Deception (10 page)

“But I need that computer time. If we have to stop now, we'll lose all the momentum we've built up.”

“Don't worry. You'll have it.”

“Once the ball gets rolling, on something like this, you can't stop it. No, no. You just can't.”

“Don't worry about the computers,” Keyes said. “Worry about your end, Ed. Let me worry about mine.”

2.

Twenty minutes later, they were back in the game room with the stuttering lights of the pinball machine, drinking coffee that burned straight through Keyes's stomach.

Greenwich was talking again. As the man spoke, Keyes noticed, he was picking his nose.

“… above the board, at some point down the line. Of course, I realize the need for security. These days more than ever. That goes without saying. But in five years, or ten, I'm not sure I see the harm …”

Keyes could read between the lines. Greenwich, between picks, was thinking about the Nobel again. “Ed,” he said. “First things first. Okay?”

“Sure,” Greenwich said. “First things first. I'm just thinking aloud.”

“Think all you want. No harm in thinking.”

The reprimand was implied:
As long as you don't do what you did yesterday. As long as you keep it in the realm of thought.

Personally, Keyes was pleased that Greenwich had gone ahead. But officially, he had responsibilities—no matter how eager he might have been to bring the Project to quick fruition.

He could sense the man's frustration at his response. Greenwich thought that Keyes was a bureaucrat, interested only in the nuts-and-bolts results of the Project—the liberated vacuum energy, the defensive applications, the research potential. Greenwich thought he couldn't see the deeper philosophical implications of what they were trying to accomplish here. But if that had been the case, would Keyes have taken the chance he was taking by providing cover for Greenwich now? Would he have taken the chance of hitching his cart to this particular horse, after Greenwich had gone ahead the previous day without authorization? No. He understood the importance of the Project, all right. He understood it on every level. And Greenwich's refusal to recognize this struck him as patronizing.

Greenwich wasn't going to let go of the topic, Keyes realized, despite the implied reprimand. The man wanted some guarantee of credit.

“Without these machines,” Greenwich said loftily, “we would be incapable of reaching so far. But without
this
machine”—he tapped an index finger against one bony temple—“we would never have known to reach in the first place.”

This was undeniably true. Greenwich had been the one who had developed the model of space-time with compactified extra dimensions, thereby opening the door for the Project to proceed.

Keyes remembered the very first time the man had explained the Project to him—putting it in such simple terms that everything had clicked together, even for an admittedly literal-minded man like Keyes.
Space-time is finite yet unbounded
, Greenwich had said.
Picture a globe representing the earth. You can travel in any one direction on the globe and never hit a boundary. Yet the surface area is finite. That's how space-time is, Jim. And all we're going to do is poke a little hole
—
make a tunnel from one side of the globe to the other. Cut right through the middle. But you've got to remember, it's time as well as space we'll be crossing …

Later had come other metaphors. They would bend space-time into the shape of a saddle and leap from one horn to another. None of the metaphors were strictly accurate, since three-dimensional beings were by definition incapable of picturing four-dimensional space-time. But it was the first metaphor, of the globe, to which Keyes had clung. That picture, he could understand.
Finite, yet unbounded.

Greenwich had even managed to provide Keyes with some sense of context—a thumbnail sketch of physics and relativity. Relativity, Greenwich had explained, was not nearly as difficult a subject as was widely believed. The secret, he said, was simple.

The secret was light.

They'd been sitting in Keyes's Vermont office, discussing the nature of the universe calmly and quietly, drinking ice water from a cut-glass decanter.

We've known for centuries that light does not travel infinitely fast. A Dutch astronomer figured this out way back in 1676
—
by observing that the eclipses of Jupiter's moons occur later in the night when Jupiter is farther away from earth. That means that the light has traveled to us at a less-than-infinite speed. He even took a shot at naming that speed; and he got pretty close, considering what he had to work with. He suggested that light travels at 140,000 miles per second. We now know that the figure is closer to 186,000 miles per second. Are you with me so far
?

Keyes had assured the man that he was.

But when you measure something's speed, you need to measure that speed relative to something. A young patent clerk named Albert Einstein answered the question “What is light moving relative to?” thus: Light is the speed limit of the universe, and everybody measures it the same no matter how fast they are moving through space. Time stretches to make this possible. Distance, of course, is simply rate multiplied by time. If distances vary, and yet the rate of light always stays the same, something in the equation has to give
—
in this case, time.

He'd seen the frown appearing on Keyes's brow.
It's not so hard
, he'd said quickly.
Say a pulse of light is coming toward us. I'm standing still; you're walking forward. You're moving at four miles per hour. By conventional thinking, the light would seem that much slower to you. Yet we both see the light traveling at 186,000 miles per second. Time stretches to make this possible.

The frown had diminished, but remained.

You just need to give up the idea of absolute time
, Greenwich had said.
You need to accept that space and time are two sides of the same coin
—
space-time
—
both existing without absolutes, and both relative to one's motion.

It was a difficult idea for humans, he admitted, because humans saw time as moving forward, unchanging. But that was wrong. To understand the Project, Keyes would need to accept this fact.

He had accepted it gladly. Time was only an illusion? Yes, he could happily embrace that idea. The philosophical implications were not only staggering, but rather pleasing.

Yes, yes. So. A few years after publishing his “special” theory of relativity, Einstein published a “general” theory of relativity. Gravity is not like other forces, he said, but is a result of the fact that space-time is warped by the distribution of mass and energy in it. Planets don't circle around the sun; they follow the nearest thing to a straight path in curved space-time. Observation of the orbits of our own planets, you know, confirms this theory. Einstein's equations predict them more accurately than Newton's.

