Chapter 9 chapter eight

When Kohler and Langdon emerged from the back of the main CERN complex into the harsh Swiss sun, Langdon felt as if he had been sent home.The scenery in front of me looks like the campus of Beijing. A grassy slope descends into an open quadrilateral lowland dotted with clusters of sugar maples, surrounded by red-brick apartments and connected by footpaths.Scholarly people holding stacks of books hurried in and out between the buildings.As if deliberately highlighting the atmosphere of the school here, two long-haired hippies are throwing flying saucers back and forth, while enjoying the Fourth Symphony played from the apartment building.

"This is our dormitory building." Kohler explained as he accelerated his electric wheelchair along the path towards the buildings, "We have more than 3,000 physicists here. The 'European Nuclear Center' family employs people from all over the world." More than half of the brightest minds on the planet - particle physicists - are german, japanese, italian, dutch, you name it. We have physicists here representing all over the world more than 500 universities and more than 60 ethnic groups." Langdon was surprised. "So how do they communicate?" "In English, of course. It's the lingua franca of science."

Langdon had always heard that mathematics was the lingua franca of science, but he didn't bother to argue with Kohler.He followed Kohler laboriously down the path. As they approached the lowlands, a young man jogged past them, wearing a T-shirt with the words: No Universal, No Honor. Langdon looked at the man behind him, and asked a little puzzled, "Universalism?" "It's the theory of universal unity," Kohler sneered. "It's a theory about everything in the world." "I see," Langdon said, but he didn't understand at all. "Are you familiar with particle physics, Mr. Langdon?"

Langdon shrugged. "I'm familiar with general physics—free fall, stuff like that." His years of diving had given him a deep respect for the theory of gravitational acceleration. "Particle physics is the study of theories about atoms, right?" Kohler shook his head and said: "Atoms are as big as planets compared to what we study here. Our interest is to study the nucleus of an atom—it's only ten thousandths the size of the whole." He coughed again, like Is sick. "CERN's men and women are here to find answers to the questions that humans have been asking throughout history. Where do we come from? What are we made of?"

"Answers like this could be produced in a physics lab?" "It seems that you are a little surprised." "I was a little surprised. These problems seem to be spiritual problems." "Mr. Langdon, all problems were once spiritual. Since the dawn of time, spirituality and religion have been used to fill the gaps that science does not understand. Sunrise and sunset were once attributed to the sun god Helios. and a chariot with fire. Earthquakes and tides are attributed to the wrath of Poseidon, the god of the sea. Science has now proven that these gods are false gods. Before long, all gods will be proven False gods. Science has now provided an answer to almost every question humanity has ever asked, except for a few, and they are all profound. Where did we come from? What are we here for? What's the point?"

Langdon was surprised. "So these are the questions CERN seeks to answer?" "Correction. These are the questions we're answering." The two twisted and walked through the quadrangular residential area, and Langdon fell silent.As they were walking, a flying saucer glided overhead and landed right in front of them.Kohler ignored it and drove the electric wheelchair straight forward. A shout came from across the quadrilateral. "Excuse me!" Langdon followed the reputation.A gray-bearded elder in a loose long-necked, sleeveless sweatshirt with "School de Paris" printed on it was waving to him.Langdon bent over to pick up the flying saucer and threw it back professionally. The old man caught it with one finger, flicked it a few times, and then threw it to his companion with a raised hand. "Thank you!" he called Langdon in French.

"Congratulations." Kohler waited for Langdon to finally catch up and said, "You were playing flying saucers with a Nobel Prize winner just now. His name is the inventor of the Doss proportional chamber." Langdon nodded.my lucky day. It took Langdon and Kohler another three minutes to reach their destination—a sprawling, well-maintained dormitory building nestled in a grove of poplars.Compared with other dormitory buildings, the structure of this building is a bit luxurious. A few words are engraved on the stone tablet in front: Building C. Imaginative building name, Langdon thought.

