7

Rome, Italy

The big man flipped through the old copy of Scientific American until he reached the bookmarked page. The article he was looking for was called Medieval Quantum Science. Its author was Dr Roberta Ryder, an American biologist working out of Paris. He’d read it before, but because of the reports he’d been receiving over the last few days, he was reading it again in a whole new light.

When he’d first seen Ryder’s article he’d been pleased at the way the magazine editors had attacked her work. They’d torn her to pieces, devoting an entire editorial to debunking and ridiculing everything she’d said. They’d even made a fool of her on the front page. Making such a public example of her had been an undisguised hatchet job, but what else could you do with a once-respected, award-winning young scientist who suddenly started making wild and unsubstantiated claims about such a thing as alchemy? The scientific establishment would not, could not tolerate a radical of this sort who demanded that alchemical research should be taken seriously and given proper funding, asserting that its popular reputation as quackery was undeserved, possibly even a conspiracy, and that it would one day revolutionize physics and biology.

He’d followed her career since then, and been pleased at the way it had plummeted. Ryder had been thoroughly discredited. The science world had turned its back on her, virtually had her excommunicated. She’d even lost her university job. When he’d heard this news at the time, he’d been delighted.

But now he wasn’t so happy. In fact, he was furious, and anxious.

This damn woman wouldn’t go away. She’d shown an unexpected toughness and determination in the face of adversity. Despite the universal derision of her peers, despite almost running out of money, she continued to persist in her private research. Now the reports from his source were telling him she’d had a breakthrough. Not a major one, necessarily–but big enough for him to worry about it.

Clever, this Ryder woman. Dangerously clever. On a shoestring budget she was getting better results than his whole well-equipped, highly-paid team. She couldn’t be allowed to go on like this. What if she discovered too much? She’d have to be stopped.