Broken Symmetries, page 19
Hey tried to laugh; it came out as an uneasy squeak. “The TERAC people threatened to throw me in jail, and now you’re threatening to sue me—I’ve got to figure I’m onto something.”
Peter took a deep breath. “I’m going to try to explain myself one last time, Hey. Based on theoretical considerations of my own, symmetry principles of the most general sort—but not generally shared, I must re–emphasize—I would have expected the inside quark to be less than perfectly stable. Nothing dramatic, although maybe I made it sound that way, and believe me I now deeply regret it. The point is, all the data we have so far tell us the inside quark is stable. I’ve examined that data over and over again, Hey. It’s unequivocal. The problem is with my hypothesis—not with nature.”
Hey’s wrath was not deflected by Peter’s attempt at sweet reason. “I don’t know whether you’re defending Edovich out of a feeling of solidarity with all the rest of the arrogant S.O.B.s, or because you’re in on the scam. Either way, it won’t work.”
“Have it your way.” Peter set the glass of bourbon and melted ice on the dresser.
“You still have my camera, Gardner,” said Anne-Marie.
“Just leave the film, okay?”
“Sure.” She tossed it on the bed. “A little lint can’t make it any worse than it already is.” She took the camera from the dresser, where Hey had left it. “See you at the conference tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Do you care if I am?”
“Chauncey Tolliver hired you, sweetheart. Suit yourself.”
She walked out of the room. Peter followed her, closing the door firmly. Hey stood stiffly, tugging and worrying the ends of his mustache.
Outside the door of her room Anne-Marie turned to face Peter. “Peter, I’m sorry to have to say it, but nothing’s happened to change my mind. The longer we stay together, the more it’s going to hurt us both.”
Peter stepped toward her, his jaw muscles knotting. He spoke with an effort. “Anne-Marie, I just—can’t accept that.”
She backed away from him, frightened. “Don’t pull that masculine stuff on me, Peter. Trying hard doesn’t make things right.”
He stopped and stared at her bitterly. Then he turned and walked rapidly, stiffly away.
She stepped into her room and closed the door behind her, leaning against it wearily, her hands squeezing the doorknob as if she were trying to strangle it. She felt vertiginous, disembodied. She groaned aloud, fending off the wet, black, questing mouth of her despair.
“Ahh, shit,” she said aloud. Then she giggled at the ludicrous sound of her feeble, obscene voice.
She turned away from the door. The red message light on her bedside telephone was glowing.
26
Ishi hung up the phone. The news was good, but curiously unwelcome: Umetaro Narita, on behalf of the Health Physics Department, could find no reason why Ishi should not order the restarting of the ring. All signs pointed to an explosion deliberately set by saboteurs or malicious vandals; the incident of the trespassing reporter proved that it was a simple matter to penetrate TERAC’s outer perimeter.
There was no positive evidence of sabotage. Nevertheless, Narita had been unequivocal: whatever had caused the explosion, the explosion itself was an external event.
Ishi sat in his study at home, pondering his course. He had hoped that the results would be at least a little more equivocal. Certainly he wanted TERAC to be perfect, but a tiny worm of suspicion that it was not made him flinch at Narita’s good news.
Investigative teams were on their way from Tokyo and Washington. Could he use the ongoing investigation as a plausible excuse to delay the restarting of the beams? He could conceive of no legitimate way to do so. Delay in restarting would have only detrimental effects on many expensive experiments, reflecting on his abilities as an administrator, and thereby reflecting on the Prime Minister’s wisdom in having chosen him for the director’s job. After only a few minutes he reached the necessary conclusion: he would order that the ring be restarted as soon as possible.
Now, by his own word (and nothing had arisen to alter the circumstances of his promise), he was obliged to inform Yamamura personally that the decision had gone contrary to his advice, his wishes.
How best could he break the news? That evening the full moon would rise to the south of east, in the direction of Diamond Head. There was still time to prepare an impromptu tea, to create a proper frame for viewing that spectacle. And Ishi would like to make tea for Yamamura-san, even if for no better reason than to show his gratitude for the magnificent banquet Yamamura had arranged on his behalf. After the ceremony he and Yamamura could share a light supper and discuss whatever matters needed discussing.
