Artifact

by Gregory Benford

“You weighed the cube again?”

  “Yep. Assuming there’s a pretty big hole in there, then the singularity weighs maybe one, two hundred pounds.”

  He stood silent for a long while, oblivious. Presently she asked, “Do you want to measure anything else?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure. I want to find out what this acceleration looks like at other angles. Make a three-dimensional map of it.”

  “I’ll move this….” She began working the gravitometer between banks of electronics.

  “Claire?”

  She looked up, biting her lower lip in concentration, perspiring, a lock of hair looped down across her eyes. He smiled and said, “Just because something’s crazy, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

  CHAPTER

  Two

  The battle between the BU and MIT administrations was short, bitter and conducted at the highest levels. BU had lost none of its contentious edge since the glory days of President Silber, and MIT reflexively protected its own. The president of MIT came to the lab and viewed the artifact. Abe described how its physical properties did not jibe at all with its origin. Claire and John were present, but—on Abe’s advice—little heard from. Assorted deans and others came into play, part of a blocking movement organized by Abe, who was calling in all his debts.

  Abe took the position that the artifact had ceased to be solely an archeological object and now was primarily interesting for its physical aspects. He told the president that the cube housed a radioactive anomaly, an unusual concentration which defied analysis.

  All this was true, but not very forthcoming. Abe held that its appearance in the artifact was surely accidental. The facilities needed for its study were far better at MIT than at BU. The president disliked the appearance of arrogantly with holding the piece from a sister institution, but understood the scientific issues involved. He agreed to propose a brief study period, after which the object would be given to BU, and then returned to Greece.

  He communicated this to Hampton and the proper figures at BU. They all agreed the matter was highly embarrassing and did not reflect well on either university. The consequences for Claire were probably rather dire, but that was a matter which could be settled when the artifact was safely back in Greek hands. It would be well if there was a gentlemen’s agreement to keep this quiet until some of the more delicate arrangements could be settled.

  There the matter rested, until the next morning.

  Claire came into John’s office without knocking. He was behind on his work for the metallurgy group and was trying to get a solution to a particularly difficult boundary value problem involving integral equations of a knotty kind. If he had something concrete to show for this week he would feel justified in spending the rest of his time on the singularity problem, which was slow work.

  “Look at that!” Claire said sharply, as if he were to blame for whatever was in the copy of the Boston Globe she tossed on his desk.

  “Bad weather coming?” John asked mildly. It was a standard joke between them; to him, there was always appalling weather on the way.

  “Hampton’s gone public.”

  “What? But Abe said—”

  “Gentlemen’s agreement, ha.”

  “Sonuvabitch!”

  “Precisely.”

  The Globe piece was an interview with Hampton, apparently given before the deal had been struck between the universities. In it he described the artifact as “a precious relic of a cloudy time, lost in the mists of antiquity,” and deplored MIT’s “cooperation with the theft of such a priceless object from its country of origin.” He implied that it was all MIT’s idea, and that Claire—who was only mentioned once—had been duped into it by “someone over there, working with a postdoctoral fellow, a Dr. Bishop.” The Greek government would surely be affronted, Hampton said, and he would not be surprised if this matter even entered into “events at the diplomatic level, especially considering the ongoing issue of the British Museum and the remaining Elgin marbles.”

  John raised an eyebrow. “Lost in the mists? Florid type, isn’t he?”

  Claire said decisively, “It could upset the deal.” She lit a cigarette and tossed the match out the window.

  “Abe can probably patch it up.”

  “Don’t you see?” She puffed furiously. “Hampton did this before the agreement, and then couldn’t stop it. Think what else he did.”

  He frowned. She had cut down on her smoking only last week, but the dark brown cigarette with a gold tip did not look like an impulse buy. Probably she had them stashed away. Her rumpled aquamarine suit showed signs of haste, and she was breathing hard.

  “How’d you get here?”

  “I walked. I was so mad!”

