The Oppenheimer Alternative

by Robert J. Sawyer

  But any notion of a carefully orchestrated reunion evaporated as Groves, Oppie, and Nichols were finally leaving Oppie’s temporary office—and who should they run into heading toward them in the ground-floor corridor of Fuld Hull but Leo Szilard, his winter jacket unbuttoned to reveal a three-piece suit.

  “Good God,” muttered Groves.

  “Not quite,” replied Szilard, closing the distance.

  Isidor Rabi had departed for New York an hour ago, while Groves and Oppenheimer had continued to work, hammering out financial matters. “Leo, what are you doing here?” asked Oppie.

  Szilard pointed stubby fingers at a room on the opposite side of the corridor: von Neumann’s office. “I’ve come to see Jancsi. I have some ideas about this computing machine of his.”

  At that moment, the door to room 113 opened, and von Neumann’s secretary emerged. “Oh, Dr. Szilard! You’re early. The professor is down in the basement. Do you know the way?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Leo made a half turn, but then, apparently unable to resist, reversed the maneuver and faced Groves, who now had his own winter jacket back on. “So,” said Szilard, looking him up and down, “you got everything you wanted.”

  “We got peace,” said the general, simply.

  “For now.”

  “That’s all one can ever ask.”

  “Is it? With a world government we could have peace for all time.”

  Oppie eyed both men warily, a mongoose and a cobra, each capable of killing the other.

  “You’re a dreamer,” Groves said dismissively.

  “I prefer my dreams to nuclear nightmares. You military types—”

  “Leo,” said Oppie, gently.

  “—see everything in such simplistic terms. If you and your ilk would—”

  “Halt.” Groves barked it as if it were an order. Szilard just stared. “It was us ‘military types’ who brought the world to peace. And it was you, Mister Szilard, and your ilk who were nothing but an impediment to everything we worked for during the war.”

  Leo spluttered. “An impediment? Need I remind you that it was I who conceived of the chain reaction in the first place? That it was I who got Einstein to write Roosevelt, and—”

  “And that’s another thing!” said Groves, his voice starting to boil with fury. “There is a chain of command. Maybe—maybe—back in 1939 you didn’t know any better, but once the M.E.D. was up and running, you had no business even trying to get to see the commander in chief.”

  Oppenheimer saw a couple of other people at the far end of the hallway—Gödel and Weyl, it looked like—but they disappeared into Aydelotte’s office. “General Groves, Leo,” said Oppie. “Please.”

  “I’m not a soldier,” Szilard said. “I’m a citizen.”

  “For all of two years now!”

  Szilard was clearly trying to keep his tone even. “I was not aware that there are degrees of citizenship. In any event, I’m a—”

  “A what?” sneered Groves. “A professor? Show me your students. An academic? Show me your published papers.”

  “I am attached to the University of Chicago and—”

  “And even in the ivory tower, there are chains of command. You report to Arthur Compton—and Compton reports to me. If you had an ounce—”

  “A brass hat such as you will never understand academia. Unlike in the military, we don’t kowtow—”

  “Kowtow! We earn our position in the hierarchy!”

  “Like you earned the rank of general?”

  Groves’s face was turning red. “I never wanted this job; I wanted to go overseas—see some action—not spend the war herding obstinate goats!”

  Oppie looked at Nichols for help, but the colonel simply stood at attention, staring at a blank spot on the corridor wall.

  “Some hardship!” said Szilard. “You’re the world-famous atomic general now—and you owe that to me. Without me, there’d be no atomic bomb.”

  “And your days of having anything to do with it are over. After that petition stunt—”

  “Which you had classified ‘secret’ so I couldn’t release it to the journal Science—”

  “Damn right I blocked it!”

  “Yes, because it might be, and I quote, ‘injurious to the prestige of government activity’—hardly what Congress had in mind when they passed the Espionage Act!”

  “That’s not the reason at all. God, how I hate pushy Jews like you!”

