The Ruddigore Dichotomy
Chapter One
Professor Hawthorne had had a long, hard day and had just settled back into a comfy chair in the Senior Common Room for a quick nap. Suddenly he felt someone touch his arm. He started. Dr. Smith was standing over him. "Oh, hello, Helena," he said. "What can I do for you?"
Dr. Helena Smith looked down at him and spoke quietly but urgently. "Professor, I've just been having a word with Stephen. You know, the new chap, Stephen Phillips," she explained as Hawthorne stared at her blankly. "He thinks he may have found a black hole, eleven light-months from the Earth."
Hawthorne replied with a I-know-you're-a-woman-but-there's-no-need-to-get-emotional look. "We must have had at least half a dozen bizarre goings-on around the Galaxy since the beginning of the year. It's only these new observation techniques. They're bound to throw up a few teething troubles." He sank back into his chair.
"But if his observations proved correct, and there really were a black hole eleven light-months away, the Earth could be destroyed within eighteen months. Don't you think it's worth investigating?"
Hawthorne was nonplussed. "Oh yes, of course. For starters, you'd have to call off your wedding, I'd never get my knighthood..."
"If we knew that the world was going to end and we did nothing about it, and we never told anyone, because we thought it was teething troubles with a new technique."
Professor Hawthorne took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. I shouldn't be having conversations like this, he thought. Especially not at tea-time. He looked up at her, shrugged and said, "OK, check it out if you must, I don't care. I say, if you do come up with anything - "
But she was gone.
Helena gradually became aware that the phone was ringing; she'd been so engrossed in the figures that she hadn't noticed at first. "Twenty-seven, twenty-seven, twenty-seven," she muttered. "Twenty-seven, twenty-seven, hello?"
"Helena! Where are you?"
"Robert? I'm at my lab. But then you know that because I answered the phone. What do you want? Twenty-seven..."
"What do I want? I've been waiting in the foyer of the Palace for three-quarters of an hour. What's keeping you?"
"It's a bit of an emergency, I've got to check some data from the radio telescope. Twenty-seven..."
"Look, can't it wait? It took ages to get tickets for this show. And what do you keep on saying 'twenty-seven' for?"
Helena resisted the temptation to say "It's your IQ, Robert." "I'm trying to remember a number. You phoned me right in the middle of a very long calculation. Twenty-seven..."
"Use a calculator like normal human beings. Helena darling, the curtain goes up in twenty minutes."
"I'll be with you by the first interval, Robert, I promise. I just need to finish this. It won't take long. Kiss kiss. Bye." She put the phone down before Robert could make any further protest. Then she froze. "Oh bugger, I've forgotten it. Thanks very much, Robert!" she screamed at the inert telephone.
Hawthorne strode into the Senior Common Room the following morning and nearly fell over Helena, asleep in one of the easy chairs near the door. "What's all this, what's all this? Sleeping on duty, eh?" Then he noticed the half-full mug of congealed instant coffee by her foot and the sheaves of paper on the table in front of her. "Good grief Helena, have you been working all night?"
Helena came to life, sat up and gazed at a spot six inches to the left of his head. "No, not all night. Only since one a.m. I went to see the new Lloyd-Webber musical at the Palace with Robert before then." She picked up the coffee mug. "Oh, yuck," she said and put it back on the floor where she'd found it.
The Professor peered at the top sheet of paper, filled with differential equations. "Your black hole, is it?"
She stood up. "Professor, I checked all of Stephen's calculations through twice last night. There isn't a single mistake in any of them."
"Well then, it must be a mistake in the observations like I said."
"That's why I'm going to speak to Stephen about it in half an hour."
"Oh. I wanted to talk to you about a new research programme I want to set up."
"Can't you come with me? Then we can talk on the way."
"I - I - "
Dr. Smith's voice floated in from the corridor. "Just give me twenty minutes to make myself presentable. I'll meet you in the car park."
Professor Hawthorne picked up the coffee mug. "Why can't people clean up after themselves?" he asked himself. He carried it at arm's length into the kitchen and dumped it in the sink.
Dr. Phillips had only been in the Astronomy Department a year and was therefore irritatingly keen. He had a mop of brown hair that bent at ninety degrees in the middle, and a moustache that was longer on one side than on the other. He also always wore a white coat. Hawthorne wondered if he wore it in the shower. "It's really fascinating," he was saying to Helena. "I mean, we've never discovered anything like this before. It's definitely not a mistake. There are so many readings, and anyway we've checked the machine out on known phenomena and it's all working as it should."
