Twistor (12 page)

Victoria's face reddened slightly and her green eyes flashed. 'Sure we've been working hard, Professor Ernst!' she said. 'But what David described is exactly what happened. I was there too for most of it, and we both saw the same things. It's a perfectly reproducible effect. Any material within the twistor field disappears at the time of the field rotation.'

Vickie's a sensible person, Paul thought. How could she have become involved in this prank or whatever it is? What's going on?

'But we're wasting time, Professor Ernst. Look, you don't have to take our word for it. We have a working model! Come on down to the lab. We can make things disappear! We can even make your skepticism disappear.' She smiled. 'Provided, of course, you're willing to put it in the twistor field.'

Paul sighed. He could see no reasonable alternative to going to the lab with his wacko friend and his confederate. He might as well be a good sport and let them complete whatever it was they were about. But it had better be good . . .

Twenty minutes later, Paul was convinced. He had put sticks and wires and even a steel bar into the small region
in
the center of the coils, and each time the central part of the test object had vanished with a
pop.
David had even allowed him to do the whole operation himself, while David and Vickie had stood with backs turned and arms folded against the far wall of the room. Paul had heard of sleight-of-hand experts deceiving supposedly sophisticated scientists, but there was no possibility of deception here. He simply had to believe that he was observing a real effect. He felt a rising sense of excitement. A real effect!

'Did you tell Allan about this?' Paul asked. He was wondering how far the news of this miracle might have spread already.

'I talked to him yesterday,' said David, 'but I only told him about the chamber disappearing. We hadn't reproduced the effect with the spare coils yet.'

Paul nodded. He was very pleased to be the first, aside from David and Vickie, to know about what he had already begun to think of as the 'twistor effect.' 'After all of this,' he said, gesturing at their apparatus,
'
I need a stiff drink. How about some machine-shop coffee.' He smiled at their grimaces. 'We can get our caffeine fix first, then go to my office and discuss what this means.'

David closed the lab, and they went downstairs to the department's large machine shop. The machinists maintained a large coffee percolator there and, according to rumor, also used the dark brown liquid for the loosening of rusted bolts and nuts. They all filled their mugs from the percolator and then took the elevator to Paul's third-floor office.

'Thanks for giving me the first look at your wonderful discovery,' said Paul. 'It's very exciting to be on top of an unexpected experimental result like this. We must work to understand it better. Much better. Perhaps that's where I might come in . . . ' He struggled to speak calmly despite the excitement he felt. It's incredible, he thought. I hardly know where to start, there are so many questions
in
need of answers. He paused and grinned at them. 'You know, it's wonderful to have a theoretical problem with a working experiment to provide answers! I'd forgotten what it was like.'

'Yeah, and it would be wonderful to have some way of explaining our weird results,' said David. 'A more important question for me just now, however, is when I'm going to get some sleep. Vickie and I stayed up all night making things disappear. We've been going for about twenty-eight hours straight. It has been very exciting, but now the adrenaline is wearing off.' He shook himself. 'What questions did you have in mind, Paul?'

Paul walked to the blackboard on the wall opposite the windows. 'Let's make a list.' He picked up a piece of chalk, becoming increasingly excited. 'We'll start with these,' he said, and rapidly wrote: (1) How much energy is used in producing the effect? (2) Does the amount of energy depend on whether or not an object is in the field? (3) When you change the field size, does the energy load change? (4) If you reverse the field rotation quickly enough, can you make the object come back? (5) If you put a radioactive source in the field, does the radiation vanish when the source disappears?

'I could think of a couple of hundred more questions,' he said, 'and so could you if you weren't so tired. But these will do for a start. Get me the answers to some of these, and maybe I'll be able to help you with a theory.'

Victoria produced a small note pad from her purse and quickly copied the questions. David stared at the blackboard, rubbing his unshaven chin. He seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes open and yawned.

