The Trinity Paradox (40 page)

Elizabeth smiled to herself at Mrs. Canapelli’s concern. Self-doubt about her femininity was the least of her concerns. She wondered what Mrs. Canapelli would think in twenty years when women started wearing hip-huggers and burning their bras.

“Tell you what—I’ll change when I get down there. Okay?”

“You know best. Just be careful. And good luck with whatever it is you’re doing down there.”

“Thanks.” Elizabeth closed her suitcase.

A horn honked from outside the dormitory. Mrs. Canapelli squinted out the window. “Oh, it’s your ride. They’re waiting for you.”

Elizabeth swung her bag from the bed. “Thanks again. With any luck I’ll be back within a week.”

Once in the black government-licensed car, Elizabeth settled back for the ride down to Trinity. She recognized the two other passengers as physicists from their interactions with Feynman; she thought one might be Enrico Fermi, but she didn’t recognize the other. They politely nodded to her and went back to reading their journals. Everything seemed so calm—the driver didn’t speak either, but Elizabeth didn’t mind. She hoped to catch a long nap on the drive down. It would be a nice change from accompanying General Groves.

Elizabeth stared out the car window with her eyes half closed, lost in thought. As the car wound its way down from the mesa, they passed cliffs that jutted up hundreds of feet and boulders bigger than houses. Pinon pine, Douglas fir, and blue spruce hung onto rocky ledges.

Although no one spoke, Elizabeth sensed a subdued excitement in the car, and it kept her awake. The rugged landscape seemed to magnify the tension. The bomb could have been developed in no other place, nowhere that matched the grandeur of northern New Mexico, the limitless boundaries that allowed physicists to tinker with the forces at the heart of the universe.

In another few days everything would reach its climax. The goal to which they had devoted years of their lives would be wrapped up in the detonation of one sphere of plutonium.

And then what? What would happen when Pandora’s box was finally opened for all the world to see? Would all nations react the same way as they had in her original timeline? The bipolar split of the USSR and U.S.? Would it still take fifty years for those old wounds to heal? Or would everything get worse?

Elizabeth then wondered about her own life. What was she going to do with herself after the test succeeded and the urgency of developing the bomb went away? One way or another, the war would soon be over. Someone would eventually discover that she had no birth certificate, no real identification. She didn’t know how much longer she could fast-talk her way through everything.

She couldn’t stay at Los Alamos. Even though she had helped develop the weapon in the first place, she couldn’t keep helping to make it worse and worse. Or would even that conviction change? At times she hated herself and her weakness. Germany would be stopped, and hopefully America would have enough sense to get rid of the weapon once and for all.

In her old timeline she realized that some people had accused the U.S. of racism by dropping the bomb on Japan. It was all right to obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the Japanese were “different.” Japanese-Americans were thrown into detention camps; German-Americans never were. No matter how terrible the Nazis were, they still
looked
like Americans. What would the public think if they saw radiation-crisped blond-haired babies lying in the rubble of a nuked Berlin?

It would never be Harry S Truman’s decision now. It fell into the hands of President Dewey. She had no idea what the man would do.

With her knowledge of how things might have turned out, maybe she could start something that would force the U.S. to ban further work in nuclear weapons. Some of the other scientists had expressed doubts. She might even have to talk to Graham Fox again, try to resolve things with him. One person should be able to make a difference. Look at what Ralph Nader had started, back in her timeline, overturning the whole safety industry.

She knew the U.S. had experienced food riots and some war demonstrations in the past, but they were nothing like the major protests in the sixties, or even her Livermore demonstration. Maybe she
could
change things, help keep the world on the razor-thin path that would let them survive the next fifty years.

Elizabeth set her mouth, unable to sleep in the car as she considered the possibilities of all she could do.

They ate a late lunch at a run-down place called the Owl Cafe, which was one of only a few adobe buildings that collectively called themselves a town. Several cars and jeeps were parked at the small restaurant; the longhaired cook appeared frantic but delighted by the unexpected flood of business. Half the people were civilians, the other half military. As the only woman in the place, Elizabeth felt many gazes turned to her, but she ignored them. Her eyes stung from the cigarette smoke floating in the claustrophobic room—that was one thing she still had not been able to get used to, even after all this time.

She and her companions ate quickly and managed to get back on the road before many of the other diners had finished. When they turned south for Trinity, time seemed to slow. The scenery looked blasted and monotonous. She felt eager to get to the place, but also uneasy about being part of the atomic test. Elizabeth kept looking at the driver, trying to urge the man to drive faster, but the desert miles crawled.

Elizabeth squinted at the horizon. A dust storm shrouded the base of the mountains, obscuring the view. The car shook as they drove along the bumpy road, making it even harder for her to see. They crept over a sloping hill, and the dust lowered like a veil. Not more than two miles in front of her stood a metal tower, alone in the middle of the desert.

It rose over a hundred feet from the ground. Four legs supported the structure with pipes crisscrossing the middle. A tent covering of canvas billowed in the wind on the top, shielding whatever the tower held.

Elizabeth’s chest started to hurt; she realized she was holding her breath. She breathed deeply and looked around the car. No one else had seemed to notice the site. Fermi glanced up from his journal.

“Ah, is this the shot tower?” he said in his thick Italian accent.

The driver cleared his throat. “Yup. You shoulda seen it a week ago, when they blew up a test shot. A hundred tons of explosives, they said. Boy oh boy, it looked like Hell on Earth, with dust and smoke flying up into the sky. We were so far away down in the base camp that we couldn’t hear the boom for five seconds or so.” He lowered his voice. “And I heard that’s gonna be
nothing
compared to this real shot.”

