Twistor (3 page)

'I wouldn't want to say that,' Saxon answered carefully. 'They're phasing out an NSF program that I consider to have been highly successful. I think they're making a big mistake.'

'Are you an entrepreneur, sir?' Wegmann asked.

Saxon looked uncomfortable. 'Well, in a way . . . '

'
In what way, Professor? Do you have a business on the side?'

Saxon cleared his throat. 'I'm part owner of a small venture-capital company that specializes in exploiting certain aspects of condensed matter physics that may have applications in, for example, the computer industry.'

'Did you have one of those grants you were talking about when you started the company, Professor?'

'Well, uh, yes, we did have a small S/I grant, but most of our startup was funded by the private investment of venture capital.'

'Don't you think you have a conflict of interest, Professor, sitting here on the National Science Board and pushing federal programs that would directly benefit your company?'

Saxon stood up. He could feel his scalp prickling in the back, a sign that his blood pressure was rising. He took a deep breath. 'No indeed, Mr Wayland. My company is already started, and is unlikely to get any further federal research support, particularly under the present administration. I bring to the board an experience in both basic research and private enterprise, and that is very valuable in our deliberations, as I'm sure the chairman will tell you. I resent your implication, Mr Wayland—'

'Wegmann, sir. I think I understand, Professor Saxon. Thank you for your comments.' He turned and moved to corner another board member before he could escape.

I hope none of that gets into
Newsweek,
Saxon thought. We don't need that kind of publicity just now.

David sat at the control console. The snarl of wires had been folded back into its recesses. During his lunch break, after the elusive wiring fault had been discovered and fixed, David had stopped by his apartment to change from the jeans and loafers of the morning to a white shirt, creased
slacks,
and polished black shoes. A dark tweed jacket hung from the window handle, and through the panes behind it campus buildings were visible in the gathering darkness.

Across the room Vickie sat at the little design computer, manipulating a pattern of red, green, and blue circuit traces on a circuit board layout. She moved a mouse over a large digitizer pad, circuit structures popping into existence and reforming themselves as she coaxed the design slowly toward an optimum.

'Jesus H. Christ!' said David, peering more closely at the vacuum gauge. 'Vickie, watch this! When I take the RF up by a megahertz, the vacuum gauge goes
down!
It just clicked down to the 10
^-9
scale and then popped back up. Look, it reproduces! There it goes again!' He moused the cursor to a spot on the control screen labeled OSCILLATOR [INCREMENT], clicked, and then leaned back in the swivel chair, trying to watch the row of orange digits labeled FREQUENCY (MHZ) and the meter labeled VACUUM (TORR) at the same time, although they were at opposite sides of the console.

Vickie rose from the design computer and walked over to the control console. Despite the loose jeans, rumpled sweatshirt, and unbrushed red hair, David noted, she seemed remarkably attractive this evening. He felt distracted, and recalled Allan's warning comments about involvements with the female physics graduate students.

'Really, David!' said Vickie, pointing at the apparatus that they had meticulously designed, constructed, and assembled over the past few months. 'I told you this kludge had ground loop problems – ' Walking up behind him, she peered intently over his shoulder at the console vacuum meter, then reached out and tapped it sharply near the bottom. ' – but you had to start running the full-blown experiment before we'd done the final component debug. The vacuum can't be that good. Considering all that Apiezon bear-crap you pasted over the leaks, we're lucky it isn't hissing at us.'

The
object of her derision was the beach-ball-size stainless-steel sphere in the center of the room, girdled by sculpted coppery coils and spiked with vacuum feed-throughs and a large blue-and-silver ion pump. A plume of condensed water vapor and a rim of frost marked its nitrogen exhaust vent. Silvery dewars stood at one side to supply liquid nitrogen and helium for the cryogenics inside.

Yesterday David had used the department's only functioning helium leak-checker to discover tiny air-to-vacuum leaks in several of the welded joints. These he had peened shut with a small hammer and then for good measure temporarily sealed them with dark brown leak-sealant putty. The sharp chemical smell of a spray-on vacuum sealant still hung over the equipment. These were stopgap measures until the machine shop foreman could spare some welder time to fix the leaks properly.

