Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  Sometime midafternoon, Bronsky’s truck would appear on the ridge. Everyone could see Charlie stiffen. Collecting his papers of test results, he’d nod at the site boss—“Thanks again, sir”—before trotting up the hill to the truck. He’d hand the pages in the passenger-side window, then tumble in back. The truck climbed the dirt hill, reached the gravel road, and roared away out of sight.

  Each night he would work in the lab, soldering, testing, soldering, building detonators, soldering. Only when he had enough designs to occupy the testing crew the next day would he step out into the fall New Mexican night. Never had he seen so many stars. The air smelled sharply of pine. He could hear distant conversations, as if from across a body of water. Charlie would reach Ashley Pond, squatting at its edge, and in the soft dirt with his finger he would write one letter: B.

  The Allies had reached Paris in August. Hitler ordered his troops to destroy the city on the way out, but they had not obeyed. Brussels came next, liberated in early September. Hitler survived an assassination attempt, and Rommel committed suicide rather than be executed for his role in it.

  Meanwhile, Brenda was waking and sleeping, eating and working, and not answering his letters. He’d sent three, without a word in return. In a way, he had his answer. A woman not responding to letters was, in a fashion, being quite articulate.

  Charlie straightened and left that B in the mud. After stretching his back and neck, he wandered off toward the barracks.

  “There he is,” Monroe hailed from across the yard, veering in Charlie’s direction. “Rarest critter in these parts: Charlatius Fishius.”

  “An uncommon sighting indeed,” called Giles, who wobbled a bit himself. “I thought they’d gone extinct.”

  “You’re looking at the last of its kind, right here.”

  Charlie stood still as they approached, a tortoise out of steam.

  “The species may be extinct after all.” Giles lifted Charlie’s arm and let it fall to his side. “This one appears to be dead.”

  “Pity,” Monroe answered. “A loss to us all.”

  “Hello, guys,” Charlie said. “What did I miss tonight?”

  They glanced at each other and both burst out laughing.

  “Really?” Charlie said. “That good?”

  “No,” Giles protested, though he continued laughing. “It was terrible.”

  “I can’t wait to hear.”

  Monroe tried a serious face but could not maintain it. “The fella nearly died.”

  “Till they turned the lab into a vomitorium,” Giles said, and that sent them on another spasm of laughter.

  Charlie sighed. “It’s been a long day, guys.”

  “Of course,” Giles said, sobering. “But it exemplifies the absurdity of this place.”

  “It went like this.” Monroe held his hands wide, like he was holding a picture frame. “Don Mastick, nice chemist fella, expert at scoping the smallest reactions. Oppie loves that stuff, so Mastick’s holding a glass vial, tiny, maybe the size of a sewing needle.”

  “This afternoon,” Giles added. “Six hours ago.”

  “Setting in that tube, though?” Monroe hastened to say, peeved at the interruption. “Near about half the world’s plutonium supply.”

  “Now I’m interested,” Charlie said.

  “Well, during the afternoon some of the liquid done gassified in there. When he held the vial in his hand, the heat was too much.”

  “So it burst?” Charlie said.

  Monroe nodded. “Popped. Onto the wall, mostly, but a bit went onto Mastick’s lips.” His eyes were bright with delight. “Some, right into the bastard’s open mouth.” And he was off laughing again.

  “That’s not funny,” Charlie said. “Do you know how dangerous—”

  “Rest assured,” Giles patted his arm. “They contacted senior medical staff immediately. Hempelmann and the others. They concocted a nonreactive solution to rinse out his mouth. He swished it, then spat it, every fifteen minutes for three hours. They tested the spit and it was a good recovery.”

  “But then.” Monroe wiped away a tear. “I don’t know why this part kills me, but it does. They run a counter on his breath from six feet away. Mastick’s still hot as a barbecue. So then . . .” He started chortling again.

  “They pumped his stomach,” Giles interrupted. “And collected the contents. That’s a beaker I shudder to contemplate. And when it came time to salvage the plutonium from the organic material—”

  “Who did they give the job to?” Monroe thumbed Charlie in the ribs. “Who?”

  “I have no possible idea.”

  “Mastick,” Monroe all but yelled. “They made the poor bastard titrate his own barf.” And he was howling with laughter again.

  Giles chuckled along, while Charlie stood shaking his head. “You guys are great. Honestly. But can I please go to bed now?”

  Monroe kept grinning. “You know, Mister Charlie, a thing I admire about you?”

  “What is that?”

  “That you can work all day on detonators, and still sleep at night.”

  “Hey,” Giles said. “Play nice.”

  “No offense,” Monroe protested. “I can’t get but about three winks, myself.”

  “Nor any taken,” Charlie answered, patting Monroe’s arm as he walked past, aiming for the barracks. “I’m too tired to take offense at anything.”

