The God Particle (6 page)

‘Okay, two out of three. I’ve got the “what” and the “why”,
but who put it there?’

‘It was given to us by the Indian government in 2004, to
celebrate the research centre’s long association with their country. Don’t
forget that, if it wasn’t for a certain Indian physicist, CERN would probably
not exist and we wouldn’t be here, enjoying this delicious meal. So, I’d like
to propose a toast…’ Frederick raised his glass. ‘To Satyendra Bose.’

Tom clinked his glass against Frederick’s. ‘Satyendra Bose,’
he repeated.

Frederick noticed that his plate was almost untouched,
whilst Tom had nearly finished his meal. ‘I’ve been doing all the talking and
neglecting Chef Michelle’s culinary masterpiece. I will be in trouble.’

They finished their meals in relative silence, but it didn’t
feel uncomfortable. They made small talk, but neither man felt obliged to fill
the pauses between conversations. To Tom, it felt like he’d known Frederick for
years; the stately man had a certain way of making him feel relaxed in his
presence.

‘And how do you like your accommodation?’ Frederick asked,
as he finished his last mouthful of lobster.

‘I’ve lived in worse.’ Tom thought about his student flat
back at MIT.

‘It’s as temporary as you make it,’ Frederick replied. ‘Some
people prefer to stay on campus because they are closer to their work. Erik was
one of them. Others move out to the suburbs of Geneva, so they can have a
distinct work-life balance. I am a strong advocate of the latter, and I’d
recommend you do the same. I have a little place overlooking the lake. Why
don’t you come round for dinner? My wife makes a wonderful Schweinshaxe mit
Sauerkraut. Mrs Volker is always scolding me for not bringing my work
colleagues home.’

Mrs Volker.
Up until now, Tom had regarded Frederick
as either a widower or confirmed bachelor.

‘Sounds delicious,’ Tom said, not having a clue what the
dish was. ‘I’d love to.’

Pierre was hovering in the background and saw his
opportunity to clear the table.

‘Give Chef Michelle my compliments,’ said Frederick. ‘That
certainly was the best lobster I’ve ever tasted.’

‘And mine. The steak was superb,’ Tom echoed the sentiment.

‘Could I interest you in the dessert menu?’ Pierre asked,
looking from one diner to the other.

Tom was the first to answer. ‘Not for me, thank you. I
couldn’t eat another morsel.’

‘Could we just have the bill when you’re ready, Pierre?’
said Frederick. ‘I would think my colleague is exhausted, it’s been a long day
for him.’ He turned his attention back to Tom. ‘I understand, from Deiter, that
there will be a full operational trial tomorrow.’

‘Yes, it should give me an insight into just what I’ve let
myself in for.’

***

Louis was waiting for them, by the car, at the entrance to
the hotel. He quickly extinguished his cigarette when he saw them coming.

‘They’ll be the death of you,’ Frederick told him,
reproachfully.

The return journey to CERN was even quicker, due to the lack
of traffic. Louis pulled up outside the accommodation block; it was just after
midnight. Frederick wished Tom goodnight and Tom thanked Frederick for a most
enjoyable evening. Then he watched as the car left the compound.

‘I think we’ve found our man.’ Frederick sat at the head of
the large, polished mahogany table, addressing the five men and one woman that
occupied the other seats to his right and left.

He had dropped Tom off at his quarters. However, instead of
going directly home, he had instructed his driver to take him to an underground
car park on the far side of the compound, where there were very few buildings
and even fewer people to see him enter the lift, wait for the doors to close,
insert a key into the control panel and press the ‘alarm’ button. Instead of
the lift ascending to one of the three marked floors, the arrow indicated that
he was going down.

After descending for almost a minute, the doors opened to
reveal a brightly-lit, sterile, white corridor, at the end of which were two
anonymous doors. The one on the right led into a windowless room where the
meetings were convened; the one on the left, which could only be opened from
this side, led into the underground maze of corridors and service tunnels that
made up the bulk of the CERN complex. Volker had personally overseen the
addition of this section to the architect’s plans and referred to it as the
Bunker. Apart from the people waiting for him in the room, the builders and the
architect himself, nobody else was aware of its existence.

The others were already seated and chatting amongst
themselves by the time he entered the room.

‘What makes you so sure?’ said the woman.

