Part 36 (2/2)

'Maybe.'

'If that happens, could you get a job at the department at Cork? Could she, Da?'

'The vice-chancellor would get down on his very knees, Liam,' said John, his voice upholstered with tact, 'but-'

'There you go, Ma.'

Ah, Liam, the most malicious G.o.d is the G.o.d of the counted chicken.

The Trans-Siberian shunted through a slumberous forested evening in northern China. I was still toying with matrix mechanics, but getting nowhere. I'd been stuck with the same problem since Shanghai, and now I was wandering in circles.

'Mind if I join you?'

The dining car had emptied. Did I know this young woman?

'Sherry's the name,' said the Australian girl, waiting for me to say something.

'Please, take a seat, let me move this junk for you...'

'Maths, eh?'

Unusual for a young person to want to talk with an oldie like me. Still, we're a long way from home, and don't generalise, Mo. 'Yes, I'm a maths teacher,' I said. 'That's a thick book.'

'War and Peace.'

'Lot of it about. Particularly the former.'

A half-naked Chinese toddler ran up the corridor, making a zun-zun zun-zun noise which may have been a helicopter, or maybe a horse. noise which may have been a helicopter, or maybe a horse.

'I'm very sorry, I didn't catch your name.'

I felt a stab of suspicion. Oh, Mo! She's just a kid. 'Mo. Mo Smith.' Mo!

We shook hands. 'Sherry Connolly. Are you going straight to Moscow, Mo, or stopping off ?'

'Aye, straight through to Moscow, Petersburg, Helsinki, London, Ireland. How about you?'

'I'm stopping off in Mongolia for a while.'

'How long for?'

'Until I want to move on.'

'Good to be out of Beijing?'

'You bet. It's good to be out of my compartment! There are two Swedish guys, they're drunk and having a belching compet.i.tion. It's like back home. Men can be such drongoes.'

'I could get your compartment changed. Our babushka's tame. I bribed her with a bottle of Chinese whisky.'

'No worries, thanks. I grew up with five brothers, so I can handle two Swedes. We get to UB in thirty-six hours. Plus, there's a hunky Danish guy in the bunk below me... You travelling alone too, Mo?'

'Yes, all alone.'

Sherry gave me that look.

'Great heavens, no! I've got a husband and a teenage son waiting at home.'

'You must be missing them. They must be missing you.'

What a perfect pair of sentences. 'Yep.'

'Hey, I've got a flask of Chinese powdered lemon tea. Join me? It's the real McCoy.'

It was nice to speak to a woman in my own language again. 'I would love to.'

We talked until we got to the Mongolian border, where the train's wheels were changed to fit the old Soviet gauge, and I realised how lonely I had become.

Maybe it was just the caffeine in Sherry's tea, but when I next glanced at the black book I saw how utterly obvious the answer was: Trebevij's constant broke the logjam. Mo, you're a deadhead. I worked for what seemed a little while longer, and before I knew it the dining-car staff were starting the breakfast s.h.i.+ft.

The islands, cities, forests, all left behind. Dawn welled up over the open gra.s.slands of central Asia. I was an extremely tired, middle-aged, morally troubled quantum physicist with a very uncertain future, but I had gone somewhere no one else had ever been. I wobbled back to my compartment and slept for over a day.

Accepted wisdom accuses Dr Frankenstein of hubris.

I don't think he was playing G.o.d. I think he was just being a scientist.

Can nuclear technology or genetically engineered parsnips or quantum cognition be 'right' or 'wrong'? The only words for technology is 'here', or 'not here'. The question is, once here, what are we going to do with it?

Dr Frankenstein did a runner, and that was his crime. He left his technology at the mercy of people who did what ignorant humans habitually do: throw stones and scream. If the good Doctor had shown his brainchild how to survive, adapt, and protect itself, all that gothic gore could have been saved, and transplant technology jumpstarted two centuries early.

I see what you're saying, Mo, but how can you teach an engine to recognise right and wrong? To arm itself against abuse?

Look at the black book. If Quancog isn't sentience, give me another name for it.

The telephone rang as I cracked my egg. It was next to John, so he answered. 'Billy?'

John said nothing for a long time.

Bad news.

'Right-o.' He put the receiver down.

I knew it.

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