“I’m considering giving you an assistant, Hutch.”
“There’s no need for that,” Hutchman said in sudden alarm — the last thing he wanted was a stranger billeted in his office. “I mean there’s no point in it. I’ll be through the work in a couple of weeks and it would take a new man that long to brief himself properly.”
“Two weeks,” Boswell appeared to sieze on the definite statement. “We couldn’t give it much more. The board want to reach a definite decision about Jack and Jill next month.”
“Two weeks is all I need,” Hutchman assured him. He left Boswell’s office with the self-imposed deadline singing in his ears and hurried upstairs to the less sumptuous environs in which most of the R and D staff worked. Two weeks would be just about enough time in which to make the world’s nuclear powers aware of the existence of his machine provided he worked quickly and made no wrong moves. I will work quickly, Vicky, and I’ll make no mistakes. Just for you.
A task he had to get on with immediately was writing out a summary of his maths and a specification for the machine. These would have to be copied several hundred times then mailed out to a list of institutions and individuals across the world. A minor difficulty was that the mailings would have to be scheduled to allow for varying delivery times to different countries, so that all would reach their destinations at roughly the same time. And a major difficulty was that as soon as the envelopes were opened, a lot of people — powerful, ruthless people — would want Hutchman killed. The only way to forestall them, he realized, would be to maintain a high degree of secrecy. Up till now he had assumed that the secure drawer of his desk was a safe enough place to keep his original notes and schematics, but there were those in the company who considered Westfield’s security an elaborate joke. Hand all our secret plans to the Russians, the saying went, then they’ll be five years behind us.
A prey to fresh unease, Hutchman discovered he could not even remember locking the drawer. He speeded up his pace until he was almost running along the corridor, and burst into his office. Don Spain was standing at Hutchman’s desk, his gray-jowled face intent as he riffled through the papers in the secure drawer.
“Ho there, Hutch,” he said hoarsely, grinning. “Where do you keep your pencil sharpener?”
“Not in there,” Hutchman snapped, and almost as an afterthought added, “You prying little bastard.”
Spain’s grin disappeared. “What’s the matter with you, Hutch? I was only trying to borrow a sharpener.”
Hutchman went to the inner door to Muriel’s office and slammed it shut. “That’s a lie,” he stated flatly. “And the reason I know it’s a lie is that you’ve been though my desk so many times you could find the sharpener in the dark. No, Spain, the truth of the matter is that you’re a creepy, prying little bastard.”
Brick-coloured smudges appeared in the gray of Spain’s cheeks. “Who do you…?”
“And if I ever find you in this office again I’ll squash you.”
A look of incredulity flitted across Spain’s face, followed by one of anger. “Don’t get carried away, Hutch. I’ve no interest in your bloody scrawls, and I’m not going to let a big drink of water like you talk to me as…”
Lifting the varnished pebble paperweight from his desk, Hutchman made as if to throw it. Spain ducked aside with comic agility and vanished into Muriel’s office. Hutchman sat down at his desk and waited for his nerves to settle. He had wanted to do that for years, but perhaps it would have been better to hold himself in check a little longer. His little display would be widely reported by Spain and Muriel throughout Westfield’s just at a time when he wanted to blend into the background.
He inspected the secure drawer and was relieved to find that his mailing list of government departments, politicians, and influential scientists was close to the bottom and folded in such a way that Spain would probably have passed it by. From now on he would keep all his paperwork on his person, but what about the machine itself?
Hutchman slumped in his chair and stared through the office windows, scored diagonally by occasional raindrops, at autumncoloured trees. The machine, which was barely portable, could not stay at the Jeavons. To blackmail the nuclear powers, to convert megadeaths to megalives, he would have to set the machine up in a secret place. It would not matter if it was traced eventually, because his would only be the first — once the knowledge of how to build it was disseminated others would be produced from time to time, in hidden rooms. And nobody would be able to risk owning baubles of gray metal. Ever again, Vicky. Ever again.
Hutchman stood up and regarded his image in the glass partition, allowing himself a moment of paranoic indulgence. The shadow man he was looking at, the tall figure with sculptured black hair and long dry hands thrown into prominence by a stray beam of light, was the Lucas Hutchman the rest of the world saw. That Lucas Hutchman — keep on referring to yourself in the third person, Hutch, classical symptom — was going to take on the whole world single-handed. And one day that man’s wife would understand, finally, when it was too late. And that man’s wife would know her own guilt.
Disturbed at the pleasure the game gave him, Hutchman sat down abruptly and shuffled through his notes and sketches. They were all done on Westfield graph paper but that could be rendered anonymous by trimming the name from the top. The trouble was that his scribbles might be impossible for a foreigner to decipher — and it would be better if his handwriting did not appear anywhere in the folio. He went into Muriel’s claustrophobic office and, ignoring her wary gaze, took a sheaf of plain copy paper from her desk without speaking. It took him almost an hour to write out the entire maths for a neutron resonator and to detail his version of the hardware, using block letters throughout.
As soon as the job was finished he put the paperwork into his briefcase, and began to think about a suitable hiding place for the machine. Somewhere along the south coast, perhaps? He looked at the classified phone directory, found six names of estate agents in Crymchurch, and began calling them in alphabetical order. The second one was able to offer him a cottage in Hastings. Hutchman reached for his scrap pad to write down the address and discovered he had left it on his bookcase. He swore impatiently, then jotted the information on the side of a new green eraser.
“This sounds as though it could be just what I’m looking for,” he told the girl at the other end of the line. “I’ll call at your office later today.”
He told Muriel, by way of the intercom, that he was going out on private business for an hour, and took his briefcase out to his car. It was warm for November but a despairing sky was sagging between the tops of trees and buildings, and rain was falling with the quiet assurance that it would continue for the rest of the day. As he drove into Crymchurch water droplets crawled along the side-windows like frantic amoebae. Hutchman parked in the town center then went to an office-equipment supplier and bought a used copying machine and a supply of paper for £60. He paid in cash, using the money Vicky had given him to replenish their current account, and avoided giving his name. With the copier stowed in the back of his car he walked slowly along the glistening main street looking for the office of the estate agent he had telephoned. It was the third he reached and in the window was a photograph of the house. It was a terrace house, to rent on a winter-only basis. Hutchman estimated that Hastings was about sixty miles away — a ninety-minute drive — which would be about right for his purpose. It was convenient enough to let him install the machine there without suspicious absences from home, yet far enough away so that he could hide efficiently when the time came. He went into the agent’s office and in less than half an hour had rented the house until the beginning of April, claiming he was a writer who wanted to get away in solitude to complete a book. Again he gave a false name, paid the full rental in advance by cash, and came out with two new keys and the unfamiliar address written on a scrap of paper in his pocket.