Читать книгу Jupiter’s Bones - Faye Kellerman - Страница 15

Sipping coffee, her feet propped on the desk, Europa said, “Once upon a time, I had friends just like any other little girl. Jilliam was one of them. We formed an alliance out of mutual loneliness. Both of us had absentee fathers and narcissistic mothers, but her situation was more extreme. At least my father and I had occasional talks because I was scientifically inclined. Jilliam and her father had nothing in common. He was a high-powered attorney who hated children but loved sex with teenage girls. Looking back, I suppose her relationship with Dad was a natural sequela of her own father’s misbehavior.”

She paused.

“Our mothers had points in common as well. Mine was self-absorbed, but hers was selfish and egotistical. We met when we were eleven. I took pity on her. She seemed needy.” She rolled her eyes. “Little did I know.”

Decker put down his mug. “When did she actually become involved with your father?”

“Hard to say.” She took another drink from her cup. “My father vanished when I was fifteen. When he was resurrected as Jupiter some ten years later, I knew I had to see him. Jilliam came with me for moral support. It was a reunion from hell.”

“In what way?”

Europa’s eyes glazed over. “I wanted a father.” A pause. “I didn’t get one. I felt betrayed, but not surprised.”

“How did you find out about his return?”

Europa’s eyes took in Decker’s face. “A phone call.”

The room fell quiet, the only sounds coming from the wall clock’s ticking and ambient noise from down below.

“It wasn’t that he was cruel. He just couldn’t help being who he was. And that was good enough for Jilliam. She lapped up every word of his bizarre pseudoscientific ramblings. I don’t think she understood a word of it. But she did react to the force of his personality. Then I realized that the rapture was a two-way street. The way he looked at her—such naked hunger. Though in denial at the time, deep down I knew something was going to happen.”

“Do you think they had a prior relationship before that reunion meeting?”

“You mean before he disappeared? I doubt it.” A grimace. “She was only fifteen.”

“Was your father inclined to seduce women?”

Europa stared at him. “Why are you asking about Dad’s sexual proclivities?”

“Your father’s death is under investigation.” Decker tapped his pencil. “I was just wondering if your father could have angered someone—like an irate husband or jealous boyfriend.”

Europa immediately broke into laughter. It was so abrupt it took Decker by surprise.

She said, “Lieutenant, the more appropriate question is who in this world hasn’t my father angered. Before he disappeared, he must have burned every bridge in existence. Often my brothers and I would muse that he had disappeared because he had done something even more nefarious than ruin careers—which, by the way, was a favorite hobby of his.”

Quickly, Decker turned a page on his notepad. “Your father ruined careers?”

Europa started to speak, then stopped herself. She peered at him with intense blue eyes. “Somehow you suckered me into talking about our family’s sordid saga. Although what it has to do with Dad’s death, I don’t know. No, Lieutenant, I really don’t think he murdered anyone. Back then, my brothers and I were engaging in childish fantasy, giving my father an exotic alibi to excuse his devastating and inexplicable behavior.”

But Decker was persistent. “How did your father ruin careers? Did he sabotage experiments? Did he steal someone else’s research?”

Europa stared out of the window. “No, nothing illegal. If he had done that, he wouldn’t have been so feared. Instead, he decimated within the proper channels.” She hugged herself. “To understand my father’s potency, you’d have to know the academic world.”

Decker said, “I’ve heard its moral accountability falls somewhere between politics and Hollywood.”

“You’ve got it.” Europa gave him a beleaguered smile. “In academia, to be associated with the right people is all-important. And Dad was the right person to know. His stamp of approval added prestige to anything it touched. He was on the board of many scientific organizations and peer-review journals. A good word from him could immediately advance a career just as a well-placed barb could set it back ten years. During his scientific years, Dad doled out much more criticism than praise. He had brought down many a promising career with a single, snide comment. Presenting a paper to Emil Euler Ganz was an ordeal akin to being placed on the rack. A few of Dad’s remaining colleagues have enlightened me as to how truly sadistic he was, taking pleasure in smashing someone’s life’s work.”

Decker formulated his question. “Of all the people your father … offended—”

“Ruined.”

“Is there any specific person that sticks in your mind?”

“No. My older colleagues might be able to help you.”

“I’ll ask around,” Decker said.

“Approaching my father’s colleagues might be akin to entering the enemy camp.” She smiled. “Maybe not now that he’s dead. I’m sure they got their revenge witnessing my father’s downfall in cosmology. Since Emil Euler Ganz had become an object of derision, Dad’s enemies could discredit his previous criticism of their past work.”

She seemed bitter. Decker asked, “When you entered the field, did they hold your father’s behavior against you?”

She thought for a moment. “I’m sure a few did. Mostly, people felt sorry for me. As a girl, I had been abandoned by him. As a scientist, I was now saddled with this embarrassing nutcase called Father Jupiter. In reality, even before Jupiter my father had lost his scientific luster.”

“Why was that?”

