Technol Rep Tohoku Univ: GENERATION OF ANTI-GRAVITY ...

Chapter 8
The sunlight reflected brightly off the thin carpet of snow that had fallen
along the east coast overnight. I kept the estuary on my right and the sea
defenses on my left, edging the car along the narrow road, navigating by
the instructions I had been given over the phone. There was something
almost primeval about the combination of the pine forest, the limbs of the
trees twisted into impossible shapes by the wind, the open sky and the
stillness.
The trees parted briefly and I saw the radar mast that I'd been told to
look for. Around another bend and the tiny haven swung into view.
I pulled up in the parking lot beside a wooden jetty that jutted into the
green, fast-flowing current toward a small settlement on the far bank.
The buildings seemed run-down and dirty compared to the crisp scenery
through which I'd just driven.
There were two other cars parked beside mine and both were empty. I
got out, stretched my legs and shivered as the still-freezing temperature
blew away the fug of the hour-and-a-half-long journey from London.
Suffolk. The East Anglian coast and the cold waters of the North Sea. I
was in a part of the country I didn't know.
A light breeze tugged at the rigging of a row of yachts dragged onto a
thin stretch of stony beach nearby. Seabirds picked along the jetsam and
detritus of the shoreline. Above the gentle pinging of the mast ropes, I
heard children's voices.
There were four people on the jetty.
A woman sat on the far side, wrapped warmly against the cold, reading
a book as her two small children line-fished for crabs.
The father, standing farther off, his back to me, was tracking an open
motorboat chugging hard against the fast-flowing water, its helmsman
preparing to tie up alongside the jetty's end.
As the boat bumped against the tire buffers, the man stepped on board
and settled onto one of the bench seats.
I waited for the woman and the two children to get up and join him,
but they never so much as glanced his way.
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