Elizabeth could hear the sound of chairs being pushed across the wooden floor as the scientists rose from their seats. She stepped back, not sure whether to run as men began leaving the meeting hall. No one spoke to her or even acknowledged that they saw her. They walked out, eyes to the ground.
Elizabeth searched the crowd. She spotted Graham Fox coming toward her. He looked sullen in his baggy clothes. He didn’t even smile as he looked at her. Elizabeth reached out and grabbed his arm. “Graham! What’s the matter?”
“Accidents happen. What do they expect?” Fox’s eyes grew wide. “They failed to tell you?”
“What? Tell me what?”
“Edward Teller.” Fox shook his head. “One of the theoretical physicists. You may have seen him—he had a limp, and a Hungarian accent? He… he tried to test one of the new gun schemes, wanted to be the first. Thought he could improve the gun kinematics for a theory he was working on.”
“What are you talking about?”
Fox shook his head. “The photos showed it all. Magnificent high-speed cameras. He created a self-forming fragment—like a bazooka bullet that jets out, only made out of depleted uranium, which is a very dense metal. The jet was able to punch through a protective plate made of solid steel.”
Elizabeth couldn’t say anything for a moment. Teller was one name she recognized—he had been called the Father of the H-bomb, he had co-founded the Lawrence Livermore Lab, and he had been one of the major advocates of the Star Wars defense program, the x-ray laser, Brilliant Pebbles. Elizabeth had fought against everything he had done—but Edward Teller was an idea man, not a hardware jockey.
“But what was a theoretician doing with the experiment?” she asked.
“Feynman’s results got him excited. The possibilities looked better than he expected. He tried to assemble the blasted thing himself.”
Elizabeth took a step back. “But Teller… he isn’t supposed to die.” She recalled the Livermore protest back in 1983, the time she had been arrested. Teller had lived to a very old age. She remembered marching with the other demonstrators, knowing that just inside the fence, old Teller was up in his ivory tower in Building 111, concocting new ways to destroy the world.
He certainly couldn’t die in 1943, before he had made much of a name for himself. That made everything different.
Fox set his mouth. “Oppie tracked the error down to a misplaced decimal point. No one was at fault, it was a mistake anyone could make. But because the group who checked the numbers was the same group that performed the original calculations, the mistake slipped past them a second time.”
Elizabeth could barely contain the conflicting emotions within her. “But what about the rest of the Project?”
“Oh, don’t worry.” Fox glanced up and narrowed his eyes. He looked around and spoke quietly, sounding bitter. “The work goes on. Teller might have been one of our brightest theoreticians, but the bloody Gadget must be built. The show must go on.”
Fox walked away with the rest of the scientists. Elizabeth leaned back against the door of the meeting hall. I’ve really done it, she thought. I’ve changed history.
But now what was going to happen?
She felt caught in a vice—the exhilaration of being able to change things was tempered by the realization that she had killed someone. Through her tampering with numbers, she had caused a fatal mistake. Would the change be for the better, or worse?
So why wasn’t she ecstatic? The man responsible for developing the hydrogen bomb, the very instrument of death that had escalated the arms race, the billion-dollar buildup of weapons, the nuclear weapons research at Livermore, California—now Teller would never be able to accomplish all that. She could consider herself responsible for wiping clean the slate of inhumanity, perhaps giving the future a real future.
Giving Jeff a second chance. The Jeff in this timeline. He wouldn’t have to die to prevent something that never occurred in the first place.
But as she watched the grim-faced scientists slog back to work, she could tell by their expressions that they had no intention of stopping because of an accident, any more than the future Los Alamos would stop the MCG test because of the deaths of some old scientist and a few technicians. Perhaps the Manhattan Project workers were even more determined to succeed.
Elizabeth would always think of Teller in his tall building behind the restricted-area fence, as she and the other members of the Livermore Challenge Group marched up and down with their banners outside the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, trying to get someone to listen to their pleas.
In her new timeline, the Manhattan Project would continue, even without Edward Teller.
8
Livermore, California
April 1983
“I have felt it myself, the glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to it as a scientist, to feel it’s there in your hands to release the energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding, to perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is responsible for all our troubles, I would say, this… technical arrogance that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”
Actions speak louder than words. Thoreau might have been content to sit at Walden Pond and write about civil disobedience. Elizabeth Devane had always wanted to do something more tangible. She and others in the Livermore Challenge Group felt their conscience was more important than any laws they might be breaking.
On the morning of the scheduled protest, most of her companions in the van sat in silence, lulled toward sleep as the van moved along the interstate. The sun had not yet risen. Though Jeff dozed beside her, leaning against her shoulder, Elizabeth felt too keyed-up to relax. Everything about this day mattered too much. It was her first major blow against the research that had almost lured her away from an acceptable life.
Since joining the Livermore Challenge Group, Elizabeth had done her bit standing on street corners in Berkeley, handing out leaflets to people who didn’t really care. On the other corners up and down Telegraph Avenue other demonstrators were passing out their leaflets too, side by side with people handing out coupons for pizza restaurants. Many of the students were interested, she knew, but they frequently suffered from activism burn-out, with too many causes to fight for and too many organizations asking for donations. Would it be El Salvador this week, or the homeless, or Ethiopian famine relief, or Amnesty International?
But the gigantic Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was right in their own backyard, less than an hour’s drive from Berkeley. There, within the mile-square fence, scientists developed generation after generation of nuclear weapons, high yield or low yield, multiple warheads, surveillance systems, death-beam lasers, and who knew what else. Elizabeth couldn’t ignore it. She had fled the defense contractors and the nuclear support industry in Los Angeles, but it seemed she couldn’t escape. As soon as she began to pay attention, the pervasiveness of defense work shocked her.
The Livermore Lab was the heart of the problem. Why couldn’t the scientists see that if they stopped creating new weapons, then the Soviets could stop finding ways to counter them, and this whole madness would grind to a halt?
The Livermore Challenge Group was based in Berkeley to disseminate information about the secret work going on at the Lab, and they also conducted regular protests. Easter—typically Good Friday—was the most appropriate time of year for major demonstrations. By their reckoning, this year’s would be the biggest demonstration ever. About time, Elizabeth thought. She had seen—and been guilty of—too much apathy.