Ishi reached for the telephone. First he would call Yamamura, then Friedman. After that, the others.
Ilse Friedman hung up briefly, then picked up the phone and began to make calls of her own, to the control room operators of the linac control center, the pre-injector rings, the cooling rings, to her main deputy in central control. They in turn would notify their deputies and assistants, and the personnel responsible for operation of the sources and pre-accelerators, for monitoring power sources, rectifiers, coolant flow, and all the other myriad intricate processes essential to the huge machine’s proper functions. With luck, the restarting process would consume a few hours, not the half day or more Friedman had pessimistically predicted early that morning.
Yamamura’s gray Datsun sedan wound jerkily through the deep shadows of the Nuuanu Valley toward Ishi’s home. Yamamura steered the little car stiffly around tight corners and along the unfamiliar narrow streets. He was almost trembling with gratitude for the unexpected honor Ishi was about to bestow. Ishi was said to be an expert amateur of cha-no-yu; on these grounds alone Yamamura would have been delighted to accept the invitation to tea. Moreover, the circumstances of the invitation foreshadowed a change, a decision, perhaps an announcement of some importance.
Through sources of his own, Yamamura knew that Ishi would soon leave his post as director of TERAC—a suspicion that he’d shared, in utmost confidence, with his superiors in Tokyo—and he hoped that Ishi perhaps appreciated the excellent advice Yamamura had given him concerning the proper administration of the facility. Could it be that Ishi would put in a special word for Yamamura with his own people back home? Could it be that he had already done so, and now had good news to share?
Yamamura swerved into the steep drive that led to Ishi’s house and parked in the cul-de-sac under the ancient koa trees. High up on the hillside the roof of the teahouse was visible, above and behind the low eaves of the brooding colonial estate. The house and gardens were already in shadow, but the last rays of the setting sun illuminated the mists that gathered higher up the valley.
Etsu Ishi, wearing a kimono of finely patterned blue cotton, cheerfully greeted Yamamura at the door. In the hall he exchanged his shoes for tabi and his Western suit coat for a short-sleeved kimono jacket. Mrs. Ishi led him through the house and up steep stone steps to a little arbor of pine and bamboo beside the gate to the inner garden. There they lingered awhile, while Mrs. Ishi engaged Yamamura in polite chit-chat about his two sons, who lived in Japan. She excused the unfinished landscaping, which Ishi had been rearranging ever since his arrival on the island many years ago. After a few minutes Mrs. Ishi left, with apologies, going to prepare their supper.
Yamamura sat quietly for a moment, sensing the cool evening air that flowed down from the ridges. Bamboo sighed and rustled. The scent of ginger floated delicately in the shadowy garden; he saw a white ginger flower, luminescent in the green darkness.
He heard a sharp splash of water as it was poured into the stone basin in the inner garden, then Ishi’s footsteps on the path. Ishi appeared at the wooden gate; in his simple tan kimono with its short coat of charcoal gray he emerged out of the shadows like a creature of the forest taking shape before Yamamura’s eyes. Ishi bowed.
Yamamura suppressed the urge to greet him aloud. Talk was not necessary. A hint of worry creased Yamamura’s brow. In the presence of men skilled in the old ways he sometimes felt inept—or, alternately, belligerent. But Ishi was smiling calmly. After all, this tea was quite impromptu, not a solemn occasion, not ichi go ichi e, “one chance in one lifetime.” Yamamura was reassured.
He followed Ishi into the inner garden, along a path of steppingstones. He noted the fresh green moss at his feet, sparkling with the artificial dew Ishi had sprinkled there. He was aware of Ishi’s footsteps ahead of him; how graceful the lame man seemed, here in his little garden, with his robes flowing so softly around his twisted legs. What a contrast to the hard corridors of TERAC! There poor Ishi stumped along, tiny and deformed in his dark Western suit, a wizened goblin overshadowed by loud towering foreigners.
