The Light of Other Days

part 1: THE GOLDFISH BOWL Chapter 3 - THE WORMWORKS
Hiram was waiting for David Curzon in the arrivals hall at SeaTac.

Hiram was simply overwhelming. He immediately grabbed David's shoulders and pulled him close. David could smell powerful cologne, synth-tobacco, a lingering trace of spices. Hiram was nearing seventy, but didn't show it, no doubt thanks to antiaging treatments and subtle cosmetic sculpting. He was tall and dark - where David, taking after his mother, was more stocky, blond, leaning to plump.

And here was that voice David hadn't heard since he was five years old, the face - blue eyes, strong nose - that had loomed over him like a giant Moon. "My boy. It's been too long. Come on. We've got a hell of a lot to catch up on..."

David had spent most of the flight from England composing himself for this encounter. You are thirty-two years old, he told himself. You have a tenured position at Oxford. Your papers, and your popular book on the exotic mathematics of quantum physics, have been extremely well received. This man may be your father. But he abandoned you, and has no hold over you.

You are an adult now. You have your faith. You have nothing to fear.

But Hiram, as he surely intended, had broken through all David's defenses in the first five seconds of their encounter. David, bewildered, allowed himself to be led away.

Hiram took his son straight to his research facility-the Wormworks, as he called it-out to the north of Seattle itself. The drive, in a SmartDrive Rolls, was fast and scary. Controlled by positioning satellites and intelligent in-car software, the vehicles flowed along the freeways at more than 150 kilometers an hour, mere centimeters between their bumpers; it was all much more aggressive than David was used to in Europe. But the city, what he saw of it, struck him as quite European, a place of fine, well-preserved houses with expansive views of hills and sea, the more modern developments integrated reasonably gracefully with the overall feel of the place. The downtown area seemed to be bustling, as the Christmas buying season descended once more.

He remembered little of the place but childhood fragments: the small boat Hiram used to run out of the Sound, trips above the snow line hi winter. He'd been back to America many times before, of course; theoretical physics was an international discipline. But he'd never returned to Seattle-not since the day his mother had so memorably bundled him up and stormed out of Hiram's home.

Hiram talked continually, peppering his son with questions.

"So you feel settled in England?"

"Well, you know about the climate problems. But even icebound, Oxford is a fine place to live. Especially since they abolished private cars inside the ring road, and."

"Those stuck-up British toffs don't pick on you for that French accent?"

"Father, I am French. That's my identity."

"But not your citizenship." Hiram slapped his son's thigh. "You're an American. Don't forget that." He glanced at David more warily. "And are you still practicing?"

David smiled. "You mean, am I still a Catholic? Yes, Father."

Hiram grunted. "That bloody mother of yours. Biggest mistake I ever made was shackling myself to her without taking account of her religion. And now she's passed the God virus on to you."

David felt his nostrils flare. "Your language is offensive."

"...Yes. I'm sorry. So, England is a good place to be a Catholic nowadays?"

"Since they disestablished the Church, England has acquired one of the healthiest Catholic communities in the world."

Hiram grunted. "You don't often hear the words "healthy" and "Catholic" in the same sentence... We're here."

They had reached a broad parking lot. The car pulled over. David climbed out after his father. They were close to the ocean here, and David was immediately immersed in chill, salt-laden air.

The lot fringed a large open building, crudely constructed of concrete and corrugated metal, like an aircraft hangar. There was a giant corrugated door at one end, partly open, and robot trucks were hauling cartons into the building from a stack outside.

Hiram led his son to a small, human-sized door cut in one wall; it was dwarfed by the scale of the structure. "Welcome to the center of the universe." Hiram looked abashed, suddenly. "Look, I dragged you out here without thinking. I know you're just off your flight. If you need a break, a shower - "

Hiram seemed full of genuine concern for his welfare, and David couldn't resist a smile. "Maybe coffee, a little later. Show me your new toy."

The space within was cold, cavernous. As they walked across the dusty concrete floor their footsteps echoed. The roof was ribbed, and strip lights dangled everywhere, filling the vast volume with a cold, pervasive gray light. There was a sense of hush, of calm; David was reminded more of a cathedral than a technological facility.

At the center of the building a stack of equipment towered above the handful of technicians working here. David was a theoretician, not an experimentalist, but he recognized the paraphernalia of a high-energy experimental rig. There were subatomic-particle detectors - arrays of crystal blocks stacked high and deep-and boxes of control electronics piled up like white bricks, dwarfed by the detector array itself, but each itself the size of a mobile home.

The technicians weren't typical of a high-energy physics establishment, however. On average they seemed quite old - perhaps around sixty, given how hard it was to estimate ages these days.

He raised this with Hiram.

