Power

"I promised you exactly five minutes. You wasted ten seconds getting tangled up in the door on the way in to my office, another fifteen with a fawning introduction, and now ten by waiting for me to fill an embarrassing silence that you created. I have my honour and would therefore not normally renege on a promise, but I am currently very tempted indeed to have you cast out of this office for the sake of the reputation of the Club."

Dr Lucas Milhous blinked at this comment. He had had an inkling that Sir Alec despised him, even though Milhous was normally so wrapped up in either his work or the eagerness of explaining it to be able to classify a reaction from anyone. Sir Alec's interest in Milhous (or at least in Milhous' work) at the irregular but frequent meetings of the Club might fool others. They might work on those who made any measure of the human contact they made but, like a blind man seeing the soul so much more clearly in the voice than in the face, Milhous could tell exactly how Sir Alec felt about him. Sir Alec, Milhous imagined, probably spent hours of his day talking to people he despised, and Sir Alec was just as probably content to number Milhous among them.

Now, all pretence of Club civility had been shed. Milhous was, despite foreknowledge, shocked to see Sir Alec's true colours before him: nasty, miserable shades of grey and grimness. If he could not talk in the tone of a businessman to this ur-businessman, if his words were not coloured that one particular shade, then he would be back on the street before he was aware what was happening. He looked down at the unassuming little box he was carrying - no bigger than a shoebox - and then up again at his host.

"Sorry, Sir Alec. I must, er, admit I'm a little nervous." He collected himself. "Well, as you, er, know, I've had funding from the Ministry for years now, and as they don't, er, enquire into what I'm doing then I rarely have to tell them. Every few months I, er, provide them with a new patent and in return they leave me in, er, peace. They never feel the need to come to my laboratory, and so nobody other than me has ever seen what I've brought you until today."

Sir Alec leaned forward in his leather seat, which rumbled contentedly at the shifting of his bony frame. "Spit-it-out-be-fore-I-throw-you-out!" he ordered.

"A weapon. My, er, weapon. My device."

Sir Alec was struck dumb. Suddenly he began laughing, croaking, rending laughter that crashed out of him as if struggling to get free. As he continued to cackle Milhous began to look dejected. "Is that it? Do you think that I, Sir Alec Delft, do not have access to whatever weapons I could possibly need? That I joined that idiot Club to obtain guns and bombs? Are you really that stupid?"

Milhous blushed. A little of the colouring was from shame, but it was clear there was anger mixed in there, a raspberry ripple of flame. Sir Alec checked himself. Perhaps, he thought, this queer fish standing before him had something of value. Lord knew it was about time that membership of the Club, with its communists, anarchists and plain kooks, should yield at least one result.

"Go on, Milhous. Please continue. I admit I may have... been a little hasty. What is it you've built?"

Milhous shifted the box slightly towards Sir Alec. "The most powerful device you, er, might ever see, Sir Alec. A Doomsday device. The mechanisms within this-" he lifted the lid of the box to reveal glowing metal and rivets "-have the, er, power to destroy not just a building, nor a city, nor even just the world."

Sir Alec craned his head forward, a sudden thirst in his eyes. "Are you quite serious, Milhous? Something so small?"

"Is not a, er, word small, sir? Or the signature on a declaration of war?"

Sir Alec just nodded.

"The mechanisms are, individually, quite simple. They consist of, er, several timing and positioning devices, er, linked up to the main circuit. Even that, though, is only a, er, fuse, if you like. The main circuit is connected to the laws of physics themselves, and turns matter itself into its, er, own explosive, spreading outwards from the device, not annihilating but in a sense, er, dictating self-annihilation."

There was a silence. A much less embarrassing one than before, and this time, although some ten or fifteen minutes had elapsed, Sir Alec had no desire to rid himself of the scientist. "But..." he began, astounded, "what would be the use of such total destruction? I mean, to gain anything from such a... device, one would need to focus it upon those one would wish ill on. Can it not be directed at a single target? Surely it can?"

"In principle it can be focussed, of course. But that, er, is not its primary function. I, er, built it as a Doomsday device, and that is what it is best suited to be. Focussing would yield clumsy and untidy results."

Sir Alec looked hard at Milhous. As he did so he tapped his fingers on the desk. He didn't want to ask the scientist why he had built a Doomsday device in the first place. Anyone who wanted such a device must have their heart full of malice, wishing death on so many others. Grimly Sir Alec could appreciate that and, nodding, he told himself that the scientist's motivations, however bitter and vengeful, were none of his business.

