Us полностью

‘Thanks to World of Wonder. Fun facts! Did you know caesium has atomic number 55? That sort of thing. Of course at that age you’re just like this big sponge, so it all went in, but the bit I loved the best was this cartoon strip, “Lives of the Great Scientists”. There was one about Archimedes, I could draw it for you now: Archimedes in his bath, making the connection between volume and density, dancing naked down the street. Or Newton and his apple, or Marie Curie … I loved this idea of the sudden beautiful realisation. A light bulb going on, literally for Edison. One individual experiences this flash of insight and suddenly the world is altered fundamentally.’

I hadn’t spoken this much for years. I hoped, from Connie’s silence, that she was finding me fantastically interesting, but when I looked her eyes were rolled far back into her head.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m sorry. I’m just rushing my tits off.’

‘Oh. Okay. Should I stop talking?’

‘No, I love it. You’re bringing me down, but in a good way. Wow. Your eyes look massive, Douglas. They’re taking up your whole face.’

‘Okay. So … should I keep talking, then?’

‘Yes, please. I like listening to your voice. It’s like listening to the Shipping Forecast.’

‘Boring.’

‘Reassuring. Let’s keep walking. Tell me more.’

‘Anyway, these stories were nonsense for the most part, or hugely over-simplified. Most scientific progress is a slog, and more often than not it stems from a dialogue within a community, lots of people thinking along the same lines and inching forward, rather than these great bolts of lightning. Newton did see the apple fall, but he’d been thinking about gravity well before that. The same with Darwin, he didn’t wake up one day and think: natural selection! There’d been years and years of observation, discussion and debate. Good science is slow-moving, methodical, evidence-based. Method. Results. Conclusion. Like my old tutor used to say, “To assume makes an ass of u and me!’’’ Here, rather optimistically, I had hoped she might laugh, but she was staring open-mouthed at her wiggling fingertips. ‘Still, I was hooked. It seemed heroic, or at least the kind of heroism I might have access to. Normal boys aspired to be footballers or pop stars or soldiers, and I wanted to be a scientist, because wouldn’t it be incredible to have a moment like that? An entirely original idea. A cure, an insight into space and time, a water engine.’

‘Anything occurred to you?’

‘Not as yet.’

‘Well it’s still early days!’

‘Of course it was all a lot easier in the past. Much easier to make your mark when people still thought the sun revolved around the earth and there were four bodily humours. Not much chance of me making that kind of breakthrough now.’

‘Oh no!’ she said with real feeling. ‘That’s not true!’

‘’Fraid so. Science is a race, you’ve got to get there first. There’s no second prize. Look at Darwin — those ideas were in the air, but he was the first to get his paper published. The only way I could really make a mark now is to be transported back to, say, 1820. I’d jot down some pointers on evolutionary theory. I’d explain to the Royal College of Surgeons exactly why washing your hands is a good idea. I’d invent the combustion engine, the light bulb, the aeroplane, photography, penicillin. If I could get back to 1820, I’d be the greatest scientist the world has ever known, greater than Archimedes or Newton or Pasteur or Einstein. The only obstacle is being a hundred and seventy years too late.’

‘Clearly, what you need to do,’ she said, ‘is invent a time machine.’

‘Which is theoretically impossible.’

‘There you go again, being negative. If you can make a battery out of a lemon, how hard can it be? I’m sure you could do it.’

‘You hardly know me.’

‘But I can tell. I have a sense. Douglas, some day you are going to do something quite amazing.’

She was very far from sober, of course, but, if only for a moment, I thought she really did believe this of me. Even that it might be true.