Edward slapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘
‘
Steve Barkin was one of the last on the bus. He sat next to Otis Renshaw and watched tight-lipped as Arn laughed and joked with Becky as they stood among the other milling students.
Otis followed his friend’s gaze outside the bus, and spoke out of the side of his mouth. ‘You used to date her, didn’t you?’
‘Ages ago.’ Barkin kept watching.
Otis nudged him. ‘Well, better watch out; Sitting Bull’s going for it.’
‘Never happen. She’d never go out with an Injun charity case. Anyway, so what? I dumped her. She was high maintenance, kept hassling me.’
Otis nodded. ‘Well, she’s certainly over you now.’ He laughed and sat back.
Barkin shrugged and blew air from his lips in an
Arn and Edward turned away from Becky and looked straight into the dead-eyed faces of Steve Barkin and Otis.
Barkin put his hand on Arn’s chest and pushed him. ‘You should leave her alone.’
Arn pulled an incredulous face. ‘Leave her alone? Why? Your property is she, Barkin, huh?’
Barkin shrugged. ‘Listen Pawnee: stay away for your own good. Besides, she thinks you’re weird. We all think you’re weird… and don’t belong here. Just piss off back to the reservation…’ He looked at Edward. ‘… And take your boyfriend with you.’
Edward seemed to shrink at being included in Barkin’s spray. Arn felt his face get hot again. ‘Really?’ Arn turned to Becky and her friends. ‘Becky!’
She turned. He made writing motions in the air and yelled, ‘Catch up later!’
She nodded and turned back to her friends, and they started to head to where Beescomb was gathering all the students.
Arn turned back to Barkin. ‘We write to each other all the time… and you?’ Barkin opened his mouth, but Arn cut in. ‘And it’s Shawnee, not Pawnee. We’ve been here nearly four hundred years — I think it’s you who doesn’t belong.’ He pushed past him, and he and Edward walked towards the class group.
Edward waved his arms in front of them to clear a path. ‘Comin’ through, dead men walkin’.’ Edward looked up at his taller friend. ‘He is so gonna kick your ass.’
Arn shrugged. ‘Probably, but it was worth it to see that look on his face.’
‘The I’m gonna kill you one?’ Edward laughed. ‘You know, it’d be worth it if she liked you as much as you liked her.’
Arn just sighed.
Chapter 3
The Speed of Light
The group moved like some many-legged organism towards the main entrance of the giant, sagging sandwich building. Arn was amazed by how modern the interior was, how clean, how… sterile. But something else struck him as strange — it was almost empty.
‘Where is everyone?’
A balding, smallish man was making his way towards them, and Arn’s voice must have carried in the library- like hush of the high-ceilinged building.
‘Mostly under your feet. Like just about everything else in the Fermilab community.’
Beescomb cleared his throat and walked forward to introduce himself. The small man nodded, shook his outstretched hand, and held out his other hand for the paperwork. He quickly scanned it, and then stepped back from the shadow of the larger teacher so the students could see him.
As he did, a number of large dogs raced up, pushing in between the crowd and quickly sniffing pockets, bags and fingers. Some of the girls squealed, and Arn reached down to pat one of the largest dogs, who gave his fingers a quick sniff before racing off after a discreet signal from its keeper.
‘Don’t mind them,’ said the small man. ‘Just working members of the security detail. In those few seconds they were among us, they searched for everything from explosives to drugs, and even for excessive nervousness — they miss a lot less than the most sophisticated electronics. In fact, you might be interested to know that Fermilab is breeding some of the best and smartest guard dogs in the entire world: increased intelligence, size, and a higher tolerance to ionising radiation — our new guardians if you like.’ He gave a small nod, like a bow. ‘My name is Dr. Albert Harper, and I’m the chief physicist working on the Tevatron project. I’d like you all to follow me to the theatre for a short background briefing before we descend for the test-firing.’
A couple of hands shot up, but Harper held up his own like a traffic cop. ‘Whoa, not yet. I’ll take questions following the presentation — we simply cannot be late; the project has cost about a billion dollars, and is being monitored and managed by a very large, very expensive, and very impatient team.’
He laughed as though he was joking, but Arn knew the head scientist had got his message across: you’re on my turf and my time — jump to it.
The group filed into the amphitheatre, and Arn let his long hair fall forward over his face to try to avoid seeing a glaring Steve Barkin skulking at the rear.
Before the last student had sat down, the theatre darkened and Harper’s voice droned from speakers around the room.
‘Welcome to Fermilab… funny name right? He peered around the room, his eyebrows raised and an ironic smile indicating no answer was really expected.
‘Well, the science community you’ve come to today was originally home to the village of Weston, and was once little more than farmland. In fact, you might see some of the first barns still around the place. There’s even a small burial ground with tombstones dating all the way back to 1839. We still maintain it out of respect for the original inhabitants.’
Arn kept his mouth shut, even though his, and Dr. Harper’s, concept of original inhabitants differed by about 250 years.
Harper continued. ‘We weren’t always called Fermilab though. We actually started out as the National Accelerator Laboratory when President Lyndon B. Johnson himself commissioned it in 1967. But, in 1974 the laboratory was renamed in honour of Nobel Prize winner, Enrico Fermi, one of the most famous physicists of the atomic age and…’
Edward’s hand shot up, and at the same time his voice sprang from the dark next to Arn. ‘The father of the atomic bomb.’
Harper pointed to where Edward’s voice had risen, and nodded. ‘Yes, yes he worked on the Manhattan Project, but did you know he also developed the world’s first nuclear rector, and contributed to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics?’ Again the eyebrows went up.
Harper’s voice had become momentarily rushed as though responding to a challenge. He paused, staring in Edward’s direction for a few seconds before he smiled, and smoothly changed back to talking about the facility, his voice once again relaxed. ‘Since those early days we have grown, adding extra circumference, accelerators, and too many upgrades to mention.’
Harper waggled a finger in the air. ‘Although there is one worth mentioning.’ A giant image appeared behind him of a ruby red cylinder — glass-like, perfect — a magnificent stone. ‘Diamonds used to only be a girl’s best