"Very well," said the knight with an ornate gesture of his hand towards the device. "How do I activate it?"

"Well," began the scientist, "to talk of, er, activating this device is to talk at crossed purposes, really. Not that I am implying that it is anything other than fully operational; and not that I would suggest that one ought to have, er, moral qualms about setting such things in motion-"

"Then what, Milhous?" Sir Alec began to get impatient.

"Well, although I cannot possibly explain the, er, precise construction of the device to - begging your pardon - a layman such as yourself, Sir Alec, I would imagine you could readily grasp that, er, such a device would have to be very finely tuned. It would have to be sensitive to its environment to a very high, er, degree, in order to effect such a dramatic change on it. I think you realise what I mean: triangulation, synchronicity, planetary, er, alignments, that sort of thing."

"You mean I must just sit here with it, waiting for some zodiacal conjunction as if it were all ordained anyway? That's preposterous!"

"Well, er, it's not so much a matter of waiting as positioning. One must position one's self, er, in both space and time. Think of it as, er, finding a lock in which to fit a key, or...."

But Sir Alec had lost patience again, this time with no hope of getting it back. "I cannot decide, sir, whether you be a charlatan or a madman. Either way, you are clearly a fool to think that I could possibly believe such ridiculousnesses about, of all things, a Doomsday machine. If one of us is insane, Dr Milhous, I assure you it is not me. Good day."

At the indication of some signal that Milhous could not see, the door behind him clicked open, and the assistant that had escorted him to the office glided into the room. For the first time Milhous saw that the young gentleman filled his suit admirably - too admirably, like a boxer made pretty for a charitable dinner. Milhous clutched the box like a life raft, and as the assistant began to lead him forcefully, if politely, towards the door, he suddenly stammered:

"I-I-I know, Sir Alec! I think I should warn you, I know! I know all about Elise, and I should warn you that you won't get away with it."

Like a faithful hound the assistant was ever observant of Sir Alec's face for some sort of signal, and he suddenly saw a change come over it. It was as though a cloud had passed over the sun, although if it were a sun then Sir Alec's face was brittle and drawn: a sun caught mid-winter. The assistant paused in the act of frogmarching Milhous' suit to the door.

"What?" It was barely a question, barely even a sound.

"Elise, Sir Alec. I know about her. I know what you did to her. She - she was my sister, Sir Alec. I won't let you get away with it, Delft. I won't let you."

Sir Alec's lips worked for a few seconds, as if he were chewing a fly.

"Get out!" he finally screamed. "Get out of my sight! Get out!" he roared, finally unable to control himself. "I will have you blackballed from the Club! You will never work for the Ministry again! If I have my way you will never work for anyone, ever again!" As the assistant grabbed the scientist, and began dragging him to the door as if he were a sack of coal, Milhous shouted back at Sir Alec, and their monologues conflated messily: I know it all, make a fool out of me, your so-called reputation, leave you penniless, revenge, how dare you, tell the papers, threaten me, the end of you.... Then the door closed, with Milhous and Sir Alec on opposite sides.

Suddenly Milhous deflated, miserable to the core. The assistant, whose name was Devlin, saw his quarry's resistance relax and ebb away. Deep down Devlin was a decent man, for all the indecencies he carried out on behalf of his employer. He let go of Milhous' shoulders, where he had instinctively grabbed for epaulets. Smoothing the material, he muttered something conciliatory and asked, could show the good doctor out to a cab? Milhous just shook his head, and tottered off towards the stairs.

Later in the afternoon Milhous was slumped on a park bench. In the distance was the Delft building; in his hands, the box containing his invention. He stared at some point between the two, thinking hard. The hum of traffic passing along all four sides of the quadrangle pushed his thoughts gently from side to side, but he was suddenly roused by the sound of a church bell chiming three o'clock. He looked in all directions, finally settling on the box. Talking to himself all the while, he unpacked the device and began unfolding sections of its machinery. With only his own ears as audience his stutter evaporated, leaving measured, quiet words.

"I said, didn't I, Sir Alec? I said it was all a matter of positioning yourself in the right place, in space and in time. You don't have to wait around forever to do that, you know. You just need to have a good sense of timing." He extended a final piece of kit, like a radio aerial with a crosshair on the top of it. "Timing, Sir Alec," he muttered, squinting through the crosshair at the skyscraper in the distance. His hands moved over a few controls. "You either have it... or you don't." He pressed a button and smiled.