'This is the heart of spiral field maths and of the deceptive beauty at the heart of Superforce. Look one way and you see quantum theory, look the other and you see relativity-two sides of the same coin, held just long enough by the maths to allow us to see which one we're looking at. But what does this mean for us?' I walked across stage, unsteady from my memory of Caroline. 'Well, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know. We just can't tell what may come. So, when you're asked, "Does this stuff really matter?" you shout, "Of course." This formula, this force, explains the universe and the world around us. It's the force that binds our materials together, and if we understand that, imagine what might be possible. Maybe we can manipulate matter itself and change a table into a cow, or dirt into gold. Perhaps we could make new energy and create our own tame black hole. Who knows? What I do know though is that the future is ours. Remember that one message when you leave. Science has made the future ours to mould. We just have to be brave enough to lay our hands on the clay. Thank you and goodnight.'

Applause thundered through the auditorium. I took my bows and left, waving to all parts of the audience. Bebe waited for me with a towel and water and I took the congratulations of those around me as I gulped down the liquid. The happy tempo of ELO blasted from the stage. As 'Mr Blue Sky' played, I knew the magical animated tour around a black hole and through the other side where everyday images changed shape, was showing on the stage screen.

Bebe and I relaxed in the changing room after I'd changed from my sweat-soaked clothes and sunk my first post-show drink. That one always tasted good, almost on a par with the first of the day. The adrenalin of the show had shrugged off my earlier gloom. All the lights were on now and I was ready for the party, though there was still some lingering uneasiness at the thought of Caroline's hanging feet.

'The world should see you, Jack. You were marvellous out there. I'd like to see Driesler try and do something like that. He's just a bag of gas.'

'You know, Bebe, I've been pondering our earlier conversation about Mr Driesler. I can't help but think what a grand coincidence it is that when he publishes his book, I'm stuck down here at the other end of the world, away from all the action.'

'Conspiracy theorist.'

'Maybe, but how convenient it is for the company to have me here.'

'This trip has been planned for months.'

'And Driesler's book?'

'We don't have any control over that.'

'Don't you?'

'Of course we don't. Christ, Jack, the company supports you fully, we've spent millions...'

'Bebe, spare me the company bulls.h.i.t, I know how it works: the king is dead, long live the king. If Taikon think he's a better bet in the future then I'd be put out to pasture, contract tied and silenced while Frank steps into my fame-sodden shoes. And think how much easier he'd be to manage. s.h.i.t, he'd be low maintenance compared to me. I bet he doesn't have any vices, I bet he's squeaky clean. The company would love that, wouldn't they, Bebe? No risk of scandal to dirty the image. What a partnership, and how easy it would be to get me off the scene. I mean, a few kiss-and-tell stories and I'd be in disgrace, I'd be blasted off planet fame with a one-way ticket.'

'You're talking rubbish, Jack.'

'Am I?'

'Yes you are, rubbish.' He checked his watch. 'Let's go to the party.'

'Why won't you let me comment on his book?'

'The company wants a planned response. The boys in Europe are anxious to go through everything with you first. In fact that shows how committed they are to you, how much they respect you.'

'You're so well practised in the art of spin, Bebe.'

'Let's go.'

'You had better be straight with me, Bebe. If I find you lot are in bed with Driesler I would be one very sad and unhappy boy.'

The Hilton party was in full swing when we arrived. The guests babbled their excitement at being seen at one of the parties of the year. Bebe had performed his usual impeccable job in preparing the guests and the working girls mixed with the wannabes. In fact, he had excelled and the party was well stocked like a fine wine cellar. Protocol demanded I first meet the head of Taikon in Australasia. He was a short man with a wispy moustache that hinted at weak stubble on a Sunday morning and he spoke with an unusually staccato voice. I played the game, graciously accepting congratulations, talking up the company and talking down the compet.i.tors. Nodding in agreement and laughing at poor jokes, I shook outstretched hands with a firm, warm greeting. Bebe hovered at my shoulder, ensuring my drink was full and my comments bland. He had every reason to be pleased with my performance and told me so at every opportunity as we moved from one group to another. Finally after an hour Bebe relaxed his grip and let me go play.

The toilets at the Hilton are an interesting mix of Raffles and the s.p.a.ce station: all the trappings of colonial cla.s.s in a sanitised environment. I lingered in them for a while, taking care over a wash and dry of hands, combing my hair and adjusting my clothes. It was nice to be away from the sweaty ma.s.s, my work for the evening done and the fun about to begin. I toyed with the idea of taking a pew and contemplating my worries, but I really couldn't be f.u.c.ked to get morose again so I just winked at myself and left the toilet to its...o...b..t.

