James P. Hogan (11 page)

“So, what did this Zigandan guy do for America that caused him to wind up here… or is that something we don’t ask about, too?” McCain called after him.

“Oh no, everybody knows about that. He gave them a top-secret Russian plane – a MIG-55. At least, that was what the court-martial decided. Mungabo claimed that his electronic navigation system malfunctioned, but the KGB refused to believe that the whole thing wasn’t a put-up job.”

“What made them so sure?” McCain asked.

“It was elementary. Equipment produced under a Marxist economy, they pointed out, cannot malfunction.”

Dr. Philip Kress, from the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, stared out unhappily from behind the table of panel members at the rows of delegates to the Third Conference on Communications Physics, sponsored by the Japanese Science Council and being held at the “university city” of Tsukuba.

“There are no doubt several reasons why the underwater neutrino-detection experiments have given ambiguous results.” he said. “The biggest problem all along has been statistical. We’re talking about trying to separate out a very few real events from an enormous background noise. Whichever way you approach it, you end up subtracting one big number from another big number, neither of them guaranteed absolutely, to yield a very small number, which is the answer you’re looking for. It’s a tricky problem, and we’re working on it. What else can I say?” He tossed up a hand to indicate that he was through and sat back in his chair to light his pipe.

The panel moderator, Jules Dupalme, from the French telecommunications corporation CIT Alcatel, looked from side to side for further comment from the others. “Okay? Any more questions from the floor? No? Good. Well, there is one announcement before we end the session for lunch. Would all those who —”

“One question.” A Japanese about halfway back near one of the aisles stood up. In the fifth row, Dr. Melvin Bowers, from the Plasma Physics Institute at Livermore, California, sighed and looked at his watch. He was getting hungry, and speculations about communicating via neutrinos beamed through the solid Earth weren’t his field. He shifted in his seat and tried to recall the name of the bar in the city that Sam and Max said they’d found the night before – the one with the underwearless hostesses that sat on the customers’ knees. From behind him, the voice of the Japanese continued, “I see a difficulty with the data that have been selected as candidates. There is nothing that positively excludes every one of them from being an atmospheric muon, and not a neutrino-induced muon at all. For example, if the detected muon came from below, it would have to be neutrino-induced. But that is not so in a single case. All the ones we have seen came from above. Even with a small sample, this asymmetry bothers me.”

“Phil?” Dupalme invited.

Kress shook the match between his fingers to extinguish it and dropped it into an ashtray. “I agree, it’s strange… not what you’d expect…” The answer wasn’t satisfactory even to himself. He sighed. “But we have pushed the detectability threshold back an order of magnitude. Maybe we need to re-examine the sensitivity of the detectors… It’s difficult to say without further analysis.”

“Thank you.” Unenlightened, the Japanese bowed and sat down again. Dupalme glanced down to read the announcement he had been about to make.

Then, Professor Masaki Kurishoda from Osaka University, who had been curiously reticent throughout most of the proceedings, pulled a microphone across the table. Bowers in the fifth row groaned inwardly. Kurishoda had a pudgy, humorous face and shot a genial smile at the audience through his heavy-rimmed spectacles before he spoke. “Of course.” he said, “another reason why you gentlemen are not getting unambiguous evidence for the existence of neutrinos might be that they don’t exist.” Somebody near the front started to laugh, then stopped abruptly with the realization that Kurishoda was serious. The professor regarded the audience calmly, shifting his eyes until sure that he had everyone’s attention. Even Bowers had forgotten lunch for the moment. Kurishoda spread his hands expressively. “Explaining the unknown by means of the unobservable is always a perilous business. The neutrino was postulated by Pauli simply as a book-balancing device to preserve the conservation laws of momentum and spin in the beta decay of a neutron into a proton and an electron. Every subsequent interpretation since has merely extended that convention. We scientists, you see… we think we construct objective views as dictated by facts, but really we do not. Sometimes we seek solutions within a framework of ruling academic opinion.” He paused and sent a broad smile around the room. Nobody interrupted.

