Thursday 28 June 2007

Coda

Summary
Surrealist humour with musical medical twist

For some weeks I had been experiencing feelings of discord. During quiet moments when I was resting, reading a newspaper or memorising recipes, I would detect unseemly rumblings from within my torso. I could feel my internal organs were out of tune, little overtures of muscular spasms, uncontrolled movements from within. At first I dismissed these as normal bodily functions, the background to everyday life. Yet I knew the harmony of my body had been disturbed. Eventually I could sustain it no longer and visited my physician.

As I gave a recital of my symptoms, he became a silent audience, listening to my theme of mounting disquiet. I finished my piece.

"What does it sound like to you, Doctor?" He refused to be drawn into an opinion. "I think you should go for some tests."

I felt several grace notes of alarm tinkle down my spine, and my solar plexus tightened like cat-gut. My temples hummed with dismay. I pressed. He gave an inscrutable look.

"These things are open to several interpretations. Let me arrange the tests for you."

"Tests! What sort of tests?" I exclaimed, staccato.

"We need to make some recordings. Then I will be able to tell you more."

So, within weeks, a booking was made for me to visit the local hospital. I was accompanied by a kindly nurse. I had to take various substances for some of the run-throughs to work properly. I had tubes inserted into places I prefer not to mention.

I returned to my Doctor’s.

"What do the tests reveal?" I asked.

"There’s no easy way to break this to you," he recited. "You need to compose yourself. It seems you may have an ensemble of musicians in your lower intestine."

"What?" I exclaimed. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. "How is that possible?" A threnody of despair raged in my ears. I could not understand what he was saying.

"You should know that the body is like a place of many galleries. Sometimes it’s like the pits." He put on a studious face as he introduced me to the facets of his world that he was taught at medical school but which are unknown to the layman. "Normally, these work in tune with one another, to their own natural rhythm. But the body is a complicated thing. Sometimes you get the odd busker developing in there, sometimes a duo, occasionally a quartet."

"I have never heard of such a thing," I gasped, my panic reaching a crescendo. "Surely it is very rare."

"It has a more common time than you would think."

I cast my mind back to television programmes that I had seen between those with my beloved recipes. Now I came to think of it, I had heard of ailments like this. I had just not taken much notice. I had always been a healthy person. You never think something like this could happen to you. New questions began to transpose themselves from the recesses of my memory.

"Are they likely to be – instrumentalists?" I asked.

"Instrumentalists, singer/songwriters, sometimes a capella groups. Let’s hope it’s not a dance band."

"A dance band!" I gasped. "Could it be as bad as that?"

"Dance, jazz, who knows? Let’s just hope we caught it before the malady lingers on. Otherwise, there is a danger it could turn into a whole orchestra. You will need to go for more tests."

I returned to his surgery a few weeks later. His expression was grim and I knew it must be bad news.

"Go ahead, Doctor. Tell me."

"The tests reveal," he spoke with a slight rallentando, "unmistakable signs of a brass section. The disease is more advanced than we thought. Are you sure you didn’t have more obvious symptoms earlier? Auditions, perhaps?"

"What can I say, Doctor? I thought perhaps I was eating too much roughage. I’ve always had obbligatos in the morning. What do we do now?"

"There are four areas which we can try in concert. Drugs, radiation, surgical rearrangement, and alternative therapies such as relaxation and visualisation."

"But I was relaxed, taking a tacit rest, until I found out a symphony was being rehearsed in me. What is visualisation, anyway?"

"Visualisation is a technique you can do for yourself. Try to imagine what the orchestra looks like. Has it got a string section? Are the woodwinds organised? Is there a first violin or solo pianist? Most importantly, can you see the conductor?"

"Why is he so important?"

"Because if you can find the conductor, force him from his podium, and remove his baton, the orchestra cannot play, and your condition will be beaten, four to the bar. The recital will be over. You will go into remission and recover."

"Is there anything else?" I asked, impromptu.

"There is just one thing," said my Doctor – I could tell from the timbre of his voice that he did not hold this alternative any more highly than an improvisation. "You could try standing anywhere there is a lot of noise."

"Noise?" I echoed, "why?"

"Noise interferes with practice sessions, affects rehearsals and destroys the coherence of the orchestra’s repertoire."

"I’ll try it," I said.

It was to be a most unpleasant experience. At first, it was difficult to find anywhere cacophonous enough. I sought out road-works, building sites – anywhere there were pneumatic drills in use. I would come home with my ears ringing. I stood on the central reservation of motorways – they were not loud enough, and too middle of the road – I could feel the exposition of a piece developing within me. I had a lucky break with the onset of the holiday season – the local airport provided many charter flights, but even with take-offs every few minutes, there was too much silence in between. My ears told me all was not well. I returned to my Doctor.

"Things are getting worse," I told him. "I think I can recognise the style of a composer."

"Who do you think it is?" he asked. "It could be hard to Handel. And if it’s a variation of Elgar, that would be an Enigma."

"Beethoven," I said.

He sighed. "At least it’s not Strauss," he said with signs of relief. "A condition like this can sometimes be a Strauss-related illness. If it was Strauss it would be – well – goodnight Vienna."

"Thank God," I murmured. "It’s like that old-fashioned dance – one minuet you’re in, the next…"

"You’re out. Do you detect a time signature?"

"No, but I think the key is F major."

His brow furrowed. "Could be the Pastoral. Anything else?"

"The second movement may be molto vivace."

"Ah – you have been fooled by the relative minor." His experience clearly showed in these matters. "That would make it the Ninth Symphony."

"Oh no," I said, "not the Chorale! Not the Ode To Joy."

He put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. "Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that," he said with a gentle air. "That’s the finale."

Autumn approached, and with it, the opportunity to buy fireworks. I purchased as many bangers as I could, crackerjacks, rip-raps, screaming banshees. Eventually my neighbour complained when my hat blew off my head and landed on the roof of his conservatoire, traumatising his wife.

Finally, in desperation, I went clubbing. Night after night I would stand next to the speaker stacks, soaking up house music until I was overwhelmed with nausea – usually within two minutes. I persevered, until I was staggering home in the small hours, crazed with tinnitus.

