The Fourth Kind of Time Read online

  As the trip progressed, his mood shifted from mere passive resentment to a more belligerent frame of mind. He resolved not to let the project die. He would scrounge any scraps of resources from other projects to keep the work going for as long as he could. But he knew that relatively soon he’d need real funding. And no one would give it to him if they knew that Derwent & Graham was going to drag the project through the courts for years, especially when there seemed to be a good chance Derwent & Graham would ultimately succeed in having it stopped.

  He needed to counterattack. If he could credibly threaten to have their patents declared invalid, perhaps they’d agree to cut a deal. He recalled the brief burst of enthusiasm back in the meeting room when he had referred to Crick’s previous work. He decided to revisit Crick’s work to see if he could establish whether Crick had the idea before Derwent & Graham, in which case they weren’t the inventors and weren’t entitled to patent the techniques. To achieve that, he’d search to the ends of the earth if necessary.

  Chapter 3

  Know Your Enemy

  “There’s more if anyone wants some,” Tina proffered, tentatively.

  “Yes, please,” Anna and Daniel replied, responding to Tina’s evident lack of confidence in her own cooking with a convincing show of eagerness.

  “Yes, please,” replied James, with a polite display of enthusiasm.

  “Yeah,” said Alex casually, pushing his bowl in Tina’s direction.

  Tina rose from the table and went into the kitchen to collect the serving dish. Returning to the table, she happily doled out second helpings for everyone.

  “Anyway,” said Daniel, having completed his explanation of Cam’s situation, “Cam’s searching in the UK but he wants us to help here in Australia. He wants us to look anywhere where there might be records of what Burnet got told by Crick, in case there’s some evidence that shows Crick actually developed the idea.”

  “So Cam’s fighting against a big multinational and he needs our help?” Tina asked, spoon poised in mid-air.

  “That’s right,” Daniel affirmed.

  “When do we start?” she asked, eagerly.

  Alex stirred, as if he was about to protest about Tina’s time and energy being diverted away from himself, but he didn’t need to speak. Anna forestalled him.

  “Tina, did you understand what Daniel’s been saying?” she asked.

  She knew what Tina’s idea of helping would entail. Tina would have no idea of how a legitimate business would go about gaining a greater market share. Her only experience of commercial rivalry came from the racketeering done by the organised crime syndicates in the fruit and vegetable industry which was their family’s means of livelihood. Her idea of helping Cam would be to fight against the hired muscle she assumed Derwent & Graham would be using. The reality would disappoint her, Anna thought, so she might as well be told now.

  “Yes,” protested Tina. “Well I don’t understand all the scientific bits, or all the legal stuff, but I understand the rest of it”.

  Anna smiled gently, and decided not to delve into the ‘rest of it’.

  “Tina, this is going to be a long, dull process of looking through piles of old documents. There’ll be no action or excitement. More importantly, the looking needs to be done by people who understand the scientific bits.”

  “But James is going to help, aren’t you?” Daniel intervened hastily.

  Seeing Tina about to react to that revelation, Anna swiftly cut her off.

  “James is quite capable of understanding as much of the science as he needs to,” she stated firmly. Tina glared back reproachfully, but didn’t attempt to claim that she could do the same. Anna knew, and Tina knew that Anna knew, the limits of Tina’s academic accomplishments.

  “I promise,” said Anna soothingly, “that if it turns into any sort of adventure, you can join the team.” Having mollified Tina for the moment she turned to Daniel.

  “So how do we go about it?” she asked.

  Daniel sighed. “It’s a bad time to be taking something like this on,” he said glumly.

  In response to James’s enquiring glance, he explained. He and Anna had been spending a good deal of time on a joint project – a mathematical description of possible energy transfer through the fourth or even higher dimensions. Daniel and Anna’s respective departments at the university would soon start getting impatient unless their efforts started to produce some tangible outcomes. It was way too early, he explained, for any practical application, but he and Anna were getting close to producing a coherent description of how their underlying theory might work in the natural world. If they could turn that description into a paper published in a credible journal, it would stave off criticism for the time being.

  “Can you take most of the running on this?” Daniel asked James.

  “James has a job, too, you know,” interjected Anna sharply. “You’re living on campus, in fact in Burnet’s old college, so you’re far better placed than James to do a search.”

  “Yes, but …” Daniel began to respond, but then turned to his friend for support.

  “It has to be done quickly?” James asked.

  “Preferably. Cam has no resources left for the project, and he’s fast running out of plausible ways to divert cash and personnel hours from other activities. In theory, if it comes to a shuddering halt now, he could pick it up in the future if and when money becomes available, but by then the staff he’s been working with would probably be fully engaged doing other work, so he’d probably almost be starting again from scratch.”

  James shrugged.

  “Sometimes things are hectic, and sometimes they aren’t. Apart from a couple of days interstate next week I don’t have any massive amounts of time blocked out. I should be able to find some time in the evenings to get started, at least.”

  “Good,” exclaimed Daniel, relaxing visibly and quickly adding, in case James had a change of heart, “First thing tomorrow I’ll forward you Cam’s email with all the details.”

