Charmed Particles (33 page)

The moderator and the rest of the Department of Energy panel filed back onto the stage and re-took their seats behind their microphones and name placards. The moderator again leaned forward into his microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, I now reconvene the public hearing on the matter of the super collider. We will now hear from Mr. Lawrence Callahan, mayor of Nicolet.”

Rose watched with interest as the mayor stood, hiking the waistband of his dress slacks over his substantial girth, and made his way to the podium. The difference between the professionalism of Rose's campaign staff and Mayor Callahan's loose group of family and friends pitching in to help when they could, was, Rose believed, a manifestation of the difference between the old, rural Nicolet and the Nicolet of the present—a suburb that, with the arrival of the Lab, of developers, had become savvier, more sophisticated. Mayor Callahan, Rose hoped the voters would see, was a relic of the old Nicolet.

“Hello, everyone,” he began. “Gentlemen. I'm awfully glad so many of our good citizens have come out today to participate in this hearing. And now if you'll bear with me, like I said, I'd like to say a few things.” Here he looked down, consulting his notes.

In his comments, he came down, as Rose expected, squarely on the side of the collider's supporters, pointing out that the Lab was a good neighbor, a showplace for the arts, a cancer treatment center, and an educational institution.

Rose had also registered to speak. Her own comments were brief, largely an affirmation that she stood “in support of the safety and sanctity of our homes, schools, and farmland,” and that she believed the local elected officials had “failed the citizens of Nicolet by allowing this proposal to proceed this far.”

When they returned to the school from lunch, Sarala had taken Rose aside and asked her to explain the conversation about the Academy, so Sarala, unlike Abhijat, had a better sense of what was afoot. As the hearing continued, she began to guess, correctly as it turned out, at why Meena had not before mentioned this opportunity.

Abhijat, however, now found himself distracted, half following the hearing, and half curious to learn what it was that Rose had been referring to, what this opportunity for Meena was, and why she hadn't shared this information with her own parents.

Meena sat stiffly next to her parents as the hearing continued. Surely, the moment they found themselves in the car on the way home her father would ask her about the conversation.
And what to say?
she wondered.

After the two mayoral candidates had come a kindly old lady, who urged the panel to pray over the matter. “Please don't build this terrible machine under our homes, our schools, our beautiful farmland,” she urged them. “All of us, on both sides of this auditorium, want safe homes for our families. Don't you want that, too? Then don't take that away from us.”

Throughout the afternoon, the audience grew restless in their seats, and tempers grew short. Outbursts came from both sides, followed by stern reprimands from the moderator. Listening, Abhijat could feel his heart pounding. He felt afraid for the Lab and afraid for himself. Beyond his own hopes for what the collider might mean for his legacy, he had begun to worry over what would become of the Lab if they lost this bid. The Lab was the one place he had ever felt at home in the world, and the opponents seemed to be threatening its very existence. He felt Sarala's hand on his, and he looked at her, grateful for her presence.

“We will next hear from Mr. Horace Emery,” the moderator announced, his voice crackling over the auditorium's speakers.

Mr. Emery approached the podium. He took off a hat with what Rose recognized as a seed-company logo on the front—her father had worn one like it—and tucked it into the back pocket of his overalls.

“My name is Horace Emery,” he began. “My family roots go back to the land that is now part of the Lab, and I want to go on record as being 100 percent in support of this project. When the Lab was first proposed twenty years ago, I was opposed for many of the same reasons you folks are. But I was wrong, and you are wrong today.”

At this, booing from the audience.

The moderator leaned toward his microphone. “We have all agreed we will not have that sort of outburst. Mr. Emery, please continue.”

“With this new proposal, I am going to lose 189 acres of farmland, and it is probably going to destroy my way of life. I'm getting too old to go out and start all over again. But that's okay, because this is for a good cause.”

Here there arose a series of shouts from the opposition's side of the auditorium.

“You folks want to yell?” he said, turning to face them. “Well, that's all right. I like those kind of discussions. Progress always involves risk. We cannot stand in opposition to progress. I know people who have been cured of cancer out at the Lab with their medical experiments, and in my mind, losing my land is worth keeping one of my neighbors alive. I wish this sort of thing existed back when my father died of cancer. He had a tumor. He went into the hospital and they cut a hole in his head and he lay there a vegetable until he died. Nowadays, I hear about people who go down there to the Lab and in a few treatments they're healed. No knife, no blood transfusion, not even a Band-Aid. I certainly hope we cut out this monkey business and get on with this thing, the sooner the better.”

Mr. Emery turned from the podium and walked back to his seat, the audience, for a moment, strangely quiet.

“And now we will hear from Ms Lily Winchester,” the moderator announced. Lily had told no one, not even Meena, that she had registered to speak. She had kept it to herself, and for the past several days had spent her evenings, like many of her fellow citizens, poring over her comments, timing herself so as not to exceed her allotted five minutes, refining her points down to the most salient, the most persuasive. She inched past Meena, Sarala, Abhijat, and Dr. Cardiff, who watched, as surprised as her mother on the other side of the auditorium, as she made her way down the aisle.

