Miss Buddha (34 page)

And this is where Einstein disagreed with
Bohr. Since, according to Einstein, no signal can travel faster
than light, it would be impossible that the measurement performed
on one electron would instantly determine the axis and direction of
the other electron’s spin, thousands or millions of miles (or light
years) away.

Bohr—correctly—maintained that even though
the two electrons were far apart in space, they were nevertheless
linked by instantaneous, nonlocal connections. He further
maintained that connections were not signals in the Einsteinian
sense: they transcend conventional notions of information transfer,
something Einstein simply refused to believe.

“Bohr was correct,” said Ruth. “Which is
what you proved in 1999.”

“He was,” Julian agreed.

“And you proved it to everyone’s
satisfaction.”

“Nearly everyone’s.”

“There are always those who refuse to see
feet at the end of their legs as a matter of principle.”

Julian laughed. Whether at what she said, or
whether because she—such an unlikely source—had said it, he wasn’t
sure. Things were slipping a little toward a quantum reality where
nothing would sit still for very long, if at all. Shifting.

“Yes,” he finally said. “There are always
those.”

“But all who matter agreed, isn’t that so?
The theorists?”

“Did Kristina tell you about that, too?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, the theorists agreed. At least those
who mattered.”

“And the experimenters? Any dissent
there?”

What ten-year old used the word “dissent?”
he thought. Then let the thought go, he simply had to get used to
this.

“No,” he answered. There was no dissent in
that camp either.”

Ruth shifted in her chair, then pulled one
leg up and tucked it in under the other, then straightened her
skirt as a matter of course. “You showed the world that non-local
communication exists. Proved it beyond a doubt. It didn’t get much
press, did it?”

“I had expected more,” he admitted.

“It should have changed everything,” she
said.

One hell of a statement. But he, himself had
thought precisely that, and more than once. “Yes,” he said. “It
should have changed everything.”

“Then, why didn’t it?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” Then he heard
himself add, “Do you?”

She did not voice her answer, but only shook
her head slowly while she asked her next question. “What are you
working on now?”

“Specifically, or in general?”

“Either.”

“Well, both then. I, as well as many others
today, am trying to isolate the fundamental particle.”

“The God particle?”

“Yes, that’s what Lederman called it.”

“And you don’t?”

“It’s as good a name as any.”

“So it’s not the quark then?”

“We don’t think so.
I
don’t think so. We have
never been able to detect one, only theorize one.”

“Is it a string?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wasn’t it Geoffrey Chew who pointed out
that what we actually detect in subatomic particles is the energies
of their internal interaction. And doesn’t that mean that what
particles we can detect all have structure—constituent parts, in
other words—or there would be no internal interaction to
detect?”

Julian at this point was too stunned to
answer. He only looked across his cluttered desk at the
impossibility talking to him.

So Ruth continued, “Would it not then follow
that a truly elementary particle, one without any form of internal
structure, would not be subject to any forces that would allow us
to detect it? The fact that we know of the particle at all implies
that it has an internal structure, constituent parts, and so cannot
be elemental.”

He followed the argument, of course he did.
He had pondered this precise question more often that he’d care to
admit. The impossibility of their quest. Then, again, he tried to
reconcile the logic—the clearly stated and very perceptive
logic—with its ten-years something source. It did not compute.
Could not be. Again, he engaged, with some effort, the suspension
of disbelief, or the conversation simply could not go on.

“
I’ve considered the
problem,” he said finally. “Often.”

“Is Chew right?”

“As far as it goes, yes.”

“As far as what goes?”

“In so far as what we have detected so far
is precisely that internal energy.”

“The energies of the internal structure? The
interaction?”

“Yes.”

“So, then, would an elemental particle, if
there is one, in fact be detectable?”

“I don’t know.”

Ruth considered this for a
while. Looked out the window briefly, then back at Julian.
“Do
you
think
there is an elemental particle?”

“There must be. Mustn’t it?”

“Must there?”

This was another thing which Julian had
considered; often, and at some depth. He looked again at his the
most unlikely of guests. Incongruous didn’t even start to describe
the young girl at the other side of his desk. Large, and very awake
blue eyes regarding him in turn, unblinking, unwavering, waiting
for his reply. But he had no reply, he only had the question that
now was gaining rapid momentum, and could no longer be contained
for it cried out for an answer.

“Who are you?” he asked. And he really meant
that question.

“I am more than meets the eye,” she
replied.

“That much is obvious,” he said.

“Some other time,” she said, and there was
no question in his mind about what she meant. Some other time she
would tell him who she really was, and there was definitely
something to tell. He shuddered inwardly, then took command of
himself again. Nodded that he understood, accepted.

“Does there, in
fact,
have
to be
an elemental particle?” she asked again.

“How can there not be one?”

Ruth said nothing.

Julian knocked on his desk. And again.
“There’s something here,” he said. “And it has to be made from
something.”

“Are you close?” she wondered.

“To discovering it?”

“Yes.”

“Some days closer than others, but no. No,
not really.”

“But you are sure there is one?”

Julian did not know what to answer. How
could there not be one. He could still hear the knock on the
tabletop with his inner ear. Unless.

“Unless what?” said Ruth.

His knee-jerk reaction, naturally, was that
he had misheard her. But his more fundamental self calmly pointed
out that he had heard her just fine.

“Unless it’s all illusion?”

“The atom is mainly space,” suggested
Ruth.

“Sure.”

“Sometimes we forget,” she
said. “There’s hardly anything
but
space.”

“I know.”

“Has anybody ever seen an atom? A
nucleus?”

“Not yet. Only what it does to light.”

“So maybe it doesn’t exist?”

