The research cruise. Part 3
(3/4) Stable geniuses
[Navigation station: here’s Part 1 and Part 2 of this story. For lots of other stories, here’s a great big Table of Contents.]
At breakfast Pete asked the science journalist Harrison Bottleneck how to arrange a meeting with the Nobel Prize winners, if necessary under the pretext of investing in a new jacuzzi.
“I'm interviewing Professor Stu Potts today. You can come along.”
“What did he discover?”
“Some biology genetics bla bla stuff. I have a blurb on him somewhere.”
“You don't remember?”
“No-one remembers. Now he's most famous for his proof that the universe was created by God.”
“Isn’t he a biologist?”
“He used to be a biologist. Now he's a celebrity.”
Pete trailed Harrison through the security checks at a succession of doors and elevators, but once he had made it into the first class forward deck he decided that he had no interest in speaking to a scientist whose own personal ship had gone entirely adrift, and broke away to try some other cabins.
At the first door he tried he was confident he could hear muffled thrash metal from the other side, which stopped abruptly when he knocked, but there was no answer. He knocked again, and thought he heard some clinking and scuffling, but still no answer. After his third attempt he was about to walk away when a voice called out, “Who is it?”
“I would like to talk about your research. I'm an investor.”
“Go away.”
Pete looked up and down the corridor to make sure there were no witnesses to what he was about to say. “I'm told you need a new jacuzzi.”
“An Uzi? You idiot! I wish I had an Uzi right now!”
“Not an Uzi. A jacuzzi! A hot tub.”
“Fuck off, you nut!”
It seems that there were witnesses after all: further down the corridor a cabin door flew open and a lanky old man loped out into the middle of the corridor in one huge step, like a sausage dog on stilts.
“Are you talking about my jacuzzi?”
“Yes!” cried Pete. If this was what he needed to do to get information, then fine. He strode up the corridor towards the elongated man, with his arms out and a huge grin on his face, the very model of a travelling jacuzzi salesman.
Now the first door cracked open and a bristly face popped out. “Don't talk to that scoundrel. It's my research you want to hear about!”
Pete stopped half way between the two cabins, unsure in which direction to move.
Mr Stilts closed the gap in two strides and put a long bony arm around Pete's shoulders. “Ignore him. He's never had an original idea in his life.”
Pete looked back at the face at the door, which had expanded into an entire person filling the doorway. The person who stood there had once been a huge man, hairy and bearded and vast and formidable, like a grizzly bear on its hind legs, but in old age had shrivelled severely, so that what was left was still large, but encased in a sagging wrinkled sack of skin, like a gigantic prune. Or a testicle.
“Didn't you both win Nobel Prizes?” Pete asked.
“We won the same Nobel prize!” growled Shrivelled Bear.
Stilts pulled Pete back towards his cabin. “I won half. He shared only a quarter with another charlatan.”
Shrivelled Bear's voice was a croaky relic of something that must once have boomed. “I was robbed!” It was obvious that he wanted to follow them but didn't dare leave the safety of his cabin. “I was the one who did the real science. All he did was mount an obscene public relations campaign. You'll see! My latest results will prove which of us is the true genius.”
Pete pulled away from Stilts and made it a few steps back towards Shrivelled Bear before two nightmarishly long arms got hold of him. “What results?” he managed to ask.
“I'm not telling you in front of that thief.”
“Don't listen to him. He's a hack. You want to hear about my work!”
“Ok. What do you work on?”
Stilts released Pete so that he could stretch himself up to his full height, which was actually possible due to the luxury cruise ship Sabine’s high ceilings. “I have spent the last decade corroborating my findings, which constitute an astounding breakthrough.”
Pete was duly impressed. “What is it?”
“Come inside and I'll tell you. There are unscrupulous ears out here.”
“He's got nothing!” roared Shrivelled Bear, whose voice was recovering some of its old resonance in the furnace of his anger. “He's going to tell you that he's revolutionised our understanding of gravity.”
“You fiend! You've been spying on me!”
“You tell everyone you meet, until they run away laughing.”
“But it's true! I have revolutionised our understanding of gravity!”
“Oh yeah? And is it also true that you can levitate?”
“Yes! Yes I can!”
Pete's eyes boggled, and he backed quickly away while Stilts was distracted. He rushed to Shrivelled Bear's door, and the once-great man retreated with impressive speed back into his cabin with Pete close behind. Shrivelled Bear slammed the door. Moments later there was a dull pounding at the door, and cries of, “I can prove it! I can prove it!”
“You clown!” growled Shrivelled Bear. “You should have worked out how to walk through walls instead.”
Then he turned to Pete, with his bristly face stretched into a wide smile. “So. Do you want to hear my new theories?”
Ten hours later Pete slumped into a chair in the sumptuous dining room. Tonight at least he was not so thoroughly shunned. Also at the table were the journalist Harrison Bottleneck and the suddenly thoroughly loyal economically upwardly mobile scientist Hans Groper.
“So?” asked Harrison. “What was his theory?”
“It took me four hours to get out of his cabin. And only because that other looney was banging on the door for the first three of them.”
Hans was a shrewd monitor of time. “What have you been doing since then?”
“Word must have spread. I was besieged by Nobelists. They all wanted to tell me their discoveries. And why they are under appreciated. And why they should have got the prize alone. And how much they hate each other. They're all mad!”
“But what about the first guy? Ignatius Poop.”
“His name is Poop?”
“You can imagine the headlines when he won. What was his theory?”
“After everything I've heard, it might be the most reasonable thing I was told all day. He just thinks evolution is wrong. As crackpottery goes, it's rather mainstream and dull.”
“What about the others?”
“Where do I start? Spoon bending. Clairvoyance. Contact with alien civilisations. A doomsday bomb. There was even some guy who spent two hours telling me how the Big Bang spawned an infinity of other universes. I'm amazed I got out alive.”
Bottleneck looked nervous. “I might have written a serious popular science article about one of those.”
Pete banged the table. “Is there any legitimate science anywhere on this ship?”
Hans shrugged. “Like I said before. Your best chances are the seismic isolation deck, or the Welsh whizz kid. But you'll never find him.”
“You mean because they're doing secret medical experiments on him?”
“Exactly.”
“This place is nothing but hype and rumours. If I wanted to find out what was going on here I'd be better off talking to the people on the pirate ship.”
Bottleneck and Groper exchanged worried glances. “Oh no, don't do that. We must never make contact with them.”
“Oh for God's sake! Why not?”
“They can't know where we are. It would be extremely dangerous.”
“Come on! Between the deadly viruses and the medical experiments and the sex dungeons, and the pirates in hot pursuit, you're nothing but a bunch of conspiracy theorists.”
“You haven't tried contacting them, have you?”
“No, of course not!” Pete retreated behind his cocktail. “And what harm would it do if I did?”
“They could identify the location of this ship.”
“That's ridiculous! I use state of the art encryption. There’s no way they could track the origin of my emails.” To their boggled stares he added, “Not that I sent one, of course.”
“I hope you're telling the truth,” said Hans.
“Or just that you're right,” said Harrison.
“Of course I'm right,” said Pete.
At that moment the ship lurched. Exactly as if it had been struck by another vessel.
Oh dear. I hope you haven’t forgotten the little teaser from the very beginning of Part 1. The final exciting episode, where not only will the story be concluded but, at last, something may actually happen, is just a click away: Part 4.