"Yeah. OurWorld makes the policy of hiring older workers anyhow. They're conscientious, generally as smart as they ever were thanks to the brain chemicals they give us now, and grateful for a job. And in this case, most of the people here are victims of the SSC cancellation."

"The SSC-the Superconducting Super Collider?" A multibillion-dollar particle-accelerator project that would have been built under a cornfield in Texas, had it not been canned by Congress in the 1990s.

Hiram said, "A whole generation of American particle physicists was hit by that decision. They survived; they found jobs in industry and Wall Street and so forth. Most of them never got over their disappointment, however."

"But the SSC would have been a mistake. The linear accelerator technology that came along a few years later was far more effective, and cheaper. And besides most fundamental results in particle physics since 2010 or so have come from studies of high-energy cosmological events."

"It doesn't matter. Not to these people. The SSC might have been a mistake. But it would have been their mistake. When I traced these guys and offered them a chance to come work in cutting-edge high-energy physics again they jumped at the chance." He eyed his son. "You know, you're a smart boy. David."

"I'm not a boy."

"You had the kind of education I could never even have dreamed of. But there's a lot I could teach you even so. Like how to handle people." He waved a hand at the technicians. "Look at these guys- They're working for a promise: for dreams of their youth, aspiration, self-fulfillment. If you can find some way to tap into that, you can get people to work like pit ponies, and for pennies."

David followed him, frowning.

They reached a guardrail, and one gray-haired technician-with a curt, somewhat awed nod at Hiram-handed them hard hats. David fitted his gingerly to his head.

David leaned over the rail. He could smell machine oil, insulation, cleaning solvents. From here he could see that the detector array actually extended some distance below the ground surface. At the center of the pit was a tight knot of machinery, dark and unfamiliar. A puff of vapor, like wispy steam, billowed from the core of the machinery: cryogenics, perhaps. There was a whirr, somewhere above. David looked up to see a beam crane in action, a long steel beam that extended over the detector array, with a grabbing arm at the end.

Hiram murmured, "Most of this stuff is just detectors of one kind or another, so we can figure out what is going on - particularly when something goes wrong." He pointed at the knot of machinery at the core of the array. "That is the business end. A cluster of superconducting magnets."

"Hence the cryogenics."

"Yes. We make our big electromagnetic fields in there, the fields we use to build our buckyball Casimir engines." There was pride in his voice - justifiable, thought David. "This was the very site where we opened up that first wormhole, back in the spring. I'm getting a plaque put up, you know, one of those historic markers. Call me immodest. Now we're using this place to push the technology further, as far and as fast as we can."

David turned to Hiram. "Why have you brought me out here?"

"...Just the question I was going to ask."

The third voice, utterly unexpected, clearly startled Hiram.

A figure stepped out of the shadows of the detector stack, and came to stand beside Hiram. For a moment David's heart pumped, for it might have been Hiram's twin - or his premature ghost. But at second glance David could detect differences; the second man was considerably younger, less bulky, perhaps a little taller, and his hair was still thick and glossy black.

But those ice blue eyes, so unusual given an Asian descent, were undoubtedly Hiram's.

"I know you," David said.

"From tabloid TV?"

David forced a smile. "You're Bobby."

"And you must be David, the half-brother I didn't know I had, until I had to learn it from a journalist." Bobby was clearly angry, but his self-control was icy.

David realized he had landed in the middle of a complicated family row - worse, it was his family Hiram looked from one to the other of his sons. He sighed. "David, maybe it's time I bought you that coffee."

The coffee was among the worst David had ever tasted. But the technician who served the three of them hovered at the table until David took his first sip. This is Seattle, David reminded himself; here, quality coffee has been a fetish among the social classes who man installations like this for a generation. He forced a smile. "Marvelous," he said.

The tech went away beaming.

The facility's cafeteria was tucked into the comer of the "countinghouse," the computing center where data from the various experiments run here were analyzed. The counting house itself, characteristic of Hiram's cost conscious operations, was minimal, just a temporary office module with a plastic tile floor, fluorescent ceiling panels, wood-effect plastic workstation partitions. It was jammed with computer terminals, SoftScreens, oscilloscopes and other electronic equipment. Cables and light fiber ducts snaked everywhere, bundles of them taped to the walls and floor and ceiling. There was a complex smell of electrical-equipment ozone, of stale coffee and sweat.

The cafeteria itself had turned out to be a dismal shack with plastic tables and vending machines, all maintained by a battered drone robot. Hiram and his two sons sat around a table, arms folded, avoiding each other's eyes.

Hiram dug into a pocket and produced a handkerchief sized SoftScreen, smoothed it flat. He said, "I'll get to the point. On. Replay. Cairo."

