Twistor

by Cramer, John; Wolfe, Gene;

  Paul cleared his throat. 'Let me review what's happened recently,' he began, 'so we'll all be talking from the same basis of information.' He was superficially very calm as he described David's demonstration of the twistor effect and his subsequent theoretical work on it. He described the concept of shadow matter and the conversion that the twistor field produced.

  Weinberger questioned Paul closely on some of the theoretical aspects of this. He seemed skeptical that Paul's version of superstring theory should be taken as having been verified by experiment. Vickie remembered having heard from some of the theory grad students that Weinberger was a field theorist whose work was somewhat at variance with the superstring approach.

  Vickie was impressed with how Paul presented the case. She had seen Paul last night, shaken and unsure, and she understood what control he must be exerting now to hold together like this. Vickie watched the others, Weinberger sitting erect and concerned, Saxon slouched by the window, examining his fingernails.

  Paul went on reviewing the incidents of yesterday, describing his last moments with his children. To Vickie his control as he spoke those words seemed icy. 'I believe,' he concluded, 'that for some reason, perhaps to escape the phony movers, David enlarged the twistor field to about a five-meter radius and activated it. He, the children, and most of the apparatus were inside the field sphere at the time of transition. They were twisted to a shadow universe, the one from which the wood sphere came. There's a good possibility that David and my children are still alive. But without food and supplies – '

  And air, Vickie thought.

  ' – they can't last long,' Paul continued. To get them back, we'll have to immediately rebuild the apparatus and reverse the effect as soon as possible. We'll need coordinated effort and support from the department for that. That's what we've come here to request.' Paul stopped and looked at Weinberger, who in turn glanced at Allan. Vickie looked too, bracing herself for the explosion.

  Allan smiled. 'I don't want to question the judgment of my young colleague, particularly when he's under such severe emotional stress from the disappearance of his children. But it seems to me that, as theorists sometimes do, he's chasing up a blind alley. Myself, I've always favored simple explanations. Even Paul admits that his scenario involves theoretical ideas that are not widely accepted. Why do we need all these speculations about "shadow matter" and new physical effects when we haven't eliminated the far greater likelihood that this was a simple case of kidnapping?' His voice rose dramatically to hammer home the point.

  'We know that several men came into this building,' Saxon continued, 'then left in a van, and that this was coincidental with the disappearance of David and of Paul's children. I've no idea whether David Harrison, or for that matter Miss Gordon, had any previous contact with these men, but it's possible they came to help Harrison remove my equipment to some other place before it could be taken to my corporate laboratory, as I had intended.'

  Vickie felt rising anger. She glared across the table at Saxon, then at Paul. She noticed that there was color in his cheeks and that his fingers were drumming against his knee.

  Saxon paused, smiling. 'Of course, I have no evidence of any such thing. For the moment, I'll give both Harrison and Miss Gordon the benefit of the doubt and assume that these events were strictly the actions of strangers. I've no idea what the motives of these terrorists or thieves or whatever they are could be. But I find it likely that they were the ones who planted listening devices in my laboratory and my office. From what they learned by listening in, they must have decided to steal my equipment. They took Harrison along, willingly or unwillingly, because he knew how the equipment worked, and they took the children because they happened to be in the laboratory at the wrong time. I feel that unless the kidnappers decide to ask for a ransom, Paul's children, and perhaps Harrison also, will be released very soon. We have only to remain calm and wait them out.'

  Paul's control must have snapped. He made an inarticulate sound and rose from his chair, face red, fists clenched, clearly about to lunge across the table at Saxon. Weinberger clutched Paul's arm, and Saxon held up a conciliatory hand. 'I allowed you to talk without interruption, Paul,' he said calmly. 'I'd appreciate the same courtesy from you.' Paul, struggling to regain his composure, took a deep breath and shook himself. Finally, at Weinberger's urging he resumed his seat.

