COSM

by Gregory Benford

  To break the pause Hugh said, “I sure hope this doesn’t get us a fresh lawsuit. An explosion, even though unrelated, during the first time we use uranium…”

  “The rabid anti-Lab folks, like Fish Unlimited, they don’t have to hear about it, do they?” Alicia asked.

  “Good point,” Dave said, brightening. “Let’s see that nothing about this gets into a Lab publication.”

  “Yes,” Alicia said. “Those people scare me more than any blown-out pipe.”

  Particle physics was rich in imagery of change—annihilation, disintegration, fluctuations, decay—and counterposed with phrases of stability. Experiments began from simple initial conditions; particles assumed their ground state from which experimenters perturbed them; all in pursuit of the new, of signal over noise.

  But such thinking assumed careful preparation. The mystery suspended under the trap was raw reality, unprepared.

  In the five running days remaining Alicia helped the BRAHMS team monitor the uranium results. Data streamed in and flickered onto the big laser disks for later digestion. BRAHMS strummed with purpose. The pursuit of the particle fog that signified the Quantum Chromodynamic plasma state was never going to be a “eureka moment,” as Alicia thought of it. Rather, careful diagnostics had to fathom the spray of debris emerging from the beam focus point. Detailed backtracking would tell if they came from a compressed mass over ten times more dense than a proton.

  It was like reconstructing a massive traffic accident by counting the shards of steel that peppered the roadway. This the particle physicists shared with those at RHIC who thought of themselves as nuclear physicists, because they dealt with the convolutions of many-body interactions. Their ancient rivalry was mostly an argument over boundary fences, and for once at RHIC the two communities were united, probing the complicated wreckage made by complex, fundamental particles smashing together.

  Whatever label they labored under, tedium was the lot of particle and nuclear physicists alike. Only the relentless could weather through to their reward.

  At the shutdown they all toasted each other again and started the breakdown of special gear deployed only for this run. Then came the packing up and checking out, an inevitable letdown.

  Except for Alicia and Zak. With Brad Douglas they filled crates with the carcass of the ruined Core Element. When Zak and Alicia wheeled out the already crated permanent magnet, Brad asked few questions. Alicia had gotten the magnet consigned to her on a loaner basis, her request rubber-stamped without a murmur.

  But they had to get it past the usual exit examination. The inspecting team looked over the crates while her heart pounded. One stopped at the sphere’s crate, studied the paperwork, tapped the crate absently. She held her breath. Then he just sauntered off.

  So they came to stand watching their crates loading at Islip Field, a regional freight-hauling airstrip nearby. Transporting an object she did not understand troubled her, but she brushed aside misgivings. She had plunked down her ante solidly now and might as well play her hand out. Probably it would all come to nothing anyway.

  She had a farewell supper with Brad and Zak and others of the BRAHMS collaboration at the usual Long Island indifferent Italian restaurant. Months of data analysis loomed ahead of them all as they tried to ferret out evidence that something new and worthy had happened at the focus of the two uranium beams. They had a certain bravado about them, this tired crew, because they were trying an idea outside the conventional.

  Most of the Brookhaven staff felt that if the quark-gluon fog was to be seen at all, it would come from the many runs using gold nuclei, carefully building up statistics. Uranium was a cute idea, they would allow, but a long shot. A very long shot.

  The whole time a clock ticked in the back of her mind. She had done something based on pure gut intuition, but that did not keep the anxieties away. She found herself tapping her belt nervously, even biting her fingernails—habits she had long ago mastered, she thought.

  Somebody proposed driving into Manhattan to walk around and sniff the Essence of Big City, but Alicia begged off, saying she was tired and had an early JFK flight in the morning.

  All true, but she did not mention that underlying her leaden fatigue was a high jittery eagerness.

  PART II

  MAY 2005

  How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

  —Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four (1888)

  1

  The University of California at Irvine was the youngest campus in the system, founded in 1965, but it had lost its raw look long ago. The original planners had laid out the campus around a wooded, circular central park. Framing it were tall tan buildings done in droop-eyed windows and graceful curves. Two decades later a biology building had infiltrated, proudly flaunting its bare metal conduits and pipes on the outside. It stood out like a pimple on a princess. Back then biotechnology had looked as though it would inevitably dominate the research companies growing up around the university. That idea didn’t look as good now and neither did the building.

  Asphalt parking lots and a clutter of buildings in the stuck-together style of the late Twen Cen now seemed to jostle each other, trapped in the original circular layout. Angular and knobby, the newer buildings with their glued-on steel afterthoughts made the stately Moorish edifices look like elderly aunts brooding from their heights over the antics of unruly children.

  Fanning out from the rim of the central park, the physical sciences complex sported five buildings. Pale wooden trailers were wedged into available crannies, more ratty each year as their “temporary” status looked more permanent. Students sat on the hard concrete benches and slurped coffee as they studied. Nobody looked up as a truck pulled into the utility parking lot and edged around an illegally parked car.

  Alicia Butterworth carefully backed the UC–Irvine truck into the receiving bay of the Physical Sciences Research Facility. Zak jumped out of the cab and waved her in. At 7 A.M. the air held only a promise of the moist spring heat to come and there was nobody in the facility, which was the way she wanted it.