“He was espousing some way-out theories even before he took his famous hike. Now, the few times I’ve spoken to him, his mind was as scientifically sharp as ever. But we kept our conversation on neutral ground, never talking about his postulations.” She got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. “Which are not as crackpot now as they were then.”

Decker asked, “What kind of crackpot theories did he hold?”

Europa returned to her desk. “It’s a long story as well as a complicated one.”

“I’ve got time. Try me.”

“How’s your working knowledge of physics?”

“I know Newton had three laws of motion.”

“That’s a start.”

“Actually someone at the Order clued me into that one.”

“Who?”

“Someone named Bob.”

“Ah …” Recognition. “Tall, thin … I think now he sports a beard.”

“Goatee.” Decker tried to hide his surprise. “Does he have a last name?”

“Changes with the wind. When I knew him, it was Robert Ross.”

Decker wrote it down in his notes. “Where do you know him from?”

“From Southwest. We were fellow students—actually dated for a couple of months. He was a fanatic admirer of Emil Ganz the scientist. With my father gone, I was his sole link to the great man. But when Dad was resurrected as Jupiter, Bob went directly to the source. At one time, he had a working brain. By now I’m sure it’s mush.”

“He impressed me as being sharp. But what do I know?”

Europa shrugged. “Maybe.”

Decker regarded her with a swift glance. She wasn’t as separate from the Order as Decker had thought. She had kept in contact with her father via phone, she had dated one of the members, and had been best friends with her father’s woman. Also, she remembered Pluto, albeit not fondly. And this was what she admitted to. Who knew what she wasn’t telling him. He said, “Explain your dad’s whacked-out theories.”

She sighed heavily. “Dad had developed some far-out theories about teleportation and time machines into alternative universes—a combination of H. G. Wells and Beam me up, Scotty.” Again, a sigh. “Not that this bears any relevancy to your investigation.”

“Actually, it may be very relevant,” Decker answered. “Maybe he chose to end his life because he believed that he was transporting himself to a better place with a time machine.”

“Even so, why would that be relevant to the police?”

“Because we have to make sure no one tries to follow in your father’s footsteps. I don’t want another Heaven’s Gate—not anywhere and certainly not in my district.”

“How can you guarantee that?”

“With adults, we can’t. Kids are another story.”

“I see your point.” She held up a finger. “So you are viewing this as a suicide.”

“Everything’s open,” Decker said without emotion. “Especially since your father had enemies.”

“That he did.”

“Getting back to your dad’s theories … did any of them have any scientific bases?”

“Of course. Before my father vanished, he’d been working on superluminal loopholes—things that could scientifically account for instantaneous time travel, backward-in-time travel and faster-than-light travel.”

Decker raised his brow. “Okay.”

“Not a science fiction reader, Lieutenant?”

Decker smiled, “I liked it when Han Solo did that warp speed thing on the Millennium Falcon.” He leaned forward. “What travels faster than light?”

“Undiscovered subatomic particles called tachyons—”

“Undiscovered?”

“They’re out there. We just haven’t found them yet. Also photons coming from the same electromagnetic wave. Subatomic particles called kaons travel backward in time. With them, we see the result of the event before the actual event takes place.”

“I don’t follow you,” Decker said. “I was taught that nothing travels as fast as light. Are you saying that’s not true?”

“I believe you mean that you were taught that nothing travels as fast as electromagnetic radiation. Visible light is only one small part of the spectrum. You’ve got UV waves, microwaves, radiowaves, infrared waves … any of this ring a bell?”

“No.”

She tapped a pencil on the surface of her desk. “All right. I’ll try to sum up twentieth-century physics in a couple of paragraphs.”

“I’m taking notes.”

“Stop me if I lose you.” She finished the dregs of her coffee. “For years, physics was based on Newton’s three laws of motion. The second law deals with the orbits of heavenly bodies. The fact that some of the orbits didn’t comply with Newton’s mathematics bothered no one. They just added a fudge factor, an arbitrary number that makes the math fit the physics.”

“You can do that?”

She chuckled, “It’s not ideal—something akin to smashing a square peg in a round hole—but physicists do it with theories that almost work until someone comes along with a theory that works better. Newton’s theories worked for most cases so why quibble with the few exceptions? Something wasn’t right, but no one knew how to fix it.”

“I’ve known a few cases of that.”

“I’ll bet.” Europa leaned over her desk. “Then along came Einstein, who ushered us into the modern world. His theories on the curvature of space explained the inconsistency in Newton’s planetary laws. But he is best known to the layman for his remarkable theory of relativity. It changed our concept of time from something absolute and immutable to something relative from party to party.”

“Which means?”

She stopped, took in a breath and let it out. It appeared as if she was used to confusing people. “Words don’t do it justice. The mathematics is beautiful, but that won’t help you either. Please interrupt me if I’m going too fast.”

“Oh, I will. Go on.”