I returned to my Doctor after another round of tests. I was on the brink of despair. The house music had been my last hope.

My Doctor looked overjoyed, the first time I had seen him smile in months. "The results of your latest tests have just come back. You are in the clear! I’ve never seen anything like it. No strings, no woodwind, no percussion. Even the timpani have gone."

I was astounded, "Are you sure?" I said. This seemed too much to hope for after all I had endured, and my mind resonated with doubt.

"Your orchestra has gone. You have no music in you."

Still I hesitated. "It’s just that… well, every time I walk I think I can hear a squeaking sound coming from my bottom." It was no time for false modesty.

"Show me," he said. I walked round his consulting room. "Hear that?" I said, "that faint high pitched sound?"

He looked dubious. "Let me ask my colleague for a second opinion. The tests were very conclusive."

We went into his colleague’s consulting room and my Doctor explained the situation. "This patient of mine believed he had an orchestra growing internally."

"What?" said the second doctor. "Is he mad?"

"And now he believes he can still hear tunes coming from his bottom when he walks."

"Walk around a little," said the second doctor. I did as I was instructed.

"What do you think?" said my Doctor to his colleague.

"I don’t know," he said, with a shake of his head. "It just sounds to me like some silly arse whistling."
THE END

A Walk On The Wild Side


Summary
A humorous short story about a holiday misunderstanding

"I can’t believe it!" said Susan, slumping on a boulder. It didn’t look comfortable enough to slump on but she did so all the same.

"It is a bit difficult to take in."

"But I was sure it said ‘Naturalist Ramble’."

"That’s what I thought, too," said Tim. "Animals, plants, flora and fauna."

"What are we going to do?"

Tim shifted his weight from foot to foot. "I suppose we could just ramble anyway."

"We can’t! Look at that sign."

Tim looked at the sign. "That does make it difficult. I suppose we could stay in the coach."

"But they’re going to be gone all afternoon. They will be looking at plants and birds and wildlife, while we will be roasting in a coach." Susan seemed to be getting quite het up about this. It was difficult to be sure – he hadn’t known her that long, or that well.

"I didn’t know you liked wildlife so much."

"I don’t like the thought of being stuck in stationary coach all afternoon in the baking sun when I’m supposed to be on holiday. There’s a beach and rock pools and things as well."

"Look at it this way – you’d be adding to your tan."

"I am not" she paused for emphasis, "interested in getting a tan like that."

"Perhaps they wouldn’t mind if we just tagged along."

"I think perhaps that they bloody would. Seeing as they have – now – made it clear that is a Naturist ramble. Read the sign."

Tim read the sign. It said: "No clothing or textile beyond this point. Please store clothes in the lockers provided. Take key. Photographs allowed but people have to give permission." It also said, as far as Tim could make out, the same thing in French and German. The thought of naked Germans made Tim shudder.

"We could still look at the wildlife." Tim offered.

"We’d be part of the bloody wildlife," Susan offered back.

He walked over to her, raising his palms in a gesture of magnanimity. "Everybody else is getting undressed. Look. We won’t we be the only ones." Tim looked at the sign again. He wondered what Spanish or Russian holiday-makers from the hotel would do. "No-one will see anything they can’t see somewhere else."

"No-one has seen this!" Susan hissed. She looked down at her t-shirt-and-shorts-covered body like it was a piece of furniture that had been delivered by mistake.

"What, no-one?" said Tim.

"No-one out in public in broad daylight."

"But it’s not a complete mystery to the entire rest of the human race?"

"Don’t be personal! Or prurient."

"I wasn’t. I was just making the point that there isn’t a principle involved here. It’s just these particular circumstances. And, in these circumstances, you will be surrounded by other naked people. So – far from standing out, you will actually blend in. Unless there’s something odd about you."

"There is nothing odd about me," she retorted, getting up off the boulder. Then, for good measure she kicked it. At least she was wearing fairly substantial shoes, for the anticipated walk.

"Well then," Tim said.

"Well what? Do you want to strip off."

Tim fidgeted. "Not exactly. But I had been looking forward to a good walk. Plenty of fresh air and a trip down to the beach. They say the sand is white there. Something to do with silicates. Very picturesque."

"What’s your point?"

"Well… it’s still on offer… If only we can swallow our pride and stop being so self-conscious."

"I’m not self-conscious – it’s other people I’m conscious of!"

"That’s what I’m saying. No-one else will be taking a blind bit of notice of you. But if we stay here we will be a laughing stock!"

It was slumping-on-boulder time again for Susan. "Oh, help…" she whimpered.

"What are you – we – going to do?"

There was a pause. This unpopulated side of the island spread out before them in a tapestry of natural beauty, flowers and tropical shrubs giving off a heady scent, the shimmering sea in the distance trapped between it and the sky, while the sun warmed everything with friendly, gentle blows.

"Alright," Susan said. A bit grumpily, but with determination.

"We’re going on the walk?"

"Unless you don’t strip off too."

"Yes, um, I realise that." Tim bit his lip. "It’s probably just like being in your swimming cozzy at the pool. You feel a bit exposed at first but then you start to have fun and don’t think about it."

"How can you not think about having no clothes?"

"I don’t know. Does this mean you’ve changed your mind again?"

"No!" She stood up smartly and started towards the lockers near the sign. "I’m going to get undressed. And you are too. And we’re going for a naturist ramble."

"Alright." Tim swallowed. It didn’t really feel alright. But he couldn’t see another way out of their dilemma.

Susan tugged off her t-shirt with a minimum of grace and put it in a locker. She turned to watch Tim to make sure he kept up with her by removing his shirt. He did so, and pushed it regretfully into a neighbouring locker, as if he might never see it again. Then she reached behind her back to reach her bra clasp, staring vehemently at the sky.

"Oh… " she grimaced, looking skyward. "I can’t stand doing this."

"What, looking for God in the heavens?"

"Getting naked in front of strangers. I mean, I hardly know you – we only met a couple of days ago."

