Twistor (14 page)

'Hi, Paul,' said David. 'Hope I'm not intruding. I need to talk to you.'

'Nonsense! You couldn't possibly intrude,' said Paul. Then he turned in the direction of the kitchen, from which the sounds and smells of frying bacon were emanating. 'Honey! It's David! Set another place for breakfast!'

The children immediately ran into the entryway. 'Hi, David!' said Jeff, still in pajamas. Melissa, looking rather sleepy, took his coat and, stretching to reach the pole, hung it in the hall closet.

'Come on in and have a seat,' said Paul, gesturing in the direction of the sofa and the view of Lake Washington backed by Mount Rainier. David sank into the sofa and the children immediately took up their stations on either side of him. He gave them each a hug.

'So how did it go with Allan Saxon?' asked Paul,
noticing
that David looked a bit subdued.

'That's what I need to talk to you about,' said David. 'We did our magic disappearing-wire act for Allan last evening, and we were able to convince him that we have a real effect. He's very excited now, and he's dropped the matter of the missing equipment, at least for the moment.'

'David, can you do a magic act?' asked Melissa enthusiastically.

'I guess I can now, Melissa,' said David with a rueful smile. 'I make things disappear. I'll be sure to invite you to my next performance.'

'I wanna come to th' p'formance too!' said Jeff.

David nodded. 'Anyhow, Paul, Allan insists that we should keep the whole thing a deep secret. Not a word to anyone. He had some story about a friend of his who talked too freely and missed a Nobel prize. I didn't mention that we'd already told you about the twistor effect.'

'Why not?' asked Paul. 'I would have thought that the best way of dealing with Allan's secretive nature would be to tell him that people already know about your results.' Damn Saxon and his paranoid secrecy, he thought.

'Yeah, maybe so,' replied David unhappily. 'Trouble is, Allan has a very short fuse, and Vickie and I had just gotten him calmed down. Besides, when I called him in San Francisco on Wednesday, he did tell me explicitly to keep quiet about our problems with the experiment. Also I didn't want to get you involved in some confrontation with Allan. He's a powerful man in the department, and he'd make a bad enemy. I thought we'd let things cool off for a few days while I convince him that we need theoretical help. I think I can get him to ask you for help, if I keep at it. He just wants to make sure we don't get scooped by another group.'

Paul looked at David closely. He isn't very good at being devious, he thought. 'Well,' he said, 'I think it would have been far better to avoid all this secrecy. But
handle
it your way. I'll respect your wishes. At least for the moment.' And please don't screw it up any further, he thought.

'Look, Paul, I don't like secrecy any better than you do,' said David. 'Remember, I worked at Los Alamos for two years. I was in one of the "window dressing" basic research groups where essentially nothing was classified, but I saw the effects of secrecy at first hand. When you're not sure if you can talk about something, you don't talk. And so you aren't able to share ideas, to be stimulated by the other guy's ideas or by the problems he has in understanding yours. And you sort of get into the habit of keeping quiet about what you're doing, even when it isn't classified. The result is that research goes very slowly, if at all, and often stagnates. Los Alamos made me a firm believer in open research, free discussion, and publication in the open literature. That's why I left LANL to come here. I have no interest in doing research that way.'

*I completely agree with you on that,' said Paul. Then he remembered the list of questions he'd written on the blackboard yesterday. 'Were you and Vickie able to make any progress on our questions about the twistor effect? What about the energy dependence?'

'Boy, have we got some good stuff for you,' said David, brightening. 'We worked on it 'til late last night. Vickie put in some shunts with ADCs to monitor the current flow better, and I set the control computer to integrate the net power usage as a part of the transition procedure. It shows that for a particular transition frequency, the net energy required for a twistor transition goes as the cube of the diameter of the field sphere. So the energy per unit volume is holding constant.'

Paul nodded. Just as it should be, he thought.

'But there are several frequencies that produce the popping noise,' said David, 'and each of them needs a different amount of energy for the same size of field sphere. There's something interesting going on here. I
put
a summary of all the frequencies, energies, and field sizes in a data file and mailed it to you on the Physics HyperVAX. See what you can make of it.

