“Leaving me to spin?” Marjorie smiled. “It’s the only way, isn’t it? Here’s your lunch. No meat again this week, but I got a bit of cheese at the farm and I pulled some early carrots. I think we may have some potatoes this year. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She reached up and kissed him. “I do hope the interview goes well.”
“Thanks, luv.” He felt the old familiar tightening begin. He had to get that funding. He’d put vast sums of time and thought into this project. He must have the equipment. It had to be tried.
Renfrew left the house and mounted his bicycle. Already he was sloughing off the family man, his thoughts reaching ahead to the lab, the day’s instructions to the technicians, the coming interview with Peterson.
He pumped along, leaving Grantchester and skirting round Cambridge. It had rained during the night. A slight mist hung low over the ploughed fields, softening the light. Drops clung to the new green leaves on the trees. Moisture glittered on the carpet of bluebells covering the ground in the clearings. The lane here ran alongside a little stream lined by low alder bushes and nettles. On the surface of the stream he could see ripples forming as the bugs called water boatmen jerked themselves along on their oarlike legs. Kingcups were blooming in a sheet of gold along the banks and big soft furry catkins were coming out on the willows. It was a fresh April morning, the kind he had loved as a boy in Yorkshire, watching the mist rise off the moors in the pale morning sun and the hares scurry off at his approach. The lane he was cycling along had sunk deep over the years and his head was nearly level with the tree roots on either side. A smell of damp earth and rain-washed grass came to him, mixed with an acrid tang of coal smoke.
A man and a woman eyed him blankly as he pedaled by. They leaned idly against a sagging wood fence. Renfrew grimaced. Each month more squatters drifted into the area, thinking Cambridge was a rich town. Off to the right was the shambles of an old farmhouse. In the last week the yawning black windows had been blocked in with newspaper, boards, and rags. It was surprising squatters hadn’t smelled out the place before.
The last bit of cycling, nipping through the outskirts of Cambridge, was the worst. The streets were difficult to negotiate, with cars parked every which way, abandoned. There had been a national program to recycle them, but all Renfrew had seen come of it was a lot of talk on television. He threaded among the cars, which sat there like eyeless, legless beetles, stripped of all their removable parts. Students were living in some of them. Drowsy faces turned to watch him wobble by.
In front of the Cavendish he locked his bicycle into the rack. One car in the lot, he noticed. Surely that bugger Peterson wasn’t here this early? It wasn’t yet 8:30. He trotted up the steps and across the entrance hall.
To Renfrew the present complex of three buildings was anonymous. The original Cav, where Rutherford had discovered the nucleus, was an old brick building in the center of Cambridge, a museum. From the Madingley Road two hundred meters away this place could easily be taken for an insurance center or a factory or any business place. When it had opened in the early ‘70s the “new Cav” had been immaculate, with harmonized color schemes, carpets in the library, and well-stocked shelves. Now the corridors were poorly lit and many laboratories yawned empty, stripped of equipment. Renfrew made his way to his own lab in the Mott building.
“Good morning, Dr. Renfrew.”
“Oh, morning, Jason. Has anyone been in?”
“Well, George came in to start the roughing pumps, but—”
“No, no, I mean a visitor. I’m expecting a fellow from London. Peterson’s his name.”
“Oh, no. No one like that. You want me to get started here, then?”
“Yes, go ahead. How’s the apparatus?”
“Fairly good. The vacuum is coming down. We’re at ten microns now. We’ve got a fresh charge of liquid nitrogen and we’ve checked out the electronics. Looks as if one of the amplifiers is going. We’re doing some calibrations and the equipment should be checked out in about an hour.”
“Okay. Look here, Jason, this fellow Peterson is coming down from the World Council. He’s considering increasing funding. We’ll have a run for him, put the apparatus through