B00OPGSMHI EBOK

by Unknown

  He shined a light in and saw it.

  A box. A wooden box.

  He was surprised how calm he felt reaching in and pulling it out.

  It was the size of a large cigar humidor, made of polished rosewood, chocolate brown, richly hued and veined. The lid had a beautifully carved relief of Montserrat with an inscription below it.

  Gràcies a Déu

  “Thanks to God,” Claire whispered.

  Arthur placed the box onto the granite slab directly above Gaudí’s bones and without hesitation opened the lid.

  There it was.

  The Grail.

  The bowl was snug in a cushioned satin depression.

  It was jet black, polished to a gloss with thick rounded edges, a bowl of the simplest possible design meant to be lifted to the lips with two cupped hands.

  But they were transfixed by its other attributes.

  Surrounding it, conforming to its shape, was a circumscribed zone of invisibility, the width of a finger.

  “My God, look at it, Arthur. Look at it!” Claire whispered.

  Arthur felt paralyzed by the enormity of it all.

  A two-thousand-year quest was over.

  A quest that had consumed the likes of King Arthur and his knights, Thomas Malory, writers and bards; Andy Holmes, Tony Ferro should be here, he thought. A poet should be here to describe the moment.

  I’m just a simple man.

  Why me?

  Claire broke the spell and said, as if reading his mind, “You found it. You’re the one who found it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said suddenly.

  “Why are you sorry?”

  His eyes were wet. “I’m sorry, Senyor Gaudí,” he said, speaking to the earthly remains of the genius. “This is a violation. I’m truly sorry.”

  “Pick it up,” Claire urged. “Do you want to be first?”

  “No, you. Go ahead.”

  She gently lifted and cradled it, her fingers partially lost from sight by its strange, ethereal halo. “It’s warm,” she said. “The stone looks so cool but it’s warm, like holding a person.”

  She lifted it to her eyes. He saw that she was going to cry. It started quietly but soon her chest was heaving.

  “Arthur … it’s not any substance I know.”

  He swallowed.

  “It doesn’t come from the earth.”

  They spent the night sitting against the wall of the St. Joseph’s chapel, ready to hide themselves behind the altar if a watchman came down to the crypt.

  It had been an easy job replacing the candle rack and limestone blocks and when they were done Gaudí’s tomb looked untouched.

  They stayed silent for much of the night, both of them lost in their thoughts. They would wait until the Sagrada Família reopened in the morning and tourists came down into the crypt before finding the right moment to mix in with them and leave.

  But throughout the long, dark night they passed the Grail between them, holding it to their chests for warmth.

  31

  The rosewood box distorted Arthur’s backpack to a square shape. The zipper wouldn’t close completely so he covered the gap with an unfolded map. With the nervous demeanor of a couple escaping from the scene of a crime they climbed into a taxi on the Avinguda de Gaudí and returned to their hotel.

  Hengst was waiting near the hotel entrance, lurking in the doorway of a body piercing shop on the carrer de Sant Pau. He held a newspaper to conceal his tired eyes and ragged scowl. He had called up to their room several times and was satisfied they hadn’t returned all night. So all he could do was pace the narrow deserted street in a testy nocturnal vigil.

  As Arthur and Claire hopped from their taxi and disappeared into the lobby, Hengst exhaled in relief and placed a call.

  In their room, Arthur put the backpack on the armchair and both sat on the bed, staring at it.

  After a long, seemingly endless interval, he finally said, “Now what?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He felt numb. The elation had been short-lived. The quest was over.

  Now what?

  The words came out robotically, a weary stream of consciousness, his eyes fixed on the prize. “I want to tell Andy and Tony about this. But they’re dead, aren’t they? They were killed because of it. They’ll want to kill us too. Claire, you should go home, get away from it, get away from me. You should leave now. Will you?”

  She was bone-tired too. “I don’t know.”

  “I don't think we were followed but maybe we were. Why do they want it so much, Claire? It’s got to be more than its monetary value.”

