The Genesis Machine Page 5

  So that could be the answer. Maybe the observed amount of helium didn't require the primordial inferno of a Big Bang to explain it at all. At least, now there was an alternative explanation that needed looking into.

  Even if the theory eventually came to be fully substantiated, vindication of the Steady State model would not follow automatically. For one thing, the time-window provided by long-range astronomical observations revealed an evolving universe—evolving from a population of quasars to a population of galaxies—and not one that remained unchanging in its general appearance throughout the whole of time, as seemed to be demanded by a Steady State definition; indeed, the new theory itself required an evolutionary sequence.

  But Clifford was less interested in the issue of Big Bang versus Steady State than in that of Big Bang versus his own theories of k-space rotations and spontaneous particle events. Edwards had been skeptical on the grounds that Clifford's theories seemed irreconcilable with Big Bang. However, if Big Bang were superseded by something else, Clifford could be right. Here was a hint that the ground upon which the edifice of Big Bang had been erected might not be solid bedrock after all; it made Clifford wonder how firm the foundations of its remaining pillars might turn out to be.

  Whether Steady State became resurrected or not as a consequence was a separate, and largely irrelevant, matter.

  Chapter 5

  Clifford rested his elbows on the edge of the table and cocked his head, first to one side and then to the other, as he studied the checkered board being displayed on the Infonet screen. If he advanced his pawn to King 5 as he had been preparing to do for the last four moves, Black could initiate a series of exchanges that would leave Clifford with a weak center. So Clifford had no choice but to postpone the pawn move yet again and cramp Black first by pinning the knight on . . . no, he couldn't; Black's last move had unmasked the queen, protecting the square that Clifford wanted to move his bishop to. Damn! The machine had seen right through it. He sighed and began to explore possible ways of opening up his king's bishop's file to bring some rook power to bear on the problem.

  Suddenly a flashing message in bright red letters appeared across the middle of the board:

  you're ignoring me!

  and your dinner's ready!!

  and i'm fed up!!!

  and it's not good enough!!!!

  He grinned, keyed the terminal into Local Override mode, and tapped in the reply:

  armies might march on their stomachs

  but have you ever tried it?

  ok—i'm coming down.

  "I should think so." The voice of his wife, Sarah, chided him from the audio grille. "I wonder if computers have ever been cited in divorce cases before."

  "As core-respondents?" he offered.

  "You idiot."

  "What's to eat?"

  "Bits, bytes, and synchronous whatsits—what else? Oh—and processed veg. There—how's that?"

  "Not bad."

  He canceled the override, stored the present position of the game, and cleared the connection, having been informed that the session had cost him $1.50 of network time. As he rose from the chair amid the shambles of books and papers that he had long come to feel at home in, he noted absently that the chart of elementary-particle decay processes was coming away from the wall above the desk and resolved for the fourth time that month to do something about it sometime.

  Sarah came from an English family that had once been reasonably prosperous. Her father had risen from Marketing Assistant to Managing Director of a ladies-fashion business that owned a number of factories in Yorkshire and Lancashire, with its head office and showrooms in London. His life had been one of ceaseless work and total dedication; spending twelve hours a day at his desk—frequently more—and logging hundreds of hours flying time across the air lanes of Europe, he had transformed a demoralized sales force and a collection of antiquated mills into a vigorous, professionally managed and profitable business operation. On one occasion, in the early days when the going was tough, he had mortgaged his own house as security for a bank loan to pay that week's wages.

  But as the country stagnated under the burden of its own brand of socialism and everybody clamored for a more equitable distribution of a wealth that became steadily more difficult to create in the first place, the fruits of his labors were milked away and poured into the melting pot of free handouts and subsidies from which the new utopia was to emerge.

  Although she had stayed with him through the rise and fall of his dreams, Sarah chose not to join her father's business, preferring instead to pursue a career in medicine, in which she had developed an interest at an early age. She studied at London University and Charing Cross Hospital during the day and helped her father with his administrative chores in her spare time. A year before she was due to complete her studies, her parents parted amicably; her mother went north to join a Scottish company director in the oil industry while her father, leaving the carcass of his own enterprise to the squabblings of the vultures from various government ministries, cashed his shares and was last seen heading south for sunnier climes, accompanied by a glamorous Italian heiress. Sarah went to live with an aunt in California, where she continued studying medicine and qualified as a radiologist. It was there, while taking a short refresher course in nuclear medicine at CIT, that she met Clifford. They were married six months later. When he moved to ACRE, she obtained a job at the local hospital, working three days a week; the money helped and the job kept her from becoming bored and getting rusty.

  She was garnishing two juicy steaks when he entered the kitchen door behind her and pinched her sides just below her ribs.

  "Eek! Don't do that when I'm cooking—it's dangerous. Come to think of it, don't do it at all."

  "You're funny when you squeak like that." He peered over her shoulder. "Hey—I've been conned."

  "What do you mean, conned?"

  "You said it was ready. You're only just dishing it out. You might have cost me the game busting in on my concentration like that."

  "Good. Concentrate on me instead." She carried the plates over to the table. They sat down.

