Hidden Variables

by Charles Sheffield

  Ten trips, and he had the whole collection. He ran his hands over them slowly, noting their exact positions.

  They made a strange assortment, a rusting and jagged heap of junk on the dry earth. He picked up the heaviest one first, a four-foot length of thick iron pipe scavenged from the boiler room. The rope tied around its jointed end was old and frayed, a discarded clothesline from the garden shed, but he had tested it carefully and knew it would be strong enough. Placing his foot on the rope end, he swung the pipe around and with a grunt of effort hurled it upwards and over the wall. There was a heavy thud as it struck the earth on the other side.

  He waited a full minute, looking back towards the big house for signs of extra activity there. All remained quiet; but that was little reassurance. If the eyes on top of the wall were also tuned to thermal wavelengths, a cold object would pass where a man could not.

  He bent to pick up his second find, a massive iron wheel from a derelict washing machine. He secured the end of the rope tied to it, then it too went over the wall to join the iron pipe.

  One by one, the roped objects were thrown up and over. He fingered the final one for a few seconds before he swung and heaved. It was a heavy bronze statue of Mars, God of War, clad in helmet, armor, and massive metal leggings. He had seen and hated it every day in the library. Removing it that afternoon had been a pleasure.

  Ten lengths of rope trailed upwards from his feet into the darkness. He picked up the whole bunch and began to twist them together into a single braided cable, turning until each one merged with its companions. Then he began to climb, feet braced against the wall. When he reached the top he paused and looked back at the house. Still no sign of increased activity.

  He peered down. This was the unpredictable part. He had not been able to determine what lay outside and now he would have to jump blind. A ten-foot drop onto sharp fencing would end everything.

  Bracing himself, he pushed off hard with his hands and dropped into the darkness.

  * * *

  "Come on in, Wenziger. I'll be through here in a minute."

  The man behind the desk nodded his visitor to a chair and went on with telephone dictation. His jacket was off and his shirt sleeves rolled up, to reveal strong and tanned forearms. A cigarette, lit but unsmoked, smoldered in the gunmetal ashtray in the middle of the big desk. The man who had entered the room received no further attention from him until a full page of dictated memorandum had been completed.

  "Right," he said at last, dropping the telephone back onto its stand. "That should hold them for a day or two. You heard, did you, that our bird has flown?"

  The other man nodded. He had been patiently sitting, knees together and heavy briefcase resting on his thighs. In contrast to the relaxed and casual man behind the desk, the newcomer was stiff and formal. He looked pressed and polished, from the shining surface of his black shoes, past the charcoal-grey suit to the glistening top of his bald, domed head.

  "I was told as I came to the outer office. In view of this, General, perhaps our meeting will not be necessary?"

  His voice was soft and husky, with a faint trace of an accent. Not quite German, somewhere a bit farther east.

  The man behind the desk picked up his neglected cigarette and inhaled a long drag.

  "Like hell. We need to talk more now. They had Laurance Nissom in a maximum security hospital and he got out. Before this he could have been just a kook. Now I need to know all about him." He tapped the thick dossier on the desk in front of him. "Lots of stuff in here, but nothing about this new work. Did you get through the stuff I sent to you?"

  The bald head nodded again. Zdenek Wenziger opened his briefcase and took out a thick sheaf of xeroxed pages.

  "I read it in some detail." He hesitated, biting at his thin upper lip. "General Greer, I really wonder if I can give you a useful evaluation."

  He stopped as though there were more to say. The other man looked up quickly from the dossier. His eyes, bright and blue, seemed too young for the grey crew-cut hair and lined face.

  "You need more time? Hell, this is supposed to be a top priority item. What have you been doing all week?"

  Wenziger flushed at the tone of voice. "I have spent almost all my time on this since it came to me, General. Time is not the problem. The difficulty is one of full understanding."