  “I don’t know. The stone has unique properties.”

  “What kind?”

  “I’m so tired. I need to think, okay?”

  He nodded wearily. “I really don’t know what to do. The quicker we go public the safer we’ll be. Should we give it back to the Sagrada Família? To Montserrat? To Spain? To the Vatican? Stupid, isn’t it? I don’t even know how to call a press conference. I’ve dreamt about this moment my whole life. Finding the Holy Grail …” His voice trailed off. “What do you do when you’ve achieved the ultimate? What do you do with the rest of your life?”

  He felt his hand being squeezed hard.

  “All I want to do right now is take it to the Bear, order a round of beers and show it to Sandy Marina and Aaron Cosgrove and the rest of the Loons. I want to put it down on the table next to Andy’s cane. Then I’ll figure out the rest, I suppose.”

  “Why don’t you sleep for a little while?” she said tenderly. She peeled down the bedspread. “I’ll take a bath. Then I’ll join you. Afterwards, things will be clearer.”

  He agreed, took off his clothes, slid between the sheets.

  In the bathroom, Claire undressed and while waiting for the tub to fill she switched on her mobile phone, which had been off for the night. There were multiple missed calls, all from her parents’ number.

  Alarmed, she called them back.

  In fifteen minutes she came out, toweling her hair.

  Arthur was still awake. “Everything okay? I heard you talking to someone.”

  She looked worried. “It was my mother. My father had some kind of a spell. Dizziness. They went to the hospital. They tried to call me. But it’s all right. He’s home now.”

  “What was it?”

  “Maybe a ministroke. He’s going to have more tests.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you need to go home?”

  “They didn’t want me to come.”

  She climbed beside him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “In the bathtub, I was thinking … we should try to understand the Grail, its properties. The effect on light, the heat it’s producing. As a physicist, I want to know more, learn from it. Don’t you think we should study it first before you have your press conference so we can describe it properly?”

  “Study it how?”

  “I can do some tests in my lab. In Modane. It’s Friday today. We can drive there this afternoon, stay in my flat, go to the lab tomorrow. No one will be there.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s exotic.”

  “Let’s sleep first,” he said, his head drooping. “Then we’ll talk about it.”

  #

  A little more than an hour after leaving the hotel they were crossing the border into France. Arthur had agreed to spend the weekend in Modane, to try to get some understanding of the bowl’s properties before showing it to the world. Besides, he didn’t want to say good-bye to Claire. Not yet.

  Claire sat beside him, cradling the rosewood box in a carrier bag on her lap. It didn’t seem right consigning it to the trunk or the backseat. And she could feel a slight heat emanating from within that she said was unusually comforting.

  32

  They arrived in Modane in the early evening with only a short time to spare before the gallery of snow-peaked Alpine mountains disappeared into the night. Her flat was in an apartment bloc
k near the city center, small rooms, cheaply but appealingly furnished, a transitional kind of place more for a student than an adult.

  They were tired. They stayed in, microwaved some frozen dinners and shared a bottle of wine. Afterward, she left him and called her parents from the kitchen. Through the thin walls he could hear her talking, not the words but the tones. She sounded upset and when she returned she looked worried.

  “How is he?” he asked.

  “He’s fine. It’s my mother. She doesn’t handle these things well.”

  “Maybe you should you go to Toulouse?”

  “There’s no point. His tests aren’t until next week. She won’t worry less just because I’m there. I know her.”

  In her bedroom, she said, “I just want to see it before I go to sleep.”

  The wooden box was on her dresser. She opened the lid, stared at the Grail and touched it, watching her fingertip vanishing in its halo.

  #

  Saturday morning they awoke early but had to bide their time before leaving. The lab didn’t open until 9 A.M. on the weekend.

  At the mouth of the Fréjus Road Tunnel, the main commercial thoroughfare connecting France and Italy, they stopped at the administration building of the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane.

  Claire left Arthur in the car and returned a few minutes later.