  'As for rebuilding the apparatus,' Saxon continued, 'I intend to do so in my corporate laboratory in Bellevue where the security is better. A university campus simply has too many comings and goings, too many students and visitors and janitors with passkeys, to protect anything that people, for whatever reason, are intent on stealing. We plan to do all the construction for the new apparatus at company expense. There's no need to burden the limited resources of the physics department. And I must point out that Miss Gordon's thesis project is no longer an issue here, since she already has enough data for a thesis. Isn't that so, Vickie?' He aimed a bland smile in her direction.

  Caught off guard, she stammered, 'I . . . uh . . . think I may have enough data, but . . . uh . . . I can't really be sure yet.'

  Saxon nodded. Tine. You'll certainly have to analyze what data you already have first. By the time that's done, the new apparatus will be operating at my Bellevue laboratory, and you will be most welcome to come there and take more data if you need it. So I suggest – no, I insist that we allow the police and the FBI to do their jobs and find these criminals. Until they have eliminated the possibility of a kidnapping, I don't see how we can take Professor Ernst's hunches about other universes seriously enough to act on them. And it is clear that no crash program is required to allow Miss Gordon to complete her thesis project. Therefore,' he said, turning to Weinberger, 'I don't see that any departmental action is required.'

  'Wait! Look!' Vickie exploded, surprising herself with the outburst, There's a bloody big wooden sphere in my lab that must weigh twenty tons. It had to come from somewhere. How the Hell do you—'

  'Vickie, please!' the chairman cut her off. 'We must all try to be more rational and less emotional about this. Remember that this is a university campus. Tricks like this are sometimes played. I recall some years ago that the engineering seniors disassembled a Jeep, carried the parts in the middle of the night into the office of the dean of engineering, and reassembled it to stand on the carpet in front of his desk, where he found it the next morning. The university, at considerable expense, hired mechanics to disassemble and remove the vehicle. That was all done very quietly and with no publicity. And the prank was never repeated. That's the way vandalistic pranks like this must be handled. One must have absolutely no publicity, because it only encourages the perpetrators.' He stopped, giving every appearance of satisfaction that he had laid the problem to rest.

  Victoria stared in disbelief. 'But we have mass spectrograph tests—' she began.

  'Please,' Weinberger interrupted, his voice hardening, 'we've had enough discussion of this prank. Let me worry about dealing with it.'

  She looked at Paul and rolled her eyes heavenward. She took several deep breaths. There was no point in arguing further. Still feeling the flush of her cheeks, she turned to Weinberger again. 'There is one other matter that I'd like to bring up, sir,' she said, trying her best to imitate Paul's tight control. 'I'm very much opposed to the blanket of secrecy that Professor Saxon has chosen to place upon my thesis research. I find it unacceptable. I don't think that I can continue to work in this atmosphere. Therefore, I would like respectfully to request that Professor Ernst be made my thesis advisor. He has already agreed to this—' She turned to Paul, and he nodded.

  'My modified thesis project,' she continued, 'will consist of the design and construction of the twistor apparatus, which is already done; the analysis of the data from measurements on the phenomenon, which will be done in the near future; and ongoing work with Professor Ernst on the theoretical aspects of the phenomenon.' She looked challengingly at Allan, daring him to object.

  He smiled
at her instead. 'Students in our department always have the prerogative of changing advisors whenever they wish, my dear. I certainly value the work that you've done under my direction, but I have no objections at all to the change you suggest, with two minor reservations. First, Paul should immediately assume the responsibility for paying the stipend for your research assistantship out of his Department of Energy contract. And second, I may at times require your services as a consultant when we are rebuilding the experimental apparatus.' He looked across the table at Paul.

  'The assistantship is no problem,' Paul said through clenched teeth. 'I'll make the arrangements today. As to the consulting, that's strictly up to Vickie. The department cannot compel her to consult for a private company, even yours, Allan.' He smiled grimly back across the table.

  Saxon was quiet for a moment. 'Of course,' he said finally, conceding the point.

