She told me ‘life is much better than you think’.”
“How patronising! They think we’re just kids! They have no idea what ‘life’ is like for us,” bemoaned Carla, who enjoyed being disgusted with her sister and with grown-ups in general.
“What happened? Was it old age?” she asked, gently.
“No, my uncle killed it,” said Finn. “It was late, they’d been drinking, a fight broke out …”
She laughed despite herself.
“Oh HA HA – you’re avoiding your emotions.”
There was a call off-screen. “Carla, we have to go!”
“OK!” she shouted back, and turned to Finn.
“That’s it. We’re going to the airport. You should have seen this place we passed – there’s this actual dwarf world here! A theme park full of little people to gawp at. Can you imagine anything so cruel?”
“Honestly, I can’t,” Finn said without a hint of irony.
Finn wished he was going with her, wished he was going anywhere, with anybody.
Carla grabbed her things and went to shut down the screen, then paused and confessed, “You know, I often wonder if you two are locked-up in some theme park – isn’t that the weirdest thing?”
“Ha! Why?” Finn stalled.
“I don’t know, the crazy stories and everything. Plus I’ve never even seen outside this barrack room …”
“Well it is a secret base,” said Finn.
“Exactly. Always the big mystery with you two!”
“Carla!” called the voice off-screen again, and she waved goodbye.
Phew, thought Finn.
As Finn walked out of the fake barrack room back into the nano-compound, Delta, Kelly and Stubbs suddenly stopped talking. He hated when grown-ups did that.
“What?” said Finn. “What were you talking about?”
“Nothing,” said Delta.
“Liar,” said Finn.
“We said the main thing is we’ve got to stick together as a team. Everything takes time,” said Kelly.
“I know,” said Finn. At least he could be sure of that.
“Your uncle will eventually find the answer,” said Stubbs, almost reluctantly.
“You better believe it!” came a familiar booming voice, as a shadow, like a huge cloud, fell across them.
The four tiny figures looked up at the giant, praying for good news.
“I just don’t know what the answer is yet,” Al finished, to a chorus of sighs. “Now, who’s up for Sunday lunch?”
For want of anything better to do, Finn agreed to spend Sunday at Grandma’s with Al and they razzed along the country lanes between Hook Hall and the village of Langmere in Al’s incomparable De Tomaso Mangusta sports carfn3, happily outrunning the Mercedes of the security detail and scattering autumn leaves.
Finn sat in a nano-den (or ‘nDen’ as Al liked to call them) that was clipped to Al’s top pocket.
A way had to be found for the nano-crew to be housed, heard and taken out of the lab complex from time to time and nDens were the answer. This particular nDen was a typically eccentric choice of Al’s: a vintage Sony Walkman cassette player. About the size of a book, it had been adapted to hold nano-humans: there was a sofa, tinted glass for them to see out of, a line to Al through the earphones, and a built-in loudspeaker for when they needed to make themselves more widely heard.
“Tell me what went wrong with Fluffy. Maybe I can help,” said Finn.
“About three grams,” said Al.
“Three grams?” said Finn.
“That’s right,” said Al. “We reduced Fluffy, then we rescaled Fluffy – in perfect form, every atom, every molecule in the right place – and yet … somehow Fluffy ends up stone cold dead and three grams lighter. It’s as if the electrical relationships and reactions that run a body – the stuff of life – somehow disappeared. We just have to isolate why, what, where and when, and then we’ll be able to do something about it. But at the moment we haven’t got a clue – just three missing grams.”
The conversation continued as they walked through the woods with Grandma later that afternoon – another headache for the Security Service. Al was thought to be a prime target for kidnap, but Grandma refused any extra security. For her there was no appeasing villainy – and no mystery in Al’s missing three grams, either.
“The three grams are obviously the Soul,” said Grandma. “The divine.”
“Mother! As the wife of one scientist, the mother of two more and as a medical professional, do you really think that—”
“Don’t you dare be rude about simple faith!” squawked Grandma. “People have the right to experience mystery!”
“Let’s not have this argument again!” Finn pleaded, as it was one that had ruined at least three mealtimes a week for most of his life.
Yap! agreed Yo-yo, running ahead and making Finn wish he’d opted to ride with him instead. He often did this, sitting in the fur just under Yo-yo’s ear, guiding him with simple commands. Yo-yo was the best, most uncoordinated mongrel ever born. He couldn’t fathom the mystery of Finn’s physical disappearance – just as he couldn’t fathom what clouds were – but he could still smell Finn and hear him, which was all he needed.
Grandma and Al lowered their guards, warily.
“If it isn’t supernatural, what’s your best guess on the missing three grams?” Finn asked Al from the nDen.
“My best guess is there’s a relationship between dark matter, the speed of light and the timing of electrochemical reactions within a body,” said Al.
“Dark matter?” said Grandma.
“Yes, dark matter, also known as dark energy. It’s mystery stuff that makes up nearly all of the Universe, but no one knows what it is or how it works. No one except us. We have discovered that when you shrink ordinary matter – atoms and stuff – there must be a proportionate shrinking of dark matter, otherwise you’d be incredibly heavy; as heavy as you were when you were big.”
“But where is it?”
“Who knows? It’s unobservable, we can’t even begin to experiment – and without experiment we are nothing but apes groping around in our own excrement.”
“Charming!” said Grandma.
“Think of dark matter as a shadow – in this case,
