by P A Vasey
“Professor Cohen,” he said, standing up and gesturing to the empty chair next to him. “Thank you for coming. Please sit down. I’m William Hubert. You’ve met my colleague, Dr Morgan, and obviously you know Dr Holland.”
Cohen nodded, a quick bird-like gesture.
“We’re from the FBI,” Hubert continued, “specifically the Science and Technology Branch.”
She said nothing and looked around the room at the others around the table. Hubert smiled and made the introductions. “Mike Holland is our senior scientist and over there is his number two, Sonya Davis. Sitting next to her are Diane Lynch and Michael Sandoval, both from NASA. Everyone, this is Lauren Cohen, recently retired Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at UCLA.”
I pulled out the chair next to Hubert, and Cohen sat, drawing the shawl tight around her shoulders. She coughed a phlegmy cough.
“Alright, so we know who everyone is now. What’s going on and why am I here?”
Hubert laughed, “Straight to the point, I’ve heard that about you, Lauren.” He hesitated, “Is it okay that I call you Lauren?”
Cohen was in the process of balancing her spectacles on her bony nose. “It’s my name, isn’t it?” she replied, somewhat haughtily. “Why don’t we dispense with the pleasantries and get on with this? I see we’re in Nevada, and I certainly know this particular location, although it’s been a few years - no, decades - since I was last here.”
Hubert nodded, looking across the table at Holland who was tapping out notes on a tablet computer. “Okay, let’s get to it. Dr Holland, please proceed.”
Holland pointed at one of the monitors where a black and white photograph of a young woman, wearing a white lab coat, goggles on her head, clipboard in hand, was looking directly at the photographer. Behind her was a computer the size and shape of an upturned mattress, and a half dozen or so scientists standing and posing for the photograph. I squinted up at the picture, which was very grainy and low-def.
Hubert pointed at the screen. “This is you, Lauren? From 1953, I believe.”
“Yes, that’s me,” said Cohen. “So what? I worked on the atomic program, you all know that. I left soon afterwards to pursue an academic career. It’s all in my file.”
Hubert glanced over at Holland, who changed the picture to a series of columns and data. “Professor, you worked on all these tests. We’ve information on all of them, except this one.”
STORAX/SEDAN: NTS/shaft/crater/1450ft/Classified/100Kt
Cohen looked at the highlighted text. “Yes, I remember that one very well. Still classified is it?”
“Lauren, what can you tell us about this test?” said Hubert.
She sat back in her chair, closing her eyes. “I’d like a cup of tea please. Darjeeling if possible.”
Hubert flicked his head towards the agent standing by the door who promptly left the room. I looked at Holland who just shrugged. Cohen slowly opened her eyes, lizard-like.
“You need to understand the context here,” she began. “We’d just come into possession of a hydrogen bomb. The ten-megaton detonation of ‘Ivy Mike’ in the Pacific the previous year was groundbreaking. Awe-inspiring. The government was pushing all sorts of money into developing these things, and so were the Soviets. It was the start of the arms race and well, there could be only one winner. Or so we thought.”
“But this wasn’t a hydrogen bomb. Not in Nevada.” said Holland.
“No, of course not, stupid.” Her voice took on the timbre of a schoolmistress and she looked at me with a prim smile. “You must understand, ‘Ivy Mike’ weighed eighty tons. Eighty tons! It produced a huge bang, sure, but it was a dirty explosion, and from a non-portable delivery system. It wasn’t going to be feasible for limited warfare, and would not be a deterrent to a very mobile Soviet army occupying vast swathes of civilian-dense land over a Europe-wide battlefield.”
I got it. “So why weren’t you just developing better hydrogen bombs then? Why was the focus on atom bombs?”
“I’ll tell you why. But first, you need to know the difference between an atom bomb and a hydrogen bomb. You do know that don’t you?”
“I’m a medical doctor. Pretend I know nothing?”
