Twistor (21 page)

After some final discussion of details, Saxon replaced the handset in its cradle. He stared at the wall, thinking of the bugs and what they had picked up while they were in operation. I wonder how much that bastard knows, he thought.

David hung up the telephone and looked across at Vickie.
'
I guess it isn't as easy as I thought,' he said. The confrontation with Allan had made him very angry. He'd called the chairman at Cal-Berkeley immediately to discuss the possibility of his early arrival and to ask about a transfer for Vickie. 'He said I could show up at Berkeley early, if I wanted. No problem, particularly if I was willing to do some fill-in teaching to earn my keep.'

Victoria nodded.

'But having you transfer into their graduate program looks harder,' David continued. The chairman there said it was asking for trouble at many levels. Apparently no university graduate program is willing to admit that their courses and qualifying examinations are equivalent to those of any other university's graduate program. We discussed several ways of doing the transfer, but none of them looks easy. It's doubtful that it could be worked without costing you at least a year or two in your progress toward a degree.'

Then forget it,' said Vickie grimly, shaking her head. That would be almost like starting graduate school over. I'll just have to make the best of the situation here.' Her lower lip protruded a bit; a sign, David guessed, that she was feeling stubborn and angry.

'
I agree,' David said carefully, 'and I don't think that's so bad. The new data, along with the work we had already done, looks more and more like a thesis to me. I've an appointment with Chairman Weinberger at four this afternoon. I'll try to get his help in arguing Allan out of his crazy plans. The worst scenario, however, is that Allan moves the hardware on Wednesday afternoon anyway. That gives us two more days of data collection. I'd give us an excellent chance of accumulating enough data in that time to get you a thesis. And a pretty damn good thesis, at that.'

There was a knock at the door, and David walked across to open it. Jim Lee of the astronomy department stood outside. He was a Chinese-American, about forty years old, and had a reputation as the sharpest observational astronomer in the department. David invited him in.

Jim looked from David to Vickie. 'I'm not sure what this is about,' he began. 'You said on the phone that you have some astronomy data you want me to look at?'

David carefully explained the twistor effect and their recent work with it. Lee seemed skeptical. They demonstrated the apparatus. It was soon clear that he was convinced. David was impressed at how rapidly Lee seemed to grasp the new ideas that were being thrown at him. Finally, Vickie showed him the data on star positions and spectra that they had collected with the CCD camera.

It was interesting for David to watch the transformation in Jim Lee, the serious and circumspect professor becoming a child in a candy store as he examined the data files and his excitement grew. He left them after about an hour, laden with printouts and laser disks. As he walked out the door, the soles of Lee's feet seemed to David to be a few millimeters off the floor.

14

Tuesday Morning, October 12

David Harrison walked down the long corridor on the third floor of Physics Hall. Along the south side were faculty offices with windows looking out on Mount Rainier. Near the far end of the corridor he came to Paul Ernst's office and knocked.

'Come in,' called Paul. David opened the door. 'David!' said Paul, motioning him to a chair. 'And what have you brought me today in the way of new and mind-boggling results?'

'Just a few more morsels for our captive theorist!' said David cheerfully. 'Yesterday I persuaded Jim Lee to look at the data on the stars recorded by the CCD camera. This morning he told me that there are several distinctive spectroscopic binaries that he's sure are like nothing in our neighborhood of the galaxy. The shadow-universe idea is still with us, Paul, and it has its own set of stars.'

'Congratulations!' Paul said. 'That's impressive progress.'

'The other news is that I talked to Ralph Weinberger yesterday about Allan's plan to move our hardware,' said David. 'He was sympathetic, at least on the surface, but he showed me the part of Saxon's NSF grant stating that cooperation with industry is encouraged, including equipment loans. I don't think it's worth the effort to make a stink at this point. Once decisions like this are made, they become very hard to change. And Allan's too powerful in the department.' I don't have the sense of
timing
or the knowledge or the clout to play an effective game of department political hardball, he thought.

Paul nodded.