The teahouse made no pretense to age, though it had been constructed in the traditional sōan manner, with much rough-planed pine, and walls of thin adobe plaster. Ishi disappeared behind the little hut, and Yamamura continued walking to the guests’ entrance. There a stone lantern glowed softly beside a washbasin, also carved from stone; Yamamura stooped to splash water over his hands with a bamboo dipper.
The gentle shock of the cool water refreshed his senses. He saw the play of yellow candlelight on the water in the granite bowl, and felt himself coaxed by the flickering fairy light to enter a tranquil world of natural simplicity—a world out of time, yet still a part of the olden Japanese times—separated by an unimaginable gulf from the harsh modern jumble of the Hawaiian Islands. In such a place even he, tense and temperamental as he ordinarily was, could forget his ambitions and dissatisfactions for some little while.
The guests’ entrance was tiny, and Yamamura bent low to crawl through. Thus everyone entering the teahouse was made equal; thus all were born equally into this world apart.
Somewhere a last steel door clanged shut and a massive key was twisted, sealing the ring. The persistent soft chime in the central control room fell silent.
Ilse Friedman sipped thin, sour coffee and paced the length of the long room, watching the operators at their consoles. Intercoms hissed and mumbled, screens glowed, a man yawned and stretched. The air conditioner rattled; Friedman made a mental note to have Maintenance tighten the loose grate. It was probably the only system in TERAC not functioning perfectly.
Computer-graphic displays of the ring and its subsystems indicated the staged withdrawal of beam stops and focusing quartzes downstream from the proton source. Energetic protons entered the antiproton assembler, where they smashed into a tungsten target. A spray of antiprotons and other debris resulted, from which all particles except antiprotons were stripped away. In repeated circuits of the assembler the intensity and luminosity of the antiproton beam was raised to the stupendous value that made TERAC the world’s most efficient collider as well as its most powerful.
“There’s nothing wrong with this machine,” muttered one veteran controller, a gray-haired man in his fifties. “You been makin’ false log entries again, Ilse?”
Friedman did not bother to answer the rhetorical question. She glanced at Martin Edovich, who stood by himself in a dark corner of the metal cave, scowling silently. He had nothing to do until the Hall 30 controls were repaired, but his impatience would not let him rest.
A speaker hissed abruptly: “Rated antiproton intensity at our end.”
A young woman with long blond hair depressed the microphone button on her console, leaning forward impatiently. “If you’re at rating, AA, when can I have you?”
The reply came back as a drawl: “Anytime you want, gorgeous. I’m your slave.”
A row of yellow buttons on the woman’s console turned green. She tapped rapidly on her keyboard. Obstinately she kept silent.
The speaker hissed plaintively: “You guys ain’t got no sense of humor.”
The older man lolled in his chair. Casually he pressed the intercom button. “The humor comes when the experimenter asks for a beam.” He was rewarded with laughs from half a dozen remote operators, all patched into the system.
Even Ilse Friedman grinned. She sipped her coffee, barely noticing it was no longer warm. She resumed her pacing, letting her gaze rove over banks of blinking lights and digital displays and screens showing bright schematics or dull gray TV images from remote cameras trained on TERAC’s vital interior parts. One by one the great machine’s components were brought on line and tuned, the pre-accelerator, linac, cooling ring and accumulators, main ring injectors, the main ring itself—helium refrigerators and pumps, transformers, steering magnets, focusing magnets, rectifiers, pulse cavities…
In the darkened room of plastic and steel the world closed in, buzzing and clanging and whirring, all its unearthly sights and sounds passing unsensed by its controllers, who watched only for the minute signs of error, of deviance, of incongruity.
Yamamura heard a sound, a soft rustle of cloth on wood. Ishi bowed from the doorway of the preparation room, then brought in the tea utensils and deftly arranged them near the brazier. Without the least hint of hurry, he began to make tea.
Yamamura was seduced, almost entranced, by the delicate strength and bold precision of Ishi’s actions.
