Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 25

He was soon seated and ready to pay attention, so Danielle explained the problem of the Beltway hyperspace junctions.

"A traveller enters a Beltway junction going in one direction," she said. "The junction is supposed to send it either on a spur out of the Beltway or along the Beltway to another junction in a process called 'band-allocation'. Band-allocation breaks down with the new technology because the traveller and the beacon can't communicate information. The Beltway junctions are a kind of beacon but their guiding signals get scrambled. It's impossible for the junction as a whole to have the same information as individual travellers, and vice versa. ... So that's our problem, Roger. Tell us the answer."

Roger was silent.

"I'm waiting for your solution, husband."

"I don't think I have one."

"What a failure! I don't know why I married you."

"For my money."

"For the wages of a research fellow at a British university? I don't think so."

"However, your problem does remind me of something. Do you know what the Talmud is?"

"No."

"It's an ancient book of Jewish law, thousands of pages long, though it also contains philosophy, folklore, mythology, biography, history, jokes and ancient science. Scholars of the Talmud say it contains everything, but it's main content is a running argument on cases of religious and civil law, debated in the minutest detail with the strictest logic. The Talmud records a thousand years of pernickety arguments, including all the defeated arguments, lovingly preserved and diligently studied, to teach the method and in case later scholars want to change their minds."

"I see," said Danielle, "though I don't see the relevance."

"The relevance is that two later scholars of the Talmud had a dispute. One said: If you could fully understand just one page of the Talmud, you would understand the whole Talmud. His fellow replied: To understand just one page of the Talmud, you need to understand the whole Talmud."

"So who was right?"

"It's not something you can prove or refute."

"What's your opinion?"

"I think they're both wrong. For a page of a book to contain the whole book, it must be a perfect microcosm, which is not the case for the Talmud: each page has different content. Also, to understand a whole book means to understand every page; but you can understand it only one page at a time. If you have to understand a whole book before you can understand even one page, then you can never get started. However, it's possible to understand the essential content of a book incrementally if every page contains parts of the essence and all the pages are interconnected, which is the case for the Talmud."

"Aha!" said Danielle, catching on and even jumping ahead a little.

"What's a microcosm?" asked Yael.

"It's like the whole universe contained in an nutshell," Roger said. "The essence of the Talmud is thirteen rules of legal argument. Its content is the elaboration of these hermeneutic rules in thousands of case studies, which range over many pages. Every page employs some of the thirteen rules and implies the others, which means that each page is connected to many other pages by logical method. Different pages are also linked by analogous case-studies. This means that one can incrementally increase one's knowledge of both the whole book and every page of it. With the thirteen rules in common, one can treat each page as an out-of-focus snapshot of the whole."

"My husband's a genius." Danielle said with satisfaction and Rosa smiled.

"Please explain," Yael said.

"It's the holographic principle," Danielle said.

"Aha!" said Cho.

"You mean these 3D projectors?" Yael asked.

"No, something different. The holographic principle was an answer to the problem of where the information goes when matter falls into a black hole. Information is squeezed out of existence when matter crosses the event horizon. When we get the energy back out of the black hole as microwaves, the information is scrambled. The holographic principle says that the information is not lost but is smeared out over the surface of the black hole and measured by its temperature."

"How does the holographic principle help?" Yael asked.

"It doesn't help the black hole information problem but it helps us because the holographic principle is not really about the location of the lost information. It's a measurement of how much information can be channelled out of a system; which is a new and clever way of looking at the problem we're stuck on. It says that we cannot get more information out of a system than can be written on its surface."

"My brilliant husband turns this around, and says it means we can get all the available information out of a system by writing it on its surface. In theory, we can program thousands of travellers with limited snapshots of the whole system, like pages of the Talmud. So long as they are synchronised (by something equivalent to the thirteen hermeneutic rules), the junction (which is the Talmud) can read the whole system without needing to know any individual part perfectly."

Cho asked: "How do we synchronise the information between the travellers in the Beltway?"

"Anyone?" Danielle asked.

There were no responses.

