Chapter 7

Pippa brushed grass from her knees and pushed through the thick flock of sheep that covered the lawn ten-deep. She had found The Saint. Now she had to find the way to his office. Maria Thingumijig, what was her name? Skoda? Skowska? Something like that. She’d seen it before somewhere, but where? On the empty heliport Pippa stood still and closed her eyes tight. Think now. Concentrate. Where is Maria?

“Down here with us.” The words entered her mind. Down? She looked up at the top of the Tusk and then down its ivory length. The catacombs. Of course. She’s a bust. Pippa jumped in the air and ran for the side entrance of the Tusk, singing at the top of her voice “Mar-i-a, Mar-i-a.”

The head and shoulders of Maria Sklodowska-Curie were mounted on marble at the very end of the corridor, no doubt because they were larger than life. It wouldn't do to eclipse the likes of Marconi and Tesla, Sam Morse and Alex Bell, Pippa thought.

“Men!” said Marie Curie. “Can't live with them, can't live without them.”

Pippa stepped closer to the bust. “They made life tough for you?” she said, imagining a young woman in a white-long sleeved blouse, a long grey serge skirt, and her tousled hair breaking out from the decorum of a fin-de-siècle bun. The woman was running in circles behind men in lab coats and top hats. The circular movement made it look as if young Marie was trying to catch one while being pursued by the others, round and around.

“I was not trying to catch. I only wanted the recognition due to me. It was they trying to catch up with me, but what they didn't understand was that for a woman there's life beyond science.”

“And did they catch up?”

“My dear, you are much better placed than me to judge that. And I did live for my science.”

Pippa raised one eyebrow.

“All right, I had my loves,” Marie said. “But always through my work, for my work,” she added hastily.

Pippa's mind read some tears, and a garbled image of a very young woman with a broken heart, but it was soon swept away with the flourish of a labcoat. “And you did get the recognition,” Pippa said softly.

“Thanks to a man who recognised that is was my work and not just Pierre's.”

“Things haven't changed,” Pippa said. “I guess you still need connections.”

“Alas,” said Marie, Curie, “but the lack of should not stop you. But mark my words, the day will come when there will be true transparency,” Maria said cryptically.

“Speaking of which,” Pippa said, suddenly remembering The Saint, “How can I find Theodor Sain't office?”

“Ah, the good Theodor. He's in a bit of a quandary, you know.”

“He is?”

“I shouldn't spill the – what are those things?”

“Beans?” Pippa said.

Marie ignored her and pursed her lips, then let them soften. “Theodor Saint is a scientist; and a scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.”

“Yes, but where is his – laboratory,” Pippa said.

Marie Curie furrowed her brow. “It's a bit of a maze, this place, isn't it? And they keep moving me and the others about. Always renovating. They're even putting music into the toilettes down the way.”

“Please. The way to The Saint.”

“Sorry, my dear,” Marie Curie said and continued in a teacherly tone: “North twenty metres and then SSW, then NE past the second door to the power of 32. Turn around and you should be there.”

Pippa's head began to spin.

“And don't go through the magnetic field.”

I can match that, Pippa thought. “You mean, follow the sheep?”

Marie Curie smiled. “I think you've got it,” she said.

“But I've just been following the sheep, Pippa thought.