Unobtainium 1: Kate on a Hot Tin Roof (3 page)

‘News on Kate’s… sire? I refuse to refer to that mad man as her father.’

‘Indeed, sir. Mister Alfred Cooper was apprehended this morning, in Portsmouth. The inspector suggested that you visit Scotland Yard tomorrow.’

Charles began deactivating the spectrometer. ‘I believe I shall. Today I need to go to the Royal Society to check on the store of Unobtainium. This Cooper appears to have obtained some two-six-two.’

Harroway also had that most amazing of English servant qualities: an inability to be surprised. Or at least to express it; his
words
suggested the news was as alarming to him as it was to his employer. ‘My understanding was that that particular isotope was as rare as rain in a desert, sir.’

‘I believe then that we will be required to issue a storm warning for the Sahara.’

New Scotland Yard, Westminster, 16
^th
April.

Alfred Cooper was, according to Franklin, a man of some means, though not quite of the gentlemanly upbringing that Charles had had. That made his appearance now all the more surprising and displeasing.

He was not tall, perhaps five feet and six inches, thin to the point of minor malnutrition, and bald. The hair loss, Charles fervently hoped, was likely the result of accumulated radiation damage from his experiments. He sat hunched over the interview room’s table, but his face, heavily lined and with watery, grey eyes, was still visible. He looked sickly. There was every possibility that he would not make it to trial.

‘Unobtainium,’ Charles said as he entered the room. Cooper looked up, surprise flickering across his face. ‘You managed to lay your hands on some quantity of a heavier isotope of it. Atomic weight two hundred and sixty-two. There are just under three ounces in the entire world, all accounted for. Where did you get it and what did you do with it?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Cooper rasped.

Charles peered at him for a second and tried an alternative tack. ‘Come now, I’ve been through your laboratory. Some of the work there is genius. The light guide pipes, for example. The box with several radiation feeds was used to bombard the two-six-two…’ He saw Cooper’s face shift, a slight smile. ‘No, not for that, but you were bombarding something in that box with Unobtainium radiation.’

‘I don’t know–’

‘What I’m talking about? You appear to be as poor a liar as you are a father, sir.’

‘What did you do with Kate? They won’t tell me. What happened to her?’

‘She’s safe, but you pose the very question I would ask of you. What
did
happen to Kate? What did
you
do to her? Where is her mother?’

‘Dead. Died giving birth. She needs me. She’ll die–’

‘You kept her locked in a cellar, in the dark! You’ve been exposing her to radiation! The last thing we’re going to do is return her to you.’

‘She’ll turn on you.’ Cooper looked up again, his eyes hard. ‘She’s an animal. Little more than one. She can barely speak.’

‘She knows more language than you realise, sir. Perhaps if you had treated her more like a human she would know more. She reacts well to kindness. I believe she has never had any from you.’

‘I show her kindness!’ There was at least some animation in the man. ‘I brought her into this world. I gave her the best start any woman could have. She is the future, Doctor Barstow-Hall, Fellow of the Royal bloody Society. She is special!’

‘So she keeps telling us. “Father make me special.”
How
did you make her special,
Mister
Cooper?’

Cooper lowered his head to the table. ‘You already know the answer to that, Doctor.’

Frowning, Charles turned away. He was quite sure that he would get no more from the man. Perhaps Franklin could, but for now there was thinking to be done. Apparently he had all the facts, and now there was just the process of putting them together.

Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

‘I must say, Doctor,’ Doctor Wilberforce said as he placed a pair of X-ray negatives onto the light box, ‘when you asked for X-rays, I was unsure what purpose you had in mind.’

‘Particularly since I said that any part of the body would do?’ Charles replied.

‘Indeed. But then I saw this.’ He turned on the light.

‘Forgive me, Doctor. I am not a medical man, but I have seen an X-ray before. Are they not normally clearer?’

‘They are. We checked the development and the machine. There is nothing wrong with these pictures.’

