Charmed Particles

by Chrissy Kolaya

  The elevators carried them to the top of the Research Tower. On the highest floor, large plate-glass windows looked out over the prairie; from here, visitors could observe the surrounding land as it had been before the beginning of its transformation into farmland, into suburbia. The children lined up before the windows, noses pressed against the glass. Rose looked out over the great expanse of the Lab’s campus, thinking of how she had never before seen Nicolet from this height, so much of it visible all at once, arranged just beyond the borders of the Lab’s grounds.

  “There, in the shape of a ring,” Abhijat said, “you will see the outline of the accelerator, which exists many feet below ground, four miles in circumference.” He traced the shape of the circle on the glass with his finger. “Looking out even farther, you will see how vast the campus of the Lab is. We are nearly seven thousand acres.”

  Rose looked out over the land she remembered as neighboring farms, prairie grasses now reclaiming the soil. The Nicolet Lily would grow up thinking of as home was so different from the Nicolet Rose had known—so different, she thought, as to be almost unrecognizable.

  “And now, may I please turn your attention to this exhibit—” Abhijat gestured at a large segment of metal tubing stretching the length of the hallway, “—which shows a replica of the magnets used to power the accelerator. Here at the Lab,” he explained, “we are searching for tiny parts of the world we believe may exist. To do this, we use an accelerator, in which we send two particles around and around in a circle, going faster and faster until—smash!” He clapped his hands together and held them there for a moment. “We have crashed them!”

  “Why?” Meena asked, her voice coming from beside him where she stood next to Lily, watching as Abhijat spoke. Hearing her father describing his work, her curiosity had overpowered her sense that these were things she ought already to know. But her father so rarely talked with her or her mother about his work. She knew the Lab as a facility with a lovely butterfly garden, a cross-country ski path, a dog park, lectures, arts events, and symphonies—not as her father knew it.

  “Ah, yes. A useful question from our colleague, Miss Mital,” Abhijat said, looking surprised. “It is, to put it simply, to see what happens.”

  “And what does happen?” Meena asked.

  Abhijat looked at his daughter, intrigued by her curiosity. He felt for a moment as though he were speaking only to her. “You see,” he explained, “when they collide, they break apart into even smaller particles. Particles so small we can’t even see them. All we can see are the paths they make as they go spinning and flying out into the world. And those paths help us to know what kind of a particle it is we are looking at.”

  A chattering in the corner, which Mrs. Hamilton quickly shushed, broke the illusion and brought Abhijat back to the group of students.

  “Now, you may be wondering, why should we want to do such a thing,” he continued. “Why build such a facility just to look at such tiny, tiny things? Who among us is wondering this?”

  A few timid hands went up into the air.

  He smiled. “Well, my distinguished guests, it is for a very good reason. These tiny, tiny particles help us to learn what the world was like at the very beginning of time.” He paused here for effect, his eyes wide.

  “Like Adam and Eve?” one of the children, a pale, blonde-haired girl, asked.

  “Oh, no, long before then,” Abhijat said, smiling.

  “And what was it like?” Lily asked.

  Abhijat looked out at them, eyebrows raised, his face animated. “Very curious indeed.” He clapped his hands together. “Now, if you will please follow me.”

  Lily and Meena trotted along at the head of the group, close to Abhijat. As they passed the offices of the physicists, Rose noticed the chalkboard walls filled with equations, a beautiful script that reminded her for a moment of the hieroglyphs she and Randolph had seen in the temple of Karnak.

  “You see,” Abhijat continued, “every particle gives an energy signal. As Miss Winchester suggested, you might think of the particle accelerator as a kind of microscope. When the protons collide, they create mass in the form of other particles, and here, sometimes, are new particles we have before only ever imagined. In order to see these, we must use a quite ingenious machine called a detector, which is watching all day, every day for the signals from these particles. It gives us, in a nutshell, a tsunami of data. Because, you see, the accelerator is creating over a million collisions per second. So someone must look at these collisions and see what they’re telling us.”

  “And what are they telling you?” Lily asked.

  Abhijat smiled. “Well, you must be patient with us, Miss Winchester, as we work to discover that. Now, if you will please follow me, here we will look at part of the detector.” Abhijat led the children over to a bank of computers, where a number of young men sat glued to their screens. “Birali is the colleague who is making sure the machine is running correctly,” Abhijat said, indicating a younger man, who looked up from his computer screen and smiled at the children. “And he will today show us what the paths of some particles look like after a collision.”

  On his screen, the young technician pulled up an image of a collision event, the paths of the particles outlined against a black background, arcing and spiraling off by way of announcing their existence.

  Rose thought of how the paths of the particles, inked out against the dark background looked like chrysanthemums, like the explosions she and Randolph had watched blooming against a dark sky during the fireworks festivals of Japan.

  “What we will do next,” Abhijat continued, “if you please, is to visit the experiment hall. Please, I think this you will find most exciting. So with your permission, we will head in this direction.” He led the snaking line of students back through the atrium to a nearby building, the docent trotting along at the back of the group to help herd the strays. “On the way,” Abhijat continued, “we will pass a very interesting part of our facility, the neutron therapy department. Here, with experimental medical treatments connected to our work, we are treating patients with very serious conditions.” He gestured at the building as they passed and crowded together at the door of their destination. “Now in the experiment hall, I must ask you please not to touch anything. We must all keep our curious fingers to ourselves.”

