Three (4 page)

Oliver took comfort in the
fact that Father Ryan was such a help and comfort for Alice.  On the other hand,
he was greatly troubled by thoughts of how and why Peter died and what he had meant
by “You must find the three”. 
What or who are the three: The Holy Trinity;
his three team members; three hidden volumes of his work; or things hidden at Fermilab,
CERN, and the Dark Sector Lab, where his three team members worked?
 

“Father Pat, it’s after
midnight.  I can stay here if you need me, but I must tell you I want to look into
all aspects of Peter’s death, including a possible conspiracy, and therefore
may have to do some traveling in the next week.” 

“We’ll be ok,” said Father
Pat. “Find out what you can.  We all want to know why Peter died so suddenly,
and at such a young age.” 

“Tomorrow I’ll talk to
Peter’s team members to see if anything at all comes to mind regarding Peter’s
last request.” Oliver then shook Father Pat’s hand, and made his exit. 

Returning to his nearby
apartment, Oliver turned on a few lights and opened some windows to allow fresh
air to clear out the evidence of his week-long absence. The living room was
filled with replicas of artifacts from various world religions that he often
used in his lectures.  This room resembled a London men’s club, complete with
heavy dark wood paneling and heavy leather lounge chairs.  It smelled of lemon
oil, old leather, and redwood.  The center of the oak floor was covered by a Persian
rug with a traditional gold and blue motif against a deep red background.  Next
to his favorite wingback chair stood a floor lamp with a Tiffany shade, and a
burled redwood magazine stand full of books and newspapers.  The far wall held
a flat screen TV which he used on a daily basis for world news reports.  It was
truly a bachelor pad, and had suited Oliver’s lifestyle quite well over the
years. 

The adjacent study centered
on a large desk, piled with notes and books that partially obscured the open,
laptop computer at its center.  File cabinets of lecture notes and student
records, and shelves of reference books, lined two of the walls.  On the upper
shelves of these bookcases were a few framed photographs of family and
friends.  In prominent positions was the one of his parents, both of whom had
recently died, and one of himself with Peter and Alice.  He removed both
photographs and stood examining them, one in each hand.

Both of his parents, who had
worked in the redwood lumber industry, would have been amazed at the life their
son now led: a college professor and a secret agent for the government.  As he
studied their photograph, Oliver realized that the life his parents had led, though
completely different from his, was in fact happy and fulfilling.  He and his
parents had been surrounded by the majestic stands of redwood and Engelmann
spruce that had provided them with a stable environment for both work and
leisure.  

When Oliver was a child, his
father had taken him on long outings into the surrounding woods looking for the
oldest and largest trees.  Stopping at old stumps to count tree rings, they
would then discuss what creatures might have walked in these same woods when
that tree was young.  Oliver’s young mind would create images of large Saber-toothed
tigers as they quietly made their way through the forest on a hunt for deer or
bears or giant sloths.  He loved these outings with his father and now realized
that they had formed his love of history.

Cutten, California, had
offered a wholesome and stimulating environment for his boyhood and allowed him
to explore the world around him with little exposure to the crime and
inner-city strife he knew only through television. 

Nothing in his childhood
memories was more exciting than watching giant redwood logs being cut into
lumber in the Georgia Pacific lumber mill where his father and mother had
worked.  As the steam-powered carrier, the size of a railroad flat-car, carried
a huge redwood log through the vertical band saw blade, he would watch each
piece of wood as it was carried away to be cut into standard lumber.  The floor
shook and the saw screamed as these logs were being cut.  The outer slabs of
bark would be directed down a chute into a flickering furnace.  The entire
sawmill ran on the heat from this furnace. 

The drying yard that lay to
the south of the mill contained the rough–cut lumber that would eventually be
planed to standard size for market.  On one occasion Oliver’s father took him
out to the drying yard to see a special piece of redwood.  It was a slab 4
inches thick, 4 feet wide, and 16 feet long of solid burled redwood.  It was
worth thousands of dollars and would eventually become a conference table for a
large corporation.  It was the most beautiful piece of lumber Oliver had ever
seen.

