Free The God Particle by Daniel Danser Page B

voice. ‘It’s Ajay. I picked you
up from the airport this morning.’
    Tom opened the door to see Ajay’s smiling face. He was
carrying what looked like a thick, black, leather-bound photo album under his
arm.
    ‘Professor, sahib, I have a scrapbook that I made of my
grandfather, that I would like to show you.’
    Tom groaned inwardly. He wanted to tell Ajay to leave it
with him and he would look at it in the morning, but he could tell by the
enthusiasm on his face that Ajay literally meant that he wanted to show it to him. Perhaps he regarded it as too valuable an item to let it out of his
sight. Tom also recalled making Ajay a promise to finish the stories about his
grandfather when they got back to CERN, so he only had himself to blame. So
much for an early night.
    ‘Come in, Ajay. I was just about to make a coffee,’ Tom
lied.
    Ajay entered the apartment and stood awkwardly by the door.
    ‘Please take a seat. The sofa would probably be best and
then we can look at the scrapbook together.’ Tom beckoned him further into the
room.
    Ajay eyed the orange sofa as though it was a wild animal.
    ‘Is something wrong?’ Tom asked, catching his expression.
    ‘I haven’t been into this apartment since Professor Morantz,
since Professor Morantz…’ Ajay was having difficulty finishing his sentence.
‘Since I found Professor Morantz on the couch.’
    Well, that certainly answers that question, Tom thought.
    ‘Okay, if you’re uncomfortable in here, why don’t we look at
the scrapbook in your room?’
    The suggestion seemed to pacify Ajay and the savage look on
his face was replaced by a genteel smile. ‘Follow me, sahib,’ he said to Tom,
making a hasty retreat through the door.
    Ajay’s apartment was the size of Tom’s living room, not what
he’d expected for the grandson of the great physicist. A single bed took up the
whole of one wall. Along the wall opposite was a kitchen sink and worktop with
a microwave and a two-ring hob on it. Underneath was housed a small fridge. The
single window that provided all the natural light was centrally positioned
between the two walls, and the ‘designers’ had managed to squeeze a small table
and chair underneath it. To the right was a narrow bookcase stacked from top to
bottom with books. A door to the left of the kitchen sink was obviously where the
bathroom was, Tom surmised. The décor and carpets were the proverbial beige and
fawn, although Tom had difficulty in determining the colour of most of the
walls as they were plastered with newspaper cuttings.
    Tom scanned the articles’ headlines:
     
    ‘Massive quake kills
thousands in China’
    ‘Wenchuan earthquake
leaves 5 million homeless’
    ‘Earthquake rocks
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, thousands feared dead’
    ‘Magnitude 7.1
earthquake strikes Chile's Maule Region’
    ‘Tsunami triggered by
Chilean earthquake leaves thousands homeless’
    ‘Pacific coast of
Tōhoku, Japan, hit by massive earthquake and tsunami’
    ‘Earthquake off the
coast of Sumatra measures 8.6’
    ‘Fukushima Nuclear
Power Plant in melt-down after quake hits’
    ‘500,000 dead or
missing after worst nuclear disaster ever’
    ‘Are you, by any chance, interested in natural disasters,
Ajay?’
     ‘Not all, only earthquakes.’ Ajay was making the coffee and
had his back to Tom.
    ‘It’s an interesting subject. Would you like to be a
seismologist?’ Tom ventured.
    ‘As you can see, I read a lot of books on the subject…’ Ajay
turned around and pointed to the bookcase beside the window. ‘But I don’t think
I’m smart enough.’
    Tom was getting a bit too tired for small talk. He looked
around for a suitable place to sit and chose the edge of the bed. Ajay joined
him, carrying two steaming mugs, which he placed on the floor in front of him.
He grabbed his scrapbook and sat next to Tom.
     
    ***
     
    Tom had finally managed to get back to his bed just after
two in the morning. Ajay had gone through his scrapbook,