Once back in the party the calves of a particularly fine pair of legs caught my attention. Thankfully the face and figure matched.

Her voice was husky, heavily accented, reminiscent of a Berlin jazz club. She wore a red velvet dress, a little cheap, with some frayed edges, but not so cheap as to immediately give away her status. This was a working dress, not a night-time special to get on the pages of Woman's Day. Her name was Claudia and she had come from Russia to New Zealand two years ago, but her English was almost perfect. Her black hair, shiny and soft as an advertis.e.m.e.nt, formed a waterfall on her shoulders. It reminded me of a thoroughbred's tail. She wore heavy black shoes that tightened those black-clad calves and her body swayed to an imaginary tune.

Looking into my eyes without quite focusing she answered my question: 'Paul for my wedding ballad, John to run away with.' It was good enough for me. I touched her arm and guided her toward Bebe. As I moved I shook more hands, took more congratulations and flashed a smile or two. Already my mind was imagining hands running the smooth path of those legs.

It was just before I reached Bebe that Jo appeared at his side. He acknowledged her hesitantly, quickly a.s.sessed the dangers and tried to distract her with an overelaborate welcome. To the outsider it must have seemed as though Bebe was greeting a long-lost lover. The diversion almost succeeded and I had just about escaped the throng when her interest in Bebe suddenly waned and she turned straight into my path. She greeted me with a sloppy kiss; her breath smelt of drink and her eyes were dazed.

'Jo?'

'You said to come along to the party, Jack, so here I am.' She held out her arms as though offering me her body in sacrifice. Her eyes failed to focus on anything and slowly her gaze fell to the floor. 'Can we go to your room? I just want last night to come again.'

'Who's the friend?' Claudia sniffed the air as though Jo was a foreign body and there was a risk of contamination.

I introduced them and there was an uneasy silence as Bebe hovered on the outside of the group, ready to bring the meeting to an end. Claudia touched my arm. 'I'm sure there's enough of everything to go around.' Jo was too drunk to care, Claudia looked more than comfortable with her idea and I was almost halfway up the stairs with my trousers down.

Even before I'd fumbled the cork free of the first champagne bottle, Claudia was into the c.o.ke. She divided three lines on the gla.s.s coffee tabletop and we took one each in turn. Between us, Claudia and I had enough to keep the hotel going for the night, but it was Jo who greedily consumed the most. As for the rest of the evening, though, the memory is hazy, or perhaps better to say corrupted. I know the broad brushstrokes of drink, drugs and s.e.x, but the more precise details are lost. Everything just kind of rolled into one experience of head spinning, saliva spreading, grunting, sweating, and sniffing as though it was all one. Finally the cocaine-induced energy waned and we slept.

Never before had Bebe entered my bedroom when I still had a woman with me, but we had slept through his various attempts to rouse us-the phone had been knocked to the floor by some contorted limb. He pulled the curtains and shook my shoulder to wake me.

'Come on, Jack, we have to do the Holmes show,' he whined. He was dressed in an immaculate blue suit and I could smell his expensive aftershave as he leant over the bed. I opened an aching eye and saw the look of disgust on his face. 'My G.o.d, Jack, what has been going on in here? It's like a scene from Caligula. Come on, get up-we have to go. I never thought it would come to this.' He shook his head.

I half sat up, trying to ignore the heavy hangover, which I had already a.s.sessed as a grade one with bells on-loud bells that echoed throughout my head the way a house alarm does when you're inside. Claudia appeared from under a tangle of bedclothes, looked around, yawned and got out of bed. She still wore her stockings, one of which had slipped to below the knee. Bebe held up a towel, which she ignored as she collected her clothes and took them to the bathroom. Determined to use his scorned towel he held it to me, shaking it like a matador in the hope it would entice me from the bed. I obliged and wrapped the towel around my waist. Jo remained asleep, her back to us. Bebe circled the bed to her side. 'Come on, young lady,' he called but she refused to respond.

'Jo,' I croaked, my voice rebounding in my head like a bullet in a lead room, 'her name is Jo.'

'Come on, Jo, time to get going.' She remained silent. Bebe touched her arm. 'Jo. Jo? Jack, I think there's something wrong here.'

Hearing the panic in his voice, I scrambled around the bed. My poorly secured towel fell from my body at the sudden movement. I rolled Jo onto her back. Her arm swung and fell lifelessly. She was pale but warm and although her body was limp, I could see the shallow rise of her chest as she breathed what must have been no more than an eggcup full of air. I closed my eyes and there was Caroline again and not just her feet this time, but her entire body, her head to one side, mocking that once vital, questioning pose of hers.

