“Just because you slept with me? Is that all it means to you? An amusing little roll on the mattress?” Fox seethed with his anger, but then he lowered his voice in defeat. “I thought you were like me. I thought you understood exactly what sort of monster we were creating here. I thought you wanted to work with me from the inside, to stop it. Do what your conscience tells you to do—those were your own words, Elizabeth! But you change your conscience whenever it’s convenient—”
She slapped him, but didn’t know which of them felt the most stung. “It’s not like that. This test will go off, but I don’t know what will happen next. I used to know. New York never got wiped out. Germany surrendered. President Truman dropped the bomb first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki. He used both the plutonium bomb and then the uranium bomb.” Elizabeth turned away from him and felt herself shaking. “This isn’t how it happened at all.”
Fox blinked in confusion. “President Truman? What are you talking about? Roosevelt and Truman lost the election. They want to use the bomb on Germany, not on Japan.”
“This is a different timeline! History has changed, somehow. I changed it. Everything is all messed up.”
Fox grabbed her shoulders. “Elizabeth, what on earth are you saying? Who are you? I thought you were planted here. A German spy or saboteur or something. I never reported you because I thought we were both working toward the same goals, but then you went over to them!”
Elizabeth pulled away from him in shock. “A German spy? You’ve got to be kidding! I’m from the future. The future! Or a different future, at least. I caused an accident, I woke up back here. I don’t know how it all happened. I wanted to change things, fix it for the better, but now I think maybe I should have left it alone, left everything alone. A spy?”
Elizabeth froze, about to laugh, but then her eyes widened. “Are yow?” She grabbed the front of his white shirt. She could see dust and sweat stains on the material. One of the buttons pulled off as she gripped him. “Graham, what did you do to the bunker? Tell me!”
“Elizabeth, you’re insane. From the future? You don’t know what’s happening here. You can’t understand—”
She struck him again across the mouth, hard enough to split his lip. “What did you do to the bunker?”
Fox flinched, then glared at her.
“Twenty minutes,” the announcer said.
He shoved her away. “Too late now anyway. Somebody must do something to stop the madness before it begins. Germany showed restraint. They proved they could control their destructive urges. I’m not at all convinced we can do the same. You’ve seen the look in General Groves’s eyes. He wants this weapon, he wants to see the blast. He wants to take over the world with it. He’ll have a better Big Stick than any other military commander has ever had.”
“Graham, it doesn’t happen that way. We survive it. Times get ugly and paranoid for a while, but we survive. You can’t uninvent something!”
“But I can certainly delay its progress. That’s the beauty of having a classified program, Elizabeth—only the senior staff know how the entire project fits together. Once you get rid of most of the people who know how to make the Gadget—”
“Get rid of… ” She glanced at the jeep and started to move toward it. Her heart pounded. Fox grabbed her arm, squeezing and digging in with his fingernails. “Don’t touch me!”
“You’re going to stay right here. You can’t make it back to the command bunker before the detonation.” He looked ludicrous with white suntan cream smeared on his cheeks and nose. But his words frightened her very much.
Fox turned back to look at the tower. In the distance the first rays of the sun had just begun to peek over the San Andres mountains. It would be several minutes yet before the light hit the ground around the base of the mountains.
“Fifteen minutes,” the radio said.
Elizabeth whirled and lashed out, jerking herself from his grip. He clung to her blouse so that it ripped along one seam. “You cannot make it!” he said.
She started for the jeep again, but Fox tackled her. Sharp rocks and sand stung her face, and she coughed, trying to wheeze her breath back. Fox held her down. She squirmed and kicked.
“It is already done, Elizabeth. Everything is in place. I hid some of the test explosives inside the command bunker, then wired the detonation to occur in parallel with the bomb. They’ll never even feel it.”
She thought of Oppie and Groves and Feynman and all the other scientists in the command bunker, leaning forward, waiting to see the flash that would be brighter than a thousand suns.
“No!” She moved sideways and brought her knee up, jamming it between Fox’s legs, then punched him in the larynx, using the sharp edges of her knuckles. Being a student in Berkeley had taught her plenty of self-defense techniques.
Fox mewled and turned to jelly. She scrambled out from under him and crawled toward the jeep.
“Too late,” Fox wheezed behind her.
“Oh shut up!” Elizabeth threw a glance at the radio. The Army field unit was propped up against one of the muddy tires. Painted a khaki green, it was as big as a large knapsack.
“Ten minutes,” the voice said. “Minute by minute countdown starting now.”
The dials looked incomprehensible to her; she couldn’t make out any of the settings. Nothing came from the speaker box except a quiet hiss of background static. Elizabeth dropped to her knees and started flipping dials. “Hello, can anyone hear me? Hello?” She leaned into the device. “Answer me!” She smacked the radio with the flat of her hand.
Fox’s voice came from behind her. “There’s no microphone, Elizabeth. They didn’t want the scientists to inadvertently compromise the test by breaking radio silence.”
She scrambled back over and grabbed his hair to smash his head down on the sand. “Then give me the keys to the jeep. Now!”
Fox grunted and tried to claw at her with his hands. She pointed her fingers straight out and held them like an icepick in front of his wide, glazed eyes. “Give me the keys, dammit, or I’ll gouge your eyes out!”
He tried to roll her off of him, then groaned in his own agony.
“All right, we’ll do the left eye first!” She drew back her hand.
Fox gasped his words. “No, no!” He seemed to realize he couldn’t get away. “Jeep… doesn’t have keys!”
Elizabeth leaped to her feet, feeling stupid. Of course, the Army Series M vehicles used only a starter button. She thought about kicking Fox one more time in the kidneys for good measure, but sprinted for the jeep instead.
She threw herself behind the steering wheel and fumbled for the starter button. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. In the distance the area around the shot tower remained deserted. Nothing moved as far as she could see, where moments before the area had been a flurry of activity—jeeps had bounced across the desert, carrying last-minute dispatches; scientists had set up their diagnostics. Now nothing moved as far as she could see. The desert waited for a second sun to rise.
Setting the choke, she pushed the starter button. The engine caught, and she jammed it into gear. The vehicle lurched forward.
And then Fox stood there, somehow getting to his feet and throwing himself in front of the jeep. She swerved, ran into a rock and bumped over it. The front headlight struck Fox and sent him sprawling back to the sand. She could see blood in the dim dawn light. Fox screamed in pain, then shouted a last, plaintive “Stop!”
She gripped the steering wheel and did not move for a fraction of a second. Fox was hurt. He needed help. She remembered holding him, talking with him, making love to him.
She recalled sitting in front of a car, skier 4, in the Livermore demonstration. She had trusted civil rules of protest. Instead, she had now run down Graham Fox.