"It’s the same for me, you know. Anyway, I was just thinking God won’t mind. We are made in His image, after all."

"That’s man who’s made in His image." She remained frozen in the pose of removing her top. "What about woman?"

"I suppose He’s a bit like woman too, then."

"You mean God’s some sort of hermaphrodite?"

"I… I… " he stammered. His hands were resting on the belt buckle of his pants. "I know too little about spiritual issues to judge."

There was a pause. At length, she sobbed, "I can’t do this!"

"Do you want me to stand behind you?"

"What happens when I take my knickers off? You’ll see my bum!"

"Well, how about I stand along side you? And I don’t look down?"

"Just don’t look at me at all. Keep your head turned away from me all the time and watch the scenery."

"People will think we are a married couple…"

Tim moved so that he was shoulder to shoulder with her, staring into the middle distance. He felt like they were soldiers on parade. Trooping the colour. There was motion beside him, and he saw the bra go into the locker. Gritting his teeth – which didn’t really help but was all he could think of – he stepped out of his pants and shoved them in his chosen locker. Then, in an act of solidarity and encouragement, without waiting, he lowered his Calvin Kleins, stepped out of them and chucked them on to his pants.

He had never felt so awkward in all his life.

Then Susan was doing something, and he just caught sight of her shorts, topped by something skimpy, going into the locker. The two of them stood to attention, about three inches apart, glaring away from each other.

"You naked?" he said, out of the corner of his mouth.

"Yes. You?"

"Yes."

"Except for my boots."

"Me too. I feel… a right… "

"Please don’t finish that sentence."

"Probably best if I don’t. I say, I feel a bit of a draft."

"Likewise. Aren’t you going to need some extra sun-block?"

Tim hesitated. "I don’t think I dare put it on."

"Why?"

"It might… amplify the problem."

"You could get a sunburn."

"So could you."

"I think I’d rather risk it."

"Me too."

There was a difficult moment as they both reached for their respective locker keys. "Watch it! Don’t get too close. OK, let’s go."

"I’ve another problem."

"What?"

"I haven’t got a pocket to put the key in."

"Give it me."

Facing the opposite way, he reached backwards to hand her his key, as if discarding a used handkerchief. "What are you going to do with it?"

"I’ve got my beach bag. Surely we’re allowed to carry a bag. I’ll keep it in there."

Quite unintentionally, he glanced round to see what the bag was like – he’d not taken any notice of it before. She was dropped on to her haunches over the bag, a brightly coloured fabric thing, stark naked except for her boots in the beaming sun, and looking oddly beautiful. The way nature intended?

"Don’t look!" she snapped, curling up still more tightly over the bag.

"Sorry! Only saw a knee." He spun his head away, and studied the horizon some more. There was an odd sound from Susan. It was a moment before he realised what it was. She was chuckling.

"That’s not as much as I saw!"

And then they both started to laugh.

They didn’t see that much wildlife, in truth. Some seabirds, over the beach. They remarked upon a small group of young French women with a deep natural tan all over as if they had never worn clothes in their lives, never done anything but wander around, tribe-like, naked on sun-baked islands. One of the women approached them and, almost solicitously, as if taking them under her wing, told them in accented but faultless English about some of the plant-life on the island, and explained how to recognise prickly pear.

"How prickly?" said Tim, somewhat concerned.

"Not very," the French woman laughed, her breasts bobbing up and down. "Leetle scratch, at most." Tim noticed she wasn’t either the tiniest bit shy, nor did she stare at his body in its pale, full frontal nudity. Nothing she’d not seen before.

By the time Tim and Susan reached the beach, they’d stopped bothering trying to ignore each other. She was lean and well-toned. He was more fit than she would have guessed, and thought an all-over tan would suit him. They explored one end of the beach, where there were some rocks. They swum in azure sea for a while, spotting seemingly tame fish drifting just beyond reach in the clear water. Then they rested on the beach that arced around the blue-green bay like a silver braid. Susan produced something like a Tupperware box in which she had some small cobs with cheese, and a dish of fruit salad, which she shared with him. He had set off on the trip with a couple of sandwiches, but he’d left them in the pocket of his pants. By now they were just looking at each other and could see each other’s bodies in their entirety and there seemed nothing odd about it at all. Three days before, they’d never even met.

"You know," Tim said, finishing off a mouthful of food, "I’ve just realised it’s ages since I last thought – hey, I’m naked."

"Makes sense," she nodded. "I mean, you don’t go around when you’re dressed thinking, Oh, I’ve got these clothes on."

"That’s true," he laughed.

"And it’s great coming out of the water and not having a wet bathing costume sticking to you."

"And nothing wrong with the human body."

"Nothing," she smiled, and looked out to sea. "In fact, the only thing I’m embarrassed about is that I was ever scared of showing it in the first place. Or seeing one, to be honest."

"We’ve all got one."

"We all have, indeed. And should be proud of what nature has given us."

"Back to nature," he mused. "You know, I think I could live like this all the time."

Later, as they were sauntering back along the path that led to the lockers and where the bus was awaiting them, a thought struck Tim.

"Erm. Would you be interested in going out somewhere to dinner tonight?"

She frowned, as if something was troubling her. "That might be wonderful.."

"Is there something wrong?"

She stopped and turned to face him. "No, no – nothing really." She shrugged, grinning. "It’s just that… "

"What?"

"I don’t know what to do. I haven’t got a thing to wear."

She turned and walked off, giggling.

He admired her bum for a moment, then followed.

THE END

How can the air worry


Summary
Short, non-fiction article about biochemistry and the air


Speaking of keeping things in perspective, it can sometimes seem that we living beings have such a lot to worry about – sometimes we say, "Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt!" (if we have undergone a classical education – otherwise, something similar.) We wish that we could be as free as air.


As a matter of fact we are.


This is a slightly more philosophical approach to keeping things in perspective. We imagine we are in some way special. Well, in some ways we are, but not because of what we are made of.
In fact, the whole Universe, in some respects, is a pretty simple place. Most of it is just a gas, literally. Hydrogen – the sort of gas we used to put in balloons to make them lighter than air, until we started thinking there might be a bit of a fire risk. After that we went for a slightly heavier gas, Helium.


