‘Es freud mich sehr Sie kennenzulernen,’ she said.
‘Ah, Gott sei Dank.’ He smiled at Payne. ‘Forgive me. English is a wonderful language, but not as alive for me.’
Their escort stayed outside, but Payne and Gavriela entered the study as bidden. Her attention was caught by the dusty blackboard, or rather the equations upon it. Written in his hand, that was the thing.
‘Was denkst du?’ From anyone else, the use of the familiar would have been unthinkable; here it seemed natural. ‘Das Lambda hab’ ich nicht gern.’
He pointed at the Λ symbol, so necessary for an expanding, steady-state universe.
‘Ich weiss nicht–’ Gavriela began.
But he picked up the violin and plucked with his fingers, causing her throat to constrict as if one of Payne’s soldiers had snapped on a chokehold.
Da, da-dum, da-da-da-dum, da-da.
The sickness that rose inside had little to do with her condition.
‘Es tut mir Leid, Gavriela.’
Those twinkling eyes belonged to a man with human faults, but one who saw deeply into things, in more ways than she had suspected; while Payne was nodding, like a man checking off a point on a list.
FORTY-FOUR
EARTH, 2033 AD
Regent’s Park, on this ninth day of September, remained green and splendid, a forest oasis in the centre of smoggy London. From the high window in his rented apartment – part of a townhouse built for a Georgian gentleman, or some such – Lucas stared at the treetops, and the parade of office workers beneath them, making the most of an end-of-summer lunchtime. Softness pressed against his back, Maria’s breasts beneath his shoulder blades.
‘Come to Rio with me,’ she said. ‘In the spring.’
‘I don’t know. Will there be sex?’
‘There better had be, lover.’
Quantum resonance was one of Lucas’s specialities, and for sure his innermost cellular self resonated with Maria’s lusty energy. He laughed as she tweaked his nipple from behind. He twisted to face her, then followed as she pulled him back to the bed where she laughed as he entered her. At some point, during the rise to nova crescendo, a ting sounded from his holoterminal, but Maria Higashionna was everything, the universe he breathed in, the hot skin he melded with; and then it exploded for both of them, and they lay afterwards with only gentle adjustments and kisses, lost in each other, floating in the aftermath.
‘My recital’s at three,’ said Maria.
‘You’d better shower first.’
‘Mm.’
She rolled out of bed and walked to the bathroom. Lucas watched her, wishing he had the equations to describe her nude beauty. Then she was out of sight and the shower was starting up.
‘Oh, well.’
Bare-arse naked, he hauled himself to the holoterminal and tapped it into life. When he pointed, the floating-scroll icon unfurled to show a black-and-white photograph hanging in the air beside a vertical sheet of creamy writing-paper. The cursive script might have been written with a fountain-pen.
‘Hey, lover.’
‘Huh!’ He had not heard the bathroom door open. ‘You’ve left the shower running.’
‘Just wondering if someone would wash my … So what’s that, anyhow? An old family photograph?’
Lucas leaned closer to the holo rather than magnify it.
‘I think that is my grandmother, you know. Not that I ever knew her.’
‘You’re kidding. Turn the letter this way, would you?’
He gestured, and the image rotated a little. Slipping his arm around her soft, exciting waist, he made himself read.
Dearest Lucas,
How wonderful to have a grandson! My words will seem very strange, since we do not know each other and I speak from your past. Still, I must ask you a favour, and be assured it must be this way. Even banks can fail over time, although it is to be hoped that some familiar names survive, so I am forced to contact you in this indirect way, with the hope that you will feel curious enough to investigate as I tell you.
He gestured at the paragraph.
‘Her first language wasn’t English.’
‘Neither is mine, meu amor. Read on.’
‘Yes, but … Never mind.’
Please, my grandson, look under the parquet flooring, in the right-hand outer corner as you look out the window at the park.
Love,
Gavi (your grandmother!)
X X X
Lucas pulled out a chair and sat down. Maria leaned against him; his hand cupped her buttock.
‘Is this a little physics joke arranged with my friends?’
‘Nothing to do with me, lover,’ said Maria. ‘Is there any actual nerdy science in the note?’
‘A logical paradox, maybe.’
‘Didn’t you say maths is built on paradox-infested foundations? Russell and Gödel, right? When you got into that argument with Jim in the One Tun.’
‘No.’ He shut down the display. ‘I mean, that’s sort of what I said.’
Maria looked at the space where the letter had hung.
‘What is parquet flooring?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘The letter said parquet flooring, in the corner.’
He squeezed her.
‘That’s parquet.’ He pointed at the wooden floor. ‘Blocks arranged in patterns. And you’re going to be late for your recital.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And you’re wasting water, more to the point.’
‘You’re a monster.’
‘Yes.’ He kissed her nipple, and ran a finger down to her mons. ‘Your monster, and I’ll be here all night.’
‘Bad monster.’ Maria glanced at the floor in the far corner of the room. ‘All right, I’m going to get clean by myself.’
Lucas grinned as she returned to the bathroom. Then he pulled on a pair of discarded shorts, and went in to the kitchen alcove to make coffee.
Silly buggers.
He went back to the terminal and checked the message’s metadata.
‘Thought so.’
These terminals were new and still scarce, each model with varying capabilities. The message had been directed to this physical device by address, not just to his cloud ID, with model-specific image optimization.
Sorry, grandma, but you died before I was born, so this is impossible.
He wasn’t sure of the year, although it was related to an historical event, the year that … something happened. World-shaking at the time, no doubt.
You could not have known I’d be in this room, right now, today.
Not to mention arranging for a message to be sent via a technology no one dreamed of then. Although, to be fair, the message content was old schooclass="underline" an inked letter, a black-and-white two-dimensional photograph.
And you definitely wouldn’t have known what I was up to. Did they have sex back in your century?
There was something weird about talking to one’s grandmother this way, even in imagination, so he closed off his thoughts. Coffee in hand, he wandered back to the window. Maria left the bathroom and opened the wardrobe, moving fast.
‘Who owned the building’ – she wriggled, pulling a dress down over her head – ‘before they turned it into apartments?’
‘I can’t remember. Someone told me.’
‘Some rich duke, or something, I’ll bet.’ She checked herself in the mirror, changed the tuning on her eyelid make-up – the liquid crystal layer grew pinker – then came over to kiss him. ‘Meet in the bar at six, right?’
‘You’ve got it.’
‘And you’d better get going now yourself. No time to dawdle.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’
He began to hurry now, because he really did have a meeting booked, followed by a get-together with two of his PhD students. They were ten years younger than he was, and far too polite regarding his shortcomings. He remembered how his own supervisor, Vadim, had been a nightmare to pin down for meetings; that was why he wanted the next generation to have a better experience.