The sphere stood on aluminum I-beam legs attached to an elevated concrete slab in the center of the room. Framing the apparatus in three dimensions was the outline of a cube made of thin wooden sticks. Along the surfaces of the sticks were taped many turns of chestnut-brown enameled wire. These formed Helmholtz coils that nulled out the Earth's magnetic field in the central region of the apparatus.

David leaned back and looked beyond the control computer, studying the red-and-black coaxial cables and gray ribbon leads that snaked across the floor from the control console's underside to the components of the experiment. 'Guilty as charged, ma'am,' he said, looking up at her. 'Guess I've been pushing too hard. I wanted us to get some good data today before I had to bug out for dinner. I'm having my weekly Wednesday night dinner with the Ernsts.' He gestured at a brown sack in the corner, the red top of a wine bottle projecting above its edge. 'I'm bringing that bottle of Chateau La Tour '82
tonight.
It cost me too much so I wanted to have something to celebrate.'

'
But instead,' she said, 'it looks as if Vickie Fix-It has some work to do while you're gone. We've gotta find this bug before we can make any more progress.' Her eyes unfocused.
'
Hmmm. Maybe if I hooked a 'scope to the vacuum meter drive circuit I might zero in on the problem

David nodded. 'Sam Weston was down in the electronics shop about half an hour ago. I think he's working late on something tonight. Perhaps you could persuade him to help.'

There's an idea,' said Victoria. 'Sam's super at debugging electronics. If I can just keep the topic of conversation away from sex and survivalism, he should be a big help.'

'Just kick in his kneecaps if he gets out of line,' said David. Although he'd never seen any evidence of it, Vickie had a reputation among the graduate students as a martial arts expert.

She smiled. 'You're coming back tonight?' she asked.

'Yeah,' said David, 'I should be back by about midnight. As we both know too well, "Physics is what physicists do late at night.” At least it's when
I
seem to get the most done. If you can fix this RF glitch, maybe I can accomplish something on the owl shift. I should be good 'til about three A.M. Allan's still in D.C. smooth-talking the NSF, so I have the honor of teaching his Physics 122 class again tomorrow morning at eight-thirty. Guess I can't stay up too late; I haven't made any notes for the lecture yet.' He grinned.

'I was under the impression that you real physicists didn't need lecture notes,' said Vickie, grinning back. 'They did give you a Ph.D. in physics at Illinois, didn't they? Doesn't that mean you know everything in the 122 textbook, at least?'

'Oh sure,' said David, 'only the students get kinda
upset
when I start using partial differential equations and Riemann tensors to demonstrate that water runs downhill. It's real work to get it on the right level. But there are compensations. It's just amazing how much you learn when you want to explain what you already know to somebody else . . . ' He shook his head, musing. 'Particularly to the articulate, socially adjusted algebra-illiterates that are admitted to our institutions of higher learning these days. This morning I had to spend ten minutes to get across the idea that when you divide by a number smaller than one, the result gets
bigger.
I guess they couldn't do that one on their fingers and toes.'

She laughed, a rich contralto.

'Anyhow, Vickie, I gotta go,' he said, reaching for the wrapped wined bottle. 'If the food's overdone because I'm late, I may not be invited back. If you can bring some modicum of order to this chaos by the time I get back, it will be sincerely appreciated.'

'OK,' said Vickie, 'but you go easy on that Chateau La Tour. I can't have you staggering back and falling into my apparatus. I need a Ph.D. too, you know.'

As David turned down the long hill toward the university's east gatehouse, Lake Washington appeared on his right. The water shimmered with the reflected lights of the lakefront houses of nearby Laurelhurst and the longer reflections from posh Hunt's Point across the lake. A row of stationary red taillights punctuated the long low silhouette of the Evergreen Point Bridge, indicating to David that there was another jam-up there, on that well-known 'car-strangled spanner.' It was nice that Paul lived on this side of the lake.

David thought about Vickie. She was a remarkable young woman. He'd never before worked with anyone so capable, so smart, and at the same time so nice to have around. The traffic light at Twenty-fifth Avenue Northeast turned green, and he accelerated.

