SHARONA BEN-lOV
The Invisible Mine
In the Sun Tower
T
HIS IS A STORY
about how the marriage of science and war broke
a great man's heart. It begins, for me, on the road winding
through an Israeli landscape that resembled a cross between a
kibbutz and a Star Trek set. Along the road, domes of ficus trees rose
into a deep blue sky, and a gardener walked by with a mud-caked hoe
over his shoulder. But where you expected to see a tractor, you saw a
group of Chinese men in lab coats. And then a sleek concrete tower, fif–
teen stories high, with a strip of windows down its center.
I entered the tower, as instructed in the telephone message that I'd
received the night before, took the elevator to the top floor, and walked
into a vast loft that resounded with metallic crashes, screeches, and
thunks . This was the sound of a shutter opening in the far wall, which
split from ceiling to floor in a line of sun. A dark figure advanced with
the steps of confident old age, and nodded . The noise stopped.
"You look just like your father," Avram rumbled. His heavy face was
sunk in his neck, and one of his faded blue eyes had a cast. I watched
him scrutinize my father in my face. Then he said, "Come see the field
of mirrors." Our steps echoed as we approached the strip of light in the
wall. I looked down the sheer drop to a clearing of very bright dirt,
where white pillars stood in semicircles, holding up rectangular mirrors.
The tilted mirrors kept a sacral stillness .
"They're being repaired," Avram said, "but when they're operating,
they focus a sheaf of sunlight, a super-ray, straight through this window
where we're standing into the solar reactor. There the ray gets very hot,
in fact," he rummaged in his pocket, "this hot."
He brought out a stone disk, yellowish and flat except for the center,
which had melted into a mustard teardrop.
I edged away from the window.
"How many degrees is that ray?" I asked. Avram's good eye dark–
ened in amusement, and he followed me to a pair of folding chairs,
where we sat.
