The Oppenheimer Alternative

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “Ah, but did he tell you that he himself was sitting on something called the ‘Scientific Panel’ of the Interim Committee on Atomic Energy?”

  Teller felt his heart jump. “What?”

  “And did he tell you that on June sixteenth—before you’d even shown him my petition back in Los Alamos!—he’d written the report for that panel, a report which went straight to President Truman, urging that the bomb be dropped on Japan without warning.”

  Teller tasted acid at the back of his throat. “I didn’t know any of this.”

  “It’s true. Fermi, who was also on the Scientific Panel along with Compton and Lawrence, gave me a copy of the report, and he confirmed that Oppenheimer was its author.”

  There was a wooden bench ahead of them; most of the paint that had once covered it had been eroded away by the elements. Szilard sat and motioned for Teller to do the same. He then pulled a rolled-up sheaf of papers from his inside jacket pocket, flattened them, flipped to the final page, and handed the document to Teller. “Have a look at the passage I’ve underlined.”

  Teller opened his own coat long enough to remove glasses from the inside pocket of his sports jacket. He perched them on his nose, then scanned the highlighted section: We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternates to direct military use.

  “Damn it,” said Teller, re-reading the words in disbelief. “He ...”

  “Lied to you,” said Szilard, simply. “Or, at best, deliberately misled you.”

  “But why?” asked Teller.

  He could see in Szilard’s round face that Leo thought him naïve. “Oppenheimer was Groves’s handpicked man and, from the first, Groves wanted to use this bomb. Of course Oppenheimer would play ball.”

  Teller tipped his head to one side. “All right, all right. There’s no doubt that he went along with them—but he came to see me the day of the Hiroshima bombing. He was a wreck; I’ve never seen a man so ... so anguished. And Mici heard from Kitty that he’s become even worse after Nagasaki.”

  “A change of heart after the bombing is cold comfort for those in Japan,” said Leo.

  “Granted, but—” And then it hit him. “This isn’t about Oppenheimer,” he rumbled as he pointed an accusatory finger at Szilard. “It’s about General Groves! If Oppie ends up running the show at the Institute, there’s no question that Groves will be in the background, pulling the strings just as he did at Los Alamos. Hell, if Oppie had had his way, we’d have all been given ranks and made to wear uniforms there! But I have only a passing acquaintance with Groves; he has no hold over me.”

  Leo smiled like a boy caught pulling an innocent prank. “I admit that’s a bonus. But you underestimate yourself, my friend. You have connections we will need. Groves would doubtless make this an America-only effort; you saw how he treated the Tube Alloys contingent from the United Kingdom! But we will need the best minds from here in North America and from Europe, including—”

  “Heisenberg,” said Teller, getting it. “My thesis advisor.”

  “Exactly. To be honest, Niels Bohr’s name had occurred to me as a potential director, but, after their falling out during the war, Heisenberg could never work under him. But you? You he would trust—as would most of the Europeans. And, of course, our fellow Martian, von Neumann, who is already at the I.A.S., would trust you, too.”

  “All of this is fascinating, Leo, but ...”

  “But what? Destiny has called you. Besides, I looked into the details. The job of I.A.S. director pays handsomely, $20,000 a year; you are supplied with housing in Olden Manor, an eighteen-room mansion staffed by servants; and there’s a generous pension. Plus, of course, a chance to focus your work on saving the world. What was it you wrote me back in the summer? ‘I have no hope of clearing my conscience; the things we’re working on are so terrible, nothing can save our souls.’ Well, my old friend, perhaps this work can.”

  The most abstruse problems in physics made beautiful, serene sense to Teller, but this—this—left his head swimming. “I’ll need to talk it over with Mici.”

  “After three years stuck in a desert? You know as well as I do that she’ll welcome the luxury of the Institute.” Leo extended his chubby hand. “Shall we shake on it?”

  Chapter 24

  Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?

