"Free fall tube," Kohler said, stopping to wait for him. "Indoor skydiving. For stress relief. It’s a vertical wind tunnel."
Langdon looked on in amazement. One of the free fallers, an obese woman, maneuvered toward the window. She was being buffeted by the air currents but grinned and flashed Langdon the thumbs-up sign. Langdon smiled weakly and returned the gesture, wondering if she knew it was the ancient phallic symbol for masculine virility.
The heavyset woman, Langdon noticed, was the only one wearing what appeared to be a miniature parachute. The swathe of fabric billowed over her like a toy. "What’s her little chute for?" Langdon asked Kohler. "It can’t be more than a yard in diameter."
"Friction," Kohler said. "Decreases her aerodynamics so the fan can lift her." He started down the the corridor again. "One square yard of drag will slow a falling body almost twenty percent."
Langdon nodded blankly.
He never suspected that later that night, in a country hundreds of miles away, the information would save his life.
8
When Kohler and Langdon emerged from the rear of CERN’s main complex into the stark Swiss sunlight, Langdon felt as if he’d been transported home. The scene before him looked like an Ivy League campus.
A grassy slope cascaded downward onto an expansive lowlands where clusters of sugar maples dotted quadrangles bordered by brick dormitories and footpaths. Scholarly looking individuals with stacks of books hustled in and out of buildings. As if to accentuate the collegiate atmosphere, two longhaired hippies hurled a Frisbee back and forth while enjoying Mahler’s Fourth Symphony blaring from a dorm window.
"These are our residential dorms," Kohler explained as he accelerated his wheelchair down the path toward the buildings. "We have over three thousand physicists here. CERN single-handedly employs more than half of the world’s particle physicists—the brightest minds on earth—Germans, Japanese, Italians, Dutch, you name it. Our physicists represent over five hundred universities and sixty nationalities."
Langdon was amazed. "How do they all communicate?"
"English, of course. The universal language of science."
Langdon had always heard
Halfway to the bottom, a young man jogged by. His T-shirt proclaimed the message: NO GUT, NO GLORY!
Langdon looked after him, mystified. "Gut?"
"General Unified Theory." Kohler quipped. "The theory of everything."
"I see," Langdon said, not seeing at all.
"Are you familiar with particle physics, Mr. Langdon?"
Langdon shrugged. "I’m familiar with general physics—falling bodies, that sort of thing." His years of high-diving experience had given him a profound respect for the awesome power of gravitational acceleration. "Particle physics is the study of atoms, isn’t it?"
Kohler shook his head. "Atoms look like planets compared to what we deal with. Our interests lie with an atom’s
"And these answers are in a physics lab?"
"You sound surprised."
"I am. The questions seem spiritual."
"Mr. Langdon, all questions were once spiritual. Since the beginning of time, spirituality and religion have been called on to fill in the gaps that science did not understand. The rising and setting of the sun was once attributed to
Langdon was amazed. "And these are questions CERN is trying to answer?"
"Correction. These are questions we
Langdon fell silent as the two men wound through the residential quadrangles. As they walked, a Frisbee sailed overhead and skidded to a stop directly in front of them. Kohler ignored it and kept going.
A voice called out from across the quad. "
Langdon looked over. An elderly white-haired man in a College Paris sweatshirt waved to him. Langdon picked up the Frisbee and expertly threw it back. The old man caught it on one finger and bounced it a few times before whipping it over his shoulder to his partner. "
"Congratulations," Kohler said when Langdon finally caught up. "You just played toss with a Noble prize-winner, Georges Charpak, inventor of the multiwire proportional chamber."
Langdon nodded.
It took Langdon and Kohler three more minutes to reach their destination—a large, well-kept dormitory sitting in a grove of aspens. Compared to the other dorms, this structure seemed luxurious. The carved stone sign in front read Building C.
But despite its sterile name, Building C appealed to Langdon’s sense of architectural style—conservative and solid. It had a red brick facade, an ornate balustrade, and sat framed by sculpted symmetrical hedges. As the two men ascended the stone path toward the entry, they passed under a gateway formed by a pair of marble columns. Someone had put a sticky-note on one of them.
Kohler looked over. "What do you mean?"
"Whoever wrote that note made a mistake. That column isn’t Ionic. Ionic columns are uniform in width. That one’s tapered. It’s Doric—the Greek counterpart. A common mistake."
Kohler did not smile. "The author meant it as a joke, Mr. Langdon.
Langdon looked back at the column and groaned.
Langdon was still feeling stupid when he stepped from the elevator on the top floor of Building C. He followed Kohler down a well-appointed corridor. The decor was unexpected—traditional colonial French—a cherry divan, porcelain floor vase, and scrolled woodwork.
"We like to keep our tenured scientists comfortable," Kohler explained.
"Quite," Kohler said. "He missed a meeting with me this morning and did not answer his page. I came up here to locate him and found him dead in his living room."
Langdon felt a sudden chill realizing that he was about to see a dead body. His stomach had never been particularly stalwart. It was a weakness he’d discovered as an art student when the teacher informed the class that Leonardo da Vinci had gained his expertise in the human form by exhuming corpses and dissecting their musculature.
Kohler led the way to the far end of the hallway. There was a single door. "
Langdon eyed the lone oak door before them. The name plate read:
