Brenda Cooper: The Single Larry Ti, or Fear of Black Holes and Ken

Better to bring up your soft spots than let the prosecution do it.

When Jerry talked about Ken and me, I couldn’t look at Ken. If I did, he’d know I still missed him. Hell, I still cried sometimes after I saw him at a conference. But not now. Not today.

I took a deep breath and refocused. I was here to defend science, not myself. I remembered the woman who’d spit on me, the way her dark eyes had been further blackened by fear. Science shouldn’t scare people. Damned corporations and money machines and dependent press. Damned religious nuts that hated science since sea level rose, and blamed godlessness for the whole thing. Easier. That way, it wasn’t our fault, anyone’s fault. Fuckers probably read Machiavelli. I better not even think words like that—no swearing on the stand.

Jerry’s voice cut in. “Do you remember what happened when the Large Hadron Collider was brought up in 2008?”

I nodded. “Yes. I was at Stanford then.”

“Can you tell us?”

“There were a lot of people who wrote about how it might make miniature black holes.”

“And did it, in fact, make miniature black holes?”

“No.”

Jerry shifted slightly on his feet, painting his face bored even though I was close enough to see how the little muscles behind his jaw jumped. “How many years did the Large Hadron Collider operate without making any black holes?”

“Twenty-five.” I swallowed. “Twenty-five years and three months.”

“In that time, did you see any evidence”—his voice rose—”any evidence at all that the Large Hadron Collider manufactured any black holes?”

Ken had come home one day, halfway into the demise of our marriage, excited about experimental results that showed a nanosecond time lapse between a collision and its results, a tiny flash of photons that might have been, maybe, the briefest flaring of an event horizon, given life for less than the millisecond delay. I’d told him it wasn’t enough then. If I hadn’t believed him then, I couldn’t say I believed him now. Besides, I didn’t. If the results ever again showed even the tiniest tear in space-time, I didn’t see them. Science has to be repeatable.

Ken’s head snapped up and he looked angrily at me.

Of course, he hated the media, too. Even when physicists fight, colleague on colleague, we stop and join in hatred against the media and their scare tactics. The media wars couldn’t be won. We didn’t have any territory on the nets anymore except inside the closed land of the universities. I looked directly at the cameras and smiled reassuringly. “No. No, I never saw any evidence of the creation of black holes.”

“So in your expert opinion, the Earth is in no danger from the Moon Ring?”

I looked directly at the justices. “No, it is not.”

Julie Ray stared right back at me, deadpan, all except her eyes, where I swear I saw the ghost of compassion. Why? Because she knew I was telling the truth?

A small smile crossed Jerry’s face. “Are you the one scientist who’s spent the most active time working with colliders?”

I had to think about that for two breaths. “Yes, I am.”

“And you believe we’re safe?”

A shrill voice from the other side. “Objection! Leading the witness.”

Justice Ray sighed. “Sustained.”

Jerry switched tactics. “Do you believe there is any risk associated with the Moon Ring?”

I cleared my throat. We’d planned this as the most open question. No one objected, so I stood as straight as I could. “All science has some risk. Being human has some risk. We would never have gone to the Moon without risk, never have set up low-g manufacturing or medical labs there, never have built the solar arrays that now power the world.” Subtext—we’d have all drowned from runaway global warming without ready clean energy. But it wasn’t okay to talk about climate change. “The occasional, real risk has kept our species alive.”

A different voice from the other side. Ramona Stutzhaven, the queen of German law, wholly owned by the drug companies, here to keep money away from us and flowing toward pharma. “Objection! Irrelevant.”

Justice Ray again. “Sustained.” I didn’t see any compassion in her eyes anymore.

Jerry was too smooth to show his irritation. “And as a scientist, you believe that some risk is necessary for the human race to evolve?”

Objected to, of course, and sustained, this time before I could do more than nod and smile gently. Ramona would say risk was necessary if this was about medical trials. Stupid two-faced world.

Jerry still didn’t seem to mind. “I rest my case.” He leaned in close to me, his voice low. “Good job. Hold up on cross. Don’t give in.”

Justice Ray nodded to the prosecution. “You may cross-examine the witness.”

Ramona walked over, clouded by cams, head high, blond hair pulled back in a severe bun, little diamonds glittering in her ears. No wrinkles on her face or her clothes. Bitch. Not for that—for what she was about to do to me. She stood where Jerry had just been, smiling sweetly. She even leaned in and smiled at me, and like Jerry, she said, “Good job.”

She didn’t mean it.

She smiled again, pointing her white teeth at the cameras, and when she spoke she sounded like the earnest girl next door. “Dr. Johnson, can you tell me if it is theoretically possible to create miniature black holes from high-speed particle collisions?”

Jeff Rice had stuttered his way through that yesterday. I gave his answer, thankfully without the stutter. “Some scientists believe it is possible, but not probable.”

“And if a black hole is created?”

“It will probably wink into existence for a short time and disappear.”

“Is it theoretically possible that it will not disappear?”

I breathed out. Held it. Took a slow breath in. “Only at the far edges of theory.”

“And if it doesn’t disappear? If it continues to live and grow?”

“It is highly unlikely—less likely than winning a lottery ticket.”

“But people do win lottery tickets,” she mused, pacing half-circles around me now, glancing sideway at the audience and the cameras from time to time. “If people win lottery tickets, perhaps you will also succeed and make a black hole.”

I didn’t think so. Ramona paced past me two more times, heels clicking on the hard floor. Just as Justice Ray straightened and took in a deep breath, Ramona’s voice lashed at me. “You didn’t answer my question. What will happen if a black hole is created in the Moon Ring and it doesn’t disappear? Could it begin to absorb the mass of the Moon?”

We’d never seen a black hole. None of us. Except maybe with telescopes lurking at the middle of galaxies. “That’s science fiction.”

“But theoretically possible?”

I was doing myself in. I gritted my teeth and plowed forward anyway. “It isn’t likely.”

“Isn’t science about the unlikely, the theories?”

It went on like that. When we were done, Jeff had stuttered, Salli had been destroyed, and I’d utterly failed to keep the anger out of my voice. Great. That was the way to reassure the populace. And the judges would almost certainly vote however the media polls told them to.

I hadn’t been good enough.

It was only one in the afternoon when Judge Julie called a final recess, telling us to re-assemble in the courtroom in three hours for a verdict.

I came off the edge of the dais, stepping carefully, keeping my head down. Ken. I stepped back and tried to go around him, nearly falling back onto the stage.

He pulled me in to him like a familiar pet. I hated it that he still knew how, but this time when I contemplated bolting, I noticed a bank of swarm cams nearing us. Hell, since the verdict was assured, why not watch some of the human drama? I stood straighter and smiled sweetly at him. If Ramona could smile before she skewered me, I could smile for the press. “Hi, Ken. You guys made a good argument.”