Einstein's Bridge

by Cramer, John

  “That’s a bit difficult to imagine,” said Roger, draining the last sip of apple juice from his glass, and turning it upside down on the tray. The small yellow wasps were beginning to take an interest in it.

  “And I suppose St. Genis maps into Maypearl to the west of the SSC campus,” George continued. “Maypearl is certainly the low rent district, but I wouldn’t recommend living there. It’s a depressed cotton-gin town, not very pleasant unless you like beer joints populated by migrant workers, sharecroppers, and mean unemployed drunks.”

  “So where do people live who work at the SSC?” Roger asked.

  “Be prepared to buy a car and drive it,” said George. “There’s essentially no public transportation, and the places you will need to go are far apart. As for housing, as usual, it’s a matter of taste. Some have apartments in De Soto or South Dallas, where there’s something of a singles scene. A few are buying and remodeling the classic gingerbread houses in Waxahachie. Others live in newer houses on one of the lakes to the south, with maybe a dock and a boat for water skiing. Then there are those who have bought into the Texas mystique and have set themselves up as mini-cattle-barons on a hundred acre spread, with a couple of horses, a dozen head of prime livestock, a few ranch hands to do the actual work, and an air-conditioned ranch house. The land around Waxahachie isn’t too expensive, so you could buy into that kind of setup for the equivalent of a few year’s salary. For example, your new boss Bert Barnes, the head of the SSC Theory Group, has become a Gentleman Rancher in that style. Stetson, high-heel boots, and all. You’re going to love his barbecues.” George combed his fingers through his beard, as if appreciating the thought.

  “I don’t think I’m quite ready for gentrification,” said Roger, who had already met Bert and had already formed an opinion. “What’s the culture like in Dallas proper. Can one find films and theater, book shops and coffee houses and intelligent conversation?”

  George smiled. “You must understand that I’m a faculty member at the University of Washington, so I live in Seattle, which is about 2700 kilometers northwest of Dallas. But over the past few years, while the SSC was getting started, I’ve come to know the Dallas area fairly well. I think you may have a problem, Roger. Dallas is a big city, but its culture, like its religion, tends to be concentrated at the surface.

  “The Dallas big-rich support the showy cultural forms, the symphony, the opera, the ballet, the usual repertory theater company, and a well-appointed art museum with some minor works of first rank painters and major works of third rank ones. They like culture they can point to and be seen at. They like big names, but they’re not all that picky about the quality of the end product.

  “The center of Dallas is a complex of sterile office buildings staffed by a mobile population that vanishes at 5 PM. You’ll find the film scene at the suburban shopping malls, with movie theaters that have a dozen screens and can occasionally spare one of them for the odd foreign film. The book shops are mainly chain franchises, and they’re also at the malls. Come to think of it, that’s probably where the coffee houses are too, so that the housewives can pause on shopping expeditions to grab a quick espresso or latte. Perhaps you’ll need to locate near a shopping mall, Roger.”

  Roger winced. He wondered if George might be having a joke at his expense, and looked closely at him.

  “Seriously,” said George, apparently getting the message, “there’s intelligent conversation to be had, but you’ll have to go looking for it. There are some big universities in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington, and there are supposed to be good bookstores, coffee houses, and student pubs near them.” George paused and stroked his beard again. “Look, Roger, I’m making it sound worse than it is. There are good and interesting people living around the SSC, and you just have to find them yourself. Culturally Dallas isn’t London, or even Seattle, but it’s a city with an enormous vitality and frontier exuberance that’s quite fascinating in its own way.”

  Roger swatted at the yellow wasps. “I can see,” he said, “that I’m in for a period of adjustment.” He looked upward at the sunshine filtering through the trees. Griffin seemed to have come to the end of his Texas observations. “Permit me to change the subject,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about the experimental program at the SSC and the big detectors. During my visit there two months ago, I only talked to the theorists. I’d rather not be so uninformed about the SSC’s experimental program when I show up there and begin telling the experimentalists what physics they should do.”

