Charmed Particles (30 page)

The prairie burn was an annual event. Conducted by the Lab's grounds crew and supervised by the Lab fire department, it was something the Lab had done every year, a way to rejuvenate the land, to allow the growth of new vegetation, clearing the way for fresh shoots of native prairie grasses through the ash. But this year, amid all of the clamor over the super collider, it had collectively slipped the minds of nearly all of the citizens of Nicolet.

Abhijat walked to his car and began his short, winding drive home. In his rearview mirror, the smoke and heat rose up from the grasses as they turned to clouds of ash, reaching up into the evening sky and obscuring the Research Tower. At the entrance to the Lab were the usual protesters, but now they seemed angrier, louder, and Abhijat could hear them from inside his car as he passed by more slowly than usual.

“You think you can burn us out? We won't be intimidated by your scare tactics.”

Abhijat drove home in silence, realizing as he did so that the prairie burn had been—this year—poorly timed.

CHAPTER 19

The Last Trek into the Wild

T
RAVELING
THROUGHOUT
SOUTHERN
A
SIA
THAT
FALL
, R
ANDOLPH
had collected a thoughtful assortment of gifts for Lily and Rose, which he looked forward to presenting to them upon his next sojourn in the States. Through Lily's letters, he had been kept abreast of the gathering storm the super collider had become for the citizens of Nicolet, and for his wife and daughter as well.

Randolph's final stop on the journey would be the Andaman Islands, where he had arranged to live among the inhabitants of a small fishing village for several weeks in a hut on the beach.

In a small cardboard jewelry box, swaddled in cotton, Randolph had sent Lily the tiny corpse of a deathwatch beetle, and a note, describing to her how the small creatures bored into dead wood, and from there sent their mating calls, a repetitive tapping sound, out into the night.

Randolph had fallen asleep soundly, a well-earned rest after a busy day working alongside the fishermen, learning their techniques for constructing and repairing the nets they used to gather the fish that had sustained their people for generations. Before bed, he'd read Lily's most recent letter, chronicling the state of the town as the public hearing loomed, and Rose's most recent letter, chronicling the state of Lily's application to the new Science and Math Academy.

He woke to the sound of shouting. The sun had just begun to rise, and when he peered out the entrance of his shelter, he was astonished to see that the ocean had receded miles and miles from shore, revealing wrinkled wet sand as far as the eye could see, as though someone had pulled a plug and the great sea had simply drained away.

All around him, there was the sound of commotion, and when Randolph turned back to the village to make sense of it, he found the fishermen and their families frantically loading children and prized possessions onto rickety bikes, some of them already hurrying inland toward the swell of land where the mountains began.

CHAPTER 20

The Public Hearing

In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civilization
.

—F
REDERICK
J
ACKSON
T
URNER,
T
HE
S
IGNIFICANCE OF
THE
F
RONTIER IN
A
MERICAN
H
ISTORY

O
UTSIDE
THE
HIGH
SCHOOL,
PROTESTERS AND
SUPPORTERS
HAD
gathered with signs and posters, shouting at one another and at the Department of Energy representatives as they made their way inside. As Sarala and Abhijat passed through the crowd, Sarala noted the presence of police officers near the entrance, arms crossed over their chests, watching for signs of unrest.

Most of the crowd carried signs and wore T-shirts reading N
O
SSC
IN
N
ICOLET
or B
UILD
Y
OUR
E
XPERIMENT
E
LSEWHERE,
but there were a small number of supporters there as well, some of whom Abhijat recognized from the Lab and greeted with a nod as he and Sarala passed through the crowd. Among the opponents, Sarala recognized a number of their neighbors and some of the women from the Mary Kay party. She kept her head down, avoiding eye contact, but just as they were almost to the door, she caught sight of Carol, who broke away from the group of protesters and took her hand.

“Sarala, I'm so sorry,” she said. “I know you're in a difficult place here, but I feel like I have to take a stand on this.”

“I understand,” Sarala said. She smiled warmly at her friend. Indeed, over the last few months she had begun to wonder whether, were she not married to Abhijat, she would be standing with Carol and the rest of their neighbors.

Carol embraced her. “We're still friends,” she said, her words somewhere between a statement and a question.

“Of course.” Sarala gave Carol's hand a squeeze and hurried to catch up to Abhijat, who stood at the door, holding it open for her.

Earlier that morning, as she dressed for the hearing, Abhijat had brought Sarala a letter. She sat down with it, on the edge of their bed, and he watched her as she read.

I think that I have been insensitive to your feelings
, it began. She read on, Abhijat beside her on the bed, expectant, uncertain.

She looked for a moment at the letter in her hands when she finished. It was so like Abhijat—its language scientific, analytical. She remembered how appealing Abhijat's logical, organized mind had felt to her when they'd first married—how reassuring. But now?

She took his hand in hers, finally. “It's time for us to go,” she said.

Inside the lobby, the students of Nicolet Public High School, Lily and Meena among them, had gathered during the passing period to watch the protesters. Meena caught sight of her parents making their way through the crowd and joined them.

Lily watched the crowd for her mother, whom she found standing with a group of protestors, passing out campaign literature. They made eye contact for a brief moment before Lily looked away and made her way toward the auditorium, where she joined Meena, Abhijat, and Sarala, who sat next to Dr. Cardiff in a row of seats near the middle of the room.

The auditorium had neatly divided itself—supporters of the super collider on one side and protesters on the other, and, as though they were all guests at a wedding, each person who entered the auditorium looked up into the crowd on either side of the long entrance tunnel that split the seats into two sides and made a choice.

Up on the auditorium stage, which typically showcased awkward but earnest high school musicals, officials from the Department of Energy took their seats behind a long table looking out over the auditorium, their names on placards before them.

The organizers of the hearing had scheduled a three-hour period for public comment, but 1,500 people had shown up, nearly a hundred of whom had preregistered to comment, and the auditorium soon began to overflow, audience members sitting in the aisles and standing along the entrance tunnel, where they leaned against the gray concrete walls.

From his seat at the long table on stage, the moderator called the hearing to order, explaining the rules of conduct and pointing out the podium near the foot of the stage, from which each speaker would make his or her remarks.

Sarala noticed that its placement, whether by design or necessity, meant that the speakers would be looking up at the stage and at the officials behind their long table, like children looking up at an adult.

The moderator continued. “I have been retained by the Department of Energy for the purpose of facilitating today's hearing. In this role, I am neither an advocate for nor against this proposed project.”

“Bullshit!” came a shout from the protestors' side of the audience.

“Well, then,” the moderator continued. “I suppose now is as good a time as any to remind you that this hearing is being recorded. Your comments today will become part of the public record.”

As the hearing began, Sarala watched the parade of speakers as they made their way to the podium, one after another.

There were speakers who, remembering the Lab's original means of acquiring its campus, now cautioned that this was nothing more than another land grab, another abuse of eminent domain. “You hear a lot of folks going on about what a good place the Lab is, all its important contributions,” one of them noted. “But what about those folks who lost their land? They'll sing you a different tune. And now, thirty years later, here we are again. And what about in another twenty years? They might be coming for your house, for your land then.”

There were speakers who argued that they were sick and tired of being told why they should give up the houses they saved for and raised their families in just so “a bunch of scientists could have a fancy new toy to play with.”