  Inside, silver canisters of liquid nitrogen stood along the walls surrounded by strange machinery, and Rose thought it seemed more like being inside a factory than anything else. How, she wondered, did one connect the delicate image of the particle paths she had just seen, so like a flower, to this noisy, hissing, chuffing room?

  “My colleagues you see working here are experimental physicists,” Abhijat continued, his voice raised over the hum of the machines. “They work with the equipment we will see today, conducting experiments and gathering data.”

  Abhijat did not share this opinion with the students, but he had always felt that there was something ugly about all that tinkering, all that machinery. He privately felt that a good idea ought to be able to be sorted out in his head, on paper, or on the crowded chalkboard in his office. He thought of it as an untidy business—building and operating these accelerators. But it was a necessary business, he knew. For without this machinery, what were his theories, the argument went, but elegant ideas, grand guesses at the shape of the world?

  “I, on the other hand, am a theoretical physicist,” he continued. “We concern ourselves mainly with the philosophy and mathematics behind the physical world as it exists around us. If you will permit me a little joke, to quote Sir Arthur Eddington, ‘I hope it will not shock experimental physicists too much if I say that we do not accept their observations unless they are confirmed by theory.’”

  Here Abhijat waited what seemed to him a rather long time for the group’s laughter. Finding it not forthcoming, he plowed onward.

  “Yes, well, now we shall return to the education center, where I will be happy to take your questions.”


  The group approached the education center and gathered on the part of the lawn that had been neatly mowed, around which sprang up the tall, native prairie grasses now blowing in the warm breeze.

  “So, please, have you any questions for me or for our colleague Mary Ann from the Education Department?” Abhijat asked, indicating the docent who now stood beside him. She had been surprised at how well Abhijat had been able to tailor his explanations to the age group.

  But by now the allure of the warm spring day had begun to take hold of the children. The circle of students had already begun to fray out at the edges, a group of boys running circles around a large, outdoor sculpture of a Möbius strip.

  “Well, then, hearing no questions, I thank you very much, young ladies and gentlemen, for your interest and attention.” Abhijat folded his hands one over the other before him and nodded as though to punctuate the end of the tour.

  Led by Mrs. Hamilton, the students called out in a sing-songy group, “Thank you, Dr. Mital. Thank you, Miss Mary Ann.”

  Most of the students bolted to join the boys in their game. Abhijat, Meena, Lily, and Rose stood where they were, watching the road for the approach of the large yellow school bus that would transport the children back to their classroom.

  “It was very kind of you to give up this time for the students,” Rose said. “And very interesting. I’ve never had the chance to tour the facilities—only ever the grounds.” She thought about how many people there were now working at the Lab and living in Nicolet who had never known the town as she had.

  “Not at all,” Abhijat said. “I am delighted to see that they, and you, are curious about such things.”

  “Yes, it’s an important human quality—curiosity,” Rose said.

  “The most important,” Abhijat agreed.

  And from around the corner, they heard the loud diesel approach of the school bus.

  CHAPTER 7

  Exotic Particles, Expected and Unexpected

  1984

  NOW, WITH MEENA OFF AT SCHOOL AND ABHIJAT AT THE LAB, Sarala found herself with entire days alone, long quiet hours in which she watched the clock, waiting for the sound of the school bus on the corner, of Abhijat’s car in the drive. The house was in order. Meals were on the table each evening at precisely six o’clock.

  “Why don’t you take up a hobby?” Abhijat suggested. He considered it the highest form of luxury to be able to provide his wife with a life in which she need not occupy herself with work.

  But what Sarala had decided she needed was her first good American friend. And, as though timed perfectly with her resolution, a new couple had moved in across the street.

  From the window of Abhijat’s study, Sarala watched with interest as a large Mayflower truck pulled up in front of the house across the street, followed closely by another car, from which emerged a woman in shorts, bouncy red hair held back with a pink silk scarf, sunglasses catching the daylight as she pointed here then there, directing the movers and the tall tanned man in a golf shirt who must, Sarala decided, be her husband. By the time the school bus delivered Meena home from school, the truck was gone. Sarala peered over her shoulder at the house as she walked Meena home from the bus stop.

  That night, Sarala opened her red-gingham-print Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and made a batch of cookies—chocolate chip—with which to welcome her new neighbors. In the morning, she combed her hair, studying her reflection in the mirror and trying out a bright, welcoming smile.

  The house across the street was a green saltbox with yellow shutters and already looked to Sarala as though someone had been living there for years—an American flag flying from the porch, a stone goose standing sentry, wearing an apron, a matching kerchief tied over its head. Sarala knocked on the front door, the plate of cookies balanced in her open palm.

  The door was opened by the woman with the bouncy red hair, which was today held back by a bright yellow headband.

  Sarala held the plate of cookies out before her. “Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said, producing the friendly smile she had practiced in the mirror. “I am Sarala. My husband, Abhijat, and I are your neighbors across the street.”

