The Stolen (39 page)

‘I'm curious to see whether there are any superconductive qualities. If there are, once I cool the metal down to thirty-nine kelvin with liquid nitrogen' – he bent down to switch on the liquid nitrogen – ‘and a Meissner effect kicks in, all resistance will fall away. The current will flow unencumbered and the magnet will react to the metal by —'

‘Matthias! It's reacting already.' Helen was staring into the cabinet. ‘That can't be normal.'

He peered in; the magnet was floating over the fragment by a good ten centimetres.

‘Jesus Christ,' he murmured under his breath, not daring to believe the reality of what he was witnessing. ‘It's just not possible.' He glanced at the controls – they were at zero. The temperature in the cabinet was SRT – standard room temperature. His stomach went into free-fall. ‘Helen, please confirm the magnet is hovering above the metal fragment.' He struggled to keep the sheer excitement out of his voice.

‘It's hovering,' she confirmed, uncertain what this actually meant. ‘That's good, isn't it?'

‘Good? We may be witnessing history on a scale that's unimaginable.'

A Polaroid camera lay on a table nearby. He took a photograph of the experiment, making sure the reading on the temperature dial was in shot then waited as the single photograph printed slowly out of the camera. He waved it in the air to dry it then peeled off the cover. There it was, caught by the camera, hard evidence. Trying to control his shaking hand he scribbled the date and the temperature – eighteen degrees Celsius – on the back to verify the occasion. He looked at the floating magnet. Hovering above the fragment, it was now revolving slowly.

‘Astonishing,' he whispered, as if a raised voice might break the spell and the experiment would come crashing down.

‘Matthias, what exactly are we witnessing?' Helen, now caught up in his rapture, murmured.

‘History,' he answered. Holding his breath, he opened the cabinet as slowly as he could, terrified that the magnet might fall with one clumsy jolt. But it stayed in mid-air, suspended like a cheap magician's trick. Still not quite believing his eyes, Matthias put his hand into the cabinet to confirm the temperature; to his extreme joy it was exactly the same as in the room. It was then that he allowed himself a huge shout of delight.

‘What just happened?' Helen exclaimed, astounded by his reaction. In response he picked her up and whirled her around, her frame surprisingly light in his arms.

‘The Holy Grail just happened, the fucking Holy Grail!'

 

 

Dawn was just beginning to streak up into the sky as the caretaker stamped the snow from his boots, before unbolting the door of the church. Anxious to finish his cleaning duties quickly and get back to the warmth of his basement apartment, the old man grabbed the broom from behind the altar and headed to the crypt where he always began.

It was pitch dark as he descended the narrow stone stairwell, his foot feeling for the edge of each step. At the bottom his fingers found the switch on the wall and in seconds the chamber was flooded with light. But before he'd even stepped onto the flagstones he knew something about the crypt had changed; he had lived his life in such spaces and was attuned to their individual silences. He had learned that a distinct vibration marks a room, and now, straining his hearing, he listened. The vibration here had been changed, had been violated. Without moving he glanced around for anything that indicated a disturbance. The tombs with their sleeping figures appeared intact. Nevertheless the caretaker remained wary as he started to sweep the floor; it was only when he reached the far corner and was resting for a moment beside the tall altar candles that he felt the greatest disquiet. He looked at the candles. The wicks, normally pristine, were blackened with soot and pools of wax had solidified around the base of each one as if they'd been burning for hours.

It took him five minutes to reach the telephone in the small ticket office behind the entrance door, another ten to reach the man he'd been instructed to call if ever there was such an invasion – he was not happy to hear from him.

 

 

Matthias glanced at his watch. Six. He'd sent Helen home despite her protests and he'd now gone without sleep for over twenty-four hours, his nerves pulled taut – his whole physique and psyche gripped by exhilaration. The statuette's alloy was superconductive at room temperature. He was sure of it: he'd tested and retested, each time meticulously recording the result. He'd even tested the fragment at twenty-nine kelvin just to see whether, ironically, it retained superconductivity at very low temperatures. To his utter amazement it had the opposite reaction – superconductivity fell away at thirty-nine kelvin, the traditional point when all other material he'd ever worked with underwent the Meissner effect. It was as if the world had shifted on its axis and he was now living in some parallel universe: the father he thought he had was not his father, the laws of physics he'd studied were now completely usurped. It was both wildly liberating and wildly disturbing.

A row of empty coffee cups and two empty cans of Coca-Cola, the debris of a sleepless night, watched like disapproving sentries. The whole process had taken over six hours and tremendous patience as he painstakingly prepared the samples despite trembling fingers. Initially he'd run the sample under a scanning electron microscope to examine the surface qualities of the material – it was a mineral he'd never seen before, neither in a compound nor in an ore. Dumbfounded, and fighting the sheer adrenalin of discovery, he'd prepared another sample for the next stage of research – to examine the atomic structure of the material under an X-ray diffractometer. This machine used X-rays to illuminate the atomic structure – whereas the electrons used in the microscope only illuminated the surface structure.