He
was going to have to watch himself. Romance at the workplace is generally a bad idea. Particularly the physics workplace. He could think of a few cases where scientific coworkers had become romantically involved. Almost never had it ended well. If the relationship broke up, it became difficult working together afterwards. And if it lasted it was even worse. The conflicting demands of two careers, of retaining scientific objectivity in criticizing each other's work and ideas, and the eventual problem of finding jobs together usually seemed to destroy such pairings within a year or so.

He curved left at the Laurelhurst intersection and headed north along Sand Point Way. But she was beautiful and enormously talented, very intelligent, and remarkably good with equipment, a natural with the hardware. He couldn't think of anyone else quite like her. And there were a few examples of successful physicist couples . . . David rolled down the window and breathed in the cool night air off the lake as he slowed for the pedestrian crossing at Children's Orthopedic. Watch it there, guy, he thought, and shook his head as if to clear it.

He continued north along Sand Point Way, a broad street with a tree-studded esplanade, and thought about Sarah and their final quarrel. Was he too self-centered for a lasting relationship? He'd always considered himself to be a nice person. Thoughtful, considerate, even tempered . . . but it seemed that when he became at all involved with a woman, everything eventually exploded in a barrage of accusations about his character flaws. After it happens for the third time, you begin to wonder . . . He continued down Sand Point past the Federal Records Center and the entrance to Magnuson Park.

He recognized the brown-and-gold sign for the Seventy-O-One condos coming up on the left, his signpost for the place to turn. Downshifting, he clicked the turn indicator and drove uphill into View Ridge, passing large houses with manicured lawns.

Paul's
house stood at a sloping corner near the top of the tall ridge overlooking Lake Washington. It was of traditional northwest design: brown wood tones with stone accents, cedar shake roof with a wide stone chimney, a broad, raised deck, and window walls of Thermopane glass facing on the sweeping view of the lake and the Cascades. The day, begun in overcast, had turned cool and clear with the arrival of darkness. The waxing October moon was not yet up, but a sprinkling of stars to the east was already penetrating the urban sky-glow. David parked by the line of rose bushes in front.

Paul Ernst was slipping a CD of Bach cantatas into the player just as the doorbell chimed. He heard Melissa and Jeffrey already racing across the slate entryway to the front door, squealing with excitement! He rounded the corner just in time to greet David as Melissa was closing the door. 'David! Welcome!' he said. He accepted the proffered Bordeaux-shaped bottle and held it up for examination. 'Wow! "Appellation Pauillac Contrôlée, Chateau La Tour, 1982!” She was a good year,
oui
?' he asked. 'What, may I ask, is the occasion for this superior product of the vintners' art?'

Melissa and Jeff swarmed over David as he shrugged off his topcoat. Jeff took the coat and carried it to his father for hanging in the closet. Both children suggested coyly that they might like piggyback rides to the living room.

'Mmmm! I smell something absolutely wonderful!' said David, raising his voice and projecting in the direction of the kitchen. Then he turned to Paul. 'Yeah, '82 is near the top of the Bordeaux scale,' he said. 'There hasn't been a better year there in the past decade, though the '93s are looking good so far.' He dumped Jeff on the long L-shaped sofa and went back for Melissa. 'I bought it on impulse last week when I thought that tonight we'd be celebrating the final debugging of the new experiment. But, as it turns out, that celebration would be just a bit
premature
. . . ' He dumped Melissa on the sofa near Jeff and sat down between them, putting one arm around each, giving them a squeeze and heaving an exaggerated sigh of contentment. The children snuggled against him, and Melissa rumpled his hair. Paul detected a note of forced good humor in David tonight in place of his natural good spirits. Perhaps he needs a bit of cheering up, he thought.

'You mean that chrome-plated mound of fancy hardware we saw this afternoon still isn't working?' he asked in mock surprise. 'Why don't you guys design equipment that works? By the way, David, the children were very impressed with your lab. On the way home Jeff asked why I wasn't allowed to have neat stuff like yours.'

David laughed. 'What did you tell them?'