The Oppenheimer Alternative

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Gödel nodded.

  “Well,” continued Dick, “suppose our universe flickers back and forth, almost instantaneously, between being matter and anti-matter, with electrons changing into positrons and back again as if they were ...” Dick waved his hand vaguely.

  “Sort of ... oscillating?” offered Gödel. “No one has ever suggested such a thing for fundamental particles before.”

  “I know but think about it. If the universe oscillates quickly between matter and anti-matter—between being made of matter particles moving forward in time within a universe rotating clockwise and being made of anti-matter particles going backward in time as part of a universe rotating counter-clockwise—the net effect would be zero overall apparent rotation.”

  “And then even our own, actual universe could be permeated by closed time-like curves!” declared Gödel. “What an interesting thought! Of course, there’d be some jittering—”

  “Like Brownian motion or the saccades of the eye, only orders of magnitude more rapid.”

  “Right,” said Gödel. “Quite beyond the ability of any of our current instruments to detect—but, in theory, experimentally testable and falsifiable.” He looked Feynman up and down, apparently assessing the risks, and, to Dick’s delight, he said, “Won’t you walk me the rest of the way home? Let’s talk this through!”

  Chapter 43

  What a pity that they attacked him and not some nice guy like Bethe. Now we have all to be on Oppenheimer’s side!

  —Enrico Fermi

  Roger Robb rose again from his chair and looked at Oppie. The sun wasn’t behind the lawyer, and Oppie could for once clearly see his carnivorous, sharp-featured face. “Doctor, may we again refer to your written submission to this board, please, sir? On page four: ‘In the spring of 1936, I had been introduced by a friend to Jean Tatlock, the daughter of a noted professor of English at the university, and, in the autumn, I began to court her. We were at least twice close enough to marriage to think of ourselves as engaged.’” Oppie nodded and Robb went on. “However, Doctor, between 1939 and 1944, as I understand it, your acquaintance with Miss Tatlock had become fairly casual. Is that right?”

  In the afternoon light, Oppie could also see Kitty. She had fallen recently, breaking her leg, which was now in a cast; a pair of crutches leaned against the wall behind her, birch sentinels. Her face was a study in composure, but she was gripping the wooden arms of her chair, red painted nails stark against fingers drained of blood.

  “I don’t think it would be right to say that our acquaintance was ‘casual,’” Oppie replied slowly. “We had been very much involved with one another, and there was still very deep ...” He looked at Kitty again. “... feeling when we saw each other.”

  Robb nodded. “How many times would you say you saw her between 1939 and 1944?”

  “That’s five years. Would ten times be a good guess?”

  “What were the occasions for your seeing her?”

  “Of course, sometimes we saw each other socially with other people. I remember visiting her around New Year’s of 1941.”

  “Where?”

  “I went to her house or to the hospital she worked at, I don’t know which, and we went out for a drink at the Top of the Mark. I remember that she came more than once to visit our home in Berkeley.”

  Robb swung to face Kitty. “Visit you and Mrs. Oppenheimer?”

  “Right,” said Oppie. “Her father lived around the corner from us in Berkeley. I visited her there once. And ... I visited her, as I think I said earlier, in June or July of 1943.”

  “I believe you said, in connection with that, that you ‘had to see her.’”

  Oppie forced his eyes not to go back to Kitty. “Yes.”

  “Why did you have to see her?”

  “She had indicated a great desire to see me before we left for Los Alamos. At that time I couldn’t go. For one thing, I wasn’t supposed to say where we were going.” Robb looked like he was about to prod for more, so Oppie went on. “I felt that she had to see me. She was undergoing psychiatric treatment. She was ... extremely unhappy.”

  “Did you find out why she had to see you?”

  Eyes straight ahead. “Because she was still in love with me.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “At her home on Telegraph Hill.”

  “When did you see her after that?”

  “She took me to the airport, and I never saw her again.”

  “That was 1943?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she a Communist at that time?”

  “We didn’t even talk about it. I doubt it.”

