Broken Symmetries, page 2
The thud and rumble of unfolding landing gear frightened her out of her distracted thoughts. The sound was always so unexpected, so inexplicably violent, as if something were being torn from the plane, as if some blunt object were beating against the fuselage. It was a reminder of mortality. “The-captain-has-turned-on-the-fastenseatbeltsign,” a cabin attendant recited, slapdash, managing to sound less human than a recording. The plane banked and turned. The passengers in the crowded jumbo jet stared glumly at the seat backs in front of them, trying not to think about popped cargo doors or engines dropping suddenly into the sea.
Oahu appeared beneath Anne-Marie’s window. The island’s serrated green ridges were crowned with mist and rainbows, and creamy surf surged out of turquoise seas to collapse on golden beaches. Then the city appeared, a compressed conglomeration of cement and glass and wood and rusted tin and stone and stucco, crawling with cars and people, trapped, overflowing the narrow strip of land between the Koolaus and the sea. Sliding beneath the wing were stark towers of featureless glass and concrete, what surfers called “The Wall of Waikiki.”
Again Anne-Marie sensed Gardner Hey leaning toward her; this time he really was looking out the window. “There’s my baby,” he whispered, sounding not at all like a proud parent, but very much like a safecracker contemplating a vault; she could hear him mentally sandpapering his fingertips. She followed his gaze toward the middle of the island, to the immense interlocking circles there traced out against the gray pineapple fields by grassy mounds of bright green, a giant bull’s-eye in the center of Oahu—TERAC, the Teravolt Accelerator Center.
“The main ring’s over six kilometers in diameter,” Hey said. “But the tunnel is actually way below the surface—that mound, what they call the berm, is only landscaping.”
Anne-Marie took a moment to assimilate just how much of central Oahu the Teravolt Accelerator Center subsumed beneath its tastefully sculpted surface. She knew nothing of this machine or its smaller cousins around the world; indeed, she knew no more of high-energy physics than any ordinary person, that it had to do with “atom smashing” and particles with odd names like “quark.” Her response to TERAC was wholly aesthetic. She’d expected to see something that looked like an oil refinery and was pleasantly surprised to find herself mistaken.
Studding the earthen rings were clusters of buildings with the rough dark geometry of natural monoliths. Within the largest ring meandered a serpentine lake. From high in the air the accelerator center looked like a miniature Zen garden of stones and moss. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “And much bigger than I’d imagined. It’s huge.”
“Oh, it’s so huge—” Gardner Hey’s eyes glistened. “You can’t begin to imagine the fortunes that have been squandered on this overgrown peashooter, the political careers that have been made and wrecked, the deals…”
“It sounds like you could write a book,” said Anne-Marie, smiling.
“That’s what I’m doing, all right. I’ve been following this story for years—there couldn’t be a better example of what really goes on behind the respectable ivy-covered walls of Big Science, Inc.”
“But this is the first time you’ve ever been to see TERAC?”
Hey sniffed resentfully. “I don’t work for Science, you know. Or one of those flashy pop-sci slicks. If there weren’t so many big names coming to this dedication I’d probably be writing up some stringer’s files instead of coming in person. But I twisted arms. This conference is a perfect excuse for me to get…” Hey glanced at Anne-Marie, breaking off his sentence. Then he leaned back, and when he spoke again, the topic had shifted. “I’m glad Chauncey put us in touch with each other, Anne-Marie. Even if Science Weekly doesn’t use enough of your stuff to make it worth your while, I can help you find other markets. Good photos really help sell a book.”
She thought he sounded peculiarly insincere, but it didn’t matter; she’d do the best job she could, better than Hey and his newspaper deserved. She was working for herself. “I hope there’ll be something more interesting than speeches,” she said, watching the shapes of TERAC blend into the distant fields as the plane settled lower.
“I’ll get something a hell of a lot better than speeches,” said Hey complacently.
The plane dropped swiftly toward the Reef Runway, its multiple landing gear reaching like birds’ claws for the asphalt-covered landfill.