'Oh f.u.c.k, Jack.' Bebe was leaning over Jo, peering into her eyes, his finger delicately holding up an eyelid smeared with old shadow. It was the first time I'd heard him swear. 'I think she's in a coma.'

'What are we going to do, Bebe?'

Claudia slid silently from the bathroom. She moved like a stalking cat, but when she saw the panic in our eyes and Jo's apparently lifeless body, she stopped her slow walk.

's.h.i.t,' continued Bebe as he experimented with his new vocabulary. 'You two need to go to my room.'

'I'm not going anywhere.' Claudia was already near the door.

Bebe composed himself, dropped his hands to the side of his body and in a low whisper that carried a menace I'd never heard before said, 'You two go to my room, wait there for me and do not leave until I say you can leave.' I took his key and like two chastised schoolchildren we went to Bebe's room. Claudia's defiance was clearly all show and Bebe's resoluteness had for the moment silenced her objections. Bebe's room, as always, was in the same corridor, but not next to mine as might be expected-perhaps he thought I might keep him awake at night. The room was fastidiously tidy and even though no maid had yet visited, the bed was made. I sat down and watched Claudia continue her stalking cat routine. She lit a cigarette and flicked ash into a gla.s.s.

'Do you always do what he tells you?'

'Pretty much,' I replied.

'I'm not staying here.'

'I think you should, we need to sort some things out.'

'That's why I'm not staying here.'

I clenched my teeth. This was my first moment of reflection on what had happened and the reflection was s.h.i.t ugly. I felt sick. 'You have to stay, Claudia.' Fighting the nausea was going to be pointless. Deprivations of the body from the night before, mixed with the shock of Jo's condition, were irresistible forces. I ran to the bathroom to vomit. There were no warm-up coughs to acclimatise the body to what was to come. Oh no, I sprayed the sink immediately with a high-octane mixture of old alcohol, remnants of food, bile and the not so humble smell of fear. At the end there were also some tears, but I could not be sure if they came from the experience of vomiting or from the s.h.i.t piling up around me. After the last shocks finally abated I washed away the remnants of my stomach before splashing water on my face. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Was this really me?

Claudia was gone. It was no surprise, and who could blame her. Christ, given half the chance I'd join her. There was something undeniably attractive about just walking from this room and leaving everything behind. Bebe would do all he could, but I knew the company would lose their collective minds over this escapade. If any of this reached the papers I'd be sunk and my drowning would leave a very dirty mark on my very clean masters. Oh yes, this was bad; this was f.u.c.king bad.

'Just one thing, Jack, just one thing, that's all I asked of you.' Bebe had returned. 'And you couldn't even do that. Why did you let her go?' He strode around the room flapping the air with a towel to clear the smoke. He'd yet to find the gla.s.s full of ash. He was sweating and his shirt had dark marks under the arms and down the back.

'How is Jo?' I was almost too afraid to ask.

'In a coma, Jack, she's in a b.l.o.o.d.y coma.'

'Where is she now?'

'Hospital.'

'Will she live?'

'That's in G.o.d's hands now.'

He noticed the gla.s.s and picked it up with the tip of his finger and thumb as though it contained a dog t.u.r.d. 'What an earth were you doing last night?'

'Just having some fun.'

'Going fishing with a friend is having fun, going to a sports game with your son is having fun, listening to music and having a dance is having fun, but an orgy with a Russian hooker and an old school friend while taking enough cocaine to keep Napoleon's army going isn't having fun. It's called destroying your life, and it's b.l.o.o.d.y senseless. You've gone too far this time, Jack. She might die.'

'I know and I feel awful.'

'Awful? Awful? Is that all you can say? I'll tell you something, Jack-you're coming apart at the seams. Paranoid stories about being followed, s.e.x, drugs and drink out of control...' He was crying as he spoke. 'You have so many gifts. I'd cut off my left leg for a fraction of your talent, but what do you do with it all? You give up work and slowly destroy yourself and everything you've worked for.'

'I can't work, Bebe, there's nothing left for me. I've achieved my peak and I know I'll never come close again. Even if I work for a hundred years I can't touch what I've done. Everything seems so b.l.o.o.d.y mundane in comparison. There's nothing left for me, Bebe, nothing.'

'The company has to know about this. You have no idea what I've had to do to sort this out.' He pulled a tissue from the box beside his bed and dabbed his eyes. 'I don't know what's going to happen, Jack.'