  Some hours later, in Cambridge, Cam Fletcher sat idly observing two men. Some people have no sense of style, he thought to himself. Those two blokes could have saved a fortune on gold jewellery and they’d look more upmarket than they do now.

  He gazed at them for a short time, before thinking guiltily that it was rude to stare. Then, since they seemed to be staring back, he rose and sauntered off to attend to more practical matters.

  At the time he didn’t give the incident another thought.

  The next day, during what was officially his ‘lunchtime’, James thought about Cam’s request. There wasn’t anything he could do immediately to assist, but he didn’t really feel like resuming the laborious task on which he had spent his morning. Brooding clouds visible from his window discouraged him from heading outside. He pondered Cam’s problem for a while, and then, on impulse, typed ‘Derwent & Graham’ into Google. Passing over the company’s official website, he clicked on the Wikipedia entry below:

  One of the largest pharmaceutical … blah, blah … now listed on the New York Stock Exchange … etc., etc.

  The ‘history’ section looked more interesting:

  Chester Derwent and James Graham were soldiers in the United States Army, stationed in the Philippines. Nearing the end of their terms of enlistment, they were involved in a truck accident, and, although not badly injured, as a precaution they were kept overnight at a military hospital. Observing various devices being used in the treatment of their fellow patients, they began discussing possible improvements to …

  There followed a description of a piece of medical equipment, written mainly in technical terms that meant little to James:

  An army doctor with whom they discussed their idea confirmed that, if they could make it work, it would be an improvement on the technology available at that time. Graham, always the optimist and something of a gambler, persuaded Derwent that after leaving the army they should stake everything they had on producing their invention.
r />   Their early difficulties were recounted, and then there was a reference to the success of their product. The narrative moved on to the crucial moment when a young scientist persuaded them to branch into pharmaceuticals by backing the scientist’s bold new idea:

  Derwent was sceptical, but he allowed himself to be persuaded by Graham. The risk paid off spectacularly; Derwent & Graham quickly became a major player in the industry.

  Subsequent business developments were then summarised, until …

  Graham died suddenly of a heart attack at his Florida holiday home. The loss of the popular icon cast a pall of gloom over the organisation, but in reality it made little difference to the running of the enterprise. Graham had had little interest in the daily routine of administering an established business, and as the company’s operations became more conventional and more hemmed in by regulation, Graham’s involvement had waned, and Derwent had become, by default, the de facto, sole chief executive.

  A perfunctory description of the company’s subsequent steady rise followed.

  James’s gaze shifted to the photographs at the right of the text. In descending order, following the timeline of the narrative, they showed two smiling youths in army fatigues, two young men clearly not wholly comfortable in business attire, middle-aged ‘Jimmy’ Graham relaxed and affable at a charity golf day, and an elderly, impassive Chester Derwent, gazing watchfully at the camera.

  James peered at the last one. Shrewd and cynical, James thought, definitely trying hard not to give anything away to the photographer.

  James read further down the screen. Chester Derwent held more Derwent & Graham shares than any other single shareholder, and was still officially the executive chairman of the company. Even so, James wondered whether at Derwent’s advanced age he was still really in control. If so, would he be involved in the detail of individual patent disputes? If he knew about Cam’s situation, what would he think?

  The Wikipedia entry noted the existence of a charitable foundation named after the two founders, which to James suggested some commitment on their part to public benefit. But, James reflected, almost every American tycoon had set up one of those. They were partly status symbols, and partly a product of the tax advantages bestowed by the American government on private charities, so a Derwent & Graham charitable foundation didn’t necessarily prove that Derwent was some sort of Santa Claus. James had the sense that Jimmy Graham would have sympathised with Cam. He wasn’t at all confident about Derwent, though.

  Chapter 4

  On Guard

  Tina stirred slightly but didn’t emerge from her slumber enough to become fully aware of her surroundings. Her mind resumed the train of thought it had been pursuing when she had drifted into unconsciousness. I haven’t done anything wrong, she reiterated to herself, defensively. Drowsily she ran through the facts. The hot water service at her new flat had suffered a burst pipe, making life there less than ideal until a replacement could be installed. James had been planning to go interstate for a couple of days for work. It was simple logic that Tina should move into James’s house for the couple of days he was absent. If her flat wasn’t habitable by the time he returned, she thought, she might stay there for longer.

  But she hadn’t even got as far as broaching her idea about staying at James’s place with Alex before the argument started.

  No, she wasn’t going to stay with Alex till the pipes were fixed. When pressed for her reason, she fudged, saying that she could mind James’s place for him in his absence. (That, of course, only made things worse.) She knew that the dispute would have escalated drastically if she had stated her main motive, which was to avoid two days of Alex’s mother driving her up the wall with her snide criticisms and disdainful snubs. Nor, she knew, would Fatty have been a welcome guest at Alex’s place.

  And, no, Alex couldn’t stay with her at James’s place. That had been harder to rationalise. She certainly wouldn’t have let Alex stay without telling James, and she wasn’t sure how James would have responded if she had suggested it. And although she suspected he would have been fine, she just didn’t want to ask him. She couldn’t even articulate to herself why she felt that way.

