Heads were shaking, voices rising, English, American, French, German – all demanding answers, all offended by such an absurd suggestion, at being caught out by a child.
Finn didn’t give a damn. He was staring at Al in open-mouthed wonder.
“Shrink? Is that really what the boy said?”
“This is flat out impossible,” the US Chief Scientist advised her President.
Al overheard. “No! Possible –” he insisted, adding a much smaller atom to his diagram – “by exploiting a chain reaction at the quantum level, you can create a new type of magnetic field, a ‘hot area’ within which all matter can be reduced, sucking the electron right up tight against the nucleus.”
“That is totally absurd!” the US Chief Scientist responded.
Voices immediately started to rise again.
The entomologists were stunned.
Finn’s mind was spinning. He wanted to ask a million questions. He wanted to understand every impossible detail. He wanted to know about the who and the why and the how. He wanted to know it all and yet somehow, right now, it was all so much to try and take in and he was just thinking: I Want A Go.
He walked straight up to his uncle through the babble, looked into his eyes and asked in wonder and for a second time, just to make sure, “You’re going to shrink stuff. You’re going to shrink some soldiers and get this thing?”
“Yes I am,” said Al, delighted with Finn, who then all but burst with questions.
“Won’t you still be the same weight when you’re tiny as when you’re full size?”
“No, because there’s a proportionate shrinking of dark matter…”
“Will you be really dense and super tough?”
“Theoretically, no, though of course power-to-mass ratios are different and gravity won’t break you so easily…”
“Will bacteria and diseases be able to eat you, like, really easily, like flesh-eating bugs chewing off your face and arms and ears and nose and— Hey! Will you be able to smell?”
“The rule of thumb for nano-to-normal interaction at the molecular level is that complex compounds don’t interact, though atoms and simple molecules do, so you can relax about contracting the Ebola virus…”
They were having to raise their voices as the meeting was all but out of control, until the chilling opening bars of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ emerged from Al’s jacket.
It was the ringtone he had assigned to one very special caller. For the first time, Al looked scared. He checked the time again – nearly two o’clock – and began to panic.
“Shush! Shut uuuuuup! SHUT UP!” he shouted at the room.
The room gradually fell silent as everyone looked at Al, frozen in terror. Once again Finn got there before everyone else.
“Grandma!”
“Is his Grossmutti there too?” the German Chancellor asked.
“Nobody say a word!” insisted Al.
The leaders of the free world, along with their best and brightest, followed orders and “shut up” as Al interrupted The Phantom and took the call.
“Hey! Mum! How’s Oslo? I know I promised, I’m sorry, I lost track of time… No, don’t call the police, we’re fine! That’s ridiculous… Have you transferred to the ship?”
With his outstretched arm, he indicated that everyone could relax a little; he had the situation under control.
“He’s fine, he’s right here, he can tell you himself… oh, school? School’s clo— canteen! No! School canteen’s closed, they were sent home for lunch – no food. Wasp infestation. Astonishing… No, he’s fine! Here…” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and handed it to Finn, whispering, “Speak! Just tell her everything’s fine.”
“I can’t lie to Grandma,” Finn tried to insist. “I promised Mum I’d…”
“I order you to lie to your grandmother!” snapped the Prime Minister in a loud whisper.
Al looked at the Prime Minister like he had no idea what he was getting into.
Finn took the phone and accidentally pressed the ‘speaker’ button on the touchscreen so that everybody got the benefit of – “Grandma?”
“Do you need me to come back? I’ve unpacked but we’re still in port…” came her voice.
“No, no, I’m fine, everything’s fine.”
“What a lot of nonsense about the canteen! Tell him to take you straight back right now!”
“We’re going! We’re just getting in the car.”
“He will starve you to death! Neglect… Did he do any vegetables?”
“What…? Yes.”
The watching experts and world leaders – who had grandmothers of their own – were nodding him along.
“Exactly which vegetables?”
Finn’s mind went blank. There was a terrible, panicked silence.
“Broccoli?” mouthed the US President.
“Broccoli! And… just broccoli. What’s your food like? What’s the ship like?”
“Food is tepid, the cabin is cramped and I have to share a bathroom, but there’s a lovely woman from Godalming on our corridor who, would you believe it, went to the same boarding school as Jennifer – second cousin Jennifer not Jennifer from the Hartford Pottery who I don’t think you know her grandson wants to be a solicitor it’s good to have ambitions but as I told her not a solicitor Jennifer not at twelve… anyway I—”
“Grandma, I think we’d better go or we’ll be late.”
“Oh… all right, dear. Please don’t trust Al, he’s already missed one call.”
“OK, Grandma, love you, bye!”
“And keep safe!”
Finn killed the call and everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief.
The Prime Minister gave an order to someone off-screen. “Get on to the Norwegians. Upgrade Mrs Allenby’s cabin and get her, and the woman from Godalming who knows Jennifer, on to the Captain’s table. Now.”
“Would someone please explain to me what the hell is going on?” said the US President.
DAY ONE 14:13 (BST). Siberia
Deep in the Siberian permafrost, 2,546 miles away, east by northeast, Kaparis watched the scene via his agent’s spectacles.
Everything was going according to plan. They were falling into his trap.
1 The beast was at large.
2 The ‘pheromone hypothesis’ had been successfully introduced by his agent at the meeting.
3 Boldklub had been established as the only viable response.
Kaparis was where he liked to be: in control. And yet… he was overwhelmed.
The boy.