Charlie grimaced. “Machetes, I believe.”
“That’s why God gave you ten toes. Any mishaps, you’ll still have some spares.”
“Seriously, though.” Charlie put the letter aside. “If the goal is twenty-four, why would Bronsky have me work on ten?”
Giles sat on the bed beside Charlie. “I am untrained in Russian inscrutability. Maybe if he said twenty-four at the outset, you’d have replied that it is impossible.”
“Well, it is. A basic short circuit would involve testing six hundred connections. Or is it six hundred squared?”
“All clears.” Giles nodded at the letter. “Rainbows from your girl?”
Charlie smiled. “And unicorns.”
“Have you informed the young lady yet of your plan to make a hundred babies with her, or die trying?”
“Get out of here.”
“The things you utter in your sleep, Fish. The whole barracks knows.” Giles shook his head. “Poor girl has no idea.”
“Quit it,” Charlie said, grinning and flushed.
The barracks’ back door slammed, two boys entering with a rage of setting sun behind them. The forward one had a familiar stagger.
“Monroe, you infamous chemist and drunkard,” Giles hailed him. “What mischief are you committing this fine evening?”
Monroe navigated to the nearest bunk, holding it for balance. “Celebration.”
“You seem further gone than usual,” Charlie said. “Are you all right?”
“Great, Mister Charlie. Better than eight out of ten.”
“Ouch,” Giles laughed.
“I’ve done something, though. Take a gander.” Monroe lifted his shirt, and sticks of red dynamite were inked in a stack on his ribs, with orange sparks coming off its lit blue fuse. The whole area was ringed by angry skin. “Done it today in Santa Fe.”
“What in the world?” Charlie asked.
“Of course.” Giles threw up his hands. “A tattoo.”
“Souvenir of our mission here.” Monroe fingertipped the red area. “Tender as a new lamb though.”
“Monroe,” Charlie was incredulous. “You do know that we’re working with TNT here, right? And not dynamite?”
Giles burst out laughing.
Monroe shrugged. “No one seeing this’ll know the difference.”
“It’s scarification, regardless,” said the person who’d entered behind Monroe, stepping into the light. “Ugly and permanent. Hello, Fish.”
Charlie found that he had stood. “Richard Mather.”
The mathematician from Chicago made a small bow. “I’m surprised to see you here. I didn’t think your uncle had that much clout.”
“I did it on my own,” Charlie replied. “Or halfway, anyway.”
“Please,” Mather scoffed. “You aren’t nearly intelligent enough.”
“None of us must be very smart,” Giles observed, “to be living in this bedlam.”
Mather checked his fingernails. “At the moment I prefer it to both Belgium and Bataan.”
“No argument there,” Giles answered. “But, Monroe? Lots of argument with you. What have you done?”
“Become irresistible,” he preened. “Handsome as a banty rooster now. Tell them ladies to line right up.”
“You’ve defaced yourself. It’s graffiti on your body.”
“Easy does it,” Charlie said. “Too late to lecture him now.”
But Giles shook his head. “As if this life did not already give a person enough things to regret.”
“Jealousy talking,” Monroe slurred. “Some people can’t handle a man so pretty.”
“Exactly,” Mather said. He leaned against a locker, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I’m breathless with envy.”
Charlie remembered his constant interruptions in Chicago, the picture of his pretty sister who he swore none of them would ever touch. Were they supposed to be friends now, on this island of science? “Which division are you in?”
“Theoretical. Under Bethe.”
“That’s the genius crew,” Giles observed.
Mather blinked blandly at him. “If the shoe fits . . .”
Giles snickered. “Humble too.”
“Fellas.” Monroe shook himself as if he had just awakened. “I’m dancing on over to Fuller Lodge for a bit. Aim to make a god-awful fool of myself, do things I’ll regret for weeks, and I’d be right honored to have your company.”
