Return of the Ancients (3 page)

‘I mean, if you look at it from one angle it looks symmetrical, and from another angle it . . . doesn’t.’

The frown stayed in place, and she quickly looked over her shoulder at her friends, perhaps to see if they were still watching – they were, intently, as though something amusing, embarrassing, or hopefully both, was about to take place.

Becky turned back to him, her expression morphing from a frown to a look of haughtiness. She took a half step back as though his mere presence was dragging down her street cred, and allowing him to be in her space would mean his nerdiness would somehow rub off on her. She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows questioningly.

He nodded quickly. ‘It was made from the deck plates of . . .’ Arn shut his mouth and just grinned, or tried to. He guessed it looked more like one of those faces that chimpanzees pulled when they were scared.

Then she sort of came to his rescue.

‘So, the notes?’ she asked, with a small shrug.

‘Yeah,
ahh
yeah, that’s what I was trying to tell you. I was going to include the sculpture in my notes for you. Make a good starting point.’

She tilted her head, and her expression softened. ‘Thank you for doing the notes for me, Arnold.’ She smiled as she looked over her shoulder, perhaps this time feeling her cred was moving back up the cool scale by having someone do her work for her.

Now
,
ask her
, he thought. ‘Any time. Hey, I was wondering if afterwards, we . . .’

Beescomb began calling them to order. Becky mouthed
, gotta go
, and turned her back on him to move into a huddle with her friends.

‘Okay, well maybe later,’ Arn said to her departing back, and then shrugged, knowing she probably either didn’t hear him, or had already blanked him from her consciousness.

‘Ahh, unrequited love – the toughest love of all – especially when you’re the
unrequitee
.’ Edward watched as Becky and her friends giggled and pranced away like a small herd of colourful, long-legged deer.

Arn sucked in one cheek and then exhaled.

‘Be even better if she liked
you
, and not just your note-taking skills.’ Obviously, Edward wasn’t ready to give up salting the wound.

‘Sooner or later she’ll see me – see the real me – and see how I feel about her.’ Arn kept watching her as she flicked hair that shone in the sunlight.

Edward slapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘
Ha
, you’re dreaming. Maybe
someone
will, one day, but I’m not so sure it’ll be Becky Matthews. I think you’re just too . . .
different
for her.’

‘
Hmm
, different? Real feelings are blind to differences.’ Arn shrugged. ‘Besides, got to start somewhere.’

*****

Steve Barkin was one of the last on the bus. He sat next to Otis Renshaw and watched tight-lipped as Arn laughed and joked with Becky as they stood among the other milling students.

Otis followed his friend’s gaze outside the bus, and spoke out of the side of his mouth. ‘You used to date her, didn’t you?’

‘Ages ago.’ Barkin kept watching.

Otis nudged him. ‘Well, better watch out; Sitting Bull’s going for it.’

‘Never happen. She’d never go out with an Injun charity case. Anyway, so what? I dumped her. She was high maintenance, kept hassling me.’

Otis nodded. ‘Well, she’s certainly over you now.’ He laughed and sat back.

Barkin shrugged and blew air from his lips in an
I don’t give a crap
type of way. Then when he noticed his friend had turned to stare out of the opposite window, his eyes narrowed and drifted back to where Arn and Becky stood.

You just wait
, he mouthed, and sprung up, heading for the door.

*****

Arn and Edward turned away from Becky and looked straight into the dead-eyed faces of Steve Barkin and Otis.

Barkin put his hand on Arn’s chest and pushed him. ‘You should leave her alone.’

Arn pulled an incredulous face. ‘Leave her alone? Why? Your property is she, Barkin, huh?’

Barkin shrugged. ‘Listen
Pawnee
: stay away for your own good. Besides, she thinks you’re weird. We
all
think you’re weird . . . and don’t belong here. Just piss off back to the reservation . . .’ He looked at Edward. ‘. . . And take your boyfriend with you.’

Edward seemed to shrink at being included in Barkin’s spray. Arn felt his face get hot again. ‘Really?’ Arn turned to Becky and her friends. ‘Becky!’