‘He’s intellectually capable of understanding our purpose
and compassionate enough to support our motives,’ replied Volker.

‘But that’s what you said about Professor Morantz,’ the
gentleman to his immediate left piped in.

Frederick sighed. ‘I believe that, given time, I could have
persuaded Erik round to our way of thinking. It was just unfortunate that we
didn’t get that opportunity.’

‘And if your new recruit doesn’t support our ideals, what do
we do then?’ the woman queried.

Frederick looked around the room at the blank computer
screens on the walls before resting his gaze back on the woman. ‘We’ll have no
option but to replace him,’ he said with some finality.

‘How sure are you that the experiment tomorrow will not be
successful?’ asked a man on his right, changing the subject.

Frederick looked to the man on his left for the answer. ‘I
have placed a small device on one of the coolant tanks, which is designed to
cause a small leak when the Collider reaches maximum power. I have every
confidence that the maintenance crew will discover the seepage and the
operation will be closed down again, for a number of months, whilst they check
that everything is in working order.’

The man who had asked the question nodded his approval.

‘Now, if there are no more questions, I’d like to reconvene
this meeting in two days’ time.’ Frederick looked at each one of the people
sitting around the table in turn. He had known them for more years than he
cared to recall and, as he looked at the age lines etched in their faces, it
only served to remind him of his own mortality. Getting no response, he bid
them all a goodnight and left the room.

Tom was exhausted. He suspected it was a combination of
disrupted sleep, jetlag, excellent food and nearly a full bottle of
Châteauneuf-du-Pape. All he wanted to do was sleep until his body told him it
was time to get up, but he had scheduled a meeting with Serena Mayer for 8 am
the next morning to go through the previous day’s data. Perhaps she’d
understand if he didn’t make it, but then again he didn’t want to give the
wrong impression.

He made his way to his apartment, past all the other
nondescript doors, following the numbers printed on the walls to ensure he
didn’t get lost. The corridors were soulless and identical – one false turn and
he would find himself walking around in circles in this concrete maze.

He opened the door with his key and surveyed his living
room; it didn’t look any more homely than he remembered. And then a shiver went
down his spine as he recalled something that Frederick had said over dinner,
which didn’t really register at the time.
‘He must have gone back to his
apartment - your apartment - more disturbed than I realised because
they found him the next morning. He’d taken an overdose of sleeping pills
washed down with a bottle of whisky.’

He was literally stepping into a dead man’s shoes and
probably sleeping in a dead man’s bed, come to think of it. He closed the door
behind him, wondering where they had found Erik’s body. If he were to take his
own life, where would he do it? The bedroom would be the most comfortable
place, or maybe the sofa. But then again, the kitchen would be more practical.

The loud knock on the door nearly gave him a coronary,
shocking him out of his reverie.

‘Professor, sahib,’ came the voice. ‘It’s Ajay. I picked you
up from the airport this morning.’

Tom opened the door to see Ajay’s smiling face. He was
carrying what looked like a thick, black, leather-bound photo album under his
arm.

‘Professor, sahib, I have a scrapbook that I made of my
grandfather, that I would like to show you.’

Tom groaned inwardly. He wanted to tell Ajay to leave it
with him and he would look at it in the morning, but he could tell by the
enthusiasm on his face that Ajay literally meant that he wanted to
show
it to him. Perhaps he regarded it as too valuable an item to let it out of his
sight. Tom also recalled making Ajay a promise to finish the stories about his
grandfather when they got back to CERN, so he only had himself to blame. So
much for an early night.

‘Come in, Ajay. I was just about to make a coffee,’ Tom
lied.

Ajay entered the apartment and stood awkwardly by the door.

‘Please take a seat. The sofa would probably be best and
then we can look at the scrapbook together.’ Tom beckoned him further into the
room.

Ajay eyed the orange sofa as though it was a wild animal.

‘Is something wrong?’ Tom asked, catching his expression.

‘I haven’t been into this apartment since Professor Morantz,
since Professor Morantz…’ Ajay was having difficulty finishing his sentence.
‘Since I found Professor Morantz on the couch.’

Well, that certainly answers that question, Tom thought.

‘Okay, if you’re uncomfortable in here, why don’t we look at
the scrapbook in your room?’