“It exists all right,” he said. Almost
defensively. Then, “Did you hear me think?”

Without hesitation, “Yes.”

“That is not possible, is it?”

Ruth smiled. “Much is possible.”

The she asked, “How do you go about it? How
do you hope to detect the elemental particle, if there indeed is
one?”

“We smash things together,” he said.

She nodded that she understood. “Particle
accelerators.”

“Yes.”

“Fermilab and CERN?”

“Yes.”

“Bubble chambers?”

“Yes. To trace the little bits.”

“But if they’re traceable, they must have
internal structure?”

“So the theory goes.”

“So that’s not going to work then, is
it?”

“We hope it will.”

“Though futile?”

There was no answer to that, so Julian
didn’t bother. Instead, he said, though not with any hope of an
answer, of course:

“How would you go about it?”

“I would look,” said the girl. Smiling
now.

“Look?”

“I would make myself really, really small,
and look.” And still smiling.

“You’re kidding.”

“Am I?”

“Of course.”

“Am I?” Surprise or mock surprise? She did
it so well that Julian could not tell.

“Of course,” seemed to be the only two words
left in his vocabulary. Then the question walked in and sat down,
and he asked it of her:

“Do you think matter longs for matter?”

If she was surprised at that question, she
did not show it. But there was no hiding his own surprise at her
answer:

“As in gravity?”

::
76 :: (Pasadena)

He is a brilliant man, this Julian Lawson.
Kristina Medina was clever to have introduced us. He knows on many
levels, and he is knocking on the final door.

And he knows the language of deep science.
Yes, he is indeed my next teacher.

I see in his heart that he loves Kristina
Medina. Deeply. Hopelessly. Strangely, I also see that he is
resigned to, and quite happy with this. He is an unusual man.

And then he asks me if I think matter longs
for matter. Which, of course it does. So I answer him:

“As in gravity?”

And his eyes spring open, very wide, as if I
had turned ghost.

“Do you know?” he says after a long
while.

“I know many things,” I tell him.

“About gravity?” he says. “Do you know about
gravity?”

“About the longing?”

“Yes, about the longing.”

For him, it is a matter of what the world
calls a strong intuition—an intuition so strong as to border
certainty, though not crossing that border. He knows with his
deeper roots, of course, but the leaves that are his current life
have had no direct dealings with those roots for many lives.

Yet, he sees with the clear eye of
intuition, matter pulling matter, this universal affinity at work,
this strong need and yearning to return to elemental particle,
before its sundering into universe.

Finally, I answer, “Yes.”

Then he falls silent again, scrutinizing me,
visually probing surfaces as if the answer to his now growing
question lies in my face, my eyes, my hair, or in the air
surrounding.

Then he asks it, again:

“Who are you?”

Shall I avoid, ignore, or answer the
question? But when he asks with such earnestness, with such
intensity, he does not really leave me a choice. And besides, he
deserves to know. So I say:

“Can you keep a secret?”

::
77 :: (Pasadena)

Julian did not sleep much that night. Perhaps
he didn’t sleep at all, he couldn’t really tell. Some of his
ponderings felt like sleep, or at least next door to it, but even
here he was partly awake, for how can you fall away from such a
revelation?

If true.

And how could it possibly?

The rational part of him,
the part he sometimes thought of as
C
& B
—Checks and Balances, as if the name
of some accounting firm—issued warning after warning not to be
taken in by the apparent romance of this mystery; for how could it
possibly?

Romance? he’d argue back with himself.
Romance?

The wish for the unbelievable to be
believable, C & B said, the thrill of transcendence, that
romance. That dream.

But how do you explain?

C & B said nothing, for he had nothing
to say to that. Julian reached out for his alarm clock and brought
it close to his face. He had to press a small button for the face
to illuminate, and he did. Two-thirty-three. He carefully placed
the clock back on his bedside table. The Buddha.

It was a thrill, all right. He laughed into
the still night, wondering fleetingly what someone who heard that
might think of the madman inside. Then he laughed again. Let
them.

For the deeper part of him
that considered C & B nothing but an auxiliary view—the part of
him he sometimes thought of as groundwater—knew. Just
knew
that the
impossibility that called itself Ruth Marten now made
sense.

Not that he knew much about the Buddha. In
fact, all he knew at this point is that it rang true. The name, the
person, and her mission, as she had put it, to marry the mystery of
science with the mystery of religion, for they are one and the
same.

One and the same.

And he laughed again.

Then climbed out of bed to fix himself some
chamomile tea, perhaps that’ll relax him and help him sleep.

It did and it did not.

:

Another person who slept little, if at all,
that night was Ananda.

Ruth had been unusually quiet, subdued even,
when she came home from Cal Tech that afternoon. Both Ananda and
Melissa had wondered how it had gone, had she gotten along with
Julian?

Sure. Nodded.

“Oh, well,” said Melissa, “Sounds like you
got on like a house on fire.”

“Maybe not a house,” she’d answered. “And
maybe not on fire.”

“You didn’t get along?” Melissa concerned
now.

“Oh, we got along just fine.”

“What then?”

“Nothing. Just a lot to think about.”

And give Melissa credit, she does give Ruth
“space” as they call it these days, and does respect her privacy,
especially when, like this, she’s a little pensive.

But there was more to it than that. When
Ruth maintained what struck Ananda as her brooding, and at dinner
only picked at and hardly ate any of her food, he just had to
know—he had come to suspect, but had to know.

“You told him, didn’t you?” he said.

Melissa nearly dropped her fork, then
actually did drop her fork in her quick turn to face him then Ruth
then him again. There was something she wanted to say but it seemed
like she could not catch it.