Charles Sheffield, page 3
First, any new development would surely be in Teheran. I would have made that bet even without information from Pierce. There are universities in Tabriz and Mashad and Isfahan, but they were weak in science even before the Ayatollahs took over. Now, as a high-level Iranian who had fled the country just four days before the Shah (and been forced to bribe his way out) said to me, “The technical programs are being run by Ph.D.’s in theology from the University of Qom.”
So it was Teheran if it was anywhere. Roland Pierce had come to the same conclusion, but at that point his analysis had taken him in the wrong direction. He knew that the United States had spent billions of dollars on fusion research. As a long-time federal employee, he assumed that the only group with enough money and talent to do the work in Iran must be part of their government.
“If you can provide us with exact coordinates,” he had said just before I left, “we’ll make a quick strike and pick up the team members and as much equipment as we can. This could be another Peenemunde.”
At the end of the Second World War, the Americans and Soviets had between them scooped up the whole German rocket team from Peenemunde and laid the foundation for both nation’s space programs. Pierce did not say, and I did not ask, how his strike would be performed. He surely had his people in place in Teheran, but what I did not know I could not tell.
Pierce’s Peenemunde analogy sounded impressive, and I have no doubt that it went down well in briefings to his bosses. But I disagreed with him for two reasons. First, the government ministries here, even in the old days of near-unlimited oil wealth, had not employed first-rate creative talent. But second, and more important, I knew that Iran had never engaged in research into magnetic confinement and tokamaks. They had no “big fusion” projects. If a path to commercial fusion power had been discovered here, it must be along some new and untraveled road and employ a new physical insight.
To me, that did not suggest large teams and massive equipment. It suggested pencil and paper, and the lonely inside of one person’s head.
I could imagine Roland Pierce’s skeptical reaction. “The Iranian school system today is terrible for science training. Are you suggesting that some half-educated unknown is behind this?”
He was not here for me to remind him that Newton, an unknown isolated from all scientific colleagues by the Great Plague of 1664-5, had in those years laid down the physical laws that created modern science; that Einstein, a half-educated unknown hidden away in the Swiss Patent Office in Berne, had produced the papers on relativity and quantum effects that led to today’s world; that Ramanujan, a self-taught unknown isolated in Madras, had devised formulas that staggered the best mathematicians of Europe when they saw them.
Teheran University, isolated for years from the rest of the scientific world, was just a couple of miles from my hotel.
I put on older and shabbier clothes and went outside again. I walked north. Yesterday’s dusting of snow had disappeared, and a warmer breeze was at my back. I could taste spring in the air.
The fine weather brought many people out of doors. When I came to the campus the walkways were busy with students and faculty, walking and talking. The days of riots and armed guards were a distant memory. No one took any notice of me as I moved from building to building, reading the signs. That was it:tabiyat -natural sciences; somewhere in there would be the physics department.
I went in and wandered around, wondering what I expected to see. If my logic were valid, I should see nothing special. Men and women would be teaching and taking classes, or quietly working in their rooms. Perhaps the oddest thing about geniuses is how ordinary they look.
I made my way to the office of the secretary, an older man carefully dressed in a shiny suit and a shirt frayed at the collar. If anyone respected the old traditions, he was a prime candidate. But you have to be very careful in these things. It does not do to offend someone who is proud of his professionalism.
“I am looking for a friend of a friend,” I said. “His name is Dr. Manoucher.” The banknote I was holding, twice what I had given the desk clerk at Victoria’s apartment building, was discreetly tucked away in my fist so that only the end showed.
He looked at it, looked away at the wall, looked back at my hand. And nodded. I moved my hand forward.
As he turned his eyes again to the wall, I dropped the note onto an open book in front of him. He closed it-still without looking. He must have had a lot of practice.
“I don’t know any Dr. Manoucher,” he said. “He is not in this department.”
“I am not sure that he is even at this university. This is the department of physics?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It is possible that he is at Shiraz. I was given other names at this university, who also know Dr. Manoucher, but I do not remember them. Perhaps if you had a directory, to refresh my memory…”
He shook his head, but before I could feel disappointed, he pointed to the wall behind me. “No printed directory,” he said, “but everyone in the department is shown there.”
It was a huge blackboard, with dozens of names neatly written on the right in green chalk. To the left were days and times and room numbers, what I assumed to be class schedules.
“May I?”
He waved his hand. “Certainly.”
I stepped closer to it and carefully read down the list. Five of the faculty showed blank schedules. I pointed to the first. “He is not here?”
“No. Mr. Ashrafi is away in Baluchistan, on a two-month trip.”
“The others also?”
“No. They are taking time off for private activities, but I do not know where they are. They did not leave a forwarding address.”
“If I may.” I took out a pad and wrote down the five names. I did it in English. When in Rome … don’t write your private notes in Italian. “That is the most likely man.” I pointed at a different name, fourth from the bottom.
“Dr. Azimi. His class will end in five minutes.”
