“Excuse me. Would this be In-Processing?”
Elizabeth jumped in her chair. She crumpled her list in a ball and rose from her chair.
“The door says this is In-Processing,” the man said, as if pointing it out to Elizabeth. His words carried a British accent.
A thin man, wearing an oversized coat and a narrow black tie, twisted a hat in his hands. His elbow held a manila envelope to his side. His eyes darted around the cluttered office, and when they rested on Elizabeth, they revealed a sad look. Elizabeth could see deep lines of experience etched onto his face.
“Yes, what can I help you with?”
“Thank heavens.” The man smiled nervously. He slapped his hat against his leg and entered the office. “What with all the commotion outside, I wasn’t certain which way was up. I’m from the British MAUD program, sent here to help out. Some of my fellows came a few weeks ago, but I had to take a side trip to Princeton. Szilard was still there and wanted to see me.” He smiled, focusing on her again. “Your office looks to be rather deserted compared with the rest of the camp.”
“It is.” Elizabeth smiled. She tossed her crumpled list along with a couple of used forms into a wastebasket stenciled burn. “May I help you?”
“Most certainly.” The man fumbled with the manila envelope and withdrew some papers. He held them out to her. “I’m Graham Fox, Doctor Graham Fox, actually. The MAUD people had me doing setup studies for them for the past year. Imagine my surprise when I discovered they were shipping me to this, er, enchanting place with the rest of the MAUD chaps. Didn’t even bloody bother to ask.”
Fox’s lack of enthusiasm struck a chord with her, though she didn’t know what in the world a MAUD was—the code name for the British nuclear program?
“How did you get up here, Dr. Fox? Did another bus pull up?”
“No, they told me it would be another day until the next one. I obtained a military taxi this morning. Santa Fe failed to excite me. Is it like most towns out here in the West?”
Elizabeth looked over Fox’s papers. She didn’t have a clue about what she should do next—maybe send him over to Assignments. She could always find an Expedite form to assign him to the Project.
The Project.
She found herself doing it. Give the work a nice plain euphemism and nobody will think about what it is they’re trying to accomplish. Maybe it took away some of the inhumanity from the whole idea—did these people really think about what they were doing? They had no idea how their work would snowball, what would happen a half century after they had opened Pandora’s box.
The Project.
“From far away the town looked pleasant enough,” Fox muttered. “But the buildings were made of adobe—just mud, like wattle and daub huts you see in the National Geographic magazine!”
Fox kept complaining, but Elizabeth turned to glance over his form. He had received his Ph.D. at Cambridge in 1935, directed by Rutherford—that name sounded familiar; a post-doc came next under Sommerfeld. The curriculum vitae listed his age at thirty-six. Though two years older than her, Graham Fox looked more like ten. Maybe the “eggheads” of this era squirreled themselves away and didn’t get out.
“Where do I go now, Miss…?”
“Devane. Elizabeth Devane.”
“Yes, most pleased to meet you. But might I ask where I should report next? I’m rather hungry and would like to relax a bit.”
Elizabeth looked around the room. She had almost finished the filing—and she knew her own nonexistent papers and baggage would never be found. It wouldn’t hurt for the office to be closed. She extended a hand to Fox.
“My supervisor can’t help you until she returns. I was just going to lunch myself. Would you care to join me?” Fox might prove to be as much a source of information as Mrs. Canapelli; he could tell her everything official new arrivals were supposed to know. Besides, he seemed as displaced as she was.
His puppy-dog eyes lit up. “I’d like that very much, Miss Devane.”
“Elizabeth. Please, call me Elizabeth.”
“Thank you. The British are supposed to be stodgy, but I go by Graham.” He stuffed the papers back into his manila envelope.
Elizabeth nodded to the envelope. “You don’t want to lose those. I learned the hard way. I came here to do calculations, but they have me filing instead. Paperwork mix-up.”
Fox grimaced at the thought. He held the door open for her. Elizabeth waited until he had gone ahead, then closed it behind them as they left.
They found the civilian mess hall by trial and error, watching the flow of people on the street. Once Fox learned that Elizabeth was just as new to the Project, he opened up and began to tell her of his schooldays at Cambridge, how marvelous it had been to work on physics, the only place where political borders made no difference. He had even had a close German friend—until the war, of course, when secrecy had clamped down on everything Fox tried to do.
Elizabeth dug out the money Mrs. Canapelli had loaned her. The smells of the civilian mess didn’t make her any less uneasy about the food. “My supervisor warned me about this place.”
Fox shrugged and stared down at his tray as they stood in line to pay. “This is the American West, Elizabeth. According to your Hollywood movies, we are supposed to be eating beans cooked over a campfire. Therefore, I shall not complain.”
The military cashier tallied up her lunch: “Cheeseburger, twenty-five cents; fries, fifteen cents; Coke, a dime. That’s four bits, ma’am. Anything else?” The man looked barely old enough to be in the military.
“No, thank you.” She had to figure out in her head how much “four bits” was. As she paid, Elizabeth kept from shuddering at the grease glistening on her plate from the harsh light bulbs. The only fruits and vegetables laid out on the counter bore some sort of green mold. Probably oozing pesticides, DDT, whatever.
She joined Fox at an eight-person table. Three young men in white shirtsleeves nodded briefly as Elizabeth sat down, then returned to reading copies of Physical Review and a two-day-old Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. The man reading the newspaper commented to no one in particular about how long he thought it would take the Allies to capture the Solomon Islands, over which air battles were now apparently taking place. Elizabeth didn’t remember anything about that part of World War II.
She cut her hamburger in two, then took a bite. She looked around the dining area. “See any mayonnaise?”
Fox glanced up from his meal. “For your hamburger? Is that how you Americans eat it?”
Elizabeth forced a swallow. “Of course not. Never mind.”
“I see.”
Elizabeth didn’t realize how hungry she had become. She had only pecked at Mrs. Canapelli’s huge breakfast of eggs, sausage, and hash browns fried in lard. Now removed from the matronly woman’s presence, Elizabeth tried not to gulp.
As she looked up, she saw the mysterious man who had helped her in the Admin building the night before. He turned from the cashier and looked at her. Elizabeth recognized the short, curly hair, the angular face, the broad smile. He raised one eyebrow and winked at her, taking his plate off to a different table.
Elizabeth grabbed Fox’s wrist. “Who is that? Do you know him?”
Fox looked around, took a moment to locate the man she meant, but shook his head. “Sorry, I’m new to all this.”
One of the others at the table glanced up from his technical journal and answered, “That’s Dick Feynman, a brilliant kid. A wise guy, too, from what I hear.”
Two of his companions chuckled. “He drives the security folks nuts—keeps breaking into safes, just to prove that anyone with brains and patience can outsmart any of their precautions.”