  —Leo Szilard

  Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves, Jr., was known to family and his few close friends as Dick to distinguish him from his father. Dick wasn’t normally given to metaphoric thinking, but an apt analogy came to him as he got out of the car that had brought him here from the train station this bitter afternoon. It wasn’t just that a November chill had come to Los Alamos, which, at 1.4 miles above sea level, would almost certainly experience another white Christmas despite its southerly location. No, more than that, the whole place seemed figuratively cold, too. The fire had gone out of it, and out of the people who remained here. Dick was reminded of taking his son and daughter to the New York World’s Fair in 1939—a concentrated enclave of bustle and exhilaration—and then passing by the grounds a few months after the fair was over and finding it a decaying husk, abandoned futuristic architecture silhouetted against the setting sun.

  He entered the office reserved for his visits to the mesa. Peer De Silva, whose own office was down the corridor, materialized moments later in the open doorway; well, thought Dick, he wouldn’t be much of a security man if he didn’t know when a general had arrived on site.

  “Sir,” said de Silva, “thank you for coming. As I said on the phone, I think something big’s going on.”

  Dick eased himself into his swivel chair. “I’m listening.”

  “Per your orders, I still have everyone down to the C-level on the org chart under surveillance.” The general nodded. Now that key scientists and engineers were pouring out of Chicago, Oak Ridge, and Los Alamos, precautions had to be extra-tight. The Soviets would be happy to snare leading Manhattan Project workers, especially since the U.S. had beat them to the punch by scooping up many of the best Nazi scientists, including Werner Heisenberg, who had been captured personally by Boris Pash as part of the final Alsos mission. An Edward Teller or a Hans Bethe would be a momentous prize for the Kremlin, whether enticed with riches or taken at gunpoint.

  De Silva went on. “On Wednesday, October seventeenth, Oppenheimer and Leo Szilard had a private meeting in Szilard’s hotel room in Washington. On Monday, October twenty-second, Szilard met with Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study. Four days later, Edward Teller, Szilard, and Einstein met there again.”

  Some professors Dick knew at Princeton University enviously called the place “the Institute for Advanced Salaries”; others apparently called it “the Institute for Advanced Lunch,” which would certainly appeal to that layabout Szilard. “They’re all looking for the best jobs they can get.”

  “Granted, sir. But there’s more. None of these guys were particularly circumspect during the war, even though they knew their phones were being tapped. But now the lot of them—including even Feynman—are being so careful not to say anything, I’m sure they’re hiding something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, General, except that it has something to do with the sun.” Groves leaned back in his seat as de Silva continued. “Back in August, a few solar-spectrum plates were sent here for Mr. Battle—Dr. Bethe, I mean—from Cornell. I delivered them to him myself, and he seemed awfully pleased. Of course, he figured I couldn’t make head nor tail of them, or
of what he was saying about them.”

  “The intellectuals’ hamartia,” said Groves.

  “Sir?”

  “My goodness, son, don’t they teach the classics at West Point anymore? Their hamartia; their fatal flaw. Arrogance. They assume that anyone without a string of letters trailing behind his name like pretentious ducklings can’t possibly grasp their thoughts.”

  “Yes, sir. Anyway, Dr. Bethe said he was going to show them to Dr. Teller. Since then, just about every book or journal they’ve had shipped here has been related to solar physics, stellar fusion, and the like.”

  “So what’s your best guess?”

  “I imagine it has something to do with the super, sir. Oppenheimer has come out against it, but Teller is determined to build it. If they’ve figured out something fundamental about how the sun does fusion, perhaps that’s the breakthrough needed to get the hydrogen bomb to work.”

  “If they’d made a breakthrough, they would have reported it to me,” Groves said.

  “So one would assume, sir, but it seems like Szilard is calling the shots and, well, you know he wants to take atomic matters out of military hands. He might be thinking that the Institute for Advanced Study could make a good home for civilian atomic physics now that the war is over; they’ve already got Einstein there, after all.”

