ALL WINTER LONG, COMING HOME FROM CAROL’S OR CATCHING A glimpse of her own home through Carol’s big bay window as they shared coffee in the morning, Sarala had begun to think that her house did, in fact, look stern and imposing. She felt embarrassed that it had taken her so long to notice how spare and utilitarian the yard was—driveway, grass, sidewalk, porch. By the end of the long grey winter, her eyes craved color, and she began to make plans for changes come spring: bright flowerbeds to line their front walkway, a flowering tree for their front yard. She sketched it out on a piece of paper, borrowing ideas from the glossy magazines she kept in a pile on the living room coffee table.
By early spring, copies of the feasibility studies the Lab had conducted began to circulate. These noted that it would be necessary to negotiate easements with property owners under whose homes and businesses the collider’s tunnels would run.
Then came the draft of the Environmental Impact Statement, which the Department of Energy had commissioned and which the citizens of Nicolet and the surrounding communities were invited to respond to. The statements arrived in eighteen-by-twelve-inch cardboard boxes, one to each home in Nicolet and the surrounding areas. Inside were reams of paper bound together, their blue covers reading Volume 1 of 21, Volume 2 of 21, and so on.
On the day the draft of the Environmental Impact Statement arrived at the Winchester home, Lily dragged the box through the foyer into Randolph’s study, slit it open with his ox-bone letter opener, and began reading, page 1, volume 1, red pen in hand for suggested corrections.
The collider ring will pass under farmland and residential communities.
Geologic suitability is outstanding. Perceived potential loss of home values is a key element of the strong landowner opposition.
Slowly, in the yards of some of the more vocal opponents, signs reading NO SSC, NOT UNDER MY HOUSE, and NOT UNDER MY SCHOOL began to bloom.
Sarala noticed these first, and wondered how long it would be before Abhijat, in the course of his commute through the neighborhood to the Lab, would notice them. It had not taken long.
Though the signs had sprouted up all around the neighborhood, Abhijat had managed to remain composed, if privately frustrated. But the first sign to go up on their own street was a different matter. It had felt, to Abhijat, very much like a personal attack.
The sign appeared one day in front of Ted and Sheila Miller’s house, just a few doors from the Mitals. Sarala noticed it first. She’d felt a sudden surge of embarrassment and shame. The Millers knew where Abhijat worked, but still the sign stood starkly in their yard, like a message to her and her family.
Abhijat noticed it that night on his way home. He slowed and pulled the car over to the side of the street. To Abhijat, the signs seemed tantamount to putting up a large placard in one’s yard announcing: “I am poorly educated and illogically fearful.” He couldn’t imagine who in their right minds would be willing to publicly advertise such a thing.
Surely his own neighbors knew where he worked, that his career and the careers of hundreds of his coworkers were at stake. Don’t you care, he’d wanted to shout, that you may cost people their occupations, their calling?
At the hardware store, Mr. Fricker, who’d taken a shine to this young mother who seemed, always, to come in without a husband, walked with Sarala through the store, helping her select the things she might need for the redesign of her yard: plastic trays in which to start the seeds, a small spade for when it was time to transplant the sprouting plants into the ground, potting soil, and slim envelopes of seeds. In the rotating seed display were flowers that reminded Sarala of her girlhood—orange, yellow, and pink marigolds—but she’d settled instead on an assortment of varieties in alternating arrangements of red, white, and blue.
As a bachelor who had lived alone all his life, Dr. Cardiff was a favorite dinner guest of the wives of the other Lab physicists, Sarala included, and when Abhijat’s frustration over the steady stream of anti-super collider sentiment in Nicolet began to reach a crescendo, Sarala thought a dinner with Dr. Cardiff might cheer him up. Meena had asked whether Lily might join them, so the five of them gathered around the Mital dinner table one evening.
“And how is your father, Lily?” Sarala asked. “Where do his adventures take him these days?”