David watched the "Screen. He saw, through a succession of brief scenes, some kind of medical emergency unfolding in sun-drenched Cairo. Egypt: stretcher-bearers carrying bodies from buildings, a hospital crowded with corpses and despairing relatives and harassed medical staff, mothers clutching the inert bodies of infants, screaming.

"Dear God."

"God seems to have been looking the other way," Hiram said grimly. "This happened this morning. An other water war. One of Egypt's neighbors dumped a toxin in the Nile. First estimates are two thousand dead, ten thousand ill, many more deaths expected.

"Now." He tapped the little "Screen. "Look at the picture quality. Some of these images are from handheld cams, some from drones. All taken within ten minutes of the first reported outbreak by a local news agency. And here's the problem." Hiram touched the comer of the image with his fingernail. It bore a logo: ENO, the Earth News Online network, one of Hiram's bitterest rivals in the news-gathering field. Hiram said, "We tried to strike a deal with the local agency, but ENO scooped us." He looked at his sons. "This happens all the time. In fact, the bigger I get, the more sharp little critters like ENO snap at my heels.

"I keep camera crews and stringers all around the world, at considerable expense. I have local agents on every street comer across the planet. But we can't be everywhere. And if we aren't there it can take hours, days even to get a crew in place. In the twenty-four-hour news business, believe me, being a minute late is fatal."

David frowned. "I don't understand. You're talking about competitive advantage? People are dying here, right in front of your eyes."

"People die all the time," said Hiram harshly. "People die in wars over resources, like in Cairo here, or over fine religious or ethnic differences, or because some bloody typhoon or flood or drought hits them as the climate goes crazy, or they just plain die. I can't change that. If I don't show it, somebody else will. I'm not here to argue morality. What I'm concerned about is the future of my business. And right now I'm losing out. And that's why I need you. Both of you."

Bobby said bluntly, "First tell us about our mothers."

David held his breath.

Hiram gulped his coffee. He said slowly, "All right. But there really isn't much to tell. Eve - David's mother - was my first wife."

"And your first fortune," David said dryly. Hiram shrugged. "We used Eve's inheritance as seedcom money to start the business. It's important that you understand, David. I never ripped off your mother. In the early days we were partners. We had a kind of long range business plan. I remember we wrote it out on the back of a menu at our wedding reception... We hit every bloody one of those targets, and more. We multiplied your mothers fortune tenfold. And we had you."

"But you had an affair, and your marriage broke up," David said.

Hiram eyed David. "How judgmental you are. Just like your mother."

"Just tell us. Dad," Bobby pressed.

Hiram nodded. "Yes, I had an affair. With your mother, Bobby. Heather, she was called. I never meant it to be this way... David, my relationship with Eve had been failing for a long time. That damn religion of hers."

"So you threw her out."

"She tried to throw me out - I wanted us to come to a settlement, to be civilized about it. In the end she ran out on me - taking you with her."

David leaned forward. "But you cut her out of your business interests. A business you had built on her money."

Hiram shrugged. "I told you I wanted a settlement. She wanted it all. We couldn't compromise." His eyes hardened. "I wasn't about to give up everything I'd built up. Not on the whim of some religion-crazed nut. Even if she was my wife, your mother. When she lost her all-or-nothing suit, she went to France with you, and disappeared off the face of the Earth. Or tried to." He smiled, "It wasn't hard to track you down." Hiram reached for his arm, twit David pulled back. "David, you never knew it, but I've been there for you. I found ways to, umm, help you out, without your mother knowing. I wouldn't go so far as to say you owe everything you have to me, but - "

David felt anger blaze. "What makes you think I wanted your help?"

Bobby said, "Where's your mother now?"

David tried to calm down. "She died. Cancer. It could have been easier for her. We couldn't afford - "

"She wouldn't let me help her," Hiram said. "Even at the end she pushed me away."

David said, "What do you expect? You took everything she had from her."

Hiram shook his head. "She took something more important from me. You."

"And so," Bobby said coldly, "you focused your ambition on me."

Hiram shrugged. "What can I say? Bobby, I gave you everything - everything -  I'd have given both of you. I prepared you as best I could."

"Prepared!" David laughed, bemused. "What kind of word is that?"

Hiram thumped the table. "If Joe Kennedy can do it, why not Hiram Patterson? Don't you see, boys? There's no limit to what we can achieve, if we work together..."

"You are talking about politics?" David eyed Bobby's sleek, puzzled face. "Is that what you intend for Bobby? Perhaps the Presidency itself?" He laughed. "You are exactly as I imagined you. Father."

"And how's that?"

"Arrogant. Manipulative."

Hiram was growing angry. "And you are just as I expected. As pompous and pious as your mother."

Bobby was staring at his father, bemused.