"So you've really found a black hole then?" Hawthorne asked.
"Well, not quite. More like point discontinuities in the structure of space-time. The observations seem to indicate that there are certain points at which electromagnetic radiation at all frequencies scatters in all directions, which I can only put down to a diffraction effect through a hole of zero radius."
Dr. Smith interrupted him. "Points? You mean there's more than one?"
Phillips was as cheerful as ever. "Oh yes. Twenty-nine in total." The other two's eyes widened. "Look, I'll show you." He produced a large computer graphic drawing of the familiar star map of the Milky Way, with the "points" marked with red crosses. "By measuring the amount of scattering of the various radio frequencies, we can work out where and when the point discontinuities originated. The more diffuse the fringes, the older the diffraction source. The first one is back here," he indicated a red cross with a pencil, "nearly twenty light-years away. And look at this. Each successive one is closer to the present position of the Earth - the most recent being here, about eleven light-months."
"It's almost as if they were following us," Hawthorne remarked, only half-seriously.
Phillips didn't catch the sarcastic hint. "It's funny you should say that. If you draw a curve through the points, it follows precisely the path of the Earth in space-time, accounting for the movement of the Solar System relative to the centre of the galaxy, the orbit of the Earth around the Sun and the rotation of the Earth on its axis. In other words, the Earth was at each of these points in space-time."
"What has the rotation of the Earth on its axis got to do with it?" asked Helena, trying to get a better look at the diagram which Professor Hawthorne was poring over.
Phillips smiled, making his moustache look even sillier than usual. "Not only," he said, licking his lips, "was the Earth at each of these points when the discontinuities were created, but they also nearly all correspond with the same point on the Earth's surface. All but the last eight, in fact."
Helena was impressed. "Really? You can measure it that accurately?"
"Oh yes," he declared airily as if he had said he could play Grieg's piano concerto with one hand tied behind his back. Hawthorne decided he hated him even more than before. "Within about five light-years, we can pin it down to the nearest five milliseconds and the nearest ten metres. Beyond that, it gets less precise, of course."
"Of course," the Professor snapped - more sharply than he had intended, because Phillips stopped smiling and his moustache drooped. The lad's only doing his job, he thought. He's just misguided enough to enjoy it. "Where is this point on the Earth's surface?"
Both the Professor and Helena expected him to point to a spot in the middle of the ocean somewhere, probably bang in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. Instead, he produced an Ordnance Survey map of Cornwall and spread it out on the table. "Right... er... here," he said, poking the map with a pencil.
"In a village called... Rederring?" Hawthorne exploded.
"It's not in the village itself," said Phillips leaning over the Professor's shoulder, "it's at this castle here."
Professor Hawthorne had had enough. He stood up straight, turned to Helena and exclaimed, "That's it. Joke over. I haven't time for any of this, I've got important work to do." He started towards the door, muttering, "Point discontinuities in the space-time continuum... centred around a castle in Cornwall..."
Helena called after him, "Professor, don't go. This isn't a joke. Honestly!" He stopped and looked at her sceptically.
Phillips stuttered, "I - I - It's all here, Professor." He held out a wad of paper, including the maps and some computer printouts, to him. "You're more than welcome to take it away and check it for yourself. See here, for instance." He jabbed at one of the crosses on the star map, inadvertedly dropping the other papers as he did so. "This discontinuity here, this corresponds to..." he hunted through the papers on the floor, "these readings here..." He picked up a computer listing, dropping the map.
Hawthorne sighed. "Look, Helena, Stephen, we all know what problems we can get with a new method of observation. We're all still novices. Learning to interpret the results is as much a task as inventing the machine in the first place."
"But it was your research that led to this particular machine's invention, Professor," replied Helena. "So you would be in the best position to judge of anyone..."
She was interrupted by a knock on the door. "Yes?" Phillips bellowed.
A young man wearing jeans, a T-shirt and an old-fashioned waistcoat came in, pushing a tea-trolley. "Would you like some coffee?" he said.
"Oh, yes please," replied Helena. The young man looked away again nervously. "Milk, no sugar."
Hawthorne was gazing out of the window at some sheep. Dr. Phillips asked, "Would you like some coffee, Professor Hawthorne?"
"Hmm? Oh, er, black, two sugars, please."
The young man handed the academics their drinks and retreated without saying a word. "One of my research students," said Phillips when he had gone.
Helena sipped her coffee and said, "So what are we going to do?"
"About this Rederring business?" The Professor turned back to his sheep-gazing. "What do you suppose could be there that would cause tears in the fabric of the space-time continuum?"