The suggestion seemed to pacify Ajay and the savage look on
his face was replaced by a genteel smile. ‘Follow me, sahib,’ he said to Tom,
making a hasty retreat through the door.

Ajay’s apartment was the size of Tom’s living room, not what
he’d expected for the grandson of the great physicist. A single bed took up the
whole of one wall. Along the wall opposite was a kitchen sink and worktop with
a microwave and a two-ring hob on it. Underneath was housed a small fridge. The
single window that provided all the natural light was centrally positioned
between the two walls, and the ‘designers’ had managed to squeeze a small table
and chair underneath it. To the right was a narrow bookcase stacked from top to
bottom with books. A door to the left of the kitchen sink was obviously where the
bathroom was, Tom surmised. The décor and carpets were the proverbial beige and
fawn, although Tom had difficulty in determining the colour of most of the
walls as they were plastered with newspaper cuttings.

Tom scanned the articles’ headlines:

‘Massive quake kills
thousands in China’

‘Wenchuan earthquake
leaves 5 million homeless’

‘Earthquake rocks
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, thousands feared dead’

‘Magnitude 7.1
earthquake strikes Chile's Maule Region’

‘Tsunami triggered by
Chilean earthquake leaves thousands homeless’

‘Pacific coast of
Tōhoku, Japan, hit by massive earthquake and tsunami’

‘Earthquake off the
coast of Sumatra measures 8.6’

‘Fukushima Nuclear
Power Plant in melt-down after quake hits’

‘500,000 dead or
missing after worst nuclear disaster ever’

‘Are you, by any chance, interested in natural disasters,
Ajay?’

 ‘Not all, only earthquakes.’ Ajay was making the coffee and
had his back to Tom.

‘It’s an interesting subject. Would you like to be a
seismologist?’ Tom ventured.

‘As you can see, I read a lot of books on the subject…’ Ajay
turned around and pointed to the bookcase beside the window. ‘But I don’t think
I’m smart enough.’

Tom was getting a bit too tired for small talk. He looked
around for a suitable place to sit and chose the edge of the bed. Ajay joined
him, carrying two steaming mugs, which he placed on the floor in front of him.
He grabbed his scrapbook and sat next to Tom.

***

Tom had finally managed to get back to his bed just after
two in the morning. Ajay had gone through his scrapbook, meticulously
explaining the contents of each page, in detail. It mainly consisted of press
cuttings from the time Satyendra Bose’s historic paper was published in
conjunction with Albert Einstein, as well as personal letters from him to his
son, Ajay’s father, and postcards to Ajay from the places his grandfather had
visited. The last few pages were dedicated to when his grandfather was honoured
by the Indian government and ended with his obituary, with eulogies from people
who had known him personally through either work or his private life.

Tom had grown very fond of Ajay in the short time that he’d
known him. However, fatigue had finally got the better of him and he made his
excuses to leave with as much bonhomie as he could muster.

Tom had hit his snooze button three times before he finally
gave in and forced himself out of bed. Half asleep, he made his way to the
bathroom mirror; the dark lines under his eyes were still there. He decided
that a shower was the only antidote to his tiredness; but, no sooner had he
turned on the faucet, than the phone rang.

‘Good morning, Professor. I hope I didn’t wake you?’ It was
Deiter.
Why did he always sound as though he was being sarcastic?

‘Not at all, I’ve been up for hours.’ Tom didn’t want to
give Deiter the impression that he was somehow the weaker man for being
exhausted – it was childish, but he couldn’t help himself.

‘Good! Then you wouldn’t mind coming into the office to go
through one or two things before we set up the initialisation sequence for
today’s experiment?’

‘Of course not. I’ll be there straight away,’ Tom said,
trying his best to sound wide awake. He hastily put the phone down before he
was caught out.

He checked his watch; it was just after 6.30 am.
They
certainly want their pound of flesh,
he mused as he forsook his shower and
quickly got dressed. He was out of his apartment within ten minutes and made
his way to the main reception building, where he had been dropped off the
previous day. It seemed like a week ago.

The complex was as deserted as it had been when he’d left
Ajay in the early hours of the morning. As he approached the statue of Shiva,
adorning the entrance to the building, he couldn’t help but recall Frederick’s
conversation the previous evening.
Shiva the Destroyer, he had called it.
Surely Brahma the Creator would have been a more fitting donation from the
Indian government?