  “No one else has signed in. We’ll be alone, at least for a while. It’s usually not busy on Saturdays anyway.”

  “Don’t I have to sign in too?”

  “It’s not so high security. I have a key card, of course, but if I bring a visitor, it’s not such a big deal. I’m mainly glad that Simone isn’t here.”

  Claire drove. The tunnel ran through the Col du Fréjus in the Cottian Alps between Modane and Bardonecchia in Italy. They entered it and went 6.5 km to its midpoint where they were 1,700 meters underneath the ground. She signaled and pulled off onto a well-marked turnout designated for the lab and took a couple of nylon mesh red vests from her bag and told Arthur to put one on. It was protocol, as they had to cross two lanes of high-speed traffic to get to the lab entrance.

  Arthur did a double take: here was an entryway built into the belly of a mountain beside a major motorway. A truck rumbled past and for a moment the road was clear. Beside a larger vehicle entrance was a pale green door. Claire opened it with the swipe of her card and they were in.

  The lab was not attractive, with little creature comforts. The floors and walls were poured concrete the color of cold oatmeal. Donning obligatory hard hats, they passed through an engineering room for fabrication and repair of instruments and entered the main hall: here were tanks, large and small, wrapped in piping amid a bulk of electronic gear. The largest tanks had catwalks for access. It reminded Arthur of a Bond film set, the underground lair of a mad nemesis.

  Claire moved through the complex quickly, picking up tools as she went. He was at her mercy, in her world, and all he could do was admire her efficiency. His only job was to carry the Grail and he clutched the bag tightly.

  They went as far as they could in one direction, entering a small chamber so packed with equipment that there was hardly room for a computer work station. The room was dominated by a large cylindrical copper vessel.

  “Is this where you brew the beer?” Arthur jested.

  “Hardly. Meet EDELWEISS-II. Expérience pour Detecter Les WIMPs En Site Souterrain. This is where I’ve lived for the past years. She’s my baby.”

  “She?”

  “Maybe it’s a he; in any event, she’s retired but not yet shut down. In the other wing of the lab, her successor is coming on line. It’s much bigger, more detection power. It’s called EURECA. Simone works on that project now; me too, mostly. We’re going to use EDELWEISS. It’s going to take an hour to power her up and do some calibrations. There’s a chair. No coffee, I’m afraid. I should have bought a thermos. There’s a toilet through there. That’s it.”

  “I’ll just have to watch you. Tell me what we’re looking for.”

  She began to talk while she worked. “Astronomers know with almost complete certainty by observing galaxies and deducing the impact of gravity on them that ordinary visible matter—the stuff that makes stars, planets, trees, elephants, you and me—that this represents only four percent of the mass plus energy of the universe. So that leaves ninety-six percent to explain.”

  “You don’t think the Grail is ordinary matter?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why we’re here. A force called dark energy represents seventy-three percent of the remainder of the universe. It’s the property of empty space, Einstein’s cosmological constant, the energy driving continual expansion of the universe. That leaves twenty-three percent. This is dark matter. It’s almost too exciting to contemplate but I’ve been wondering if the Grail could have something to do with this substance. Dark matter as we understand it doesn’t radiate detectable quantities of visible light or any kind of radiation. It’s completely invisible.”

  “But we can see the Grail.”

  “Yes, but here’s what I’m thinking: What if the Grail is made from material that was some kind of amalgam of ordinary and dark matter formed, perhaps, soon after the Big Bang—when temperatures were enormously high and various forms of matter may have interacted differently with one another than in a cooler universe? What if it came to Earth maybe billions of years ago as an exotic meteorite? Anyway, the point is, maybe we are seeing the stone’s ordinary matter but not the dark matter.”

  “How do you explain the halo around it?”

  “Maybe this is a gravitational bending of light at its surface, similar to the gravitational bending around galaxies that dark matter produces, which astronomers can detect with radio telescopes. It’s crazy, I know, but we’ve never had dark matter to study before.”