She turned. He made writing motions in the air and yelled, ‘Catch up later!’

She nodded and turned back to her friends, and they started to head to where Beescomb was gathering all the students.

Arn turned back to Barkin. ‘We write to each other all the time . . . and you?’ Barkin opened his mouth, but Arn cut in. ‘And it’s
Shawnee,
not
Pawnee
. We’ve been here nearly four hundred years – I think it’s you who doesn’t belong.’ He pushed past him, and he and Edward walked towards the class group.

Edward waved his arms in front of them to clear a path. ‘Comin’ through, dead men walkin’.’ Edward looked up at his taller friend. ‘He is so gonna kick your ass.’

Arn shrugged. ‘Probably, but it was worth it to see that look on his face.’

‘The
I’m gonna kill you
one?’ Edward laughed. ‘You know, it’d be worth it if she liked you as much as you liked her.’

Arn just sighed.

The group moved like some many-legged organism towards the main entrance of the giant, sagging sandwich building. Arn was amazed by how modern the interior was, how clean, how . . . sterile. But something else struck him as strange – it was almost empty.

‘Where is everyone?’

A balding, smallish man was making his way towards them, and Arn’s voice must have carried in the library-like hush of the high-ceilinged building.

‘Mostly under your feet. Like just about everything else in the Fermilab community.’

Beescomb cleared his throat and walked forward to introduce himself. The small man nodded, shook his outstretched hand, and held out his other hand for the paperwork. He quickly scanned it, and then stepped back from the shadow of the larger teacher so the students could see him.

As he did, a number of large dogs raced up, pushing in between the crowd and quickly sniffing pockets, bags and fingers. Some of the girls squealed, and Arn reached down to pat one of the largest dogs, who gave his fingers a quick sniff before racing off after a discreet signal from its keeper.

‘Don’t mind them,’ said the small man. ‘Just working members of the security detail. In those few seconds they were among us, they searched for everything from explosives to drugs, and even for excessive nervousness – they miss a lot less than the most sophisticated electronics. In fact, you might be interested to know that Fermilab is breeding some of the best and smartest guard dogs in the entire world: increased intelligence, size, and a higher tolerance to ionising radiation – our new guardians if you like.’ He gave a small nod, like a bow. ‘My name is Dr. Albert Harper, and I’m the chief physicist working on the Tevatron project. I’d like you all to follow me to the theatre for a short background briefing before we descend for the test-firing.’

A couple of hands shot up, but Harper held up his own like a traffic cop. ‘
Whoa
, not yet. I’ll take questions following the presentation – we simply cannot be late; the project has cost about a billion dollars, and is being monitored and managed by a very large, very expensive, and very impatient team.’

He laughed as though he was joking, but Arn knew the head scientist had got his message across: you’re on my turf and my time – jump to it.

The group filed into the amphitheatre, and Arn let his long hair fall forward over his face to try to avoid seeing a glaring Steve Barkin skulking at the rear.

Before the last student had sat down, the theatre darkened and Harper’s voice droned from speakers around the room.

‘Welcome to Fermilab . . . funny name right? He peered around the room, his eyebrows raised and an ironic smile indicating no answer was really expected.

‘Well, the science community you’ve come to today was originally home to the village of Weston, and was once little more than farmland. In fact, you might see some of the first barns still around the place. There’s even a small burial ground with tombstones dating all the way back to 1839. We still maintain it out of respect for the original inhabitants.’

Arn kept his mouth shut, even though his, and Dr. Harper’s, concept of
original inhabitants
differed by about 250 years.

Harper continued. ‘We weren’t always called Fermilab though. We actually started out as the National Accelerator Laboratory when President Lyndon B. Johnson himself commissioned it in 1967.  But, in 1974 the laboratory was renamed in honour of Nobel Prize winner, Enrico Fermi, one of the most famous physicists of the atomic age and . . .’

Edward’s hand shot up, and at the same time his voice sprang from the dark next to Arn. ‘The father of the atomic bomb.’

