Chapter 35: Two Electrons, One Stone
Maybe the opening of Margarita’s Kitchen coincided with a natural turning point in the work. Or maybe the dining hall enhanced productivity. Rudy could not produce journal-worthy evidence of a causal relationship, and he didn’t look for any. He just kept working, and did more and more of his work from the dining hall. With his laptop and a robust wireless signal, he could most of his administrative work under Ivan’s shimmering beams and fanciful trim, in the comforting light from the big north windows. He met team leaders in the dining hall, held office hours there to field concerns and complaints over tea and salads and freshly baked pryaniki. As spring turned to summer, as the construction crew was finishing the upper floors of the admin building, Rudy dispatched part of their team back to ground level to add a wooden patio spanning the entire north side of the dining hall. Many workers took their breaks on the new patio, in the shade of the growing building.
And the Ring started to work. Glitches smoothed out, cables and breakers held, cryogenics stayed really cold, superconductors conducted, and test after test showed the big magnets charging the evacuated tunnel, reliably, over and over.
Rudy toured the Ring tunnel three times a week, checking air quality and humidity, looking for the sources of anomalies in the test results, marking equipment for repair or upgrade. Rudy did some repairs on the spot, but he had to assign most of that work to Maksim and the other veteran diggers who now scrambled about the Ring finding and fixing problems. When Rudy wasn’t underground or working on reports in the dining hall or on the patio, he got his hands into the computer network. He enmeshed every building in the finest optical cable they could find, enough to connect a dozen villages the size of Goryachiy Klyuch. He directed and tested the cooling systems for the server rooms, then oversaw the installation of the big processors and workstations. Vitaly started coming a couple days a week to work on software and security for the connection back to Irkutsk and the Institute.
Two dormitories went up—nothing like the old, dark rooms Rudy remembered in Suzdal, but airy, modern buildings with big windows and a variety of rooms, from singles to suites larger than his apartment, all with private baths.
Water, power, paved driveways and walkways and parking lots… the compound took shape.
And on November 11, three weeks before the completion date Rudy had set when he became foreman, Galina Filipovna came to Goryachiy Klyuch and flipped a switch.
That action produced no physical evidence of the interaction it caused; even the switch itself had a cushioned catch and made no sound. The walls of the immaculate main control room did not hum, the lights did not flicker, the forest and hills did not shake or sink into a black hole, and Ivan Ivanovich did not wake up next to Margarita Ruslanovna the next morning. But a stream of numerical outputs told Galina Filipovna that two electrons had accelerated to 99.94% of the speed of light and collided in a burst of gamma radiation measured to the twelfth decimal place in the primary target chamber. “It works,” she said.
The crowd around her cheered. The Institute’s entire physics department, faculty and students, had come from the city, along with a handful of Galya’s regular scientific collaborators from as far as Novosibirsk. Some of the loudest cheers came from a gaggle of Rudy’s workers, led by big Maksim, all proudly in their hardhats. They didn’t grasp the physics, but they understood that their machine held together and did its work on this momentous day. Rudy cheered, too, from the edge of the room, where he stood with Vitaly, Nina, Kolya, and Saran—yes, Saran! his resourceful friend who earned a role in the Ring Group’s inner circle and moved from Kyzyl to Irkutsk to manage security for the Institute. That handful of schemers with direct involvement in the Institute’s “financial analysis”, the people who robbed banks, stole secrets, and arranged scandal and misfortune, stood back, a little more subdued and watchful than the other witnesses to the moment they had made possible.
No one hugged Galina Filipovna or raised her to the crowd’s shoulders to parade her around the compound. The professors controlled their excitement when they faced her, bowing and offering enthusiastic but polite congratulations. They were more open with Rudy, shaking the foreman’s hand and his shoulders and expressing admiration for the orderliness of the facility and the construction area where even today his crews were still finishing a cluster of guest cabins, with snow cleared and pushed back to the tree line and planks laid neatly so workers would not have to trudge through mud when the sun came out.
The gentle hum of congratulations was interrupted by one booming voice. “Galina Filipovna!” It was Maksim, sounding like an Orthodox priest, a deep bass vibrating through the entire room, silencing the chatter and attracting every eye. Maksim raised his hardhat, and he and his fellow workers stepped forward as a unit and, as if they had drilled, all went down on one knee.