  He was soldering in his sleep. A giant in-box bent under the weight of designs he was to build. The instant he finished an assembly, some soldiers snatched it up. Brenda stood by, tapping her foot. In the logic of the dream, she could end his work with a word, but she kept silent. Charlie wanted to see where the finished detonators were going, but whenever he turned his head someone would press on his stomach to make him focus on the device before him. As he surfaced into wakefulness, it turned out that Midnight was kneading the blanket on his belly with alternating paws. He rubbed her ears back, which she tolerated for half a minute before hopping down to begin her day’s expeditions.

  The barracks were quiet, the others boys already at work. Charlie shuffled to the latrine, squinting at a pinup calendar to see that it was Saturday. Tonight, he might have some fun. If he was not too exhausted. Or too blue about Brenda. Or required to build something for Monday.

  Probably he had slept through breakfast. But he scanned the row of empty sinks, and for the first time since arriving at The Hill, he had his choice.

  Charlie was waiting by the mess hall for a ride to the concrete bowl when Monroe arrived with the power wagon. Stopping to let boys unload, he gave a sloppy salute.

  “So I missed it?” Charlie asked.

  “Yep, but you done good, Mister Charlie.”

  “I did?”

  “Sixteen went bang without a hitch. New world record.”

  “Two of them misfired?”

  Monroe shook his head. “Didn’t fire at all.”

  Feeling like a rock had dropped in his belly, Charlie put a hand on the truck for balance. A moment later, Bronsky’s yellow pickup came idling along. The driver slowed, and Charlie moved over to receive his lecture. But the department director only pointed over his shoulder. “We have leave assembly on big table. Perhaps please by tomorrow you are find what failed and why.”

  “Sure,” Charlie said. “Yes, sir.”

  The truck pulled away, and wearily Charlie started toward the gate to the labs. At the same time the guards stepped forward, he reached for his pass.

  “Hey, Mister Charlie,” Monroe called. “See you at the dance tonight?”

  “I wish,” he mumbled. The guards inspected his pass and waved him forward.

  When Charlie had presented his assembly for testing, it was laid out on a grid atop the fabrication table. Now a rough wooden crate sat in that place. He dragged it to the edge and peered in: wires, devices, cables, all in a mad knot. He turned the crate over and dumped the contents out.

  It looked like a spiderweb that had trapped itself. Merely untangling the thing
would take hours, and that was before a single diagnostic test. There was no one to help him, no one to share the work. And if he succeeded, what then? Was he a hero, or a monster? How would his invention be used?

  Charlie fell back into his chair. Detonation wires dangled a few feet away. Without thinking, he took the positive one and clipped it to his left sleeve. Calmly, he attached the negative to his right. He completed the circuit. He was the Gadget.

  The building’s custodian passed in the hallway, a local man mopping the floor. He circled back though, and poked his head in the doorway. “Everything all right, senor?”

  “Excellent, fantastic, splendid,” Charlie told the man. He lifted the wires and let them fall on his chest. “All clears.”

  29.

  Already I knew Lizzie well enough to wait before asking. I gave it three whole days, though I was ravenous with curiosity. Meanwhile, Mrs. Morris was friendly to me as a scorpion. Each Sunday after I played, trying harder, aiming for perfection, her hostility was less hidden. And the reverend—between daily services, visiting the sick, and the funeral of a woman who’d lived her whole life in Santa Fe and therefore drew quite a crowd—was not around the house much. We all knew when he’d come home, though, because that voice boomed up the stairs like it was amplified.

  “Thank God he’s quiet during sex,” Lizzie joked one day, though the very thought scandalized me.

  It was after dinner, and I’d just come from the washroom. “You are so saucy” was the best reply I could muster.

  “Probably he waits till we’re both not here, so they can be as loud as they want.”

  “Probably you should spend less time imagining other people’s private activities.”

  Lizzie laughed. “Believe me, kid. If my Timothy were here, I’d be thinking about his and mine and there’d be no room for anyone else’s.”

  “Naughty.” I whapped her with my washcloth. “Come drink with me at La Fonda.”

  “Your treat this time?”

  “Why not?”

  “Church collection money paying for booze.” She slid into sandals. “I love it.”

  Off we went, into the warm evening. The moon hung high in the clear desert sky. Lizzie took my arm and we strolled like sisters.

  The hotel bar was packed as a theater showing a new Bogart movie. Guys in their twenties, loud as a college party. Dozens of them, but no Charlie. One funny thing: None of them were dressed like ranchers or vacationers. No locals either. No girls. No one in uniform. Just a gang of pale guys with short hair, many wearing glasses.

  We found a table outside, beneath a string of bare bulbs. I waited till the waitress brought our drinks, then dove right in. “Why is Mrs. Morris strange about me now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was friendly till I played the organ. Now I’m the skunk at her garden party.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “It’s your imagination.”

