Elizabeth remained quiet and let the elderly woman go on. She would figure this out sooner or later.
Just inside the veranda a row of metal beds lined a long room. The low ceiling rafters revealed a dormitorylike construction. Only about a quarter of the beds looked as if they were being used.
On a flimsy table Elizabeth saw a ragged newspaper, shuffled and folded as if it had been read by a dozen people. The headlines spoke about Himmler ordering the liquidation of all Polish ghettos, someplace called Pantellaria had been captured, and the USAAF had attacked Wilhelmshaven—wherever that was.
The date on the masthead read June 12, 1943. And the paper was new and white, not yellowed with age.
Before Elizabeth could say anything, the old woman steered her to the back. “I’ll get you a spare bathrobe after you’re through with your shower, dear. I’ll notify the guard to send a runner for your luggage in the morning.”
“But what is—” She caught herself. “I mean, thank you, Ms.… ?”
“Mrs. Canapelli. My Ronald died five years ago. He was a handyman at the university, and we used to be friends with Dr. Oppenheimer and Kitty back in Berkeley. Oppie asked me to chaperone the ladies’ dormitory. I’m glad he remembered me, bless poor Ronald’s soul.” They stopped in front of the bathroom.
Oppie? thought Elizabeth. Yes, that Oppie. She felt dizzy. So this lady was friends with Oppenheimer, the man responsible for the Bomb. “Thank you, Mrs. Canapelli. Uh, can I get these clothes dried? Do you have a laundromat?”
“A what? Why don’t I just hang them up for you. The humidity here is very low, and once the rain stops, your clothes will have a chance to dry out. We can get you an iron to use if you’d like.”
“No thanks, they’re permanent press.” Elizabeth never bothered with clothes she had to iron.
“Permanent press?” Mrs. Canapelli inspected Elizabeth’s jeans and plaid shirt. “You really took the Project at their word, dressing for the country, didn’t you? Where did you say you came from? And I didn’t catch your name.”
“Elizabeth Devane, and, uh, I’m from… Montana. I always dress like this.” She closed her mouth, not wanting to get caught up too much in her lie. Montana was about as far removed from anything else she could imagine, and it might explain some of her unusual behavior.
Elizabeth backed into the small bathroom and started taking off her clothes. Mrs. Canapelli continued to chatter. Elizabeth normally would have resented the company, but since Mrs. Canapelli mentioned everything from in-processing to Project rules, she ended up filling in Elizabeth with the details she would need for getting around. Elizabeth listened and stored the information.
It might be useful until she woke up and ended this hallucination.
Elizabeth never thought an Army cot could feel so good. She rolled over and felt only the sharp edge of the cot, not Jeff’s warm shoulders. The realization jarred her awake.
It had been at least twenty-four hours since she and Jeff had climbed down into the MCG test site. Twenty-four hours, some twenty miles of hiking. And maybe fifty years of… time travel.
Elizabeth snorted. Time travel. The human mind is far more complex than most people give it credit for. If she woke up tomorrow still in the Los Alamos women’s dormitory, then she had to make a concentrated effort not to keep thinking about the impossibility of it all. Obviously her mind wanted her to experience something in this era—best to go along with the flow and live it out. That way, at least her body could heal while her mind put things in order.
It made sense to her. Putting the blame on her psyche and leaving it time to heal. But if it was only a hallucination, she wished she could imagine Jeff back into it somehow.
The officer squinted at Elizabeth. He wore military insignia on his collar—two parallel silver bars. She didn’t know anything about ranks, but Elizabeth thought she had heard someone call him a captain.
The rain had disappeared, leaving a sunny spring morning, but the mud remained. Brown muck spattered everything; even the soldier’s khaki uniforms seemed a part of the mess.
Elizabeth tried to keep the notion that she was hallucinating out of her mind as she explained her situation. She silently thanked Mrs. Canapelli for droning on the night before, feeding her tidbits of information.
“No, sir. My papers were with my luggage. I was told to board the bus in Santa Fe. And until the Army can locate my things, I don’t have any other documents or even items to wear. Mrs. Canapelli says I should be able to arrange for some clothes through the PX…”
Trucks rumbled past; a dozen soldiers leaned out the back and whistled at her. The three people in line behind her tapped their feet in the dirt.
The captain held up his hands and rolled his eyes in good-humored exasperation. “Okay, okay, I understand! It’s just that you’re the third person in four days with the same problem. I’m trying to prevent it from happening again. Look Miss Depine—”
“Devane,” said Elizabeth. “And it’s Ms. Devane.”
He looked up sharply. “Yes. Miz Devane.” He muttered to himself, “Must be from the South.” He opened his hand and ticked off the rationale on his fingers.
“Okay, your papers must have been in proper order or they never would have let you board the bus in the first place. Otherwise, you never could have gotten up here, since there’s only one road. Therefore, something must have happened to your paperwork after you got on that bus. Maybe someone else picked up your suitcase and it’ll turn up before long? Did you have your name in it?”
“Of course.”
“Guess you’ll just have to wait and keep your fingers crossed, then. I’m sorry, Miz Devane, but until your paperwork comes through, the only thing I can do right now is assign you to the in-processing center as a clerk.”
“Doing what?”
“Clerical work, of course. What else would you want to do?” The captain looked astonished.
“How long will I be there?”
“If your paperwork is just misplaced, it may be only a couple of days. If it’s really lost, we have to go all the way back to Washington. And that may take until the end of the summer.”
End of the summer? Is that the timescale I have here, going crazy for three months? I thought I’d wake up tomorrow.
“So until then, there’s nothing more I can do.” The captain raised a finger. “Except I have to restrict you to the Project. Can’t allow you to leave the grounds until we’ve got something back on you.”
Elizabeth set her mouth, unwilling to make a commotion. What difference did it make? Where would she go anyway?
“Thank you, Captain. I appreciate your help.” She turned and left the wooden administration building. On her way out, she noticed that the Assignments and In-Processing rooms were across from each other.
She experienced a sinking feeling in her stomach. After all her efforts protesting nuclear weapons research, now she found herself in the middle of the Manhattan Project itself. And they expected her to work for them.
Two o’clock in the morning, and sleep would not come. A single white light blazed outside the women’s dormitory, throwing deep shadows across the row of beds. Outside, moths and insects whipped around in the light. Snoring came from the cot next to hers. A guard’s footsteps crunched between the buildings on the other side of the window. Elizabeth turned over and tried to make herself comfortable. The sheets smelled like bleach and felt too hot, even in the cool mountain air.