“Don’t worry about it—I’m sure you’ve got lots of other qualities.” Prudence leaned forward and, unnecessarily, touched the back of his hand. “I like your sense of humour.”
Ambrose looked closely at her, made wary by his glimpse of the tough-minded, hard-edged person who inhabited such an essentially female body. Prudence’s face had not altered, but he found he could now see it in two different ways, revealing two different characters, as with an op art picture in which shifts of perception changed heights into depths. He was intrigued, impressed and attracted all at once, and for this reason the idea of simply being picked up, used and discarded rankled more than ever.
“What would happen if I refused to chaperone you to Barandi?” he said.
“Why should you refuse?”
“Because you don’t need me.”
“But I explained that I do need you—to fend off undesirables. That’s what chaperones are for.”
“I know, but…”
“Would you abandon any other girl in the same situation?”
“No, but…”
“Then why me?”
“Because I…” Ambrose shook his head, lost for words.
“I’ll tell you why, Doctor Ambrose.” Prudence’s voice was low, but firm. “It’s because I don’t play the old game. You know the one I mean. Every time a helpless female accepts courtesy from a gallant male there’s the implication—even though it’s rarely taken seriously—that, if everything develops favourably, she’ll repay him by making herself available.
Now, I like you, and it’s possible that if we were in Barandi long enough, and you were keen, that we might go to bed together—but it wouldn’t be because you held a door open for me or carried my case on to a plane. Do I make myself clear?”
“Gin clear.” Ambrose swallowed a large portion of his drink. “That’s a British expression, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but feel free to use Americanisms as well. I’ve been around.” Prudence gave him another of her perfect, dizzying, ambiguous smiles.
Ambrose cleared his throat and surveyed the baking landscape outside. “Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
“All right—equality isn’t fair.” Prudence took out another cigarette and accepted a light for it. “Tell me what you’re going to do about these ghosts. Are you going to exorcise them?”
“No exorcism is possible in this case,” Ambrose said soberly.
“Really? You’ve got a theory?”
“Yes—I’m here to check it out.”
Prudence shivered with an excitement Ambrose found gratifying. “Does it explain why they can only be seen with those special glasses? And why they keep rising up and sinking back into the ground again?”
“Hey! You’ve really been paying attention to the news.”
“Of course! Come on—don’t keep me in suspense.”
Ambrose cooled his fingertips on the dewy sides of his glass. “This is a little awkward. You know how an artist doesn’t like anybody to see a painting until it’s finished? Well, scientists are like that with their pet theories. They don’t like making them public until they’ve tied up every loose end.”
“I can understand that,” Prudence was unexpectedly docile. “I’ll look forward to hearing about it on the radio.”
“Ah, hell,” Ambrose said. “What difference does it make? I know I’m right. It’s a bit involved, but I’ll try explaining it to you if you want.”
“Please.” Prudence moved forward on her chair until her knees were touching Ambrose’s.
“You remember Thornton’s Planet?” he said, trying to ignore the distraction. “The so-called ghost world that came near tie Earth about three years ago?”
“I remember the riots -1 was in Ecuador at the time.”
“Everybody remembers the riots, but the thing that sticks in the average physicist’s craw is that Thornton’s Planet was captured by our sun. It’s composed of antineutrino matter and therefore should have gone through the Solar System in a straight line and never been seen again. The fact that it went into orbit upset a lot of people and they’re still trying to dream up whole new sets of interactions to account for it. But the simplest explanation is that inside our sun there’s another one composed of the same kind of matter as Thornton’s Planet. An antineutrino sun inside our hadronic sun.”
Prudence frowned. “Underneath the big words, it sounds as though you’re saying two things can occupy the same space at the same time. Is that possible?”
“In nuclear physics it is. If a field has a flock of sheep in it does that stop you driving in a herd of cows?”
“Please let’s try it without the Will Rogers routine.”
“Sorry—it’s hard to know how far to go with analogies. What I’m saying is that if there’s an antineutrino planet centred on the Earth. Who is Will Rogers?”
“Before your time. Are you serious about this world within a world?”
“Absolutely. It’s slightly smaller than the Earth and that’s why, even if magniluct had been around a long time, we would not know about the inner world. Its surface would normally be many kilometres below our ground level.”
Prudence dropped her unsmoked cigarette into a pedestal ashtray. “And this inner world is inhabited by ghosts.”
“Well, ghosts is a terribly unscientific word, but you’ve got the idea. To the inhabitants of that world we would be ghosts. The big difference is that, because the Earth is bigger, we inhabit their stratosphere—so it’s unlikely they would ever have detected us.”
“So what happened? Was it something to do with…?”
Ambrose nodded. “Thornton’s Planet is composed of the same kind of matter as our inner world, and therefore would have had a strong effect on it. Strong enough to disturb it in its orbit. That’s why the inner world has begun to emerge through the Earth’s surface—the two worlds are steadily separating from each other.” He looked beyond Prudence’s raptj dreaming face and noticed the heat-wavering image of an aircraft on final approach. “I think this is our plane.”
“There’s no need to hurry—besides, you haven’t told me everything.”
Prudence was gazing at him with what seemed to be open admiration. Ambrose found himself reluctant to break the spell of the moment, and yet his memory told him there was another Prudence Devonald, self-interested and pragmatic, who might be playing him along for reasons of her own.
“Are you interested in astronomy?” he said.
“Very much.”
He grinned. “Do you ever say “light years in the future”?”
Prudence gave a good-natured sigh. “Is that your own personal pans asinorum ?”
“I guess so. I’m sorry if I…”
“Don’t apologise, Doctor. Is it enough to say that a light year is a measurement of distance, or do I have to work it out in metres?”
“What else did you want to know?”
“Everything,” Prudence” said. “If there’s an inner world coming out through the Earth, as you say, why do the ghosts keep rising up to where they can be seen and then sinking back down out of sight again?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that.”
“Why? Does it hurt your theory?”
“No—but it’s hard to explain without diagrams. If you draw a circle, then draw another circle inside it and slightly off centre so that they touch at the left side, it will give you an idea of the current relative positions of the two worlds.”
“That seems simple enough.”
“It’s simple because your diagram is static. The fact is that the Earth turns on its axis once every day—and apparently the inner world does the same—so both your circles should be rotating. If you put a mark at the point where they touch, and rotate both circles, you’ll find the mark on the inner circle sinking below the same point on the outer circle. By the time you’ve given both circles a half turn the inner point will have sunk to its maximum distance below the outer point, then if you go on turning they’ll gradually approach each other again. This is why the ghosts have only been sighted around dawn—there’s a twenty-four hour wait for your points to coincide again.”