Hidden Variables (30 page)

July 30th 1980. Walter Reed Army Hospital, Outpatient Department
From: ODR Records Reference: AST-422 Wenziger, Z.
From: ODR Records Reference: AST-422 Wenziger, Z. Please note that Andemil is an experimental drug and its use is currently restricted to volunteer military personnel. Continued participation by the above subject in this program is prohibited pending renewed Special Exemption from ODR Central Office.

"General Greer?"

"Speaking."

"Wenziger here." The voice over the line was hoarse and muffled. "I have located Laurance Nissom. I have also met with him. What should I do next?"

"Well, Hallelujah. It sure took long enough. Where is he?"

"He would prefer that I not divulge that to you yet."

"Don't worry, I'll hold up my end of the deal. Could you bring him out to the farm?"

"I'm not sure." The voice was diffident. "I would need travel funds."

"You'll have them. When can I see him."

"Saturday? And a promise that you will be alone?"

"Just the three of us. I'll expect you about fourteen hundred hours. Pick up a road map from my secretary."

"And the injections?"

"Go on over to Walter Reed right now. I'll clear it while you're on your way there."

The old farmhouse had been set well up on the hillside, out of reach of floodwaters. With the aid of a pair of binoculars it was possible from the upper windows to see cars as soon as they came over the southern rise, two and a half miles away. The heat shimmer on the road made it hard to be sure, but there seemed to be only one person in the blue VW with the Maryland license plates. Greer frowned. He walked down the stairs into the dirt yard and was waiting when Wenziger stepped from the car.

"What gives?"

"We came separately. He had to pick up a book. I expect him in about twenty minutes." Despite the heat, Zdenek Wenziger was dressed in a dark suit, tie and tight collar. His high, bald head was covered with a film of perspiration. Greer peered at him closely before he finally nodded, turned around and led the way into the thick-walled building. Wenziger followed him slowly, still lugging his heavy briefcase as they climbed the narrow stairs.

"Beer? It's home-brewed." Greer held up two bottles. He was shirt-sleeved, in denim patch-pockets and loafers.

"No. Thank you, no."

"Well, here's to Laurance Nissom anyway, the Invisible Man." Greer drank straight from the bottle. He seemed to be in high spirits. "How did he seem when you left him?"

"Under great stress, as you might expect. But sane. I think sane."

"But you didn't manage to talk him out of his pet theory?"

"I think not." Wenziger's manner was restless. He had placed his briefcase by the side of his chair and was staring out of the high window at the valley beyond with a strange intensity.

"And he couldn't talk you into it, either?" Greer watched Wenziger's fidgeting with a cool amusement. "Look, you can't be comfortable like that. Why not take your jacket off?"

"Thank you, but no. You are right, he could not persuade me. I still believe that he is wrong." He turned from the window. "You were not completely honest with me when we met in your office. You did not show me Laurance Nissom's
second
paper."

"No, I didn't." Greer was unabashed. "I knew that if you ever got to Nissom you'd hear about it first-hand. It didn't change his theory any. He showed it to you?"

"Of course. You are right, it makes no difference to the actual theory." Wenziger was still looking urgently out at the road winding away from the farm. "But it took us down to the nuts and bolts—the applications that I had looked for in the first paper and couldn't find."

A nod. "Right. The personalized defense field against all forms of attack? See what turned me on to it?"

"Defense against everything. You do not realize it, but that idea has a special meaning to me."

"I realize it. I told you, I know you." Greer was looking out of the window also, searching the road for a second car. "I know you a lot better than you'd ever believe. I've looked at your background, all the way from Czechoslovakia in the 1920's." He flashed a quick sideways look at Wenziger. "What's keeping him? Damn it, man, take that coat off before you boil."

"He will be here. I had a twenty minute start on him. He may have met more traffic than I did. Be patient." Wenziger's own manner showed no patience. A nervous tic moved under his left eye.

"You know," he said at last. "I didn't need the help of the 'network' to find Laurance Nissom. Not really. He was running. I have been running all my life—from Germans, from Russians, then from Nixon and McCarthy. I know just where people run to, where they hide." He looked across at Greer. "I wonder if I might change my mind. I would like a beer."