Sarala had introduced their two dinner guests, Lily and Dr. Cardiff, and now turned to explain to Dr. Cardiff that Lily’s father was a—. She found herself unable to produce an accurate description.
Abhijat stepped in. “An explorer,” he said, nodding at his colleague.
“I see.” Dr. Cardiff smiled. “How very fascinating.”
“He’s in a mountainous region of Tibet right now,” Lily said, answering Sarala’s question. She could picture her father standing atop some peak, hand shading his eyes from the sun as he looked out over the rugged terrain ahead, plotting his next day’s journey.
“You must miss him terribly when he’s gone,” Sarala said. Her voice was gentle and tentative, and in that tone Lily recognized that what Mrs. Mital was really asking, what so many people always seemed to be wondering, much to Lily’s irritation, was whether she resented her father’s absence and travel. Lily evaded Sarala’s asked question, and instead responded to the implied one, a tactic that tended to unnerve Lily’s conversational partners, leaving them wondering if she was some sort of mind reader and, for many, ensuring that this was the last time they engaged her in conversation.
Sarala, though, was not so easily unsettled.
“My father knows me better than my mother does,” Lily said. “Sometimes letters are a better way to know someone than all of the silly, inconsequential interactions of daily life.”
Abhijat regarded Lily carefully. He thought for a moment, of the letters he and Sarala had exchanged in the months just after their marriage.
“And how is your outreach mission faring, Dr. Cardiff?” Sarala asked, turning her attention to her other guest.
“Well, I’d like to be able to say that I’m making headway, relieving some of our neighbors’ anxieties,” Dr. Cardiff replied. “But I don’t seem to be making the kind of progress I hoped.” Dr. Cardiff was a squarish, grandfatherly man with gentle eyes framed by large black glasses. Because of his skill at interacting with the public, Dr. Cardiff had been dispatched by the Lab director to speak about the super collider throughout the community. Of all Abhijat’s colleagues, Sarala couldn’t imagine anyone better suited to the job of representing the Lab to the public. She had always loved his soft, gentle manner, his courtly way of taking her hand in his by way of greeting.
Dr. Cardiff was a theorist Abhijat held in the highest regard, and was better than most of their colleagues at explaining the collider in terms that might be understood by a layperson. But perhaps more important, he was skilled at listening to the residents’ concerns and at empathizing with them. Since taking on the role of spokesperson he’d attended meetings of the city council, of the school board, and of the various homeowners’ associations. In doing so, he had quickly realized that the most important part of his outreach was simply to be human, to put a familiar face on “those scientists out at the Lab.”
In many of the sessions, though, he could tell that no matter how sincerely he tried to connect with the residents, to respect and respond to their concerns, there were many who thought of him as nothing more than a government stooge, someone dangerous to listen to. At one meeting, a woman had stood up and yelled, “You’ll just show me something that will take away my fears, but it will be a trick, a Potemkin village!” And he had had to admit to himself to understanding why one might feel that way. This was science beyond what a non-specialist could understand, and at a certain point one would have to take a leap of faith, to trust the motives of those who did understand it.
Sarala, sensitive to the notion that, as a bachelor, Dr. Cardiff was so infrequently provided with a home-cooked meal, and to the amount of stress he had likely been under during the last few months, had wanted
to prepare something that would, for him, be comfort food, and though he would have probably delighted in the chance to sample some of her mother’s recipes, Sarala had chosen something she hoped he would find both familiar and reassuring.
“What is it?” Abhijat asked as she brought the dishes to the table.
“Kraft Dinner—macaroni and cheese—and Rice-A-Roni.” Sarala held up the boxes proudly.