75% of the ordinary stuff in the Universe, by mass, is Hydrogen. Approximately 23% is just Helium. That means that 98% of the Universe is made of just two gasses, while just 2% is something a little more interesting.


Stars are made of Hydrogen. Despite being such a light gas, if you get enough of it, it weighs quite a bit. In fact, if you get 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of Hydrogen together, they weigh so much that, at the centre of the crush, the atoms actually start squashing together and start turning into Helium. It is, indeed, because Hydrogen is so light that stars have to be so big, or this doesn’t happen.


When Hydrogen is turned into Helium, a little bit of mass is left over. This is given off as (quite a lot of) energy. It’s only about 0.7% of the original mass, but that still equals a lot of energy, according to that equation (by You-know-who.) And that is how stars burn.


I want to squash this story a bit, so I’ll say just this. In a nutshell, if a star is big enough and gets hot enough, the Helium can fuse – or burn, if you prefer – to make other elements, such as Beryllium, Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen and quite a few others up to Iron. That 2% of interesting stuff I mentioned earlier – it all came from burning inside massive stars. "We are star-dust," is not just a quote from a Joni Mitchell song, it’s quite literally true. (Whether "we are golden" is another matter.)


We live on a rocky planet with a metal core. It would actually be fair to say we live on a molten 7,000 mile wide nuclear reactor, which has the thinnest imaginable crust of cooler rock floating on it, but don’t tell the Friends of the Earth that. They’re a bit anti-nuclear power and might get a bit upset. But, to get the scale of things, imagine cutting an apple in half cutting through the skin and exposing the fruit beneath. The fruit is the molten bit of the Earth, and the skin – well, in proportion, that’s thicker than the rocky surface we spend all our lives on. Most of the time this is not a problem. Apart from earthquakes and volcanoes, that is.


But what has this got to do with how we come to worry, and what we are made of? We are made mostly of just a very few elements. Of the rest, we have only tiny traces. Ironically, despite these being present in only traces, we can nevertheless not do without them. Miss Iron or Calcium or a few others out of your diet and you will become very ill. But still, not to worry – a balanced diet of almost any meat, fruit and vegetables will have adequate traces of what you need.


But it’s the major part I want to draw your attention to. It turns out we are made mostly of just four chemical elements. We have to have Carbon. Carbon is in some ways the most remarkable element in the Universe, because it is very good at making compounds that contain chains or sometimes rings of Carbon atoms. Atoms are particles of one particular element, compounds are collections of atoms called molecules.


This makes it possible to make literally millions of different Carbon compounds. All living things contain these compounds. They are so important that the study of Carbon chemistry is not known as Carbon chemistry, it is called "Organic Chemistry." Ordinary Carbon is the same as soot. It is also the ‘lead’ in pencils (actually Carbon like this is known as graphite. Another, much, much less common version of Carbon is in the form of diamonds.)


The other three elements are Oxygen, Hydrogen and Nitrogen. Hydrogen is not usually found on Earth as it just floats away into space. But it can form a compound with Oxygen – water. Water, as a compound, is essential for all living things. Again, despite the fact that all living things contain Carbon, it is slightly ironic that the one compound that is essential to life does not contain Carbon. Sometimes things just go like that. Nitrogen is a fairly (seemingly) unexciting gas that makes up 4/5ths of the Earth’s atmosphere.


Here is the amazing part. 96% of our bodies is made of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen. (Sometimes, these are referred collectively to as CHON.) In other words, you are mostly just soot, water and air. The remaining stuff that makes You, you could find and fit into a bag of household potting compost.


As Carbon and Oxygen can make Carbon dioxide, which is a gas, and Hydrogen and Oxygen can form water and water can be a vapour, which is also a gas, both found in the atmosphere, you can see that 96% of you is made up of the same stuff as air!


(It doesn’t work as well to sing "We are sooty, wet air, we are golden," but it’s no less accurate than the original version.)


You can’t imagine air worrying, so why should you?


On the other hand, the next time you see a cloud, don’t say something unkind. They may have feelings too!

THE END

The Magic Sword

Summary
A short, fantasy story with a touch of romance, and a message.

King Boden, in despair at losing yet another battle to defend his kingdom, the Kingdom of Icia, was sheltering in a cave and in fear for his life, when suddenly he was trapped by a Tall Stranger.

"What do you want?" cried King Boden. "I cannot defend myself for I have no weapon."

"What would you wish for yourself?" said the Tall Stranger.

"If I could have anything right now, it would be a sword so that I could strike down any who threaten me or cause me fear."

"Then take this," said the stranger, producing from inside his voluminous cloak a sword. It was a sword like no other King Boden had ever seen. Its balance in the hand was perfection, its blade gleamed and its edge would make shame of a razor. King Boden hefted the sword in his hand. "You give me this, yet are unarmed. Do you not fear me now?"

"No," said stranger, "I have fear of no man."

"But why do you give me this sword?"

"I tell you this," said the stranger. "This sword is a Magic Sword. With this, and as King, you will never taste defeat again. But you will never know love..."'

And with that, the Tall Stranger was gone.

Sure enough, from that day on, King Boden was victorious in every battle. His armies grew stronger till all feared the power of Icia. Then one day he captured the Princess Alsanda, daughter of King Ezeck of the neighbouring land of Maggedor and took her hostage. Ezeck swore revenge against King Boden and declared war. But on the eve of battle, King Boden realised he was falling in love with his prisoner.

"You are indeed a beautiful princess," he said. "I feel my heart yearning for your affection. What would it take for you to become my bride."

"More than you have in your power to give!" she vowed. "Take yourself from me, for your presence poisons the very air."

"But, Princess, if you would be mine there is nothing I would deny you. For without your love my heart will surely break."

"Then let it break. Your destiny is on the battlefield and not within my affection."

Angrily, King Boden left the Princess and went to prepare for victory or death at the hands of Ezeck and his warriors of Maggedor.