The other man uncapped a bottle and handed it across without speaking. Their eyes turned again to the quiet road.

"That's one thing they drill into us early." Greer's tone was reflective, abstracted. "Don't run. An army gets cut up worse running than standing firm. Face the enemy and hold your front." There was a curious smile on his tanned face. "So. This week you decided you'd had enough running. Too old to run any more. Right?"

Wenziger swung around. Beer splashed from the bottle onto the thick rug. "Why do you say that?"

Greer's gaze was still on the world outside the window. "I told you. I know you. I've seen men like you and watched your ways for forty years. Sometime last week you decided you'd had it, you couldn't take this thing any longer. You made up your mind that the only answer was to come here and kill me. Nissom didn't have to be right, it was the principle of the thing." He laughed. "Like to see the sales slip for the gun you bought down on Fourteenth Street? It's in my desk over there."

"You know about that? Why didn't you have me arrested then, instead of getting me here to taunt me with it?"

"No law against buying a gun." Greer shrugged."I own five or six of them. And I have to have Nissom. You're my key to him. But you've changed, haven't you? A couple of weeks ago you were convinced that his ideas were wrong—even
one
week ago you thought that."

"I think it still."

"You don't convince me. You changed your mind, a few days ago, and decided that Nissom had to go free. I want to know what changed you."

He leaned over and picked up Wenziger's briefcase. "I'll lay you any odds you like that you don't have the gun in here. See, I know you too well. No matter what you think of Nissom—or of me—there's no way you could pull out a gun and shoot me cold. 'Ambition should be made of sterner stuff', don't you think?"

He opened the case and looked casually at the jumble of papers and books inside. "Did you ever fire a thirty-eight in your whole life? Any handgun at all?"

Wenziger had settled back in his seat. After an instinctive gesture when Greer picked up his case, he had relaxed. "Never in anger. At fairground shows a few times."

"So I'm still looking for an answer. What made you change your mind, even if you don't have the guts to follow through with it? Something that Nissom told you?"

"Nothing from my meeting with Nissom. I learned from a dead man." Wenziger flicked a glance at his watch, then back to the road. "Do you remember that I quoted Eddington to you, as evidence that genius is no protection against a wrong theory? I ought to have quoted something else that he wrote, but it only came back to me a few days ago—just before I bought a gun. Eddington said, 'The world that we observe is the world of our theories'.
That
changed my mind about Nissom. You understand the significance of what he was saying?"

"No." Greer put down the briefcase without looking into it further. Like Wenziger, he had become obsessed with the thin ribbon of the road leading to the farm. "What does Eddington have to do with Nissom?"

"He meant that scientists become married to their theories. We look only for the things that our theories lead us to expect. Unless we think we'll find a result, why perform the experiment? Especially today, when experiments are very expensive. Let me ask you something, General. Did you ever look into Laurance Nissom's personal finances?"

"Sure I did, early on. I wanted to see if somebody could buy him."

"They could not. He is a rich man, right?"

"He's loaded. He inherited millions from his father."

"So why did he work for the government at all? Especially when he had his own theory to develop."

Greer lowered the bottle from his lips without drinking. He looked puzzled. "You've got me. Strange, I've asked every question about him except that one. He didn't need money, not the way that you do. Do you have an answer?"

"Equipment. He needed access to equipment that millions of dollars can't buy, but billions can. You see, he wanted to test his theory fully, in every branch. That would be hugely expensive—take huge resources. The world that his ideas describe is so different from the one we see that he had to build a whole new structure."

"But he's wrong." Greer moved uneasily in his chair, sensing that somehow the control was moving to the other man. "You said he's wrong, and you still think so."

"I do. All of me believes that, as strongly as I believe anything." Wenziger looked again at his watch and grimaced with concern.

Greer could see the tension building on the other's face. "He ought to be here by now. You're not trying to cross me? I hope not, for your sake."

"He's on his way. I think he's wrong—but
suppose
he were right. I had to admit that possibility, even if I didn't believe it. Suppose that Nissom is right, that he is seeing a different and more valid world picture. Could there be a chance—one in ten thousand, even—that he's right?"