Oliver was also aware that much
of the redwood not used for lumber was sent to a nearby pulp mill where it was
made into paper.  Not until he went off to college in New Jersey, had he
realized all the newspapers published in Northern California smelled like
redwood.  None of the newspapers he picked up anywhere else in the country
smelled like home.

Looking back and forth
between the picture of himself with Peter and Alice, and the one of his
parents, he realized that three of the five figures were no longer with him.  Alice,
alone, was his family.  The thought made him feel an emptiness that brought
back his grief at Peter’s death. 

Examining everything around
him, he saw the smallness of this apartment as a representation of home.  Over
the years, as he pursued his career as professor and scholar, his sense of home
and family had become small and self-centered. Yes, there are his students here
in Chicago, and yes, there is his work with Maxine at I&A, but at this
moment, he felt very alone.

He went to his kitchenette
and checked to see if he had eggs and bacon for his breakfast the next
morning.  Taking a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, he returned to the
study and turned on his laptop.  Opening a new document page he wrote, “You
must find the three.”  Oliver then stood staring at the words, sipping
periodically at his beer.  Finally, he sat the unfinished bottle on the side of
the desk, shut down the computer, and walked to his bedroom.  There he unpacked
his small carry–on bag and got ready for bed.  His sleep, through the early
morning hours, was troubled by thoughts of these words, along with his loneliness
and loss.  He slept little before dawn began to cast a few rays of dim light
and stir a gentle breeze through his bedroom window.

For many things lead me to have a suspicion that all
phenomenon

may depend on certain forces by which the particles of
bodies,

by causes not yet known, either are impelled toward
one another,

and cohere in regular figures, or repelled from one
another and recede.

-
Isaac Newton

After rising that morning and
having a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and coffee, followed by a warm shower,
Oliver called the Fermilab office of Peter’s team.

Kahlil answered, and
recognizing Oliver’s number, said, “Dr. Saxon, I’ve been expecting your call;
we’re all still in shock and are here in the office trying to determine what we
should do.” 

“I’d like to come out to the
lab and see you, David, and Elizabeth.” 

“That would be fine.  I’ll
let security know you’re coming.”

“Has Elizabeth finished her
work attempting to restore Peter’s laptop?”

“She’s still working on it
but says she should know something by tomorrow.”

“I’d still like to talk with
the three of you about the work you each have been doing with Peter.  I’ll be
there in about an hour,” Oliver responded as he walked to his car.

Oliver drove from the
University of Chicago campus, north through the city and then west out Interstate
88, toward Fermilab.  As he drove, he could not help visualizing the exuberant
Peter Newbury, encouraging his team of three researchers, as together they
worked to unravel the secrets of the universe. 
What impact will Peter’s
death have on this important research?  How will his team members be affected? 
 If his death was not from natural causes, who could possibly expect to profit
from such a hateful act?
  These thoughts did little to soothe Oliver, or
brighten his dark mood as he drove west toward the lab.  His thoughts were
finally interrupted by the exit signs for Fermilab.  Exiting Interstate 88 he
drove north along Kirk Road into the National Accelerator complex, a 6,800-acre
tract of land just south of Batavia.

In his discussions with
Peter, Oliver had learned that Fermilab employed over 1,500 scientists and
engineers, and was a world leader in sub-atomic physics and particle
accelerator design.  Oliver recalled Peter’s enthusiastic words: “Here at
Fermilab, particles like electrons or protons are accelerated to high energies,
held in a storage ring, and made to collide.  Over the years, these controlled
collisions have yielded a lot of information about the structure of matter.  We
are close to finding out how all matter is formed!”

  As Oliver turned east onto
the main entrance road to Fermilab, approaching Wilson Hall, he was again
struck by the unusual architecture of this main administrative building. The concave,
inward-sloping east and west wings, looming more than fifteen stories above the
surrounding flat-lands, had always given him the impression of two giant hands,
clasped in prayer.  He had often teased Peter about the symbolism, asking what
all these physicists and mathematicians could be praying for.  Peter would
laugh and remind him of the opening scenes of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, where
Indiana Jones takes all the risks and does the hard work to find the hidden
treasure, and in the end has it stolen from him by that nasty Frenchman,
Belloc. 