'
And, Paul, do you remember yesterday when we found that one frequency that produced a kind of clunk noise?'

'Sure,' Paul nodded, 'but then we couldn't make it happen again.'

'Right!' continued David. That frequency shows a definite power drain. And we also found another frequency that draws power but doesn't make the pop sound.'

'Curious,' said Paul. 'If the pop is caused by an implosion when the air disappears, what does the absence of the pop mean? That the air doesn't disappear?' His mind chased after a random thought that it couldn't quite grasp . . .

'Paul! Children! Come to breakfast! You too, David!' called Elizabeth from the dining room.

'David,' Melissa said sweetly. Elizabeth looked over at her daughter, wondering what she was up to. 'Could you tell us more of the Ton story, since you're here, and we're here, and everything?'

David put down his coffee cup and looked at his watch.
'
I guess so,' he said, 'if it's OK with your parents . . . ' He looked at Elizabeth and she nodded.

'Good!' said Jeff, and pulled his chair closer to the table.

'Well,' David began, 'you'll remember that Ton had just been lowered into a dark underground passage at the base of a mountain.' The children shook their heads in agreement.

'At first Ton could see nothing. His eyes had not yet made the adjustment from the bright daylight above. But slowly, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he was able to see that he stood in a long passage walled with stone. Ahead, in the direction that Zorax had indicated, it did
lead
back into the heart of the mountain. But in the opposite direction it ended nearby in a jumble of cut stone blocks and dirt.

'Ton followed the tunnel until he came to a side passage on the right. Deep within the opening he was able to make out many large bags spilling silvery coins and bars on the rough stone floor. A vertical slab of stone, like the blade of a guillotine, was propped up with a single rotting wooden beam. Remembering what he had been told, he continued on along the main tunnel until he came to a passage on the left. It contained baskets and bags of golden objects, cups and bowls, arm rings and crowns, bars and coins. Ton noticed one coin near his foot. He touched it with his toe and noticed that it felt cool and substantial, not at all like an illusion. But again he remembered his instructions, and turned and continued along the passage.'

Ton sounds rather like David actually, thought Elizabeth. He doesn't trust theories, he tries things for himself. And he's goal oriented, not too interested in money. A good story for children, a good role model character.

"After a while, Ton came to the third passage,' David continued, 'which was on the right. This one contained bags of jewels and bejeweled objects. Near the doorway was a beautiful little jeweled dagger. Ton, armorer-apprentice that he was, could see that the workmanship was exquisite. He thought of how delighted his father would be with such a gift and reached out for it. But remembering the magician's warning, he hurried on along the main tunnel.

'He walked for quite a while. Just as he was beginning to worry whether his candle would last, the passage ended at a massive barred door with strange runes carved upon it. The door must once have been a formidable obstacle, for it was made of thick oak and bound with heavy wrought iron, but many decades of dry rot and decay had done their work. Ton gave the door one stout push with his foot, and it collapsed backward.

'
He walked beyond the door and looked around. Before him was a catafalque upon which rested a skeleton clothed in once-rich garments that had long ago moldered to rotten rags.'

'What's a catafalque, David?' Melissa asked. Jeff looked annoyed at her interruption.

'It's a special stand for holding up the coffins and dead bodies of important people,' David said, then took a sip of coffee.

'Oh,' said Melissa.

'Behind the skeleton,' David continued, 'a broad curved shelf had been cut in the native stone where the passage ended. Ton walked around the catafalque to the shelf and examined its contents. There was a roll of woven material tied with a cord, a bag the size of a small melon, and a corroded swordlike weapon with a thin shaft ending in a sharp point. These must be the things that the magician had described. Ton carefully took the three items and turned to leave. As he was passing the catafalque again, he noticed that clasped in the bony fingers of the skeletal hand was a small book handsomely bound in a light-colored leather. Hesitating, with trembling fingers Ton took the book from the grasp of the corpse. Lifting it for closer examination, he caught the leathery odor of its binding and heard the sound of its crisp pages. Suddenly he had the vivid memory of his mother teaching him to read. Without considering what he was doing, he clutched the book and hurried with his burdens past the skeleton and back up the tunnel.'