  Walking two miles in the cold was unClaire-like. “Again, I think Abe and the president can handle—”

  “But don’t you see? Hampton must have called Kontos, and told him everything, before the deal was struck.”

  “That’s what all that jabber about diplomatic level means?”

  “I think so.”

  “Side effects.”

  “What?”

  “As soon as we let this out, I knew we’d get side effects. Abe had to go through the dean, which meant that, plain as the nose on your face, people would start to horn in.”

  He told her about the half-dozen faculty members who had dropped by the lab, and the others who wanted to know more about the anomaly. Worse, word had spread to Harvard, and Sergio Zaninetti had appeared interested.

  “Is that bad?” Claire asked, puzzled.

  “Well, better’n a poke in the face with a sharp stick, I suppose.”

  John was torn between two views of science. On the one hand, spreading of results and ideas resulted in greater productivity and cross-fertilization. Particularly, mathematics and physics often reinforced each other. This was nowhere more true than in gravitation theory. Most of the major results of the last few decades had been obtained by people originally trained as mathematicians.

  Opposed to this idealistic model of the way science worked was the simple fact of self-interest. John knew much of the differential geometry of manifolds, and similar techniques, but he did not have the surety of approach that a theorist like Zaninetti could bring to the subject. The more time he had to work by himself, the better.

  “Well, compared with being castigated in the Globe, and my probably losing my job, don’t you think this rivalry is less important?”

  “Sure,” John said, but something inside him winced.

  Claire’s mother had no doubts. They had agreed a week before to have dinner that evening, so despite John’s efforts to back out, they called upon Mrs. Anderson in her home at 242 Commonwealth Avenue. It was a thin brownstone townhouse with broad bay windows that let an orange glow out into the shafts of gusty rain.

  “Brrrr!” John’s teeth chattered as they approached, hunched over against the wind. “This stuff’s barely a degree above the ice point.”

  “Oh, you southern softy types simply don’t appreciate the subtle sway of the seasons.”

  Mrs. Anderson closed the front door quickly after them and led them through the little antechamber where coats were hung. She was a small, smiling woman, well dressed in an old-fashioned way, with a lot of antique jewelry that must have been quite expensive even when new. She spoke with a heavier accent than Claire, vaguely English-sounding to John’s ears but with a country undercurrent of flat New Hampshire consonants.

  “I hope you can survive such weather, Mr. Bishop,” she said. “Perhaps you’d like some, ah, restorer?”

  This meant not the expected sherry, but a deep, warming brandy. At least Mrs. Anderson was a realist about her climate. She led them from the small, ornate wooden bar through a scalloped archway and into a spacious, carpeted living room with thick oak beams. Vivaldi harpsichord tinkled softly from two wall speakers. Antiques crouched at every turn, the chairs all testifying to their age by being slightly too small for John’s frame.

  Mrs. Anderson
was jovial, almost flighty. Her face was carefully composed and her lined skin had the look of long bracing walks in the open air. Remembering an old adage that a woman’s mother is a good guide to how she will age, he noted that she had a pleasant heft to her, muscle tone giving a spring to her movements. Then he felt somewhat ashamed at being so coldly analytical. Still, maybe it was only fair; he deduced that she looked upon him as—the word seemed appropriate here in Boston—a suitor.

  “You come from Atlanta, Mr. Bishop?”

  “John. No, Athens, Georgia—it’s a medium-sized city.”

  “And how did you come to be in Boston?”

  It was all said gracefully, but beneath the high cheekbones her mouth had a concentrated, discerning look. He trotted out the biography. Early interest in math. Decision to avoid going to Georgia Tech, despite his engineer father’s wishes. Scholarship to Rice in Houston. No, he didn’t work in the space program. Finished his bachelor’s degree and kept right on for a speedy doctorate at Rice. Early interest in combinatorial geometries, with later applications to particle physics. A brief year at Berkeley. Current postdoc at MIT, looking into some interesting boundary value problems. He threw in this last part because it forestalled the usual questions. Nothing stopped people cold like indecipherable jargon.