“Not me,” Charlie said, waving the letter. “I have reading to do. Then I need to march myself over to the tech area, and figure out what went wrong today.”
“That’s you all over, Fish,” Mather said. “Not that bright, but as persistent as a salmon headed upstream.”
Giles’s eyes went back and forth between the two, waiting for Charlie’s riposte. When nothing emerged, he patted his friend on the back. “Don’t underestimate our Charlie. This guy has already rewritten the world’s rules for detonator switching.”
Mather bent at the waist, looking downward, before rising with a smirk. “Just checking to see if I’d wet myself with excitement.”
Giles bristled. “Well, aren’t you a perfect pain in the—”
“Don’t mind Mather,” Charlie interrupted. “Unfortunately, he is every bit as smart as he considers himself to be.”
“Also?” Monroe held one hand high. “He knows where to get whiskey. Them sick of rum can respect such a man.”
Mather stood straight again. “You’ve all bored me. Good-bye.”
He swept away down the barracks aisle, his manner entirely regal, Monroe wobbling along behind, his boozy scent following like a tail. Giles watched them, shaking his head, then turned to Charlie. “Sonder,” he said, “you know what I mean?”
“Rarely do I know what you mean.”
“Sonder is the realization that every other person has a life as vivid and complex as your own.”
“So saith the walking dictionary.”
“Shower night for me, so I’ll leave you to your epistle,” Giles said. “Are you planning to attend tomorrow’s lecture?”
“I’ll be choiring at the church service, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, the physicist Robert Sebring is speaking in the afternoon. Allegedly, he’s going to explain what’s actually happening here, and what we might accomplish.”
“The end of compartmentalization?”
“Possibly. But my hope is for liberosis. Know what I mean?”
Charlie shook his head. “Not a bit.”
“The desire to care less about things. It might do us all some good.”
“Where do you find these ten-cent words?”
“Lying on the ground, Charlie, waiting for someone to scoop them up.” He headed down the row of bunks. “Have a good night.”
“I hope when you wash all the dirt off, there’s still a person left inside.”
Giles snapped his fingers. “Damn close to making your second joke of the day.”
“I apologize.”
Charlie shoved his pillow against the bed frame, settling against it, when who should jump onto his lap but Midnight. She squeezed her ebony body along his leg and began to purr. He rubbed under her chin before lifting the letter again.
Dear Charlie, I took your advice, or followed your example anyhow, and at the urging of my girlfriends, last Saturday I went to a dance.
The guard returned Charlie’s pass, waving him through the fence. Party music from Fuller Lodge echoed at his back. He climbed the creaking stairs and was chagrined to see a light on down the hall in his workroom. The bigger surprise was finding Bronsky there, perched on a high stool.
Usually at ten on a Saturday night, senior staff gathered in one of the directors’ cabins on Bathtub Row, martinis and cigarettes, a mélange of accents arguing or laughing. Yet here was the Detonation Division chief with a magnifying glass, hovering like a vulture over the assemblies that had not fired that afternoon. Or their remains, because he had already taken them apart, pieces and wir
es scattered across the table.
“Hello, sir,” Charlie said.
“Fishk.” Bronsky remained bent forward. “Perhaps I am not only one wondering about today’s result.”
“I thought you wanted this stuff in the trash.”
He kept the magnifying glass to his face. “I am angry then. Not so much now. Do you know why they fail?”
“That’s why I came. To find the error.”
“I do this already and learn nothing. You have a theory?”
Charlie scanned the table. Three weeks of fastidious design and careful soldering lay there, dismantled recklessly. A ballpeen hammer would have done as good a job. Any diagnostics would be pointless now. The error was therefore likely to repeat, and he would be blamed. “Maybe it’s because we used ten detonators, instead of twenty-four.”
“Ah.” Bronsky straightened on the stool. “Someone has been indiscreet.”
“Or honest.”
“Now I see it is your turn for anger.”