It was the diffraction pattern of the atomic structure that he was now staring at on a square of photographic film, absolutely captivated.
I feel like the first man on an unknown planet
, he told himself, scarcely daring to breathe, the atomic landscape of the material stretching out in front of him like an exotic landscape that was both stunningly beautiful and utterly alien. A lattice of atoms composed of chains, some of them double – some of them even treble – it was the most delicate of structures, sounding out in his head as a tune – a filigree of descant notes reminiscent of Gluck's ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits' he couldn't help thinking. But one thing was obvious: he'd never seen anything like it anywhere – not in a compound, not in any known element.

‘Matthias?' Jannick's voice jolted him from his reverie. He immediately swung round in his chair, masking the image of the sample on the desk, his mind racing madly as he tried to compose himself. Jannick, still wrapped in his winter coat, his cheeks and nose nipped red with the cold outside, began pulling his coat off.

‘Mind telling me where you've been these last few days?' the Dane asked, a note of suspicion in his voice. ‘I've hardly seen you and it's been really challenging keeping everything running smoothly.'

‘I told you I had to go to Germany.'

‘So you said, but I thought you'd at least call. When did you get in this morning?'

‘Eight last night,' Matthias lied.

Jannick put his briefcase down onto his desk, wondering why Matthias was screening his microscope. ‘You look terrible. When was the last time you slept?'

‘Wednesday, I think,' Matthias replied, half of his brain telling him to keep the discovery a secret until he absolutely had a proven case, while the other half argued that it was so unbelievable, so preposterous that he desperately needed another scientist's verification he wasn't going crazy. All he knew was that if he was correct, it would explain how the material was superconductive at room temperature.

‘Matthias, it's Friday morning. Must be a hell of an experiment to work on all night; something I should know?'

‘I'm not sure. It's all a little premature and I just want to make sure…' His words stumbled over each other, the guilt of withholding information undermining his natural authority.

‘I'm your partner, for Christ's sake. If you can't trust me who can you trust? Besides, I might be able to help.' Jannick's gaze turned to the worktop, where the sample slides were glinting in the sunlight now streaming in from the window.

‘Are you studying some new compound?'

‘It's a mineral I came across, don't ask me how, and it's like nothing I've ever seen before. I have a hypothesis as to what it might be.'

‘Would you like me to take a look for you?'

‘You are better at recognising these things than me,' Matthias admitted a little ruefully as he stepped aside, exposing the image lying on the desk. The Dane peered down, then fished his glasses out from his breast pocket and moved closer to the image.

‘Looks like a silicate, yet it doesn't…' Jannick sounded guarded. Matthias studied him: he didn't want the young Danish physicist to know exactly what he'd stumbled upon, at least not yet.

‘Exactly where would you find a brand new silicate?' Matthias ventured carefully.

‘Not easy. I thought all the possibilities had been discovered, at least on Earth that is…' Now Jannick swung back to him. ‘You must have tested this for superconductivity?'

Ignoring the question Matthias stared at him, a sudden epiphany shooting through him like a blast of light. Sky metal, holy metal, metal from heaven – wasn't that what the Rom called it? Extra-terrestrial – it had to be.

‘Well, have you?' Jannick insisted.

Again, Matthias chose not to reply. Instead he elbowed Jannick out of the way and looked back down at the image. There was only one way this had reached the Earth.

‘Jannick, you're a genius,' he announced, slapping the Dane on the back, then started to pack papers into his briefcase.

‘Where are you going?' Jannick demanded. Ignoring him, Matthias grabbed his jacket, swept the glass slides into his pocket, then turned to pick up the statuette, its surface sparkling under the sunlight. As he turned to the window he was distracted by the sight of Latcos waiting by his Chevy outside the laboratory.

‘Matthias! Is that statue made of the same material that's on the slide?' Jannick's voice pulled him back into the laboratory.

‘Maybe.'

‘Maybe? Then you can't just walk out with it. It's incredibly valuable.'

‘I know, that's why I have to find an astrochemist. Have fun,' he finished, grinning like a madman, then slammed the door behind him, the thump resounding around the laboratory.

Furious, Jannick ran his gaze across the work table, then noticed the Polaroid photograph. Walking over, he picked it up. It was the standard reportage of an experiment testing superconductivity – the floating magnet over the testing material – but the temperature reading clearly visible on the cooling-unit display – eighteen degrees Celsius – made him gasp out loud. He picked up the telephone and started dialling a number, his fingers shaking with excitement.