  George smiled. “The most important thing I can say about the SSC,” he said, “is that the damned thing, after years of political battles, DOE bureaucratic interference, budget fights, technical glitches, and magnet tinkering, is finally up and running. I consider that a miracle. The whole project was almost killed by the U. S. Congress several times in the mid-1990s. It was very close. Only a major effort spanning the whole eight years of the Bush Administration, particularly by Allan Bromley, Bush’s Science Advisor, and John Deutsch, his Energy Secretary, saved the SSC from an ugly premature death. Bromley and Deutsch engineered the one billion dollar Japanese contribution to the SSC, and at their instigation many of us in particle physics made frequent pilgrimages to DC to talk to congressional staff about the value of the project. I was at Fermilab working on CDF at the time, and for a while we were spending more time lobbying for the SSC than discovering the top quark. Have you ever tried explaining particle physics to a lawyer?”

  Roger laughed. “I have trouble enough explaining it to my colleagues,” he said. He sensed that Griffin was giving him another familiar spiel. “But how well is the machine running? I’ve heard the luminosity is low.”

  “The beam luminosity did start out very low four months ago, when they first reached full energy. The machine team is still working on some beam instabilities that occur while ramping up to full energy, but the luminosity is building up to the design values on a nice curve. The two major detector systems, SDC and LEM, are both working well, and both are now taking data.”

  “Ah, yes, you should remind me of what the acronyms stand for,” said Roger. “To be properly admitted to the high priesthood, one must first memorize all of the holy acronyms.”

  George grinned. “SDC stands for Solenoidal Detector Collaboration. It’s a big barrel-shaped superconducting solenoid coil with elaborate wire chambers on the inside and layers of calorimeters and muon detectors on the outside. It collects data mainly for the hadronic sector, the heavy charged particles from the collision. LEM stands for Lepton and Electro-Magnetic Processes, the processes it’s designed to detect.

  “I should add, for your cultural edification, that some of our rivals have had the temerity to suggest that LEM stands for Jake’s Large Empire of Minions or the Loony Excursion Module. It’s a large open-geometry superconducting toroid for detecting leptons and photons.

  “LEM is working fine at the moment, but some of the electronic components are already failing. We’re worried. Some of the radiation hardened detector circuits are turning out to be not as radiation-hard as we’d expected, and we badly need to replace them with better ones. I’m here at CERN to compare notes on radiation damage problems with people in the LHC detector groups. One of their experts, Wolfgang Spiegelmann, is going to spend next month working with us at Waxahachie.”

  “Anything, ah ... interesting in the data you’ve collected so far?” Roger asked.

  “Well, we haven’t yet discovered any Higgs bosons with LEM, if that’s what you mean. Neither has the SDC, but we’re all looking hard. The students claim that Jake Wang has already written the paper announcing the discovery of the Higgs. He only has to fill in a few numbers and paste in some graphs when we actually find it. He expects his Nobel Prize any month now.” He smiled and combed his beard again.

  Roger looked across at George. “Of course!” he said. “I’d overlooked that minor detail. You mu
st work with Jake.” He smiled sympathetically, realizing that he had probably hit upon yet another of Griffin’s favorite topics of conversation.

  George shook his head. “I don’t think you understand, Roger. Nobody works with Jake. I work for Jake, just as everyone else in the LEM collaboration does. All of Jake’s detector projects have started with the letter L, all have produced excellent physics, and all of them have left a trail of broken minds and bodies in their wake.

  “The story goes that a prominent particle physicist suffered an unexpected heart attack, dropped dead, and immediately found himself standing before Saint Peter at the Gates of Heaven. Saint Peter carefully examined his earthly record, asked some pointed questions about several referee reports the physicist had written, and finally decided to admit him to heaven. As he was passing through the Pearly Gates, the man noticed to his right an enormous particle detector that looked like LEM, and standing before it was a solemn oriental man in a gray tailored business suit, checking papers on a clipboard against some details of the detector.

  ‘Why, that’s Jake Wang over there,’ said the physicist. ‘Is he dead too? I saw him at the SSC just last week.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Saint Peter. ‘That’s God. Sometimes he likes to play at being Jake Wang.’”