3
Chauncey Tolliver sat on the couch in Matsuo Ishi’s outer office, wordlessly humming an old drinking song he’d picked up in the Air Force: “Last to know, first to go, we are the troopers of the PIO.”
On his lined yellow pad TERAC’s public information officer had been scratching crude drawings of knives and spears, their points diametrically opposed. Now he moved his gold ballpoint to the bottom of the page and wrote “Anne-Marie” in his loopy vertical hand, and drew an elaborate picture frame around the name. If her plane hadn’t been late, if Director Ishi hadn’t asked him to stand by to help prepare a last-minute press release, if these Friday afternoon staff meetings didn’t always run so interminably long while the director waited for everybody to agree with everybody else, Tolliver could have stolen forty-five minutes from his schedule to meet Anne-Marie at the airport.
Tolliver stretched his legs, studying the crease in his seersucker trousers critically, judging the shine of his perforated-wingtip oxfords. He rubbed his aching eyes. He still had a thousand details of the dedication ceremonies to attend to: the workmen were running behind schedule with the speakers’ platform, and his budget couldn’t absorb much weekend overtime; somewhere he or one of his staff had to get hold of a crate of salmon roe—Japanese delicacy—to replace the shipment he’d had flown in from Alaska, which had arrived spoiled; already writers and dignitaries were arriving from all over the world, and Tolliver had to be sure the key people got their invitations to Martin Edovich’s lawn party this evening, or Martin would chew his ass. Martin always preferred to do his arm-twisting and cajoling in informal settings.
Through the polished oak double doors of the conference room, across the room from where he sat, Tolliver could hear the muffled voices of the director’s staff, familiar even when unintelligible: Edovich’s jocular baritone, laughing but insistent; Ilse Friedman’s tart, superior contralto, salted with an assumed working-class bluntness; Lasky’s soothing murmurs; Shigeki Yamamura’s unintentionally comic growls. By eavesdropping halfheartedly Tolliver knew that Yamamura had already wound up his standard speech of complaint, the one about “most important experiments awaiting to the adjusting of the beams”—Yamamura’s experiments—and “also interesting experiments but now going on for more than one year”—Martin Edovich’s. It seemed that Yamamura could never get enough beam time to suit his purposes.
Anticipating adjournment, Tolliver got to his feet. The doors opened abruptly. Martin Edovich, always in a hurry, was the first out of the room. The red-haired Yugoslavian gave Tolliver a wink and a grin; “I’ll see you in a couple of hours, my friend.” Then Edovich spun around to snag Ilse Friedman by the elbow and lead her away before Yamamura could catch up. The other staff members walked past Tolliver without acknowledging his presence.
From inside the empty conference room Ishi’s secretary, Miss Sugibayashi, nodded to him: “Ishi-sama will see you in his office, Tolliver-san,” she murmured, closing the double doors.
Tolliver ripped the top sheet from his notepad, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it into the cylindrical leather wastebasket beside the couch. The door to Ishi’s inner office was to his left; like a Maxwell’s demon Miss Sugibayashi opened it from inside just as he approached. She bowed as he entered.
Matsuo Ishi was slowly crossing the room toward his desk. His severely malformed left foot, damaged at birth by a clumsy doctor, caused him to lurch precariously as he walked. Ishi was a tiny man, almost hairless except for his wiry brows and the equally wiry gray hair bordering his crown. His shiny skin was stretched smoothly over his large skull and over the delicate bones of his hands. Yet once he’d seated himself behind his desk he appeared perfectly proportioned. Stillness, not action, was appropriate to his nature. “I am very sorry to have kept you from your duties, Mr. Tolliver. Please be comfortable.”
Tolliver bowed awkwardly—in his years at TERAC he’d never mastered the polite gesture—and sat stiffly on the hard chair facing the desk. “Whatever I can do, sir.”
“It is a matter of timing. Of what to say when.”
Isn’t it always? thought Tolliver. “What’s the situation, sir?”
“I will relate an experience. You are aware that the Japanese staff held a little gathering in my honor at the Akasaka last night?”
“I had heard of it, yes.”
“Yamamura-san had instructed the management to serve all my favorite dishes. The hostesses were charming and adroit, as usual.”