'I think I'd be too excited to sleep,' Paul said, rubbing his hands together. 'This is going to be fun, by God. This is a whole new phenomenon, and we've got it all to ourselves to play with.' He remembered then that he was leaving out Allan Saxon. 'Whatever this turns out to be,' he continued, 'it's not an effect that anyone had even
suspected
before. It's a crack in the seamless structure of our understanding. It's enormously important, and we've got to treat it accordingly. Now go home, both of you, and get some sleep if you can. You've earned it.'

'OK, Paul,' said David. 'At the moment I don't need much persuasion. But I can't sleep long. Vickie and I have to be back here this evening. Allan's returning, and he wants "a full report" on what's happened to his equipment. I hope we can convince him as easily as we convinced you that we're neither lunatics nor thieves.' David headed for the door, stifling another yawn, and Vickie followed.

Paul looked after them. That will be an interesting meeting, he thought.

Later that morning a balding middle-aged man in thick horn-rimmed glasses, a worn tweed coat, gray sweater, baggy slacks, and new Adidas running shoes appeared at the reception desk of the campus architect's office. 'I'm Professor Johnson from the physics department,' he explained to the secretary. 'I'm stuck with being the chairman of the departmental space committee. I've got to find offices for three new faculty members. I need to look at the drawings for the Physics Building. Maybe there's a concealed broom closet or elevator shaft we've missed.'

She looked up at him. She was very busy, and she wondered how she could get rid of him with a minimum of disruption.

'We've got to put them somewhere,* he added, then regarded her with a lopsided grin.

She stood and led him to the microfilm cabinet, where she showed him how to use the index and the film reader. She left him making notes and sketches and went back to the large stack of correspondence that her boss had dumped on her this morning.

He left after another twenty minutes, complaining that he was going to be late for his class. She shook her head.
Another
basket-case faculty member, she decided.

Just before noon Sam Weston knocked at the door of David and Vickie's laboratory. When no one answered, he tried the door and found it unlocked. Entering the room, he immediately spotted the electric drill that Vickie had borrowed yesterday. As he bent to disconnect it from the electrical outlet, he jostled the equipment frame. Sam watched as a brown object about the size of a tennis ball that had been resting hidden in the hollow of a projecting bracket rolled out from under the apparatus, off the platform, and across the floor to bump to a stop against his shoe. He picked it up and examined it.

It was a perfect wooden sphere a couple of inches in diameter. Its surface was glassy smooth, with a beautiful reddish wood grain. Curiously, it smelt like new-cut wood, perhaps cedar, and it felt damp. Sam shook his head. How did Vickie and David have time to do artsy-craftsy stuff like this and still work so hard on their experiment? He put the sphere carefully down on the control console, picked up his drill, and let himself out.

The reddish wood gleamed in the bright sunlight that streamed through the window.

8

Friday Afternoon, October 8

In the early afternoon of the same day a man of about thirty with a mop of hair, pressed gray trousers, a neat blue blazer, necktie, and polished black shoes entered the Physics Building. He was carrying a black attaché case bearing the white, blue, and green logo of U.S. West Communications. He made his way directly to the basement and found an unnumbered door in a back wall. He produced a ring of keys, but there was some delay in opening the door. After about a minute, however, it swung open, revealing the telephone wiring for the Physics Building. He produced three small gray plastic cases embossed with the Western Electric logo and, using the adhesive backings of the units, carefully attached each in turn to the bare upper part of the inner panel. He studied them, making sure that they appeared to be part of the standard equipment. After consulting a computer printout he connected a few wires and closed and locked the door. That part was easy, he thought.

He made his way upstairs to the main hallway and walked along it, consulting his notebook, until he found the laboratory room he was seeking. He knocked, but there was no answer. He tried the door and found it unlocked. Entering, he looked around at the bewildering array of wiring and hardware. He crossed the room to a desk with a black telephone. He placed his case on the desktop and opened it. Ignoring the telephone, he removed a pair of small objects in clear plastic boxes. In one of them he inserted a tiny disk battery, snapped the
back
closed, peeled off an adhesive strip, and attached it to the undersurface of the desk. Then he crossed to the blackboard and, after the same procedure, attached the other to the underside of the chalk rail. He removed a small box with a meter from his case, pulled out a short antenna, and twisted a knob on the box while watching the dial. Satisfied, he put the box back in the case.