That day, on the vast Plain of Ildion, the mighty armies of Icia and Maggedor faced each other. Their weapons glinted in the pale cold sun shining balefully down upon them. King Boden had the unwilling Princess brought by guards to watch the battle.

"I ask you one last time," said King Boden to the Princess, "If you would surrender to me as I demand, and be my bride, I would recall my soldiers. But if you deny me, you will see the men of you homeland scythed down like ripe corn."

The Princess raised her noble head. "I and all the troops of Maggedor would sooner die than suffer such dishonour." And she lowered her head once more and wept.

"That is your answer?" roared King Boden.

"That is the answer of all of the line of Maggedor," whispered the Princess.

"Then so shall it be," said Boden. With a curse, he wheeled his horse and galloped off to the head of his troops.

Arranged in the first line of battle upon the Plain of Ildion were the two cavalries, the horsemen of Icia decked in their colours of blue and gold, the knights of Maggedor in purple. The crests of their colours stood proud in the wind on the manes of the battle horses. But when at last the order to charge was given, not an animal would move from either side. The riders urged them on fiercely with blood-curdling battle cries, but the horses, snorting and pounding the earth with their hooves, refused to move forward, even an inch.

Realising the peril if his horsemen remanded still and were charged by a powerful enemy, King Boden raced to the front of his troops. He had the Magic Sword, the ownership of which had made him the victor of so many battles. He could not be defeated.

King Ezeck, too, saw the danger his army was in, if the horses would not charge and attack the enemy. He galloped to the head of his army to urge them to attack. But to no avail. It was as if the horses had no wish to be a part of the wars of men.

Across the plain, the two kings dismounted from their steeds and turned to face each other. King Boden raised his sword in signal, and shouted. "King Ezeck. Our armies are evenly matched. There is no need for them to fight this day. We two can determine the outcome of this battle. Let us fight, just you and I, to decide the day."

Ezeck knew of King Boden’s recent successes on the field of war. He had heard rumours of the Magic Sword, of how King Boden had come by it, in the cave with the Tall Stranger. He knew the promise the stranger had made that King Boden would never taste defeat as king while he had the sword. Yet he was not afraid. "I accept your challenge! He who wins our duel will win the war between Maggedor and Icia!"

"Victory in war!" cried King Boden.

"Victory in war!" Ezeck shouted back.

The two paced across the plain till they were in sword’s reach. A pause stayed them. The two armies looked on in thrall. Princess Alsanda swept the tears from her eyes upon seeing her father, standing proud. Then King Boden raised the Magic Sword and swung it fearsomely at King Ezeck’s head.

It was a mighty blow. Yet Ezeck parried, and deflected the lethal blade harmlessly. He too struck out with his weapon, but Boden denied the steel a target in his flesh.

And so the fight was joined. On it raged, blow followed by counter blow. Sometimes the fight seemed to favour one man, then the advantage would swing the other way. But neither man took wound.

"Surely I cannot be defeated," King Boden thought between thrust and parry, "for I have the Magic Sword. The Tall Stranger swore to me."

For hour upon hour the epic struggle raged without rest, quarter neither given nor taken. But then, just as the sun that had blazed down upon this momentous day seemed to weary, and kissed the horizon, King Boden lofted the Magic Sword high above his head and brought it down with a crashing fury greater than any before.

King Ezeck raised his sword in defence and, as steel clanged on steel, the blade of his weapon shattered. The broken tip fell to the ground. King Ezeck, in despair, let the hilt slip from his hand and join the rest of the now-useless weapon in the dirt.

Quietly he spoke. "King Boden, you have your victory." He stole one last look at his daughter, Princess Alsanda, in the lines of the men of Icia. Then he closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable death.

But death did not come. Kind Boden, following the gaze of his adversary, also spotted the beautiful princess. He saw, even at this distance, the tears upon her face, and the sadness in her eyes, and he felt his heart leap.

"As King, you will never taste defeat again. But you will never know love." The words of the Tall Stranger who had handed him the Magic Sword repeated themselves on his lips. He raised the Magic Sword one final time.

But the blow never fell.

Lowering the sword, he spoke, almost in a whisper, to King Ezeck. "Open your eyes, King Ezeck. I cannot strike you down."

King Ezeck looked into the face of Boden. "What do you mean?"

"As a king, with this sword, I can never taste defeat."

"So strike me down, for I will not live if my daughter is to remain your prisoner!"

Again Boden looked to the princess. "But, as a king, I will never know love." He looked again at King Ezeck. "Therefore I choose no longer to be King! I am now a common man, and a common man cannot strike down a king." And with that he laid the Magic Sword at King Ezeck’s feet.

"And what of my daughter?" said Ezeck, in a bare whisper.

"She is free," he said. With a wave, he commanded his guards to release her. For a moment, Princess Alsanda was frozen to the spot. Then she, tearfully, ran into the arms of her father.

"Oh, my beautiful daughter," cried King Ezeck, for tears had come to his battle-drawn face also, "I thought that I should never see your sweet face ever again."

Ezeck turned to face Boden. "So how do we decide the battle?"

"What battle? There is no battle. There is no war. We should leave this place in peace, with honour."

For a moment, Ezeck was unable to speak. "You could have won the day," he said.

"I would have won nothing."

"But is there nothing you would wish for?" said Ezeck.

Boden hesitated. "I can barely say this. But if I could have one thing, it would be to ask for the hand of your daughter, the beautiful Princess Alsanda, in marriage, for I am under her spell, a spell greater than that of any sword or weapon. And I ask, not demand. I would have her answer freely, as only her heart dictates, and I would be content with any answer, though I hope for only one."

Princess Alsanda looked at Boden. Suddenly, now that he was no longer a king, it was as if a blindfold fell from her eyes, and she could see a handsome, wise and generous man. She turned to King Ezeck. "Father, this man is more noble than any I have ever met, nor even dreamed of. With your permission, nothing would make me happier than to be his bride."

King Ezeck wiped the tears from his face, and for the first time since news of her capture in Icia had come to him, he smiled. "Then his bride you shall be, with my blessing." Upon these words, she let go of her father, and embraced Boden.