  "You telling me you don't understand what Nissom wrote?" Greer slapped the dossier onto the desk. "I can't buy that. You're our top physics consultant, aren't you? Whistler over at DARPA warned me that getting evaluations out of you was like pulling teeth. I have to have an answer. Is there a chance—any chance—that Nissom's work could produce the effects he claims?"

  "If you put it that way, I will have to say no. Almost certainly, no."

  "Almost certainly! What the hell use is that to me? What's the doubt, you're the one with all the fancy awards, not Nissom. You shouldn't have any trouble sorting out what he's saying."

  Zdenek Wenziger had closed his briefcase and placed it on the floor beside his chair. He sighed. "General Greer, you insisted on a one-word answer to a complex question. I was foolish enough to try and provide one. Will you give me five minutes to try and explain?"

  Greer looked at his watch. "Take five, take ten—but give me an answer I can use. You know I've got forty men out there trying to trace Nissom?—and they're all coming up cold. There's a lot of classified stuff locked up inside his head."

  "I believe you. There is also a lot of unclassified stuff." Wenziger took off his glasses and began to polish them with a spotless white handkerchief. His eyes were revealed as a mild and watery grey. "The content of the paper you sent was new to me, but not the style. I have been dealing with Laurance Nissom since he was a graduate student. If anyone can claim to have a fair understanding of how his mind works, I suppose that I am he. And I tell you that I have at best an imperfect understanding of that process."

  "You mean he's smarter than you are?" The tone was sceptical. "You're the one with all the awards, not him."

  Wenziger smiled faintly. "Yes, General. I have all the awards. I am also sixty-seven years old, and Laurance Nissom is thirty-one." He leaned forward. "Do you realize that Einstein himself did not win a Nobel Prize until he was well into his forties? And that when he did win it, it was not given for his most profound work? If Nissom were to be right—and I do not believe that he can be—it would be another five or ten years before the implications would be understood. I could draw you almost an inverse correlation. The more profoundly original the work, the longer it takes to reach a point where a Nobel Prize Committee is ready to accept and recognize it."

  "I hear you." The cigarette had been stubbed out to join the ashtray litter of stubs, and Zdenek Wenziger had the full attention of those bright eyes. "You're telling me that Nissom is smart. I know that. I want to know, how smart. I mean, the way you're talking, is he likely to win a Nobel Prize some day?"

  "I think so. But you are still asking the wrong question." The careful polishing of the eye-glasses had continued, though any speck of dust had long since disappeared from them. "This may sound ridiculous to you, General, but at the highest level of creativity the award of a Nobel is not an adequate measure. There is as much spread among Nobel Laureates as there is among—how shall I put it?—professional quarterbacks. All are good, but some are pre-eminent. Do you by any chance speak German?"

  "A few odd words. I was stationed in Frankfurt for three years, but that was ages ago."

  "Three years?" Wenziger registered surprise for the first time. "Didn't you find it most inconvenient to be unable to speak the language?"

  "Hell, no." Greer laughed. "Anything I needed, I just waved a mark at 'em. That always worked." He leaned forward. "I'll let you in on a little military secret. You don't get two stars in the Air Force for learning foreign languages. They're about equal to a big fat zero on your promotion rating. Any spare time I had on watch over in Europe, I used it reading Clausewitz on war, or Machiavelli on using a power s
tructure. If I want a Ph.D. in languages, I just call it some over-educated major. Whatever it is, say it to me in English."

  "Very well, General, we will do it in English." The old man looked resigned, shaking his massive head slightly. "Bear with my translation. For almost forty years, Albert Einstein and Max Born—both Nobel Laureates in physics—kept up a friendly correspondence in German about work and other things. In describing their correspondence, many years later, Born talked about his first exposure to Einstein's work. Remember now, this was many years before Einstein was famous, many years before he won a Nobel Prize. He did not even hold a university appointment. But Born, recalling the first time that he saw Einstein's work, says: 'We all knew at once that a genius of the first order had arisen.' I'm translating his words, but do you see my point?"

