Part 37 (1/2)

'That was Billy, phoning from The Drum and Monkey in Baltimore. There are three Americans who look like The Blues Brothers coming over. The St Fachtna St Fachtna has developed some mysterious engine trouble, so won't be coming back this morning, but he's got to come back this evening. Danny Waite's low on insulin, and there's more rough weather for the rest of the week.' has developed some mysterious engine trouble, so won't be coming back this morning, but he's got to come back this evening. Danny Waite's low on insulin, and there's more rough weather for the rest of the week.'

A sharp spade cut through the earth, roots, peat and pebbles.

'Ma,' Liam was gripping my forearm. 'We've got to get you away!'

Planck started barking. There was a bang on the door. Was it beginning now?

Liam led me through into the back. 'Who's there?'

'Brendan Mickledeen!'

The door opened. What a feverish farce the morning was turning into. Brendan was out of breath. Air from outside, sweet and sharp. 'Mo, Billy told me the Yanks have come. We can get you on Roisin's boat to Schull. From there my sister-in-law can drive you to Ballydehob. After that-'

I held up my hand. 'How how does everyone know about this?'

It was a shock to hear Brendan raise his voice. 'Clear Island looks after its own! McDermott's boat is waiting! There's not time to squabble about who told who what.'

I imagined it, peering into that possible reality. I would start running now, a journey of peering through taxi windows, raised newspapers, lowered umbrellas, up to Belfast maybe. And then what? Overseas again, if I can get that far, to some cheap country, all the while carrying the only extant blueprint for New Earth's computer.

What path through the park brought you here, Mo?

It had become very quiet.

John cleared his throat. 'It's time to decide, love. What are you going to do?'

'Brendan, thank you. But I cannot outrun the Pentagon using the Republic of Ireland's public transport. I came back to face the music. That's what I'm going to do.'

Brendan took out his asthma ventilator, shook it and inhaled. 'Gabriel, me and the boys are ready to show the Yanks what we're made of.'

I could pop with all the fear, irritation and love. 'There's going to be no fighting and no running.'

Liam frowned. 'Then what are you going to do, Ma?'

I hoped I sounded braver than I felt. 'Pack.'

Quantum Physics speaks in chance, with the syntax of uncertainty. You can know the position of an electron but you cannot know where it's going, or where it is by the time you register the reading. John went blind. Or you can know its direction, but you cannot know its position. Heinz Formaggio at Light Box read my Belfast papers and offered me a job. The particles in the atoms of the brain of that young man who pulled me out of the path of the taxi in London were configured so that he was there, and able to, and willing to. Even the most complete knowledge of a radioactive atom will not tell you when it will decay. I don't know when the Texan will be here. Nowhere does the microscopic world stop and the macroscopic world begin.

Liam had to stoop under the roof beams of John's bedroom. Our bedroom. I remembered the first day he managed to get up the stairs on his own, a.r.s.e-first, step by step, his face like Edmund Hillary's.

'Liam?'

'Your wart's gone, Ma.'

'Well, so it has. Isn't that something?'

'Ma! You can't just go without a fight.'

'That is why I have to go. To stop fighting.'

'But you said that Quancog will accelerate warfare by fifty years.'

'That was half a year ago, at Light Box. I think I underestimated.'

'I don't get it.'

The black book lay on the dresser. 'What if Quancog were powerful ethical enough to ensure that technology could no longer be abused? What if Quancog could act as a kind of... zookeeper?'

'I don't understand. Where would that take it?'

The men were arguing in the kitchen below.

'In five hundred years we are going to be either extinct, or... something better. Technology has outstripped our capacity to look after it. But, suppose I suppose Quancog could ensure that technology looked after itself, and-' Christ, what was this sounding like? 'Liam, is your ma a complete madwoman?'

Between here and the strand a flock of sheep were all bleating at once. Liam's face hung still as a portrait's. The beginning of a smile went as soon as it came. 'What's to stop them taking the black book and elbowing you out of the picture?' Liam is a bright kid.

'Ah yes. The black book.'

Red Kildare's Norton thundered down the drive and skidded to a halt in the yard. Heisenberg squawked and flew up to his perch on the telegraph pole.

'It's Red,' said John. 'He'll have come to milk Feynman.'

Red Kildare walked into the kitchen. 'They found you then, Mo! Any chance of a cuppa?'

'Does every last soul on Clear know about my contretemps with the Americans?'

'Island secrets are hidden from mainlanders, but never from the islanders,' quoted Red, offering us all a sherbet bomb. 'Shouldn't worry. All Yanks think they can buy anything. They probably just want to raise their offer.'

John sighed. 'I may be blind as a stone, Red, but if you think that these people want only to chat about job perks then compared to you, I am the Hubble Telescope.'

Red shrugged, and popped in a sherbet bomb. 'In that case, it's hailing pigs.h.i.+t on Mo. And when it's hailing pigs.h.i.+t, there's but one thing to do.'

'What?' asked Liam.

'Go to The Green Man and have a drink'

'That's the best idea I've heard all morning,' I said.

'I can hear Father Wally's tricycle,' said John.

Father Wally came in and sat down, panting. 'Mo,' he said, trying to understand a world too muddled for his vision. 'This is tantamount to kidnap! You've committed no crime! How did all of this come about?'

Take any two electrons or, in Dr Bell and my case, photons that originate from a common source, measure and combine their spins, and you will get zero. However far away they are: between John and me, between Okinawa and Clear Island, or between the Milky Way and Andromeda: if one of the particles is spinning down, then you know that that other is spinning up. You know it now! You don't have to wait for a light-speed signal to tell you. Phenomena are interconnected regardless of distance, in a holistic ocean more voodoo than Newton. The future is reset by the tilt of a pair of polarised sungla.s.ses. 'The simultaneity of the ocean, Father Wally.'

'I don't believe I'm altogether following you, Mo.'

'Father, Red, Brendan... could I have a couple of moments with John and Liam alone?'

'Aye, Mo, of course. We'll wait for you at the end of the drive.'

'I'm going to be so lonely without you two.'