  “Well isn’t this sweet of you.” The woman held her hand up to her heart. “Come in please,” she said, waving Sarala into the foyer. “I’m Carol, and this is my husband Bill—well, where has he gone off to? He must be out in the backyard setting up his grill. He’s just crazy about that grill.” Carol smiled knowingly at Sarala, took the plate, and beckoned for her to follow her into the kitchen, which Sarala did.

  “You’ll have to forgive the frightful mess. We’re still getting settled in,” Carol said over her shoulder, leading the way through the foyer and into the kitchen.

  But Sarala, taking in the rooms around her, was perplexed, for though she was sure she’d seen the moving truck pull away from the house late in the afternoon just the day before, there was now nothing to suggest that Carol and Bill had not been living there for years—pictures on the walls, throw pillows plumped and arranged in the corners of the sofa, and not a single cardboard box to be seen.

  Carol poured them each a cup of coffee and set the plate of cookies in the center of the kitchen table. Sarala took a seat, noting the bright flowered tablecloth and plush floral-print rug under the table.

  Carol leaned toward Sarala. “Well, you’ll just have to tell me all about yourself, and where you’re from, and your husband, and everything.”

  Sarala, smiling, told Carol about her move to the States and all about Meena.

  “And what does your husband do?”

  “He’s a theoretical physicist.”

  “He must work over at that laboratory. We heard a little about it when we were house hunting, but I have to tell you, I don’t really understand what it is they do over there.”

  Sarala was used to this. Always, as though following some sort of script, the neighbors, upon learning where Abhijat worked, seemed to say one of two things: “I’ve always wondered what they do over there,” or: “It must be fascinating, but it’s all beyond me.”

  “To be absolutely frank,” Sarala confided, “I’m not sure that I do, either,” and Carol laughed, a full and warm laugh that seemed to suggest this was the most delightful thing anyone had said to her in ages.

  Carol and Bill were transplants from Alabama, “on account of Bill’s job,” Carol explained. He was climbing the corporate ladder, so they were becoming old pros at these relocations and had just made a killing on the last house they’d sold, she confessed. “And I keep busy with my Mary Kay, of course.”

  “She is your daughter?” Sarala asked.

  Carol laughed. “Oh my goodness, no. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Mary Kay!”

  Carol began to bustle around the small desk just below where the telephone hung affixed to the wall. She handed Sarala a book. On the cover was a blonde woman whose enormous and elaborately arranged hair filled the frame of the picture and then some. “This is Mary Kay Ash, my personal heroine.”

  By the end of the morning, Sarala left with a stack of glossy pink brochures and a small bag of makeup samples. Walking back home from the bright green saltbox, Sarala was struck by how dark and imposing her and Abhijat’s house looked by comparison. If it could be said that a house looked stern, she thought, then theirs surely did.

  “Why don’t you come over for coffee tomorrow morning, after the boys leave for work?” Carol called out from the front porch as Sarala made her way back across the street.

  That night after dinner, when Abhijat had returned to his study and Meena had curled up on the couch with one of the Little House on the Prairie books she was reading voraciously, Sarala made her way upstairs and opened the small pink bag of samples, spreading them out over the counter of the master bath, leafing through the brochures featuring models with elaborate frosted hairstyles moussed and hair-sprayed into place, blush in bright swaths across their cheeks. She leaned in toward the mirror, holding the image of on
e of the women up beside her own face. Sarala looked at the colors in the samples—pearly pastels, pinks and blues. She could see them on the face of the woman beside her in the mirror, but she couldn’t imagine them on her. Sarala put the samples and brochures back into the pink plastic bag. She opened the drawer under the counter and shoved the bag into the back, closing it behind her.

  CHAPTER 8

  Partners in Collaborative Research

  1984

  RANDOLPH VISITED NICOLET EVERY FEW MONTHS, BETWEEN expeditions. Often, Rose and Lily didn’t even know to expect him. On those days, Lily returned home from school to find a familiar backpack in the front hall.

  During these visits home, she and her father spent long hours together, Randolph regaling her with stories from his latest adventure, Lily filling him in on her latest school projects. In these conversations, they took on the classic postures of analysis—Randolph stretched out on his back on the living room sofa, eyes on the ceiling as though recounting film clips being played against that blank screen, and Lily beside him in the high-backed wing chair, listening in rapt attention as he described the pack of zebras he had watched one blazingly hot afternoon gathering under the shade of a few sparse trees, vying for the best position.

  He told her how, in Tunisia, his motorcar had broken down in the middle of the desert and he had spent the night in the back seat until he was rescued by a gang of Berber boys who came upon him stranded in the sand. How the boys, rug weavers, had taken him back to their village, where he learned to his surprise that he was, as it turned out, not a half bad rug weaver himself.

  He told her about the months he’d spent in Tanzania learning to speak the isolate language of Hadzane, now down to about a thousand speakers—hunting kudu with the Hadza people, sleeping with them in brush-covered dwellings. Of how he had learned to carefully measure lion tracks through the bush to identify a mother traveling with cubs, a dangerous encounter best avoided.