  Roger laughed. “I heard the same story at Cambridge about Disraeli, but I think it probably fits your friend Jake better. Even in England I’d heard stories about his rages and personality quirks.”

  “Yes,” said George. “Unfortunately, all of those stories are true. Of course, it is possible to adjust to him. In fact, there are many time-tested ways of adjusting to Jake ...” He smiled. “A nervous breakdown, alcoholism, heavy tranquilization, a quick drink of strychnine, a change of profession ...” He smiled.

  Roger raised an eyebrow. “That bad ... ?” he said.

  George shrugged. “It’s the price that fate has extracted from me in exchange for my involvement in the best experiment on the best accelerator in the world. Usually, I think it’s worth it.”

  CHAPTER 1.5

  Wagner Publishing

  ALICE glanced up at the rundown building as she paid the cab driver. She frowned. Could this really be the New York headquarters of the famous Wagner Publishing Company, the publisher of all her novels? She stepped around the derelicts near the entrance, walked past a sleazy-looking guard by the doorway, and entered the building’s lobby. There was no mistake. The building directory listed Wagner Publishing, Suite 401.

  When she pressed the call button for the elevator, feeling a bit uneasy, the guard laughed unpleasantly. “No elevator this week, Lady,” he said. “The stairs are over there.” He laughed again.

  She felt growing concern as she walked to the stairway, remembering that her financial and literary future depended on this publisher. Weren’t the big New York publishing houses supposed to have fancy offices on 5th Avenue?

  Alice was breathing hard when she reached the fourth floor landing and pushed through the fire door. She looked around, feeling somewhat reassured. Apparently Wagner occupied the entire 4th floor of the building. The elevator lobby was nicely decorated and furnished. It was adorned with a large gilded Wagner Books logo and a long glass-covered display exhibiting the covers of some of their recent publications. She noted that although her most recent novel, ‘E’ as in Earthworms, had just come out and was selling very well, it was not among the paperback books in the display case. Prominently featured were George H. W. Bush’s recent Saddam, Boris, and I, along with Fabulous Washington Sex Scandals, Madonna’s Secret for Thinner Thighs, The Financial Secrets of Football All-Stars, and How to Psychoanalyze Your Cat. Non-books, she thought. I hope at least that stuff pays the bills here.

  Alice smoothed a wrinkle at the sleeve of her lose white jacket and brushed a fleck of lint from the side of her elegant light blue dress as she approached the reception desk. “Miss,” she said, “I have an appointment Janet Renfrew. Please tell her that Alice Lancaster is here.” Alice liked the sound of “Lancaster,” which was her pen name. It looked better on a book than “Lang,” the name she was born with, or “Brown,” the name of her late husband.

  The receptionist picked up the handset of her telephone, dialed a number, chewed her gum for a while, and then replaced it in its cradle. “I can’t reach Janet because the phone system is acting up again. Guess you can go on back to her office. It’s in the back of Room 447. Go straight back to the first partition and turn right, then left to the wall and another two rights and a left. Ya can’t miss it.”

  Alice wondered briefly if this was a joke but decided that the receptionist didn’t seem sufficiently amused. She ventured through the door and was immediately confronted by a barricade of cardboard boxes filled with books. She took a long detour around the obstacle, took several turns along the lines the receptionist had suggested, and was soon completely lost in a warren of narrow passages, small offices, partitions, piles of printed matter, and desks. No room numbers were visible anywhere.

  A young man wearing faded jeans, a tee shirt advertising a defunct 60’s acid-rock group, worn running shoes, and a new-looking camel-hair sport coat approached her. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  She asked him how to find Janet Renfrew, and he guided her along several more hallways to a room filled with people, all talking rather aggressively into telephones. “That’s our collections group,” he said.

  “Book collections?” Alice asked.

  “No,” he replied. “Bill collections. Go to the far end the room. Janet’s in the little glassed-in nook back there by the windows.” He smiled and waved, then turned away.