  "Looks good," Clifford commented. "Where'd it come from?"

  "A cow of course. Oh, I forgot. They wouldn't have taught you things like that in physics, would they?"

  "Where'd you get it, you dumb broad?"

  "Same place as usual. I'm just a good choose-ist."

  "I already know that. Look who you married."

  Sarah raised her eyes imploringly toward the ceiling. They ate in silence for a while. Then she said:

  "I called Joan and Pete about those theater reservations while you were upstairs. It's all right for Friday night."

  "Mm . . . good."

  "George is coming too. You remember George?"

  Clifford frowned at his plate while he finished chewing.

  "George? Who's George?" He thought for a second. "Not Joan's brother George?"

  "That's the one."

  "The one in the Army. Big guy, black hair . . . likes music."

  "I don't know how you do it."

  Clifford frowned again. "I thought he was overseas somewhere."

  "He was, but he's home on leave at the moment. He's with a missile battery in eastern Turkey."

  "Great." Clifford attacked his steak once more. "He's good fun. Haven't seen him for . . . must be around a year now." He didn't pursue the subject further. Sarah watched him in silence, her face serious.

  Eventually she said in a strangely sober voice: "Joan told me he's been talking about the situation out there. They're on stand-by alert practically all of the time now. They have combat patrols airborne around the clock, and the mountains are full of tanks ready to move at a moment's notice."

  "Mmm . . ."

  "She's worried sick, Brad. She says he's convinced there'll be a showdown before long . . . everywhere. And now that she's expecting, it's really getting her down. . . ." Sarah's voice trailed away. She continued to stare at Clifford, looking f
or some sign of reassurance, but he carried on eating stolidly. "What do you think'll happen?"

  "No idea . . ." He realized reluctantly that something more was called for, but was aware that Sarah knew him too well to be taken in by the clichés that immediately sprang to mind. "It doesn't look too good, does it?" he conceded at last. "Our esteemed and inspired leaders have their righteous cause to protect. I've got mine."

  When Clifford and Sarah conversed, most of the dialogue was unspoken—and instantly understood. In these few words he had told her that as far as he was concerned, even one human life was too high a price to pay for any political or ideological crusade. In anticipation of her next question—whether he would go into the armed services if drafted—the answer was no. Doing so would help solve nothing. If half the world had been brainwashed into becoming zombies, the answer was not to go backward a hundred years and emulate them. Man had to move forward. Universal education, awareness, and knowledge offered the only permanent solution. Bombs, missiles, and hatred would only drag the agony out longer, giving people a tangible threat to unite against. If war came, he would find a way to survive and to be himself in whatever way was left open to him. That would be the only meaningful way of fighting for something that was worth preserving.

  She looked hard at him for what seemed a long time, then her face softened into a wry half-smile.

  "What would we do then—head for the hills?"

  He shook his head and replied lightly, "Everybody and his brother would have the same idea. You wouldn't be able to breathe up there. Death trap—right in the middle of the fallout zone from the West Coast. You'd need to get away from the wind system of the northern hemisphere completely. Head south—more privacy in the jungles."

  "Ugh!" Sarah pulled a face. "Nasty crawly things there . . . and slithery things. Don't like them."

  "Nor do most people. That's why it would be the thing to do. Anyhow . . ." The chime of the Infonet extension in the den interrupted him. "Hell—who's that?"

  "I'll get it. You finish that up." Sarah rose and disappeared through the door. Clifford could hear the muffled tones of one end of a brief dialogue. Then she came into the kitchen again.

  "It's somebody asking for you. I've never seen him before—a Dr. Phillips from California?"

  "Phillips?"

  "He seems to know you."

  Clifford contemplated his fork quizzically for a moment, then set it down on his plate and strolled through into the den. He sank into a swivel chair and swung round to face the screen.

  The apparition confronting him looked like a cross between something out of a rock opera and a reincarnation from Elizabethan England. His hair fell in flowing blond waves almost to his shoulders, forming an evangelical frame for his medieval pointed beard and shaped mustache. The part of his body that was visible was clad in a loose silky shirt of vivid orange, with ornate designs in gold thread embroidered about the shoulders and the long, tapering collar. Clifford's first guess was that he was about to be the victim of a harangue by some kind of religious freak.

  "Dr. Clifford?" the caller inquired. At least there was no hint of fanatical zeal in the voice.

  "Yes."

  "Dr. Bradley Clifford of Advanced Communications Research?"

  "No less."

  "Hi. You don't know me. My name's Philipsz—Dr. Aubrey Philipsz of the Berkeley Research Institute. I'd better spell that: P-H-I-L-I-P-S-Z. Most people that like me call me Aub. I work on the experimental side at Berkeley—high-energy particle physics."

  "Uh huh." Clifford was still trying to orient himself toward the probable direction that the conversation would take, but no particular direction seemed to suggest itself. The voice issuing from the grille sounded out of character with the face on the screen. If it hadn't been for the synchronization, Clifford could have believed that the audio and visual components of two different conversations had somehow gotten scrambled in the network. Aub sounded confident, composed, and totally rational, though without any trace of arrogance. His eyes were shrewd and penetrating, yet sparkled at the same time as if suppressed mirth were bubbling up to break free.