"You know the answer, Samothea, because it happened to you when you were prospecting near the white dwarf star."

Wildchild answered meekly:

"You create an anomaly in the plume."

"An anomaly in the plume?" Cho said.

"Yes," Danielle said. "The traveller and the junction can produce anomalies with an x-ray source."

"Won't an anomaly redirect the traveller randomly out of its path?" Cho asked.

"Yes, but we can control this effect by putting one signal in each traveller's retarded guiding wave and cancel it out with another signal in the next traveller's advanced guiding wave. If they don't cancel out, then the beacon will know the traveller's gone wrong and can correct it."

"But how can the travellers produce synchronised x-rays when they are separated in space?" Rosa asked.

"That comes from an earlier discussion that you missed, Rosa. If you'd heard it, you'd have got there quicker than any of us."

"Flatterer. What's the secret?"

"Samothea knows that as well, don't you?"

"Yes, Danielle. Desstrolite."

"What's desstrolite?" Rosa asked.

"It's a mineral that produces photomorphic crystals."

"I see," Rosa said.

"I don't," said Cho.

"Piezomorphic and photomorphic crystals change shape, colour, conductivity or other physical properties when they are squeezed, when a current is passed through them or when light is shone on them. Some get hot or cold, some emit laser light, some make an electric or magnetic field, others emit a beam of x-rays. Like many crystals, desstrolite refracts x-rays. But when it's in strong normal light, the shape of its lattice distorts, which changes its refractive index."

"At first we thought this was a clue to how the junctions might work but now we have a different use for photomorphic crystals that can produce an x-ray pattern."

"What's that?" Cho asked.

"Samothea knows the answer but it looks like Yael is going to burst if we don't let her be the one to tell us."

Yael was signalling frantically to Danielle, saying:

"I know! I know! Pick me! Pick me!"

Yael spoke at double speed, trying to get it all out in one breath.

"Wildchild formulated an analogy for how band allocation works in the junctions. She said it's like chess, where there are rules of the game and tactics but some tactics are 'forced moves'. The Beltway junctions use forced moves to keep travellers in their allocation bands but we couldn't find one that worked with the new technology. Now we have one because the traveller and the plume can read the same anomaly. We give the travellers x-ray signatures that combine to form the inverse of the beacon's x-ray signature. Isn't that right, Danielle?"

"Exactly right, Yael, though our hardest job is now starting: how to put it all into practise."

With a thank you kiss for Roger, Danielle set to work putting mathematical flesh on the theoretical bones of the solution, though she had something to say first to Wildchild and Yael:

"I know I say it too often but I have to say it once more. I love you girls: you never fail to astonish me."

******

Work on solving the monster equation using the holographic principle and x-ray anomalies inside the plume was slow and difficult but the Project Team were enthusiastic, turning up each morning at Danielle's office to show what they had worked out overnight before going to their teaching jobs or somewhere quiet to think, gathering again in Danielle's office in the late afternoon for another briefing.

Although crystals of desstrolite would do the job, they were not ideal for the purpose because the mineral was insanely expensive and it was better to find a crystals that emitted x-rays in the required patterns.

To that end, Ezra and Tatiana visited the university library to search the mineral catalogues for an existing crystal. If they had no success, then they would get an institute computer to design a crystal that could be manufactured in a factory out in space. That part of the problem was soluble, at least in principle.

In between their maths and physics lessons with Danielle, Rosa or any lecturer who could be spared, Wildchild and Yael worked at a large projector-board on parts of the monster equation that Danielle gave them to solve for real-world values.

One afternoon, as Yael skipped along the corridor from the bathroom back to Danielle's office, she saw a man coming the other way. She had seen him before but never said hello. He was old, white-haired, shorter than her, with cold grey eyes, a wide nose, bushy white eyebrows and a scowl.

Yael gave him her usual big friendly smile, the same greeting she gave everyone, especially men, who still fascinated her, despite having met dozens of the odd creatures in the last year. The man did not return her smile but they were going to the same place. He stopped outside the room and politely opened the door for her.

