She went on into a Christmas-shopping story. Natalie, with a drink in her hand, was talking to Jack Bates in front of the fireplace, which did not look quite like the fireplaces of my youth. Modern design apparently requires that nothing be built to look like what it is. We have a waffle iron that’s streamlined for an air speed of approximately four hundred miles per hour. Similarly, our fireplace dispenses with a mantelpiece and has its chimney masonry concealed by discreet paneling so that, surprise, surprise, nothing but the fireplace opening itself peeks out at the room from another innocent wall.
Ruth was still talking. She was a thin and fairly tall girl, with straight brown hair cut in a bang across her forehead, and glasses that always had something fancy in the way of rims—tonight’s were striped gold and black. She wasn’t bad looking by a good deal, but she had been better looking when I knew them in Chicago. I’m no authority on feminine beauty, but I have observed that women who go too long without having children often tend to get a kind of intense and frustrated and dried-up look. Not that I was in a position to criticize. Our house wasn’t resounding to the patter of tiny feet. Ruth was wearing a long skirt of some heavy Indian weave in a yellow-and-black pattern and a brief black jersey bodice. A tremendous necklace of Indian silver occupied most of the space left bare; and there were similar bracelets on both arms. I did not dare comment on the stuff because she collected it, and I did not want to hear about the charming old squaw at the picturesque old pueblo who had sold it to her for only thirty per cent more than she would have paid for it at Marshall Field’s back in Chicago.
Friendships are funny things. Once I had been good friends with Ruth DeVry, as well as with Larry. In Chicago I used to practically live in their little apartment near the University. It seemed a long time ago. When I spoke of it to Natalie, she wanted to know if Ruth and I had ever exchanged kisses or other tokens of affection when Larry wasn’t around.
I said, “Keep it clean, Princess. They were just friends of mine, that’s all.”
“But didn’t you ever think of it?” she insisted.
I admitted that there might have been times in those long-lost days when slender, intense, artistic Ruth DeVry had seemed very attractive to a lonely bachelor; however, as a gentleman and a friend of her husband’s, I had concealed my feelings.
“That,” said Natalie, “is what you think. Why do you think she hates my guts?”
Well, that was Natalie’s theory, and I didn’t put much stock in it. The fact remained that Ruth got on my nerves nowadays; and I was glad when Natalie and Jack Bates came over to join us.
“Hi, Boss,” Jack said. “God, you look terrible.”
“You don’t look so good yourself,” I said. “What’s the matter, have the women been running you ragged?”
He was a big, blond guy in his late twenties who liked anything that took him outdoors—and apparently, although he did not talk about it, a few things that took him indoors, as well. Van Horn had taken me aside to caution me about this tendency of his several months ago. Nowadays it seems that a man can’t have any privacy at all in government service; even his love life comes under the heading of security information. Jack and I had struck up a hunting acquaintance in a duck blind on the Potomac while I was working in Washington; and when I needed a man with his qualifications, I remembered him. After all, physicists are a dime a dozen, but a man who can drop a passing canvasback at fifty-five yards is a jewel to be treasured and cherished.
If this seems like an irresponsible way of filling an important post, all I can say is that Jack Bates had been a life-saver in the lab, steady and conscientious and dependable; which is more than could be said for Larry DeVry who, despite our long-standing friendship and his brilliant qualifications as a mathematician, had turned out to be a hell of a prima donna on the job. Granted that it had been a tough assignment for him to turn around and work under me here, after seeing me through to my degree at a time when he was already an instructor at Chicago; nevertheless there had been times when I could see no sense to the temperamental performance he had put on. Even tonight, instead of joining in the festivities, he was browsing through my collection of classical records in an absorbed way, although he knew what was on the shelf as well as I did.
He was a small, dark specimen with glasses, who lived in a kind of fog of abstract numbers. It was typical of both of them that Jack had sent me, by way of Natalie, several batches of outdoors magazines in the hospital. Larry had sent me a box of candy. Only Larry DeVry would have thought of sending chocolate creams to a man convalescing from multiple perforations of the guts.