  With the ceiling crane they got the crate off the truck bed. Alicia had plenty of experience with moving heavy gear from her years at Berkeley and RHIC. The cubical crate lowered into position on the polished concrete floor and she and Zak used a forklift to get it into one of the smaller subsections of the bay. Out of the way, they could work without anybody kibitzing. She picked up a crowbar and popped a steel packing band off. The shipment had come into John Wayne Airport late last night, May 3. She and Zak had been there when the gate opened this bright Wednesday morning. Nothing had gone funny with the shipment, or so the manifest said. Still, she wondered if the sphere was still anchored in the magnetic field. Had it shaken free? No sign of damage on the outside, at least—

  Her wrist alarm went off. “Damn,” she muttered. “Zak, hold off. We’ll finish opening when I get back.”

  He nodded a little foggily and went in search of coffee. She went by her lab desk and picked up her viewgraphs and notes, left there three weeks before so they would be tidily close to the lecture hall. She sorted through them, trying to recall where the class should be in the progression of ideas and homework problems. The ideal in such introductory courses was to give an illusion of science’s steady march, systematically searching the perimeter of an ever-expanding horizon. She crossed the courtyard into the main lecture hall. Five hundred faces greeted her.

  She slapped her first viewgraph down, a sketch of a quantum mechanics effect. That would give the hired note-taker from the Clone Factory time to copy it lovingly and sell Xeroxes of her lecture by tomorrow morning, relieving some of the class from showing up today. The classic lecture-and-notes system had started with medieval Irish monks and was staggering badly into the twenty-first century. Audio hookup on, tap the mike, check. She glanced up at the audiovisual booth where an attendant recorded her lecture, also offered for sal
e tomorrow. Was the rest of their med school preparation this packaged and passive? She sighed. Adjust the focus and begin—

  She apologized for having to bring in a substitute lecturer for the weeks she had been gone. To get Clare Yu to take over had cost Alicia a substantial trade: three weeks lecturing in an upper-division class Clare would teach next fall, plus dinner at the Four Seasons, where they had enjoyed a fine, long, silly conversation about the antics of their colleagues.

  Launching into a description of quantum mechanics, Alicia knew the cost was worth it. It had been only three weeks on chilly Long Island, but it felt like three months of fresh air and sunshine. Teaching was all very fine, but research made the heart sing.

  She finished her eight o’clock—students hated the hour, but it gave her the rest of the day to get something done—and checked in with the department office. Her pigeonhole mail slot was crammed and at the factotum’s front desk she picked up another whole box of mail, the fruit of three weeks. She was heading out to the lab again when the department chairman came ambling down the main corridor of the department staff offices. Apparently the management services officer (nobody had ordinary titles anymore) had told him she was back.

  “Oh, Alicia,” an unconvincing brightening in the voice, “I have a small favor to ask.”

  Martin Onell wore his usual uniform of full three-piece suit, gray today, with a sea blue button-down shirt and muted amber tie on a bronze clasp, all set off by a lime green decorator handkerchief peeking out at the scruffy world.

  “Martin, I just got back last night from Brookhaven—”

  “As I know.” He gestured at the white board where faculty names were listed with destinations and dates. Four faculty strewn around the world, in Kobe and Geneva and Cambridge and D.C., a typical roster. “You made your 3-B lecture?”

  “Sure.” What was he edging up to?

  “The head of Gender Education—”

  “Not that again.” She sighed.

  “—called and well, they really would like to talk to you about—”

  “I haven’t got—”

  “—just showing up for their board meetings—”

  “—any time right now—”

  “—because you did agree, since they wanted a minority woman, to take the post—”

  “I got asked and said yes, but that was last year—”

  “—knowing it was a two-year appointment—”

  “And the vice chancellor said it would be no real work.”

  A quizzical expression flickered over his face. “It isn’t, is it? I mean, just vote on measures—”

  “You have to listen to them first. That’s what I found out I couldn’t stand.”

  Martin Onell gave her a raised-eyebrows stare that was supposed to make her feel guilty but only made him look stupefied. “You did say you’d do it.”

  “I’ll call them.” That got her off the hook and took the problem off his desk, which was what he really wanted.

  “Good, good.” An audible sigh. “Uh, how did your run go?”

  “Disappointing. We broke down early in the run.”

  “Really? I thought RHIC was reliable.”

  “It is, but… well, I’m looking into what happened. The beam pipe vacuum failed.”

  “That’s odd.” Onell was a solid-state physicist, but he had broad interests.

  “I’m taking some space in my lab to look at the damage. It pretty well wasted my detector.”

  “Too bad.” He shook his head.

  “I’m keeping it quiet because Brookhaven wants it that way.”

  “Ummm.” A knowing pursing of lips. “Not unexpected. The big accelerators are closely watched these days.”

  “I don’t think it’s a major problem,” she said to deflect further interest. Onell was a terrible gossip and an old foe of the particle physics group. Probably had cronies at Brookhaven, too. She turned away and retreated down the hall, waving goodbye.