  “Szilard.” Groves hissed the name then shook his head. “Okay, keep digging and keep me posted. Has Robert arrived yet?” Oppenheimer was making his first visit to the mesa since his resignation. He was scheduled to address the Association of Los Alamos Scientists, a group that had emerged in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Groves despised its rueful acronym ALAS.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, I won’t corner him until after he’s done jawing tonight—and nobody jaws like Robert!—but once his speech is over, I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  #

  A clear night at Los Alamos was a wondrous thing, with countless stars spangling the heavens. Tonight was not such a night; instead, a tenebrous canopy obscured almost everything, although a vague patch of brightness suggested, as though quantum effects were manifesting on a macro scale, where the moon probably was.

  The rain had stopped, but the wind had a honed edge. Dick and Robert both hunched their shoulders under their coats and leaned forward, as the general walked the physicist to his guest quarters after his speech. Oppenheimer had a cigarette in one hand, the tip a flaring nova in the wind, and he alternated having his other hand in his coat pocket and reaching up to grasp the wide brim of his hat lest it take flight.

  Dick was never one for small talk, but he nonetheless asked about Oppenheimer’s children. Peter was now four and a half, and Toni, the nickname her parents had slowly shifted to using instead of the generic Tyke, was just shy of eleven months. “They’re looking forward to Christmas,” Robert said.

  Dick had been surprised to discover a couple of years ago that the Oppenheimers celebrated that holiday with a tree, a gift exchange, and a turkey feast; he’d never heard of Jews doing such a thing before. But this time he merely nodded. “I’ll send presents for your kids. I presume Eagle Hill is the right address?”

  “Perhaps. I’ll let you know.”

  “Still entertaining offers?”

  “They do keep arriving,” Robert conceded. “But Berkeley seems the most tempting.”

  “Ah,” said Groves, keeping his tone flat. “I hear tell that some of the bigger names are going to that fancy place in New Jersey, what’s it called ...?”

  “The Institute for Advanced Study,” supplied Oppenheimer.

  “Right, right. You’ve always got your ear to the ground, Robert. Tell me: anything interesting going on there?”

  “I’d imagine there always is.”

  “I hear you visited recently.”

  “You hear a lot.”

  “Oh, odds and ends, yes. And I know Teller is fascinated by fusion in general, but there seems to be a heightened interest among all of you in solar fusion.”

  They came to a fork in the road, hard to see in the dark. Groves led; Oppenheimer followed but said nothing. “Has there been some sort of breakthrough, Robert? I really do have a right to know.”

  “I told Truman I had blood on my hands,” Oppenheimer replied. “I still do—no, no, I know you don’t see it the same way. But there are things that I can wash my hands of, and this—if there is a ‘this’—is one of them.”

  “So something is going on,” said Groves.

  Oppenheimer pointed at one of the Sundt apartment blocks looming ahead in the darkness. “I think I’m in this one.”

  Groves placed a hand on Robert’s forearm to stop him, took a half step, and turned to better confront the man. “Neither of us liked it the only time I gave you an order before, Robert.” Oppenheimer stiffened; having to disclose Haakon Chevalier’s name was clearly a painful memory. “Don’t make me do it again.”

  “Respectfully, General, you can’t do it again. I resigned, remember?”

  Groves thought, Then what are you doing back on the mesa? But he just shook his head. “All right. But, you know, there are others who can compel you to speak.”

  Oppenheimer shook his head. “I really can’t imagine who might have that power.” He stuck out his hand. “Good night, General.”

  Groves sighed and shook it. “Sleep well, Robert.”

  His voice was infinitely weary. “I plan to sleep”—he blew out smoke, quickly lost in the darkness—“like there’s no tomorrow.”