It was a time when the whole team was present. A friendly but intense altercation was proceeding, so Yael and the man entered the room unnoticed. Danielle, Rosa and Cho were disagreeing about a technical matter. They were talking and gesticulating at the same time, writing rival equations on a projector board and rubbing them out.

"Doctor Goldrick," the man said quietly.

The argument stopped as Danielle looked around.

"Oh, hello, Hendrik," she said. "Did I miss a meeting?"

"No. I came to ask you a question. However, I now have another question."

"Yes?"

"Why is my department full of women?"

"Sorry about that, Hendrik, but we're not unsupervised. We have Herman to keep us under control."

Herman was steeped in the same mathematical problem as the others but he had not taken part in the argument. He heard his name and looked up. Danielle's voice had her usual teasing humour, but Herman was an intrinsically serious young man who preferred not to mix humour with his work.

He did not know why Danielle and his girlfriend, Rosa Silverstein, liked Professor Hendrik Jakovs so much. The professor was known for being two things: a brilliant astrophysicist and (as Eva Welwyn once said) the most misogynistic bastard in the galaxy. Even so, Hendrik had hired Danielle Goldrick for his department and welcomed Rosa Silverstein as a post-doctorate researcher. In the last year, he had begun to call the two women 'his precious metals'.

Doubtless there was a good joke behind it all, but Herman had no desire to know what it was. Realising he was not needed, Herman nodded to the professor and returned to his computer tab.

His scowl suggested that Professor Jakovs thought Herman was not doing a good enough job keeping the women in line, but he made no comment.

"What's your question, Hendrik?" Danielle asked.

"Do you know a Doctor Eva Welwyn and a Robyn Bradford?"

"Yes. Eva's a friend of mine. She's director of the Petticoats, and Robyn's their team-leader."

"I see. Do you know why they want to ask me impertinent questions about how I treat women in my department?"

"Yes. They want to know why women do so well under your tutelage, although you discourage girls by setting the highest possible entry standards."

"I suppose sociologists are capable of thought?"

"Some of them, Hendrik."

"Then why can't they work out the answer for themselves instead of bothering me?"

"My guess is that they want more precise data. They may even ask you to complete a survey."

"What in the galaxy for?"

"Because sociology isn't really a science but sociologists like to pretend it is, so they use lots of jargon and publish many statistics to make themselves feel all sciencey."

"Good lord!"

"What answer did you give to Eva?"

"I told her that women are a damned nuisance and I don't allow them in my department at all. ... Clearly, she didn't believe me. Now I know why."

"Please will you meet them, Hendrik? Eva is a key member of the Samothea Project and she genuinely wants to know why girls drop out of the hard sciences more often than boys."

"Do they? There might be a dozen different reasons."

"I know, but Eva has a binary view of the world, in which there are only two possible reasons: male discrimination (however subtle) and the inferiority of women. As she cannot allow the latter, she has to search unendingly for the former. If you met her, you could explain how things really work."

"Very well, as she's a friend of yours. ... What are you all working on?"

"It's a problem that Cho found with the Beltway Junctions."

"Are you Cho Lim?" the professor asked, addressing the young woman from Singapore. "I read your paper. It was very good."

Cho was both in awe of the famous astrophysicist and affronted at his attitude toward women; but he spoke to her kindly and appreciated her work, so she replied politely.

"Thank you, professor. Doctor Goldrick cleaned it up for me."

"So what's the solution?"

Danielle gave a brief outline of the solution they were working on. The professor caught on immediately.

"I like the idea of using the holographic principle for this problem," he said. "Who thought of it."

"My brilliant husband," Danielle exaggerated proudly.

"Show me where you're stuck."

"We're not stuck exactly. We're arguing about method. In her lab, Cho's team uses a shortcut in the calculations and we were disagreeing about whether or not it will work with our solution."

Hendrik looked at the problem and thought for a few minutes, making waving signs with his hand.

"I loathe compromises on principle," he said at last, "but in this case, you're both right. The shortcut makes the calculation easier but it misses out part of the procedure. ... Look here: if you say the traveller keeps band allocation between the time it sends and receives the first guiding wave, then you can use the shortcut, but if the travellers share the guiding waves, which they do to build the holographic data incrementally, then you cannot use the shortcut."