“If it works,” Fermi said.

“It will work,” Elizabeth muttered. Fermi stared at her, but seemed to dismiss her comment.

Elizabeth looked back at the tower.
So this is it.
Everything they had been working for on the Manhattan Project—and every reason why she had first gotten involved in the antinuclear movement. The Livermore Challenge Group at Berkeley, the United Conscience Group at Santa Fe, she and Jeff climbing down the canyon during the storm to smash the MCG setup ... this flimsy tower looked too frail to even hold the weapon.

In the next few days the precious plutonium core would be driven down from Los Alamos under heavy escort. In the desert heat a few men would begin the final assembly of the test device. Until now the tower sat like a rifle with no bullets—it needed to be loaded with the Gadget before it was complete.

The driver proceeded past the front guard shack, then circled around the settled area of the site, keeping at least half a mile from the structure before they pulled up to an old wooden farmhouse in the middle of the barren area. The driver pulled the car to a stop and spoke. “We’re here. Old McDonald’s farm—ha, ha, I mean ranch.”

Elizabeth barely noticed the joke, thinking how glad she was that he had remained quiet during the journey. The driver opened the trunk and started removing their luggage.

“A jeep will come around and take you to the tents. That’s where you’ll be staying until the test.” He nodded to her. “I think Oppie wanted to put you up in the ranch house, ma’am. I’ll get someone to help with the bags.”

A voice came behind them. “No need for that—I’ll take care of it.”

Elizabeth turned, startled. Graham Fox stood with his hands in his pockets, a thin, uncertain smile pressed on his lips.

“Hello, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth nodded, trying not to show any emotion. “Graham.”

“General Groves mentioned that Oppie had invited you down for the test. He asked me to show you around, take you under my wing, as it were.” Fox put his fingers on Elizabeth’s elbow and steered her away from the others. They walked across the packed brown sand, stepping over clumps of scrub and cactus.

“How thoughtful of him.’’

“It wasn’t my idea, Elizabeth.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.” She stopped and held a hand in front of her eyes to shield them from the sun. They had moved a good twenty yards away from everyone. “Graham—things have changed. I’ve been gone a long time. I don’t know what you expect of me.”

“I know—”

“I just wanted to make sure you knew.”

Fox held up his hands. “Fine. I have no problem with that.” When Elizabeth didn’t react, he nodded away from the ranch house. “Come along, we can talk.”

She followed reluctantly; they walked until they were well away from anyone. She frowned and tried to interpret Fox’s reactions. “Graham, you don’t understand. Our relationship isn’t the only thing that’s changed. I’ve been doing some thinking. About this weapon, what we’ve developed.”

“Yes, you certainly had a hand in its success, didn’t you?” His voice dripped bitterness.

In her mind Elizabeth saw the image of the little girl wailing in the crowded New York subway, sitting cross-legged beside her dead mother. She saw the footage of the plane passing over deserted, poisoned streets.

“You know, I’m not sorry for what I did. Germany hasn’t surrendered yet. For all we know, the Nazis are ready to hit us again with another shower of radioactive dust, if not a bomb of their own.”

“They wouldn’t do that!” Fox said, grabbing her arm. She pulled away. “Every day that passes without Germany using another weapon means that their scientific staff have managed to circumvent Hitler’s wishes! They have controlled themselves. They won’t do it. You know damned well that Hitler isn’t refusing to drop another weapon because he’s a good little boy. Think, Elizabeth. The only reason why we haven’t been hit again is because they have physicists
like me
over there, people willing to stop this madness—I thought you were one of them too, but I guess I was wrong. They know what’s at stake.”

“Are you sure that’s the reason?”

“It must be! And you know that once the Americans have a working atomic bomb, somebody’s going to drop it. We could have used our own radioactive dust weapon at any time, but we wanted something bigger! More destructive! To show the Germans we could be even more horrible than they were.”

Elizabeth fell silent. She did know what would happen. She knew what the President had done in her timeline. After spending two billion dollars on developing a new weapon, they wanted to make some use out of it.

Fox lowered his voice. “What was it you told me about following your conscience, doing what you had to do? I’m listening to your own advice—or was it all just empty words to console a man you had just slept with?”

Elizabeth stiffened and snapped at him. “Don’t bring that into it! That doesn’t have anything to do—”

Fox shook his head. “No, I suppose it didn’t have anything to do with me, with my thoughts. I suppose it didn’t mean much to you either.” He swallowed and started walking again. When he spoke, he seemed to be talking to himself. “I can’t allow it to happen, Elizabeth. Our German colleagues are risking their lives to prevent their bomb from going further. They’re in a much more dangerous situation than us. I have to do my part.”

Elizabeth snorted. She started walking back toward the ranch house. “So what are you going to do? The test is going to go on, Graham, no matter what you think. I’ve got work to do.”

As she turned, Fox called after her. “Elizabeth ...”

She stopped, looking down at the sand, but didn’t turn to face him. “That’s it, Graham. No more.”

“Elizabeth.” He stepped toward her. “Where are you going to watch the test from?”

“The test? I don’t know. I’ll be with Feynman, I suppose.”

“Please watch it with me. I’ll be in a safe place.”

“No, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

He shuffled his feet. “Well, don’t go to the bunker during the test.”

“Why not?” She sounded tired, was tired—of putting up with him, of listening to his reasons why she should help him, because they sounded too close to what she wanted to hear. In a way, he reminded her of the people she had known in Santa Fe who were all talk and no action.

“Just ... don’t, that’s all.”

Elizabeth balled her fists and stepped up her pace.

24

Berlin
—
the Virus House November 1944