  #

  Following his speech for ALAS, Oppie returned to Berkeley and One Eagle Hill. He’d heard Haakon Chevalier was back in the Bay Area and had been thinking about whether he should reach out to his old friend but, as it turned out, he’d missed the opportunity. A letter from Hoke was waiting for him along with hundreds of others. Although there was no return address, Oppie recognized his handwriting and decided to open it first. He made himself a martini, lit a Chesterfield, moved into the living room with its redwood floor and twelve-foot-high beamed ceiling, and settled into his favorite chair, next to the stone fireplace, to read it. After the usual Dear Opje, Hoke declared:

  I’m off to Nuremberg! It seems someone finally values my skill. As I told you, I got some work as a translator for the French delegation during the first meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco. I must have minded my “pays” and “coos” well because now our War Department has asked me to serve as a lead translator for français to anglais for the International Military Tribunal at the war-crimes trials in Germany. The hearings begin 20 November and could last many months.

  We’re trying something new, something I’m calling “simultaneous translation,” so the proceedings won’t slow down; not as complex as building your bombs but still a hellishly difficult undertaking. They also tapped me to co-author the glossary of legal terms being distributed to witnesses and others.

  I plan to keep a diary of the proceedings. Nothing of moment ever happens in my own life, but the trial might make a good book—everyone loves the parry and thrust of cross-examination, eh? In any event, it shall be a time until our paths cross again, dear friend! My very best to Kitty, the children, and, of course, to you, mon cher Opje. À la prochaine!

  Oppie sat, holding the lined page, not putting it down, not letting it go. They would need to have a difficult conversation at some point—Damocles had nothing on him!—but he was glad it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  Chapter 25

  [The Institute for Advanced Study at] Princeton is a madhouse: its solipsistic luminaries shining in separate & helpless desolation. Einstein is completely cuckoo. I could be of absolutely no use at such a place.

  —J. Robert Oppenheimer, in a 1935 letter to his brother Frank

  Although the Oppenheimers did indeed decorate their house at One Eagle Hill with a Christmas tree, the
actual day was nothing special: gifts had already been exchanged throughout the eight evenings of Hanukkah. Peter, closer to five now than four, sensitive and shy, had been particularly pleased with a bright red tricycle that he named Berky—his way of saying the name of the city they’d at last moved back to. Little Toni, who had just turned one, was now inseparable from the plush white rabbit that Kitty had dubbed Hoppy. And Haakon Chevalier, who had spent some previous Christmases with Oppie’s family, was indeed off in Nuremberg. Since there was nothing to keep them in California over Christmas, Oppie took his family to New York City that week, and neither Kitty nor his children objected when he went off on his own on December 25.

  Oppie was visiting Isidor Isaac Rabi, the previous year’s Nobel laureate in physics. Rabi—not even his wife or sister ever called him by either of his I’s—had embraced his Judaism as much as Oppie had rejected his own; for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. No Yuletide baubles adorned his home; that it was Christmas simply meant that the usually noisy Manhattan traffic was oddly subdued for a Tuesday afternoon.

  Famous now and rich, thanks to the Nobel, Rabi lived with his wife and children in a posh apartment on Riverside Drive, the river in question being the majestic Hudson. The high-rise—a full ten stories tall—was near Columbia University, where he’d returned to teaching after spending most of the war years at M.I.T. working on the development of radar. It was the same Riverside Drive upon which Oppie’s family had resided during Robert’s youth, a short distance but a far cry from the poor, immigrant Lower East Side where Rabi had grown up. They’d known each other for sixteen years now, having first met in Leipzig in 1929.

  Oppie and Rabi retreated to the latter’s study, each with pipe ablaze. On Rabi’s desk was a copy of the first issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago, published earlier that month; Robert had read his own copy on the flight out from California. Oppie also noticed that Rabi’s Nobel medal was sitting flat on a bookshelf—not framed or mounted, just sort of there. Although he knew many recipients, it was his first time ever seeing such a medal. He couldn’t bring himself to fawn over it in Rabi’s presence, but when Rabi excused himself to go to the washroom, Oppie seized the opportunity to examine it. The disc was a little over two and a half inches in diameter and had the heft that went with being made of gold. The front showed a profile of bearded, bow-tied Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.