Flashforward

"Don't worry," said Drescher, gri

"Good luck, Mr. Procopides. Like I said, just be careful. For billions of people, the future turned out unlike what their visions portrayed. I shouldn't have to tell you this, you being a scientist and all, but there really is no good reason to think that your vision is going to be the one that actually comes true."

Theo used his cellular phone to call his car, and when it arrived, he got back in.

Drescher was doubtless right. Theo felt embarrassed about his panic attack; probably a bad dream the night before, coupled with anxiety about the upcoming replication, had brought it on. He tried to relax, looking out at the countryside as his car drove him back to the LHC control center. The tour bus was still there. It made him a bit nostalgic. Globus Gateway buses were seen all over Western Europe, of course. He'd never taken one of their tours himself, but as a horny teenager he and a couple of his friends had always watched for them in July and August. North American girls, looking for a summer of excitement, often traveled in such things; Theo had enjoyed more than one romantic evening with an American schoolgirl during his teenage years.

The pleasant memory faded to sadness, though; he was thinking of home, of Athens. He'd only been back twice since Dim's funeral. Why hadn't he made more time for his parents? Theo let his car find a vacant spot. He got out and headed into the LHC control center.

"Oh, Theo," said Jake Horowitz, coming at him from the other end of the mosaic-lined corridor. "I've been trying to get hold of you. I called your car but it said you'd been arrested or something."

"Fu

"There's a problem with the LHC that Jiggs doesn't know how to fix."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, something with one of the cryostat clusters — number four-forty, in octant three."

Theo frowned. It had been years since the LHC had been cranked up to full power. Jiggs, all of thirty-four, was head of the maintenance division; he'd never actually seen the collider used at 14-TeV levels.

Theo nodded; cryostat controls were notoriously finicky. "I'll go have a look." In the old days, when CERN had a staff of three thousand, Theo never would have gone down into the LHC tu

Theo took the elevator to the minus-one-hundred-meter level. The air in the particle-accelerator tu

As he'd often done before, Theo Procopides looked down the tu

Hanging from the tu

The driver had to sit with his legs out in front of him; the cab wasn't tall enough to accommodate a normally seated person. The name ORNEX — the manufacturer of the monorail — was emblazoned across the cab's front. To either side of the name were small red reflectors, and below it was a wide strip with black-and-yellow safety markings; they wanted to be absolutely sure the cabs would be visible in the dim tu

Theo got a tool box from one of the supply lockers in the staging area, put on his yellow hard hat — even though he rarely went down into the tu

Detective Helmut Drescher tried to get on with his work; he had seven open case files to dig through, and Capitaine Lavoisier had been demanding he make some more progress. But Moot's mind kept turning back to the plight of Theo Procopides. The guy had seemed nice enough; he wished he could have helped him. He'd looked to be in good shape, too, for a man who must have been almost fifty. Moot found the flatsie that had recorded their earlier conversation; the biographical-data box about Theo was still displayed. Born 2 March 1982 — so that would make him forty-eight. Pretty old to be a boxer — besides, he had the wrong build for it. Maybe in whatever alternative reality the visions had shown he'd been a coach or a referee, rather than an actual fighter. But no — that didn't seem right. Moot didn't have the business card with him that Theo had given him two decades ago, although he had saved it through all intervening years, and had looked at it occasionally: it had clearly said CERN on it. So, if he was already a physicist before the visions took place in 2009, it seemed unlikely that he'd switch to a career in sports. But Moot remembered his own vision vividly: the man in the smock — the medical examiner, he knew now — had clearly said that Procopides was killed in the ring, and—

In the ring.

What was it Procopides had said earlier today? You must have heard of it. There's a tu