  “Why not? If it’s so common, why isn’t it all around us?”

  “Ah, it is all around us! We’re showered by these dark matter particles, probably trillions and trillions every day. But they are also very difficult to find. I'll try to explain. Someone very clever once said that ordinary luminous matter is little more than a thin icing on a massive and dark cosmic cake. The dark matter is probably distributed throughout the universe, maybe evenly in some regions, maybe clusters in others. Soon after the Big Bang, regions that were slightly denser than others may have pulled in dark matter which clumped together and eventually collapsed into something resembling flat pancakes. Where these pancakes intersect you get long strands of dark matter filaments. Clusters of galaxies then formed at the nodes of the cosmic web where these filaments crossed. Anyway, like I said, dark matter is probably all around us. The problem is that it plays by different physical rules than ordinary matter. All the subatomic elementary particles which make up ordinary matter—you know, the leptons and quarks, et cetera—they’re all bound together by the strong nuclear force. The candidate particles for dark matter are called WIMPs.”

  “Physicists come up with the best names.”

  She smiled. “Well, it’s a field dominated by men. It stands for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. Like ordinary matter these WIMPs have mass, they’re acted on by the exceedingly faint force of gravity, but because they don’t obey strong nuclear forces they almost never interact or collide with ordinary matter.”

  “They pass right through us?”

  “They pass through everything we know and see. Their collisions with ordinary particles are so infinitesimally rare that they are almost impossible to detect. So in the last twenty years, laboratories all over the world have been looking for direct experimental evidence for WIMPs and trying to define them. This laboratory is one of them. All of the dark matter detectors have to be deep underground, built into mountains like Modane and Gran Sasso in Italy, and in mines like Boulby in England. The probability of a WIMP particle interacting with the proton or neutron in an atomic nucleus is so small, and the product of that reaction so tiny, that to measure it at all, all the background radiation t
hat could mimic a WIMP collision and interfere with the calculations needs to be minimized. Deep underground we can greatly reduce cosmic rays, which bombard us all the time from space. Then the instruments have to be shielded from the natural radioactivity that comes from rocks. These instruments here are amazingly sensitive. They look for WIMPs by the scintillation—the ultrafaint light—that’s produced and the microscopic amount of heat that’s made in a collision with ordinary particles.”

  “These WIMPs,” he said. “Is there one candidate for dark matter or several?”

  “The one that I’m betting on, and I’m not alone among particle physicists, is the neutralino. It’s never been settled. Its existence has been predicted from mathematical models that arise from supersymmetry theory. We think its interactions would be really feeble—as we’d expect from a WIMP—and its mass would be very substantial: fifty to a few thousand times the mass of a proton. If I were a woman who liked to bet, I’d bet the Grail contains neutralinos.”

  “Why the warmth? Why is it putting out heat?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this very hard. My honest answer is, I don’t know. But everything could be explained by neutralinos. It also follows from supersymmetry theory that neutralinos are their own antiparticle. As particles and antiparticles collide, they produce energy. The models say that when neutralinos collide they would annihilate each other and produce another kind of particle, the neutrino. I’m going to be looking for neutrinos too.”

  She began to work on her instruments, keeping a running commentary going, letting Arthur know what she was doing and why. The biggest problem was to dumb the detector down, as she put it, to accomplish the opposite of what it was designed for—that is, to detect exceedingly rare collisions. She would need to see if it were possible to set the calibration to a coarse enough level so as not to be swamped by (what she hoped would be) frequent collisions.

  EDELWEISS-II, she told him, had some limited success to show for its years of service. A handful of possible neutralino collisions had been detected—literally a handful. Five candidate collisions had been observed with a mass determination of approximately 20 GeV: the size of massive particles, about 25 times the mass of a proton. Unfortunately, this was somewhat higher than what the mathematical models had predicted and suggested contamination from background radiation. EURECA was designed to overcome the shortcomings of EDELWEISS. According to Claire, the true mass of a neutralino ought to be between 7 to 11 GeV.