he lived. The title was “senior research assistant”; it was TDY, so he could live at home, “hours to be arranged.” If he was reading between the lines correctly, the army was pretty well through with him, but on principle wouldn’t just discharge him. It would be a bad example, being able to get out of the army just by killing yourself.
Mona Pierce had been a good listener who asked the right questions. She didn’t condemn Julian for what he did—was angry at the military for not seeing it and discharging him before the inevitable happened—and didn’t really disapprove of suicide in an absolute way, giving Julian tacit permission to do it again. But not over the boy. A lot of factors caused the boy’s death, but Julian had been present against his will, and his part in it had been reflexive and appropriate.
If the personal mail had been awkward to write, it was doubly awkward to answer. He wound up with two basic replies: One was a simple “Thanks for your concern; I’m okay now” brush-off, and the other was a more detailed explanation, for those who deserved it and wouldn’t be too bothered by it. He was still working on that when Amelia came in, carrying a suitcase.
She hadn’t been able to see him during the week he was incarcerated in the observation unit. He’d called as soon as he was released, but she wasn’t at home. The office said she was out of town.
They embraced and said the obvious things. He poured her a cup of coffee without asking. “I’ve never seen you look so tired. Still going back and forth to Washington?”
She nodded and took the cup. “And Geneva and Tokyo. I had to talk with some people at CERN and Kyoto.” She looked at her watch. “Midnight flight to Washington.”
“Jesus. What is it that’s worth killing yourself over?” She looked at him for a moment and they both laughed, an embarrassed giggle.
She pushed the coffee away. “Let’s go set the alarm for ten-thirty and get some rest. You feel up to going to Washington?”
“Meet the mysterious Peter?”
“And do some math. I’m going to need all the help I can get, convincing Macro.”
“Of what? What’s so damned . . .”
She slipped out of her dress and stood up. “First bed. Then sleep. Then explanations.”
* * *
while amelia and i sleepily dressed and threw together some clothes for the trip, she gave me a rough outline of what to expect in Washington. I didn’t stay sleepy long.
If Amelia’s conclusions about Peter Blankenship’s theory proved correct, the Jupiter Project had to be shut down. It could literally destroy everything: the Earth, the solar system; the universe itself, eventually. It would re-create the Diaspora, the “big bang” that started everything.
Jupiter and its satellites would be consumed in a fraction of a second; Earth and the Sun would have a few dozen minutes. Then the expanding bubble of particles and energy would muscle its way out to consume every star in the Galaxy, and then go on to the main course: the rest of everything.
One aspect of cosmology that the Jupiter Project had been designed to test was the “accelerated universe” theory. It was almost a century old, and had survived in spite of inelegance and a prevailing skepticism over its “ad hoc”–ness, because in model after model, the theory seemed to be necessary in order to account for what happened the tiniest fraction of a second after creation—10−35 of a second.
Simply stated, during that tiny period, you either had to temporarily increase the speed of light or make time elastic. For various reasons, the elasticity of time had always been the more likely explanation.
All of this took place when the universe was very tiny, growing from the size of a BB to the size of a small pea.
In the cab to the airport and during the flight, Amelia slept while I skimmed the field equations and tried to attack her method, using pseudo-operator theory. Pseudo-operator theory was so new I’d never applied it to a practical problem; Amelia had only heard of it. I needed to talk to some people about applying it, and to do it right required a lot more computing power than my notebook could muster.
(But suppose I did demonstrate they were wrong, and the Jupiter Project went ahead, but it turned out to be me and my new technique that were in error. A guy who couldn’t live with killing one person would wind up