— No, sir.
— No, no, I thought not. Though one never knows. I don’t imagine you chose to come back either. Dear me, these doctors keep one alive far too long, so tiresome for promotion, when one has played out one’s genius I mean. Of course I could retire, no doubt he thinks I should. D’you think I should, Laurence?
— No, sir.
— Hmm. In the old days one died before retirement age, of pneumonia, influenza, anything could do it. What did you die of, Laurence?
— My heart stopped, sir. I mean, forgive me, during an operation. They opened me up quickly there and massaged it, so they told me, but in vain. Apparently.
— Ah yes, indeed. I have no memory for physiological detail these days, despite my own ailments, or perhaps on account of trying to forget them. Dear me, how did we get on to this, most unscientific, ah yes, Dekko.
— I don’t know the way to his heart.
— No. No. He does wrap it up, rather. How shall we peel away those outer layers of atmosphere, Laurence?
— Perhaps, well, through recognition. A little recognition can do a lot for a man with a wife and three children.
— Not to mention, yes, well. Couldn’t you, perhaps, with your unsettling eyes, decoy the blonde?
— No, sir.
— No, I thought not. And nor, of course, can I. Pity that Stance … a most unmathematical man, balancing things the wrong way about. Well, well. Recognition, yes. Though recognition usually adds further layers to people. But how can we recognise him, Laurence? I’ve tried praise at every turn, even when I disagree, but he absorbs it straight into those tight layers of his and gives nothing out. Besides his work falls off.
— Do you say that because –
— he disagrees with me? I’ve thought of that, Laurence, I have, believe me. I have no illusions about my age. Infinite space exhausts me. Look at my eyes, I’ve worn them out with listening.
— I know.
— Of course we could secretly brain-drain him to the States, but so far they have put out no tentative feelers even, let alone tempting offers, except to me, and I don’t want to start a second life. Would you, Laurence?
— No, sir.
— No. Of course not. Why, I’d need three separate lives to catch up, and then what would I do?
— What will he do, Something?
— You may well ask, my boy, you may well ask. How did we get on to this, most unscientific, oh yes, Dekko. How shall we recognise him, Laurence? We must devise a way.
I don’t know how to reach him. As one of my ex-patients who assumes that analysis consists of sitting dumbly with the analyst, feeding him no items and then giving up, your kind, of science doesn’t work, says Dr Dekko. He doesn’t tell his wife about the tentative feelers and the tempting offers he receives after all to drain his brain across the ocean, or anyone, least of all me. He keeps them tight in those close-knit meridians that do not fluctuate one inch into any wavering outlines. Yet something emanates out of his small corona in the mad morse of neural cells that reject in every cycle of his undrained brain the one decoying premiss as it blocks with irrelevance the programming of both his ambition and his loyalty. So that he starts again, feeding the items of his desires, disgorging their binary arithmetic on wide white sheets of hope except for the one item of his wife’s own chemistry now galled by the banality of the same untender story with the mixture not quite as before owing to the presence of plump affronted virtue. My wife? Well, what about her?
— Wouldn’t she like to get away, to go to America? Have you asked her?
— What do you mean? Who said anything about going to America?
— Surely you’ve had offers. All the scientists do. Especially since –
— Since what, Laurence?
— Well, since the Theory.
— THE Theory, you call it. Whose theory?
— Oh, come off it, Tim.
— Our theory. Yes, team-work, Head called it on television. I noticed he mentioned no names.
— Names, what do names matter?
— Ah, the anonymous greater glory of science.
— My dear Tim, the television people can’t clog the public with a lot of names, except for Tell-Star and such.
— Just because you have to appear anonymously on programmes in your field –
— But surely you don’t think the brief subliminal flash of names under your episodic image remains for one moment in the public mind? You have your name on the technical stuff.
— Yes. At least some people know who does the work around here.
— Smile, Tim, smile.
— What good will that do me? I work all round the clock as Head gets more and more dotty and turns pop-scientist –
— And takes all the credit, you mean.
— Credit must circulate. Otherwise energy falls off.
— And in no time at all you have no shocks, no movement and no life.
— Oh, stop quoting Head’s obiter dicta at me. You know nothing about it, Laurence, they have no relevance at all.
— You don’t like him much, do you Tim?
— Of course I like him. I … I used to admire him enormously, who wouldn’t. When I first came here, and even long before, I thought of him as a, yes, as a god, a giant among intellects, I mean, why, his work as a young man, well, you wouldn’t understand, but –
— But scientific genius gets played out at forty? Do you believe that, Tim. Do you … fear it?
— Of course not. Head went from strength to strength, and so will I. And so will you, Laurence, in your own queer field, well, I mean, when you get your vigour back.
— Only you don’t think I will?
— I didn’t say that. These things take time. Everyone knows a serious illness affects the metabolism of the brain, at first I mean.
— As does old age in the end?
— But Laurence, you can’t call yourself old.
— I meant Professor Head.
— So you’ve got it all lined up. You brain-drain me away so that your wife has a nice clear field all to herself as Head dodders into retirement. But she’ll have to show a bit of brilliance, you great innocent. Stop spying on me, Laurence, stick to your more naïve, less empirically minded patients. Yes, yes, I see, what does my wife think, wouldn’t she like, oh Laurence, you great clumsy oaf.
I have heard this conversation in waves that run backwards through time, I even seem to supply the words and their internal combustion pushes them along though I don’t do the steering. We make the bumps as we go and leave them on the road like horse-power waste as the little orange lights flicker on the control-panel, over Erase, Next Instruction, Uninhibit, One-shot-trigger and things like that, which flicker in Dekko’s eyes while his mouth dips a little and he apologises, I get so tired, he says.
— I know, Tim. I know. You do work hard. I only meant, about your wife, she might want to get away from, well, have you talked to her at all, Tim, have you asked her? I mean, perhaps more than just scientific facts come into it.
— You think you know a lot, don’t you?
— Not in your field, Tim, of course.
— Yes well, I admit, I mean I agree, that scientific facts, as our admin friend would say, never hurt anyone. Only when –
— People –
— Yes. People. Sometimes I think you read right into me, Laurence. I get frightened by your eyes. Not frightened exactly, but, unsettled, shall we say. They’ve got so big. They look as if they might come right out of your head on long stalks, and yet they stay deep sunk. Do you take drugs or something?
— I seem to live backwards, or rather, part of me, my ears and eyes, as if their atoms consisted of anti-matter. I realise this makes no scientific sense.
— It has no physical meaning. I mean even in theory you’d cancel them out or if not you then other matter.