“Four, twenty-four, one hundred and four, I’ll do my best. But I thought we were on the same side. Is it wrong for me to know what you actually need? Are you concerned that I might try to talk you out of a method that invites malfunction?”
Bronsky set the magnifying glass on the table with care. “Fishk, how much you are knowing about arcs?”
“Thanks to Chicago,” Charlie answered, “more than I ever cared to know.”
“Good.” He took a sheet of paper and drew a large circle. “Imagine in three dimensions though.”
“A ball.”
“Yes, a sphere, this large.” Bronsky held his arms about four feet apart. Then he drew bumps at various places around the circle. “Detonators in arcs around ball, all identical distance from one another. Calculating this is hard arithmetic, many arcs. But to make ball implode, each detonator must burst uniformly, identical force.”
“Implode. I don’t know that term.”
“Opposite of explode. Pushes everything inward.” He put the pencil down. “Ball we are create here on Hill requires twenty-four detonators. All must fire simultaneously for Gadget to work.”
Charlie pondered this information. “Two questions. First, do you understand that twenty-four things cannot happen at exactly the same time? It has never been done.”
Bronsky shrugged. “Many things happen on Hill that are not done before. What is second question?”
“You know how long I’ve been working on this ten-piece design. Why build and perfect it when you actually need something that can detonate fourteen more?”
“Goal is not device. Goal is knowledge.” He waved his hand over the parts strewn across the table. “This knowledge, we will use many, many of times.”
Charlie scanned the table’s debris. “We will?”
Bronsky’s face went blank. “Or, perhaps, just once.”
23.
By Greta’s measure, I was back-dooring. That is, I was not telling Charlie. In fact, I was not telling anyone. It was my own private glory. My own private torment.
Chris Beatty followed me home that night. It was my idea, the invitation an impulse I followed without pausing to consider the consequences. The ruse was simple too. I asked the gals if they would mind dropping me first, then waited outside till he came marching down the sidewalk. I felt like I’d pulled off a little coup.
Chris arrived quickly, almost at a trot despite his arm in a sling, which struck me as maybe how he did everything. But he pulled up short. “Is this all right?”
“Twice around the block,” I said. “And I’ll still be in before curfew.”
“Fair enough,” he answered, with a smile to melt a girl’s heart. Or at least her resistance. I imagined you could fill a school bus with the ladies who had thrown themselves at this man. Yet here he was, with me. He chose me.
“Come on.” Chris tilted his head up the street. “Princess.”
The charmer. I stepped up on the side of his good arm, and we set off. But his pace was so jerky and quick, I had to grab his elbow to slow him down. Which is how we ended up strolling arm in arm.
He was taller than Charlie. He smelled terrific, which believe it or not was the first time I’d admired a fella’s scent. And he jabbered a mile a minute.
“. . . Then there was the day in high school when you won that basketball game with foul shots—”
“My mother hated me playing that sport. She was afraid I’d break a finger and wreck my organ career.”
“I was home from college for the weekend,” he continued, almost as if I hadn’t spoken, “and wandered over to school just in case. I couldn’t just knock on your parents’ door, hi, I’m the total stranger who pined for your daughter—”
“You pined?”
“—and then that big girl fouled you, it was such a blatant shove, the poor sport, though I also understand how competition is useful, and pushes us to do our best, and maybe she got carried away, but anyway bloop bloop you dropped those two foul shots as easy as unwrapping a lollipop, and the timer rang game over and you’d won.”
He bounced from topic to topic like skipping a stone on the lake: the foul, college, lollipops. Which should I respond to? “Would you believe I had never made two foul shots in a row before?”
“Nope.” Chris shook his head as if I’d uttered blasphemy. “In my mind, Brenda, you always make both shots. Because every time I’ve seen you try, you’ve done it. That makes me want to show off for you sometime, too: land a plane under some difficulty, one engine out or something. To wow you like you wowed me that day.”