She harrumphed. “Well in simple terms, atomic bombs derive their explosive power from fission of heavy unstable nuclei belonging to very exotic nuclear materials, such as isotopes of uranium and plutonium.” She paused and looked at the faces of the people around the table, checking that she hadn’t lost them. All seemed well, so she continued. “Hydrogen bombs on the other hand, are fusion devices. They’re very complicated structures incorporating uranium shielding, plutonium, and fusion fuels such as liquid deuterium. But at the heart of any H-bomb there’s a fission device used to start the process of fusion… a small A-bomb, by any other name. The weapons we were developing were boosted by a mixture of deuterium and tritium in their core, which actually undergoes a very small yield fusion reaction to produce enormous numbers of neutrons.”
“So, okay then, an A-bomb kicks off a H-bomb,” I said.
Cohen nodded and spread her hands expansively. “Yes, but in an uncontrolled fashion and producing enormous amounts of energy, enough to lay waste to entire continents. So our remit was to finesse the technology and produce smaller, portable atomic weapons with controllable payloads.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So basically you just started scaling down the bombs to make them portable for the battlefield?”
Cohen shook her head, and tried to make the movement non-patronising. “No, other labs were working on that. We went in a different direction. We were evaluating newly discovered isotopes for the reactions. We discovered a novel and highly energetic reaction that released a phenomenal amount of neutrons, unprecedented at the time. We thought that if we could establish a way to confine this burst of neutrons there was the potential for a controlled release of a massive amount of clean energy.”
She paused for effect and the room was silent, with all the scientists listening with rapt attention. “We figured out a way of controlling the amount of energy released by varying the amount of reaction going on in the core. Lindstrom called it a ‘quad stage self-replicating fission-fusion hybrid’. It was unique, beautiful in concept, using highly reactive isotopes found at the far end of the periodic table.”
Hubert nodded again to Holland, who brought up another photograph, this time of a group of scientists standing together behind a rectangular shaped device, the size of a large briefcase.
“Do you recognise any of these men, Lauren?”
“Of course. I’m retired, not senile. That’s Lindstrom at the front, always the narcissist and hogging the limelight. He was the leader of our group. That’s me on the far right. Stuck on the end, as usual. The fat one is Hershel Duggan, an experimental physicist from Harvard. The other is Eddy Fincher, a brilliant theoretical physicist from Los Alamos. Lindstrom took all the credit, but we did most of the grunt work at Los Alamos. We called our group ‘Trinity Deus’, you know, after the first nuclear detonation at Trinity, New Mexico in 1945.”
She paused, lost in thought. The agent re-appeared with a cup of tea and placed it in front of Cohen who nodded her thanks. Hubert leaned forward in his chair, and tapped his fingers on the desk.
“Lauren, this is important. You need to tell us what went on that day. In 1953.”
Cohen slowly opened her eyes. “I remember calling through to Lindstrom, on the red phone. I was about a mile away from the detonation site in a recording booth situated in a trench, protected from the blast, or at least so we thought. The dials started to register huge spikes of ground movement amplitude. We had cameras around the entry port shooting multiple angles and set back in concentric rings to catch everything. But what I saw made no sense. It was the opposite of an explosion - some form of implosion, maybe. Everything was being sucked down into what looked like a giant sinkhole. And I mean everything - rocks, soil, and all our equipment. I used some choice language over the phone, I can
tell you. I told Gus to shut it down, shut the reaction down instantly before we were all sucked in. Thankfully he did, and the reaction stopped. The cameras showed the crater, but there was no sign of a nuclear explosion.”
“So what happened then?” asked Hubert.
Cohen shrugged. “Gus fronted the cameras and reporters. Told them that this was a prototype of a radically different type of atomic weapon, and like all new designs and technologies they don’t always go according to plan. Then he exited, stage left. The official line was that it was a dud. The detonation yielded only around a hundred kilotons of TNT, despite the fact that we had programmed it for five hundred. So much for the controlled regulation of the payload that Gus had spruiked to the press.”
