“Ugh!” Sarah pulled a face. “Nasty crawly things there . . . and slithery things. Don’t like them.”
“Nor do most people. That’s why it would be the thing to do. Anyhow . . .” The chime of the Infonet extension in the den interrupted him. “Hell—who’s that?”
“I’ll get it. You finish that up.” Sarah rose and disappeared through the door. Clifford could hear the muffled tones of one end of a brief dialogue. Then she came into the kitchen again.
“It’s somebody asking for you. I’ve never seen him before—a Dr. Phillips from California?”
“Phillips?”
“He seems to know you.”
Clifford contemplated his fork quizzically for a moment, then set it down on his plate and strolled through into the den. He sank into a swivel chair and swung round to face the screen.
The apparition confronting him looked like a cross between something out of a rock opera and a reincarnation from Elizabethan England. His hair fell in flowing blond waves almost to his shoulders, forming an evangelical frame for his medieval pointed beard and shaped mustache. The part of his body that was visible was clad in a loose silky shirt of vivid orange, with ornate designs in gold thread embroidered about the shoulders and the long, tapering collar. Clifford’s first guess was that he was about to be the victim of a harangue by some kind of religious freak.
“Dr. Clifford?” the caller inquired. At least there was no hint of fanatical zeal in the voice.
“Yes.”
“Dr. Bradley Clifford of Advanced Communications Research?”
“No less.”
“Hi. You don’t know me. My name’s Philipsz—Dr. Aubrey Philipsz of the Berkeley Research Institute. I’d better spell that: P-H-I-L-I-P-S-Z. Most people that like me call me Aub. I work on the experimental side at Berkeley—high-energy particle physics.”
“Uh huh.” Clifford was still trying to orient himself toward the probable direction that the conversation would take, but no particular direction seemed to suggest itself. The voice issuing from the grille sounded out of character with the face on the screen. If it hadn’t been for the synchronization, Clifford could have believed that the audio and visual components of two different conversations had somehow gotten scrambled in the network. Aub sounded confident, composed, and totally rational, though without any trace of arrogance. His eyes were shrewd and penetrating, yet sparkled at the same time as if suppressed mirth were bubbling up to break free.
“You’re the guy who wrote the paper that connects gravity with k-space transitions,” Aub confirmed.
Clifford straightened up in his chair. “That’s right . . . but how come you know about that?”
“You don’t know we know about it?”
“No, I don’t. Who are you and where does Berkeley fit in?”
Aub nodded slowly, half to himself, as if Clifford’s response had somehow been expected. “Just as I thought,” he said. “Something smells about this whole business. You couldn’t imagine the problems I’ve had trying to get hold of your name.”
“Suppose you start at the beginning,” Clifford suggested.
“That’s a fantastic idea, man. Why don’t I?” Aub thought for a split second. “Part of the paper talks about sustained rotations of k-functions. In it you derive the criteria for stability and frequency for different rotational modes.”
“That’s right. It follows from conservation of k-spin. What of it?”
“Your mathematics implies that certain sustained rotations can take the form of continuous transitions between hi-order and lo-order dimensional domains. In normal space the effect would appear as a particle repeatedly vanishing and reappearing, like a light flashing on and off.”
Clifford was impressed, but dubious. For the moment, he’d reserve judgment.
“That’s correct. But I still don’t see . . .”
“Take a look at this.” Aub’s face disappeared and was replaced by an irregular pattern of thin lines, some straight and some curved, traced in white on a black background. Clifford recognized it as an example of computer output from a high-speed ion chamber; this was the standard technique for capturing details of high-energy particle interactions, and was used by experimentalists worldwide. Aub’s voice continued: “You see the track marked G to H, down at the lower right of the picture?”
“Yes.” Clifford picked out the detail indicated. It was not a continuous line, but comprised a string of minute points of white.