  Predictably, Alex had been offended and had become increasingly assertive with her. She surprised herself by standing her ground. Alex had been surprised, too, and hadn’t reacted at all well. Normally Tina caved in to his heated and insistent commands, as if the intensity of his demands somehow counted as justification. This time, however, Tina stubbornly declined to change her plans.

  For once she got her own way, but a residue of negative emotions from their conflict remained in her mind.

  She arrived at James’s place under the weight of a travel bag, a cat-sized carrying case containing Fatty, and a despondent sense that in order to restore harmony she was soon going to have to put on an insincere and dispiriting display of submissive repentance.

  And now as she lay in the dark hovering over the abyss of unconsciousness, she mused idly on how best to commence the process. Should she make contact with Alex quickly? That might be diplomatic, but it might also reopen the issue of how the next day or so should be spent. Perhaps it would be better to wait until the end of the two days, even though that might aggravate the situation in the meantime. No need to decide now, she thought. Hoping that the next morning her subconscious would have supplied a strategy that would solve all her concerns, she drifted back into a deep and peaceful night’s sleep.

  Which she might have had undisturbed if Alex’s mother, grimly disapproving, hadn’t started to smother her with some kind of fur-lined blanket …

  “Oh, get off, Fatty,” Tina mumbled irritably, annoyed to have her sleep disrupted. She pushed Fatty away, still groggy from sleep. She noticed, though, that Fatty wasn’t slumped across the pillow in languid torpor, but was instead standing taut and tense as she pushed at Tina’s face. Tina willed herself into semi-attentiveness, and watched as Fatty stood on the bed, facing the hallway, back arched and hissing quietly but vehemently.

  “What is it Fatty?” she murmured. Her first thought was that James’s house might have a rodent problem. But Fatty wouldn’t hiss at a mouse or rat. She’d find a suitable vantage point and remain silent and motionless until her prey gave her a chance to pounce.

  Tina’s head started to clear, and she began to pay attention to her surroundings. Was that a sound from the back bedroom, the one that James used as a study?

  “Shut up, Fatty,” she urged, quietly, as Fatty hissed once more. She strained to hear better. It was impossible to tell whether there was something going on in the other room, given that she didn’t know the house and couldn’t easily distinguish between any unusual internal sounds and the normal external night noises.

  There’s no harm done by investigating, she thought. If it turned out to be nothing at least there would be no one around to laugh at her. Intensely careful, she silently slid from the bed, fetched something from her bag, and proceeded out of the main bedroom and along the hallway.

  “I don’t want to shoot you …” she announced.

  The figure bent over James’s desk spun round. He didn’t notice that he was the object of Fatty’s most malevolent glare; his attention was fully occupied with trying to determine whether the cylindrical object protruding from the young woman’s hand, dully glinting in the dim light, really was a firearm.

  “… because you’re standing in front of a shelf full of James’s stuff and I don’t want to have to replace any of it.”

  The woman’s voice was surprisingly calm and decisive, even perhaps tinged with excitement. If it’s a bluff it’s an extremely good one, the intruder decided.

  “We’ve got more than one option here,” Tina continued. “The first is for you to get back out of that window, get off the property and never come back. Do you want to find out what number two is?”

  The burglar didn’t have to think long. Whether she had a gun or not, she could scream, meaning that anything other than a quick
getaway was fraught with risk. Keeping his hands well within her sight, he moved slowly towards the window, clambered over the frame and disappeared into the night.

  This window obviously wasn’t secure even before it was forced open, thought Tina. She closed it as best she could and balanced a few hard objects on top of the frame of the lower pane. If the window was reopened they’d fall and make a substantial racket. She’d be instantly awake and alert if that happened. She went around the house, satisfying herself that no other entry points could be breached without making a considerable noise, and then returned to bed. As she gently resisted Fatty’s attempts to commandeer her pillow, her last thought before she descended into oblivion was how glad she was that she had insisted on staying at James’s place rather than at Alex’s parents’ house. James’s house is much more fun …

  But that wasn’t Anna’s assessment of the situation a couple of days later when Tina was telling James what had happened.

  “What the hell were you thinking of, taking that stupid gun to James’s place?” Anna demanded, genuinely angry.

  “I couldn’t leave it at my place,” retorted Tina. “What if the tradies had found it?”

  “You would have got into big trouble for having an unregistered, stolen firearm,” Anna responded, “but that’s …”

  “I didn’t steal it,” Tina protested hotly. “I won it fair and square in a fight. You know that. You were there.”

  James had been there, too. The three of them had visited Anna’s office one night when she had left her car keys there, and they had stumbled upon some intruders spying on something Anna and Daniel had been working on. One of the intruders had been armed, but he had made the mistake of coming too close to Tina. It had been a painful experience for him. Tina had taken possession of the gun and had kept it ever since. James knew that it was lucky that Tina, with her quick reaction to trouble, had been there, and it had all turned out fine, but he still shuddered inwardly at the memory.