'So,' David continued, 'it looks as if we've only got today and part of tomorrow to work. Vickie stayed up all night taking data, and I'm going on shift after I leave here. Allan has been fairly noncommittal about whether we can continue the work in Bellevue. My guess is that if he and his partners can make the hardware work, Vickie and I will be locked out "for security reasons." If not, maybe they'll let us in.'

'Surely he wouldn't do that,' said Paul. 'You two discovered the effect.'

'I'm sure he would,' said David. 'I'm frustrated, Paul. We're making so much progress, and now he's going to pull the plug.

'I haven't had the time to work out many details, but I'm pretty sure that if I have to start over from scratch, even assuming that funds are no problem, it will require months of work just to get back to where we are right now. And my first order of business will have to be moving to a new place where I can do the work. I have that assistant-prof offer from Berkeley that I told you about. I checked. They're willing to have me come early, but there isn't time to arrange for much support.'

Paul shook his head. 'Allan's being such a bastard about this. At least now that he knows I'm involved, maybe I can talk to him about it. He isn't being reasonable.'

'I think there's more to it than just personalities,' said David. 'Apparently Allan's business is having money troubles. Maybe he sees this as a way of saving the firm.'

Paul raised his eyebrows. 'Well,' he said, 'in any case, you're doing the right thing. Collect as much data as you can and don't worry about analyzing it too thoroughly until there's time later. This is pretty rough on you and Vickie, but there's a lot that I can do theoretically if we develop a good data base.'

'
Yeah, data we have. We're accumulating laser disks full; that's gigabytes of information. Vickie's been stashing backup copies at home, in case Allan should decide to move our data to Bellevue too.'

Paul smiled wryly and shook his head.

'Oh, one other thing,' David said. 'Vickie discovered something last night that may be of some significance. I told you that we see different star patterns at different twistor transition frequencies. The star patterns from two of the frequencies are perfect mirror images of each other. Any idea what that means?'

Paul paused for a moment. 'Jesus, yes! That's a parity transformation,' he said, standing up and pacing back and forth. David noticed that his previously serious and somewhat dour expression had changed to one of excitement. 'That's a very important observation, David,' Paul continued animatedly. 'For the last couple of days I've been using those frequencies that you gave me to try to construct a model describing the twistor effect. Things are coming together. Orthodox superstring theory, starting from the work of Schwartz and Green back in the early eighties, indicated that the universe might have a symmetry called E
⁶
× E
⁸
, which predicted new particles of shadow matter that only interact gravitationally with normal matter. We've talked about it before.

'There is an unexplained gravity effect, the "dark matter problem." Observational evidence says there's more matter in the universe than we can account for,' Paul concluded.

'Yes, I read a lot about the dark matter speculations when I was in graduate school,' said David. 'It was quite interesting, but it also looked unapproachable experimentally. Paul, could our results actually be related to dark matter?' David felt himself catching Paul's excitement. The dark matter problem was important, an unsolved problem of astrophysics and cosmology that had been a nagging worry for a decade or more.

'
Perhaps,' said Paul. 'I've been playing with the idea that your twistor field is converting normal particles into their "shadow matter" equivalents. I almost gave up right at the start because it didn't work at first. Then I hit on a variant of the orthodox superstring theory in which the normal/shadow matter distinction is treated as a vector – a spin vector of a certain spin pointing in some hyperdimensional direction. I call it "shadow spin." When I got to vectors of shadow-spin three, it was like finding the Rosetta Stone. Everything clicked into place. Your measured frequencies form a set of energy levels that map perfectly into the shadow-spin three energy states.'

'Zowee! You mean you can predict the frequencies where the transitions come?' David struggled to grasp the implications of what Paul was saying.

Paul nodded and stepped to the blackboard, writing with chalk as he talked. 'Our normal matter is only one particle state, and there are six others. I found it was confusing to think of that many different states, so I visualize them as seven parallel planes. A particle can lie only in one plane at a time and can interact with other particles in the same plane. Our universe is the middle plane, say, and there are three adjoining "up" planes and three "down" planes. Or you can think of these shadow planes as six other shadow universes, all parallel to ours and interacting with ours only through gravity.