  “My, that’s most impressive,” Mrs. Anderson said warmly. He knew he hadn’t given her what she really wanted—a feel for the family that had spawned him—but in truth he didn’t know how to. He could tell her about one side of his family, still living in classic old homes in Charleston. There the lawns were immaculate, and sported century-old statues of Negro hitching boys, their faces now painted an egalitarian white, but the hands forgetfully left black. Or he could mention with equal justice the relatives on his mother’s side, who, when they were working in the fields with a cold, blew their noses by pinching their upper nostrils and letting fly. He decided to forego that particular bit of local color.

  They went into a dinner of roast beef, squash, rice and a decent Bordeaux. Unremarkable, but thoroughly Bostonian. There was much talk of Uncle Alex and the estate in New Hampshire. Only over a wonderful dessert of baked Alaska did Mrs. Anderson say, “I thought the piece in the Globe was unfortunate,” and gazed at him expectantly.

  “Maybe Professor Hampton has overstepped,” John said diplomatically.

  “To bring out such a thing in the press, however…”

  “As we say where I come from, I doubt that Hampton knows grits from granola.”

  Mrs. Anderson frowned and peered at him suspiciously. “Well, I certainly hope Claire’s name can be kept out of it henceforth.”

  “I’ll surely try,” he said warmly.

  “Mother, you don’t have to look out for me.”

  “I was only inquiring.”

  “John is not responsible for me.”

  “I was only asking for another opinion, dear.” She gave her daughter a severe look.

  “I’m dealing with Hampton in my own way.”

  John raised his eyebrows at this, knowing that she in fact had no secret plan.

  “All over a piece of stone from someone’s grave. It seems such a minor thing to engage our name in public.”

  Claire nodded, apparently understanding, but said nothing. It was clear that to Mrs. Anderson appearing in the Globe was a disgrace roughly comparable to being shoved into a police line-up.

  The moment passed on to the brandy and cigarettes stage, only Claire smoking. Mrs. Anderson voiced opinions on the Boston Symphony and the current president, neither overly favorable. The news of Greek withdrawal from NATO, expulsion of various diplomats from Athens on trumped-up charges, and mysterious Turkish naval maneuvers passed through Mrs. Anderson’s attention, received a frown and a tsk-tsk, and passed from the conversation. John played a game of damage limitation, taking no stands until he guessed hers. This proved a winning strategy, but tiring.

  When they left the rain had gone and the walk down Commonwealth was lit by the yellow glisten of headlights from every wet surface. The garden island that divides Commonwealth was bleak, the trees denuded and the bushes mere black twigs. A policeman was rousting a bum who slept on one of the benches beneath a plastic sheet, managing to be firm and well mannered at the same time.

  “She did a lot of probing,” John said neutrally.

  “Oh, it’s her way.”

  “I didn’t know I’d have to render an opinion.”

  Claire laughed. “Sorry about that.”

  “She’d like you to keep off the front pages, I suppose.”

  Claire grimaced ruefully. “Typically Bostonian. There’s a Faulkner quote, about writing, but it applies here. He said the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.”

  “Ah yes. So, archeologically speaking, imagine what the urn itself is worth.”

  “Precisely.”

  CHAPTER

  Three

  Sergio Zaninetti said, “Dio mio! You are sure?”

  John arrived at the tail end of Sergio’s visit to the lab. Clearly, Abe was bewitched by the famous theoretician. “Many times I have checked it,” Abe said amiably, with muted pride.

  “But this is of supreme importance!”

  “Thus we going slowly and carefully,” Abe said.

  They both noticed John picking his way among the cables that now snaked everywhere in the laboratory bay. Sergio shook John’s hand and greeted him effusively. “The other night, you did not say to me you had such a thing.”

  “Well, it’s all kind of a big mystery,” John said casually.

