by Frank Smith
I created a file named "CosmicRayPhotos" and transferred three photos to it with increased activity and the straight tracks and three with normal activity for comparison. I wanted Sal Lucasi to take a look. Opening my secure hotmail account I typed in Sal's address and added, "Sal, what do you make of the straight tracks?" I included the photos as attachments. Using my secure account the message would be safe from the prying eyes of pen pal and, assuming he is the one leaking information to the CDF, safe from their eyes as well. If they found out about the experiments they could-what? Just what would be the reaction of the CDF? I delayed sending the email and saved it as a draft. I needed to flesh out an idea, something that was rattling around in the back of my head about the archbishop's "bargaining chips".
That night Olivia brushed her teeth, said her prayers, and chose Ariel's Glittering Sea for a bed time story. She has it memorized, so I just turn pages. She tells me the story. When her version differs from that on the printed page I have learned not to correct her. I tucked her in along with four dolls and her stuffed rabbit.
Tom Lacey was coming over to watch Monday Night Football-two days late. Neither of us had caught the game Monday but I had recorded it. I know, that's about as exciting as yesterday's pizza. I enticed Tom with the promise of gourmet snacks. I needed to talk to him. In the kitchen I opened the fridge. Two bottles of Bud, Cracker Barrel cheese, a half tub of hummus. I took some Ritz crackers and Tostitos from a cabinet.
Tom brought a six pack. By the second quarter the Eagles trailed the Cowboys by fourteen. At halftime I paused the DVR and entertained Tom with the saga of the cosmic rays. He already knew I was getting some strange behavior in my lab. Now he got the full story including my plans for Georgina Rutherford.
"You're kidding."
"I wish I were. I don't know what to make of it. How about some advice?"
"About what? I struggled with physics in high school."
"Not with the science-with the CDF. How do you think they would react if they knew of the experiments?"
"An interesting thought. They would react negatively to any questioning of Church doctrine but your experiments don't question doctrine; if anything they confirm it. So, they should welcome the good news," he said getting up from his end of the couch.
"Refill?" he asked, picking up my empty bottle.
I nodded.
Heading for the kitchen he asked, "They would know about Georgina too?"
I nodded again.
He came back from the kitchen with two bottles of Corona Lite, gave me one, and plopped back down on the couch with a sigh.
"Good news until they thought about it for a while- for about as long as it took me," he said taking a swig and glancing at me sideways with a smile.
"And, those thoughts would be?" I said urging him to go on.
"Those thoughts would be that this former Episcopal priest, this notorious advocate of women's ordinations, this violator of canon 277 might just be devious enough to repeat his experiment with a host consecrated by an Episcopal priest and, worse yet, a woman Episcopal priest."
"And they would not want me to do that for fear it would succeed and contradict the Church's teachings, right?"
"Yes, that of course, but I see another more immediate problem for them."
Tom put his head back on the couch and searched for words in the cracks in my ceiling.
"Assume that the CDF gets wind of your experiments. They might think, one-you're a quack. Two, you're a schemer. It's all a hoax to influence their decision on your petition to marry. Or, three, you're legit and immediately realize the danger of an extension of the experiment with Georgina, an extension that would directly test-assuming that your divine hypothesis is true-directly test the validity of Anglican ordinations and, egad, women's ordinations also. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
"And, the Church claims that both Anglican ordinations and the ordinations of women are invalid. Still in agreement?"
"Yes."
"And to doubt that is heresy."
"Now I don't know about that, Tom. I might prove the Church was wrong with the cosmic rays."
"Maybe. Now, here's the real problem for the CDF. The Church claims that its position on both of these issues must be 'definitively held' by all the faithful, that its position is both true and unchanging. It is infallible. Along comes this snot-nosed-their assessment, not mine- young American priest with his cosmic ray heresy who may have the means of putting that position to the test."
"You put it so dramatically."
He sat up straight, took a swig of Corona, and leaned toward me. "It gets better. Not only are they worried that snot nose will perform the experiment but they are upset by the fact that they are worried in the first place."
"Because?"
Tom put his beer on the coffee table and stood. I watched my friend the priest morph into my friend the former Assistant District Attorney. He paced back and forth, head bowed, right hand massaging his chin as if deep in thought.
"Why? Because if they truly believe the Church's position on these ordinations then they should also believe that such an experiment must fail. And, where does that leave them? Logically they should welcome the experiment, secure in their faith that it would fail and confirm the Church's position. But, they worry. They worry that the experiments will not fail and that very worry bothers them because they realize that it indicates that they have?" Tom stopped, smiled, and extended an upturned palm towards me.
"That they have doubts," I said.
"That they have doubts!"
Tom walked over to the dining table at the end of the room and addressed the picture of the Last Supper on the wall.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury-correction, make that just gentlemen- let me conclude by saying that the very congregation that sanctions others for doubting Church doctrine would be guilty of the same sin, and they'd know it."
Tom turned his back on his ancient jury, came back and plopped down on the couch. Arms folded across his chest he said, "I rest my case."