  "I think so." Greer's head was cocked to one side, his manner sober and thoughtful. "If I can see past your funny way of putting it, you're telling me that it takes one to know one. Great physicists can recognize super-great ones before anyone else can—including the fellows who award the Nobel Prizes. Right?"

  "You have it exactly. In my opinion Laurance Nissom is one of those rarities, even among Nobel Laureates, the 'genius of the first order' that Born recognized in Einstein."

  "So dammit, you're telling me that he's right in this cockeyed theory!" Greer sat up straighter in his chair. "We've got to get our hands on him. Do you know what this could mean to the defense of the country?"

  Wenziger replaced his glasses. He held up a carefully manicured hand to the other man. "Gently, General. Let me finish. I had to tell you all that, to explain why I would be forced to view any of Nissom's work with great respect. Having said that let me now say something else. I am almost certain, as certain as I can be about any theory, that Laurance Nissom's latest work is not correct."

  "My God, you're choosing a funny way of telling me it." Greer leaned to the side of the desk and pressed the Intercom buzzer.

  "Yes, General?"

  "Get Major Merritt over here with the mission progress report." He turned back to Wenziger. "You'd better be right. If you mess this up and give us the wrong evaluation, you can forget your clearances and my career. You'll lose your industry consulting too. I tell you, we're playing hard ball on this thing."

  He walked over to the window and looked east towards the Potomac. Behind him, Wenziger had gone rigid in his chair.

  "All right," said Greer at last in a quieter tone. He did not look round. "So why is Nissom wrong? I couldn't read that paper, it'd all be Greek to me. But I've seen the memo that he sent to Colonel Perling saying that he was onto a development that would make all our defense systems obsolete as chain mail. You don't agree with that?"

  There was no answer. He turned from the window to the older man.

  "What's up? Lost your tongue?"

  Wenziger shook his head slowly. "I'm sure that you have your dossier on me, too, General. There must be information in there on my financial position." His accent had thickened. "I am not fortunate enough to share in your generous pension systems. Even with the government's assistance medical expenses are heavy. I will do my best for you on this matter—as always—and in exchange I hope that you will not seek to deprive me of my livelihood."

  Greer walked back to the desk and sat down behind it. He leaned back in his chair. "We'll see. I'm not making promises until I see how this works out. Now tell me about Nissom's paper."

  "I will do my best." Wenziger reached again for his briefcase, a slight tremble in his thin hands. "But again I must have time to explain. We are dealing with complex ideas, and even with my best analysis Laurance Nissom's paper seems incomplete. I would have expected more on tests, more on applications. That is his style, the style I know . . ."

  He looked across the desk, waiting for some word from Greer. The other man looked back at him impassively.

  "The basic idea is not new," went on Wenziger at last. "It is a variation on the old 'hidden variable' theories of quantum mechanics. In that field, there are certain combinations of quantities, conjugate quantities, that cannot be known simultaneously beyond a certain precision."

  Greer nodded. "Heisenberg's uncertainty principle." He grinned at Wenziger's poorly disguised look of surprise. "Don't assume too much. Science background is one of the things that count on our evaluations. I've had physics courses, more than you'd think."

  "That will help this a lot." Wenziger looked around him as though vaguely seeking the familiar blackboard.

  "The Heisenberg principle," he went on. "That is Nissom's starting point. It reflects the fact that the fundamental processes of quantum phenomena must be interpreted using probabilities. We cannot predict how certain events will turn out, only the chance that they will result in one of several outcomes. That idea was developed sixty years ago, back in the twenties—mainly by Born. But many people found it hard to accept. Einstein himself was one of those. From him, and others who felt the same, came another idea: that we have not been observing 'reality' at the most fundamental level in quantum experiments."

  "You've lost me." Greer's face was intent, and another lit cigarette was smoldering unattended in the ashtray. "What do you mean by 'observing reality'?"