She passed the serving dishes around the table as Dr. Cardiff continued. “It’s an unenviable position they’re in, many of our neighbors. To know the science here well enough to feel certain that this is safe would require an impossible investment of time and effort. There is nothing for them to do but to trust that we have their best interests at heart. Think of those of us here tonight,” he added, serving himself from the bowls as they made their way around the table. “Because you have the luxury of knowing Dr. Mital as a caring, ethical person, you can say, ‘Even though I don’t know the science well enough to assess the risks, I feel safe in the knowledge that Dr. Mital would never support this project were there a danger to living or working on top of it.’ However, not all of our fellow citizens have that luxury. And the way we have described this project has not always done much to earn their confidence.”
Dr. Cardiff had come to understand that for many residents, the Lab’s attempt at simplifying the explanation by saying “We’re recreating conditions not seen since shortly after the Big Bang” did more harm than good, leaving residents wondering, “Then what? After you recreate the Big Bang, then what of this world?”
What they should be saying, Dr. Cardiff had come to realize, and he had revised his remarks accordingly, was: “We’re creating similar conditions in a controlled environment, but we’re not recreating it.”
Lily leaned forward in her seat. “Dr. Cardiff, do you really and truly believe that there would be nothing dangerous about living on top of the super collider?”
Dr. Cardiff smiled at Lily. “I do, Miss Winchester, I do. If I had a single lingering doubt about this, I would most certainly tell you, and the rest of Nicolet’s citizens. But if that does not reassure you, I encourage you to review the draft of the Environmental Impact Statement. Though,” he held up his finger in warning, “it will require a significant time commitment.”
“Oh, I already have,” Lily said.
Abhijat and Dr. Cardiff exchanged surprised smiles, Abhijat’s full of pride in Lily, who had begun to feel like an adopted member of the family, and Dr. Cardiff’s at the pleasure of discovering a kindred spirit, a generation removed.
Unlike Lily, Meena had not attempted to read the Environmental Impact Statement. The open box sat in the middle of Abhijat’s study, where he had pulled out and leafed through a few of the volumes.
Instead, Meena had focused her attention on the Letters to the Editor in the Nicolet Herald-Gleaner. These she read carefully, as though they might help her to gauge the mood her father was likely to be in on a given day: distant and preoccupied (these were the nights she sometimes had to knock at his study door to remind him to join them for dinner), or happy and hopeful (these were the days in which someone, preferably not from the Lab, had written in support of the project), for Abhijat, too, kept a careful eye on the papers.
I am Mrs. Dixie Edmonson, and I am the president of the Nicolet High School PTA. I am for our tax dollars being used in our classrooms, not under our classrooms. This is an experimental facility fraught with uncertainty. It does not belong in any populated area.
Abhijat’s response to these letters was a growing sense of dread. It would be taken from him—his chance at a legacy, he worried. If they were allowed to prevail, if Sarala’s concerns about the community were right, it would be snatched away, again just out of reach.
As the residents of Nicolet sat down to make their way through the daunting box of Draft Environmental Impact Statement documents, many were outraged to find themselves referred to as “human receptors” in a section detailing the potential for exposure to radiation.
At the entrance to the Lab, Abhijat and the other scientists now faced a throng of protesters each morning when they arrived and each evening when they left, stationed just outside the entrance, chanting, “We are people, not ‘human receptors!’”
Rose, who was preparing to announce her candidacy for next year’s mayoral race, had also been carefully monitoring the community response. As soon as the word “radiation” entered the conversation, Rose noticed that the arguments in the newspaper took on a fevered pitch, opponents insisting that no one really knew the risks of cancer for those who would live above the beam line. The letter writers pointed out that many experts argued that there was no safe dose of radiation. And to that, supporters (among them a number of physicists from the Lab) countered that the public was exposed to radiation all the time—in soil, rocks, food, and in the very air they breathed.
Each morning as she ate her breakfast, Sarala studied the paper and kept a silent tally of the letters for and against the collider.
We did not ask to have our homes located on top of this science experiment, this atom smasher. I won’t allow you to build this death ring below my home.
