Brad Meltzer - The Zero Game

“There are certainly some potential defense applications,” he begins. “This doesn’t require an accelerator, but if you want to know if a particular country has nuclear weapons, you can fly a drone over the country, get an air sample, and then use the ‘quiet’ of the mine to measure the radioactivity in the air sample.”

It’s a fine theory, but if it were that simple, Wendell — or whoever they are — would’ve just requested the mine from the Defense subcommittee. By trying to sneak it though Matthew and the Interior subcommittee, they’re playing dirty — which means they’ve got their hands on something they don’t want public.

“What about weaponry… or making money?” I ask.

Lost in thought, Minsky twirls the tip of his paperclip through the edge of his beard. “Weaponry’s certainly possible… but what you said about making money… you mean literally or figuratively?”

“Say again?”

“It goes back to the nature of neutrinos. You can’t just see a neutrino like you see an electron. It doesn’t show up under the microscope — it’s like a ghost. The only way to see them is to watch their interactions with other atomic particles. For example, when a neutrino hits the nucleus of an atom, it generates a certain type of radiation like an optical sonic boom. All we can see is the boom, which tells us that the neutrino was just there.”

“So you measure the reaction when the two things collide,” Viv says.

“Exactly — the difficulty is, when a neutrino hits you, it also changes you. Some say it’s because the neutrino is constantly shifting identities. Others hypothesize that it’s the atom that gets changed when there’s a collision. No one knows the answer — at least, not yet.”

“What does this have to do with making money?” I ask.

To our surprise, Minsky grins. His salty beard shifts with the movement. “Ever hear of transmutation?”

Viv and I barely move.

“Like King Midas?” I ask.

“Midas… Everyone always says Midas,” Minsky laughs. “Don’t you love when fiction is science’s first step?”

“So you can use neutrinos to do alchemy?” I ask.

“Alchemy?” Minsky replies. “Alchemy is a medieval philosophy. Transmutation is a science — transforming one element into another through a subatomic reaction.”

“I don’t understand. How do neutrinos…?”

“Think back. Jekyll and Hyde. Neutrinos start as one flavor, then become another. That’s why they tell us about the nature of matter. Here…” he adds, opening the top left-hand drawer on his desk. He rummages for a moment, then slams it shut and opens the drawer below it. “Okay, here…”

Pulling out a laminated sheet of paper, he slaps it against his desk, revealing a grid of familiar square boxes. The periodic table. “I assume you’ve seen this before,” he says, pointing to the numbered elements. “One — hydrogen; two — helium; three — lithium…”

“The periodic table. I know how it works,” I insist.

“Oh, you do?” He looks down again, hiding his smile. “Find chlorine,” he finally adds.

Viv and I lean forward in our seats, searching the chart. Viv’s closer to tenth-grade science. She jabs her finger at the letters Cl . Chlorine.

17

Cl

“Atomic number seventeen,” Minsky says. “Atomic weight 35.453(2)… nonmetallic classification… yellowish-green color… halogen group. You’ve heard of it, right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, years back, in one of the original neutrino detectors, they filled a hundred-thousand-gallon tank with it. The smell was horrific.”

“Like a dry cleaner’s,” Viv says.

“Exactly,” Minsky says, pleasantly surprised. “Now remember, you only see neutrinos when they collide with other atoms — that’s the magic moment. So when the neutrinos plowed into a chlorine atom just right, the physicists suddenly started finding…” Minsky points down to the periodic table, pressing his paperclip against the box next to chlorine. Atomic number eighteen.

17-18

Cl-Ar

“Argon,” Viv says.

“Argon,” he repeats. “Atomic symbol Ar . Seventeen to eighteen. One additional proton. One box to the right on the periodic table.”

“Wait, so you’re saying when the neutrino collided with the chlorine atoms, they all changed to argon?” I ask.

“All? We should be so lucky… No, no, no — this was one little argon atom. One. Every four days. It’s an amazing moment — and completely random, God bless chaos. The neutrino hits, and right there, seventeen becomes eighteen… Jekyll becomes Hyde.”

“And this is happening right now in the air around us?” Viv asks. “I mean, didn’t you say neutrinos are everywhere?”

“You couldn’t possibly see the reactions with all the current interference. But when it’s isolated in an accelerator… and the accelerator is shielded deep enough below the ground… and you aim a beam of neutrinos just right… well, no one’s come close yet, but think about what would happen if you could control it. You pick the element you want to work with; you bump it one box to the right on the periodic table. If you could do that…”

My stomach twists. “… you could turn lead to gold.”

Minsky shakes his head — and then again starts laughing. “Gold?” he asks. “Why would you ever make gold?”

“I thought Midas…”

“Midas is a children’s story. Think of reality. Gold costs what? Three hundred… four hundred dollars an ounce? Go buy a necklace and a charm bracelet, I’m sure it’ll be very nice — nice and shortsighted.”

“I’m not sure I-”

“Forget the mythology. If you truly had the power to transmute, you’d be a fool to make gold. In today’s world, there are far more valuable elements out there. For instance…” Minsky again stabs the periodic table with his paperclip. Atomic symbol Np .

93

Np

“That’s not nitrogen, is it?” I ask.

“Neptunium.”

“Neptunium?”

“Named after the planet Neptune,” Minsky explains, forever the teacher.

“What is it?” I ask, cutting him off.

“Ah, but you’re missing the point,” Minsky says. “The concern isn’t what is it ? The concern is what it could be.. .” With one final jab, Minsky moves his paperclip to the nearest element on the right.

93-94

Np-Pu

“Pu?”

“Plutonium,” Minsky says, his laugh long gone. “In today’s world, it’s arguably the most valuable element on the chart.” He looks up at us to make sure we get it. “Say hello to the new Midas touch.”

Scrubbing his hands in the fourth-floor men’s room, Lowell stared diagonally down at the front page of the Washington Post Style section that lay flat across the tile floor and peeked out from the side of the closest stall. It was nothing new — every morning, a still-unidentified coworker started the day with the Style section, then left it behind for everyone else to share.

For Lowell, who usually never read anything but the newspaper clips his staff prepared, it was a ritual that stumbled headfirst across the fine line that separated convenience from bad hygiene. That’s why, even though the paper was right there, he never reached down to pick it up. Not once. He knew what others were doing when they read it. And where their hands had been. Disgusting , he’d long ago decided.

Of course, some things took precedence. Like checking the Post ’s infamous gossip column, The Reliable Source , to make sure his name wasn’t in it. He’d meant to look this morning, but time got away from him. It had been barely three days since he last saw Harris. He’d counted at least four reporters in the restaurant that night. So far, everything was quiet, but any one of them could’ve tattled about the meeting between him and Harris. For that alone, it was worth taking a peek.