I felt the tension in the air. Everyone was waiting for me to speak, especially Ravi Nara, who had diagnosed the stroke as Fielding died.
“No,” I said at length. “Ravi said he observed paralysis, speech impairment, and a blown pupil just prior to death. That’s consistent with stroke. It’s just … it usually takes a while to die from a bleed. The suddenness took me by surprise.”
It was as though the air had been let out of a balloon. Shoulders sagged with relief, buttocks shifted position, fingers began drumming on the table.
“Well, of course,” Skow said generously. “It took us all by surprise. And Andrew was, quite simply, irreplaceable.”
I wanted to strangle Skow. He had wanted to replace Fielding for the past six months, but there was no one remotely as qualified as the Englishman available for the job.
“And to show how serious I am about that,” Skow said, “we will not try to replace him.”
Only Jutta Klein looked as shocked as I. Fielding had known more about Project Trinity than anyone but Godin. He’d got us through a dozen major bottlenecks. Problems that had stumped software and materials engineers for weeks were but puzzles to the eccentric Englishman, something to be solved in a quarter of an hour. In this sense, Fielding truly was irreplaceable. But the quantum aspects of Project Trinity could not be ignored. Quantum physics was akin to alchemy in my mind—alchemy that worked—and to push ahead without someone qualified to handle problems like quantum entanglement and unwanted tunneling would be madness.
“But what do you plan to do about the MRI side effects we’ve been studying?” I asked. “As you know, Fielding believed they were the result of quantum disturbances in the brain.”
“Ridiculous,” barked Nara. “There’s no proof there are any quantum processes in the human brain. There never has been, and there never will be!”
“Dr. Nara,” Skow said.
I gave the neurologist a look of disdain. “You didn’t sound half so sure when you were in the room with Fielding.”
Nara shot silent daggers at me.
Skow gave me his patient smile. “David, both Peter and I feel that you and Ravi are quite capable of continuing to explore the medical anomalies. Bringing in a new physicist at this time would be a needless security risk.”
I wasn’t going to argue this. I would save my efforts for the president. “Will Fielding’s body and personal effects be turned over to his widow?”
Skow cleared his throat. “We can’t seem to contact Mrs. Fielding. Therefore, Andrew’s remains will be cremated as per his written wishes.”
Along with any evidence of murder. I struggled to keep my face impassive. So Lu Li had made her escape. On the other hand … would they say anything different if they’d caught or killed her?
Godin touched Skow’s wrist.
“Would you like to add something, Peter?” Skow asked.
Godin rubbed his nearly bald pate under the indirect lights. He sat with a Buddha-like centeredness, only the blue eyes in detectable motion. He spoke rarely, but when he did, the world listened.
“This is no time to talk about trivialities,” he said. “We lost a giant yesterday. Andrew Fielding and I disagreed about a lot of things, but I respected him more than any man I’ve ever worked with.”
I couldn’t hide my surprise. Everyone at the table leaned forward, so as not to miss a word. The hypnotic blue eyes made a quick circuit of the room. Then Godin continued, his voice soft but still deep and powerful.
“From the dawn of history, the driving force of science has been war. If he were here today, Fielding would argue with me. He would say it is mankind’s innate curiosity that has driven the upward surge of science. But that’s wishful thinking. It is human conflict that has marked the great forward leaps in technology. A regrettable reality, but one that every rational person must recognize. We live in a world of fact, not philosophy. Philosophers question the reality of the universe, then look surprised when you hit them with a shoe and ask if they felt that reality.”
Ravi Nara snickered, but Godin gave him a withering glare.
“Andy Fielding was not that sort.” Godin nodded to the black-and-white photo on the wall. “Like Robert Oppenheimer, Andy was something of a mystic. But at his core, he was a gifted theoretician with a great practical bent.”
Godin brushed a wisp of white hair off his ear and looked around the table. “The weaponization of science is the inevitable first step that brings countless peacetime gifts in its wake. Oppenheimer’s superhuman efforts to give us the bomb ended the Second World War and gave the world safe nuclear energy. We here—we five who remain—face a task of no lesser importance. We’re not trying, as Fielding sometimes suggested, to assume the mantle of God. God is merely a part of the human brain, an evolutionary coping mechanism that developed to make bearable our awareness of our own deaths. When we finally succeed in loading the first neuromodel into our prototype and communicating with it, we will have to deal with that part of the brain, just as with all the rest. For those who favor anthropomorphic expressions, we will have to deal with Him. But God, I predict, will prove no more troublesome than any other vestigial element of the brain. Because the completion of Trinity will render that particular coping mechanism unnecessary. Our work will end death’s dominion over humanity. And surely there can be no more noble goal than that.”
Godin laid his crooked hands on the table. “But today … today we mourn a man who had the courage of his convictions. While we, out of grim necessity, focused on the military and intelligence possibilities of an operational Trinity prototype, Fielding looked toward the day that he could sit down and ask the computer man’s oldest questions: ‘How did life begin? Why are we here? How will the universe end?’ At sixty-three, Andy Fielding had the enthusiasm of a child, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. Nor should he have been.” Godin nodded soberly. “And I, for one, will miss him.”
My face felt hot. I’d expected the crocodile tears of John Skow, then a rush back to full-scale research and development. But Peter Godin was classier than that. His words showed that he’d known his adversary well.
“After the cause of our neurological symptoms has been found,” Godin concluded, “the project will resume. If we need another quantum physicist, we’ll hire one. What we will not do is charge forward without knowing the dangers. Fielding taught me the importance of prudence.”
Godin carefully massaged his right hand with the fingers of his left. “We’ve all sustained a severe shock. I want everyone to take three full days of rest, beginning at lunch today. We’ll meet in this room on Tuesday morning. All the usual off-site security precautions will be observed during this period.”
The resulting silence was total. The man who drove himself twice as hard as anyone else was suggesting time off? Such a “vacation” went so against Godin’s nature that no one knew what to say.
Skow finally cleared his throat. “Well, I, for one, could use some time at home. My wife is about ready to divorce me over the hours I put in here.”
Godin frowned and closed his eyes again.
“Meeting adjourned?” Skow said, glancing at Godin.
The old man got unsteadily to his feet and walked out without another word.
“Well, then,” Skow said needlessly.
I stood and walked back to my office, my eyes on Peter Godin’s retreating back. The meeting had gone nothing like I’d expected. Ahead of me, Godin started to turn the corner, but instead he stopped and turned to face me. I walked toward him.
“You and Fielding were very close,” he said. “Weren’t you?”