I am not one to stand in the way of progress, but if you want me to support this you will have to guarantee three things: that my property values will not decrease, that my water supply will not be impacted, either by drying up or by being contaminated, and that there is no health risk to living on top of this experiment.
Sarala felt like a bit of a traitor when she found herself thinking that some of the concerns seemed, to her, entirely reasonable.
The seeds in the flats on the back porch had begun to sprout. Sarala had followed the directions on the slim envelopes, each bearing a map of the United States with colorful swaths indicating optimal times for planting. She’d watched the flats carefully, keeping the soil moist, moving them to different spots on the porch, following the patches of sunlight throughout the day.
She had felt such wonder when she’d spotted the first few sprouts unfolding themselves from the potting soil—that with water, soil, and sunlight, they’d come to life just as promised. She’d expected it, of course, but found it no less astonishing because of that. Soon it would be time to transplant them, to dig up the sod and prepare the beds along the front walkway. Soon they’d take root there, she thought, and bloom as the spring turned to summer, making their house look, in this small way, just a bit warmer, more welcoming.
In response to the sheer size, not to mention the dry, academic tone of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the Lab began to produce slick, glossy, magazine-style reports, offering “an overview of the issue.”
Persons living in the vicinity of the SSC need not be concerned about the public safety aspects of the project. While some radioactivity would be generated, the radiation levels will be carefully monitored by sensitive instrumentation. Throughout the facility, stringent safety standards will be maintained.
Extensive, continuous monitoring, both inside and outside the tunnel, will assure the protection of SSC personnel and the local population alike.
But for many in the community, these assurances—packaged as they were in slick brochures delivered to each home in Nicolet—were suspected of being nothing more than advertising, than propaganda, and thus fell on deaf ears.
Sarala sat with Carol and Bill on their screened-in porch, enjoying the warm air of the approaching spring. Meena was spending the night at Lily’s, and with Abhijat ensconced in his study, Sarala’s own house was quiet by comparison. As the sun began to set, late in the day this time of year, the sounds of dogs barking and the neighborhood children being called in from their evening games floated out into the night.
Carol and Bill sat in a wicker love seat, Bill’s arm around Carol.
“I just think they need to be clearer about what it is they’re doing out there,” Bill said. They were again discussing the matter of the collider. “For one thing, why do they need their own fire
department? I used to think that seemed reassuring,” he continued, “but now, I’ll admit, it’s got me wondering.”
“What does Abhijat think of all the discussion in the papers?” Carol asked.
Sarala thought of how distant Abhijat had been lately, how absent he seemed. “I think he is very concerned that it may not happen,” Sarala confided. She’d begun to feel caught—stuck between the town’s growing suspicion of the Lab and her loyalty to Abhijat.
On the streets, in line at the bank, and at coffee shops, nearly all of the conversations were about the collider, about the Lab. People had begun, too, to wonder about the buffalo. Were they, as signage around the Lab indicated, there to hearken back to the land’s simple prairie past? Or were they being monitored by the Lab staff, early indicators that something might be going wrong?
Sarala felt, sometimes, like she ought to apologize to Abhijat for the town’s response. And she felt, other times, like she ought to apologize to the town for the Lab’s.
Later that night, back at home, Sarala sat propped up in her and Abhijat’s bed watching the latest episode of Dallas. As she watched, she flipped through yet another one of the glossy reports that had arrived in their mailbox the week before, and in every mailbox in Nicolet, courtesy of the Lab.
Sarala had herself begun to wonder about the collider. She imagined the accelerator below her home, the protons whirling and spinning, smashing into each other in a mad collision. Sometimes she imagined she could feel it, their house trembling above it.
Downstairs, she could smell Abhijat cooking again. Ginger, turmeric, oil dancing in a hot pan.
The next morning, Sarala set about digging up the sod along the front walkway and turning over the soil. It was difficult work, but it felt good. She dug down into the ground, clearing away the grass and revealing the rich, dark soil, scooping out small holes into which she could place the fragile, just-sprouting plants.
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