The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(54)

“Damn me, it’s nice that someone does,” said Vincent when the rumour reached his ears. “It’s a lot of hard work, falling back on intellectual brilliance and emotional intelligence to seduce girls these days.”

Should I have seen the clues?

Should I have spotted what Vincent was?

He was a novelty. He was unusual, ridiculous, brilliant, sombre and absurd. He was innovation in a stodgy town. When the day was done, and our companions had been returned to the stony embraces of their families, unsullied if not uncorrupted, we sat in my rooms, drinking the last of the gin–a nearly empty bottle being far sadder, in Vincent’s mind, than a finished one–and discussed once again the perpetual subject of Vincent’s final-year thesis.

“I don’t know, Harry. None of it seems really… important enough.”

Not important enough? The turning of the stars in the heavens, the breaking of the atoms of existence, the bending of light in our sky, the rolling of electromagnetic waves through our very bodies…

“Yes yes yes.” He flapped his hands. “That’s all important! But ten thousand words of thesis is… well, it’s nothing, is it? And then there’s this assumption that I should focus on one thing alone, as if it’s possible to comprehend the structure of the sun without truly understanding the nature of atomic behaviour!”

Here it was again, the familiar rant.

“We talk about a theory of everything,” he spat, “as if it were a thing which will just be discovered overnight. As if a second Einstein will one day sit up in his bed and exclaim, ‘Mein Gott! Ich habe es gesehen!’ and that’s it, the universe comprehended. I find it offensive, genuinely offensive, to think that the solution is going to be found in numbers, or in atoms, or in great galactic forces–as if our petty academia could truly comprehend on a single side of A4 the structure of the universe. X = Y, we seem to say; one day there will be a theory of everything and then we can stop. We’ll have won–all things will be known. Codswallop.”

“Codswallop?”

“Codswallop and barney,” he agreed firmly, “to paraphrase Dr Johnson.”

Perhaps, I suggested, the fate of the universe could briefly take second place to the thorny issue of graduating with honours?

He blew loudly between his lips, a liquid sound of contempt. “That,” he exclaimed, “is precisely what’s wrong with academics.”





Chapter 45


“Good God,” he said. “Fancy seeing you here.”

He was only a few years older since I’d seen him last, those centuries ago, still a fresh-faced young man barely clipping his early thirties. Somehow he’d managed to find a pair of grey suit trousers and well-kept brown leather shoes, polished up bright to wear. An oversized greenish tunic was more in keeping with his Soviet style, and a thin beard of fragile curls was an attempt to enhance his age, and he was Karpenko, and he was Vincent Rankis. He was followed almost immediately by two armed guards, rifles raised. They at once shouted at me to get down, to put my hands above my head, but he silenced them with a gesture.

“It’s all right,” said the man known as Karpenko. “Let me handle this.”

Vincent Rankis, sometime student, as British as they came, his Russian flawless, his eyes full of recollection. The night he’d attacked me in Cambridge, he’d also vanished from his rooms. I’d used every resource in my power to track him down, but every name had led to an empty nothing, every enquiry ended in a failure. Vincent Rankis, I’d been forced to conclude, had, legally speaking, never existed. But then neither had I.

For a moment I couldn’t speak, all the tactics and questions I’d had in mind briefly suspended at the sight of him. He took the opportunity to flash me a brilliant smile, before glancing at the commander and saying, “Comrade, may I have the room?”

The commander looked to me, and through lips turned to sand I mumbled, “Fine by me.”

The commander rose carefully, walked to Vincent and paused, turning his head by the young man’s side to murmur, quietly but audibly, “He has a gun.”

“That’s fine,” replied Vincent. “I’ll handle it.”

With a nod, he dismissed the other soldiers and, moving around the commander’s desk, settled himself down in the large chair with an easy confidence, folding his fingers together in front of his chin, elbow resting on his crossed-over knee.

“Hello, Harry,” he said at last.

“Hello, Vincent.”

“You here about our Daniel van Thiel, I assume?”

“He pointed the way.”

“Self-important little man,” said Vincent. “Had this incredibly annoying habit of telling everyone how brilliant they were, which was of course nothing more than a demand to be informed how brilliant he was himself. I’d hoped he’d help resolve some of the monitoring issues we’ve been having, but in the end I had to let him go. Little wart was bright enough to remember a few technical specifications, though. Should have killed him months ago. And your journey here–via Professor Gulakov? Did you like him?”

“Yes, very much.”

“I’m afraid he’s been sent away for re-education.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But then this is a very gun-heavy operation you seem to be running. Had to kill many to preserve it?”