At that moment, as the shade of evening was drawing upon them, a figure appeared from between the two now-silent battle lines. It was the Tall Stranger who had given Boden the sword so long ago.

Boden, recognising him, said, "How can we be of service to you?"

"It is you who have served me," said the stranger. "I have merely come to collect the possession I lent to you."

"You lent to me?" said Boden, astonished. "So it was never really in my ownership?"

"No man can own this sword. I take it back now, for its magic is done."

"And what magic is that?" asked King Ezeck in awe.

The Tall Stranger faced both of them. "Know this truth," he said. "It is a truth equally for king and peasant, high-born and humble, rich or poor. War is not the true purpose of any living thing." He paused to smile at Boden and Princess Alsanda, hiding the sword away in his cloak.

"Then what is life’s true purpose?" Boden asked the Tall Stranger in a hushed voice.

The Tall Stranger looked one last time at the two former enemies. "Love is."

And, with that, taking the Magic Sword with him, the Tall Stranger was gone.
THE END

Wednesday 27 June 2007

Somewhere seen through the Rainbow

Summary
Non-fiction, popular science article about light

After a heavy downpour of rain, the clouds roll away. A young couple walk with their backs to the dazzling sunlight. The air, still mist-sparked and sodden after the storm, holds the last traces of the shower. The couple look up and, in the distance, a huge arching band of every colour – a rainbow – glows before them. The beauty of the sight makes their hearts leap (as Wordsworth would say.) Their fingers touch, and they fall in love…

Figure 1. A rainbow.

Or something like that.


To some, this would be the end of the story, at least as far as the rainbow is concerned (what the couple get up to afterwards is largely their business though it may require finding a spot of dry ground or a promising weather forecast; we’ll get back to them later.) But the real beauty lies far beyond this. It is in what we can see through the rainbow. I don’t mean the hollow bit in the middle, but actually through the band of colours. Never mind "where does the rainbow end?" Where did it come from?


After all, our couple were walking in white sunlight, and now they are seeing colours, floating in the air. Something very strange is going on here. And very, very important.
It turns out that what is floating in the air is, as hinted, remaining droplets of rain. Each drop of water is taking the white light and reflecting it back. It is also breaking the white light up into different colours. In order to understand how it does this, we have to understand what colour is and what light is.


(As for finding the end of the rainbow – well, you can’t. Firstly, the rainbow doesn’t have an end, it is part of a circle. You can’t normally see this because the ground gets in the way, but you can see a rainbow as a whole circle if you happen to catch sight of one from up in an aircraft. Secondly, the image of the rainbow is formed in the eye from the light reflected by thousands of raindrops and it doesn’t actually have a location – as you move, it moves, so you would never reach a point at which the rainbow hits the ground.)


Firstly, light. In order to understand light, we have to take another step back and look at magnets. Hopefully you’ve seen a magnet and know that they can attract pieces of iron and other magnets. Also, hopefully, you have seen a magnetic rod, left floating or suspended on a bit of thread and been fascinated by the way it always to swing round to point north. This is, of course, known as the North end of the magnet, while the opposite end is the South. There are lines of magnetic force that point out from the North and curve round to the South. This can be demonstrated by putting a sheet of paper over the magnetic rod and sprinkling iron filings on top. The little fragments of iron line up along the lines of force, in what is called a magnetic field. Nothing actually moves from North to South – this was just a convention to show which way the lines are pointing.



Figure 2. A magnet’s field of force.

A similar force seems present when you rub a piece of plastic on a piece of cloth – something woollen is quite good. A plastic comb run through the hair works the same way. The piece of plastic can now attract little pieces of paper and fluff. This is because the plastic has become charged with electricity. (When experiments like this were first done, they used amber, and the Greek word for amber is elektron.) Like magnets, there are two types of electric charge, but instead of being called North and South, they were called Positive and Negative. An electric field was said to point from a positive charge to a negative charge, in an electric field. Again this was just a convention adopted at the time – nothing actually moves.


Figure 3. Two charges’ field of force.

After a while, it was realised that if you moved something that could conduct electricity, such as a wire, through a magnetic field, electricity would start to flow down it. In this case, electric charge does move.


It took no more than a twinkle to realise an electric force could be used to make a magnetic field.
In fact, it was soon realised that an electric field always has a magnetic field at right-angles to it and vice versa, that is, a magnetic field has an electric field at right-angles to it.



Figure 4. Electric current from a wire moving in a magnetic field.


Using this, it is possible to make moving magnets make an electric current (moving electricity) and electric currents to make magnets move, in things now called dynamos and electric motors respectively.


This seems a long way from rainbows, or light generally. But it’s not.
Clearly a magnet has a magnetic field that reaches a long way from the magnet itself (consider the Earth’s magnetic field.) But suppose you move the magnet – does the magnetic field a distance way change instantly? What if the magnetic was rotating, spinning even, what happens to the magnetic field?

Figure 5. A rotating magnet.

The answer is that the field changes, but it takes a little time for the change to arrive. If you set the magnet spinning the field would change and the change would move in a wave out into the distance.


Figure 6. The magnetic field of a rotating magnet.

It would move very, very rapidly and it would be hard (impossible, in fact) to see this with a bit of paper and some iron filings, but it’s happening all the same. And, at the same time – and at right-angles, the electric field would be changing too. So we would have an electromagnetic wave moving through space.


That’s what light is – a wave of electromagnetism.

Figure 7. An electromagnetic wave.

Two things. This wave moves, as I said, moves very, very quickly. At the speed of light, in fact (Duh!) This is 300,000 kilometres per second. (That’s one reason why you wouldn’t see it moving across a small sheet of paper.)

The other thing is that the waves are very, very small. The average length of a wave of light that you can see is 500 billionths of a metre. (Again, you’d be hard pressed to spot that on your bit of paper.)

The reason why I’ve gone into all this detail explaining that light is an electromagnetic wave is because you need to know what happens if you take wave lengths that are longer and shorter than average.

First of all, light at average wavelength looks green. If you increase the wavelength to about 600 billionths, the light looks yellow. Longer still, and it looks orange, then red, with a wavelength of 740 billionths. If you shorten the wavelength to 450, it looks blue.