  Relieved at finding Janet, Alice threaded her way to the door of the indicated cubicle. Through the glass door panel she could see a young woman with curly black hair, presumably Janet Renfrew, whom she had not yet met in person. The woman seemed to be screaming into a telephone.

  Alice wondered if she was intruding on a private matter, maybe a lover’s quarrel. She thought perhaps she should sneak away and wait outside for a time. But before she could put this plan into action, the woman inside saw her, smiled and waved, mouthed the words “your agent,” and rapidly terminated the telephone conversation.

  She strode to the door and opened it wide. “Alice! My dear!” she said, embracing her. “I’m Janet. So we meet at last. Come on in. Can I get you some coffee? Sit down! Did you have any trouble finding your way here? How’s the writing going? You must tell me about the new book you’re working on.”

  Alice sat in the chair by the cluttered desk. On the desk was an open manuscript which had the obvious stain of a recent coffee spill on its center. Alice was feeling uncomfortable and confused. She wondered if she had made a mistake coming here. Last month Alice had not been present when her agent had negotiated the new contract and advance for her yet-to-be-written novel. Then, to her surprise, Janet had invited her here and sent a plane ticket. Alice would have brought her agent along, but he was away on a West Coast business trip.

  Janet had taken over her books at Wagner from her previous editor, Damien Howell, who had been fired last year in the aftermath of the most recent of a continuing series of leveraged buyouts, corporate takeovers, and consolidations of publishing lines and imprints. Damien had been a wonderful editor. He had been largely responsible for successfully launching her writing career and had helped her to put her life back together after Steve died.

  Alice was still uncertain about Janet as a replacement for Damien. Janet had been involved mainly in the production phases of her last book. She had, to her credit, arranged for the Earthworms paperback to have a cover that had beautiful art work and was embossed with large gold letters and a peekaboo cutout. That was a first, and Alice had liked it very much. Janet and Alice had so far communicated only by fax, the Internet, and telephone. There had been several pleasant and encouraging telephone conversations, but th
is was their first meeting.

  “Getting here from La Guardia was no problem,” Alice said. “I just jumped in a cab, and three traffic jams later I arrived. Finding your office once I was on the right floor of the building was far more challenging. There was a nice young man in jeans and a camel-hair coat who was very helpful.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Janet. “That was Albert Jukes. He’s my boss’s boss, the Executive Publisher of the Corporation. Isn’t he nice?”

  Alice blinked. “I must be getting old,” she said. “I thought he was an office boy. Isn’t he rather young for a position like Executive Publisher?”

  “He’s older than he looks,” Janet said. “Albert likes to walk while he’s thinking, so he frequently runs into our visitors. He calls it ‘management by walking around’. Would you like some coffee?”

  Alice nodded. “Yes, please. Black.”

  Janet picked up the telephone and dialed a number, hung up and dialed a second number, then a third. Finally she slammed down the receiver. “Shit!” she said. “This telephone system is utterly worthless. Who needs ‘voice messaging’ when you want to ask the damned receptionist to bring in some fucking coffee?” She stalked out of the cubicle, returning after a while with two steaming mugs. She handed Alice a mug bearing the Wagner corporate logo emblazoned in gold.

  “Well,” Janet said, putting both elbows on her desk, placing one hand under her chin, and looking across at Alice, “we’re going to be working together, and we need to get better acquainted. So tell me how a nice girl like you wandered into the business of writing disaster thrillers that are crawling with bugs.”

  Alice laughed. “Sometimes I wonder about that myself,” she said. “I was a couple of years out of college and working as a newspaper reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat. My late husband was a sharp lawyer with political ambitions. We had a nice house and a very active social life aimed at furthering his career. But after a while, I found that I needed some creative outlet as a pressure relief valve. I’m a naturally inquisitive person, and I thought about doing some freelance investigative reporting. There were plenty of things going on in Florida that were potential subjects for investigation. But my husband, Steve, was concerned that if I looked under the wrong rock I might antagonize one of his rich clients. So I decided to do something else.