“Well, Oliver, physics
research is just like that.  All of us in this building are working as hard as
we can to find the next hidden treasure, hoping and praying someone else in this
building, or elsewhere, doesn’t publish the same findings before we’re able
to.  Being scooped after years of hard work is devastating.” 

“Peter,” Oliver would say, “you’re
so far ahead of the rest of the world of physics that the only praying I see
you do is in church.”

 Now, as Oliver drove up Road
A to the Wilson Hall edifice, he had another vision.  The inward-sloping towers
on either side reminded him of the flying buttresses and the two towers of
Notre Dame Cathedral.  Perhaps this National Laboratory for Particle Physics is
indeed a place of worship where man is reaching not for God, but for what the
media call the “God Particle.”  Somehow this thought did not comfort him, but
instead gave him a chill, as he walked from the parking lot and approached the
front of the building.  Entering, he noticed that the entire lobby was hushed
and somber, the news of Peter’s death being on everyone’s mind.

The unusually quiet security
guard immediately recognized him and handing him his security badge, said,
“Professor Saxon, Peter’s team is expecting you. I’ll key you in.” 

Oliver rode the elevator to
the fifth floor and walked down to the office complex where David Benjamin was
holding the door open for him.  Each office of the complex had its own door
with a keypad for entry, and even the outer meeting room into which each of the
four offices opened was locked to the outer hallway.  Usually these inner
office doors were propped open, but today they were all closed and locked. 
Obviously the team was taking all precautions to maintain the security of these
offices after this tragic death.

Oliver consoled and was
consoled by Elizabeth Ward, Khalil Ahmed, and David Benjamin.  Elizabeth, at
age forty, was the oldest of the three.  She had grown up in Houston, and for
as long as she could remember, loved to sing.  She had always been in a church
or school choir and loved the challenge of sight-reading a new piece of music. 
She would always try to discover the beauty of the harmony of the composition
as well as the hidden patterns of the underlying themes.  She later realized
that these same feelings of discovery had drawn her to the study of mathematics. 
By the time she was in college she had discovered the oratorio works of J. S.
Bach.  She immediately recognized his genus for creating works that pulled at
her heart-strings as well as his genus for incorporating mathematical patterns
and symbols into the score.  She identified with Bach because music and
mathematics had become her life.

 After finishing her
doctorate in group theory and the study of mathematical symmetries at Stanford
University, she had come to Chicago as a postdoctoral fellow to work with
Peter.  The two wrote the grants that eventually led to their work on the
fundamental theories of matter in the universe.  She was unmarried, and her
life was dedicated to her work in mathematics and to singing with a newly
formed Bach Choir. 

When Peter took on two
graduate students, David, and then Khalil, she became their mentor and to some
extent their mother.  She had carefully reviewed each of their doctoral theses
and provided needed guidance as the two graduate students prepared for their
final oral exams.  They were both indebted to her for helping them finally
obtain their doctorates in astrophysics and particle physics respectively. 
They now worked together as an effective research team, combining the findings
of their three scientific fields.  They worked well with one another even
though they each came from a different background.

David grew up in Chicago in a
Jewish family. He regularly attended the synagogue, and had recently invited
both Elizabeth, a Christian, and Khalil, a Muslim, to attend the family Seder
at Passover.  The three shared their religious faiths and practices as often as
they did their scientific ideas. 

One evening Elizabeth invited
David and Khalil to a professional performance of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion
by her Bach Choir and Orchestra.  The performance, presented as a worship
service rather than a concert, was so moving it brought tears to the eyes of
the performers as well as the patrons. 

Khalil, born to immigrant
parents who had escaped the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, had become an active
member of a local mosque near the University of Chicago campus.  For the past
three years, Elizabeth and David, strictly following Islamic jurisprudence, had
prepared halal food for Khalil’s mosque during the month of Ramadan.  Here, the
faithful, who fasted during the day, would be able to share a meal at the
mosque, after sundown. 