We as a species, Greenwich was saying, are too small to see the universe the way it is. The simple fact is that we are three-dimensional beings living in a four-dimensional world, and the fourth dimension is time. And if one could travel a great enough distance through space-time, one might come out not only somewhere else, but some-
when
else.

Greenwich had given him a moment to absorb this, and then continued:

Black holes, Jim, are holes in space-time, created when the terrific gravity and energy-density of a collapsing star puncture the fabric of our universe. If we could create a black hole in a laboratory …

…
which would most likely be accomplished by smashing together matter at high speeds, he had explained, in a particle accelerator like the one that formed the core of gamma site …

…
perhaps we could break out from the restrictions of being three-dimensional, of experiencing time in a simple linear fashion.

But it would not be a risk-free proposition. For if the black hole manufactured in the laboratory proved beyond their ability to control, the consequences could be devastating.

Yet Epstein's formula would enable them to accurately predict the lifetime of the black holes they would be making in the lab, to avoid such an event. This was a very good thing, Greenwich had explained; for they faced competition, and time was of the essence. The Large Hadron Collider under construction at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva, was scheduled to start smashing together protons and antiprotons in 2006.

By the time Greenwich had finished talking, Keyes had been convinced. Not to take the risk would be foolish. If one wanted to play in the big leagues, one had to take the big chances. In this case, the
very
big chances. But the potential benefits made it worth the risk—more than worth the risk.

“Ed,” he said gravely. “You won't be forgotten.”

“It's not about credit,” Greenwich said, unconvincingly.

“I know. I just want to assure you—you won't be forgotten.”

Greenwich pursed his lips. He sipped his coffee; his Adam's apple jumped.

“You might get a call from Chen,” he said then. “Chen's getting cold feet.”

Keyes nodded.

“Don't listen to him. All men have doubts. It's only human to have doubts.”

“I understand.” Keyes refrained from adding,
I'm on your side, here. Can't you see that
?

“Remember the moon landing,” Greenwich said. “‘For one priceless moment, in the history of man, all the people of this earth are truly one.' That's what we're aiming for, Jim.”

“You don't have to tell me, Ed. I'm with you on this.”

“When Chen calls, hear him out. Otherwise he might try to go over your head.”

“All right.”

“And don't forget who stayed on your side.”

That seemed a fine note on which to end. Keyes nodded again, stood, and offered his hand. They shook. He moved outside, into the waiting Town Car.

Greenwich wouldn't be forgotten, he thought as they rumbled back down the gravel road; that was true. The man was all too concerned with getting due credit. Science for the sake of science sounded good on paper, but when it came down to it, Greenwich would insist that his contribution be recognized. Like Epstein, he didn't have his feet on the ground. He had no appreciation for matters of security. And if he felt that his reward was not adequate for the services he had rendered, how would he react?

Would he run, like Epstein? Would he try to find another sponsor besides the U.S. government?

In time, Greenwich would be dealt with. In time, all the loose ends would be tied up. But first they needed to move on to Critical Achievement Three. And to do that, he needed Greenwich to repeat Epstein's results.

Soon
, Keyes thought.

Two minutes passed. The gravel turned to pavement; Keyes began to feel drowsy. The desert around them was uninterrupted, and lulling in its vastness.

Once the ball gets rolling, on something like this, you can't stop it.

And they had picked up a fair amount of momentum, hadn't they? He could envision the ball rolling—a ball of snow thundering down a hill, accreting more snow as it went, becoming heavier and unstoppable.

Jeremy, he thought then, had possessed some dizzying momentum of his own.

Jeremy had been forever in motion. When he had pedaled his bicycle into the driveway, he had managed a trick—dismounting without losing even an iota of his remarkable momentum. No matter how many times he had been chastised, he had kept on. In his mind's eye, Keyes could see the trick as clearly as if he had seen it just yesterday. Jeremy slipping off the banana seat, barging toward the front door as the bicycle continued to roll into the carport, finally coming to rest against one wall. The bicycle never fell down. Why
should
Jeremy have stopped doing the trick, despite the scolding? The bicycle never fell down. It rolled neatly over the gravel and came gently to rest, propping itself against a wall as if by magic, and by then Jeremy was inside the house, finding a snack, moving toward the television or the computer, having maintained that remarkable momentum that had carried him through life at such high speeds …

He was dozing.

No, he was awake. He shifted in the seat. Up front, the driver was listening to quiet talk radio.

He yawned. He wasn't dozing. He wasn't even sleepy.

The radio droned.

He slept.

3.

There was a message from Dietz.

Keyes sat in his darkened office, dialing.
Let it be good news
, he thought. If it was good news—if they had found Epstein, and finally taken care of the man—then he would reward himself with a morning off. A heavy breakfast, followed by a nap. If it was good news, the diet could go to blazes. But if not …

“Dietz,” a voice said.

“It's Jim Keyes,” Keyes said.

Dietz hesitated—and Keyes knew immediately that it was not good news.

They had taken care of Epstein, Dietz reported. But there had been complications.

The man's cabin and luggage had been searched, to no result. So it seemed as if Epstein had left no record of his work. But there was a possible problem. Leonard had seen the man and his wife talking with a young woman, at the fortress of Sapienza, in a way that Leonard had judged to be all too intense. There had been something between them—something of considerable importance to Epstein. And so it was possible, Dietz admitted, that in fact Epstein
had
kept a record of his work. It was even possible that he had been in league with the young woman, in some capacity. Perhaps she represented a foreign interest …

Keyes put his head in one hand as his other held the telephone. His fingers moved: small circles, circles within circles. So Epstein had sold out, after all. After so much progress, they would be stopped by this—an old-fashioned security leak. Not only would they lose the formula, but it might also fall into enemy hands. And the prospect of the formula in the wrong hands was utterly terrifying.