Saturn Over the Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

she said, quite eagerly. ‘To try to make you understand. He was a nuclear physicist, y’know, but he refused to work on the H-bomb – ’
    ‘I’m glad to hear it – ’
    ‘So was I. But the strange thing is this, Mr Bedford. When he got worse – towards the end – and didn’t know what he was saying, he couldn’t stop talking about H-bombs and what they were going to do. He began describing frightful scenes. Yet his conscience was quite clear. He couldn’t have been repressing any feelings of guilt. It was something that happened at the Institute, before I got there, that began all the trouble. But I don’t know what it was. It’s not that he wouldn’t tell me, he couldn ’ t tell me. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. Something he saw or heard or read, while he was there at the Institute, before I went there, took hold of his mind and shook it to pieces. He was a big strong man, Mr Bedford. And though he’d had some trouble here before he went to Peru, he went out there feeling perfectly well. And it wasn’t the climate or anything like that. Uramba, where the Institute is, down the coast, isn’t like Lima, which has a nasty climate – warm without sunlight, damp and sticky. Uramba’s dry and sunny. A lovely climate. We both adored it, even though I soon hated the Institute itself.’
    ‘What was wrong with it?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ She almost shouted it at me. ‘My God – do you think if I did know, I’d just sit here, collecting rents and sending for plumbers? Yes, and sometimes drinking too much whisky while I wonder what’s become of the friends we used to have. And painting pictures you can’t bring yourself to mention – no, don’t try to be polite about them. A useless woman – no husband, no children, no friends, not even caring any more for the damned science I used to teach.’
    If I showed any sympathy, she might go on and on like that, and I wouldn’t learn anything. So I asked her what her husband’s job was.
    This calmed her down. ‘He wouldn’t tell me in his letters. He’d given an undertaking not to write and talk about his work. That’s not unusual with research work. But from what he let drop when I was there, he’d been working on fall-out for them. He knew a lot about fall-out. And what he knew, he didn’t like. But that couldn’t have sent him out of his mind.’
    ‘I suppose they couldn’t be planning to make a few H-bombs themselves at that Institute?’
    ‘Of course not! Ridiculous! You can’t have the least idea what it takes to manufacture even the smallest atomic bomb. The only plant they have there is for making electricity and pumping water. It’s not big even as a research institute. Just a few labs, offices, conference rooms, and so forth, and of course living quarters and bungalows – and a little palace for old Emperor Arnaldos.’
    ‘What about Dr Soultz?’
    She stared at me. ‘How do you know about him?’
    ‘My cousin had a letter from him. Not very sympathetic, I thought.’
    ‘There are three or four of them there – ’ She broke off to take a drink. ‘They’re all in key jobs, like Soultz, and they’re all the same sort of men. I don’t mean they look alike – or even talk in the same way. But they all belong to something that you don’t belong to – or you belong to something they don’t belong to – put it either way. They’re not – not with you. You can’t imagine yourself being friends with one of them. And I felt just the same when I met Dr Magorious here in London. He’s the psychiatrist that Soultz told me to take Frank to – he’s very expensive but it didn’t cost us a penny, the Institute paid his bill – and though he’s here and not over there, I felt just the same about him, though I’m not saying he didn’t do all he could for Frank.’
    There was a lot more along these lines, but it didn’t seem to me to mean very much, and I began to feel I was wasting my time. She was trying to blame the