Charmed Particles

by Chrissy Kolaya

  As the morning progressed, officials and scientists from state agencies presented reports on floodplain mitigation, well impacts, potential increases in construction traffic, and the viability of deep tunneling through area geological formations. In an attempt to make sense of and bring order to what felt to her like an unfocused, meandering presentation of information and emotion, Lily had divided her yellow legal pad into separate sections and she took careful notes, placing them under the appropriate heading.

  Under Local Real Estate Values she first noted the reports indicating that there was no evidence whatsoever that the collider would have any negative impact on local real estate values, but crossed it out a moment later when the next speaker’s reports claimed exactly the opposite. Her notes on Contamination of the Water Supply became equally muddled, each assurance, each report cancelled out by another. She crossed out what she had written and instead wrote “uncertain.” Under Environmental Concerns she’d listed the remarks of the director of the State Environmental Protection Agency, who noted that the Lab’s efforts to return the land to its original prairie had resulted in “significant improvements to the habitats of many native species of plants and animals.”

  As the hands on her watch neared ten o’clock, the moderator leaned toward the microphone before him. “We will now take a short recess and will commence again in fifteen minutes.”

  During the recess, the audience members relocated to the school’s cafeteria, where they sat at the long lunch tables drinking coffee, having again self-segregated into groups of supporters and opponents. The recess had coincided with the high school’s passing period, and students, the majority of whom had decided not to attend the hearings, moved around the edges of the cafeteria slowly, regarding the adults with curiosity.

  After waiting out the long line for the women’s restroom, Rose approached the table where Lily sat with the Mitals and Dr. Cardiff. “Good morning, Dr. Mital, Mrs. Mital,” she said. She stood behind Lily and placed her hands lightly on her daughter’s shoulders. Lily looked down at the table and did not acknowledge her mother.

  “Madame Alderperson.” Abhijat nodded stiffly.

  Sarala smiled at Rose as warmly as she could, having noted the coolness in Abhijat’s voice and that Lily had yet to make eye contact with her mother. “Mrs. Winchester, allow me to introduce my husband’s colleague, Dr. Gerald Cardiff.”

  “Very pleased to meet you,” Dr. Cardiff said, taking Rose’s hand in his. His smile, Sarala noted, was also warm, and she felt relieved on Rose’s behalf.

  “Likewise,” Rose said. “And thank you both,” she said, turning back toward Sarala and Abhijat, “for looking after my daughter today. I imagine she feels like a bit of an orphan during this hearing.” She ran her hand over Lily’s back, but Lily continued her project of conducting a careful study of the mock wood grain of the table.

  Back in the auditorium, the audience again took their seats, the officials returning to their places at the long table on the stage.

  Looking around the auditorium from her seat on the supporters’ side, Meena felt like she could sense the fear and anger in the room. Fear of the super collider on the part of the protesters. Fear of the protesters on the part of the scientists, who had begun to worry over what would become of the Lab if the super collider wasn’t built. And on both sides, anger that the other side wouldn’t listen to reason. It was a room in which everyone was afraid of everyone else. Meena turned back to face the stage. She had never seen adults like this.

  The moderator called the audience back to order. “We will now reconvene today’s hearing on the matter of the Super Collider.”

  As Meena watched, she kept a different kind of inventory than the one growing on Lily’s legal pad. Instead, as the speakers resumed, exchanging places at the podium, one after another, Meena noted the speakers who made sound, well-reasoned points:

  “Before you scoff at the questions we ask here today,” one woman urged, “take a moment to remember how many times during the past fifty years our government has asked us to trust its decisions. They say they have our best interests at heart, yet twenty years from now, when the true effects are known, all they will say is, ‘We’re sorry. We didn’t know.’ People who believe this will be safe because the federal government says so are being naïve. Those of us who oppose this project are not a lynch mob. We are mothers and fathers, grandparents, homeowners, farmers, and businesspeople who want to protect our homes, our community, our children, and our wildlife.”

  One supporter, who introduced himself as a technician at the Lab, pointed out that “this project is not, as many of the opposition would have you believe, ‘welfare for the overeducated’ or ‘a toy for scientists.’ It is a project deserving of our intellectual curiosity and attention.”

  At the other end of the spectrum, Meena noted, were the speakers whose words caused one side of the audience or the other to erupt:

  “According to these maps they’re showing us, this thing is going to run right underneath my daughter’s school,” one man said. “Now, what about electromagnetic fields? One study I read about found that children living near power lines have more than their fair share of leukemia. And this is going to be located under a school? No one in their right mind could approve such a thing!”

  Another speaker, her voice full of anger, insisted, “You people can put as many charts and pages of information as you want in front of us, but it will never take away our fear of living above this experiment. We will not be turned into the next Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. You officials tell us this is safe, but so were the others, until they blew up!”

  And then, following these, Meena noticed, were the frustrated, exasperated responses:

  “There have been absolutely no incidents in which a collider has blown up,” one of the Lab scientists responded, his voice loud and angry. “This is simply fear-mongering at its worst. What a picture we must present to our government officials here today—a bunch of uninformed yokels who, they will probably decide, don’t deserve the honor and distinction of such a facility.”

