The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings

zoologist Zuckerman would spend far more time studying live, undamaged animals than dead or injured ones.
    Arven, meanwhile, went from shed to shed, marking the effects of blast upon different kinds of wall: this was where Kathleen’s record sheets came in. Arven read out measurements; Kathleen entered the numbers into boxes.
    Back at her uncle’s office, Arven showed Kathleen how to move thenumbers between the boxes, shifting their values as she went. She followed him. She copied what he did.
    He stared at her.
    She looked up at him. ‘What?’ she said.
    When he didn’t reply, she said, ‘Did I do it wrong?’
    He laughed, and shook his head. He drew his chair closer to hers. He showed her how to make numbers out of other numbers, making them bloom.
    Afterwards – ‘to celebrate,’ he said – he took her by train to Darlington.
    â€˜Mother will wonder where I am,’ she protested. She was so insistent that, when they got to the hotel, Arven made a call to her uncle, to see to it that her mother was reassured.
    Kathleen knew there would be trouble, but weeks of working for Arven and Zuckerman on important war work had excited her to the point where she felt that she could always use this as her excuse: the deadlines they had been struggling to meet; the fact both men would be leaving the following day – Zuckerman to Oxford, Arven to London.
    She had never eaten in a real restaurant before, and they were the only diners in the old-world sitting room, decorated with hunting scenes and large solemn prints of Conservative statesmen.
    â€˜We’ll survive it,’ Arven told her. He was excited. His eyes shone from either side of his helmet-guard nose. ‘The air war. The figures that have been keeping us up nights. Whitehall’s figures are calculated on the assumption that every bit of explosive that’s dropped on us will find a target. It just isn’t so.’
    A charge has to be shaped to fit a target, or most of its energy vanishes into the air. He drew a figure on his napkin to show her. ‘It doesn’t matter how much explosive the Huns drop on us, only a tiny fraction of it will do us any harm.’ He grew reflective. ‘The big danger is fire, of course. But better the devil you know.’
    While they ate, he told her how to survive an air raid. ‘Wrap yourself in an eiderdown when you go out,’ he said. ‘It’ll absorb the blast and protect your lungs. If bombs are falling, lie face down in the gutter. Gutters give good protection – blast and splinters will almost certainly fly over you. And wear a notice round your neck. Something conspicuous.’
    â€˜What for?’ Kathleen laughed: it was too absurd.
    â€˜In case you do get hurt. Blast pressurizes the lungs. So if, heaven forbid, some oh-so-keen sixteen-stone air-raid warden comes across you and fancies a spot of artificial respiration—’
    Kathleen blushed.
    â€˜Well, that’s you done for. So your notice will say “Weak Chest. Leave Off” – or words to that effect.’
    Kathleen was awed. ‘Is that what people will do? Is that what you will tell them to do?’
    Arven laughed. ‘I can’t see very many people adopting the eiderdown as evening wear, can you?’
    Kathleen smiled a small smile. It made her unhappy to think that people would not adopt good advice; that habit and convention overrode even the desire to survive.
    Arven shrugged. ‘Just remember the gutter trick,’ he told her. ‘That one’s a cert, and you won’t have to look like a ninny until the last possible moment.’ He drank off his beer. ‘Not that the Germans are likely to come bumbling over this little corner.’
    Later that evening, he began to speak of other things.
    He said, ‘I know you see the numbers.’
    Kathleen blushed.
    Though he was staying in Darlington that night, John Arven insisted on