As Oliver had learned these
things about Peter’s team over the last few years, it was not lost on him that they
had become a close-knit family, spiritually as well as intellectually.  Addressing
all three of them, he asked, “Can you give me some background on the work you
have been doing?  I’m sorry to say that in all the time I’ve spent here with
Peter, he seldom talked in detail about your work, and I seldom asked.” 

They then took turns relating
the development of their work, each from his or her own perspective.  Oliver
learned that here at Fermilab, in the last two decades, three independent
scientific disciplines: particle physics, astrophysics, and mathematics, had
begun to work together on what some had called the ‘Theory of Everything’.

He asked the team members, in
turn, about their research.  “Khalil, I know you do much of your research at
that atom smasher on the border between France and Switzerland, called CERN. 
Isn’t it the same kind of facility as here at Fermilab; why do you need to go
there?”

“It is the same design of
atom smasher as here; as a matter of fact, we designed that system.  However, it’s
much more powerful than this one and is therefore capable of finding those
missing pieces of matter we’ve not been able to find here at Fermilab.”

“Couldn’t you have upgraded
this system to a higher power?”

“We considered it but
realized we needed more room.  So in 1983 the United States began to develop a
very powerful atom smasher, at a new site, that was to replace this one.  The
Superconducting Super Collider would have been the world’s most powerful
system, capable of finding most all of the pieces of matter that theory
suggested existed.  Unfortunately, the money ran out and the project was
canceled in 1993.”

“It used superconductors?”

“The magnets were designed
with superconducting windings in order to achieve the highest powers.  What we
learned in designing the SSC magnets we eventually applied to the upgrade of
the system at CERN.”

“Oh yes, now I remember. 
When the new superconducting magnets at CERN were first tested, one of them
exploded seriously damaging a section of the accelerator tunnel.”

“Yes, that set us back more
than a year.  The one problem with superconducting magnets is that if they are
driven past a critical maximum they can self-destruct in a violent explosion. 
We’ve since designed computer programs to monitor and control each of these
magnets.”

“So no more explosions?”

“No, not since that first one
that delayed our research.”

“What kind of research do you
do at CERN?”

“My work is on the Swiss side,
at a detector called ATLAS.  I analyze new exotic particles that are generated
by the merger of two high energy beams of particles.”

“Can you still use the
accelerator here at Fermilab?”

“I still conduct some studies
here, but most of my research is now done at the new CERN, ATLAS detector,
where we recently discovered that particle everyone’s calling the ‘God particle’. 
Peter told me about your characterization of Wilson Hall as a cathedral.  Well,
following suit with this somewhat irreverent image, I claim Building 40, at the
site of my work at CERN, as my ‘place of worship’ since it has a domed ceiling
like a mosque.  Here is where particle physicists are hoping and praying to
make our last few discoveries before we have to look for natural phenomenon to
answer questions about the ultimate building blocks of nature.”

Oliver smiled at the good
humored jab at his religious metaphor of their scientific dedication.  He then
turned to David Benjamin and said, “David, you’re an astrophysicist.  How is
your research related to that of Khalil’s?”

“What Khalil and the other
‘high energy physicists’ have discovered in building more and more powerful
atom smashers, is that mankind lacks both the money and the technology to go
any further than they have at CERN.  They’ll never be able to smash atoms or
pieces of atoms together with enough energy to reveal the most fundamental
pieces of matter, or the nature of the forces holding them together.”

“Then what can astronomy
offer?”

“We know from years of
astronomical observations that the universe is continually expanding and
cooling.  If it indeed started some thirteen billion years ago in a big bang,
then, in its first seconds of existence, pieces of atoms were smashing together
at energies greater than anything man can ever generate in the lab.”

“So astronomy can see these
missing pieces of matter?”

“No.  Unfortunately, the
universe was so hot in its early history light was unable to penetrate it.  The
oldest light we can see with our telescopes was generated hundreds of thousands
of years after the light produced by these exotic particles and forces.”

“Then what new insight can
astrophysics provide concerning the nature of matter?”

“With our latest telescopes
we are now looking for gravitational ripples, in this oldest light we can see,
that were produced when these exotic particles were first formed.”