The three of us were always referred to by visiting celebrities as my “team.” In the Army, everybody is a team; and while we were not strictly speaking in the Army, we never got lonely for the sight of uniforms. As far as I’m concerned, this team business is a lot of bunk. I never did get anywhere in any sport that demanded co-operation with a lot of other men. I can overlook the comic aspects of a couple of guys trying to whale hell out of a little round ball, just for fun, on a golf course or tennis court; but when five or nine or eleven get together and make a religion of it, you can count me out for laughing.
But the way some of the visiting VIP’s talked, we at the Project were playing important ball in two leagues at once. There was the intramural league, in which the competition was represented by Los Alamos and various lesser centers of research around the country. The winner at this level would earn the honor of representing the country in the big, intercollegiate matches, to be climaxed, I guess, by the annual homecoming game against Soviet U. Now, I may not take my responsibilities as a Man of Science quite as seriously as some of my colleagues would like, but I’m damned if I’m going to belittle this atomic rat-race by treating it as a sport. So you’ll hear no more reference to “teams” from me.
Seeing the rest gathering around the guest of honor, Larry gave up sulking and came on over. “It’s good to have you back, Greg,” he said. “Maybe now we’ll get some action out of Washington. They’ve been sitting on that last report long enough.”
Ruth said, “Now, boys. No shop talk.”
Jack said, “Say, Greg, did you hear about Louis Justin?”
Ruth said, “Jack, I don’t really think Greg should be worried—”
“What about Louis Justin?” I asked.
Natalie, sitting on the arm of my chair, said, “Who is Louis Justin, anyway? Oh, I remember, that’s the one who had us to dinner up at Alamos and fed us enchiladas made with his own little hands.” She ran her fingers through my hair. “I’m glad you don’t like to cook, darling. There’s something queer about any man who messes around a kitchen.”
I said, “What about Louis Justin?”
“He’s disappeared,” Jack said. “Vanished. Evaporated. It’s very mysterious. Six million security men are tearing their hair out by the roots, one hair at a time. It takes longer that way. Meanwhile, no Justin.”
“How did it happen?” I asked.
“He was a ski-bug, as you probably remember. I suppose it was the Swiss in him coming out. Any time there was snow up on the mountain, Louie would be out there trying to break a leg. His record was pretty good; he managed to average one simple fracture a winter, with a compound thrown in every couple of years for good measure. Sprains and torn ligaments don’t count. Well, a week or so ago there was finally enough snow up in the Sangre de Cristos, and Justin headed up to the ski-run to try it out. He strapped the boards on his feet, took off, and was never seen again. Van Horn is having kittens, pink ones with chartreuse spots. It’s not really his baby—it belongs to the boys up at Alamos—but he’s checking this end and talking darkly about Burgess and Maclean, with a little Fuchs on the side.”
Larry shook his head. “It’s hard to believe. Of course, Louis always was an odd sort of person—”
“Oh, bunk!” Jack said rudely. “Don’t you go climbing on the little red bandwagon, too. Justin just cracked up like old Fischer, who dived into Chesapeake
Bay last summer and let his boat sail home without him. Only Justin didn’t crack quite far enough to kill himself. God knows there are times I get sick of this business, too. It would be nice to take a powder to some pleasant island where the natives do nothing more unfriendly than cook and eat each other. I say chalk up another victim to the guilt of Hiroshima. Justin’s probably a thousand miles away, happily selling size-five shoes to ladies with size-nine feet.”
Larry said, “Isn’t that a rather weak theory? I can’t imagine a sensible man with sound scientific training just throwing up his career because of a sentimental impulse—”
“You’d rather believe he’s a communist? What’s sensible and scientific about that?” Jack demanded. “And what has scientific training got to do with it, anyway? Scientists get scared just like anybody else, don’t they? I know several people, some with sound scientific training and some without, who’ve got estimates on bomb shelters for their back yards in the past few years. Some have even laid in stocks of canned goods, just in case. And the only reason more aren’t doing it is that they feel it probably won’t do any good… It reminds me of a song we used to sing in college.” He hummed the tune. “I went to the rock to hide my face, and the rock cried out: no hiding place, there’s no hiding place down here.”