He continued, “If we extend the conservation laws to include the negative energy states proposed by Dirac – and why should we restrict it to positive states only, except to satisfy convention? – then pair-production is explained without the need for a photon to mysteriously ‘turn into’ an electron-positron pair: the positron becomes simply the ‘hole’ left in the Dirac sea by the electron that has been promoted to a positive state as a result of absorbing the photon. The notion of a hole behaving like a particle might have been strange in Dirac’s time, but today, in our world full of semiconductor electronics, we take it for granted. Now, neutron decay becomes such a simple pair-production event, with the electron escaping and the positron being captured. We no longer need a neutrino to carry away the missing energy, since the electron was raised from a negative energy level to begin with. And since three particles are involved in the process, spin conservation is also satisfied.”

Kress was already spluttering farther along the table. “But… now wait a minute, I mean, what does that do to the weak nuclear force? You’ve just pulled the rug out from saying there is a weak force at all, I mean…”

Kurishoda shrugged. “I agree. And you are about to remind me of the theoretical work that has unified the weak and the electromagnetic forces since the 1980’s. But I suggest that the ‘weak’ interactions are nothing more than electromagnetic forces acting between the dipoles of elementary particles and those of electrons in negative energy states. So, if the two forces were actually only one to begin with, then the whole thing will have to be re-examined.”

A lot of muttering and head shaking was going on in the audience. “But it’s been verified, hasn’t it?” someone objected. “I mean, neutrinos are
detected
routinely. They have been, ever since the fifties.”

“Cowan and Reines.” another voice supplied. “Neutrino-induced transmutation of chlorine into argon.”

“
Presumed
to be neutrino-induced.” Kurishoda threw back, beaming, as if he had been waiting for just that. “The mechanism I have just described accounts for it equally well.”

“Experiments have been conducted which suggest they not only exist, but possess mass.” another member of the panel pointed out. “It’s been measured.”

“How else do you account for the missing mass in the universe?” somebody else in the audience called out.

“And other experimenters have found no indication of mass.” Kurishoda replied. “Some experimenters have reported that neutrinos oscillate among three forms, while others say they don’t. As for the missing mass, well, maybe we just have to look for another kind of galaxy-glue.” He half-turned, and motioned with his head. “Phil Kress himself has told us about the difficulty in observing anything, and then the ambiguity in deciding what it is. In short, it all relies on statistical methods that are questionable. There is nothing conclusive that proves neutrinos have mass, that they oscillate among three types, or that they exist at all. I contend that everything attributed to them can be explained more simply in terms that are already familiar. William of Occam would have approved.”

The audience was clearly all set for a showdown on this. Dupalme raised a hand before anyone else could respond. “Ladies and gentlemen, lunch is waiting. Perhaps we could arrange a special session this evening to explore this subject further?” He looked down inquiringly to someone in the front row, who leaned forward to mutter something up at the dais. “Yes, we’ll post details later this afternoon…” He searched for something with which to wrap the topic up for the moment. “Maybe our speculations on neutrino-beam communications through the planet were a little premature, then, eh?”

Some of the panelists grinned, while others shook their heads. The atmosphere relaxed.

“Well, there’s always tachyons to think about.” someone quipped from the audience.

“How about that, Professor Kurishoda?” another called. “Do tachyons exist?”

The professor beamed back over the top of his spectacles.

“But of course.” he replied. “A tachyon is a quantum of bad taste.”

Five minutes later, the attendees were spilling through into the central dining hall and dispersing among the tables, already set with a fish appetizer, fruit juices, and tea. Melvin Bowers headed for a quiet spot in a far corner of the room. Jenny Hampden, a research manager from Bell Labs, joined him. They’d met the previous day at breakfast in the hotel, and talked briefly during some of the breaks between sessions. She liked caving, classical music, and cats.

“Well, there goes my favorite theory.” Bowers said as they sat down.

“What theory?”

“My neutrino-bomb theory.”

“
Neutrino
bomb? That’s a new one.”

“Think about it.” Bowers said. “It meets all the requirements for the perfect strategic weapon. It keeps defense contractors profitable and employs people. It justifies the jobs of Pentagon generals and defense analysts. And it gives the media a new scare-word and the peaceniks something to howl about.” He smoothed his napkin across his knees and turned up his palms. “
But
, it has no undesirable side effects: it doesn’t damage property or kill people. The perfect bomb!”

