A Ruby Beam of Light

by Tom DeMarco

  Paule looked sourly back at him. “Well perhaps they are indeed thousands of times more productive, at least during the recent weeks.”

  “Excellent. Because to produce the fifty million lines of code required, that’s what they’d have to be.”

  “You can do amazing things, when you’re pressed.”

  “Sure, like typing 10,000 words a minute. That’s how fast they’d have to key in the code, to get it all in.”

  “Dr. Layton, you’re being excessively negative. We all know that only a small portion of any computer program is actually used during any given run. The rest is code to deal with situations that never crop up. Our people will be writing only the parts of the program that will actually be required.”

  “Such prescience. I admire them, I truly do.”

  “You can believe me, the shield will hold.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “It will.”

  Homer had been standing the whole time. His right foot, the one without the shoe had gone to sleep. He sat down to take pressure off it. He shook his head: “Rupert, Rupert, think of all you got to lose. You are a young man. Me, I got nothing to lose. A quick death is preferable to what fate has probably got in store for me. I am 77 years old. Old guys have no illusions. A bomb might be better for me than waiting for you know what. For heart cancer, or terminal constriction of the testicles. But for you it’s different. You’ve even got kids, I think.”

  Paule nodded, thinking of the three vague little faces. He hadn’t been home in weeks. “I’m doing this for them, Homer. For American children everywhere.”

  “For American children everywhere you have to think about the possibility that the shield won’t hold.”

  Paule shrugged. “Let’s consider the worst, since you insist. The worst is that six of our cities are taken out: a terrible blow, though not mortal. Our industrial power is intact. Our agriculture is intact. But think of our enemies. In our righteous indignation, excused by the whole world because of our terrible loss, we will have simply erased every single source of annoyance around the world. And we will have demonstrated our will to use strategic weapons whenever we have to. The public stance is that we have been egregiously and outrageously damaged, but have we really?”

  “My god, man! An eighth of our population is dead.”

  “Ah, but which eighth?”

  Homer stared at him, uncomprehending. Paule waved a hand dismissively. “Six large cities: Much of our urban population gone; more than fifty percent of the black population of the country, gone, and that is a loss. It does wonders, of course, for our poverty program. In one day we remove more people from the poverty roles than all prior administrations combined.” He smirked. “Oh, I think the nation will be able to go on. Time will prove that the loss of six cities was not so much a mortal blow as a kind of…purification.”

  “Jesus. I can’t believe you’re saying this. I can’t believe that when St. Louis is lying in ashes, you’ll still be able to…”

  “If the shield doesn’t hold, we launch anyway. It’s just a little messier.”

  “Oh, well that makes it easy. You’re going to hit them either way. Whether it holds or not. You don’t even have to wait to find out the result. Why torture yourself wondering whether you really should have evacuated St. Louis? You can just launch immediately, as soon as you know one missile has been fired on us.” The logic was correct, but he wished immediately that he hadn’t said it. Paule had obviously not thought of that before.

  “Hmm. You may be right. I’ll have to talk that over with Hodge. And the President, of course. Well, Dr. Layton,” he got to his feet, “as pleasurable as this little chat has been, I’ve got to get back to minding the store, as you can imagine. Be assured that I will share all your concerns with the President, who will consider them very carefully. Very carefully. By the way, I understand that you will be addressing the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Ft. Lauderdale this evening. I too have excellent information sources.”

  Homer nodded, at a loss for words. “Well, then, I think you might be well advised to catch the Delta noon flight to Fort Lauderdale. You see, we’ll be obliged to close Reagan Airport just after that. It will be the last flight out to Florida. I’ve taken the liberty of having two seats booked for you.”

  Homer pressed on, ignoring the fact that he had been dismissed. “The President has to consider taking the hit on St. Louis. Evacuate the city and let them blow it up. Don’t retaliate. It’s not a bad trade. St. Louis for Cuba. It’s a knight for a bishop. Tell him to take the trade. He’ll be far ahead and not take so much risk. He’s got to think of that.”