Everybody was quiet for a second or two. It seemed about time to break this up. I said, “Who’s replacing Justin at Los Alamos?”
Jack didn’t move at once; then he looked at me in a bemused sort of way. “What? Oh, why, nobody, as yet. We’re clearing with Strohmeier for the time being. Not that there’s much to clear until we get the go-ahead from Washington.”
Ruth stirred uneasily. “This conversation is getting too serious,” she said, “and Greg’s had enough of us, anyway. Larry dear, let’s let them have their Christmas Eve in peace. Come on, Jack, you’re having dinner with us, remember?”
It took them a while to get their wraps. I watched the three of them go out the door together, Ruth in the middle. It gave me an odd feeling of watching a movie I had seen before—Jack was spending as much time at their place nowadays as I used to do some years before. Well, it was none of my business. Natalie waved good-by to them, closed the door, and let her party face slip.
“My God,” she said, “you certainly know a bunch of grim people, darling.”
I said, “We can’t all be scintillating.”
She grinned abruptly. “I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be good, aren’t I? Your friends are wonderful, darling, simply wonderful. I just adore them. Where the hell’s my drink got to?” She found it and came over to perch on my chair. I put my arm around her. She leaned back comfortably against my shoulder and said lazily, “You’re supposed to be in bed.”
I said, “Is that a prescription or a proposition?”
“Don’t talk big,” she said. “You’re not that well.”
I sighed. “Unfortunately, you’re right. I couldn’t get excited over Jayne Mansfield tonight, let alone a skinny little thing like you.”
“You’d better be careful. You might hurt my feelings. Who was Fischer, darling?”
“I’ve told you about him. I worked with him in Washington for a while, setting up the Project. That was before I met you.”
“What happened to him?”
“You heard what Jack said. He committed suicide off a sailboat six or seven months ago.”
“And then you get shot. And then Louis Justin disappears. All people connected with the Project.”
I said, “Old Dr. Fischer had been growing a conscience for years. Any time you tried to get sense out of him you’d first have to listen to his deep thoughts about the moral aspects of what we were doing. Weren’t we usurping powers God had intended to reserve for himself? That routine. Personally, I figure that God’s big enough to keep His secrets secret as long as He wants to. But it’s a common disease in the profession. Even Jack’s got a mild case; you heard him tonight wanting to slip away to a peaceful tropical island where nobody ever heard of an atom. Fischer had it bad. I wasn’t too surprised when I heard what had happened.”
Natalie glanced at me oddly. “You don’t give the poor guy much sympathy, considering that you worked with him.”
I said, “Princess, when a bunch of guys all have to face up to the same question, there’s not going to be much sympathy for the man who cracks. He just makes it that much tougher for the rest. I get pretty damn tired of these spare-time philosophers of doom. Nobody ever invented anything important yet, in any field, that didn’t create problems in other fields. The universities are lousy with social scientists; Washington is lousy with politicians. It’s their problem; let them solve it.”
“And what,” she asked quietly, “if they can’t?”
“Then,” I said, “it’s just going to be very, very tough, that’s all. And the human race will suffer a setback of unpredictable dimensions because the so-called experts in human relations were too damn busy bickering about their childish political theories to keep up with the concrete facts handed them by us experts in physical relations. And I’m not going to fall off a sailboat because I did my job better than some other guys did theirs.”
Natalie laughed. “That’s what I love about you, darling, your humble and modest attitude.” She drained her drink, set it aside, got up, and pulled the blanket off me. “Time for bed,” she said. “I promised Dr. Barnett I’d look after you.”
I got up. “Is that a new dress?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. Corny, isn’t it? You can’t buy anything but teen-age junk in this town.” She grinned. “I mean, isn’t it a darling little number; they have the most wonderful selection of clothes in this marvelous town…” Her voice trailed off. She looked at me for a moment. “Damn it, it’s nice to see you standing on your feet, you big bum,” she said. “You know, you don’t have to rape a girl to show affection. Just a kiss will do—for the time being.”
