Dante's Equation Part 2

Grover was putzing at a monitor. In his shorts and Birkenstocks he gave the impression of an aging beach b.u.m. A full beard added to the disguise. The university bra.s.s ate it up. "Jill Talcott," he said, as though naming an inkblot in a routine psych exam. Jill forced a pleasant look. "How are you, Dr. Grover? How's the baby?" "Blew some chunks the other day, but she's back up. Whaddya need? I'm superbusy." "Well, you see, Dr. Grover-"

"Chuck." "Chuck, I need some time on Quey. You may remember from staff meetings that I'm working on wave mechanics. I've worked out an equation and I'm ready to crunch some numbers."

"So file a request with the Committee."

"I'd rather not. I only need a few hours. Two slots, two hours each, would be fine. I'm willing to do them in the middle of the night." Her voice was crisp, no-nonsense. He glanced up at her, amused. "You'd 'rather not'?You've got b.a.l.l.s. Jill the Chill." This last was muttered, almost too low for her to hear. "What was that?" "Nothin'. Sorry, but we're already scheduled twenty-four seven." He typed in something at the keyboard and a diagnostic screen appeared.

Jill was prepared for rejection. Even the insult of that ridiculous nickname only made her more resolute. Her chin came up. "This work is incredibly important, Chuck. If my equation works-and itwill work-it'll be groundbreaking. Particularly the way I've . . . that is . . ."

"It's up to the Committee to decide if your work has merit."

The Committee: Grover himself, d.i.c.k Chalmers, the physics department head, and President Reardon. The three heads of Cerberus.

"I'm not ready to show my work to the Committee," Jill said impatiently. "There's got to be something we can work out."

Grover swiveled away from the keyboard and eyed her appraisingly as if considering menu items on a cold buffet. Jill thought it was the first time he'd everreally looked at her. She knew what he'd see: an a.s.sociate professor, low on the radar, a thirty-four-year-old pixie-sized southern woman with boring taste in clothes, no makeup, no glamour. He'd see all that, but what she hoped he'dalso see was the ambition in her eyes. Jill the Chill. Maybe. But a man like Chuck Grover ought to know the value of being tough.

"Look, Chuck, no wave mechanics equation has ever been proven, because they can't be run on a conventional computer-there's way too much data to crunch. You beat everyone with your technology, but in ten years, there'll be another two dozen quantum computers atleast . Sooner or later someone is going to solve wave mechanics and it's going to be a major event. It's either going to beyour quantum computer or it'll be someone else's. I want to make it yours."

It was the speech she'd prepared, and she thought it was a good one.

He patted his pocket, found his cigarettes. "Lemme show you somethin', Jill."

He led her out of the Shrine and up a floor to his office. It was Grand Central Station compared to hers. Stacked along the front of his desk were dozens of wire baskets filled with files. At the sight of them, Jill began chewing on a fingernail.

"Do you know what those are?" he asked, lighting up.

She nodded, hopes sinking.

"That's right. Official requests for Quey's time from all over the world. And do you know how many of them are about wave mechanics?"

She had a moment of sheer terror. "How many?"

Grover made her wait for it. He plopped down in his chair and tapped his ashes in a coffee cup. "Well . . . only two that I can remember. But I get more every day, and I haven't looked through the new requests in a couple of weeks."

"Chuck! Whoever else is working on this, they can't be as close as I am. And besides, I'm right here at Udub, not halfway around the world! Isn't that why the university pays you through the nose? So thatour department,our staff, can become world leaders in physics research? Isn't that the deal?"

"Bottom line, some of the people who want Quey-and that means they wantme- are big names, Jill.Big names. So if I give you time instead of them there has to be something in it for me."

He waited, obviously expecting something. What? Not her body; his eyes told her that. s.h.i.+t. Normally, she didn't give a good G.o.dd.a.m.n what anybody thought, so she was lousy at reading people. She took a shot.

"If my equation works, I'll be able to publish in the best journals. There might even be a book in it.

Naturally, I'll credit your work. Quey's an important part of the process." "I'm glad you see it like that. The thing is, I can't tell if you're full of s.h.i.+nola or not, can I, since you refuse to file your theory?"