I played along and shouted, "Guilty! Guilty. String 'em up!"
We woke up Olivia. She was standing in the doorway to the hall clutching her lady bug pillow pet and sucking her thumb. I got her back in bed without a fuss and went back to the living room.
"Seriously, Tom, what do you think they'd do?"
"I have no idea but I know what I'd think if I were on the CDF."
"What's that?"
"I wouldn't get past the quackery option."
The Eagles lost by one. They missed a fifty-yard field goal in the last twenty seconds that would have won the game. When Tom left I retrieved the email draft with the description of the cosmic ray experiments and the photos and added a sentence about involving a woman Episcopal priest. I sent it to Sal before I went to bed. The rattle in my head was gone. I used the PaCom account, not the secure hotmail one. That was as good as sending it directly to the CDF. They want to keep me hanging on my petition to marry Vicki? Let them hang a little too. I had nothing to lose.
CHAPTER 40-THE SPIRALS
The walls of Olivia's bedroom were a deep purple. They were purple when I bought the house and purple they remained. Vicki said the room was hideous. The next Sunday afternoon we did something about it. I promised my mother and Vicki burgers from the barbeque if they'd help me paint. Vicki cut in around the woodwork and ceiling with a paint pad and I manned the roller. My mother watched the kids in the backyard. It took two coats of pink to cover the walls. While I cleaned up Vicki wandered around eyeing the walls in the other rooms. I caught up with her in my den.
"Isn't it depressing," she said "to be surrounded by four dark walls?"
"Or warm and cozy," I said.
My computer was on. The monitor was asleep.
"What are you working on?" she said.
I tapped the space bar and one of the cosmic ray photos came up on the screen.
"The cosmic ray pr
oblem I told you about. It has us all stymied. I'm trying to sort out these photos. I've got hundreds. I'm putting some into a PowerPoint presentation. This one is from a small group I sent to a friend of mine at Georgetown."
"Run the slide show. Let me see them."
I set the timer for five seconds between slides and let it run.
"Okay, now the first three are without the communion host," I said.
"They're pretty in a way, aren't they?" she said. "Sort of black and white modern art. I love the spirals."
"The spirals are caused by a magnetic field," I said. "Now these next three were taken when I placed a communion host on the table next to the cloud chamber. You'll notice that there are a lot more tracks."
"I can see that. Twice as many at least."
"The mystery is 'why'?" I said. "Where do they come from? That's what has us stumped."
"Why don't you want to consider a miracle?"
"Miracles are what you have left after all attempts at rational explanations fail and we have not exhausted all the possibilities."
"Didn't you and Joe think they came from something radioactive?"
"Initially, yes, but we quickly ruled that out."
"I'll have to put Priscilla on the case," she said.
"Your sixth-grade sleuth would be out of her league. She's great at solving mysteries involving crime-solving gerbils and kidnapped parrots but these photos are of real events. But, just for the fun of it, what would she suggest as an explanation?"
"How about hallucinations? The tracks aren't real."
"Uh, uh. You can't photograph hallucinations. Strike one."
"A mirage then, like that picture of that castle floating in the sky in your physics book. That's something that is not real but you can photograph it."
"Looming, caused by the bending of light in the atmosphere coming from a real castle on the ground," I said stressing the word 'real'. "Strike two."
The slides continued to run.
"Priscilla is very curious. She might have questions- like there," she said pointing at the screen "that slide with the little bunch of straight tracks and those faint little spirals up in the corner. Why are some straight and some curved?"
I paused the slide show.
"You know, that's a good question. I hadn't noticed that. The curved tracks indicate that the magnetic field was on. There can't be any straight ones. Let me see."
I took a six-inch plastic ruler from the drawer under the table and held it next to one of the straight tracks.
"Almost straight but curved slightly. You've got a good eye."
"Give the credit to Priscilla, Frank. She was on the case. Is that an important clue?"
"Could be."
"Well, Priscilla will leave the cosmic ray problem in your hands. Meantime, how about those burgers you promised?"
"Coming up," I said turning off the computer.
Vicki looked at the walls again.
"You know you wouldn't need such bright lights in here if you got rid of these gray walls."
"Green walls," I said.
"Only if you're color blind,"
"Maybe a little shade blind," I said.
"Really? Might explain that shirt."
I turned out the lights and looked down at my shirt.
On leaving the room Vicki said, "I think an off white would brighten up this room. Next weekend. Maybe light beige."
What had I started?
CHAPTER 41-SAL WILL VISIT
The following Wednesday morning the sun was streaming through my office window when my cell phone rang. It was Sal.
"Still got the comic ray problem?"
"Monday afternoon. Strong as ever."
"Your photos, Frank. Very interesting."
"Any thoughts?"
"They look typical of tracks in a cloud chamber except for the goups of parallel straight tracks."
"Almost parallel. They are slightly curved."
"Right. They look like the tracks of alpha particles. Very fast alphas. Any chance there was an alpha emitter nearby?"
"No. We checked."