The images showed a forearm and a shin. The bones were there, though they appeared whiter than Charles would have expected, and they were overlaid with a cloudy mass which seemed to belong to Kate’s flesh and almost obscured the bone beneath. He frowned, looking closer.

‘These striations on the bone…?’

‘They also appear to be real. The technician suggested that, for some reason, your young charge has unusually dense flesh and bones. You see how white they are in the image. This… web of lines around them is denser still.’

Charles took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘The man is insane,’ he said.

‘I beg your pardon, Doctor?’

‘I believe that Kate has had more than simple mistreatment. I will require a sample of her blood before I state firmly what my beliefs are. I can assist in its procurement.’

‘If you would. She was unhappy about the X-ray until we said that you had asked for it. She seems quite taken with you.’

‘I believe, Doctor Wilberforce, that she has had no one to show her a kindness of any kind her entire life. Kindness is such a simple thing to give and it can gain us so much, including the trust of a girl who knows nothing of it.’

‘A philosopher as well as a scientist, Doctor Barstow-Hall?’

‘When one’s family has given the world wonder, and horror, one develops many a theory on the nature of the human condition, Doctor.’

Knightsbridge, 17
^th
April.

The mass spectrometer’s fans were whirring again. Charles was as sure about the results this time as he had been the last, but he was hoping against hope that he was wrong.

The signal, when it displayed, was significantly more complex than the last time. He noted down peaks on the graph, taking care and double-checking every figure before he moved on to the calculations. Some of the spikes corresponded to elements he knew: iron, carbon, oxygen. Exactly what one would expect from a sample of blood. The last peak was small, but definitely there and he knew before he started working through the numbers that it was the same as the sample from the box.

‘My God, he’s impregnated her entire body with the stuff. It’s… impossible.’ He slumped into his chair and stared at the numbers, trying to make them come out differently by sheer force of will.

The knock on the door made him start and his shout of ‘Come!’ may have been a little louder than intended. ‘Harroway, what is it? I’ve just discovered something most disturbing about Kate and–’

‘This is about Kate, sir. The hospital called. She’s sick.’

‘You have no idea how true that is.’

Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

‘She said nothing,’ Wilberforce said, ‘but the nurse thought she looked uncomfortable when she brought breakfast this morning. By mid-afternoon she was obviously in some discomfort, if not pain, but she continued to profess to being well.’

Charles looked across the room to where Kate lay in her bed. The girl looked paler but not in a great degree of pain, yet. ‘Cooper, the man who claims to be her father, has somehow laced her body with Unobtainium.
That
is what caused the clouding on your X-rays, Doctor. It must have somehow seeped into every cell in her body, saturated her bones. It’s in her blood.’

Wilberforce had the good grace to at least appear speechless. Given the way his jaw worked for a second, perhaps he genuinely was. ‘Is that even possible?’

‘I am a scientist, Doctor. While I would have said no until today, I cannot deny the evidence of my own eyes. I’ll speak with her and then see if I can construct some mechanism to remove it, though…’

‘I realise that this sounds very much like a platitude, but if anyone can do it, you can.’

‘I thank you for your confidence, Doctor.’ Charles left him, walking over to the side of the bed.

Kate’s smile was as bright as ever. ‘Sharles! I… hope I am not… Uh… You are a busy man.’

‘You hope you’re not interrupting my work?’ Charles suggested. Kate looked puzzled for a second and then nodded. ‘My dear, all my attention is directed to your health at this moment.’

‘I am not trouble.’

‘No, you are not. Your father did not like it when you complained, did he? When you said you hurt?’ He got a shake of the head and her eyes dipped away. ‘He did something to you? He put… a material into your body–’

‘Won’er meddle,’ Kate said, nodding. ‘Lots of sharp… needles. Yes? Needles?’

‘Needles, that’s right. Try “wonder metal.”’ He enunciated the words carefully for her, wondering whether she had ever had anyone teach her how to speak.

‘Wonder metal,’ Kate replied as though reading from a child’s spelling book.

Charles smiled. ‘Excellent. It is correctly called “Un-ob-tain-ium.”’

She looked at him for a second and then said ‘Un ob tain yum’ just as carefully.