He headed for the doorway but, as he walked past the
sculpture, something colourful caught his eye. He looked down at the feet of
the statue, where somebody had placed a bouquet of white and red flowers. He
stepped closer to inspect them and noticed that there was a card nestled
between the stems. He picked it up and read the sentiment.
‘Om Sarva Mangal
Manglaye Shivay Sarvaarth Sadhike Sharanye Trayambake Gauri Narayaani Namostu
Te.’

Puzzled, he made a mental note to ask Ajay its significance
when he next saw him, and returned the card to the flowers before making his
way into the building.

Deiter was already discussing the contents of a computer
screen with two other people, whom Tom recognised as junior technicians from
his previous day’s introductions. There had been too many names to remember and
it certainly wasn’t one of Tom’s fortes. He just hoped that he’d be able to
pick up their names from Deiter before he was put in an embarrassing position.
Deiter obliged almost immediately.

‘Ah Professor, there you are. You’re just in time,’ Deiter
said, almost cordially. ‘You remember Max and Peter? We’re just tweaking the
Collider’s alignment based on yesterday’s test results.’

He was grateful to Deiter, but he still didn’t know which
one was Max and which one was Peter. He played it safe and acknowledged both of
them with a single nod.

Tom knew from his research that the alignment of the proton
beam was critical to the success of the Collider. The positively charged
protons that made up the beam must be aligned and made to bend so as to go
round in a circle. This was done by 9,000 magnets strategically placed
throughout the 27-kilometre tunnel.

The ‘dipole’ magnets caused the protons to bend consistently
in one direction to get round the circle. The ‘quadrupole’ magnets focused each
beam so that it stayed compact, to increase the probability of a collision when
the beams were brought together. Having just one of the thousands of magnets a
nanometre out of sync could mean the difference between identifying the God
particle and the proton particles missing each other altogether.

‘We’ve fed in the data from yesterday’s tests, made the
necessary adjustments to the magnets and now we’re ready to run a computer
simulation,’ Deiter informed Tom without taking his eyes off the screen. ‘If
you watch the monitors on the wall over there, you’ll see the results.’

Tom turned in the direction of Deiter’s gesture to see five
of the computer displays flick to life. The centre console showed a 3D
schematic drawing of the LHC. The two on either side displayed the now familiar
sets of scrolling green figures.

‘The monitors showing data each represents one of the four
detectors placed around the Collider where the two beams intersect,’ Max or
Peter told him.

‘And the centre one will show the beams’ trajectories based
on our computations,’ Peter or Max added.

‘Okay, run the simulation,’ Deiter instructed.

The centre screen zoomed in on a computer image of the
particle accelerator. It was so lifelike, Tom had to remind himself that it was
all being generated by a small box under the desk where Deiter was sitting and
not hundreds of feet below ground.

To achieve the maximum collision velocity, Tom was aware
that it was necessary to give the protons a ‘push start’, using a series of
smaller particle accelerators to increase their energy before being released
into the tunnel as a beam. Once there, the RF cavities would take over and
increase the velocity of the protons until they reached the speed of light.

‘Protons reaching maximum containment velocity,’ one of the
technicians announced.

‘Release the first beam in three… two… one… now!’

The computer-generated image panned out to show a bright
yellow beam circulating through the tunnel.

‘Release the second beam in three… two… one… now!’

A blue beam emerged, travelling in the opposite direction to
the yellow one. The beams intersected at four points on the diagram, indicated
by a faint glowing green ball, which seemed to get brighter the longer
programme was allowed to run.

‘Why are the intersection points intensifying?’ Tom asked,
hoping it wasn’t a stupid question.

‘The green balls represent the number of collisions the
protons make,’ Deiter responded, his eyes still firmly glued to the monitor.
‘As the beams speed up, the number of collisions increases, which is why they
glow brighter. The figures on the screens give us a prediction of the actual
number of hits we’re achieving per second.’

Tom turned his attention to the screens to see the figures
steadily increasing.

‘And how long before the beams reach maximum velocity?’

‘Twenty minutes, but we’ll run the simulation for an hour to
see if there are any fluctuations in the collision rate,’ one of the
technicians replied.

‘You boys having fun?’ Serena Mayer had walked into the
office unobserved. ‘Men and their computer games,’ she mockingly chided.

