Her BBC bosses seemed to have taken the attitude that her sudden burst of international fame, albeit tinged with notoriety and linked to a questionable area of science, had added a touch of spice to her image which was not entirely unwelcome. It appeared that they believed her programmes would be all the more popular, and possibly attract a whole new section of the viewing public, in addition to her already established audience.
Her totally out of character behaviour in cancelling filming days at the very last minute was never mentioned again. They had been rescheduled and she was now well into her new series.
But Jones felt that she couldn’t take the RECAP affair any further, even if she still wished to, without doing herself irrevocable damage. And she didn’t see the point. It was over. Surely it was over?
Connie had been totally discredited. It was leaked to the press that she had more or less co-written the worthless paper with Paul Ruders. The full story of her involvement had yet to be revealed, and quite probably never would be. But her scientific standing had plummeted — along sadly with that of the whole consciousness project worldwide, at least temporarily — and Connie Pike was unlikely to work again, either at Princeton, in the unlikely event of RECAP ever being relaunched, or at any other reputable academic establishment. Somewhat to her surprise, Jones found, as the dust began to settle, that she wished the woman no further harm. And she could only imagine how Connie’s relationship with Marion would have suffered.
However, as the days and weeks passed, Jones had also become more and more convinced that she’d missed something. Ultimately it had all been explained in ways that now seemed just a tad too convenient. A little too neat. There was something somewhere that didn’t quite add up. And she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that Connie Pike had not told her everything.
But this time, there really was nothing in the world Sandy Jones could do about it.
Twenty-Two
The previous night the first snow of winter had fallen on Princeton. Connie Pike opened the kitchen door into her little garden at the back and stood for a few moments looking out.
A pale December sun had in places turned the snow the colour of clotted cream, with tinges of blue in the shade. Icicles hanging from the fruit trees shone like white gold. Nobody had yet set foot on the lawn which was covered in a perfect milky white carpet. It was picture book stuff. It was beautiful. It was joyous. But Connie felt no joy. She did not believe she would ever feel joy again.
Her life’s work, was no more. Not for her, at any rate, whatever happened ultimately. After the flawed Ruders paper had been made public, discrediting the entire Global Consciousness Project in general, as well as Connie and Paul in particular, Thomas Jessop and the rest of the Princeton supremacy had swiftly reneged on their pledge to rebuild and reinstate RECAP.
Marion, the woman Connie had loved for twenty-five years, was spending more and more time in her own home. Alone. She had told Connie that she’d forgiven her, that she understood. But Connie knew that wasn’t true. And as she watched Marion struggling to learn to walk on an artificial leg, while coping with the severe pain which still seemed to be almost continual, Connie could hardly blame her.
She so wanted to tell Marion everything. But she didn’t dare. She had unwittingly damaged her partner quite enough. If the whole truth were known it would all begin again. Connie was quite certain of that. And this time the repercussions would surely reverberate worldwide. Many more innocent people could suffer.
Connie took a step outside, walking across the paved area close to her house, the house she was brought up in, and onto the pristine lawn, her rubber boots leaving behind a trail of dark footprints.
She was wearing a shocking pink anorak, lined in orange nylon fur which protruded around the collar and the cuffs, clashing spectacularly with her red hair.
In one green woollen gloved hand she carried a spade. She walked straight to the young apple tree furthest from the house, turned smartly left and took five carefully measured steps towards the now frozen birdbath by the fence. Then she stopped and, quite gently, exploratively, pushed the blade of her spade into the snow.
The snow was still soft, as was the earth beneath it, kept warm by its thick white blanket. But Connie knew that could change any day soon, the snow turn to ice, and the soil beneath it freeze. If she didn’t dig now, it might be weeks, or even months, before she would be able to get a spade into the ground again.
She looked up at the cold blue sky and shivered. She was actually warm inside her pink coat, but she shivered because of all that had happened and the quite monumental decision she had made last summer. A decision which had caused terrible death and destruction, but one she had stuck to throughout, because she was quite sure that what had happened already was nothing compared with what would have happened had she taken a different path.
Not only had she so wanted to tell Marion the truth, she’d also been desperate to tell Sandy Jones. She hated knowing that Sandy now thought so badly of her, although believed it likely the English doctor still wouldn’t have approved of what Connie had done. Nor accepted her reasoning. Sandy was probably too worldly for that. And, in spite of the risks she had taken in speaking out about RECAP, Connie, the explosion, and so on, Sandy Jones was an ambitious woman who would not have taken kindly to any damage that might have been done to her celebrated career.
Sandy would never have been able to keep the secret. She wouldn’t have been able to resist telling the world.
Connie Pike didn’t think the world was ready. She hadn’t thought the world was ready before the lunatics, who did the dirty work for the other lunatics who dared to sit in government offices, had so horrendously confirmed it. After they had ruthlessly blown up half of Princeton’s scientific research block in order to destroy RECAP and murder her and Paul, she’d known that the world wasn’t ready.
Connie didn’t wish to share the destiny of Carl Oppenheimer. Connie did not wish to be a shatterer of worlds. And neither did she want that to be Paul Ruders’ legacy. Paul had been a great humanitarian as well as a genius. And his genius had been such that it had at first risen above the terrible disease of the mind which had so cruelly struck him down.
Indeed the workings of the human mind never failed to amaze Connie, even though she’d spent her entire life studying just that in one way or another. It had been almost as if the early stages of Alzheimer’s had opened up certain areas of Paul Ruders’ mind, even as they’d closed others, and given him a freedom of thought he would not otherwise have had. All along, of course, he’d confided in Connie, shared his discoveries with her, just as he always had. Although she’d kept that a secret too. But as Paul had become more deluded so he’d proceeded to destroy much of his work, while being convinced that he was improving it. And all the while the interest of the outside agencies which Paul must somehow inadvertently have aroused — and Connie still did not know how — grew more and more sinister.
Mikey had approached Connie and Paul quite aggressively, and told them that he knew Paul had produced an effective theory of consciousness, and that he represented government bodies who insisted upon immediate access. For the good of America.
‘If you tell anybody I’ve made this approach it will be all the worse, for you two and for RECAP,’ Mikey had threatened.
Connie hadn’t been afraid of Mikey MacEntee, whom she knew vaguely as Ed’s rather fanciful brother, but she was afraid of the kind of people she suspected he worked for. So she dismissed at once her first instinct, which was to confide in Ed. She didn’t think Mikey MacEntee would harm his own brother. But she feared that his employers might. She feared they might harm almost anyone who got in their way.