"How about in the tank?"
Nothing in the tank except air and alcohol vapor."
"What's the white streak on the glass?"
"Probably the reflection from a helium discharge tube another group of students were using in a spectroscopy experiment. Since I've got your interest I'll send you some more. Maybe you can spot something I missed."
"I can do better than that. I've been coming up to Philly every other Friday afternoon and staying to Tuesday to visit my mother. She's getting worse and I have to make a decision soon about what to do. I hate to think of putting her in a nursing home."
"Gee, I'm sorry to hear that."
"Thanks. Anyhow, I'll be up next weekend. Can we get in your lab on Saturday so I can take a look?"
"Sure. I need somebody to tell me I'm still sane. Saturday morning okay? Olivia has a soccer game in the afternoon."
"Fine. You said you only get this phenomenon when you are carrying a consecrated host. That is really weird. You're sure you didn't have anything radioactive on you?"
"Positive. That's the first thing we checked."
"Who's 'we', Frank? How many people know about this?"
"Besides you and me my colleague Joe Amanti and Vicki. Also, Tom Lacey, a priest working for the Archbishop, and Georgina Rutherford, a friend of mine. She's the Episcopal priest I mentioned. If a plan of mine works we can add Cardinal Tossi to the list."
"Prefect of the CDF? Why would he know anything?"
I told Sal about my intentional leak.
"You want them to know?" Sal sounded incredulous.
"Tom Lacey has this theory that my petition to marry worried them. They offered to speed up the usual lengthy process for laicization if I would resign. I figure if my experiments can worry them even more they may be willing to make concessions more to my liking."
"I don't know, Frank. You're playing with fire."
I laughed. "No danger there. They don't burn heretics any more."
"Do you remember I said Karl Kurtz was interested?"
"Yes. The cosmologist. I've read a few of his papers. I could never tell if it was science or science fiction."
"Yeah, Karl can be pretty far out. Anyhow, I showed him these new pictures. An hour later he came back to me with an intriguing theory. Do you happen to have a Cavendish Balance?"
"We have one. I haven't used it for years, Why?"
"Part of Karl's theory. Think you could get the balance in working order by Saturday?"
"Shouldn't be a problem."
"I'll explain when I see you. This Episcopal priest you mentioned. Has she agreed to your experiment?"
"Not yet. I'm working on it."
"I'd like to meet her."
"I'll see if she'd like to come on Saturday."
"I've got to get going, Frank. I have an early class. Ciao."
CHAPTER 42-THE CAVENDISH BALANCE
Early Saturday morning Sal and I met in the Modern Physics lab where I had set up a cloud chamber to show him the phenomenon. He was impressed and as baffled as I. After about half an hour we moved to the Optics lab where a Cavendish Balance sat on an optical table in the middle of the room. I had invited Georgina to meet us for lunch and she showed up as we were about to start a second run of the Cavendish experiment. I introduced her to Sal and explained what we were doing.
The apparatus sat in the middle of the perfectly flat steel surface of the table. The table looked from the sides like a pool table with extra fat legs. The actual balance resembled a small glass box on a stand, a box about the size and shape of a video tape cassette. Inside the box was what looked like a small dumbbell with two small lead balls at the end of a 6-inch rod. The rod was suspended from its center by a quartz fiber about the thickness of a human hair. Two larger lead balls sat on supports outside of and at opposite ends of the box. The sole purpose of this device was to measure the incr
edibly small gravitational force between the small and large balls, a force that would cause the dumbbell to rotate and twist the thin fiber that supported it. There was a helium-neon laser near the edge of the table. The only other thing on the table was a consecrated communion host. We had previously run a trial without the host and now we wanted to see if we got any different results with the host near the balance.
I sat on a high lab stool next to the table. Georgina, dressed in jeans and a red blouse, sat on a windowsill swinging her legs. A small gold cross dangled on a chain over the blouse. She looked at the blackout shades behind her and the flat black walls of the lab.
"Kind of gloomy in here isn't it?"
"It's basically a large darkroom," I said. "Raise a couple of those shades. The laser is bright enough."
Sal adjusted the laser so that its narrow red beam was directed toward a tiny mirror attached to the quartz fiber. The beam reflected off the mirror and was projected onto the whiteboard at the back of the lab.
"It's this table we want," Sal said and pushed down on its edge with his thumb causing the gas piston legs to hiss as they adjusted the level. The laser spot on the back wall jiggled momentarily.
"It isolates the balance from stray vibrations in the building or trucks passing in the street- even our footsteps."
"Very high tech," Georgina said.
"The laser and the table just make things a little easier," Sal said.
I reached over and carefully moved the large balls so that one was close to a small ball on one side of the case and the other was close to the small ball on the other side. The pistons hissed again like angry snakes. I pushed the start button on the lab timer. The beam reflected from the mirror jiggled and then started to move across the whiteboard, magnifying the twist of the fiber caused by the gravitational tugs in opposite directions by the large balls on the smaller ones. The red spot moved so slowly it was barely perceptible.