“Thank you. I will speak with him.” Before he could offer to show me the man’s office, I dropped another note on his desk and walked to the door. “You have been most helpful.”
I left while he was busy tucking away the money. I am sure that so far as he was concerned we had just conducted business on traditional, satisfactory, and fully honorable lines. In the East there is a huge difference between bribery and corruption.
I walked through the building again on every floor, confirming my first impression. There were lecture rooms and private rooms, but there was no experimental equipment. Roland Pierce had been quite specific: aworking fusion reactor.
It could not be built here, even if it was small and simple. I examined my list of names. Anyone who worked night and day to build a new reactor would work, eat, and live at that site. They would need time away from the university, and money for equipment. At this point government resources might enter.
Before I left I dropped in on Dr. Azimi and confirmed that he did not know the fictitious Dr. Manoucher. I did not want to plant a question mark in the secretary’s mind if he ever asked Azimi about me.
In a sense I had gained no new information, but I was operating on the dog-in-the-night principle: that a physicist’s absence was significant.
I took my five names to the central records office of the university. They did have a printed directory of faculty members, and permitted me to consult it after I explained that I was trying to find out if Mr. Ashrafi of the Physics Department, now away in Baluchistan, was the same Ashrafi as the one who had studied with me many years ago, at London University.
What I was looking for was simple: I wanted to know the age of the five absent faculty members. The dates of their degrees would give me a good first estimate.
Four of them, including Ashrafi, had foreign graduate degrees obtained in the sixties. The fifth one, Ali Mostafizi, had a bachelor’s degree in physics from Teheran University, obtained just three years ago. He was now a teaching assistant.
Scientists, even in their seventies, can do first-rate work. But it is almost always a broadening of trails first blazed in their early twenties. If any of the five was the man I was looking for, it had to be Ali Mostafizi.
And with that conclusion, I came to a dead end. I did not know where to find Ali Mostafizi. Conventional methods did not work. The records office, like the physics department secretary, had no address for him. A call to the telephone company proved useless.
I returned to Fereshte Avenue and again paid my respects to Abdi Radegan-this time with the taxi waiting. He listened carefully, and then he laughed. “In the United States, possibly,” he said. “Where there is no true concept of family, a person can disappear. Here, it is impossible. Come and see me tomorrow afternoon at five. I will be surprised if I do not have news. Now you should go and rest. You sound very tired. A tired brain is an inefficient brain.”
Abdi, blind, saw more than most sighted people. He was exactly right. Between airplanes and Victoria it was three days since I had enjoyed a full night’s sleep.
I returned to the Khedmat, consumed a hugejuje kebab , and dropped into bed.
A tired brain is an inefficient brain. I had certainly proved it, and I felt like a fool. I knew as well as Abdi Radegan the overwhelming importance of family in Iranian affairs.
Ali Mostafizi might be able to do extraordinary things; but one thing he could not do in Teheran was disappear.
One other thing you cannot do in Teheran is get right down to business. There is an obligatory few minutes of tea and polite greeting, and Abdi insisted that it be observed even though he must have known that I was dying to hear what he had to say.
“Do not miss the importance of this,” he said, as a plate of sweet almond cakes was offered to me. “If you are to succeed in Iran, you must think like anIrani .”
We sat for fifteen minutes, chatting of general world affairs and local politics. I sipped a glass of sweetened tea, nibbled on an almond cake, and commanded myself to be patient. I was feeling a thousand percent more alert. Abdi had been right about my condition yesterday, and he was probably right today.
At last he said, “How can someone, eight thousand miles away, know more than I of what is happening in my home town? Yet this is true. What you told me two days ago was correct. There is a story in the city of a great invention, of a new source of power. The ears tell me of excitement, of a rumored return by Iran to the center of the world stage. My young ears share that excitement.”
“But you do not.”
“Very good. My son, you are beginning to listen. I do not.”
I waited. The old, deeply-lined face was brooding, and at last he went on, “The problem with Iran is not the Ayatollahs. They were merely the people’s reaction to the Shah. But the problem was also not the Shah. It was the world’s thirst for oil, and the greedy dreams that brought to us. We used to be a wise and thoughtful people. In the old days, I taught my students the works of our great poets and writers, Hafez and Sa’di and Ferdowsi. Yes, even Omar Khayyam, although he is greater in your translations than in our tongue. In turn the old writers taught us, me as well as my students, about life.
“But what do we learn from oil? Only that it is a source of temporary wealth, which will one day, not far in our future, be exhausted.
“This new source of power that you told me of could help to conserve our oil and restore our civilization-but only if it can be used by the whole world. If it is kept as an Iranian secret, it is far more likely to prove our destruction. I do not wish to see Iran again a pawn on the world scene, with our government made and unmade at the whim of foreign powers. My country has been changed too much already by outside influence.”
In his youth, Abdi had been noted as an orator. As he grew older his speeches and comments had become shorter and more compressed. This was one of the longest utterances I had ever heard him make.