“All right. This is the standard model used to explain it. Picture a train pulling away from a platform. To the person on the platform, it appears as if he is standing still and the train is moving, right?”

“Right.”

“But to the person on the train, it seems as if the train is standing still and the platform is moving—”

“But we know the train’s moving.”

“Only because you’ve been taught that it’s the train that moves.”

“But the train is moving. It’s going from place to place. The platform isn’t budging.”

“In space, Lieutenant, you have no way of knowing who or what is actually moving. You always have the option of assuming that you’re moving and other guy is standing still.”

Decker said, “But if you’re moving, you’re moving.”

“Sorry. Motion is relative. So is time, distance and mass. And the faster you go, the more relative it is. Now, at slow speeds, the relativity factor isn’t going to make much difference. Suppose you’re cruising at sixty miles an hour on the freeway and I’m stalled on the shoulder with a flat tire because I didn’t have the time to take my bald retreads into the garage. If you zoom past me at one o’clock in the afternoon, what time will my car clock read?”

Decker said, “It’s not going to read anything because your motor’s turned off.”

She laughed, showing teeth. She had a nice smile when she chose to use it. “It wasn’t a trick question, sir.”

Decker smiled boyishly. “One o’clock.”

“Brilliant.”

“Thank you.” Decker noticed that talking about science loosened her up. That was good. Loose people had loose lips.

She continued. “But as your speed approaches that of light, everything changes. For instance, say you’re in a spaceship going ninety percent the speed of light. Now, inside your ship, everything looks normal to you. The clocks run on time, your spaceship has the same dimensions and your clothes still fit you. Are you with me?”

“I’m here.”

“But to another ship out in space, your rocket will look shorter by a factor of two, your clock will appear to run half as fast and your weight will be twice as heavy.”

“So you’re saying fast speeds distort things. I can buy that.”

“But here’s the entire point of relativity. To your eye, everything inside your spaceship is normal. To your eye, it’s the other guy who’s distorted. His clock is slow, his rocket is shorter and his mass is twice as heavy. To your eye, he’s distorted. But to his eye, you’re distorted.”

“So who’s right?”

“You both are.”

“A Solomonic approach to physics,” Decker stated.

Again, she smiled. “It’s all perspective.”

Decker said, “Getting back to your father, you’re saying he based his theories of teleportation on Einstein’s relativity. Something like he could transport himself from one place to another because everything’s relative?”

“Actually, Einstein wasn’t a major factor in my father’s theories.”

“So there’s more.” Decker held up his pencil. “Shoot, Doc. I’m ready for you.”

She chuckled. “Einstein’s theories kicked off a revolution, but he wasn’t the final word on cosmology. That belongs to quantum physics.”

“Is this going to make me feel really stupid?”

“I’ll keep it simple,” Europa said. “There are two distinctly different aspects to how we view light or any electromagnetic radiation. Now, Newton stated that light acts like a wave, that it’s continuous and uninterrupted, that it has rises and falls, peaks and troughs. Okay so far?”

“I’m with you.”

“Quantum theory says light is not a wave, but discreet packets or bundles made up of particles called photons. Two contradictory theories—light as wave, light as particles.”

“Dare I ask? Which one is right?”

“They both are. Sometimes light behaves as a wave, sometimes it behaves like photons. If you thought relativity was bad at pinning things down, you don’t even want to know about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. It says that although you can make predictions on how these photons will behave over the long run, you can never say exactly how they will behave over the short run. At any given moment, you have no way of knowing which energy state any given photon will occupy. Are you with me?”

“No. Can I ask what photons have to do with teleportation?”

“You’re a single-minded man, Lieutenant.”

“A bad physicist, but a decent cop.”

“Photons, sir, have been one of the links implicated in instantaneous travel. Before Dad dropped out, he was one of the few men who was trying to prove that photons originating from the same packet of light had this instantaneous link between them. Whatever was happening to photon one was also happening with photon two no matter what the distance between them was. All because once they had shared the same light bundle. Are you with me?”

“Instant communication.”

“Instantaneous communication,” Europa corrected. “Now, since mass can convert to energy at the speed of light—E equals MC squared—then atoms—like the kind that make up your body—can be converted to electromagnetic energy or light in the form of photons. And since there is an eternal, instantaneous link between photons from the same packet, you can transport your atoms—now in photon form—instantaneously from one position in space to another using this superluminal link. Which is considered a scientific lost cause. Although things can move faster than light, they can’t seem to transport meaningful information … things like organized atoms. Which is what my father spent his scientific life trying to prove. He hit walls, but that didn’t stop him. When he couldn’t do it as Emil Euler Ganz, he went metaphysical and tried to prove it as Jupiter.”

She frowned. “But you know how things get messed up going from theory to actuality. Sometimes we physicists predict it right on—like with the atom bomb. We knew the math way before we had the technology. But most of the time, we sit there and wallow in our own mistakes. Like a baby with a dirty diaper, just crying and squirming while waiting for someone who knows better to clean it up.”