I see, thought Elizabeth; he isn't tempted by money, but he can't resist the possibility of new knowledge.

'He slowed as he passed each side passage, and the glint of precious metal and jewels pulled at him. But he kept straight on the path. Finally, just as his candle was guttering out, he came to the point below the hole where he had entered this underground world. The area below the hole, which had previously seemed dim and
gloomy,
now was illuminated with sunlight so bright that it hurt his eyes.

'
"Zorax! I'm back, sir!" called Ton.

' "Excellent!" crowed the magician. "Did you find all of the mementos that I described?"

' "I did, sir!" called Ton.'

Elizabeth could see the children squirm with relief at the successful completion of the dangerous task. Just wait, she thought, David's going to end with his usual cliffhanger.

The magician lowered the rope. Tied to it was the basket which Ton had carried. "Put all of the objects in the basket, and I will pull them up," said the magician. "And I will, of course, pull you up afterwards," he added, his voice taking on a faintly sinister tone.

'
Ton considered his situation. "If you don't mind, sir," said Ton, "I would like to be pulled up at the same time. I'll tie the rope around my body and hold the basket with the objects in it."

The magician spluttered and became very angry. He said terrible things to Ton, threatening him with awful consequences. In strident tones he commanded that Ton place the three objects, which he now called "treasures" and "amulets" into the basket at once.

'
"You mustn't think that I don't trust you, sir," Ton told him with careful respect. "It's only that my father taught me always to bargain carefully, even with one so great as yourself, and I could not go against my father's teachings. I hope that you understand, sir."

'
Zorax became more and more agitated and shouted fouler and fouler curses in a voice that became louder and louder, but Ton remained steadfast, for he was now very suspicious. As the magician's rage increased, he began to kick big rocks and large sticks into the hole. Then there was silence, then a loud explosion. The explosion was followed by a great shaking of the ground itself, and there came from behind Ton in the tunnel the sounds of
cave-
in and collapse. And following the explosion and its aftermath there came a wind and a great crash like a blow, and the little hole above him suddenly winked out, leaving Ton in utter and absolute darkness . . . '

David looked from one child to the other.
'
I think that will do for now,' he said. 'But we'll continue next Wednesday. OK?'

Jeff and Melissa seemed far away as they nodded.

Over a second cup of coffee, Paul asked, 'What about the reversibility of the effect? Did you have a chance to try that?'

'Oops!' said David. 'I almost forgot to tell you the most interesting part. Yes, we did try reversing the twistor operation. And it is reversible. We can twist and then un-twist, and when we do, we get the wire back. Or at least part of it.'

'Only part of it?' said Paul, frowning.

'Yeah,' David continued, 'we only get part of the wire back. Part of it falls out of the transition region. So if there's a time delay between the twist and the un-twist, part of the wire drops below the field sphere and doesn't come back. Vickie proved that it's pulled downward, and Allan calculated that the acceleration is essentially nine-point-eight meters per second squared. Wherever the wire goes, it's still in the Earth's gravity field. Isn't that weird!'

'Weird?' said Paul. 'No, it's exactly what should be happening if my suspicions are correct. Look, David, since the mid-eighties theorists have been developing "superstring" theories that explain all of the particles and forces in the universe in terms of "superstrings." Instead of mass-points, particles are described as tiny extended loops in a space that has the normal three space dimensions and one time dimension, plus six or more extra dimensions that are all curled up or "compactified" into little loops. The development of this theory went very
fast
at first, and there was a lot of excitement. We thought maybe "The Theory of Everything" was at hand. But in the last few years theoretical progress has bogged down because there's simply no contact with experiments, no tests to be done to show us where we part company with reality. It was beginning to look as if all the experimental work in this area was over and done with in the first femtosecond of the Big Bang.'