“Good afternoon,” she said, speaking into the microphone affixed to the top of the podium. “My name is Lily Winchester. I am fifteen years old and a student at Nicolet High School.

“Many people are against this proposed project. Some because they are afraid of change and progress.” Here there was shouting from the opponents' side, but now, hours into the hearing, it had begun to feel both expected and half-hearted, as did the moderator's move to quiet it. Lily continued. “But if we listened to people like that, we'd never have gone into space or done any of the other important things our country has done. By the time construction on the super collider is completed, my peers and I will be freshly out of college, and this project will open up countless opportunities for those of us pursuing careers in science. We should be honored to have the collider built here. I see the super collider as a tool, an instrument of science that has much to teach us and will help us to unlock the mysteries of our universe. It is true that the new facility will displace families. Your dreams may be affected. What, though, is wrong with another, bigger dream? Thank you.”

Rose watched Lily return to her seat on the other side of the auditorium, filled with a pride she hoped did not show on her face.

The moderator spoke again into his microphone. “And finally—” at that word, signaling an end in the nearby future, it was as though the entire audience, supporters and opponents alike, sighed deeply in relief “—we will hear from Dr. Gerald Cardiff.”

Dr. Cardiff rose and made his way down the row of seats, Sarala giving him an encouraging smile. Abhijat noted his friend's slow and careful pace, the grey encroaching on his few remaining dark hairs, and again Abhijat became conscious of the fact that they were, both of them, aging.

“When I was a boy, many, many decades ago,” Dr. Cardiff began, “we were taught that the atom was the smallest thing in the world.” He paused. “How woefully unimaginative that turned out to be. What has been revealed to us by the Lab's work and accomplishments is a magnificent world, more astounding than any of us could have imagined.”

Listening to him, Sarala felt like he was explaining to her all of the things that Abhijat loved about his work but so often did not have the words for. She reached over and took Abhijat's hand in hers.

“It is my most cherished hope,” Dr. Cardiff continued, “that we might work together as a community to ensure that this sort of revelation is available to the young people who join us here today, to their generation.” Here he looked at Lily and at Meena beside her. “They will, I believe, discover things that today we are unable to even conceive of, but we must provide them with the tools to do so, to participate in this remarkable unveiling of the world's mysteries. The greatest gift we can bestow on future generations,” Dr. Cardiff said, turning to the audience, “is to encourage their curiosity. Thank you.”

The moderator leaned in to his microphone one last time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Cardiff being our final speaker of the evening, this concludes our hearing. I, and the panelists who have joined me here today, wish to thank you for your thoughtful comments. With that, we are formally adjourned. Thank you and goodnight.”

Whereupon, at 7:30 p.m., the hearing was concluded.

CHAPTER 21

Cartography of the Time

Abhijat managed to wait until he, Sarala, and Meena had gotten into the car, the doors closing, one—two—three consecutive thumps, before raising the question.

“Meena, what is this opportunity, this academy Mrs. Winchester mentioned at lunch?” he asked, turning from his place behind the steering wheel to face Meena in the back seat.

All around them doors slammed, engines started up, the cars of the other hearing participants snaking up and down the parking lot aisles toward the exit, brake lights glowing out into the dark.

Meena had been expecting this, had buckled herself grimly into her seat waiting for one of them—of course it would be her father, she realized now—to ask the question. “I didn't want to bother you,” she said.

“That you have mentioned,” he said. “But what is the opportunity?”

“It's a special school,” Meena began haltingly, doling out as little as she could. “For science and math. You live there. Mr. Delacroix… the guidance counselor. He said Lily and I should apply.”

Abhijat was quiet for a moment, taking this in. “And do you want to apply?” he asked finally.

Sarala, listening from her seat beside Abhijat, was surprised by his choice of question. It was exactly the right one.

Meena scratched at a spot on her jeans. She spoke without looking up. “I didn't want to bother you while all the stuff about the collider was going on.”

“Yes, but it is my responsibility as your father to help you pursue opportunities,” Abhijat answered. “It is not a matter of bothering me—this is my duty as your parent. And now, again the question—do you want to apply?”

Sarala turned in her seat to look at Meena, offering an encouraging smile.

“No,” Meena said, her voice small, apologetic.

“A useful piece of information,” Abhijat replied, nodding. “And, may I ask, why?”

“I don't know,” Meena mumbled, hoping her vagueness, her lack of enthusiasm for the conversation might deter her father from pursuing it further.

But, like parents everywhere, Abhijat instead took this as encouragement to forge ahead, imagining that somewhere, underneath that “I don't know” thrown aside so carelessly, she did in fact know, did in fact want to share this information. He pressed forward, and it felt to Meena a little like the evenings around the kitchen table, so long ago now, when he would gently nudge her on through the difficult terrain of a particularly tricky math problem, displaying a kind of certainty in her ability that even she did not feel.

“I just.” Meena started, then stopped again, assessing the hazards of the tangled path before her. “I like my school. And I don't—” She took a deep breath, as though preparing to dive. “I'm sorry. I know this sounds mean, and I don't mean it to, but I don't want to have a life like you.”