‘Good morning, Priscilla. Did you have a good weekend?’
She gave him a frosty stare and the typing stuttered to a halt. ‘Professor Kavanagh wants to see you right away,’ she said with a malicious smirk.
Trouble. He went into the small office marked Dr Tom Petrie, switched on his computer, draped his sodden jacket over a radiator and wiped his spectacles dry.
• A conference announcement: New Ideas in Quantum Cryptography, to be held in Palermo in the summer. Save.
• A message from the Hun: three work-placement students arrive next week. You have been assigned to supervise them. Delete.
• A paper from a Sheffield colleague: A Symplectic Approach to Chaos. Print.
• Another message from the Hun, this one heavy with menace: you are three weeks overdue with your coffee money. Delete.
• Buy your Viagra here! Discounts for bulk orders. Delete.
• A lengthy message from a Brazilian he’d never heard of: I have proved the Goldbach conjecture. A crackpot. Delete.
The morning’s e-mail done, he pulled a heap of papers out of his rucksack and spread them over his desk. Rain had seeped through the damp canvas and some of the sheets were almost illegible.
This isn’t a good day, he told himself.
Having delayed as long as he dared, he left the office, walked reluctantly along the corridor and knocked nervously at a door.
‘Come.’
The office was large, dark and smelled of stale cigarettes. The man behind the desk was near-bald, brown-suited with a trim moustache. The air of disapproval was a permanent feature; Petrie thought it might come with the moustache. A golf bag propped up against a bookcase reminded Petrie that this was Monday.
‘Have you finished the PRTLI bid yet?’
Petrie’s stomach flumped. ‘I had intended to get it done this weekend.’
Actually, the intention only formed as he spoke; the assignment had gone completely out of his mind. Three nights ago, he had wakened up in the early hours of the morning with the solution — or just possibly the solution — to a long-standing paradox in quantum theory dancing in his head. Even the title of the paper had floated in front of him: Quantum Entanglement and the Measure of Time. As the dream-image began to fade he had jumped out of bed to write it down before it vanished for ever. In the gun-metal light of the winter morning, on a kitchen table cluttered with last night’s takeaway and boxes of cereal, he had read through his pencilled scrawl and it still looked good. The outcome was feverish work, day and night, to write up a paper before the competition got there.
Kavanagh was talking; Petrie was hauled back to the present. ‘… expecting to see it on my desk by this afternoon.’
‘It’s not needed for a week.’
‘Thank you for reminding me, although I was aware of the fact. Shall we say four o’clock?’ The bald head went down to a paper.
‘What’s the time?’
Kavanagh glanced at his watch automatically and then looked up, lips puckered. He adopted a curt voice to demonstrate his irritation. ‘The time, Petrie? It’s perhaps time you took your responsibilities to the Department seriously. Unless the PRTLI exercise delivers a top grade, our funding could suffer a serious cut.’
The Professor’s telephone rang.
‘I’ve written four papers in the last year, any one of which could bump us up to the top.’ And you haven’t written one in twenty years, you old hypocrite.
Kavanagh lifted the telephone. His eyes strayed to the young man, lines of disapproval giving way to a surprised frown. He handed the receiver over.
Priscilla. Her voice muffled, a mixture of heavy cold and awe. ‘Dr Petrie, the Provost wishes to speak to you. Hold the line.’
Kavanagh tried to be subtle, leaning forward to catch both ends of the conversation, but Petrie — by accident or design the Professor knew not — leaned back in his chair, putting the Provost’s words just out of hearing.
‘Sir John? Petrie here … Yes, sir … No, nothing that can’t wait. I have no lecturing commitments … Yes, I have, Provost, it’s my field … The Royal Society … I’ll come straight over.’ He handed the receiver back, paused briefly. ‘I have to see the Provost.’
Kavanagh put the receiver down, pursing his lips once more. ‘Well, well, the Provost. You do move in exalted circles, Petrie.’
It was a sweet moment. Petrie stood up. ‘I’d better get going.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’d better. We can’t keep Sir John waiting. Are you able to tell me what this is about?’
‘Afraid not, Professor.’ Petrie closed the door harder than was necessary.
Petrie had rarely been in the Admin. building and never in the vicinity of the Provost’s office. He trotted briskly across the quadrangle, entered the vast marble atrium and ran up broad stairs into a maze of corridors. A thin, elderly man was emerging from a toilet.
‘Where’s the Provost’s office?’
‘Straight ahead and first left.’
At the door marked Office of the Provost Petrie paused, brushed his wet hair back and then gave a tentative knock. He found himself in an outer office facing a surprisingly young woman with short wavy hair and a cheerful smile. She tapped on an inner door and waved Petrie into a room about twice the size of his Dublin flat.
The Provost looked somehow smaller and less imposing than when Tom had last seen him, swathed in academic gown and hoods, at a degree-awarding ceremony. At the side of the Provost’s desk, on a high-backed chair, sat a man Petrie had never seen before. He was thin, urbane, fortyish and had Civil Service, UK style, written all over him, from the Balliol College tie, with its discreet lion rampant crest, to the well-cut grey suit. A careful man rather than a brilliant one, Petrie judged; someone whose career comprised a predictable, steady progression up the promotion ladder.
The Provost motioned Petrie to an easy chair and looked at him curiously over metal-rimmed spectacles. ‘Dr Petrie, thank you for popping over. I dare say you’re wondering what this is all about.’
‘The PRTLI?’
‘What?’ The Provost looked surprised. ‘No, no, this isn’t a university matter at all.’
Petrie waited, mystified and nervous. The Provost’s companion, he noted, was going unintroduced. Behind the man’s brief smile, Petrie felt that he was being, somehow, assessed.
The man said, ‘I can’t tell you what this is about, Dr Petrie, because I don’t know myself.’
‘Right.’ So do we just sit here?
‘I’m just a message boy, you see.’
Petrie nodded. A message boy with a white silk shirt and Gucci cufflinks. The man continued: ‘It’s a request, really. Can you spare a few days to give some advice to Her Majesty’s Government?’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know.’
In spite of the intimidating surroundings, Petrie laughed. ‘Okay. Where do we go from here?’
The Balliol man said, ‘It involves some foreign travel. To Vienna, I do know that.’
Vienna!
The Provost was leaning back in his chair, looking at Petrie thoughtfully. ‘Is there a problem, Dr Petrie?’
‘No, sir, I’m just thinking. My field is a bit off the beaten track.’
The Provost opened a buff folder in front of him. ‘Yes, it does seem rather abstruse.’ He peered at a sheet of paper. ‘What does it say here? Non-periodic tiling algorithms and unbreakable codes.’ The tone wasn’t altogether approving and Petrie wondered what Kavanagh had written in the annual confidential report.