‘Wait a minute,’ said Rimmer, standing up slowly. ‘You don’t mean you’ve found one?’
It was several weeks since Rimmer had instigated the search — not long after the director had downgraded him to the status of a lowly security guard — and the truth was that he had more or less forgotten about it, having come to the conclusion that the magnitude of the search was too great.
Einstein puffed his pipe and then removed it from his mouth. ‘Yes. Eureka, to speak as Archimedes.’
At the bottom of the screen there appeared a small window containing a brief career resume for the Greek-Sicilian mathematician and inventor. Rimmer ignored it. The trouble with 45.1 was that so much of what you were told was simply irrelevant — an interesting waste of time.
‘I have found one such number,’ continued Einstein. ‘Against all the odds, may I say. Merely to find these six numbers, the odds are quite large enough. To be precise, thirteen million, nine hundred and eighty-three thousand, eight hundred and sixteen to one. But to find all six of these numbers in the specified search order?’ Einstein chuckled. ‘Why the odds are almost incalculable. Nevertheless, I calculated them. One in ten billion, sixty-eight million, three hundred and forty-seven thousand, five hundred and twenty. Yes, I think even God would think twice about playing against odds like that.’
Another window appeared, this one quoting Einstein’s famous remark to the effect that God does not play dice with the universe and explaining that this was Einstein’s negative reaction to quantum theory.[106]
Rimmer held his head. ‘Albert. You’re a bloody genius.’
‘So people are always telling me, much to my irritation.’
‘My God, I don’t believe it. You’ve found the number.’
‘Numbers are nothing, my friend. Equations are the thing. Better than women. Better than diamonds. Better than just about anything else I can think of. Equations are forever.’
Another window with a quotation about equations.
‘Sure, Albert,’ laughed Rimmer. ‘Anything you say. My God, this is terrific. Where on earth did you find it?’
‘I didn’t find it on Earth at all.’
‘Of course,’ breathed Rimmer. ‘He’s on the Moon.’
‘Yes, but only just.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Well,’ chuckled Einstein, ‘there’s not much gravity on the Moon.’
Yet another window explaining how Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity had described the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe.
Rimmer smiled slimly. ‘Is that an example of the famous German sense of humor?’ he asked.
Einstein shrugged apologetically and, returning the pipe to his mouth, set about relighting it.
‘Exactly where on the Moon did you find this number, Albert.’
‘At the Hotel Galileo, on Tranquillity Base.’
Another window to say who Galileo was.
‘The Galileo, huh? Nice. Dallas always did like to go first class.’
‘He should have acknowledged the work of Kepler.’
‘Who should?’
Another window to say who Kepler was.
‘Galileo, of course. It always surprises me that so many scientists should be so vain.’
‘On the subject of personas, acknowledged or otherwise, did our winning number have a name?’
‘Nicolas Bourbaki,’ said Einstein.
This time the window appearing on-screen told Rimmer something that he was actually interested to know: that the name Nicolas Bourbaki had been a collective nom de plume for a group of early-twentieth-century mathematicians including Szolem Mandelbrojt.
Rimmer started to get dressed.
‘Are you going somewhere?’
‘I’m going to get my old job back,’ explained Rimmer. ‘And after that I’m going to the Moon.’
This time a window with some astroliner flight times and prices.
‘Does the Moon only exist when you look at it?’ asked Einstein.
‘I wouldn’t say so.’
‘That’s my objection to quantum mechanics.’ Einstein’s large nose wrinkled with disgust. ‘These people reduce science to a series of captions. Schrodinger’s cat. Heisenberg’s uncertainty. Pah! It all implies that the world is created simply by our perception of it. Nonsense.’
‘I’d love to stay and talk about this, Albert. But frankly I haven’t got the time. Oh, you’d better book me on the next available flight. To the Moon. Assuming it’s still there. It was the last time I looked.’
‘There’s only coach left, I’m afraid,’ said Einstein, after a momentary pause. ‘It’s the centennial of the first Moon landing.’
‘Okay, coach’ll have to do. And thanks for your help, Albert. You can turn off now.’
‘May I give you a small piece of advice?’
Prior to shutting down, it was customary in 45.1 for the operating persona to utter some appropriate quotation — something he or she had said while living — so as to enhance the user’s impression of having interacted with some great figure from history.
Rimmer snorted with contempt. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Be my guest, you old bastard.’
Einstein pointed at the pair of malodorous socks Rimmer had collected from the floor.
‘Socks are a waste of money. When I was young, I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock.’
‘Didn’t you think you might just cut your bloody toenails more often?’ asked Rimmer.
‘Well, anyway, I stopped wearing socks.’
‘I guess it all depends on whether you’re a body at rest or a body in motion,’ said Rimmer. ‘But thank you, Albert. That was most enlightening.’
Rimmer finished dressing and was still amused at the fashion tip he had taken from a facsimile of Albert Einstein — so that was what space and time were all about: Given enough time, your toe would make a space in your sock. He went out of the apartment.
III
Almost as soon as he was settled into his suite, Prevezer began working on the silicon surrogate world that Dallas was planning to use as a laboratory in which they would test the viability of his plan.
Modeling this particular Simworld was a highly complex process, an individually tailored job, and one on which Prevezer had been working long before leaving Earth. A number of reasons had obliged him to finish making his model on the Moon. There was the press of time: Dallas wanted to take advantage of the relative anonymity that was afforded by the large number of tourists on the Moon for the centennial, and he wanted to carry out the robbery at some time during the fourteen days of lunar ‘daylight.’ But from Prevezer’s point of view, what was more important was that Dallas wanted the simulation to take place in the authentic conditions of the Moon’s one-sixth gravity, which was something the laws of physics did not permit back on Earth. Gravity, or the lack of it, was not something that could be rendered artificially.
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