“But it wasn’t a dud, was it?” I said, quietly.
Cohen sighed, and sat back in her chair. “Everything was shut down by the government. Gus left the Los Alamos laboratory soon afterwards, taking the research program with him to a private lab in LA. He was very disgruntled by the way the government and military mothballed and ceased to fund his research. They called the project a failure, and of course the stakes were so high, what with the Russians gaining ground rapidly with their own atomic program.”
“Did you stay in contact with him after he left?”
Cohen smiled. “For a while. We got married, you know.”
Hubert raised his eyebrows, and looked across the table at Stillman, who briefly shook her head in ignorance of this fact.
“Lauren, did you follow his work at all?” asked Holland. “I mean, were you part of his research team in LA?”
“No. Our marriage lasted only six months. I’d diversified my own career anyway, got more into education, lecturing, that sort of thing. We hardly saw each other. And he’d ruined things, of course.”
“What do you mean?” asked Hubert.
“Well the bastard had gotten me pregnant.”
A ripple of laughter went around the table.
Cohen smiled grimly, nodding. “We had a son, Corey. I brought him up on my own. Hard times.”
Her expression became sorrowful, and tears welled up in her eyes. Holland reached over with a handkerchief, which she gratefully took.
I was deep in thought.
Corey Lindstrom.
The son.
“What happened to those records from the bomb tests?” I asked slowly.
Cohen looked me in the eye, and there was a kind of wistfulness to her stare. “When he died, I was sent all his log entries and diaries. We hadn’t spoken for years, so I was really annoyed having to take delivery of what was mostly clutter and rubbish. After all, he hadn’t published anything of note and had become quite the capitalist in his private practice. I kept a few notebooks from our Los Alamos days. Notebooks containing formulae, diagrams and so on. For old times sake, more than anything.”
“Do you still have them?” asked Hubert, glancing across the table at me.
“No, I kept them locked in a case for decades, and when I had a spring-clean a couple of years ago, I gave them away. To Corey.”
Hubert and I shared a look of resignation. He sat back in his chair.
“We’ve already confiscated the contents of Lindstrom’s office and that panic room. We’ll get those notebooks sent here, so that Holland and Lauren can look them over. Maybe we can catch a break.”
“It’s too late, isn’t it?” I said, my eyes darting around the table. “Adam and the alien already have the formula.”
“We don’t know that,” said Hubert. I noticed bags under his eyes, but they were still incredibly clear and focussed. “That’s why we need Lauren to see what exactly was in those notebooks. Meantime, we’ll head back to SETI first thing in the morning. General Baker is flying in and I’ve got to brief him and his staff before we leave.”
There was general nodding and shuffling of papers around the table as people stood up to leave. Hubert waved a hand to me. “Kate, I’d like you to sit in on that meeting too.”
I took a deep breath. “I guess so, but I really don’t seem to be contributing that much.”
Hubert shook his head. “On the contrary Kate, I believe that you’re the most important person in this room.”
He left me standing there and moved to join Cohen who was now engrossed in conversation with Holland and the other NASA scientists. I didn’t seem to have a job to do, and hadn’t been invited to hang around, despite being so important. I decided to take a walk, and pushed open the door of the office. The air was warm and musty with hints of petroleum, wood smoke and oil. I looked up into the darkening sky and to the south, just above the dune, I could see a swarm of small black dots with larger black dots hanging underneath.
Chinook Transport helicopters.
Dozens of them.
DAY 5
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ground Zero, Nevada Test Site
My phone alarm buzzed quietly but insistently, bringing me out from what had been a disturbed sleep. I reached across from the bunk bed to the chair where my phone was vibrating and picked it up.
Four-thirty. In the morning.