Hendrik suggested some amendments and got them working again. He then noticed Wildchild and Yael, who stood before a big screen filled with equations. They had been looking on his discussion with their usual wide-eyed innocence, enchanted by anything new and unusual.

"Hello, I'm Hendrik. What are your names?"

"I'm Yael and this is Sam."

Yael was the girl he met skipping along the corridor. He noticed she was dressed more for the beach than a serious academic institution, with a short white skirt, almost see-through (luckily she was wearing knickers) and a powder blue slip-top, with bare legs and bare feet. He was careful not to notice she had no bra on. Wildchild had on short trousers and a simple blouse. Her legs and feet were also bare.

Because it seemed Hendrik always scowled, the girls could not tell whether or not he approved of their attire.

"What are you working on?" he asked.

"We're trying to solve Danielle's monster equation," Yael explained. "She's chopped it into simpler parts and we try to find the real-world solutions."

Hendrik looked over the equation they were working on. Their working-out looked odd. There were some symbols he could not make out.

"I can see what you're trying to do but what are these symbols?"

"Danielle was busy and we needed to know some physical constants," Yael said, "so we made them up. We'll put the proper values in later."

"Explain them to me."

"This is the angle between the electro-weak force and the gravi-time loop of hyperspace."

"The angle?"

"It's what we call it. If you change the charge in the plume, then the traveller changes direction in hyperspace by a number of degrees."

"You're correct in this context, but in other contexts the constant can refer to inertia or spin, so we normally express it as a number. ... What are these symbols?"

Yael explained their versions of the parameters of cosmology and physics that they had not yet learned.

Hendrik nodded. He rubbed out the girls' symbols and put in the standard ones, explaining as he went, entering the values for the constants.

They watched, rapt, seeing their attempts turned into proper science.

"Doctor Goldrick, please come here," Hendrik said.

Danielle came over and looked at the projector board.

"That's good work, girls," she said.

"I'm glad you have included these students in your advanced astrophysics class but I don't understand how they can know hyperspace theory but not basic principles of the standard model. They reinvented the gravi-time hyperspace constant for themselves but didn't know the gauge coupling parameters."

"It's my fault, Hendrik. We're teaching them informally to bring them up to speed."

"You mean they're not Ph.D. candidates?"

"Hendrik, they're not even undergraduates."

He paused a minute.

"Then we must enrol them immediately."

"They're both new to formal education. I'm giving them a foundation in physics and maths, with the intention of enrolling them in the Spring semester. Even then, they'll have a job to catch up."

"They can cope," he said confidently.

"Samothea and Yael will work harder than any students you have ever known, Hendrik, but they're not ready. Most of the curriculum will make no sense to them."

"We should make an exception in their case."

"I thought I was your exception," Danielle said with a smile.

Professor Jakovs turned to her and made rare eye-contact, looking into her dancing dark-blue eyes, which showed only happy admiration. But Danielle saw something in his cold grey eyes that she had not seen before: an unexpected but quietly-resigned sadness.

"Danielle," Hendrik said, using her first name for the first time ever: "you have never been an exception."

******

At her next girly lunch with Rosa, Joan Mayfield and Cassie Leighton, Danielle said to Cassie: "I know it's against the rules to talk shop but I've been too busy to speak to Joan until now and I've got a question for her."

"I'll allow it this time," Cassie said, generously.

"Joan, has Hendrik spoken to you about places for Samothea and Yael in this year's intake?"

"He has."

"Do you approve?"

"I do. With you tutoring them, I have no fear about the girls catching up. Samothea is a math genius, you tell me, and I don't know anyone so keen as Yael. Are you worried they won't be able to keep up?"

"A little but I'm also worried that the Samothea Project can't afford their fees as full-time students."

"That's no problem. Hendrik's paying."

"Are you happy for the funds to come out of the Astrophysics department?"

"No, I mean that Hendrik is paying out of his own pocket."

"Well, bugger me!" Danielle exclaimed.