Tolliver smiled politely, tapping the point of his pen against his yellow pad.
“After dinner the younger men became quite relaxed. I don’t mind telling you, the toasts and songs were somewhat hilarious! Watanabe Hiro did a little dance he claims to have learned from an old farmer in the mountain village where he and his family vacation.” Ishi glanced up at Tolliver. “Jokingly I told him it seemed more likely he had learned it by dancing in the streets with the rioters who closed the university. From the confusion on his face I knew I had hit the mark without aiming. Even today the younger men retain their foolish admiration for Marxism. Those like Watanabe who have spent part of their careers in the United States seem no less susceptible.”
Tolliver said nothing. Of course he knew all about Watanabe and the others, had known from the beginning. He twisted his strong fingers around the thin ribbed metal of his pen.
“Yamamura came to Watanabe’s defense, as was to be expected,” said Ishi. “I was inspired to do a bit of entertaining myself. I told the tale of how sensei Nishina lost the cyclotrons—the one he bought in your country in 1938, the one we made for him during the war. Are you familiar with the incident, Mr. Tolliver?”
“Vaguely, sir…”
“I remember the intensity of my gratitude at being allowed to help with the project,” said Ishi. “I, an insignificant lame boy—turned out of school like all the others, but saved from the army by my twisted foot and from the factories by my mathematical aptitude. And, as I learned only a few years ago, by mutual debts of honor between my father and my sensei. Oh, Nishina was a good man and a brave one. We kept the machines running through the firestorms, almost to the end. Once when a machine failed we repaired its rectifiers with parts taken from the wreck of a B-29, one of those planes which was bombing Tokyo to rubble and ashes over our heads.”
On Ishi’s desk was a tattered, paper-covered notebook Tolliver recognized as a volume of his diary. He must have been keeping it since childhood, like most Japanese of his generation. The old man carefully opened the book and took a yellowed scrap of newsprint from between its pages.
“An American colleague gave me this, Mr. Tolliver, when I was visiting the Institute for Advanced Studies in the year after the war. From this article the American scientists first learned what had become of our cyclotrons. It is from the New York Times of November twenty-fourth, 1945, a report from Tokyo.” Ishi held up the bit of paper and read aloud: “‘Today, under orders to destroy them, engineers and ordnance men from Lieut. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger’s Eighth Army here and General Walter Kreuger’s Sixth Army in Southern Japan, moved into the plants armed with welding torches, explosives and other equipment and began to take the machines apart. Parts of them will be loaded on barges, taken out to sea and sunk.’”
Tolliver sat very still. Was Ishi making some sort of personal reference with this outdated tale of military stupidity? There had been a good many mistakes on both sides; mistakes happen, when men are afraid. After all, Nishina had been using those cyclotrons in a pathetic attempt to build a Japanese uranium bomb. “How did the others respond to the story, sir?” he asked.
Ishi replaced the fragile newspaper clipping and closed the book, folding his hands carefully on its cover. “They understood me, I’m sure.” He paused, then said, “Five years ago the Prime Minister managed to persuade me that my acceptance of the directorship would make the Trillion-electron-volt Accelerator Center project more attractive to your government. I will admit that for too long I shamefully resisted the honor.”
“Your record is not only distinguished but scrupulously fair, sir,” Tolliver said automatically.
“You are gracious,” said Ishi. “Of course, I have made enemies; that could not be helped. Now, however”—as he talked, Ishi drew a cigarette from a pack in his desk drawer, found a wooden match, and lit up—“we are dedicating this great machine, after more than a year of successful operation. And it is my belief that management is properly a pursuit for the young—and vigorous.” He exhaled a cloud of blue smoke.
Tolliver saw the point, at last. Ishi intended to retire, much earlier than anyone in either Washington or Tokyo had anticipated. The whole delicate political balance was about to be given a good shaking. Did Tokyo know already? The Prime Minister’s office? The bureaucracies? Tolliver would have to inform Washington at once.
“I have told no one of my plans, Mr. Tolliver,” said Ishi, evidently reading his mind. “Except for my wife and Miss Sugibayashi, you are the first. I cannot insist that you keep the matter secret. But there are some aspects you should be given time to consider.”
