‘I must speak up,’ Lobsang murmured.
‘George wouldn’t. Sit still.’
‘—we don’t have any kind of handle on any of this—’
‘But I do,’ Lobsang announced. He rose to his feet, grave.
Agnes covered her face with her hands. Oliver stared. Ben looked bewildered.
Captain Boss glanced over. ‘I’m sorry, Mr – Abrahams, was it?’
‘George Abrahams. I do know what the beetles are constructing. It’s a Dyson motor.’
‘A what?’
‘Maybe you’d better let me speak to your science people.’ And Lobsang walked past Oliver Irwin, towards the crew, as if taking over. Just as Agnes had dreaded.
Al Todd got to his feet and pointed. ‘Yeah, you do that, Abrahams, you big shot! I always thought there was something not right about you. All our troubles started the day you showed up here. Maybe you should hitch a ride on this Navy tub right back out of here!’
The meeting started to break up, the mood frustrated and angry.
Ben stared up at Agnes, wide-eyed. ‘Agnes? Does Mr Todd mean it?’
‘No, Ben. He’s just upset, is all. He doesn’t mean anything. Now you come with me while George is busy, those chickens won’t feed themselves …’
39
‘DYSON? YOU MEAN Freeman Dyson?’ The man was asking the question even as he shook Lobsang’s hand.
‘Manners, Dr Bowring,’ Jha murmured. ‘Introductions first. Mr Abrahams—’
‘Actually I’m a doctor also.’
‘I apologize. Dr George Abrahams, meet Ken Bowring, US Geological Survey. As I said back there Dr Bowring is the team leader of our civilian science cadre.’
‘Freeman Dyson, though. That’s who you meant, isn’t it? Come, walk with me, sir, please. I’d like to show you the data we’re assembling, the interpretations we’re making.’
Margarita Jha didn’t know what to make of this man Abrahams. He was tall, slim, a little elderly for an early generation of such a new community, perhaps. But there was something about him that didn’t quite fit. His accent was basically east coast American, she thought, but not quite pitched right, as if he was forcing it. His handsome but rather unremarkable face seemed expressionless – or rather, it was as if the expressions followed the emotional trigger by a perceptible interval, as if they required some conscious impulse. Maybe this guy Abrahams was just an eccentric. Mankind, splintered across the Long Earth, had begun to diverge, culturally, religiously, even ethnically, and in all that room it seemed to her that what she would once have called ‘eccentrics’ were becoming the norm. But even so, Abrahams puzzled her.
‘So,’ said Bowring, ‘you’re a doctor of—’
‘Engineering. My doctoral research was in communication with trolls. I was sponsored by Douglas Black.’
‘Fascinating, fascinating,’ Bowring said, distracted. ‘With the collapse of the old Datum academic institutions, we must rely increasingly on the generosity of figures like Black to fund our research. Still, the work gets done. You know Black himself?’
‘I’ve met him. Before he became a recluse. Or so it’s said …’
Jha, and others of the crew, had been involved in another twain mission that had taken Black, in secret and at his own request, to a refuge much further away than either Bowring or Abrahams imagined, probably. She kept her counsel.
They came to the rough work station Bowring and his team had set up, in the shadow of the twain hovering above. Trestle tables were laden with tablets and heaps of paper, meteorological charts, maps; there were samples too of the local flora and fauna. All this was a pale imitation of the more extensive science suite up on the twain itself.
Bowring said now, ‘It’s certainly a pleasure to find you here, Dr Abrahams. Coming in cold to a situation like this, there’s only so much progress we can make in a fixed time. No offence to the people here; your neighbours seem a smart, decent, very fine bunch of people. But to have had a scientifically educated man on the spot for some years—’
‘I understand.’
‘Tell me about a “Dyson motor”.’
‘Do you have a map of the world? Or any kind of global view …’