Part 12 (2/2)

”Oh, this and that,” I said casually, which was not perhaps the best way of deflecting attention from my activities. ”I have been thinking about what you said the other evening,” I said tactically, in order to distract him.

His response was to look as if he were having a thought: one thought after another, in fact. Then he repeated, ”What exactly are you doing?”

”I'm laying a sequence of cracker balloons.” At any moment he might have walked through the long line of red balloons on the other side of the beeches, so I thought it best to tell him a little of the truth.

”What are you you doing with that milk?” I said as another diversionary measure. doing with that milk?” I said as another diversionary measure.

”Come,” he said. ”I'll show you.”

We walked alongside the stream, towards the wooden footbridge. The whole place was filled with green mossy light and the smell of vegetation. Inside the glade, where the wind had less effect, the midges were greatly in evidence, and I was soon slapping and itching. The sense of peace and composure I'd felt in that place was no longer in evidence. Quite the reverse.

As we leaned over the bridge, which sagged slightly under our weight, Ryman began pouring milk from the bottle into the running, turning water, making a cloudy vortex on one side of a rock and a white-lined plume on the other.

He chanted a ditty as he poured. ”Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity. Little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity-in the molecular sense.” He paused, before continuing in his ordinary voice, ”And this is the gospel of the Lord.”

I watched him pour more milk into the stream, where it turned in the opalescent eddy of itself, before being swept away by the surrounding water.

”Or it might not be the gospel. Unfortunately, we cannot see the whole picture, and must carry on our business on premises that are still in the hands of the builders. That business is the search.”

His mixing of both milk and metaphor apparently over for the time being, he paused again before looking at me very directly. ”I think you, too, Henry, have been searching for some kind of answer.” Below us, the water riddled through the stones. ”How to use my so-called number in war is what you're after, I suppose?”

I gave a disconsolate nod of confirmation.

”Who sent you?”

It was pointless to try to cover up any more. ”Sir Peter Vaward.”

”You've really been spying on me, all this time?”

”Not very successfully.”

He put his fingers to his brow. ”I had an idea from the first it might be something like that. You do make things complicated for yourself. Why didn't you just ask me?”

”It's war work,” I said vacuously. ”I was afraid you might have conscientious objections. And anyway, I did ask you, several times.”

The Prophet shrugged. ”Sir Peter Vaward, eh? One of the gas men at Porton Down, he used to be, before he got so grand...He used some of my equations to find out how quickly poison gas would disperse.” Peter Vaward, eh? One of the gas men at Porton Down, he used to be, before he got so grand...He used some of my equations to find out how quickly poison gas would disperse.”

”He's just trying to do his job. The Met Office needs to comprehend turbulence in a single coherent scheme. The truth is, they need it especially for the landings on mainland Europe.”

”I know what those will mean,” Ryman said sternly. ”I know what killing is.”

I saw the Prophet in the cruel delirium of the trenches, half mad with horror, the crazy Albert Hall vision rising as if on scaffolding out of that mess of dead men and horses, only to be lost under a pile of coal.

”But you'll tell me?” I pleaded. ”Even if it goes against your principles?”

”The practical application of science is an individual's moral choice. The theory itself is neither moral nor immoral. See here, for goodness' sake!”

As if he were watering a flowerbed, he poured the last of the milk into the stream, where-though not exactly-it swirled round as before, until its behaviour became unsteady, particles of milk and water enmes.h.i.+ng in little puffs of diluting white as they flowed over rocks and through weed.

Ryman spoke with an air of authority-although it was the authority of a man unburdening himself. ”Weather energy goes round in circles, runs down corridors, cascades down stairways. It diffuses, regathers, reforms, diffuses again. It moves in jets and trickles, is divided by layers thick and thin-layers that themselves can be throughways as well as s.h.i.+elds. It's always moving through one system to another, taking different shapes over time. That's why there'll always be the unexpected. The number will not help you solve that problem directly.”