  Vickie turned to Weinberger. 'As a part of my new thesis project, I intend to build a second-generation version of our twistor apparatus. I would like some departmental shop time and some equipment money for this. Can I have it?'

  Weinberger paused. 'I'm afraid that I will have to agree with Allan on this one, Vickie,' he said finally. 'The departmental equipment budget is very limited, and there are huge pressures on all of our resources, particularly in the area of technical services. I'm very much in sympathy with your concern for Paul's children and for David, but I simply cannot accept the emotional appeal from a graduate student and a theorist for the allocation of scarce departmental technical resources to rebuild an experiment when its originator and principal investigator, a distinguished senior professor of experimental physics in our department, is opposed. I'm truly sorry.'

  She looked directly at him, her green eyes flashing. 'I take it from your answer, sir, that you have no objection to my construction of a new twistor apparatus provided there is no impact on departmental funds or allocated technical services.'

  Weinberger blinked. 'No, I suppose not,' he said mildly.

  A few minutes later, after Weinberger had concluded the meeting and shown them cordially out, Paul walked with Vickie to his office. 'Those stupid mindless assholes!' she raged as Paul closed the door.

  'I guess I'm not surprised at the way it came out,' he said dejectedly. 'Ralph is not stupid, but he does have to walk a fine line as department chairman. Allan is holding all the cards. One protest from Allan, and Ralph would find himself having to explain to the provost, the dean, or a physics faculty meeting just how and why he'd decided to use departmental resources to rescue people lost in shadow universes. He probably considered that and elected to take the safe way out.' He looked at her, hoping that an objective discussion of the meeting would calm her down.

  'I do agree,' he continued, 'that Allan's a pompous asshole. That's well known in the department. But his performance just now wasn't stupid or mindless. He presented a brilliant set of intellectually dishonest and self-serving arguments in defense of his narrow self-interest. He doesn't want the twistor hardware rebuilt in a big departmental crash program. He wants to have the leisure to explore the twistor effect in his Bellevue labs, nailing down applications and patent rights as he goes. He's probably even deluded himself into believing that David and the children will benefit from his approach. Allan's always been good at using his considerable rationality for the purpose of rationalizing.' Paul hesitated for a moment. Getting his children back might depend on what he said next.

  'Vickie, we must get that apparatus rebuilt. It's the only way we're going to be able to get through to Jeff and Melissa and David. Perhaps we should make a deal with Allan and agree to help rebuild the apparatus his way.'

  'Wait a minute,' said Victoria, her cheeks flushing. 'I know you want your kids back, Paul, but I'm surprised that you'd even suggest such a thing. There isn't any way I'd trust Allan in an arrangement like that. Besides, he wants to do everything in Bellevue under tight security. That isn't consistent with finding David and the children. If we're going to locate them, it has to be done here where they disappeared, not in Bellevue.'

  'But what else can we do?' Paul was feeling increasingly apprehensive as he ran a hand through his short-cropped hair.

  'Look, Paul,' she said, 'I know that I told you last night it would take a full crash program to make a twistor device in maybe a month. And that would be true, if we took the same route as before, the safe route. But we can't afford that route now.

  'I did a lot of thinking last night about how to build a second-generation twistor generator. It doesn't have to be that hard or that expensive with the right approach. Much of what we did before with expensive analog systems can be done as well with cheap digital waveform synthesis using microprocessors. And a lot of our time went into perfecting the control program. That's done, and I have the only existing copy of the program.'

  'You do?' Paul said. He looked at her closely, wondering where that left Saxon's efforts to rebuild the equipment.

  'It would be nice,' she went on, ignoring his question, 'to have some of the special circuits that were in the old hardware, but I can make more. I think we can do it ourselves with a few thousand dollars, some circuits from the junk pile, a little borrowing from the stock in the electronics shop, and a few weeks of work. Maybe in less time than that, if I can recruit some help.'