Retreating to a corner of the room, he aimed a small camera at the assembled equipment. He repeated this action from the other three corners of the room. Then, after a brief examination of the contents of the desk drawers, he closed his case and left. Consulting a computer printout, he headed for the office of Allan D. Saxon, Professor of Physics. It was then 3:47 P.M., Pacific Daylight Time.

Allan Saxon wheeled his BMW along Fifteenth Avenue Northeast, following the boundary of the main campus until he came to the entrance to the underground parking garage. He drove past the parking guard, who nodded to acknowledge his annual parking permit and C-l sticker, and pulled into a parking slot in the southeast corner of the nearly deserted A-level parking area. His slim gold wristwatch told him that it was now 6:45 P.M.

He felt awful. He had awakened about noon in the St Francis with a horrible, although deserved, hangover. He was regretting his haste in setting up this appointment. But no, he had to find out what this jackass Harrison had been up to before things went any further. Imploding hardware indeed!

He let himself into Physics Hall with his building key and went directly to the mail room. He sorted through the large pile of letters and manila envelopes in his box. The bad news was that there were two papers from the
Physical Review
and one proposal from the National Science Foundation, all in need of immediate review. The good news was a generous check from General Avionics for the
consulting
he'd done last month. He felt a little better as he walked down the hall to his office in the south wing.

At 7:03 by his wall clock there was a knock at his door. Saxon opened it to find Victoria Gordon standing outside, wearing her usual jeans and sweater and looking a little sleepy. As he invited her in, he spotted Harrison turning the corner at the far end of the corridor, stifling a yawn as he approached. He waited at the door while Harrison entered and slumped into one of the wooden chairs opposite Saxon's desk. Victoria sat very erect in the other chair, her hands folded in her lap. Saxon walked to his desk, sat down, and glared at Harrison. 'Now! What in Hell's name has been going on around here?' he said.

'Well, Allan,' Harrison began, 'it's like this

As Harrison activated the twistor field, there was the characteristic
pop
and the ends of the one-inch steel reinforcing bar dropped to the laboratory floor with a loud clank. 'Good lord!' said Allan Saxon. He had been persuaded by Victoria and Harrison to come to the laboratory, and Harrison had repeated the now-familiar procedure for him. But to increase the dramatic effect, David had used a piece of heavy steel re-bar that he had 'borrowed' from a nearby campus construction project. Victoria picked up the steel ends and handed them to Saxon. He examined them, touched the smooth surfaces, and gave a low whistle. It's true, he thought, by God, it's true.

Victoria looked at Saxon and David hunched in front of the control computer. The change in Saxon was hard for her to believe. He looked and acted twenty years younger. His eyes sparkled, and he talked faster, as if he were impatient to get to the next word. When he's like this, she thought, he's almost a likable person. She walked up to the other side of the console and asked, 'OK, gentlemen, are we ready to try reversing the effect?'

David
looked up at her.
'
Yes, let's go for it. I've twiddled the control program's instruction list so that when it finishes the usual sequence of twistor field operations it will pause it for a few milliseconds and then do the same sequence in reverse.'

'Physical phenomena are usually reversible,' Saxon commented. 'The twistor operation makes objects disappear, but do they reappear if we reverse the sequence?'

'Let's find out,' she said. Saxon seemed to think the reversal test was his idea. She could barely restrain herself from telling him that Paul Ernst had suggested it first.

'Did you get some more of that heavy wire we were using?' asked David. 'I've got the field set for a ten-centimeter-diameter sphere, so we'll need at least that much.'

'Sure, I brought up several big rolls from the storeroom,' said Vickie, walking to the cabinet. 'But this time let's make it easy on ourselves and just hang the whole roll over the coils. We can pull down what we need for each test.' She extracted a large white roll of electrician's wire from the cabinet and in a few minutes had securely suspended it above the coils, one end unrolled so that it hung down to pass through the central region of the coils. Saxon walked over to inspect the arrangement. He bent the wire so that it was hanging closer to vertical and stepped back.