chapter forty‑one

"Ahoy there, you on the ground, are you all right?"

Andrew looked up, spat out a couple of leaves and a beetle, which his lung‑bursting gasps had sucked into his mouth, and rose wearily to his feet. He spent some time peering into the woodland behind him, but there was no sign of his pursuers.

Sitting amongst the trees behind a large designer's easel was an elderly man; he was chewing a pen and regarding Andrew quizzically. All round, in the crook of every tree, were rolled up pieces of blue paper.

"I'm okay now," said Andrew walking over to join the man, "I was having a nightmare."

"Ah yes," nodded the man, "there are a frightful number of those around here; that's why I don't get too many visitors."

"Must be very lonely for you."

"Oh it's not too bad, I have my work, you know. Work is a tremendous ally in the battle against boredom."

"Really?" said Andrew, who'd never found work an ally against anything. "What line of work are you in?"

"I'm a designer," said the man tapping his pen on the blue‑print in front of him. "Actually, not to put too fine a point on it, I'm the designer."

"Aha," said Andrew, "I was hoping I'd run into you."

"Before you go any further," said the man holding up his hand, as if directing traffic, "I simply must tell you that I don't make changes, it doesn't matter what you say, I positively refuse to do them."

"Oh, pity ... well what are you working on now?"

"Corrections, corrections of corrections and more corrections," said the man shaking his head sadly. "It's those damn Physicists always delving deeper and deeper. Of course, I don't include Newton in that, he was a great man, he knew where to stop. Do you know what he said?"

"Ouch?"

"After that."

"Um ... Eureka?"

"No, that was somebody else. He said that it wasn't worth messing around with atoms because they were so small you could never see them. Or words to that effect. But then these young physicists come poking around with their theories and their high‑energy particles, and they manage to prove that there must be something even smaller than the atom, so, I have to go back to work. I gave them protons, neutrons and electrons, three brand new particles. But was that good enough for them? Oh no, they wanted more and more, smaller and smaller."

"But if they couldn't see these things how did they know they existed?"

"Good question. I like your simple way of thinking. Action and reaction, that's what they're into. They look at things they can see and try to guess what kind of invisible thing would cause that visible thing to behave the way it does."

"I still don't understand."

"Well, consider this analogy. You have, what you think is, an invisible box of matches, but you can't see it so you don't know for sure. You give the box of matches to an invisible man, whom you also can't see but you know, from previous experiments, that he can hear you. You then tell the man to travel overseas and use the matches to set fire to a particular building in a particular foreign city. The next day you buy the local paper for that city, get someone to translate it for you, and see if the specified building has burnt down. If it has then you know that what you thought was a box of matches really was a box of matches, or possibly a cigarette lighter. Of course you have to do it several times to rule out a freak coincidence."

"I see," lied Andrew.

"Really? Nobody's ever followed it before. Anyway, most of my time is spent revising the model of the atom; every time the Physicists crack it I have to make up something even more cryptic. If only I'd done as good a job with the atom as I did with the brain."

"The brain?" said Andrew hoping he could steer the conversation towards memory, and in particular the memory of an elephant.

"Yes, I started off on the right foot with that one; it's so terrifically complex they'll never be able to work out how it functions."

"But can't they do it with computers or something."

"No, no, one of the reasons they want to understand the brain is so that they can build better computers. Computers aren't even in the same league as the brain."

"But why do you bother? What does it matter if the Physicists run out of new particles?"

"It's my job. If I didn't do it somebody else would, as I said; it keeps me occupied."

"You said you do corrections, what if I were to tell you that you'd made a mistake with the memory of an elephant?" said Andrew.

"I'd say it was highly unlikely, but since you've come all this way I'll have a look for you," the man got down from his stool and walked off among the trees. After a few minutes of searching he paused in front of a particular tree, pulled a roll of blue paper from a fork in one of its branches and brought it back to Andrew.

"Here we are," said the man unrolling the blueprint. "By the way, what did you think of it?"

"What?"

"The elephant. Did you like it?"

"Oh yes, very nice," said Andrew, "very ... um ... big."

"I must say I had a bit of trouble with it. I couldn't decide how big the ears should be. In the end I thought; Bugger it - I'll make one of each." The man ran his finger down a column marked 'Specifications' in the bottom corner of the plan. "Well, well, well, look at this, I have made a mistake, the Memory Retention Factor is ten times too big, I must have forgotten the decimal point. I'm surprised no one has spotted it before."

"Well," admitted Andrew, "they were building up a reputation."

"Well it's fixed now," said the man adding the decimal point with a flourish.

"Thank you," said Andrew, "you've made a lot of little green people very happy, I don't suppose the circuses will be too pleased, but then I never did like them anyway."

"Me neither; animals weren't designed to be kept in cages."

"You wouldn't happen to know the way out of here?" asked Andrew hopefully.

"No, I'm afraid that's not my department, usually people just roam about aimlessly, I don't know that they ever get out."

"Well, I guess that's what I'll do then."

"Oh no, what now?" said the man with a look of consternation.

A nearby shrub had begun to clatter noisily; it spewed out a narrow strip of paper.

"Aha, a real bush telegraph," joked Andrew.

The man ignored him, tore off the ticker‑tape and read it out loud. "Scientists discover cure for the common cold. Oh well," said the man stoically, "back to the drawing board."

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