  “I’ll tell him.” Paule gestured Homer toward the door. “You’d best be on your way, Dr. Layton. You don’t have a lot of time.” He moved toward the telephone on the table, as Homer rose. From the door, Homer looked back at the thin Ichabod Crane figure, now bending over the phone. Paule, he supposed, was calling the girl to come in and carry out his attaché case.

  14

  MOUSSE

  Albert was waiting outside on the steps of Blair House. Homer took his elbow. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’re out of here.”

  They caught a cab for Reagan Airport. Two first class seats had been booked for them on the noon flight to Ft. Lauderdale. Rupert Paule was a mad zealot, but an efficient mad zealot. Homer called Kelly from the boarding area.

  After hanging up, Kelly examined her reflection in the mirror behind the desk. She didn’t look like a woman who’d just received news of impending Apocalypse. She just looked normal, or fairly normal. There were some signs of the strain of the past few days, perhaps accentuated by Homer’s call, but nothing very dramatic. She seemed just a tiny bit tense. It might have been the expression brought on by mild cramps, or by disappointment at a B on a term paper. Maybe she didn’t believe that any of it was going to happen, that any of it had already happened. Only she did. She believed absolutely that this was real. The events of the near future seemed by now to be determined, like the ending of a film she had already seen. If she wasn’t reacting more, it was because of the fatalism that had taken possession of her. She ran a hand through her hair. Behind her was the sound of Claymore humming cheerfully over his sculpture. Curtis was playing cops and robbers, playing all the parts in his made up drama: Hold it right there, Buster, in one voice, and then Drop that gun in another.

  “I have to run down and pull the others out of the meeting, Curtis.”

  “You’re gonna spring them. I think they’re gonna be real happy to be sprung. They weren’t enjoying themselves all that much.”

  “And you’re going to put all the furniture back together in case we need sofas and chairs instead of a pillow fort.”

  Down on the lobby level, she paused outside the Flamingo Room door to concoct her excuse. What she came up with wasn’t perfect, but it could be made to work, she supposed, if the others rose to the occasion. It would have to be played by ear. She stepped into the room, went purposefully up to Chandler who was in the middle of his peroration on the duties and responsibilities that students must be obliged to accept in exchange for the freedom that they had been given. He stopped in mid-sentence as Kelly arrived at his side.

  “I’m so sorry to crash in like this, Senator, and to interrupt your work.” She put her hand onto his arm. “It’s just that something altogether extraordinary has just come over the news.” Kelly turned to Loren and Ed, who were seated side by side. “NASA has announced the discovery of an anti-star in the Crab Nebula.” She held her breath for someone to react.

  Edward leapt to his feet. “My God, this is momentous! An anti-star! And in the Crab Nebula. Why, this is extraordinary news.”

  Loren was standing as well. “We suspected that there was one there. We were onto it all along, only, only…”

  “Only they’re very hard to see,” Sonia picked up. “Because they only shine anti-light.”

  “Yes anti-light. It’s almost invisible, you know.” Loren began
to gather his papers. “Well, if you can possibly excuse us for the moment, Senator, we’re going to have to draft a statement for the press. It’s bound to be on the evening news, and Homer will want for us to have something very cogent ready for the news.”

  “Yes, they’re downstairs already, I’m afraid, the newspeople,” said Kelly. “Wolf Blitzer. They’ve been asking for a statement.”

  “My word, Wolf Blitzer?” Chandler looked impressed.

  “Uh huh. And a team from The Washington Post.”

  “Well then, perhaps you should go. We’ll do our best to carry on without you, thinking over the matter of freedom and responsibility and so on. By all means. We don’t want to keep Wolf Blitzer waiting.”

  “And we’d be obliged if you could spare Dean Sawyer, too, Senator. She will be quite indispensable for…” Kelly stopped, at a loss for a the rest.

  “For the makeup,” Dean Sawyer finished. “Of course, my dear.”

  “Yes, of course. By all means, Maria. You go with them too.”

  Out in the corridor, Kelly had sudden giggles. Edward pulled her by the arm, away from the door and out of earshot. “Jesus, Kelly. An anti-star? What the hell is an anti-star?”

