Europe at Midnight Read Online Free PDF

anything about it yet, and the Science Faculty Heads and I existed, for the moment, in a kind of standoff. They turned up to Board meetings occasionally, and we smiled at each other over tea and biscuits, all the while having a shrewd idea what was going through each others’ heads. Nobody was kidding anybody.
    Years ago, the various subject Faculties had merged into one huge Science Faculty, which was housed in a bizarre faceted glass and steel building which, from the outside anyway, looked as if it was perpetually on the verge of toppling over and rolling away. I parked my bike outside and chained it to a piece of statuary that looked like a spiral staircase made of billiard balls and stood for a few moments, looking about me. No sign of any eager, happy Students, although I suspected one or two would turn up if I deviated from the plan for today’s meeting. I took off my hat, combed my fingers through my hair, removed my bicycle clips, and pushed my way through the Faculty’s huge glass double-doors.
    The entire ground floor of the Faculty was empty, a single huge room floored with something that looked like marble but swallowed the sound of your footsteps when you walked on it. From inside, it was impossible to see how the building was supported; there was nothing but the glass walls and the floor and the textured ceiling, and above that the weight of the Faculty eternally poised to come crushing down. I always felt my shoulders hunch up around my ears when I came in here, which was probably the point.
    About fifteen minutes’ walk away across the not-marble floor, there was a doughnut-shaped desk, and beside that was a single staircase which poked down out of the ceiling like a tongue. I trekked across to the desk and gave my name to the smiling Student standing behind it. She in turn made quite a show of consulting a large appointment book, before smiling at me again.
    “You’re early, Professor,” she told me pleasantly.
    “I took a short-cut,” I said.
    She glanced down at her appointment book, then looked up at me and smiled sunnily. “You will have your little joke, Professor.”
    “Whenever possible,” I said.
    “Someone will be down for you shortly,” she informed me. “You’re welcome to wait.”
    “Thank you,” I said, genuinely curious about what else she expected me to do. I certainly wasn’t going to do the walk from the desk to the doors and back again. We stood there for a minute or so, me looking around the foyer and trying not to be intimidated by the ceiling, she making little notes in her appointment book. Visitor was early. Joked about it.
    I said, “Nice weather.”
    She looked up from her notes. “Beg pardon?”
    “The weather. Nice.”
    She glanced at the faraway glass wall. “Bit chilly this morning, I thought.”
    “Bracing,” I said. “I thought it was more bracing than chilly.”
    She thought about this, and all the time the smile never left her face. “Yes,” she said finally. “It could have been bracing.”
    “It was chilly,” said a deep, pleasant voice from above our heads. “Technically.”
    We both looked up. A tall, handsome man wearing flannel trousers and a shirt and tie was standing on the stairs. I said, “Is there a scale?”
    He chuckled and descended the rest of the steps into the foyer. “There certainly is. The Penman-Walworth Scale. It’s almost a hundred and fifty years old.”
    “It’s amazing what people will do when they’re bored,” I told him. “Personally, I like to catalogue my bookshelves.”
    We shook hands and he treated me to a look at his perfect white smile. “Glad you could come,” he told me.
    “As I remember, it was me who asked to see you,” I said, just so both he and the Student knew where we all stood.
    His smile didn’t falter. “Of course,” he said. “Has Claire been looking after you?”
    We both looked at Claire, who blushed ever so faintly. I said, “Claire has been very efficient,” which made her