  “You have said in your written answer that you knew she had been a Communist.”

  “Yes. I knew that in the fall of 1936.”

  “Was there any reason for you to believe that she wasn’t still a Communist in 1943?”

  Oppie uncrossed his legs. “No.”

  “You spent the night with her, didn’t you?”

  He struggled to keep the syllable even, natural, uninflected. “Yes.”

  A sharp intake of breath from Kitty.

  Robb’s voice took on a note of incredulity. “That is when you were working on a secret war project?”

  Again: even. Steady as she goes. “Yes.”

  “Did you think that consistent with good security?”

  And now, rallying somewhat: “It was, as a matter of fact. Not a word—” But he could see Robb’s feigned astonishment, and, worse, the real shock on the faces of the three members of the board who would decide his fate. He dropped his gaze to the floor and lowered his voice. “It was not good practice.”

  When Robb finally finished at half past four, Chairman Gray called an adjournment. Oppie got up from the couch and quickly moved to fetch Kitty’s crutches for her, but Lloyd Garrison beat him to it. She moved purposely, the twin supports swinging like the pendulums of grandfather clocks. “Kitty,” he said in a low voice, as he pulled up next to her, “I’m sorry.”

  She kept her eyes straight ahead. “Yes,” she said, in a savage whisper. “You certainly are.”

  It was an ordeal getting downstairs from room 2022, and Kitty pointedly let Garrison, not Oppie, carry her crutches as she hopped down backward, one hand gripping the only banister.

  When they were out on the National Mall again, Oppie took stock; Kitty, he noted, was doing the same thing. The fury she’d been radiating moments ago had shifted, and he saw in her eyes the same look she’d had when they’d closed up One Eagle Hill for the move to Olden Manor, the wistfulness that went with being unsure if they’d ever return.

  This morning, when they’d arrived for the day’s proceedings, it hadn’t seemed such a long walk from here to the White House, due north of the temporary office building. But now? Now it looked impossibly distant. And off to the east, the Capitol Dome might as well have been on another continent, another world. Not visible from here but hitherto just a short drive across the Potomac, the Pentagon, too, he knew was almost certainly out of his reach now. Edwin Hubble had been right: the universe was expanding—and all the corridors of power, all the places where Oppie had once held sway, were receding from him.

  #

  Wednesday, April 21, 1954, was the day before Oppie’s fiftieth birthday. Instead of lead counsel Lloyd Garrison, who had proven ineffective, Robert’s long-standing personal attorney Herb Marks—he of the night of the sleeping-pills overdose—was asking the questions this session. That gave Oppie some confidence. Buoying him even more was that the questions were being asked of the formidable Isidor Isaac Rabi.

  “Dr. Rabi,” said Herb, “have you spoken to Chairman Lewis Strauss of the Atomic Energy Commission on behalf of Dr. Oppenheimer?” Marks stretched the chairman’s name into Lewis’s idiosyncratic pronunciation.

  “Absolutely,” declared Rabi. When he
wasn’t testifying, Oppie was relegated to a shopworn couch behind the witness stand. That meant that he couldn’t see the witness’s face, but he suspected Rabi’s eyes—almost as sad and wise as Einstein’s—were fixed not on Herb Marks, who, after all, was merely a means to an end, but on Gordon Gray, chairman of the security board. “I never hid my opinion from Mr. Strauss that I thought the suspension of Dr. Oppenheimer’s clearance was a very unfortunate thing and should not have been done.”

  Rabi had an impassioned way of speaking that Oppie enjoyed even under mundane circumstances. But today, the Nobel laureate was on fire. “In other words, there he was: he was a consultant, and if you don’t want to consult the guy, you don’t consult him, period!” A shake of the head, and then, in a disgusted tone: “Why you have to then proceed to suspend clearance and go through all this ...” He spread his arms, encompassing the room, then, with a world-weary sense of unfairness, added, “It didn’t seem called for against a man who had accomplished what Dr. Oppenheimer has accomplished.”