  “I don’t know. I was rushed. I figured you’d think of some way to make it sound OK.”

  “And anti-light, Sonia? I almost burst out.”

  Sonia shrugged. They were all grinning. Then the grins began to evaporate as they stopped to consider why it was that they were there. Kelly filled in the details on the way up in the elevator.

  Most of what there was to do was to buy things. Loren got on the phone to rent two trucks. Edward opened Homer’s briefcase and began to divide up the cash and pass out lists of items needed and tasks to be performed.

  Delta Flight 117 was delayed in Atlanta. One engine of their DC-9 had failed to restart at the gate. Albert and Homer sat, fretting, for more than an hour while mechanics tinkered. At last, the captain announced that they would have to switch aircraft. There was an Delta agent waiting for them as they stepped off the plane. She explained that there was, as yet, no alternative aircraft, that they would be informed just as soon as she herself knew what their departure time would be. It was a little past 4PM.

  Homer looked up at the arrivals board to check on incoming equipment. The 2PM from Reagan National, he saw, was marked “DELAYED.” If the airport had indeed been closed, the closing of Atlanta International might follow shortly. He noticed that there was a flight out to Tampa at 4:30. From Tampa they could rent a car and be in Ft. Lauderdale by evening. He caught Albert coming out of the men’s room and hurried him off toward the gate. As they taxied down the runway, Homer saw Air Force pilots running toward their sleek silver fighter planes, parked alongside the government hangar.

  Jared Williams had scratched most of the items off his reception checklist before the first guests began to arrive at the Eckerd Suite just after 6 PM. The hotel had provided a bartender and two servers for the hot canapés. Williams checked them out. They seemed competent and pleasant. He mixed one shaker of martinis for the Hopkins, and then turned the bar over to the hotel man.

  It had been the Senator’s idea to bring along a Cornell singing group, The Halls of Ivy, to entertain at the reception. One of Williams’s concerns was that the group had spent the entire day at the poolside bar and was somewhat the worse for drink. He had heard them on prior occasions when in a similar state, and knew that their selection of songs could become erratic. Pray god that they didn’t decide to sing The Young Maiden of Delhi or one of their other risqué numbers this evening. The Senator would not be amused. Ah, there was Corliss Taft, the head of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his wife, Dr. Melinda Taft, just arriving. Williams hurried over to steer them toward Senator and Mrs. Hopkins for a proper welcome.

  Stacey approached him a moment later. “Any sign of Homer?” she asked. There really was no need for Williams to worry at all, with a professional worrier like Stacey around; she could take care of the worrying for all of them.

  “Not yet.” He gave her a wink. “He’ll be here.”

  “Of course he will. Dr. Layton is very countable-onable,” she said. “I mean, one can always count on him. Can’t one?”

  “Of course.” None of the other members of Homer’s group had shown yet either.

  “Of course. I shall just give a ring up to their suite, though. To let them know that it’s quite OK to arrive now. Sometimes people are shy about coming too early.”

  “That might set their minds at rest.”

  “Mr. Claymore Layton will not be coming to the reception. I talked to him this afternoon. He was going for a swim in the ocean. He said that he would be at the dinner though. He was very enthusiastic about the dinner, because we’re having chocolate mousse.”

  Williams smiled. How like Claymore Layton, he thought, to cut through the crap and go right to the essential. A decent chocolate mousse was likely to be the high point of the evening. Even if the mousse were less than perfect, it would signal the end of the dinner, the end of the speeches and toasts and the other bother. Then they could all go to bed. In the morning, he had hopes of being left alone for long enough to have swim himself.

  Just after seven, Dean Sawyer arrived, and shortly behind her, the four young members of Homer Layton’s staff. Kelly took Williams aside. “There’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “Dr. Layton is a tiny bit delayed. He’s driving in from Tampa. He will be here in time for his address. We’re going to have Sonia make a presentation before Homer goes on. She’ll tell the audience something about Homer’s work over the past few years. That will give us a bit of extra time, in case there’s traffic or something. Don’t worry.”