David stood. "Perhaps we have said enough."

Hiram's anger dissipated immediately. "No. Wait. I'm sorry. You're right. I didn't drag you all the way over here to fight with you. Sit down and hear me out. Please."

David remained on his feet. "What do you want of me?"

Hiram sat back and studied him. "I want you to build a bigger wormhole for me."

"How much bigger?"

Hiram took a breath. "Big enough to look through."

There was a long silence.

David sat down, shaking his head. "That's - "

"Impossible? I know. But let me tell you anyhow." Hiram got up and walked around the cluttered cafeteria, gesturing as he talked, animated, excited. "Suppose I could immediately open up a wormhole from my newsroom in Seattle direct to this story event in Cairo - and suppose that wormhole was wide enough to transmit pictures from the event - I could feed images from anywhere in the world straight into the network, with virtually no delay. Right? Think about it. I could fire my stringers and remote crews, reducing my costs to a fraction. I could even set up some kind of automated search facility, continually keeping watch through short-lived wormholes, waiting for the next story to break, wherever and whenever. There's really no limit."

Bobby smiled weakly. "Dad, they'd never scoop you again."

"Bloody right." Hiram turned to David. "That's the dream. Now tell me why it's impossible."

David frowned. "It's hard to know where to start. Right now you can establish metastable DataPipes between two fixed points. That's a considerable achievement in itself. But you need a massive piece of machinery at each end to anchor each wormhole mouth. Correct? Now you want to open up a stable wormhole mouth at the remote end, at your news story's location, without the benefit of any kind of anchor."

"Correct."

"Well, that's the first thing that's impossible, as I'm sure your technical people have been telling you."

"So they have. What else?"

"You want to use these wormholes to transmit visible light photons. Now, quantum-foam wormholes come in at the Planck-Wheeler length, which is ten-to-minus-thirty-five meters. You've managed to expand them up through twenty orders of magnitude to make them big enough to pass gamma-ray photons. Very high frequency, very short wavelength."

"Yeah. We use the gamma rays to carry digitized data streams, which."

"But the wavelength of your gamma rays is around a million times smaller than visible-light wavelengths. The mouths of your second-generation wormholes would have to be around a micron across at least." David eyed his father. "I take it you've had your engineers trying to achieve exactly that. And it doesn't work."

Hiram sighed. "We've actually managed to pump in enough Casimir energy to rip open wormholes that wide. But you get some kind of feedback effect which causes the damn things to collapse."

David nodded. "They call it Wheeler instability. Wormholes aren't naturally stable. A wormhole mouth's gravity pulls in photons, accelerates them to high energy, and that energized radiation bombards the throat and causes it to pinch off. It's the effect you have to counter with Casimir-effect negative energy, to keep open even the smallest wormholes."

Hiram walked to the window of the little cafeteria. Beyond, David could see the hulking form of the detector complex at the heart of the facility. "I have some good minds here. But these people are experimentalists. All they can do is trap and measure what happens when it all goes wrong. What we need is to beef up the theory, to go beyond the state of the art. Which is where you come in." He turned. "David, I want you to take a sabbatical from Oxford and come work with me on this." Hiram put his arm around David's shoulders; his flesh was strong and warm, its pressure overpowering. "Think of how this could turn out. Maybe you'll pick up the Nobel Prize in Physics, while simultaneously I'll eat up ENO and those other yapping dogs who run at my heels. Father and son together. Sons. What do you think?"

David was aware of Bobby's eyes on him. "I guess - "

Hiram clapped his hands together. "I knew you'd say yes."

"I haven't, yet."

"Okay, okay. But you will. I sense it. You know, it's just terrific when long-term plans pay off."

David felt cold. "What long-term plans?"

Talking fast and eagerly, Hiram said, "If you were going to work in physics, I was keen for you to stay in Europe. I researched the field. You majored in mathematics-correct? Then you took your doctorate in a department of applied math and theoretical physics."

"At Cambridge, yes. Hawking's department - "

"That's a typical European route. As a result you're well versed in up-to-date math. It's a difference of culture, Americans have led the world in practical physics, but they use math that dates back to World War Two. So if you're looking for a theoretical breakthrough, don't ask anyone trained in America."

"And here I am," said David coldly. "With my convenient European education."

Bobby said slowly, "Dad, are you telling us you arranged things so that David got a European physics education, just on the off chance that he'd be useful to you? And all without his knowledge?"

Hiram stood straight. "Not just useful to me. More useful to himself. More useful to the world. More liable to achieve success." He looked from one to the other of his sons, and placed his hands on their heads, as if blessing them. "Everything I've done has been in your best interest. Don't you see that yet?"

David looked into Bobby's eyes. Bobby's gaze slid away, his expression unreadable.