I laid my hand on his. “Father, I will do nothing to hurt Iran, or you.”
“Do you think I am unaware of that?” He smiled. “Would we be talking together, were it otherwise? Let me go on, now that I am sure we understand each other, to the question that you asked me yesterday. A fourth cousin of my brother’s wife is a Mostafizi. It is not a common name in this part of the city. Most of the family live in the south beyond the railway station. I will give you their address. Ali Mostafizi is a source of concern to them, because he shows little interest in women-and no interest in business. He spends all his time in his studies, at the university.”
“He is not at the university.”
Abdi held up his hand. “Patience, my son. He is not at the university at the moment, but spends all his days, according to my brother’s wife, at the research unit of the Department of Power. I have an office location there for you-and, should you need it, the address of a single room that he rents in a house off Takht-e-Jamshyd. I am told, however, that he is seldom there.”
“Father Abdi, you exceed yourself.”
“I have not finished. One of my ears works at the Department of Power. Most of the staff leave there by seven. Most of the entrances are locked, naturally, against pilfering, but the front entrance remains open with a guard.”
“I can deal with that.”
“I am sure. One admonition, although I know it is unnecessary. There must be no violence.”
“There will be none.”
“And one warning: Take care.”
“I promise. I will take care.”
It was almost seven o’clock. I had a tremendous urge to grab the information and rush off at once to the Department of Power. My promise to Abdi held me. Taking care meant taking time. I could certainly spare an extra day.
The knowledge that it was evening, and I could now return to Victoria’s apartment, had nothing to do with it.
“How long will you be staying in Teheran?”
Victoria was sitting cross-legged on her bed, wearing the top half of black silk pajamas. She was brushing her hair and looking at me as I lay beside her staring vacantly at the ceiling.
It was a perfectly reasonable question. What it really meant was, we are together after a long absence, and this is very nice. But how long will it last? Two days, or two weeks, or two months? I have other people to deal with, and a life to live.
I had been wrestling with a problem of my own, one still too deeply buried for my brain to formulate in words. I could feel connections forming, but her question interrupted the process and brought me back to earth.
“A few more days,” I said.
“You are making progress?” She had heard nothing of a new science discovery in Iran, which did not surprise me. As she had pointed out, her interests did not include science even peripherally.
“I think I am making progress,” I said. “I will know tomorrow.”
I had spoken in English, and she laughed. “Is that an American tomorrow, or one of ours?”
The Iranian word,farda , carries with it the same feeling of indefinite extension as the Spanishmanana .
“I ask for a reason,” she went on. “I must make a business trip to France, and I would like to leave in the next day or two. I was thinking, when you conclude your work here we might spend a few days in Paris together. But we would need to plan times and places now.”
It was a great prospect, but a lot depended on justhow my work was concluded. If Roland Pierce made a strike at my suggestion, I did not want to be in Iran one minute after that.
“Let’s make plans,” I said. “I’ll get there, one way or another, and I’ll call to tell you when. Paris sounds wonderful.”
We went on to talk of restaurants and museums, where we would stay, what we would do. Victoria stretched out on the counterpane, a presence to push any other thoughts to one side.
But long after midnight those thoughts returned to trouble me, and in the silent hours before dawn I made a decision. I would go to the Department of Power. Not secretly, as Abdi had suggested, at night after the regular staff had left; I would go openly, during the regular hours of business.
And I would test the soundness of my instincts.
During the time of the Shah’s rule, the Department of Power had been known as the Ministry of Power. The Minister did not so much hold meetings as grant audiences. Foreign businessmen, moguls in their home offices, had groveled and fawned along with their local partners to win big construction contracts.
Approaching that same white-walled building, I wondered who occupied that huge seventh floor office today. Did he share those same delusions of grandeur?
Probably. The city had descended a long way from the glory days of the Peacock Throne, but human nature does not change.
I was relying on that. When I walked confidently into the building foyer and headed for the elevators, the two men behind the desk on the left glanced up only briefly. My clothes said prosperity, my attitude suggested that I had every right to be there and knew exactly where I was going.
The room that Abdi had told me how to find was long, wide, and apparently deserted. At its center stood a ten-foot cylindrical pipe that ran through the center of a torus no more than two feet across. One end of the pipe stood in a big tank of water that bubbled with steam. The other end was flat and polished, and was marked FUSION REACTOR MODEL TWO-A.
I walked to the end of the room. Beyond it lay a separate chamber, complete with cot, table, chair, and a small lamp. It too was empty, but there were signs of recent habitation. The cot was neatly made up, and textbooks in English and Farsi stood open on the table.
All I had to do was walk back to my hotel, take out the little tape recorder from my case, and record a message. The machine had a dual function. At the appropriate time, when it was optimal for one of the orbiting ferret satellites, the signal would be encoded and transmitted. Roland Pierce would have it within the hour.