He paused to grip the rail of the bridge before resuming speaking more quickly, with a brighter timbre to his voice. ”But if you want help with your war, I will give you some peaceful advice. The extent of unexpectedness can be modified, increasing the probability of prediction. You must focus on the layers and boundaries between weather systems to draw out that predictability. Each layer has a different predictability. You must concentrate on the barriers between these differently characterised flows. The width of the flows is key, but also their depth, and how long they last. So the s.p.a.cing-in time and geographically-of where you make your observations therefore becomes crucial. Don't think of the date for your invasion, or you will make a prison for yourself. Think of your data instead. How does it fit into the surrounding context?”

I slapped my neck. Was he really just saying we had to measure better? If he was, it was a preposterous thing to offer up as the secret of weather forecasting. I felt like pus.h.i.+ng him off the side of the bridge, into the water.

I lit a cigarette to counter the midges-and to give me the courage to speak my mind. ”What Hitler is doing is wrong. Morally wrong. Surely you must see that. If you really cared about avoiding murder and death you would help me.”

”Very well.” He pointed at the stream with the empty milk bottle. ”Look. There is no milk there now. The important thing to remember is that, in itself, turbulence decays, until it is regenerated by new energy sets. This is where questions of range and context come in. Barrier questions, boundary matters, timing issues. Beginnings, middles and ends. These are the important things. These are the limits which affect the predictability of different atmospheric layers. You need to find the so-called Ryman number for each part of the story. The problem is, it has already changed by the time you come to the next part. The time meter is always ticking as you move about spatially. More or less everything comes down to that basic relation.”

I guess this was the moment of revelation, though it didn't seem like a revelatory experience. I felt unsatisfied. The knowledge I was after was, if anything, more elusive than ever. Perhaps I was foolish to have expected that the answers could just come like logs down a chute. Yet I clearly owed him for something.

I took his hand and shook it. ”Thank you. I think I understand better now. But I do have some other questions.”

He looked at me coolly, as if I was pus.h.i.+ng my luck. ”Go on.”

Everything I'd been thinking about came out in a rush. ”To invade a piece of France or Belgium, how much of the adjoining coast would we have to do the forecast for? How long before the invasion day should the critical forecast take place? How far beyond the immediate vicinity, one or other part of the Channel, should weather systems evolving from elsewhere be considered?”

”Oh for goodness' sake,” he said, raising his eyebrows. ”The edge is always dangerous. You must try to track all all the limits, the limits, all all the barriers. That is what I've been trying to drive home to you. Remember this, too: that a barrier between two weather patterns might also be a narrow corridor for a third. Watch out for what's flying down that narrow corridor, Henry. That can change everything for miles around.” the barriers. That is what I've been trying to drive home to you. Remember this, too: that a barrier between two weather patterns might also be a narrow corridor for a third. Watch out for what's flying down that narrow corridor, Henry. That can change everything for miles around.”

”But I don't know how to make these distinctions! I have a fifty-mile stretch of beach and I am not sure where your beginnings, middles and ends of the various weather systems fall on it.”

He sighed. ”You just must use your common sense, taking care how you relate the different zones. Where you cannot measure, you must sensibly approximate. Use randomisation judiciously.”

I seemed to hear something by the back of my head. Something very distant and apparently insignificant but in fact prodigiously imperilling. But I did not understand what it was, at least I didn't right then. I thought it was a midge, maybe, or some whining mechanical process taking place in the hills or on water. The Cowal in wartime was full of such noises.

His voice warmed a little. ”Don't pretend to the military that it can all be computed, Henry. It can't. Not yet. We don't have the brain power. Not even if every member of every Allied met office sat side by side doing one tiny part of the calculation each, as in my Albert Hall fantasy. We need machines to do it.”

With that he turned away, as if to head for home, before turning back and looking at me directly, face to face where we stood on the bridge. ”I notice you haven't asked me about Gill. You will think about the matter we spoke of?”

I nodded, uncertain as he departed as to what kind of contract, if any, I had just made-but that, as things turned out, was the least of my troubles.

Eight.

As I watched Ryman's tall figure stride across the field, I realised what it was, that half-familiar noise I'd been hearing. It was the German plane, coming in low. That is what I had heard. We both turned to look. Without stopping to think, I ran as fast as I could to the start of the beech tree walk, where I had set the first of my release switches.

The Junkers came over, already in the curve, readying itself to turn. They could have shot Ryman by now, had they wanted. Perhaps they really were just taking pictures...

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