…the folding and unfolding of the cloth…the warming of the whisk…the measuring of the green powder…the precise and graceful manipulation of the water scoop…the merry bubbling of the water in the jar, the comforting aroma of brewing tea…
The ritual words came naturally to Yamamura, of themselves, almost as if he had thought of them for the first time: “O temae o chōdai itashimasu”—“I’ll partake of your tea.”
The tea was good.
Yamamura returned the empty bowl to the mat, and for a moment gazed at its pitted surface, its irregular glaze, turning it in his hands. It was a simple bowl, not of great age, nor of surpassing artistry. It had no reputation, no name. Still, the hands of its maker were figured in its rude shape; it was a product of human sensitivity.
Current surges through the windings of the iron magnets; liquid helium flows through their cold metal hearts. Each magnet grips the steel vacuum chamber between its shaped poles in fields of crushing strength; so powerful are the magnetic fields that the windings of nitinol-tin which create them, bracketed by steel collars, strain to blow themselves apart.
Soon each single speeding particle inside the vacuum chamber possesses the energy of an angry wasp. The particle beams will chew through the walls of the chamber in an instant, destroying the magnets, if ever the powerful fields lose their grip.
Faster and faster the pulsed beams circle—meeting, annihilating, meeting again, recreating the primeval void six times over, a billion times a second.
Out of the void, new forms appear.
Ishi had withdrawn, removing the tea implements. Yamamura sat quietly for a moment, appreciating the clean, cozy room.
There were no flowers in the alcove. The traditional cherry blossoms of spring would have struck an odd note in the country of eternal summer. Nevertheless, the bare room was gently scented by the garden’s distant ginger. And without an arrangement of flowers beside it, the scroll with its sternly drawn kanji characters was even more boldly highlighted. Yamamura did not recognize the words—they were not one of the Buddhist homilies—but he recognized the masculine hand as Ishi’s own, and Ishi’s taste for the philosophical Tao was well known.
“Let everything do what it naturally does,” said the scroll.
Yamamura’s mind wandered. By now the full moon must have risen almost high enough to clear the ridge of the Koolaus. So skillfully had Ishi managed the evening that the moon seemed to be arriving just as the world of the teahouse was ready to open out to receive it. With regret, Yamamura slowly left the house.
As he walked along the path, the meaning of the scroll struck him. He so forgot himself that he staggered. With great effort he recovered, resolving to behave normally throughout the evening. Yet his resentment had been kindled.
Friedman made a note in the log: “6:42 P.M. Both beams at full power and intensity. TERAC operational.”
27
Hiro Watanabe lay face down on the futon in the bedroom of his small house in Halawa Heights and tried to forget about everything except the delicious sensation of his wife’s fists pounding his aching back. His eye half lidded, his cheek pushed into the crisp fresh fabric, he looked through the open sliding-glass door of the balcony and watched the moon rise above Pearl Harbor, beyond the lights of Pearl City spread out below.
After a few minutes Mariko’s strong hands moved up to take hold of his shoulders. She began kneading them vigorously; at last the ropy muscles began to unknot. Despite the warm sensuality of her attentions, he could not totally rid his mind of worry. Hiro Watanabe was in a bind.
The trouble had come to a head at the Edoviches’ party Friday night. Yamamura had drunkenly complained of Martin Edovich’s arrogance in loud Japanese, and Watanabe had known it would not be long before he started expressing his sentiments in serviceable English. In Japan drunken insults are readily forgiven the next day; in America this courtesy could not be depended upon. Watanabe, who had a bit of a comic flair, had successfully distracted his beloved oya with a mock-drunken display of his own. But just as he’d managed to hustle Yamamura offstage and into a waiting taxi, Watanabe had encountered a face from his past—the reporter, Gardner Hey.
Watanabe owed Hey a favor, a fact the reporter was not shy about exploiting; he was most interested in the dispute between Martin Edovich and Shigeki Yamamura, and it was clear that Watanabe was in a peculiarly good position to help him…