  “Tampa?”

  “It’s a long story. But everything is all right.”

  “Is it?”

  “Maybe not perfect. But it won’t help to have people worrying. Could I count on you, Mr. Williams, to reassure the Senator? Edward will be explaining the revised schedule to Mr. Taft. Perhaps it would be better not to mention Tampa. Let them think Homer is just taking the extra time to work on his acceptance speech. No need to mention he is working on it in a car.”

  By 8PM they were taking their places at the dinner tables. Corliss Taft stepped up to the microphone. He was a fit, sixtyish man, with a thick mane of gray hair. He welcomed the group, quieted them down, and then introduced Dr. Sonia Duryea of Professor Layton’s staff. She would provide them some background material, he said, about Homer Layton and his work. He led the applause as Sonia made her way up onto the stage.

  Sonia looked down from the dais, judging her audience. There were several hundred persons present, most of them Academy of Arts and Sciences members. There was also a smattering of physicists, known to her from past meetings of the particle physics working group, whose meetings had been scheduled to coincide with Homer’s investiture. An unusual number of spouses had come along too; evidently May in Florida had had some boondoggle appeal. All the tables were full, except for the speakers’ table. There she saw the Tafts, Senator and Mrs. Hopkins, Stacey, Dean Sawyer and six empty places. Loren and Edward, she knew, were standing in the back of the room by the double doors, waiting for Homer to arrive. She turned on the little light at the podium to illuminate the page of notes she had carried up with her.

  In all the years of teaching and making presentations at conferences, she had never felt the need of written notes. Once she had established what points had to be made, they were etched into her memory. But her father had commented after watching her lecture one day that she tended to become terribly serious, even somber as she spoke. So he had told her to concentrate on smiling, no matter how serious the subject. The page of notes lit up in the podium light had only one word on it: SMILE. Next to the word she had drawn a circular face with a big grin.

  Sonia smiled at her audience and began: “The story of the discovery of Dark and Luminous Matter, the two basic building blocks of the universe, is an exciting one. Up
until the early nineteen-eighties, no one was even aware of the existence of Dark Matter. The stuff that makes up our solar system, our whole galaxy, in fact, is entirely Luminous Matter. But today we know that there is also another and dramatically different kind of stuff: Dark Matter. We know that Dark Matter comprises the overwhelming majority of all matter in the universe. The relative proportion of Dark Matter to Luminous in the universe is similar to the proportion of earth to frost.” She paused to let the audience absorb that allusion. “The Luminous Matter, that is all we know, is present in only minute quantities elsewhere in the universe. Of the much more common Dark Matter, we knew nothing until recently, and only one man even suspected its existence…”

  In the back of the hall, Loren fidgeted. He knew there was something inane about this nervousness. There was a possible nuclear confrontation ahead, but he was fretting at the thought of this audience being stood up by the failure of its guest of honor to appear on time to receive his award. This audience could all be melted in an 15,000 degree fireball later this evening or tonight — what difference did it make if they were also stood up? He opened the door to look out into the entryway for signs of Homer. No one was there except for Claymore, sitting alone in an easy chair by a tub of ferns. Claymore was staring off into space. He was dressed for the occasion in a black tux. Loren closed the door and tried to concentrate on what Sonia was saying.

  As usual, she was holding the audience in the grip of her words. She could explain the most complicated physical phenomenon so that anyone could understand it. And she could make it interesting. The assembled notables were learning this evening about Dark Matter and Homer’s discovery of its existence. They would be able to explain what they were learning to their children and friends, because Sonia’s words would stick in their minds. They would wander out to look at the night sky, wonderingly, because all of what they could see was the frost of luminous matter. What lay far beyond, some 20 billion light years away was the rest. Somewhere out there was an infinitely larger amount of a totally different kind of matter. It was invisible because its light had not yet arrived at the earth, and would not for billions of years. Where the dark matter would be seen at some time in the distant future, there was tonight only a black space between stars. And they would marvel how Homer Layton had ever figured out what was there.