nothing about? You’re reducing the most profound mysteries of human existence to a shell game.’
Cornelius said patiently, ‘You’re right to be sceptical. Nevertheless we have thirty years of these studies behind us now. The methodology was first proposed by a physicist called Brandon Carter in a lecture to the Royal Society in London in the 1980s. And we have built up estimates based on a range of approaches, calling on data from many disciplines –’
Malenfant said hoarsely, ‘When?’
‘Not earlier than 150 years from now. Not later than 240.’
Malenfant cleared his throat. ‘Cornelius, what’s this all about? Is this an extension of the old eggs-in-one-basket argument? Are you going to push for an off-planet expansion?’
Cornelius was shaking his head. ‘I’m afraid that’s not going to help.’
Malenfant looked surprised. ‘Why not? We have centuries. We could spread over the Solar System –’
‘But that’s the point,’ said Cornelius. ‘Think about it. My argument wasn’t based on any one threat, or any assumptions about where humans might be located, or what level of technology we might reach. It was an argument about the continued existence of humanity, come what may. Perhaps we could even reach the stars, Malenfant. But it will do us no good. The Carter catastrophe will reach us anyhow.’
‘Jesus,’ said Malenfant. ‘What possible catastrophe could obliterate star systems – reach across light years?’
‘We don’t know.’
There was a heavy silence in the wood-laden room.
Malenfant said gruffly: ‘So tell me what you want from me.’
Cornelius said evenly, ‘I’m coming to that.’ He stood up. ‘May I bring you more drinks?’
Emma got out of her chair and walked to the window. She looked out over Central Park, the children playing. They were engaged in some odd, complex game of shifting patterns. She watched for a while; it looked almost mathematical, like a geometric form of communication. Kids were strange these days. Getting brighter, according to the news media. Maybe they needed to be.
But some things never changed. Here came a buggy, she saw, crossing through the Park, drawn by a horse, tireless and steady. The world, bathed in smoky, smog-laden sunlight, looked rich, ancient yet renewed, full of life and possibilities.
… Was it possible Cornelius was right? That all this could end, so soon?
Two hundred more years was nothing. There were hominid tools on the planet two million years old.
And, she thought, will there be a last day? Will there still be a New York, a Central Park – the last children of all playing here on that day? Will they know they have no future?
Or is all this simple craziness?
Malenfant touched her arm. ‘This is one hell of a thing, isn’t it?’ She recognized the tone, the look. All the scepticism and hostility he had shown to Cornelius out in the desert had evaporated. Here was another Big Idea, and Reid Malenfant was distracted, like a kid by a new shiny toy.
Shit, she thought. I can’t afford for Malenfant to take his eye off the ball. Not now. And it’s my fault. I could have dumped Cornelius in Vegas, found a way to block his approach … Too late, too late.
She tried, anyhow. ‘Malenfant, listen. I’ve been digging up Cornelius’s past.’
Malenfant turned, attentive.
Some of it was on the record. She hadn’t even recognized the terms mathematicians used to describe Cornelius’s academic achievement – evidently it covered games of strategy, economic analysis, computer architecture, the shape of the universe, the distribution of prime numbers – anyhow he had been on his way, it seemed, to becoming one of the most influential minds of his generation.
But he had always been – well, odd.
His gift seemed non-rational: he would leap to a new vision, somehow knowing its rightness instinctively, and construct laborious proofs later. Cornelius had remained solitary: he attracted awe, envy, resentment.
As he approached thirty he drove himself through a couple of years of feverish brilliance.
Maybe this was because the well of mathematical genius traditionally dries up at around that age, a prospect which must have terrified Taine, so that he thought he was working against time.
Or maybe there was a darker explanation, Emma’s e-therapists speculated. It wasn’t unknown for creativity to derive from a depressive or schizoid personality. And creative capacities could be used in a defensive way, to fend off mental illness.
Maybe Cornelius was working hard in order to stay sane. If he was, it didn’t seem to have worked.
The anecdotes of Cornelius’s breakdown were fragmentary.
At first he was just highly aware, watchful, insomniac. Then he began to see patterns in the world around him – the cracks in the sidewalk, telephone numbers, the static of dead television screens. He said he was on the verge of deep cosmic insights, available only to him –
‘Who says all this?’
‘His colleagues. His doctors’ case notes, later. You see the pattern, Malenfant? Everything got twisted around. It was as if his faith in the rationality and order of the universe had turned against him, becoming twisted and dysfunctional.’
‘Yeah. Right. And envy and peer pressure and all that good stuff had nothing to do with it.’
‘Malenfant, on his last day at Princeton they found him in the canteen, slamming his head against a wall, over and over.’
After that Cornelius had disappeared for two years. Emma’s data miners had been unable to trace how he spent that time. When he re-emerged, it wasn’t to go back to Princeton but to become a founding board member of Eschatology, Inc.
And here was Emma now, with Malenfant, in the orderly office of this apparently calm, rational, highly intelligent man. Talking about the end of the world.
She whispered urgently, ‘Don’t you get it, Malenfant? Here’s a guy who tells us he sees patterns in the universe nobody else can make out – a guy who believes he can predict the end of humanity.’ A guy who seemed on the point of inducing Malenfant to turn aside his own gigantic projects to follow his insanity. ‘Are you listening?’
Malenfant touched her arm. ‘I hear what you say,’ he said. ‘But –’
‘But what?’
‘What if it’s true? Whether Cornelius is insane or not, what if he’s right? What then?’ His eyes were alive, excited.
Emma watched the children in the Park.
Cornelius returned and invited them to sit once more. He had brought a fresh chilled beer for Malenfant and a coffee for Emma: a decent latte in a china cup, smelling as if it had been freshly brewed and poured