  “Meine lieben Herren!”

  It was the one voice they both had to heed. Groves, swinging around, popped a string of Ps like gunfire: “P-P-P-Professor Einstein, I—”

  For his part, Leo immediately affected a relieved tone. “Albert, so schön, dich zu sehen!”

  “This is my home,” said Einstein sharply in English. “My sanctuary.” His office was just down the corridor. He’d emerged from it wearing a green cardigan, his white hair even more askew than usual. “Leo, I acceded to your request to bring this madness here, but it is at the sufferance of the long-established faculty. There will be peace—and there will be quiet!” He looked at Groves and then Szilard. “I don’t know if either of you can save the world, but I can and will save this intellectual refuge.”

  “Of course,” said Groves. “Professor Einstein, sir, I hope you didn’t think I included yourself when—”

  The soulful eyes locked on Groves and, to Oppie’s surprise, the general closed his mouth and looked contritely at the polished stone floor. Einstein then turned to Szilard. “You, Leo, why are you here?”

  “I was just heading downstairs to speak to von Neumann.”

  Einstein stretched out his right arm, pointing at the nearest staircase. “Go!”

  Leo nodded and shuffled away.

  “And you?” demanded Einstein of the general.

  Oppie spoke up. “We’ve been working on organizational matters, but are heading over to Olden Manor. Time for a bite to eat.”

  “Off with you, then!” declared Einstein. “Be gone, the lot of you! There’s thinking to be done here!”

  #

  Olden Manor had three extra bedrooms, and as their discussions wore on, it was decided that General Groves and Colonel Nichols would stay the night. After the military men had gone to bed, Oppie and Kitty went to their own room and talked until almost 2:00 a.m.

  “Is Groves insane?” asked Kitty, propping herself up on an elbow. “He expects you to work under another goddamn shroud of secrecy?”

  Oppie stared up at the ceiling, a rectangle of darkness. “We’ve argued it back and forth, but—yes. Yes, that’s what we’re going to do. Better that than the panic that would ensue if we had to announce prematurely that only a small fraction of humanity might be saved.”

  “Jesus,” said Kitty.

  “I know it’s not easy,” Oppie said, “for any of us. And, well, especially now not for me.”

  “Why?”

  “Keeping others from stumbling onto the solar instability will mean making sure that the underlying research that led to its discovery isn’t brought into the spotlight.”

  “Can it be classified?”

  “No, no, it’s too late. It’s already been published ... by me.”

  Kitty made a questioning sound, and Robert went on. “That trio of papers I did in 1938 and ’39, with Serber, Volkoff, and Snyder. They’re out there for anyone anywhere to see, in the Physical Review. And any decent physicist who has access to those papers, and understands what they imply, and also has access to solar spectra taken during the period when Hans Bethe thought the sun routinely underwent C-N-O fusion will make the connection.”

  “But those papers ... Robert, they’re key to you winning the Nobel prize.”

  He felt a tickle in his throat on top of the one usually there. “I know,” he said softly.

  Words in the dark:
“You deserve that prize, damn it.”

  “Yes,” said Oppie, even more softly. “I do, but ...”

  “But what? You can’t just bury the papers, for God’s sake. You said it yourself: they’re already out there.”

  “Yes, they are. And so we’re going to have to ...” He sighed, letting go of air, letting go of a dream. “We’re going to have to obfuscate them.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “At least the name will live on: the ‘Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit.’ That’s what it’s called: the maximum upper mass of a neutron core. George and I calculated it at 0.7 solar masses—which allowed the sun to indeed have the sort of hidden neutron core Lev Landau postulated. But we also figured out, as a concomitant of that, the lower limit for a stable neutron core, and that was 0.1 solar masses. So we’ll get some people to plant articles in journals, suggesting more oomph for the strong nuclear force at the heart of stars, so that the upper cut-off, the Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, will seem higher—1.4, 1.5, or more. That, in turn, will pull the minimum stable mass out of the solar range. It’ll make sure that gung-ho post-docs don’t stumble on what’s really going to happen anytime soon.”