  Paul was surprised. 'How is that possible?' he asked. 'All that hardware . . . ' He recalled David's laboratory tour. Half of the room had been filled with complicated apparatus.

  'Remember,' Vickie said, 'David and I were trying to do something much more difficult when we built up the experiment the first time. We had to spend time and money on systems that didn't work as expected or that, in retrospect, weren't actually needed. The bulk of the cost was for vacuum systems, cryogenics, and superconducting magnets that are not needed for producing the twistor effect. I now know exactly what we want to do, and I've got tons of data from a working twistor field to tell me how to do it better. I think I can design a second-generation twistor machine that will be simple and cheap. We don't need Allan, and I absolutely refuse to work with the bastard.'

  'But what about his company in Bellevue?' asked Paul, feeling desperate. 'Isn't it likely that Saxon and his people will have a working twistor machine even sooner?' He had to find a way of convincing Vickie to work with Saxon. Surely that would be the fastest way to get the apparatus rebuilt.

  Vickie smiled ruefully. 'Allan doesn't know it yet, but he's going to have one hell of a time rebuilding the twistor hardware with what he knows,' she said. 'He never took the trouble to understand the basic principles of the field-rotation trick we used. And it is not obvious, Paul, even if you know what to look for. Now all the twistor programming and hardware are gone away to never-never land and there aren't any other records. After that bugging incident, David and I decided to archive all of our CAD files of shop drawings, circuit diagrams, and board layouts, all of my design calculations, and all of the control programming.

  'On Tuesday I put everything one would need to rebuild the twistor apparatus on a single encrypted laser disk. I trashed the hard copies and cleared the files from the hard disks of the HyperVAX and the CAD design computer. For good measure, I got Sam to show me how to do a 'Hard Disk Optimize,' which would make it much harder for even a VAX expert with exclusive use of the system to reconstruct those files from leftover blocks. That one little laser disk is the key to rebuilding the twistor hardware, and it's stored away in a safe place. And only I know the decryption key.'

  'Vickie, aren't you being rather stubborn?' asked Paul. 'Perhaps cooperation would be the best course.'

  'Paul,' she said, shaking her head, 'remember Allan's little speech in Weinberger's office, how he clearly enjoyed bending the truth to serve his ends? My grandmother once told me that the best way to coexist with a snake is to keep your distance.' She smiled grimly.

  Paul looked at her appraisingly. 'You're a hard lady,' he said. 'I think Saxon's in for a surprise.'

  Al
lan Saxon crossed the Evergreen Point floating bridge over Lake Washington at a leisurely pace, matching the speed of his BMW to that of a pretty girl who water-skied the calm water in the lee of the bridge. He waved at her, feeling good. It had been a shock to return to Seattle and learn about the 'incident' at his laboratory. The quantity of blood on the floor and the great wood sphere presented a puzzle. His new investigations of the twistor effect would have to proceed with caution until that mystery was solved.

  He perceived the heavy hand of Martin Pierce in the maneuver with the fake movers. The trick should have worked, but it clearly hadn't. The scenario that Paul had presented this morning was bizarre, but there was a certain logic to it. Harrison must have used the twistor apparatus to move himself and the equipment out of reach. About now Pierce must be feeling very angry and frustrated. Saxon smiled.

  The loss of the equipment would set back his plans. But one must land on one's feet. His questioning by the FBI last evening and his confrontation with Paul and Vickie in the chairman's office this morning had both gone remarkably well. Now he must set his business associates to work on the 'rediscovery' of the twistor effect. Steve and the others were not as sharp as Harrison and Vickie, and it might take them some time. But knowing that the effect existed was a very significant advantage, and with Harrison out of the picture and Vickie without departmental resources for a rebuild, his company had the inside track.

  And yes, with any luck Vickie might be induced to contribute her knowledge to the project. She was anxious to rebuild the twistor apparatus. With that fool Harrison out of the way and with her desire to rescue him. Saxon was confident that she could be induced to cooperate. He smiled. Yes, she would cooperate . . .