"Why don't we go and have a look?"
"Dr. Smith. What do you think we could possibly find in a castle near a remote country village in the middle of Cornwall? Little green men in a spaceship, perhaps? Doctor Who's Tardis?" Hawthorne flopped into a chair, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. It's only half past eleven, he thought. What am I going to feel like by tea-time?
Helena didn't hear him. "We could go down at the weekend, stay overnight, come back the following day."
"We?"
"Aren't you interested? You are the Head of Department."
"But I mean... er, staying overnight, I mean..."
"What's the matter?"
Professor Hawthorne stood up and said in a stage whisper, so that Phillips could hear: "What if the students find out?"
He felt somewhat put out when she suddenly started to laugh. "Oh, Professor! Is that what you're worried about? You think they'll think we're having an affair?"
"Shhh!" Hawthorne could feel the blood rising in his cheeks.
"Look, I'll invite Robert to come with us if you like, that'll scotch any rumours. Do you fancy a trip to Cornwall, Stephen? Make it a foursome?"
Phillips answered, "Well I'd like to, I mean I'm very interested to find out what's causing all of this, but I've got to go to Manchester this weekend to visit my aunt and uncle. She's quite poorly."
"Oh, sorry to hear that," replied Helena. She picked up her briefcase and walked to the door. "We'll let you know if we find anything, anyway."
"Great, thanks, Helena," said Phillips. "Thanks for your time, Professor."
"Don't mention it," Hawthorne mumbled as he shuffled through the door. Already he was having visions of Phillips spreading it around the University that Professor Hawthorne was a sex-crazed maniac. He remembered the time when one of his students had developed a crush on him, and was forced to leave. Shame, really. Bright young man, too.
That evening, Helena arrived at Mario's to find Robert waiting for her. "I'm sorry I'm late, Robert," she said.
Robert kissed her, quite passionately considering they were in public. "You're not late, I'm early. I didn't trust British Rail to get me there on time, so I got the earlier train. About the only time it's ever been on time."
"Table for two, sir?" said an oily-looking waiter in what might pass for an Italian accent.
"Yes, we have booked. Name of Anderson."
The waiter produced a pencil from his pocket, licked it and began to scrutinise a list pinned to a clipboard. "Anderrson, Anderrson... Ah yes, we 'ave eet. Come thees way, please."
"Shouldn't be all that hard to find a name beginning with 'A'," Helena remarked out of the corner of her mouth.
She decided to bring up the subject between the starters and the main course. "I thought... we could do with a little weekend break."
Robert looked up. "That's a wonderful idea! A long weekend in Paris... see the sights... dinner on the banks of the Seine..."
"Well, er, actually, I was thinking more of, er... Cornwall."
"Oh," said Robert with a shrug. "Well, that could be... quite nice, I suppose."
"There's a little village called Rederring. It looks ever so nice on the map. I thought we could stay in a guest house, have a look round, see the countryside..." Any minute now he's going to pull his "Oh, Helena!" face again, she thought.
"Yes, I suppose so," he said. Why did he have that feeling that she was plotting something?
"Oh good, we can make an early start on Saturday. The three of us won't have that much luggage - "
Plotting something? Guy Fawkes couldn't hold a candle to Dr. Helena Smith. "This Saturday? Are you serious? And what do you mean, the three of us?"
Helena spoke very slowly, as if afraid that too many words in too short a time might trigger off an explosion. "There's you, and me, and Professor Hawthorne. We're hoping - "
"Professor Hawthorne?"
Helena gave him a "Speak up, then perhaps the whole of Yorkshire might be able to hear you" look. "Professor Hawthorne?" he said again at low volume. "The balding old coot with the sideburns and the Cyril Smith belly? What kind of a romantic weekend is it going to be with him in tow?"
"Professor Hawthorne and I are planning to do some research there. There are some unusual astronomical events happening there. But I thought you might like to come as well, so we can make a nice weekend of it, and you can make sure that he doesn't... you know... try anything."
"He's as bent as a bishop's crook anyway," Robert began, then stopped as he realised that the waiter had arrived with the main course.
When the waiter had gone, Helena whispered, "He's not a homosexual. One of his students who was gay fancied him once, that's all. Anyway," she continued in a normal voice, "we're going down this weekend. I've booked a guest house for the three of us, one double room and one single."
"Oh very well then," he replied, glumness personified.
"Don't look so down in the dumps. It'll be nice. You'll enjoy it. And," she added as he took his first mouthful of tagliatelle, "you're driving."
7