He narrowed his eyes, a smile playing over his lips. ‘Are you making fun of me, young lady?’

‘Unobtainium,’ Kate said and tapped her ear. ‘I listen good. I speak bad. I… don’t have words.’

‘Well, that is something we will have to correct, but first I need to see if I can undo what your father did. It’s hurting you, is it not?’

‘It… hurts a little. It gets worse. Once it got worst of all.’

‘Well, let us hope that I can make the pain go away.’

Burlington House, Westminster.

The library of the Royal Society was the best in the world, but it was not proving up to the task at hand. Charles had suspected that that would be the case, but he had tried anyway.

Biochemistry was not one of his specialities. Oh, he was an acknowledged expert, as was the case with most things scientific, but the biological side had always been an area he had let slip. He was beginning to regret that, but not giving up hope.

The problem was that cell structure and function was a relatively unknown quantity. There had been advances made in microscopy which had revealed many secrets, but those uncovered details had posed more questions than given answers. And here was a problem which appeared to encompass every cell in the body. Even her bones had absorbed the metal.

By rights, she should have been dead long ago, which meant that something in her body was keeping her alive, and that something was no longer functioning. Cooper had said that she would die without him and Charles was beginning to worry that the man might have the right of it. If only there was a way to precipitate the metal from her body.

Now chemistry was something he knew more about! Getting up from the chair he had fallen into, he marched off towards the chemistry books. He knew more about the chemistry of Unobtainium than any other man alive, but being surrounded by the knowledge of his predecessors was always inspiring.

The Barstow Club, Mayfair.

Inspiration did not, however, come from the books and by the evening, Charles was sitting in the common lounge of the Barstow Club hoping that inspiration would come from a brandy. So far it was not working much better than the books.

‘That look on your face suggests that something of a grave nature has occurred, Doctor Barstow-Hall.’

Charles looked up to see Antonia Wooster standing over him again and tried to muster a smile. He knew from her expression that he was not doing well. ‘It’s Kate,’ he said.

‘I thought as much. She has not reverted or harmed anyone, I hope?’ Again Antonia settled into the seat beside his, crossing her legs and arranging her skirts. Her gown was off the shoulder this evening, a far more modern style than she usually wore and a little shocking, but of course she absolutely shone in it.

‘Oh, far from it. The process her father employed is unclear to me, but what he did is. Somehow he has saturated her body in Unobtainium two-six-two.’

‘You’ll pardon me, Charles. Science is not my forte, though I have an understanding of zoology. I was unaware that there were different kinds of Unobtainium.’

That managed to raise a small chuckle from him and she smiled. ‘The metal you may have seen, perhaps in the British Museum, is the most stable form, the “isotope” my grandfather discovered thirty-five years ago. The mass of each atom is two hundred and sixty. The units are not important. In fact, they are essentially arbitrary. The fact that an atom is Unobtainium, or carbon or oxygen, is determined by the element number, related to the positive charge in the atom’s core, but the
mass
of an atom can vary. We call these atoms of the same element with different masses “isotopes.”’

‘From the Greek? These isotopes occupy the same place on the periodic table of elements. Isos topos?’

‘I see you know a little Greek and a little chemistry as well as biology. Unobtainium has three known isotopes. Two-six-oh is used in most of the devices we construct from the metal. It is alloyed with iron to make adamantium. Two-five-seven is unstable. Over the course of many years it decays into other materials, giving off energy as it does so.’

‘So that is used in the reactor which powers this great city.’

‘As you say. Two-six-two is thought to be stable, or very nearly so, but exceptionally rare. I thought that there existed no more than three ounces in the world, all of it accounted for. We know little of its properties. It appears relatively useless given its availability and there is no clear advantage over its more common cousin.’

‘But this man, Cooper was it? He has not only obtained some of this heavier element, but he has somehow soaked it into Kate’s body?’

Charles nodded. ‘It’s killing her. Slowly, but surely. Heavy metals in the body do little good to anyone. I’ve no idea how he kept her alive this long.’