"I've assumed all along that there is." Greer had stood up and leaned closer to the window. "That's why I can't let him run free. That thousand-to-one shot is too dangerous. Our balance of power analyses wouldn't mean a thing if Nissom's defense screen could be built."

"Too dangerous to you." Wenziger was perspiring again. "To me and my kind, it might mean an end to running. That's why I bought the gun."

"That you'll never use. It takes training to face death, you know. I wondered for a while if you'd find the idea of killing both of us easier to take. Then I decided you couldn't even manage that. You can't face certain death, a hundred percent guaranteed. You're not unusual. When we send men on a suicide mission, we always try and build a long shot that they could get out alive. Otherwise some of them can't take it."

"I thought of a double killing, you, then myself. It was no good." Wenziger's breath was fast and shallow. He seemed hypnotized by the moving sweep of his watch. "I called Nissom. I asked him if a certain kind of test of his theory were possible—a crude one. He confirmed it."

"You mean you could do a test? Damn it, a minute ago you were telling me that tests would cost billions. Are you saying that's not true?"

There was a long silence. When Wenziger'spoke at last his voice was so soft that Greer could hardly make out the words. "You make me over-simplify, then you are angry at the result. A real test—a
full
test—of Nissom's ideas, with all their subtleties, would cost billions. But a test at the grossest level, one that was qualitative more than quantitative, that could be done cheaply. Nissom confirmed it, but he was not interested."

"You mean you could prove if Nissom's right or wrong
cheaply?
" Greer had seized Wenziger by the arm, straightening him up in his chair. "Why the hell didn't you tell me that? If you're trying to cross me it's all over for you."

"I'm not crossing you. It would be a crude test. Let me give you an analogy. The atomic bomb could be thought of as a test of Einstein's theory of special relativity, but it would give no detailed measurements, nothing for exact confirmation." Wenziger sighed. "You saw through me, General. I could never pull the trigger on final doom, for you or for me. But I would accept a
statistical
risk. We live with those every day, when we cross the street or leave our apartment. Do you understand the process of radioactive decay?"

"Of course I do." Greer shook him. "Wenziger, don't change the subject. What in God's name have you been up to?"

"In a group of a trillion radioactive atoms"—Wenziger's voice had become calm and professorial again—"some will disintegrate in the next twenty minutes. But which ones? We cannot say. That depends on fate—or on Laurance Nissom's hidden variables. You see, for certain situations—Nissom can specify some of them—his theory predicts radioactive breakdown of certain atoms faster than conventional theory." He stared at his watch face. "I have been here now for twenty-eight minutes. The odds are getting worse. You see, General, I could never have dreamed up Nissom's theory. Never. But I am not stupid. From that theory, I can certainly calculate probabilities."

He smiled, a thin-lipped crack in the old, grey face. "So I decided that we ought to let the statistics make the decision. I have primed a bomb—a small one, as these bombs go—to explode if decay from a radioactive source that has been subjected to certain resonances reaches a certain level. According to conventional theory, that level will be reached with fifty percent probability in one hour. According to Nissom's theory, fifty percent probability was reached eight minutes ago. When he drives over that hill"—he nodded at the road outside the window—"I will disarm it."

"Damn you, Wenziger, you've gone mad." Greer's face was white. He rushed to the briefcase and turned it upside down. A torrent of books and papers poured out onto the rug. "The bomb. Where's the fucking bomb? Wenziger, tell me, I'll keep you out of trouble. I swear it."

Wenziger was laughing, the tic under his eye distorting his face. "General, General. You have too much faith in technology. Be reasonable. Not even the best scientists have been able to make a zeta small enough to fit in a briefcase—and we know the best, don't we?"

He picked up the bottle from the window sill. His tension suddenly seemed to drain from him. "Sit down. Have another beer, and have faith in the hidden variables. They will make the decision for us, if Nissom is right or if he is wrong. He should be here any minute now. I predicted that he would arrive thirty minutes after I did. That is twenty seconds from now—but of course, traffic is another hidden variable, is it not?"