Charmed Particles (36 page)

And so Rose was surprised, one evening, when Randolph, home then for just over a month, made his way into the dining room where she was working on her campaign literature. “Rose,” he began. “I've been thinking.”

She looked up, recognizing his tone as the sort that indicates a conversation deserving of one's full attention. Here was the moment she had steeled herself for.

“I've been thinking,” he said again, “that it may be time for me to take a break.” Lately, he explained, he had found himself thinking about a book project—photos and text, maps of his journeys, suggested routes, helpful tips for other intrepid explorers. “I'd like to be home,” he said. “For a good long while this time.”

At first, Rose said nothing. She watched him for signs that he might have known what she had considered asking, that he might have known about the many unsent letters she had drafted before—

She stopped herself from thinking of it, as she always did.

“Is this because of my political aspirations?” she asked, finally.

Randolph took a seat in one of the chairs beside her at the glossy dining room table. “Not at all,” he said, confused by the question. For his part, he was wondering if Rose could sense the fear that had grown in him. He hoped not. He was ashamed of it. He held his hand out to her. “Just a good time to begin a book, I think.”

Rose took his hand, but rather than feeling pleased or relieved, she found herself feeling both guilty—that just like that, she'd been delivered from having to ask him something she had so thoroughly dreaded—and relieved—that he would be here with her, with Lily.

Lily, coming down the stairs in search of a snack for her study break, had found them, her mother, strangely, sitting on her father's lap like a child, their foreheads resting together, eyes only for each other.

“I've decided to take a bit of a respite from my travels,” Randolph explained to Lily that night over dinner. Lily was slowly growing accustomed to her father's presence each evening at the table, each morning at breakfast. Rose folded her napkin and set it beside her plate, feeling certain she knew what was coming.

Lily looked across the table at her mother, suspicious. “Why?” she asked.

What to say, Randolph wondered. Would he tell her all of the ways in which he'd felt himself growing fearful?

“I almost lost you both,” he said, finally, looking down at the table. “And I've been thinking about what's most important to me.”

Lily looked down, too, a tear budding in the corner of her eye, which she brushed quickly away. Still, she stole another look at her mother, who, noting it, wondered whether Lily would raise the issue of the letters she'd discovered—the letters Rose had written but never sent.

She did not.

“I'm glad you'll be here,” Lily said, taking her father's hand and weaving her fingers between his.

CHAPTER 22

Awaiting Decision

I
N
THE
WEEKS
FOLLOWING
THE
HEARING,
THE
L
AB
SEEMED
STRANGELY
quiet, the scientists unable to concentrate. To Sarala it felt like the whole town had grown silent and closed in, as if bracing itself for a blow.

Abhijat found himself more often than not looking out his office window toward the city in the distance. How precarious it felt to have one's professional fate in the hands of others.

At the grocery store, neighbors passed each other with curt greetings, having seen once and for all in the auditorium where everyone stood on the issue. They imagined the Department of Energy officials flying back to Washington, looking down over Nicolet from the windows of their airplane, its farmland and subdivisions growing smaller and smaller as they rose into the air and off to make their decision.

After the hearing, the letters began to arrive. In an office in Washington, a secretary who had been charged with collecting all correspondence on the matter of the super collider for the purposes of assembling a public record opened letter after letter from Nicolet. Some neatly typed on letterhead, others hand-lettered in nearly illegible scrawl—the shaky handwriting of elderly citizens, the large, looping handwriting of children.

Filed away with the others:

A letter from a woman who'd written
I hate the SSC
, across the bottom of the page near her signature.

Children's drawings: SSC in all caps, a circle drawn round it, a line struck through in prohibition. And their letters, asking why the collider couldn't be built on Mars instead of under people's houses.
There's lots of space up there. Then no one in our town would be fighting
.

In the rounded, decorative script of a teenage girl:
I don't really know much about this issue but our biology teacher asked us to write a letter in support of this. I hope this hasn't wasted your time. I'm getting extra credit for writing this
.

One in long, elegant cursive:
It is my testimony at the hearing that has prompted my writing. I would like to apologize to the panel members for my attitude during the hearing. While this is an emotional issue for those of us facing relocation and the loss of our community as we know it, this does not excuse my anger toward the panel members. Shortly after the hearing, the Lord reminded me that as a Christian, I had failed to represent Him in a way worthy of His name. So I ask that you please extend this apology to the gentlemen taking testimony that day in the auditorium. Please also express to them that I continue to pray for all of you for wisdom in this decision-making process
.

Anderson Hall rumbled with the low murmur of nervous conversation. Dr. Palmer made his way to the podium set up in the center of the stage, the auditorium seats filled with anxious Lab employees. Dr. Palmer was not a man who hid his emotions well; written across his face were the signs of fatigue and disappointment.

“Colleagues,” he began. “This process has been a long and emotional journey for many of us, and I am afraid I call you together today to share with you disappointing news. After careful consideration, the Department of Energy has decided against construction of the Superconducting Super Collider here at the National Accelerator Research Lab.”

There was a heavy silence in the large room. Dr. Palmer continued speaking, but Abhijat could no longer hear him, his mind racing.

Would it be built somewhere else, he wondered? Perhaps. But where? And more importantly, when? For surely it would mean more waiting, further delay, starting from scratch with studies and outreach and attempts to explain the magnitude of their work. His breath caught in his throat as all of this made itself clear to him.

Dr. Cardiff, beside him, turned at the sound.

Abhijat met his eyes, wiped a palm over a forehead now beaded with sweat.

“I know that many of us are profoundly heartbroken over this decision,” Dr. Palmer finished. “I wish that I had some words of comfort to offer you all. Perhaps it is enough to remind us all that very big projects don't always have happy histories.”

From his office window, Abhijat looked out over the charred prairie grasses.

For months now, he had been counting on the arrival of the super collider, had so freighted it with meaning, with the possibility of the great prizes, of his theories being recognized and his work remembered. He'd come to think of it as the most important thing to happen in his life, in his career. Now, though, without it? It felt as though a giant obstacle had been placed in his path. And for the first time in his life, he felt unequal to the task of determining how to circumvent it.

There would be, over the course of the next year, he realized, a slow trickle of young, ambitious physicists from the Lab. There was still work to be done, but Abhijat and Dr. Cardiff knew, as did the younger physicists, that the Lab was no longer the place from which the most groundbreaking work would emerge.

One by one the staff filtered down to the cafeteria, taking places at the long tables that lined the atrium. The sun shone in through the windows, but inside, the mood was glum. Abhijat took a seat at a table with Dr. Cardiff and Dr. Cohen. The cafeteria ladies, who knew how badly the scientists had hoped for the collider, brought over plates of cookies, which the physicists picked at halfheartedly.

“This will be the end of the Lab,” Dr. Cohen said, breaking the heavy silence.

“Don't be hyperbolic, Adam,” said one of their colleagues.

“There's still much to be found in the lower energy levels we've got here now.”

“Oh, please,” Dr. Cohen answered. “That will be wrapped up in a matter of years. And then where will we be?”

“We'll be off to another lab,” answered another colleague, as he took a seat.

That, they all knew, was likely true. Most would head to Europe or Japan. There were rumors of CERN trying for a super collider. Perhaps they would end up there.

Some would leave physics entirely, Dr. Cardiff thought, though he didn't say this.

“Now I'm going to have to wait until I'm fifty to understand what breaks electroweak symmetry,” one of their young colleagues said, looking up from the napkin he'd torn into tiny pieces.