'I am, of course, oversimplifying,' said Paul pedantically.

'Of course,' said David, with a note of irony, 'but I'll forgive you. Go ahead, Paul, oversimplify some more.' Six other universes, David thought, struggling to grasp the idea.

'The reason Vickie's observation of a parity effect, the mirror-image star patterns, is important,' Paul continued, 'is that there are several possible sub-models that work about equally well.' He sat down again at his desk. 'But only one of them predicts an extra-dimensional rotation that reverses the three spatial directions in the twistor
field,
effectively "flopping" everything in the field so as to reverse left and right. Each shadow universe would be connected to ours by two transitions that are mirror images of each other.'

'And that explains the mirror-image pictures?' David asked.

Paul nodded. 'There's a property of the weak force called parity violation which breaks the symmetry between right- and left-handedness. In the model I'm studying, that symmetry breaking splits the twistor transitions and puts one at a higher frequency than the other. If Vickie found two star maps that are mirror images, that means the two twistor transitions involved must have this broken symmetry. That model, which I wasn't too sure about before, has apparently been verified.' Paul paused.

There was a smile of great satisfaction on Paul's face, and David remembered what Paul had said just last week about the frustrations of this field, the lack of experimental verification. He's jumped to the pinnacle of his field, David thought. He's the originator of a new, improved superstring model that's just been verified. David felt suddenly elated.

Paul walked to his flatscreen terminal and typed a few commands. The small laser printer beside it hummed for a moment, and Paul extracted a neatly printed sheet of paper. 'Here are the transition frequencies from the S-equals-three model with parity violation. Notice that about half the frequencies here aren't on the list you gave me. You should find out if they're present but were somehow missed. That should keep you busy. And I'll need a data file with the information you've just collected on the star patterns and so forth. OK?' He looked inquiringly at David.

'No problem,' said David, taking the paper. He was impatient to get back to the lab to try some of these new settings. 'In an hour or so I'll MAIL you the data
file.'
He studied the list of frequencies. 'Hmmm. A lot of these new frequencies are out of our present tuning range. Guess we'll have to modify the hardware a bit to extend the frequency spread. That's easy enough, though.

'Oh, before I forget, Paul, am I still expected for dinner tomorrow night? I should warn you and Elizabeth that after Allan carts off our hardware, I may not be the best of company.'

'Indeed you're expected!' said Paul. Tomorrow is some sort of school holiday, something about a teachers' meeting, so Melissa and Jeff are coming to work with me in the morning. Elizabeth will spend the morning at her new counseling job, then do some shopping at the Pike Place Market. She hasn't confided in me, but I think she's making something special for us.'

'Well, at least I won't have to leave early tomorrow night to get back to the experiment,' said David morosely. 'Bring the kids down to the lab tomorrow, if you want. I'll show them a twistor transition while I still have hardware. Oh, and hey, is it OK if I bring Vickie along tomorrow night?'

Paul raised an eyebrow. 'Sure, David,' he said with a knowing smile. The Curse of the Harrisons strikes again, eh?'

David sighed, then nodded with a grin. Indeed it had.

At 5:49 P.M., just before closing time, the U-Haul rental agent looked up to see a balding man in a business suit entering the office. 'I'm Albert Carter,' said the customer. 'I called you on Monday to reserve a moving van, to be picked up about now.'

'Yes, Mr Carter. We have it all ready for you, along with the pads and dollies you requested. You wanted the weekly rate, sir?'

'Sure,' said the customer. 'I think we can have it back to you in three or four days, but I'll say a week to
allow
for problems. Do we get a lower rate if we bring it back early?'

'Yes, sir!' said the agent. 'It's our policy to calculate the final bill using the rate which gives you the best deal. We'd just like to know about when to expect the truck to be returned for our own scheduling. Now I'll need your driver's license and a major credit card.'