  Herb Marks looked like he was going to interrupt. God, no! thought Oppie. Let Rabi go on!

  And the Nobelist did just that, leaning forward in the witness chair. “There is a real, positive record. We have an A-bomb and a whole series of it, and we have a whole series of super bombs.” He lifted his arms in exasperation. “What more do you want, mermaids? This is just a tremendous achievement! If the end of that road is this kind of hearing, which can’t help but be humiliating”—again, a shake of the mighty head—“I think it’s a pretty bad show.”

  Oppie clamped his pipe stem between his teeth and folded his arms across his chest. He even allowed himself a moment of amusement as Roger Robb rose for cross-examination: Robb was about to question Rabi about Robert. But his smile soon faded.

  “Dr. Rabi,” said Robb with that kicked-in-the-gut smile of his, “getting back to the Chevalier incident, if you had been put in that position, you of course would have told the whole truth about it, wouldn’t you?”

  “I am,” said Rabi genially, “naturally a truthful person.”

  “You would not have lied about it?”

  “Look,” said Rabi, “I take a serious view of that incident, but I don’t think it’s crucial.”

  Robb’s tone dripped with be-that-as-it-may scorn. “Of course, Doctor, you don’t know what Dr. Oppenheimer’s testimony before this board about that incident may have been, do you?”

  Rabi crammed all four syllables of irrelevant into one prim “No.”

  “So,” said Robb, sharply, “the board may be in a better position to judge than you.”

  “It may be,” conceded Rabi. But Oppie was pleased that his old friend wasn’t giving up: “On the other hand, I am in possession of a long experience with this man, going back to 1929, which is twenty-five years. There is a kind of seat-of-the-pants feeling upon which I myself lay great weight.”

  “Of course,” said Robb dismissively. “But as a scientist evaluating, say, an explosion, you perhaps would be in a better position having witnessed it than somebody who had not, is that right?”

  Rabi lifted his arms in exasperation. “I am not fencing with you. I really don’t know what you are getting at.”

  The prosecutor’s tone was unctuous. “I am not fencing with you, either.”

  The Columbia professor replied, “If you are saying that an eyewitness to something can give a better account of it than a historian, that I don’t know. Historians would deny it.” He waved a hand. “It’s a semantic question.”

  “Let me get back again to the concrete,” said Robb. “Would you agree, Doctor, that in evaluating the Chevalier incident one should consider what Dr. Oppenheimer says happened together with the testimony of persons such as yourself?”

  “Wait a minute. I didn’t testify to that incident. I have only heard about it.”

  “Fine. But one who had heard Dr. Oppenheimer describe the incident would be in a better position to evaluate it than one who had not, is that correct?”

  To Oppie’s delight, Rabi was having none of it. “I reserve the right to my own opinion. I am in possession of a long period of association, with keen observation of all sorts of minute reactions. I have seen his mind work. I have seen his sentiments develop. And I will still stick to my right to have my own opinion.”

  Robb evidently realized he was fighting a losing battle. “Thank you, Doctor.” He returned to his seat.

  Gordon Gray looked at the other table. “Do you have any more questions?”

  Lloyd Garrison nodded at Herb Marks, and Marks rose. “I think I better ask one more question, if the board will indulge me.”

  Gray nodded.

  “Dr. Rabi, in the course of questioning Dr. Oppenheimer, about these circumstances, counsel for the board put the question to him whether the story that he had told the security officers wasn’t a fabrication and a tissue of lies, and to this Oppenheimer responded, ‘Right.’ He accepted counsel’s characterization.”

  Rabi half turned as if to catch a glimpse of Oppie, but they really couldn’t make eye contact. Marks went on. “I ask you, Dr. Rabi, whether this leads you to wish to express any further comment?”

  Rabi turned fully forward and Oppie suspected he again had his gaze fixed on the seated board rather than Marks. “Look,” he said, “there were very strong personal loyalties there, and I take it in mentioning Eltenton he felt he had discharged his full obligation. Yes, anything else was a very foolish action, but I would not put a sinister implication to it.”