  “In toto, an astonishing mystery. You may not know what it is, but this dot at the center—could you show me that again, Abraham?”

  Abe happily flicked a few switches and in a moment had the optical image on the biggest screen. “Overnight, it has cleared up a little.”

  John studied the image, matching it with his memory. The square was slightly sharper and there were wispy traces leading inward from the edges. Mottled and lumpy traces of light, perhaps along the diagonals.

  “That peak at the center,” Zaninetti said. “You say you cannot resolve it?”

  “Smaller than a millimeter. Only so much can I tell.”

  “Even using the gamma-rays?”

  “Yes. I simply cannot resolve better, given the conditions.”

  “Hard radiation, optical, a picture like this—” Zaninetti gestured broadly at the cube, which was nearly concealed beneath an array of diagnostics. “It is difficult to imagine.”

  “Don’t need to imagine it,” John said. “It’s there.”

  A quick orange flash erupted in the upper right hand corner of the screen. In an instant it faded and vanished.

  “Eh! What?” Zaninetti asked.

  “A gamma-ray decaying inside the light pipe,” Abe said. “It leaves a trail of low energy photons when some of the ionized atoms recombine.”

  John said, “I don’t remember seeing one of those before.”

  Abe shrugged. “They come every few hours. The gammaray flux is increasing a little, I believe.”

  Zaninetti peered at the spot where the light pipe went in, now surrounded by a collar to keep an O-ring pressure seal in place. He turned to John. “I think your idea may be correct.”

  “What idea?”

  “That it is a singularity.”

  So Abe had let it out of the bag. Damn.

  Zaninetti smiled thinly. “Abraham here has told me of your gravitometer measurements. You think they are correct?”

  John said grudgingly, “Near as I can make out.”

  “Then I judge you are on the correct course. Is pazzo, you agree?” He slugged John playfully in the bicep. “Crazy!”

  John had to grin. “Prob’ly.”

  “I think it deserves serious, very serious study.”

  “There’s lots more to be done.”

  “Something in the rock, you agree? Caught in that stone work. Accidental discovery. Reminds of the quark business in the
eighties, remember?”

  “Looking for fractionally charged particles?”

  “Sí. And for monopoles, too. People, they searched in some materials, hoping such particles had gotten trapped in the nuclei there. No success, but an idea worth perhaps investigating. As here.”

  John peered at the cube. It seemed diminished now, powerless, caught in the vice of a modern laboratory. He remembered how he had felt its presence in the tomb, large and looming in the shadows, full of history, a thing out of ancient lands that now rang only as legends.

  He shook himself. Part of that sensation was the one percent change in local gravity, right at the surface, he reminded himself. The hands could sense that when you felt the rock, and the mind played tricks in as spooky a place as that tomb. “Yeah, well, if this thing got into the rock it must’ve been driven in at enormous energy, a cosmic ray or something, I figure.”

  “I see, piercing the soil, coming to rest in this block.” Zaninetti tapped his full lower lip with a finger. Without his penetrating concentration he would have looked like any shrewd restaurant owner, assessing the tables. The narrowed eyes and askew twist to his mouth betrayed the inner mind. “Then, it chewed a chamber.”

  “To make the vacuum, right. That’s what convinced me.”

  “To give such radiation, it must be converting something—the rock—into energy, at a high efficiency.”

  John recalled that black holes were highly efficient that way. They could take the infalling matter, with rest mass energy mc2, and convert up to a fourth of it into heat and radiation, which eventually escaped from the hole and could be seen from outside. That was the paradigm which explained the quasars’ enormously bright emission. Astrophysicists supposed that huge black holes squatted at the center of some young galaxies, drawing in stars and dust and spewing out jets of particles and copious radiation. But that was a long way from saying any form of space-time singularity could do that. Abe’s data certainly implied that this one did. The theoretical problem was to find solutions which could describe the features of this object and still allow some energy extraction to occur. Zaninetti had already guessed this, he saw. The man was fast.