"But-"

"Forget it. I wouldn't have time to review your work if you printed it in fifty-point font and hung it

over my bed." He smirked at his own cleverness. "The point is, if I let you use Quey it's a risk-there's got to be an upside for me. I want co-authors.h.i.+p." He said it so casually. For a moment Jill was sure he was joking. She waited for him to crack a smile or say "gotcha." He didn't.

"But . . . you don't know anything about my work."

"And you know about Quey? Face it-without her you can't crunch the numbers. Without the

numbers your theory is one of thousands, not even interesting to the lowliest publication. So much

TP in other words. Isn't that right?"

He looked so infuriatingly indifferent. Whether she took his offer or not or did a striptease in front of his desk, it was all the same to Chuck Grover.

"But Quey is atool ! Like a particle accelerator or a telescope. You can't claim credit for my work just because I use a tool you built!" "That's harsh, Jill." Grover stubbed out his cigarette, looking deeply disappointed. "I prefer to think of us as a team. But if that's not how you see it I guess you'd better just go through the channels like everybody else." He walked to the door.

Jill was not naive. She prided herself on knowing the score, particularly when the score in question was hardball as played in academia. But even she was stunned at Grover's cojones. He thought he could glom onto the work of others, those without the clout to kick up a fuss, because he held the keys to Heaven. And he was absolutely right.

"Fine," she blurted. "I agree. But in return you've got to give me a little flexibility. I may need a couple of run-throughs." "Three slots," Grover said crisply. "Three hours each, between midnight and threeA .M." Jill nodded her a.s.sent, biting her lips over what she really wanted to say.

Grover grinned, his happy self once more. "Cool. Send me an E-mail. We'll work out the schedule." As he walked away, Jill heard the mocking voices of the faculty saying that to get Quey, Reardon would have given his firstborn son.

*** Jill slipped into her office and leaned against the door, grateful for the privacy to vent. Only she was not alone and couldn't vent. Her grad student, Nate Andros, was in early. The office was so tiny that accommodating his desk and hers left barely enough room to open the door and an aisle so narrow even Jill, a size 4, had to turn sideways to get through it. In this small s.p.a.ce Nate was a startling apparition, with wild black curly hair, olive skin, and large dark eyes. He was saved from being outright gorgeous by his unkempt mop and a slovenly dress code. Any myth of exotic origins was killed by a flat Boston accent.

"Morning. You look like you're being chased by the undead."

"Close." Jill made herself pull it together. Nate was still a pup; she didn't want to be the one to clue him in on the cannibalism of university peers. "Did we get our time on Quey?" "Yup." Jill scooted past his chair. "Cool!" Nate smiled happily. She poured herself a cup of coffee from the community pot. "You haven't told anyone about our work, have you? Any of the other students?" "Only Susie Forester and Gretchen Mach. Traded it for s.e.xual favors." Nate took a sip of his coffee. "Very funny." "Why are we keeping this so secret, Dr. Talcott?" He widened those big dark eyes, the look in them a little more astute than she liked.

Her first instinct was to evade the issue, as usual. But if things progressed, and it looked now as though they actually might, he should know the risks. She perched on the edge of her desk, the cup warming her cold hands. "Okay. It's like this: The theory I'm playing with is extremely unpopular. In fact, it could probably get me fired."

"Um . . . I know it's not exactly standard, but . . . isn't that what science is about? Experimentation? Thinking outside the box?" "No,"she huffed a laugh. "Science is about what's s.e.xy. You play with the s.e.xiest theories because that's where the grants and prestige are. What youdon't do is play with theories everyone else thinks are laughable. Andwe're working on a real howler."

"It would be particularly funny if we were right," Nate said dryly. Jill's chest constricted with longing. It was all she had ever wanted in life, to have this career, to be famous. Grover. What a jerk. He already had the grants, the kowtowing university bra.s.s, the sidebars in scientific textbooks. But he wasn't content with all that; he had to haveher work as well.

What wasreally funny was that he probably played that little game with every peon who came into his office on the off chance that he might get lucky someday. He had no idea.