'Thank you, Bebe. Thank you for helping.'

'I did it for the girl, I did it for myself,' he lied.

'I know-thank you for helping her. I'm sure she'll pull through and she'll owe her life to you. That is something to really be proud of, Bebe, a real achievement that matters, not some fantasy like mine.'

He stopped crying. 'I've cancelled today's press meetings-I said you were unwell. Jack, will you promise me something? Will you promise to get some help when we get back to England? Will you see someone about what troubles you so much?'

I dropped my head and sat silently.

'You can't even do that, can you? At such a desperate moment as this you can't seek help.'

'There's something that just drives me to it, Bebe, and I don't know that I want it to stop.'

'Why not?'

'Because without it there would just be this f.u.c.king huge ugly void and I'm scared of it. At least I know about the drink and the s.e.x.'

'How ironic that you're afraid of the unknown when your work takes everyone else there.'

'Can I go back to my room now, please?'

No one would have imagined what had happened in the room just hours before. The bed was made, the room tidied and cleaned, and all previously scattered possessions in their rightful place. I avoided asking Bebe how he'd sorted this problem, how he'd turned the clock back and manufactured a different outcome to protect me. How much had Claudia's disappearance upset his plans? It was best I didn't know. It didn't stop me speculating, though. I bet he engineered the finding of Jo's body in another room. The hotel would have been compliant: after all, they wouldn't want any bad publicity and there would have been the offer of some future Taikon conference to smooth the changed records required to cover up the story and sever any connection with Jo. Everything would be taken care of, everything except Claudia, of course. Thanks to me, Claudia was still free.

Slowly late afternoon invaded the room, casting shadows on the furniture. I tried sleeping, but it was impossible. Jo's lifeless face and fragments of the night before forced themselves on me. Somehow I had to get away. I dressed and walked the waterfront for an hour. The evening was cool and thick cloud pressed down on the horizon. A guard walked with me and I pulled my hat low to avoid recognition. I felt hunted, as though everyone on the street knew what I'd done. It might not be long before they actually did know. Could one of them be my stalker? The thought made me angry.

When I returned to the hotel, the manager pa.s.sed me an envelope. In my room I sat on a chair I was sure Jo had never used and read the letter at least six or seven times. The night was almost on me and I let the room darken until I could no longer read.

THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD.

A Star So Bright

So finally Jack Mitch.e.l.l has returned home to New Zealand-and what a homecoming. His show at the Aotea Centre last night was a stunning experience. Part rock star, part bar lounge crooner, part s.e.x symbol and total genius, Mitch.e.l.l had it all. And he held the audience spellbound for nearly ninety minutes.

The show is all about unity. Unity lies at the heart of Mitch.e.l.l's work as a scientist. Superforce unites deep and disparate forces and provides a unifying theory to underpin our science. Clearly his need to bring things together is a much deeper craving than just in science and that is what the show is all about. Pink Floyd rubs shoulders with Eminem; there is even a dash of ELO (if anyone remembers them). There are lasers and lights, a speech from Martin Luther King and poetry from Auden and Owen. All of this and a history of science from Galileo to the present and connections made about how science affects our daily lives.

I learnt a great deal by going to this show. I learnt more about science than I ever did at school and I learnt about the connections between ideas and music and literature. Above all, though, I learnt that Mitch.e.l.l is selling something a bit different to the world. He is not an ivory tower science nerd and he is more than a mere scientist. He is bringing science out of the cupboard and putting it front of mind and helping us to be less afraid of it on the way. Science is cool-that's his message.

It is a shame that he only has two shows here, but schedules dictate Mitch.e.l.l now. I hope he returns soon. I guess at least there will be the DVD in the meantime.

Dear Jack, I saw your show last night. It certainly was dazzling; you were certainly dazzling. I look at you from the crowd, sometimes I get close and I know you know I'm there and I think how special you've become.

You love your science, I know that, but what's with the show and all those connections? What are you searching for, Jack, because you're searching for something, aren't you? Is it to be more famous than Einstein, is that why you talk so much about him? Always straining to be compared with him.

If you really thought you had all the answers with that theory of yours you wouldn't be out there still searching.

Science doesn't explain why your wife killed herself, does it? Science doesn't explain why you loved your lover's sister. Science doesn't explain why you gasp at the poetry of Owen, or cry at the art of Michelangelo.

Science doesn't explain what looks back at you from the mirror in the morning.

The thing is, Jack, I have the answer. Are you willing to find out?