“Then the press release?” Tolliver indicated his blank tablet.
Ishi dismissed the disingenuous question with a miniature wave of his fingers. “Yamamura has never relinquished his unrealistic desire to have my post. MITI has many sources of information here.” Ishi smiled. “And Dr. Yamamura will doubtless create many difficulties when he learns of my plans—unless some fitting compromise has been arranged already, at the highest levels of government.”
Tolliver knew that without the cooperation of Yamamura’s sponsor, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, TERAC could never have been built. But the same was true of the U.S. Department of Defense, to which Yamamura was anathema.
As soon as I pass the information to Washington—unless I do it very cleverly—word’s sure to get back to MITI, thought Tolliver. He looked past Ishi to the bookshelves behind him, lined from floor to ceiling with books in ten languages. By dint of years of study Tolliver had learned to read six of the same languages himself, including Japanese and two different languages called Chinese. But Ishi’s gift for tongues seemed almost casual.
Again, Tolliver rubbed his weary eyes. So you know about me, you old fox. Not surprising, he thought; we all spend half our time peering over each other’s shoulders. What is surprising is that you’re willing to admit it—which is precisely how you’ve caught me. I have to help you keep your private little secret, at least until your people can take Yamamura out of the picture.
Tolliver cleared his throat. “I agree that any sort of announcement at this time would be premature, Professor.”
Ishi inclined his head. “I am grateful for your understanding. Thank you for your valuable time.”
Tolliver rose and attempted another stiff bow. From somewhere Miss Sugibayashi had appeared to open the door. Bemused and frustrated, Tolliver left the office, his heavy shoes scuffling the wool carpet.
Ishi watched as his trusted secretary closed the door. “There is only one thing more you can do for me, Miss Sugibayashi, and then I will not need you anymore today.”
“You are well?” Miss Sugibayashi’s tone was neutral, but her concern was evident.
“My weariness is not physical,” he said, smiling to reassure her. “I am like a little boy who wants to go home from school, so he clings to his winter cold and makes it seem piteous.”
“Ahh.” She smiled. “Then perhaps I am to telephone your regrets to Professor Edovich and his wife? Perhaps you are too weak to call in person?”
Ishi pursed his lips. “I’m afraid that’s the case. My most sincere regrets.”
“Yes!” She bowed, grinning, and left the room.
Ishi smiled privately. He opened the current volume of his diary to the first blank page and pressed the paper smooth with the flat of his hand. He plucked a writing brush from its stand, dipped its bristles in prepared black ink, poised the brush over the paper. Then, with rapidity and grace, he drew a series of formal kanji characters down the page:
Know when to stop
And you will meet with no danger.
You can then endure.
He had often pondered these words of Lao Tzu. Unlike his countrymen, Ishi believed there came a time to declare all obligations fulfilled—even those incurred by one’s ancestors.
4
On their way to ransom their luggage Hey and Anne-Marie had to fend off impatient fellow passengers, official greeters with leis and Polaroid cameras at the ready, and wild-eyed religious panhandlers. When the belt finally brought them their bags, Anne-Marie stood guard over her own leather suitcases and Hey’s government-surplus garment bag while he went off to arrange for a discount rental car. All went well until they tried to get the little red Datsun coupe out of the airport; like all airports everywhere it seemed to be in the midst of a vast eternal reconstruction program with eternal metamorphosis as its only goal. Eventually Hey found a busy highway pointing toward downtown, not before convincing Anne-Marie that she’d trusted her life to a mechanical incompetent.
“I’ve got about thirty calls to make when we get to the hotel,” he said importantly, trying to shift gears, racing the engine. “And we need to get Dan Kono’s address”—the car lurched forward—“or even get out to see him today, if we can. He lives in the opposite direction from TERAC, and it would be good to get him out of the way early.”
Anne-Marie tried to ignore the bucking, laboring automobile and meanwhile searched her memory for Dan Kono’s role in the cast of characters Hey had earlier listed for her. “He’s the land rights leader?”