Although the name was boring, the architectural style of Building C caught Langdon's attention—conservative and stable.The front of the building is made of red bricks, with ornately decorated railings, surrounded by neatly trimmed and symmetrical fences.As the pair walked up an upwardly sloping stone path to the entrance, they passed a gate made of a pair of marble columns, one of which had been pasted with a sticker. Is this column an ​​Ionian physicist's scribbles?Langdon studied it carefully, looked at the pillar, and smiled to himself again. "I feel so much more relieved to see that even the most brilliant physicists get it wrong."

Kohler looked at him and said, "What do you mean?" "Never mind who wrote it, the label is wrong anyway. The Ionic columns are all the same width, and that one is tapered and Doric - the Greek counterpart thing. It's a common sense error." Kohler didn't smile. "Mr. Langdon, whoever wrote this label wrote it as a joke. Meaning - charged ions, most objects contain charged ions." Langdon looked back at the pillar and sighed helplessly. Langdon took the elevator to the top of Building C, still feeling a little stupid.He followed Kohler down a well-furnished hallway decorated in unexpected ways—traditional French Colonial—cherrywood couches, floor-to-ceiling porcelain vases, and scrollwork wood vases. furniture.

“We like to make life comfortable for us tenured scientists,” Kohler said. This is obvious.Langdon thought. "Then the person on the fax lives here? Is it a senior employee here?" "That's right," Kohler said. "He was supposed to come to see me this morning, but he didn't come. He didn't call him back. I came to him and found him dead in his bedroom." Langdon shivered when he realized he was about to see a dead body.His stomach is not very up to date.He discovered this shortcoming when he was studying art at university, when the teacher told them that Leonardo da Vinci acquired his expertise in the human form by dissecting the musculature of corpses exhumed from graves. .

Kohler led the way until the end of the corridor.There is only one door. "That's what you Americans call it." Kohler said, gently wiping the sweat from his forehead.Langdon looked at the lonely oak door in front of him. The name plate read: Leonardo Wittler "Leonardo Witterer," Kohler said, "turns fifty-eight next week. He was one of the most brilliant scientists of our time. His death is a great loss to the scientific community." Langdon thought he felt for a split second a flicker of emotion across Koller's impassive face.But this trace of emotion came quickly and went away suddenly.Kohler reached into his pocket, distinguishing the key to open the door among a large bunch of keys. A strange idea suddenly flashed through Langdon's mind.The building seemed deserted. "Where has everyone gone?" he asked.What was about to enter was a murder scene, and Langdon didn't expect it to be so quiet. "Everyone who lives here has gone to their laboratories," Kohler replied, and he finally found the key. "I mean the police." Langdon corrected, "They're gone?" Kohler's hand stopped, and the key had just been inserted halfway into the lock. "police?" Langdon looked directly at the director. "It's the police. You sent me a fax about the murder. You must have called the police." "I'm most certain that no police were called." "what?" Kohler's gray eyes suddenly showed sternness. "It's a complicated situation, Mr. Langdon." Langdon felt a pang of apprehension. "But... there must be someone who knows about this." "Yes. Leonardo's adopted daughter knows about it. She is also a physicist at CERN. She shares a laboratory with her father, and they are partners. Ms. Wittler is out this week. Went on inspection. I have informed her of her father's death. She is on her way back as we speak." "But here someone was murdered—" "A formal investigation," Kohler said firmly, "is about to begin. However, this investigation will definitely involve Wittler's laboratory, which is a highly confidential space for him and his daughter. Therefore, it must be We have to wait for Ms. Wittler to come back first. I think I should at least have some respect for her." Kohler turned the key. As the door opened, a puff of cold air hissed and rolled into Langdon's face, and Langdon backed away in panic.He carefully looked at this incredible thing across the threshold.A thick white fog permeates the room in front of me.The dense fog swirls around the furniture, creating air eddies that drown the room in an opaque haze. "What is this..." Langdon stammered. "It's a Freon refrigeration system," Kohler replied. "I'm cooling the room so I can preserve the body." The air was blazing, and Langdon buttoned up his duffel jacket.I'm really in Oz, he thought, and I've forgotten my magic shoes.

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