Langdon was amazed. "And these are questions CERN is trying to answer?"

"Correction. These are questions we are answering."

Langdon fell silent as the two men wound through the residential quadrangles. As they walked, a Frisbee sailed overhead and skidded to a stop directly in front of them. Kohler ignored it and kept going.

A voice called out from across the quad. "S’il vous plaоt!"

Langdon looked over. An elderly white-haired man in a College Paris sweatshirt waved to him. Langdon picked up the Frisbee and expertly threw it back. The old man caught it on one finger and bounced it a few times before whipping it over his shoulder to his partner. "Merci!" he called to Langdon.

"Congratulations," Kohler said when Langdon finally caught up. "You just played toss with a Noble prize-winner, Georges Charpak, inventor of the multiwire proportional chamber."

Langdon nodded. My lucky day.

It took Langdon and Kohler three more minutes to reach their destination—a large, well-kept dormitory sitting in a grove of aspens. Compared to the other dorms, this structure seemed luxurious. The carved stone sign in front read Building C.

Imaginative title, Langdon thought.

But despite its sterile name, Building C appealed to Langdon’s sense of architectural style—conservative and solid. It had a red brick facade, an ornate balustrade, and sat framed by sculpted symmetrical hedges. As the two men ascended the stone path toward the entry, they passed under a gateway formed by a pair of marble columns. Someone had put a sticky-note on one of them.

Physicist graffiti? Langdon mused, eyeing the column and chuckling to himself. "I’m relieved to see that even brilliant physicists make mistakes."