If she wasright it would change physics forever. And d.a.m.n if she didn't think she had a good shot. She took a drink of coffee, her legs bouncing against the desk with nervous energy. "Did I ever tell you about Dr. Ansel?"

Nate shook his head, face curious.

"I was.h.i.+s graduate student. The energy pool theory was his pet obsession."

"Was this at the University of Tennessee? That's where you graduated from, right?"

She nodded, surprised he knew her alma mater. It certainly was not a name she ever dropped.

"Ansel was brilliant. Hehad been at Harvard before he started to talk about 'energy pools.' "

She made a face. Then she noticed that Nate wasn't looking at her face. He was watching her legs- waytoo closely. He had a knack for reminding her that he was male and she was not. She stopped bouncing and pushed her way to the front of her desk, putting distance, and a good chunk of wood, between them. Annoying. When Nate first came to her she'd a.s.sumed he was gay. It was that soft, moony edge to him and the fact that he lived on Capitol Hill-the artsiest, and gayest, Seattle neighborhood. Which just went to show how little she knew, or cared, about men.

"Um, is the energy pool model in your equation the same one Ansel was working with?" Nate asked, pretending he hadn't just been caught watching her legs.

"Basically. Ansel's energy pool theory was that all matter exists as energy waves in a higher dimension. What looks solid and three-dimensional to us-objects, people-is really nothing but pure energy. Something in our brains translates these energy waves to 3-D, like the projection of a hologram.

"In Ansel's model subatomic particles are energy waves. s.p.a.ce-time is like a huge pond and particles are like pebbles being thrown into the pond. Imagine the smooth surface of a pond being inundated by billions of pebbles. Each pebble creates ripples-that's the energy waves. And all of those ripples intersect with each other and create interference patterns."

"Interference patterns," Nate intoned. "When two waves merge they create a third wave pattern. Where crest meets crest it creates a bigger crest, where trough meets trough you get a deeper trough, and when crest meets trough they subtract from one another."

"Yes, and that process is repeated over and over as the waves ripple out and interfere withother waves. The entire pond is one huge, chaotic pattern. But itisn't chaotic. That's the key. Each wave is generated in a very mathematical way. What Ansel never got around to was the idea of mapping these altered wavesback onto matter. That's what my wave mechanics equation attempts to do: predict the behavior of subatomic particles based on the interaction of wave patterns in the higher dimension."

Jill sipped at her coffee. It was bitter. She preferred lattes but was always too consumed to walk outside to one of the ubiquitous coffee stands and get one. Even now, as her tongue registered the bitterness, her mind went back to its intellectual acrobatics. The enormity of it was staggering. The idea that all changes in the physical world-the growth and decay of cells, the firing of synapses in the brain, germination of seeds, everything-could be traced back to the interaction of energy patterns and, therefore, someday bepredictable , maybe evenartificially manipulated . . . Christ. It was bigger than the discovery of DNA. Itwas .

"I always liked your energy pool theory." Nate pushed his chair upright with a bang. "It reminds me of Herac.l.i.tus. Ever heard of him? He said the universe is both 'the many' and 'the one' and that 'the one' consists of the integrated movement of 'the many.' "

Nate's undergrad had been in philosophy, explaining why such a bright boy hadn't gotten s.n.a.t.c.hed up by a professor higher in rank than Jill Talcott.

She scowled. "That's exactly the kind of thinking that makes this theory unpopular! It's a perfectly logical scientific model, and any attempts to connect it to psuedomystical, wacko ideas can only hurt it!"

"So you don't like the comparison, then," Nate said, with a straight face.

Jill hmphed.

"What interests me is howyou hooked up with Ansel. You're pretty conventional, Dr. Talcott."

d.a.m.n. Hewas a bright boy. "The important thing," Jill countered, with a tone that firmly closedthat topic, "is to get ready for our time on Quey. We're only going to get a few hours, so the test run has to be perfect."

Nate hoisted himself to his feet and stretched, forcing Jill to look away from the tightening expanse of T-s.h.i.+rt material.