  “And what about you? Your Nobel? The medal? The fame? Hell, the money?”

  Robert closed his eyes and recited from the Gita once more:

  “Vanquish enemies at arms ...

  “Gain mastery of the sciences

  “And varied arts ...

  “You may do all this, but karma’s force

  “Alone prevents what is not destined

  “And compels what is to be.”

  Kitty rolled over on her side, her back now to Robert. She let out a long, whispery sigh, the last sound she made that night.

  Chapter 30

  We had known the sin of pride. We had the pride of thinking we knew what was good for man. This is not the natural business of the scientist.

  —J. Robert Oppenheimer

  “God damn it, Oppenheimer, I said no!”

  Oppie was taken aback. He’d never heard Groves swear before, and the general had never previously failed to precede his last name with either “Doctor” or “Professor.”

  Oppie tried for a calming tone. “There is a need for the sort of blue-skying Szilard specializes in. If we’re going to solve this, it’ll demand fresh ideas and new approaches, and nobody is better at coming up with those than him. Suppose—suppose I make sure you’ll only rarely have to deal with him?”

  “How?” demanded Groves.

  At that moment, the cook appeared from the kitchen, with more coffee. Kitty was off with the kids and Colonel Nichols was in Princeton, running errands for the general. “Suppose I give Leo his own private department, housed here at the Institute, but not in Fuld Hall? He and a few other ... ‘oddballs,’ shall we say? They’ll be left alone to bounce ideas off each other. If they come up with nothing, well ...” He smiled at Groves, who had occasionally chided Oppie about his one area of ignorance, namely sports. “No harm, no foul.”

  Oppie saw the mustachioed upper lip twitch as the general noted the athletic metaphor. But the levity didn’t last. “Szilard is a menace.”

  “I know you think so,” said Oppie. They were seated in the living room of Olden Manor, which, like most of the interior, was painted bright white and had creaky oak-plank flooring. A van Gogh sunset, formerly part of his father’s collection, hung above the marble fireplace. Prior to being acquired by the I.A.S., this mansion had been the residence of the governor of New Jersey. Although Frank Aydelotte was still wrapping up his administrative duties, he and his wife had already vacated in favor of an apartment in Princeton near the Quaker church they attended.

  “I understand,” continued Oppie, “that about a year ago you asked Conant at Harvard to hire Szilard away from the Manhattan Project.” Groves brought his eyebrows together, the look of a man who felt a confidence had been breached. The way Oppie had heard it, the general had even offered to have the government cover Szilard’s salary just to get Harvard to take him.

  “Then you also know,” said Groves, “that Dr. Conant laughed in my face and said I couldn’t pay him enough to assume the headache named Szilard—and he doubted any other university would want him, either.”

  “But I want him,” said Oppie. “Here, with all his peripatetic thinking, at the Institute for Advance Study. Honestly, on these grounds—and I mean that both figuratively and literally—he’s a better fit than either you or me. And he already knows what we’re working on, and you’ve made it abundantly clear you want that kept secret. Surely having him nearby is much better from a security point of view than having him at large.”

  Groves held up an admonishing finger. “Not one penny of any salary or expenses for him is to come from the United States government.”

  “No, no. Anyone I assign to his group will be financed out of my director’s fund here.”

  “And what are you going to call the group?” asked Groves. “The loony bin?”

  Oppie smiled slightly. “Well, I was rather taken by that British code name, ‘Tube Alloys.’ How about ‘Compact Cement’?” He closed his eyes and recited two lines from “An Anatomy of the World,” the poem John Donne, Jean’s favorite poet, had written about a young woman who had died much too soon:

  “The cement which did faithfully compact

  “And glue all virtues, now resolv’d, and slack’d.”

  Although he didn’t elaborate on it with Groves, the 335-year-old poem’s imagery resonated in this era of Einsteinian relativity:

  Alas, we scarce live long enough to try

  Whether a true-made clock run right, or lie.