I decided it was easiest not to answer. Let him put me on a pedestal. We’d already finished our first lap, and I felt like we could have marched thirty times around.
“But you,” he said at last. “Tell me about yourself, your brother, your dad serving, too, from what I heard. How is it all going?”
“Oh, Chris. It has not been easy.”
I started to explain, but it was a mess. I wanted his sympathy, I wanted to impress him, I wanted to sound humble, I wanted to be honest, I wanted to conceal the existence of Charlie Fish. Chris took it all in, nodding along. When I finished, he just stopped nodding. Not one word in reply. That’s how badly I did.
Yet when we rounded the last corner, he surprised me. “One more lap? Please?”
I turned his wrist to see the time. Ten minutes till. “If we don’t dawdle.”
He picked up the pace. “Can I tell you about flight training? It’s pretty amazing.”
“Please,” I said.
Chris began chattering again, top speed about entrance exams and exercise and finding out he had perfect vision. I started to tell about having perfect pitch, but he was explaining his first takeoff, listing the dangers with such enthusiasm, I let him carry on, and we strolled into the wild blue yonder.
Yes, I promised to see him the next night. I was able to get away with it because Greta was occupied with her guy. We had one phone call the morning after the dance. Turned out Brian was on leave before shipping out to San Francisco, and from there, west and west till he reached the little islands that never surrendered. Time was short, hearts were beating, and her thrill was strong enough that only at the end did she ask about Chris. “Did he stay that obnoxious, or did he calm down?”
“He was a perfect gentleman.”
“I’m so glad. With ones that cute, you never know.”
“Cute is right.”
“Conceited too.”
I hesitated. “Is it conceited if it’s all true?”
“No,” she laughed. “Then it’s just bragging.”
I was standing in the kitchen and my mother in the living room, but I could feel her listening. “Terrible dancer, anyhow.”
“You’re a pal for taking him away. That dance with Brian was something special.”
We rang off, she had to get dressed for a dinner date with her new beau, and I was glad. Her heart could run wild and there would be no room to think about me. Which meant I di
dn’t have to spill about what I was doing.
And what was I doing? I told my mother it was dinner with Greta. Then I pinned on my hat and met Chris four blocks away. He was pacing on the street corner, and I hung back a second to look at him. “Handsome” was the wrong word. “Pretty” was more accurate. Pretty like a busy baroque melody. Pretty like a young horse. When he saw me, he threw down his cigarette and opened his arms wide.
“There she is, my future wife.”
I made a face. “How about we try a first date, and take it from there?”
Chris kissed my hand royalty-style. “Resistance is futile, princess.”
It took all of my moxie to stay self-possessed. “Buy me a steak and we’ll see.”
The restaurant was around the corner from our house, yet I’d never been. Candlelight, small tables. As the maître d’ led us, women followed Chris with their eyes.
When my steak came, he pulled the plate over on his side.
“What’s the big idea?” I asked.
“Patience, princess.” He cut a small piece, stabbed it with his fork and held it toward me.
“What?” I said.
“Please,” he answered, all smiles. “Indulge me.”
I took that bite off the fork. Quick as a pickpocket he cut another piece for me.
“Again?”
“Indulge me, princess.”
So, while his plate of fish went cold, Chris fed me the entire steak. It was the ultimate pampering: slow, luxurious, and I must confess, it became sexual. I had never experienced a man’s keen attention to my senses. Yet here was another bite, his eyes bright. I felt arousal down to my toes. To this day, I wonder what would have happened if he’d attempted a seduction.
After the last bite, he sat back, victorious. I needed to collect myself, wiping my lips with the napkin, the cloth strangely rough. “The most delicious thing I ever ate.”
It sounded so pedestrian, for the magnitude of what he had awakened in me. Chris only called the waiter over, asked for the check, and went to work on his fish. In minutes we were outside, heading to the theater.
I held his good arm with both hands. “What are we seeing?”
Universe of Two Page 17