  One speaker, temper already flaring, began, “I’m tired of hearing from you people at the Lab, who tell us we ought to sacrifice ourselves and our homes for the good of science. You think we ought to listen to you just because you have a bunch of fancy degrees. Well, I might not be a college professor, but I know horseshit when I see it, and as far as I’m concerned, you scientists can all go to hell.” As he spoke, there was a growing crescendo of applause from the opposition side of the auditorium.

  Randolph’s and the villagers’ running was no match for the wall of water that rushed in on them.

  One moment he was running, heart pounding against his chest. The next he was lifted off his feet—buoyed up, swept past trees, houses, buildings, faster than his own feet could have carried him, and all around, the bobbing heads and limbs and panicked cries of others who had been swept up along with him. He looked frantically for something to grab hold of as the water rushed through the village, carrying him along with it.

  Back and forth, one after another, supporters and opponents of the collider took their places at the podium. As Sarala listened, she could sense the disconnect between the careful scientific communication the supporters—especially those from the Lab—felt they needed to use, and the desire on the part of the opponents for guarantees, for absolute assurances about the safety of operating such a facility. The scientists had been trained not to think in such terms. For them, a probability of 99.9 percent was a good answer, she knew, a reasonable indication of safety, but the opponents were tortured over what that 0.1 percent chance might mean for themselves and their families. Beyond their fundamental disagreement on the issue, Sarala thought, the two groups just didn’t know how to talk to one another.

  The next woman paused before speaking, allowing herself a moment to smooth her cardigan over her waist in a slow and deliberate way that suggested she wasn’t a person to be rushed. “You scientists t
ell us that this collider is going to help you understand the Big Bang and the creation of the universe, but I think many of us prefer the version of that we can read about in Genesis. You experts should remember,” she continued, “that not all of us care to know what happens when protons collide with one another.”

  Rushing through the center of the village, carried along by the wild, churning water, now full of detritus, Randolph caught site of a large tree approaching. Could he reach it? Would it stand against the water? The ocean rushed on, sweeping him with it. He reached up, caught hold of a branch, and wrapped his arms and legs around the trunk, clinging to it as he pulled himself up slowly. He climbed, wet and shaking, into the highest branches of the tree that would bear his weight and watched, below him, the dark, feral ocean rising.

  As the parade of state officials continued, Rose, from her seat on the opponents’ side of the auditorium, was paying careful attention to each of their performances.

  The director of the state Department of Agriculture had, she noted, been persuasive, arguing that construction of the collider could result in positive developments. “We see the collider as a mechanism to protect farmland from residential, commercial, and industrial encroachment,” he explained.

  She was concerned to hear this opinion echoed by another speaker, a man she recognized as a longtime resident of Nicolet, who asked, “Have you all considered what might become of this land if it’s not acquired for the collider? Maybe we’ll build more $400,000 homes that none of us can afford to live in. Maybe a couple more shopping malls. That’s just wonderful. Make no mistake,” he warned, “change and growth are coming. I believe the collider will give us a way to control that change.”

  Rose thought of what had become of the farmland of the Nicolet she remembered from her girlhood. He was right to note that not much of it remained. Not much of Nicolet looked, anymore, like the small farm town of her girlhood.

  Next had come the Lab director, Dr. Palmer, and then Dr. Cohen—Abhijat and Dr. Cardiff exchanging wary looks as he took the podium, both of them knowing him to be short-tempered and already long past exasperated on the matter.

  Missing from Dr. Cohen’s speech had been any note of empathy, of sincerity, Sarala thought, listening as his tone shifted into one that might be used with a group of unruly kindergarteners. Predictably, the audience began booing, someone yelling out, “Quit patronizing us!”

  “Look, I’m one of you,” Dr. Cohen continued, looking back at the audience. “I’m not some evil scientist. I live in this community. I raise my family here. If I thought this accelerator would be a danger to the community, do you think I would support it?” He turned back to the panel behind their long table. “Do not be misled by the shrill voice of opposition.” He turned and made his way back to his seat.

  “Thank you, Dr. Cohen, and our thanks to all of you who shared your comments this morning,” the moderator said, beginning to gather his papers. “At this point we will adjourn for lunch,” whereupon the panel recessed, to reconvene at two o’clock that afternoon.

  Many of the audience from the hearing made their way to the Cozy Café and Diner, where the restaurant’s three harried waitresses scurried from table to table in an attempt to serve everyone within the two-hour recess.

  Sarala had invited Lily, Rose, and Dr. Cardiff to join them, and Rose, though conscious of the potential for awkwardness, had been so hungry for a glimpse into Lily’s life, having felt, since their argument about her letter, so entirely closed off from her own daughter, that, much to her own surprise, she found herself accepting the invitation.

  The conversation at their table, like most of those throughout the diner, concerned how the hearing seemed to be going so far. Abhijat felt it was impossible to tell. Dr. Cardiff thought it would be important for the Lab to make a better effort to acknowledge the opposition’s fears. Both felt that Dr. Cohen’s comments had done them no favors, but Lily said that she didn’t think it was fair to expect the Lab’s representatives to be evenhanded when it seemed to her that the opposition was relying on hyperbolic scare tactics.