  That stanza was followed closely by another:

  And as in lasting, so in length is man

  Contracted to an inch, who was a span.

  And, indeed, Donne’s pleas were apropos of the work to be tackled:

  Thou might’st have better spar’d the sun, or man ...

  “‘Compact Cement,’” repeated Groves, trying the name on for size, then, in good military fashion, immediately reducing it to initials: “CC.” He nodded. “All right; it’ll do. Who else are you going to assign to CC?”

  “Kurt Gödel, if he’s willing. “They call him Herr Warum—‘Mr. Why’—because of his insatiable curiosity. And he and Einstein are very close; even the director here doesn’t have any authority over Einstein, as you saw, but if Gödel is part of CC, I’m sure the great man will”—Oppie paused for a brief smile—“gravitate toward it.”

  Groves harrumphed his assent. “Who else?”

  “Maybe Dick Feynman? A truly original thinker. As Wigner says of him, ‘He’s a second Dirac—only this time human.’”

  “Yes, good. Keep that jackass away from anything sensitive.” The general considered. “And you’re going to let Szilard run the show there?”

  “No,” said Robert. “He’s not an administrator. We need somebody with absolute discretion, a head for details, and so forth.”

  “That’s certainly not Feynman, either,” said Groves. “Gödel, then?”

  “I asked him, but he doesn’t want to be burdened with oversight. But I have someone else in mind.”

  “Who?”

  “Kitty.”

  “Mrs. Oppenheimer?” Groves’s head shook slightly. “Robert, I—”

  “She’s brilliant, scientifically literate, and fluent in both English and German, which will help with some of the people you’re sending us from over there.”

  “She’s a Communist,”

  “She was a Communist. But she hasn’t been for years.”

  “And she’s related to a high-ranking Nazi.”

  Oppie nodded. “Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. He’s being tried before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg even as we speak. But they�
��re estranged. Seriously, General, she’s no more of a security risk than I am. I wouldn’t try to put her in charge of Nobel laureates, but so far we have none of those assigned to CC.”

  “But if she’s doing that, who will look after your kids?”

  “Peter will be old enough for kindergarten next fall; I’m hoping to send him to the Ethical Culture School in New York, my alma mater. As for Toni, we’ll get a governess. I hear Rubby Sherr is taking a job at Princeton, so maybe his wife Pat will be interested in the job. She looked after Toni for us while Kitty was away from Los Alamos.”

  “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I have. Kitty will handle the leadership task well.”

  Groves blew out air noisily. “As you wish.”

  “Thank you.”

  “All right,” the general said. “You’ve got your Department of Wild Ideas. What about more practical concerns—if any of this can be termed ‘practical.’” He looked about to see if the cook was within earshot, then, in a lowered voice, continued, “What about trying to fix the sun or develop some kind of solar shield?”

  “One group should handle both of those,” replied Oppie, “since either way, they’ll need to figure out the same physics. Bethe should be in charge, of course; I’m sure you’ll agree he did a fabulous job running the T-Section at Los Alamos. And Chandrasekhar, if he does indeed agree to join us, obviously belongs in this group. Plus Volkoff. And my own expertise is in solar physics, as you know, so if there’s any time left for me beyond my director’s chores—and I’m hoping this time there will be—I’ll work with Bethe’s group.”

  “And I suppose you have a clever code name for that group, too?”

  “‘Patient Power,’” said Oppie. “It’s from Prometheus Unbound, but people will figure it’s just another of the countless atomic-energy efforts that are springing up everywhere—Patient Power being sort of the opposite of Rapid Rupture, you see?”

  “And what about getting folks off the planet—to Mars, or wherever?”

  Oppie knew the general didn’t take kindly to people referring to something as “mere engineering,” but it really was just that, at least if somewhere in the solar system was the goal. “Freeman Dyson has said he wants in on that.”