield calendar. The swimming goggles look down at him from their hook; he feels his whole arm go cold, as if he’d plunged it into a barrel of ice-water.
The knackers did not kill Carl. When they saw what he had done to his arm they did not even break it. So now everything is even and they can all be friends.
Friends?
We have a good thing going with those pills, dude, Barry says. These guys can help us. Give us protection, access to distributors, good deals on other products. All we have to do is cut them a little slice of our profits.
They broke your arm, Carl says.
They had to, Barry said. That’s just the way it works. It’s just business, that’s all.
So now they see the knackers nearly every day. In the park, behind the shopping mall, in Deano’s flat. Deano is the one with bad teeth. Shaved-Head, he’s the leader, is called Mark. Greasy-Hair = Knoxer, Spots = Ste. Barry laughs and jokes with them like that night never happened, and at school he walks around like he’s ten feet tall. He gives shit to fifth-years twice his size and they back off. How do they know Barry has the knackers on his side? It’s like they just know.