  The stock room had a delivery for her. Down to the basement, into the wire-caged office, sign the paperwork. The bill of lading said they were circuit elements for the Core Element, which she had fax-ordered from Brookhaven. Good. She could use them in the pep talk she would have to give her graduate students when she broke the news.

  Back up to her office on the third floor, taking the steps two at a time, usually her only form of exercise. She fidgeted her key in the balky lock to her office. Her desk was a sea of paper. A stack of phone messages, but they could wait. Clare Yu had left the results of the latest quizzes given in the discussion sections for Physics 3-B. Alicia scanned the curves provided by the grading program and sighed. No better performance than usual. In fact, a bit worse, though within the expected quiz-to-quiz variation.

  She had really tried with this class, too, holding extra problem sessions and carefully going over examples in lecture, the works. Had her three weeks at Brookhaven badly damaged their opinion of her? Feeling neglected, ideas of disloyalty if the prof was gone for too long? They should be grateful, actually; Claire Yu was the better lecturer. Physics 3-B was for nonmajors, which meant mostly biology students. Which meant, at a ninety percent confidence level, those who wanted to go to medical school. They saw the 3-B professors as hurdles they must leap on their way to respect, status, and a Mercedes-Benz.

  She had given them the nose-in-it speech on the first day of the quarter, too: “Look at the student on your right, then the left, then in front, then behind. On average, only one of you five will get into med school. Your grade in this course is a major sheep/goat separator used by admissions committees. I don’t like that and I’m sure you don’t, either. But as physicists are fond of pointing out, facts are facts. I’ll try to help you all do your best.”

  Glumly recalling that speech, she was startled by a knock on the door. It was a 3-B student, a demure young Vietnamese woman. Office hours; she had completely forgotten laying on an extra load to make up for her absence. The student came in and voiced the usual worries over her grade and Alicia let her run for the usual two minutes. Then she coaxed her into concrete talk about what the student didn’t understand, which after a few more minutes seemed to be just about everything. Alicia sat back and eyed a little poem she had stuck to the leg of her desk, out of view of students.

  Cram it in, jam it in,

  Students’ heads are hollow.

  Cram in it, jam it in,

  Plenty more to follow.

  Cynical, but won from experience. The sheer pace of 3-B demoralized quite a few. Some realized that this might be the most important aspect of the course as a filter: med school would be the same, only worse.

  Students ate up her morning. She headed over to the Phoenix Grill for one of the chicken curries they did reasonably well. The walk was crisp and warm in the advanced spring here and the grill supplied knots of diners enjoying the lancing sun. Clare Yu was there, sitting outside with the solid-state group at a round table, easy to find because they all wore hats; the undergraduates around them did not apparently worry about skin cancer. Alicia thanked her for taking over the 3-B lectures and listened to a postdoc excitedly describing an effect he had predicted. She had trouble following his point.

  When Alicia got back to her office, her secretary intercepted her with messages. A phone call from her father, some academic business she could put off, and a Call me! from old buddy Jill. All for later; she beat a quick retreat to the lab.

  In a working laboratory’s necessary chaos there is often an island of order, scrupulously clean and clear. In Alicia’s lab this was the assembly room where graduate students and diligent undergrads followed intricate plans, piecing together the myriad sensors of the Core Element. Here Alicia also labored, taking most of her research time in cross-checking, puzzling out problems, and patient encouragement. Such hard-slogging attention to detail was boot camp for any experimenter.

  Zak was in the assembly room, unpacking the ruins of the Core Element. They had come in on a later freight shipment and
without even mentioning it to Alicia he had gone to the airport and picked them up. But then, she thought sourly, how could he have found her? She had been buzzing around all day.

  Brad Douglas was helping, along with two more junior graduate students who were eyeing the mess carefully packed inside the box with fallen faces. They had all put in long months building, testing, and optimizing the Core Element. They gave limp greetings.

  She stopped them from taking any more pieces out of the crates and sat them down around an assembly table. Time for the pep talk. Not easy, especially after losing the first game, and in the Brookhaven Super Bowl.

  First she said that the Core Element had worked perfectly and it was a tribute to all of them, up and running with no trouble, got a lot of data on disk to analyze, until…

  This was the hard part. She blamed the damage on an explosive failure of the vacuum system and left it at that. “The whole matter is under investigation,” she said. She hated using the passive voice, but here it did the right job, describing without actually showing who was acting. They would assume she meant Brookhaven, not her, so she let the subject stop there.

  “Let’s get the unpacking done, then knock off. The whole tedious business of figuring out what we can salvage and what we’ve got to fabricate again—we’ll leave that for tomorrow.”

  They nodded, a bit numbed. She made a show of energetically taking out some smashed boards and sorting them into categories. Pretty soon the whole team was working reasonably well in the big bay. They cleared space and carefully unfolded the white foam packing sheets and there were even some smiles here and there.

  Time for the finish. “And here”—she held up the shipment of circuit elements—“we have the first replacement parts. We’re on the way back.”

  It sounded lame to her, too staged, but the kids brightened.