Tom turned to face her. Her green eyes sparkled
mischievously, making his pulse race a little faster. He tried to play it cool.

‘Serena, I’d almost forgotten about our eight o’clock
meeting. Shall we go to my office?’ Without waiting for a response, he led the
way across the room.

‘I’ve left the file Herr Volker asked me to compile for you,
on your desk,’ Deiter shouted after him.

It was the first time the two technicians had been
distracted enough to take their eyes off their computer screens. Their gaze
followed Serena, intently, as she strolled after Tom, only returning to the
task in hand after her shapely body had completely disappeared from view.

‘When you two have quite finished,’ Deiter said irritably.

***

Tom sat behind his desk and waited for her to come through
the door. He picked up the thick manila folder that Deiter had left for him and
started to thumb through the pages without taking much notice of its contents.

‘Please, take a seat,’ he gestured to the chair opposite
him. ‘Can I get you a coffee, tea or anything?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Good, because I have no idea where the coffee machine is.’
Tom smirked at his own remark, but Serena’s face remained impassive.

She sat down, put her briefcase on the floor beside her and
crossed her legs. Her skirt rode up to just above her knee, an action that
didn’t go unnoticed by Tom. There was an awkward silence as he absently flicked
through the pages of the dossier. He was struggling to come up with an opening
gambit that would impress her without sounding too arrogant.

‘So, how did it go yesterday?’ he blurted out.
Safe, if
not a little too generic
.

‘Well,’ she replied.

‘Good, good.’ He returned his attention to the file in an
attempt to buy himself enough time to formulate his next ‘killer’ question.

‘And how do you like it here?’ was the best that he could
come up with.

‘The hours are long, but the work is very interesting.’

‘Good, good.’ More page turning. Then he put the folder down
on his desk and leant back in his chair. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but
where is your accent from?’

‘I grew up in Israel, but my parents moved to America when I
was fourteen. I continued my studies there and graduated from university five
years ago.’

‘And which university was that?’ Tom enquired, to be polite.

‘MIT,’ she said, smiling at him.

‘That’s a coincidence. I was a professor at MIT.’

‘I know,’ she laughed, the mischievous glint returning in
her eyes. ‘You taught me.’

‘I don’t remember you,’ Tom exclaimed, rather tactlessly.

She feigned a hurt expression.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean I don’t remember you,’ he bumbled. ‘I
meant I didn’t recognise you. Sorry, I mean I don’t remember teaching you.’

She laughed again. ‘I don’t blame you. It was only for one
semester, when you first arrived at the university, and it was my last term. So
I hardly had any classes to attend,’ she said, letting him off the hook. ‘But
you did give me a “C” for one of my papers.’

This time it was Tom’s turn to laugh. ‘You probably deserved
it. I hope it didn’t affect your career too much?’

‘No, but I did think you were quite mean at the time.’

***

They spent the next hour laughing at the merits and foibles
of the various lecturers they had both known at the university, him from a
colleague’s perspective and her from a student’s perspective. Deiter,
meanwhile, paced backwards and forwards between his work station and Tom’s
office. Finally, when he couldn’t stand the joviality any more, he knocked on
the door.

‘I’m sorry to disturb this important meeting, but we need Ms
Mayer to be able set the parameters for today’s experiment.’ His face had
definitely gone a few shades redder.

‘My fault, Deiter,’ Tom said apologetically. ‘We were just
discussing mutual acquaintances.’

Deiter stormed back to his desk.

Serena got up to leave. ‘Do you want me to leave the results
of yesterday’s tests with you?’ she asked Tom, retrieving her briefcase.

‘Why don’t we go through them over dinner tonight? My treat
for being so mean to you at university.’ The words were out of his mouth before
he had a chance to think about it. He wasn’t accustomed to asking attractive
women out on dates, but they were getting on so well, it seemed the natural
thing to do.

‘I’d like that. Where and when?’

‘I only know one restaurant in Switzerland, but I know for a
fact they do a very good fillet mignon, and the lobster’s not bad either. Shall
we say the Hotel d’Angleterre at eight o’clock?’

‘I’ll look forward to it.’

Tom watched her as she went over to speak to Deiter. By his
body language it was obvious that he didn’t appear best pleased that she was
getting on so well with the new Director General.
Well, that’s something
you’ll just have to live with, Dr Weiss!