Maksim knelt right in front of Galina Filipovna. Like every man in his cohort, he placed his hardhat over his heart. a couple nervous giggles escaped from somewhere in the crowd but were quickly stilled by the workmen’s grave bearing and Maksim’s commanding voice, a voice speaking with a power different from the usual vigorous exclamations Rudy exchanged with Maksim over the grind and roar of machines. “Esteemed Director of the Institute and the Ring!” Maksim intoned. With a slow, patient gesture, he pulled something from his jacket pocket and held it up to the director. Heads bobbed around heads, as everyone tried to see Maksim’s offering. Craning his neck over two professors, Rudy saw that Maksim held an irregular stone the size of a healthy apple, polished red granite with flecks of silver and black. A streak of milky quartz divided the rock like a bolt of lightning.
“This stone,” Maksim said, “flew out from our first blast in the hillside, in this very spot, three years ago. We have carved and polished it for you, a gem for your Ring.”
For a long moment, the room was silent. But Galina Filipovna reached out to take the stone. She put her other hand on Maksim’s broad and dusty shoulder. “Thank you, men,” she said softly. “Thank you, Maksim.” Then she raised her voice to command the room. “I hear there is cake in our dining hall. These men built the Ring. Make sure they are first in line.”
The director’s grace triggered new cheers and laughter. Her grace drew everyone’s eyes and applause to the workmen, who stood and exited with shy schoolboy laughs and nudges among themselves. The workmen drew everyone but Rudy out in their wake, physicists and students and visitors all eager to celebrate, eager to fulfill yet another of Galina Filipovna’s wishes.
Having cleverly diverted the crowd’s attention, Galya turned back toward the computer screen and clicked a mouse to bring up new columns of data. But as the crowd’s hubbub faded, she stopped clicking. Rudy watched her lower her head and lean against the desk. Her left hand rested atop the red stone Maksim had given her.
“Galina Filipovna,” Rudy said from the door, “are you all right?”
“My life’s work,” she replied, facing the desktop, “ready to begin. Why shouldn’t I be?”
Galya’s voice wavered on the last words. As reflexively as he would have reached for the fire extinguisher if the computer had burst into flame, Rudy pulled the door almost shut and crossed the room before the first tear could fall from her eyes.
“The men,” she whispered. “Your men. They give me this stone out of the goodness of their hearts. They do not know, they cannot know the ill we have done make this work possible.”
The sternness and command that had directed her for decades to this moment had melted. Rudy did not meet her eyes, just stood close beside her, watched the door, and let her proceed, let her release all the doubt she could not allow while pursuing her goal, while giving others the steel they needed to stand by her and achieve what she asked.
Galya cried quietly, breathed deeply. She wiped back tears, but a single drop escaped, plashing on the white desk, just below the Control key on the keyboard.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She turned now, leaned her back against the desk, and held the red stone in both hands in front of her. “I didn’t expect…but I’ve demanded so much, and you all have given it. You all have sacrificed.”
“It’s never felt like sacrifice,” Rudy said. “It’s felt like good work. My men feel that. That’s why they gave you…” Rudy nodded toward the stone.
Galya’s eyes remained on the stone in her hands. “The shape, like a heart… not a Valentine, but a real heart….” She shook her head and looked around the control room. “There’s so much to do now, so much science, so many… questions.”
“And you’ll do it,” Rudy said. “You’ll ask those questions, and answer them, with your Ring.”
“But you, Nina, Vitaly… I still need you all. Particles and papers don’t pay for themselves. We won’t revolutionize microwave ovens. In Soviet times, the state would have gladly paid for the prestige of having the best science lab in the world. Now, the state invests only in practical power: arms, cash flow, control. To keep the Ring going, to do the science, we will have to continue our… financial analysis.”
“We’ve always understood that,” Rudy said quietly. “In that regard, nothing changes today. But in other ways, this is a momentous occasion, and you are allowed to celebrate it.” He sensed Galya had recovered her equilibrium, so he finally looked into her eyes. “Expected to celebrate it.”
Galya studied his eyes the way she had initially studied the numbers on the screen that captured the first particle interaction. “Thank you,” she whispered. Rudy nodded gently. Galina Filipovna stood fully upright, tightening her grip on the red stone. “Come then,” she said in her director’s tone. “We celebrate. Let us see if Maksim has left us any cake.”