  "You're the guy who wrote the paper that connects gravity with k-space transitions," Aub confirmed.

  Clifford straightened up in his chair. "That's right . . . but how come you know about that?"

  "You don't know we know about it?"

  "No, I don't. Who are you and where does Berkeley fit in?"

  Aub nodded slowly, half to himself, as if Clifford's response had somehow been expected. "Just as I thought," he said. "Something smells about this whole business. You couldn't imagine the problems I've had trying to get hold of your name."

  "Suppose you start at the beginning," Clifford suggested.

  "That's a fantastic idea, man. Why don't I?" Aub thought for a split second. "Part of the paper talks about sustained rotations of k-functions. In it you derive the criteria for stability and frequency for different rotational modes."

  "That's right. It follows from conservation of k-spin. What of it?"

  "Your mathematics implies that certain sustained rotations can take the form of continuous transitions between hi-order and lo-order dimensional domains. In normal space the effect would appear as a particle repeatedly vanishing and reappearing, like a light flashing on and off."

  Clifford was impressed, but dubious. For the moment, he'd reserve judgment.

  "That's correct. But I still don't see . . ."

  "Take a look at this." Aub's face disappeared and was replaced by an irregular pattern of thin lines, some straight and some curved, traced in white on a black background. Clifford recognized it as an example of computer output from a high-speed ion chamber; this was the standard technique for capturing details of high-energy particle interactions, and was used by experimentalists worldwide. Aub's voice continued: "You see the track marked G to H, down at the lower right of the picture?"

  "Yes." Clifford picked out the detail indicated. It was not a continuous line, but comprised a string of minute points of white.

  "That's the track of an omega-two minus, resolved at maximum power. As you can see, the particle was only detected at discrete points along its trajectory. In between those points nothing was detected at all. It was continuously vanishing and rematerializing in flight—exactly as you'd expect a sustained rotation to appear. I've analyzed the momentum and field vectors, and from the measured mark-space ratio of the track, it appears to conform to a mode 3 rotation with negative phi; all the even terms of the k-spin function come out at zero. Exactly like your theory predicts."

  Clifford quickly realized that he was talking to no fool. He sat forward to study the picture more closely while his mind wrestled with the implications. He was looking at positive experimental proof of some of the predictions that followed from his theoretical work. How had this come about? Was his work being taken seriously after all—so seriously that actual experiments were being conducted to test it? If so, why did he know nothing about it?

  After few more seconds, Aub inquired, "Okay?"

  "Okay."

  Aub reappeared on the screen. The mirthful twinkle was gone from his eyes.

  "That picture was produced six months ago, at Berkeley."

  Clifford stared back at him, aghast and incredulous.

  "Six months! You mean somebody else already . . ."

  Aub guffawed suddenly and held up both hands.

  "Relax, man, it's okay. Nobody beat you to it. The picture came up during some experiments having to do with something else. At the time nobody realized what the G-H line meant. We all thought it was due to some kind of fault in the computer. We figured out what it really meant only when we read your paper about, aw, two, maybe three weeks ago."

  Clifford was still nonplused.

  "Look," he protested. "I still don't know who you are or what in hell's been going on. What happened two or three weeks ago?"

  Aub nodded vigorously and held up a hand again.

  "Okay, o
kay. It really goes back a bit before that. I run a small team of specialized physicists at Berkeley. We handle all the way-out jobs—the oddball projects that are about as near as you can get to research these days. Well, round about a month or so ago, I was told I had to drop what I was doing and take a look at something new that was important, and very hush-hush. They gave me a copy of the paper you wrote, but without any name on it, plus some comments and notes that a few other people had produced, and told me they were interested in finding out if any of it could be tested experimentally. Could I look into it and see if I could devise some ways of checking it out? So, I took a look at it."

  "Yes."

  "And . . . well, you've seen the result. One of the guys in my section remembered something we had done about six months ago and spotted the connection. When we dug the picture up out of our records and re-examined it according to your formulae—zowie! We hit the jackpot. Here was a prediction we didn't even have to look for; we'd already found it."

  Clifford followed the story, but his bewilderment only increased.

  "That's great," he said. "But I'm still not clear. Where did the . . ." He turned to look inquiringly at Sarah, who had appeared at the door.

  "Dessert?" she whispered.

  "What is it?"

  "Fruit 'n ice cream."

  "Dish it out. I'll be a coupla minutes."

  She nodded, winked, and vanished. Clifford looked back at the screen,

  "Sorry 'bout that, Aub. I was saying—where did the paper come from?"

  "That's what I wanted to know. Naturally I wanted to talk to whoever wrote it, but when I tried to find out who it was, nobody would tell me. They just said that that didn't matter, that I had to talk through them, and that the whole thing was top-security classified. But lots of things that I asked—simple things—they didn't seem to be able to get answers to. That's when I thought the whole thing was starting to smell . . . you know—it was as if they weren't really talking to the guy who wrote it at all."