"I'm up for whatever. But what numbers are you gonna feed Quey? Your equation is reiterative. In an ideal world it could account for all the particles in the universe interfering with all other particles all the time. Not even Quey could crunchthat kind of data."

Jill took a diskette from her briefcase, barely able to suppress a self-congratulatory chortle. She laid it on her desk with an exaggeratedtwump .

"What's that?"

"Data from the particle accelerator at CERN. They took snapshots of a carbon atom once a nanosecond for a full second. It's accurate enough to test my equation-we plug in the state of all the particles at timex and see if my equation can predict what they'll do from there. But best of all . . ." she could barely restrain herself, ". . . the carbon atom wasin a vacuum ."

Nate had a half-pleased smile on his face, but he didn't quite get it.

"So,we only have to calculate the interference that would occurbetween the particles of the carbon atom itself. In other words, we have a pond with a limited number of pebbles in it. Quey ought to be able to calculatethat ."

Nate's face grew serious. He looked at the data, looked back up at her. "s.h.i.+t, Jill . . . I mean . . . dang, Dr. Talcott, we can really test your equation.Really test it. "

Jill the Chill permitted herself a moment of unrestrained triumph. Insoluble equations were about to be solved, and she was going to be the one to do it. She had been very quietly setting up this hand for years. Ace #1, her elegant equation based on Ansel's theory and a lot of her own d.a.m.ned hard work. Ace #2, her access to a quantum computer. Ace #3, the carbon atom data, attained using technology so cutting-edge it drew blood.

Genius was all well and good, but timing, luck, and access to the newest toys played a role in scientific discovery, too. She was pretty sure there wasn't another scientist in the world who could match the cards she held at this moment.

Jill Talcott, Tennessee long shot, was about to move into the lead.

Isaac Luria said that before creation the emanations of divine light, the Sephirot, were stored in vessels. One day the vessels shattered and the light escaped in tiny fragments. This "shattering of the vessels" is the same thing as Lemaitre's "big bang." Before creation all the Sephirot were separate, all "in their own vessels," because in the spiritual dimensions "closeness" and "distance" are the very same thing as "similar" and "dissimilar." In the spiritual world, things are near each other only to the degree that they are exactly alike. So when G-d wanted to mingle his rainbow-like Sephirot together, he had to create physical s.p.a.ce and time, a place where opposites can meet.

-Yosef Kobinski,"The Book of Mercy,"1935

2.1. Denton Wyle

APRIL UPSTATENEWYORK.

Denton pulled the rental car into the gravel parking lot and peered at the white stone edifice.HEBREW ACADEMY OF SYRACUSE , the sign said. It wasn't particularly exotic-looking, just a turn-of-thecentury Greek revival surrounded by woods, but the granite played nicely against the maples and aspens. He got out of the car and took a couple of pictures.

A fifteen-year-old boy with a yarmulke and black pants made a dash up the drive and pulled open the heavy wooden door. Not exactly the cloistered, monklike atmosphere Denton had expected- modified with side-locks and Torah scrolls, of course-but that was all right. A little poetic license was always a possibility.

Inside, there was no receptionist. A man walking through the foyer took notice of Denton. The man had a beard growing untrimmed and white fringes showing under his black vest. Better.

"Can I help you?"

Denton smiled. "That'd be great. I have an appointment with Rabbi Schwartz."

He was led down a broad corridor. He paused to take in a library, visible through an impressive arch. A few young students sat reading at a long table. Beyond them, in a smaller niche, were two older men, middle-aged and bearded like his guide. They were poring over fragments of paper laid flat on the table, s.h.i.+fting a sc.r.a.p delicately with tweezers. There was an air of intense focus about them, of Serious Work. Denton couldn't resist popping off a few shots with his digital camera.

"This way, please," his guide prompted, coming back for him with a disapproving air.

"Sure thing."

Rabbi Schwartz was a plump man who gave off waves of authority. He looked to be around fifty, with s.h.i.+mmering strands of silver in a black, curly beard. He was pale and carried at least thirty unnecessary pounds, giving the impression of a man who seldom rose from his desk.

"Come in, Mr. Wyle. You phoned with a recommendation from Roger Steiner in New York?"