  Perhaps, Sarala suggested gently, if they hoped to stand up against the heartfelt, emotional appeals of the opposition, the supporters might rely less on dry testimony from the directors of state agencies and a bit more on some heartfelt, emotional appeals of their own.

  But wasn’t that, Lily argued, precisely what Dr. Cohen had been doing?

  Sarala and Rose exchanged a look, which Lily caught and found at once both perplexing and exasperating.

  Sensitive to Rose’s presence at the table, Sarala suggested that perhaps they should refrain from discussion of the collider over this meal among friends.

  “An excellent idea,” Dr. Cardiff agreed.

  The waitress circled their table, setting plates before each of them, and Meena began to pick at her French fries. There was a long, awkward moment as they all tried to come up with another, more suitable topic of conversation.

  “Perhaps we might talk about the girls’ opportunity at the Academy,” Rose suggested. “That is certainly a happy turn of events.” Rose smiled, first at Lily and Meena, then at Abhijat and Sarala. She wondered why her smile seemed to be returned only by her daughter, who had, over the last few weeks, expended a considerable amount of energy in pointedly avoiding doing any such thing.

  Abhijat and Sarala looked first at Rose, then at Meena, who sank down into her seat, as though willing herself to turn invisible.

  Sarala spoke first. “I’m afraid we must be, as you say, out of the loop.”

  “The Math and Science Academy,” Lily explained. She looked at Abhijat and Sarala, Abhijat’s brow furrowed, Sarala still looking pleasantly expectant that soon someone would explain this to her. Then Lily turned toward Meena, her own brow furrowing.

  Meena had decided that, of the limited remaining options, the best plan was to take charge of the conversation and to steer it as determinedly as she could away from the topic at hand. “We haven’t had much time to discuss it yet,” she explained to Rose and Lily. Then, turning to her parents, “I’ll fill you in later. I didn’t want to bother you with the hearing coming up.”

  Abhijat, still frowning, had the sense from Meena’s voice that something strange was afoot. “I look forward to our discussion,” he said.

  Dr. Cardiff, perceptive enough to sense that something unpleasant was stirring beneath the surface of the conversation, took charge and turned toward Rose. “I understand, Mrs. Winchester, that you grew up in Nicolet when it was quite a different town?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, turning her attention toward Dr. Cardiff. “I suppose it was just your typical small farm town then. Everyone knew one another.” Indeed, some people still did, Rose thought to herself, as the waitress, a classmate from her school days, set a cup of coffee in front of her.

  “And what was it like to return from your travels to find it so changed?” Dr. Cardiff asked.

  “Well,” Rose thought for a moment. “To be honest, I found it exciting. The whole place had such a sense of—” she looked up and around the diner “—such a sense of possibility.”

  Back at the high school, a crowd of participants made their way back into the auditorium. Sarala had expected that the room might thin out a little after lunch, but it seemed just as crowded as it had before the break. She, Abhijat, and Dr. Cardiff saved seats for Lily and Meena, who made their way to the restrooms before the hearing reconvened.

  “You haven’t even mentioned the Academy to your parents?” Lily asked, incredulous, as they walked through the empty halls of the high school. “And Mr. Boden says you still haven’t asked him for a letter of recommendation. What’s going on?”

  Meena shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Nothing. It’s just been busy and kind of stressful around our house lately. It hasn’t felt like the right time to bring it up.”

  Lily eyed her strangely. It felt, to her, much like the conversation they’d had weeks earlier about cheerleading. But Meena seeme
d determined to ignore this strangeness between them. She ducked into the ladies’ room, Lily following behind.

  The moderator and the rest of the Department of Energy panel filed back onto the stage and re-took their seats behind their microphones and name placards. The moderator again leaned forward into his microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, I now reconvene the public hearing on the matter of the super collider. We will now hear from Mr. Lawrence Callahan, mayor of Nicolet.”

  Rose watched with interest as the mayor stood, hiking the waistband of his dress slacks over his substantial girth, and made his way to the podium. The difference between the professionalism of Rose’s campaign staff and Mayor Callahan’s loose group of family and friends pitching in to help when they could, was, Rose believed, a manifestation of the difference between the old, rural Nicolet and the Nicolet of the present—a suburb that, with the arrival of the Lab, of developers, had become savvier, more sophisticated. Mayor Callahan, Rose hoped the voters would see, was a relic of the old Nicolet.

  “Hello, everyone,” he began. “Gentlemen. I’m awfully glad so many of our good citizens have come out today to participate in this hearing. And now if you’ll bear with me, like I said, I’d like to say a few things.” Here he looked down, consulting his notes.

  In his comments, he came down, as Rose expected, squarely on the side of the collider’s supporters, pointing out that the Lab was a good neighbor, a showplace for the arts, a cancer treatment center, and an educational institution.

  Rose had also registered to speak. Her own comments were brief, largely an affirmation that she stood “in support of the safety and sanctity of our homes, schools, and farmland,” and that she believed the local elected officials had “failed the citizens of Nicolet by allowing this proposal to proceed this far.”