SIX
I SPENT MOST of the winter practicing the tricks of digesting simple food and walking around the house. Never having been wounded or critically operated on before, I was surprised how long it took for my strength to return. Finally I was promoted to a less restricted diet and permitted to stroll around the neighborhood and ride in the car with Natalie to the local shopping center and even, presently, downtown. Even this adventure palled after a while, and I started yearning for some work to do—an unusual condition for me. Unlike many of my colleagues, who live and breathe only for their research, I have never really been sold on the merits of hard work. I can take the stuff or leave it alone. But in my weakened condition there was nothing more interesting to do.
However, I was caught in a tug-of-war between Dr. Barnett, who wouldn’t hear of my setting foot on the Project before the first of April, and Van Horn, who wouldn’t consider relaxing his regulations enough to let me work at home. He said that electronic eavesdropping devices had been perfected to such extent that he would not be able to guarantee security short of tearing down the place and building it over again. So I spent the time cleaning my guns—the police had returned the .270 badly finger-marked but fortunately nothing rusts in that dry climate—and overhauling my camping gear, reading books and listening to records, and having Natalie drive me out for fresh air whenever the house started driving me completely nuts.
One pleasant afternoon she talked me into using her little car for one of these excursions. Before she got it—as a gesture of independence the day before setting off for Reno—I thought I had this sports car business licked. The little ones were MG’s and the big ones were Jaguars. Now I had to start all over again. This was something called a Triumph, of British manufacture. With the top down, it stood about knee high; it was fire-engine red; and it had ninety horsepower distributed among four cylinders, an eighty-eight-inch wheelbase, a thirty-two-foot turning circle, and a weight of about eighteen hundred pounds stripped and dry. I knew all about it because she left the descriptive brochure on the living room table the day she left me. The ve
hicle was capable of a hundred and twenty-four miles per hour in racing trim. The pamphlet didn’t say why anybody would want to go that fast.
“The top is called the hood,” she said as we went into the garage. “But it’s too nice out to put it up today. The hood is called the bonnet. The trunk is called the boot. It runs on petrol and you spell the tires with a ‘y.’ Get in and hang on… Not like that,” she said as I stuck half way. “Don’t try to walk into it. First sit down on the seat, then pull your legs up and swing them inside.”
I followed instructions while she took a bright silk scarf from the pocket of her coat and tied it over her hair; then she got in beside me. It was quite a ride. In theory I disapprove of any piece of machinery designed wholly for speed on the highway, but the thing was obviously fun to drive and she looked cute driving it. We came back after dark, well wind-blown, to find the phone ringing. Natalie went across the room, pulling the scarf off her hair, to get it while I was closing the front door. She stuck her head back a moment later, saying:
“It’s Larry. He says he’s been trying to reach you for an hour. He… they want you at the Project right away. I told him it was against Dr. Barnett’s orders, but he says it’s an emergency.”
I said, “Okay. Give me the keys of the Pontiac and tell them to clear the car through the gate so I don’t have to walk from the parking lot.” Normally, only official vehicles are allowed on the Project.
She said, “At least let me drive you.”
I shook my head. “It’s easier this way. Van Horn wouldn’t let his own mother on the place without getting official clearance, which takes about six months. This way I can drive right up to the door.” I grinned. “Hell, that glamor-buggy practically drives itself. I’m a big boy now, Princess; I’ll be okay. Tell them I’m on my way.”
To get to the Project, you go a certain distance out of Albuquerque in a certain direction. Presently you come to a stretch of desert fenced in like most of the country around here with an ordinary four-strand barbed-wire fence. Like practically all fences in the southwest—destroying any illusions you may have entertained about western hospitality—this one is liberally hung with unfriendly signs: NO TRESPASSING, NO HUNTING, NO WOOD HAULING. I think that if Mount Everest were located in this portion of the United States, Hillary and Tenzing, upon reaching the peak, would have been greeted by a large sign reading: KEEP OFF—THIS MEANS YOU!
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