So the colour of a beam of light depends on its wavelength. Put another way, our eyes recognise different wavelengths of light by interpreting them to the brain as different colours.


But where does the rainbow get all the different wavelengths from? And what is white light?


Well, it’s again something to do with how the eye works when it is given a mixture of different wavelengths. This is the same as mixing two or more colours together. Anyone who has ever tried painting knows you can get a new colour by mixing different coloured paints together. Much the same is true if you mix different lights together, through the results are slightly different. For instance, a mixture of red and green light is seen by the eye as yellow. Inside the eye, tiny cells at the back of the eye in an area called the retina that detect red or green light both fire and the brain interprets this as yellow. Light that actually is yellow, with a wavelength of 580 billionths, causes both types of cell to fire, so the brain gets the yellow message.

Figure 8. Addition of coloured light, as seen by the eye.

In fact, the retina actually has cells that can detect just one of three colours – red, green or blue. But different colours in between cause the some or all the cells to fire off messages so we see all the other colours as well. If all the cells are firing at the same time with just the right mix of red green and blue, we see the light as white! (Ah!)

This still doesn’t explain how the rainbow is made from white light. The reason is because the raindrops can split up the white light with all its wavelengths of different colours.

How does this happen?

Well, first of all, when light hits the surface of a rain drop, its direction is changed. This also happens when light enters water in a pool or a piece of glass. Indeed, you can use a triangular block of glass, known as a prism, and white light to make your own rainbow. This is actually known as a spectrum.

Figure 9. A prism creating a spectrum from white light.

Why does the light bend? In effect, this is because the light slows down as it hits the more solid water (or glass.) This is like putting on the brakes on one side of a moving car, causing it to twist to that side (similar to, but not exactly the same as, a handbrake turn!) The important thing is, how much does the light bend? This depends on the wavelength. The shorter the wavelength and more blue the light, the more it bends. The more red it is. The less it bends. This causes the single beam of white light to split up, by bending at different amounts, into all the colours that make it up. This is where all the rainbow’s colours come from.


The next thing that happens is that all the different coloured beams reflect off the back of the raindrop and shine back almost the same way the came in.

Figure 10. A raindrop creating a spectrum.

The collective effect of seeing all these is as a band of colours. The reason why this is curved or bowed is that each raindrop at a slightly different place in the air has to reflect light in a slightly different direction for it to come to you, which, if you work it backwards, means that the collection of raindrops making your rainbow have to be lying in a curve, in much the same way as having a collection of mirrors in a clothes shop are in a curve to allow you to see how you look in your new clothes. (It also means that someone stood at a different position from you is not, technically, seeing exactly the same rainbow as you – but don’t worry – you can’t ever see anything exactly the same as somebody else unless you are stood in exactly the same position, which is of course impossible, because the other person is in the way!)

Figure 11. Why a rainbow is (a) bowed and (b) slightly different for everyone who sees it.

There is another way of making a spectrum from white light instead of using a prism, which exploits the fact that light is a wave. However, before we look at this, and its uses, there is something to add about the wavelengths of visible light. Are these the only wavelengths there are?


Of course not. We could have wavelengths longer than red, at 740, or shorter than even violet (a very deep blue), at 380. It just that our eyes cannot see them! Beyond red lies infra-red, then microwave, then all the different wavelengths used by radio – radio waves can be thousands of metres long! Meanwhile, going in the other direction is ultra-violet, used – unwisely – to get a sun-tan and beyond that are x-rays, at ten-billionths of a metre that will go through flesh and are used in hospitals (more about these later.) Beyond that are gamma rays, that occur in radioactivity, with wavelengths as short as a hundred-trillionth of a metre. These are highly dangerous.


The important thing is that the visible spectrum, like you see in a rainbow, is just one very tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum as a whole. In effect, realising that there were so many colours we can see, we came to realise there were an awful lot more that we can’t.

Figure 12. The whole electromagnetic spectrum.


We also cottoned on to the idea that there were ways in which we could use this "light we can’t see." One of these was radio, with all the applications that has enabled, from transmitting messages and music and television, to a whole new way of looking at the Universe with radio telescopes. At the other end, for example, as already mentioned, x-rays are used to see through living bodies to find out any damage inside, as well as a way of treating tumours. There is also a form of astronomy known as x-ray astronomy (which, ironically can only be done from spacecraft as x-rays will not pass through the atmosphere.) And there’s another use we’ll look at in a moment.

But back to light, and how to split up light into different colours. An alternative to using a spectrum (or a raindrop) is a device called a diffraction grating. This is just a grating – a glass slide covered with something opaque such as black paint – with very finely scored lines in covering to let the light through. If the lines are on the same scale as the wavelength of the light, they make it split up into a rainbow of colours as before.

Figure 13. A diffraction grating creating a spectrum from white light.

(This is proof also that light must be made up of waves – a diffraction grating wouldn’t work otherwise. If light were made up of little particles, for example which had been an alternative theory. Unfortunately, there is also irrefutable proof that light is made up of particles, not waves, which is very weird – but another story altogether. See the article Quantum Mechanics Magic.)


An example of a kind of diffraction grating is a compact disk. Here you don’t have a slide you can see through but a mirrored surface that is covered in tiny lines. This is why you see colours coming off a compact disk that’s reflecting white light. For a really good look at this, sit in a dark room and put a CD under a desk lamp – you should see rainbows on the ceiling!


When we split up light like this – how many colours do we get? Some people, especially English-speakers, talk of seven, while in other countries sometimes five are mentioned. I’ve shown seven in my diagrams. But in fact there are as many colours as you can think of names for, in a continuous smoothly changing collection. So what happens if we ever do have gaps?


Yet again, we have to take a step backwards. This time, we need to think about what happens when certain things are heated up until they glow, possibly, for example, by having an electric current put through them. While it is possible, deliberately, to make something that glows at a number of wavelengths to give white light – in an electric light bulb, for example – most things glow with a characteristic colour. One of the most familiar examples of this is street lighting that uses glowing sodium to make the light, which has a very noticeable orangey-yellow colour. This is what happens with most things are made to glow – mercury vapour lights, also used for street lighting, have a bluish light. Fluorescent strip lights actually have a coating inside the tube which absorbs the light originally created in them and gives off a number of different colours so that they look white. And so on.


