“Hit the lights,” Groves said.
Overhead, the bulbs shone down. Army officers swung open the doors, allowing sunlight and fresh outside air to enter the room.
Groves waited a good ten heartbeats before speaking; no one in the hall moved during the wait. A few groans and outraged comments came from the audience. Elizabeth found herself drawing in short, quick breaths. Her heart raced and she couldn’t slow it down. She kept picturing the little girl screaming beside her mother in the crowded subway tunnel.
“We’ve already got an estimated five thousand dead, the ones who received a massive dose in the first day and the ones killed during the evacuation. You know as well as anyone that ten times that number will probably die within the next couple of weeks. Worst of all, New York City will not be habitable for years.”
Groves smashed his fist down on the podium and made a startling, animal sound of anger. “You have just witnessed actual, uncensored photographic evidence of the Nazi nuclear research effort. Their weapon was directed against the millions of men, women, and children in New York City. But it was also to show us how far ahead they are. They have scared the pants off of me!” He lowered his voice. “No doubt they have the capability of using it again. Whenever and wherever they want.”
A murmur swept through the crowd. Groves rapped on the podium. “All right, now listen up. You men up here on the Hill have a reputation around the White House of being prima donnas, living in your own little world and pouring two billion dollars down a rat hole while the rest of the country struggles with real problems to win this damned war. In fact, other than yourselves, I don’t think there’s more than a handful of people who actually believe you can do it.”
Groves lowered his voice. “But thank God Almighty the President is one of those people who does believe.” His voice trailed off. Then, stiffly, “If you need a pep talk after seeing that film, if you need someone to come around and kick you in the butt to get you working harder on our own Gadget, then you are in the wrong place. You’d better practice your sieg heilsl
“The Germans have hit us hard, and unless you… ‘wizards’ can come up with something and do it fast, we might as well roll over and play dead. Because I guarantee you that the krauts aren’t going to stop with New York.”
Groves motioned for Oppenheimer to stand beside him on the stage. “I don’t care how you do it—just do it. Those boys fighting in Europe need you. Our Pacific forces need you. Your country needs you—” He hesitated as his gruff voice fell to a whisper, “And I need you. This may be it. Don’t let us down.”
He abruptly strode out a side door of the meeting hall. “Dr. Oppenheimer, let me see you in your office.”
The audience sat stunned for countless moments, trying to think of what to say, how to react, and what to do. The scientists stood up and broke into heated arguments. A cacophony of foreign accents filled the room, with many of the émigré” scientists lapsing into languages other than English.
“At least there was not an atomic explosion! None of the buildings were leveled—”
“What else could it have been? Fairy dust? Something killed those people—”
“Chemical weapons?”
“No, no, no! Think of the Geiger counter readings! What about radioactive dust? Do you think it’s possible”
“But why? If they were working on their own Gadget… ”
Elizabeth stared at the blank screen; vivid memories cascaded through her mind in a jumble of terror. New York City had become a radioactive wasteland. Much worse than Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Groves had guessed that thousands more would be dead within a few weeks, but Elizabeth knew they couldn’t be counting on all the cancer deaths in the coming years. This one attack would last for decades and decades. Even in World War II, this made Pearl Harbor look like a picnic.
But what about comparing it to her own memories of Hiroshima? Nagasaki? Those images seemed too dim now, the horrors too displaced. Was it really that different?
She squeezed her eyes shut and wished she could be holding Graham Fox again. Or Jeff.
This seemed worse man what she knew of the two Japanese cities that would be bombed. Those other occurrences had been historical events, gruesome snapshots of people who had died long before she was born.
Hadn’t Japan at least been warned, to surrender or else? As far as she could remember, several cities including Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been notified days before that an attack was going to take place. But New York—had the Nazis warned America? She tightly shook her head.
Yes, there was a difference between America and Germany—like the difference between a fencer and a mad dog. The swordsman fights with finesse and honor, but the mad dog attacks indiscriminately, savaging any target in sight and stopping only when someone puts it down.
Hitler could strike again at any time.
So what would the Project do now? They were far behind with uranium-235 separation at Oak Ridge, and the theoreticians had not yet developed an alternative to the gun concept for the plutonium weapon. It looked as if they would not develop the Gadget anytime soon.
But this wasn’t as she remembered it at all. While not an expert by any means, she did have some knowledge of the bomb program because of her protest work. The scientists were supposed to be converging on the best of two solutions, not chasing after a single concept. Not just the gun.
What was it… the names of the two devices? She knew there were two, one plutonium and one uranium. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And they had to prove the plutonium design at the Trinity test down at Alamogordo, New Mexico. She had written down the names of the bombs on that damned sheet of paper a year ago when she had first showed up at the administration building for work.
Fat Man—yes, Fat Man and Little Boy! Two bomb designs. But why were they only pursuing the one design, when they knew it wouldn’t work with plutonium? Teller had died—did he have anything to do with them neglecting one of the concepts?
She remembered something about an… implosion scheme…
.Elizabeth pushed out of the meeting hall, leaving the crowd behind. She held her hand to shade her eyes in the brilliant sunlight. She wanted to find Graham Fox, but she didn’t know what to tell him.
She drew in a breath of pine smells and flowers that had remained in bloom late in the spring. The outdoors seemed to cleanse her, soften the guilt and hurt from the films she had just seen.
She felt all mixed up inside. Nothing was simple anymore, nothing was assured—she had not felt so devastated since Jeff had died, or maybe not since she had tried to kill Oppenheimer.
Living in the past had been predictable up to now. But the New York City attack put an entirely new parameter on how she viewed things, how she lived. And what she lived for.
How could she reconcile working for the Project? Especially when the stakes had changed so drastically? How could she reconcile not working for the Project, knowing what the Nazis might do now? And it scared her.
She turned to the women’s dorm. She needed a long walk. Some time to be alone, maybe even get back out to visit Jeff’s grave, or to Bandelier. She had avoided the place since that morning the previous December.
A memory of Oppenheimer flashed through her thoughts—watching his horse approach over the virgin snow, sighting Oppie’s angular head along the line of her rifle barrel—
“Oops!” She ran into another man wrapped up in his thoughts. Elizabeth drew back. “Sorry. I wasn’t looking where—” She looked up and reddened. “Oh, Dr. Feynman. I’m sorry.”
“Ah, please call me Dick, my dear. Allow me to get out of your way.” He made a dramatic show of stepping aside. “Especially if you’re heading for the Admin building. This just might be a good time to forge another reassignment, get out of the Gadget-building business.” He stepped aside and grinned; but the sparkle had gone from his eye.