  “Are you confident, Dr. Rabi, that Dr. Oppenheimer would not make that kind of mistake again?”

  In a Time magazine cover story about him, Robert had described his childhood self as an “unctuous, repulsively good little boy.” In the 1940s, I.I. Rabi—or so Oppie had heard—had called the adult Robert “a rich spoiled Jewish brat from New York.” But if Prince Arjuna could come to accept his responsibilities, apparently so could one Bob Oppenheimer.

  “I certainly am,” said Rabi. “He is a man who learns with extraordinary rapidity.” He held his hands out, palms up, the very scales of justice. “I think he is just a much more mature person than he was then.”

  Oppie smiled and leaned back on the couch. It was 3:25 p.m., and Gray called a recess until tomorrow. Rabi rose, turned around, and walked toward Oppie, who was rising himself. Robert finally got to see his old friend’s face, which, while not beaming, showed the satisfaction of a job well done.

  “Thank you,” Robert said, taking Rabi’s hand. “Thank you.”

  “Such tsuris!” Rabi declared. “Let’s hope they got the message. Who’s left to testify?”

  Kitty, her leg still in a cast, managed to make it over to them by this point. Rabi kissed her on the cheek as she, too, thanked him for his testimony. “Goodness, woman,” he said, “what happened to you?”

  “Damn stairs at Olden Manor,” Kitty replied with a vague gesture. “Took a tumble.”

  Rabi’s expression had just a hint of skepticism, as though he were thinking, Took a tumbler, you mean. He turned back to Robert. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

  “You asked who was left to testify.”

  “Oh, right,” said Rabi. “And ...?”

  Oppie gestured for them to start moving. “Edward Teller.”

  Rabi instantly froze. “Oh, shit.”

  Chapter 44

  I do really feel it would have been a better world without Teller. I think he is an enemy of humanity.

  —I.I. Rabi

  “Dr. Teller,” said prosecutor Roger Robb, standing in front of the ursine physicist, “may I ask you, sir, at the outset, are you appearing as a witness here today because you want to be here?”

  Teller’s voice was its usual thickly accented rumble. “I appear because I have been asked to and because I consider it my duty upon request to say what I think in the matter.” He sh
ifted in the witness chair, and his artificial foot made a clack against the floorboards. “I would have preferred not to appear.”

  “I believe, sir, that you stated to me some time ago that anything you had to say, you wished to say in the presence of Dr. Oppenheimer?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Is it your intention to suggest that Dr. Oppenheimer is disloyal to the United States?”

  From his couch at the rear of the room, Robert saw the back of the head move left and right. “I do not want to suggest anything of the kind.” He paused, and Oppie wondered if he was finished, but the Hungarian soon went on. “I know Oppenheimer as an intellectually most alert and very complicated person, and I think it would be presumptuous and wrong on my part if I would try in any way to analyze his motives. But I have always assumed, and I now assume, that he is loyal to the United States. I believe this and I shall believe it until I see very conclusive proof to the opposite.”

  Robb nodded curtly. “Now, a question which is the corollary of that. Do you or do you not believe that Dr. Oppenheimer is a security risk?”

  There was silence in the courtroom, although through the window, in the distance, a tour guide with a bullhorn was lecturing visitors about the white spire dedicated to the president who couldn’t tell a lie.

  Teller took a deep breath, the broad shoulders rising. “In a great number of cases I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act—I understood that Dr. Oppenheimer acted—in a way which for me was exceedingly hard to understand.” He shook his head and Oppie imagined him drawing his great shaggy eyebrows together. “I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues and his actions frankly appeared to me confused and ...” He paused as if hoping for a better adjective but concluded with one he’d used before: “... complicated.”

  Numerous issues. They disagreed about the super—that one thing. Yes, you could divide it into dozens of subtopics, but the gulf between them hadn’t been that large ... or so Oppie had thought.