  "The easiest analogy for you might be with the behavior of an ordinary gas. We seem to have well-defined quantities like temperature and pressure for a gas, right? We can measure them, they are smoothly varying functions. Now look at a very small quantity of gas, and you start to see the effects of individual molecules. The idea of a single pressure, or a single well-defined temperature, disappears. In its place we have to think of the separate gas molecules, and their motion. They are the hidden variables of the system, the ones that control its basic behavior. Pressure, temperature—they have become statistical ideas."

  Wenziger was surprised at the intelligence in the other's tanned face. Greer was nodding slowly, concentrating on every word.

  "I'm with you again. You're suggesting that the probabilities you find in quantum theory are like fluctuations in gas pressure. They only seem like chance because we can't observe the smaller things that decide them—the 'hidden variables'. Couldn't you look more closely and see what's missing from the picture?"

  "It's not that simple. I'm making it too easy, to get the point across. Nissom starts from a subtle problem in quantum mechanics, what's usually called the paradox of Einstein, Rosen and Podolsky. Most people dismiss that. He accepts it and uses it to introduce new basic variables."

  "You mean smaller particles, things that are too small to observe?"

  "Not that." Wenziger seemed easier, back in the familiar role of teacher. "Not particles. Nissom introduces a new set of field equations. Those are his variables. The four conventional fields—strong, weak, gravitational and electromagnetic—and the elementary particles, they arise as interference effects from the new fields. It is very elegant, and beautifully developed."

  "So why don't you believe it? I don't track you fully, but it all sounds pretty plausible to me." Greer picked up his neglected cigarette, took one long puff, and ground it out.

  "If Nissom's as smart as you say," he went on. "Isn't he sure to be right? Would he take a thing that far and still be wrong? I still don't see how you get from where you are to particle and field deflectors. That's what Nissom was talking about to Perling, practical defense against anything you can think of—for an individual. That's what got me excited."

  "With a radical new theory you can expect a lot of new physical results—if it is correct." Wenziger's glasses had come off again and his eyes seemed to be focused on infinity. "But only if it is correct. I'm not objecting to Laurance Nissom's ideas because of the theory, you know."

  "Then why do you think he's wrong?"

  "The experiments. It's the experiments that he wants to do that let him down."

  He hesitated, then replaced his glasses and looked at Greer. "Did any of your physics courses ever mention Eddington, Arthur Stanley Eddington?"

&nb
sp; "No. Physicist?"

  "Yes, but astronomer and mathematician might be a better description. He was a leading relativist, and also the key figure in the development of modern astrophysics."

  Greer shook his head. "Don't know him. Was he another 'hidden variable' man?"

  Zdenek Wenziger frowned and thought for a moment. "Not to my knowledge, but he might have been. That's not why I mention him. Eddington had a brilliant career in England from about 1910 onwards up through the thirties. Then about 1940 he came up with a whole new theory—one that was supposed to explain all the main physical constants of nature with purely mathematical arguments."

  Greer sniffed. "He's one up on me. I never managed to explain anything using math."

  "It was impressive. Eddington had great mathematical ability and superb physical intuition. Physicists and astronomers all over the world took his 'fundamental theory' very seriously. It was profound, and it was very difficult to understand. Unfortunately, it had one deadly flaw."

  "It wasn't right?"

  "In one crucial respect. It did not describe the physical world that we live in."

  Greer swung his chair forward. "Damn you, Wenziger, you have the most back-assed way of getting to the point. Are you trying to tell me Nissom is doing an Eddington? That he's got his head up his ass with this new theory? I thought you said it makes sense to you. Why are you saying now that it's wrong?"

  "I told you." Wenziger's beaten expression was back. "I thought I was being very clear. It's the experiments. He's proposing a whole set of them—nothing wrong with that, but he's suggesting that they will give results that are inconsistent with the best-established ideas of twentieth century physics. If you need examples I can give you plenty. The Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit experiment on electron spin. His experiment would give a slightly different result. The measurement of the Lamb shift. Conserved vector current measurements. Non-conservation of parity. How many do you want? We'd have to turn QED upside down." He caught Greer's puzzled look. "Quantum Electrodynamics—I'm not quoting Euclid at you."