Harper pointed to where Edward’s voice had risen, and nodded. ‘Yes, yes he worked on the Manhattan Project, but did you know he also developed the world’s first nuclear rector, and contributed to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics?’ Again the eyebrows went up.

Harper’s voice had become momentarily rushed as though responding to a challenge. He paused, staring in Edward’s direction for a few seconds before he smiled, and smoothly changed back to talking about the facility, his voice once again relaxed. ‘Since those early days we have grown, adding extra circumference, accelerators, and too many upgrades to mention.’

Harper waggled a finger in the air. ‘Although there is one worth mentioning.’ A giant image appeared behind him of a ruby red cylinder – glass-like, perfect – a magnificent stone. ‘Diamonds used to only be a girl’s best friend, well, now they’re the nuclear physicist’s greatest gift. They are unparalleled in their transmission of heat and light, and are virtually indestructible. Our friends down under at Australia’s Macquarie University found that their optical properties far surpassed anything else at the unique wavelengths required for high-powered laser technology. And red was best, because it allowed a pure beam without all of white light’s additional, fractious particles.’

Hands went up around the room –
where was it found? Is it expensive? Is it here? Can we see it?

Harper waved the hands down. ‘For a start, we didn’t find it, we grew it. Took over a year to create this single, three-inch structure via chemical vapour deposition – the result, after cutting and polishing – a lens of perfect, consistent clarity. And, at US ten million dollars, it was a fraction of the cost of using a natural diamond. Not that you’d be lucky enough to ever find one like it.’

Harper looked at the image of the red diamond for a few seconds, the red glow reflecting on his shiny face as well as an expression that was a mix of pride and adoration. ‘Yes, we’ve come a long way.’

He lifted one arm theatrically to motion towards the screen. ‘To where we are today.’ Pictures of rolling green fields and forested countryside were displayed against a backing soundtrack of birdsong and soft music. It faded out, dream-like, to be replaced by images of the massive Tevatron collider.

 The view shot into the sky, and panoramic pictures from miles overhead showed the size and scale of the gigantic Fermilab project. The physicist recited his lines with great enthusiasm – the world’s second most powerful proton-antiproton collider – four miles in diameter, but able to send particles around its gigantic ring at 99.999 per cent of the speed of light, completing the four-mile trip nearly 50,000 times per second. The objective was to smash those particles together at a rate of almost two million collisions each second.

Arn nodded in the dark, scribbling notes without looking down at the page.
Cool
, he thought. He turned his head to the left and saw the presentation screen reflected in Edward’s glasses – tiny copies of the Tevatron in each of the lenses. He smiled – his friend’s face was rapt with awe. Turning slowly to his right, he saw that the light made Becky look even prettier. Again, he wished he could think of something cool or funny to say, but gave up in case he sounded like a jerk . . . again.

He slowly eased back in his seat, and snuck a look over his shoulder to where Barkin and his friends were seated. Huddled together, their faces were also lit up, but by something Barkin was holding on his lap – a portable PC game, probably.
Grades are gonna be looking good again this year, Stevo
, Arn thought and chuckled softly.

Arn turned in his seat, happy that he wasn’t the focus of the dimwit’s attention for at least a few moments, just as a new image appeared up on the large screen, and Dr. Harper was moving into presentation wrap-up mode.

The new pictures were of the void of space and distant galaxies, and Harper was talking about the connection between physics and astrophysics, and how their project would assist in solving the mysteries of dark matter throughout the universe.

A crude drawing was attached to the lower corner of the image – a rough cartoon, but its point was clear. Darth Vader was holding up a lightsaber next to some crudely scrawled words: ‘The dark side controls the universe – dark matter holds it together – and dark energy determines your destiny.’

‘
Dark
energy determines your destiny’
–
good
quote
, Arn thought, as the lights came up.

*****

The student group was herded from the amphitheatre and down a long corridor, before being shown to a set of large steel doors. Behind them, heavy clanking and whirring could be heard until the giant doors slid back to reveal a grey service elevator large enough to fit ten elephants – or twenty boisterous teenage students – with ease.