Page 23 of Reinventing Cato
“Have I actually said that I’m gay?”
“Are we only ever going to talk in questions?”
Vigge sighed. “My boss knows I’m gay. And his boss. I don’t know about anyone else but probably not. There’s still inherent homophobia in the service despite a lesbian being in charge of London’s police force. Some guys will never change their attitude, so I’m careful.”
“You don’t wear your high heels to work then?”
“They’re too hard to run in.”
“If I were chasing you, would you stop running?”
The ache in Vigge’s groin edged on pain. “I quite like a good chase.”
“All the way down the M6?” Cato chuckled. “I need the loo. Can we stop at the next service station?”
“Twenty miles. Can you wait?”
“Is the alternative opening the window and peeing on the move?”
“You could use an empty bottle.”
“You might be so overcome with admiration when you see my nine-inch cock that you crash. I can wait.”
Vigge chuckled. “I’m going to be disappointed, aren’t I?”
“Think you’re going to see it, do you?”
“I suspect you’ll make sure I do.”
“You’d actuallywantto deal with a cock that length?”
“I already do.” Vigge glanced at his lap.
Cato laughed. “Nice one.”
“What aspect of astrophysics are you studying for your doctorate?”
Cato blinked. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not just being polite?”
“Do I look the sort?”
“No.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”
“I’m a little worried about telling you because I usually send people to sleep and since you’re driving… But I’ve been doing research on strong gravitational lensing. It’s to do with systems in which our line of sight to a distant galaxy or quasar lies close to a foreground galaxy. When that’s the case, the gravitational field of the foreground galaxy deflects the light from the background one, producing distorted, magnified, and multiple images of the object.”
“For what purpose?”
“Because the views of the background object are magnified, we can study things that can’t be seen by today’s telescopes. We can get unique information about mass distributions in the lensing galaxy because they’re sensitive to all matter regardless of whether that matter emits light. Studying lens systems also helps with regard to cosmology, how the universe was created, the big bang theory.”
“What the hell got you into that?”
“I chose the subject for my future doctorate the day I saw a photo of a face in space.” Cato grinned.