Technically, the colour or collection of colours something gives off like this is known as an emission spectrum, for hopefully obvious reasons. What is useful is that everything has a different emission spectrum, like a finger-print. But we can turn things around. What happens when we shine white light through a gas, such as mercury vapour or vaporised sodium? This time, we find that the spectrum we get from the light coming out of the other side has gaps. The colours that a given substance emits when it is made to glow are the very same as the colours that are absorbed when white light is shone through them. This is known, again for obvious reasons, as an absorption spectrum.


The exact reason for this is a little complicated and I won’t go into it here. Let it be enough to say that the very colours that something most likes to emit are also the colours that it most likes to absorb.


This means that, if we shine a light through a gas, make a spectrum from the light (using a prism or a diffraction grating) and spot a pattern of gaps (known as absorption lines) we can tell what the gas is made of. Like a finger-print, the absorption spectrum is a dead give-away and we’ve caught whoever was in the spotlight!

Figure 14. Absorption lines in a spectrum. (Note that the pattern is not regularly spaced nor are the lines all the same thickness. However the pattern is unique for any given chemical.)

This is very useful for working out what stars are made of, without having to go to the tedious bother of flying in a spacecraft to one to find out. Indeed, one chemical element, Helium, was first detected in the Sun by examining its spectrum closely, before the gas was later found on Earth. Its very name comes from a Greek word for ‘Sun.’


Using some similar tricks of the trade, we can quite easily tell how hot and therefore how bright stars actually are. We then compare their true brightness with their apparent brightness – the effect of being so far away makes the star look dimmer – and so work out how far away they are. Along with a few other clues, we can start to work out how the whole Universe is constructed, how big it is and what it is made of. The full story would fill a book, but we’re going to leave it there and look at one other final thing.


I said earlier that a diffraction grating could scatter white, visible light into a spectrum. But what about other electromagnetic radiation? Yes, that can be scattered too. It would be very hard to make a diffraction grating to work for x-rays, because x-rays have such a short wavelength. But we don’t have to – Nature makes its own diffraction gratings in the form of crystals.


A crystal is just a collection of atoms arranged in a very regular pattern – known as a lattice – very close together. However, there are lots of patterns possible and – as you may well have guessed, these depend on what the crystal is made of. Light has too long a wavelength to work out these patterns, but x-rays work a treat. Once we know the structure of a crystal, we can say other things about it, such as what that crystal might be able to do, given the chance. This way of examining crystals is known as x-ray crystallography.

Figure 15. Molecules in a crystal lattice.

Once again, we have for a moment to take a detour into another part of Nature. For generations (a very important word, that) humans have bred plants, animals and themselves. They couldn’t help noticing that characteristics of the parents were often passed on to the children. The question was: "how?" What sort of substance could both pass on the information – known as genetic information, or, simply, a gene – for making offspring as well as make the copies of the information in the first place? It would take a very clever chemical that could first of all make copies of itself from simpler chemicals.


Research suggested several candidates. One group, that is found in the nucleus of the cells of living things, were acids that, because of their location, were known as nucleic acids. One in particular attracted attention. It is made up of surprisingly simple components. Most notable is a sugar called deoxyribose. This may seem like a slightly odd name, but a little explanation might help. There is another sugar, called ribose, which is not unlike another, more familiar sugar, glucose, and is not in itself particularly special. Deoxyribose, is its poorer brother, having one fewer oxygen atoms in it. That’s why its called deoxy-ribose.


This too, is nothing special on its own. However, deoxyribose’s atoms can link together using a another bunch of atoms called a phosphate group, to form a chain. This chain can be any length and, just to jazz things up a bit, it can also grab on to another chemical group called a base. (There are two types of base, known as either a purine or a pyrimidine, but you don’t really need to know that. Again, these are not particularly special. An example of a common purine is caffeine, which you get in coffee.)


It’s when you put all this together that you get something interesting. It is a substance (which you’ve probably guessed if you’ve been paying attention) that’s called deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA for short.


But nobody knew whether DNA was special or not. At least, not without knowing its structure. DNA could be turned into a crystal by drying it out – all that was needed was a way to find out its structure. That’s where x-ray crystallography came in.


This makes it sound a lot simpler than it actually is to do – it’s like trying to shine a light through a forest and work out where the trees are from the shadows. However, one thing that helps is, as I said earlier, crystals have very regular patterns, so you get patterns in the shadows. Once you know how to interpret the shadows you get the structure of the crystal.


Which is what duly happened. And when people saw the shape of the crystal, they realised it was very special indeed. Because it turns out that you don’t get one chain in a DNA molecule, but two chains twisted around each other. What’s more, in certain ways, in this double chain, the second chain was like a reflection of the first. If you were then to split the two chains apart, each could create another ‘reflection’ chain to team up with. The two new double chains would be exactly the same as the original.

Figure 16. A double chain of DNA. The ‘backbones’ are sugar-phosphate, the ‘links’ are pairs of bases. These can occur in any order and either way round, but each half of the pair can only match with one other half.
(The way these chains are held together is in another article, Magic Water.)

This was rightly recognised as a way of both encoding genetic information and, most importantly, of making copies of it to pass on to children. The way in which the information is encoded, and how it is used, is, sadly, too complicated to go into here. But it was finding out the structure using that part of the rainbow known as x-rays that helped us find out.


So, at last, we can leave our loving couple, their passion raised by the beauty of the rainbow, to go and do what comes naturally and make babies (in, of course, a duly responsible fashion within an enduring, loving relationship.) And the reason we know how they can is because we found more secrets in a rainbow than just the colours, by looking through it and beyond.


That’s the true beauty of a rainbow, if you ask me.


Figure 17. A picture of a real rainbow, in Missouri © Dan Bush (further pictures at http://www.missouriskies.org/rainbow/february_rainbow_2006.html)


THE END