There was no one else in the little office I had been allocated, just the bed, a couple of chairs and a small desk. I swung the blanket off and heaved my legs down, my feet jumping a little feeling the cold of the linoleum. Bright lights could be seen moving around outside the closed blinds, and I could hear (as I had all night) the distant sounds of earthmoving equipment, helicopters coming and going, and the shouting of soldiers getting and receiving orders.
There was a port-a-loo in the next room, and after I’d done a little pee I helped myself to a travel toothbrush and gave my mouth a thorough clean. I splashed cold water over my face and pulled my hair back into a ponytail using a couple of ties from my sweatshirt pocket. I wished there was a mirror, but then perhaps it was a good thing there wasn’t. I doubted I’d like what I saw.
I pulled my sneakers back on and stepped outside. Further up the hill the crater was now illuminated by intense arc lighting and appeared almost unrecognisable from just yesterday. A metallic canopy the size of a tennis court was being delicately lowered by four industrial cranes, slotting onto buttresses made out of desert rock and concrete. Wire fences and military vehicles encircled the site like layers of an onion. Interspersed between the barriers were pieces of military equipment the size of large wheeled lawnmowers, adorned with aerials and weaponry and hard-wired to generators set further back on the main campus.
I set off at a brisk climb, squeezing through partially erected security fences. Dozens of army vehicles were making their way up the single-track road toward a roped-off parking area on the northern aspect of the crater. Army troopers in full desert BDUs and FBI agents in flak jackets were milling around a large 18-wheeler unloading more pieces of mobile artillery. Four hulking battle tanks were stationed further down the slope, their guns and secondary armaments pointing down the hill towards the access roads. HUMVEEs sporting machine guns were off-roading at various locations around the site, moving soldiers and technicians between different emplacements and outbuildings.
I approached a low-set tan-coloured portable office and pressed the security pass I’d been given on the door pad. There was a flickering of LCD lights and it clicked open. I took a last look around the site and entered, closing the door behind me. The noise of the construction work and diesel engines muted significantly. Inside, the rest of the team were already in the makeshift conference room sitting around a long table, tablet computers open and tapping away. At the far end were four military personnel sitting upright and stiff in that way soldiers do, even when at ease. I recognised the drone pilot Major Powers, sitting next to Holland. Hubert was in conversation with an army officer, a trim figure the low side of sixty with a silver buzz cut and razor sharp cheekbones to match. He had crow’s feet tan lines at the corner of his eyes, which were as grey as his hair. He seemed small and I absently wondered whether he’d met the height requirements as a young marine
. But he was as muscular as any soldier I’d seen, and I guessed he’d be the soldier you prayed would be at your side when the fighting began, the soldier who would have your back, and who would fight when all was lost.
“Dr Morgan,” said Hubert as I sat down next to him, “This is Lieutenant General Shane Baker. He’s tasked with the security of the crater.”
Baker actually ignored the introduction and started to scroll through his cell phone. I caught a glimpse of graphs of stocks and shares. I leaned in and said, “So you’re in charge of this massive show of force being assembled here?”
He looked up and gave me a steely glare before resuming his browsing. “We’ve all got our orders, doctor.”
I looked at Hubert as if to say ‘what the fuck’s his problem?’ but Hubert’s mouth just twitched and he shook his head. I suppressed a yawn and poured myself a glass of water as Holland stood up and edged along the table to stand in front of the big screen. He coughed into his fist for attention and leaned awkwardly on the backrest of a chair in the middle of the table. There was a sudden quietness in the room, and I felt a tingle in my spine and at the back of my neck.
“Good morning everyone and thank you for coming at this early hour,” Holland began. He pointed to the biggest screen inlaid into the main display, and a technician changed the image to the picture I’d taken of Adam Benedict on the hospital gurney. “As you all know, this is an unparalleled moment in the history of our species. Humanity is no longer alone in the universe. This is not a human being. It is a facsimile of a man previously known as Adam Benedict. However, we believe the mind of Adam Benedict still inhabits this ‘shell’, along with the consciousness of an alien.”