Jenny laughed. “Maybe we could have neutrino-power reactors, too – something to divert the oppositionists away from fusion. Then maybe it could all come on-line, and they mightn’t even notice.”

“Hm, there might be something in that, too. I wish somebody’d thought of it back in the seventies.”

Jenny put down her fork suddenly. “Oh, Mel, there’s something I forgot. Look, I have to see Takuji right now. I promised him some slides for the talk he’s giving this afternoon. Would you excuse me? I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“Sure. I’ll have them hold the entree.”

“Thanks.” Jenny got up and disappeared in the direction of the door.

Bowers carried on eating alone. Was it called the Yellow Dragon? Red Dragon?… No, not Dragon, but Red something… He didn’t notice the tall, elegantly groomed figure approaching from among the bodies still milling about to find places in the middle of the room. “Ah, Dr. Bowers, good day to you.”

Bowers looked up. “Igor Lukich.” he said, using the Russian familiar patronymic.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

“Not at all. Sit down, please. Oh, not there. That side’s taken.”

It was Professor Dyashkin, the director of a Soviet communications-research establishment in Siberia. Dyashkin’s name was known internationally, and he and Bowers were friends from previous professional gatherings in Moscow and Bombay. They had both been involved in an informal spontaneous discussion that had taken place the night before among a group of scientists at one of the hotels in which the conference attendees were staying.

“An interesting notion of Kurishoda’s.” Bowers said after Dyashkin had sat down. “I was just saying to the friend I’m with – Jenny Hampden of Bell, I don’t know if you’ve met; she’ll be back in a few minutes – neutrinos would make the perfect bomb. Then all of you and all of us could stop worrying, eh?”

Dyashkin smiled automatically, but he didn’t ask Bowers to elaborate and was evidently not in the mood for small talk. He scanned the surroundings constantly with his eyes, and seemed nervous, Bowers became serious and looked at the Russian inquiringly as he continued eating, “We know each other from several years now, yes, Dr. Bowers?” Dyashkin said. He spoke guardedly, with an elbow resting on the table and a hand covering his mouth.

Bowers nodded. “I guess so – in a formal kind of way, anyhow.”

“Even so, sometimes we must take risks and trust our judgment. I judge you as someone who can be trusted.”

Bowers wiped his mouth with a corner of his napkin and resumed chewing slowly. When he spoke, his voice had dropped to match Dyashkin’s. “What are you driving at?”

“When are you due to go back to the USA?” Dyashkin asked.

“Well, I’m on a one-year exchange here in Osaka. But I was planning to go home for a vacation right after this conference is over. Why?”

“Anyone might join us at the table, so I come straight to the point while we are alone.” Bowers waited. Dyashkin drew a long, shaky breath. “Look, Dr. Bowers, it is possible that I might be interested in coming over, if the conditions were right. You understand?”

It took Bowers a moment. “To us, you mean? Over to our side?”

Dyashkin nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yes. Personal reasons – too much to go into now. But what I want to know from you is, would you be willing to convey my proposition to the appropriate authorities?”

“Proposition? But I don’t know anything about what it is. How would —”

“I can arrange that. What I have to know now is, would you be willing to help me?”

Bowers chewed in silence for a while. “I’ll have to think about it.” he said finally.

“How long will you need? Please understand that we constantly risk being under observation when we travel abroad. The KGB even infiltrate their people into conferences such as this.”

“Give me until tonight. I’ll meet you in the bar of our hotel at, say, eight. Do you think it would be safe to talk there?”

Dyashkin shook his head. “I don’t want to talk. All I need at this stage is a yes or a no answer.”

“Okay, I won’t say anything. If I offer to stand the first round of drinks, the answer’s yes. Okay?”

“As you say, a deal.”

Two more figures materialized at the table. “Gustav and Sandy.” Bowers greeted. “It’s about time – we were starting to get lonely here. Say, did I ever tell you my theory about the perfect bomb?…”