  “You’d think she’d have a sweeter personality, wearing such sweet perfume.”

  “That’s just a cover-up. The woman’s a genuine grouch.”

  “But not to me, at the beginning. Now she leaves the church anytime I play, almost at a run. And she’s much less friendly around the house.”

  “Are you really good at the organ?”

  “I’m not terrible.”

  “Maybe she was. Maybe it was a big problem with her husband, that she was a lousy organist and the choir hated her, and he had to hire you to keep his job. Your talent and youth stick a knife right in her pride.”

  I sipped rum and tonic like a mouthful of candy. It was wonderfully cold. “It feels bigger than that.”

  “Well, you’ve never had someone more talented than you rub it in your face.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said.

  “I bet there have not been too many situations that humbled Brenda Dubie. You seem plenty confident.”

  I squirmed. “I’ll tell you one way I am definitely not confident: push-ups.”

  “Oh ho.” Lizzie brightened. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  “Here?”

  She pointed. “Behind my chair. No one will see but me.”

  Clambering around, I tucked my dress between my knees and used my best form.

  “Three?” Lizzie laughed. “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “I started out with less.” I stood, a little wounded. “You don’t have to be mean.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but three?”

  I slumped into my chair. “I’m not sure why those stupid exercises are so three-alarm important, anyway.”

  “Because.” Suddenly serious, Lizzie leaned toward me. “Is a woman who can do only three push-ups worth going to war for? A man needs something to desire, to keep him alive. Your guy is working day and night on some math thing that wipes his brain out. My guy is training for the Pacific invasion, preparing to see his buddies killed, maybe do some killing himself. You want a man to come home when this is all done, and think you are the only thing he has ever desired, and the only thing he will desire for the rest of his life. Then you go make babies like your life depended on it.”

  I couldn’t argue. Someday the war would end. Only that morning I read that we’d torpedoed the Junyo Maru, 5,620 men. Hitler was in retreat too. Sooner or later, our soldiers would put their rifles down, and come home. And the mathematicians? What would happen to them?

  “Do you think I am being punished?” I blurted it out without thinking.

  “Whatever for?”

  “Charlie never answered my letter saying I was moving here.”

  “Have you written him again?”

  I shook my head. “I came all this way. He should write to me.”

  “You and your pride,” Lizzie said. “Did you consider maybe your letter got lost?”

  “None of the other ones did.”

  “You’re disappointed in him, when actually he might not know you are here? And weeks are going by?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She gave me a long look, straight on, like I was a salesman feeding her a line.

  “What?” I said. “What is it?”

  “Maybe you want to be punished. It’s odd to cross half the country for a guy, then not contact him. Maybe you did something wrong, so you’re punishing yourself. Otherwise you would have written him twice, gone to the police, tracked him down somehow.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” My voice rose a little. “Presumptuous too. I want to be punished? What kind of crazy idea is that?”

  Lizzie sat back with her drink, confident as a bird on her perch. “A correct one.”

  Normally when we returned from a night out, the boardinghouse’s downstairs windows were dark. Only the stairway light would be on. But that night the whole place was lit up. Two drinks in my belly, I hadn’t noticed. But Lizzie grabbed my arm and made us stop.

  “Who’s that for?” she whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re not up listening to the radio.” She pointed at the lit windows. “So they have news. Is it for you, or me?”

  “Lizzie, that is a terrible way to think.”

  But her fear was naked to me, just then, and contagious. “If it’s me,” I said, “I’ll need your help. And if it’s you, I promise to stand by you.”

  “Oh, Brenda.” She gave me a quick hug. “I do love my fella.”

  “And he’s not in combat yet.”

  “And your brother is in a motor pool, away from the fighting.”

  “They’re going to be all right,” I said. Which was pretending, because aside from submarine kills, I knew nothing about anything.

  We were standing in the entryway off the living room, clutching each other’s hands, when Reverend Morris cleared his throat. “Brenda?”

  My mouth went dry. So it was me. Why did he have to be so damn loud?

  “Hello,” I said, chipper as a Monday morning. “How was your evening?”

  “Your moth
er called,” Mrs. Morris announced, icicles dripping from her words. What had I done to her, anyhow?

  “Is everyone all right?” I asked, my voice cracking a little.

  Mrs. Morris did not look up from her needlepoint. “We knew better than to pry.”

  “She would like you to phone her,” the reverend boomed. “We discussed it, and we are willing to make a long distance call for you.”

  I glanced back and forth between them. “Is it too late to do it now? I mean, thank you. But could we?”

  Mrs. Morris only pursed her lips, and pulled a needle through the canvas.

  “Of course.” Reverend Morris rose from his chair.

  I followed him into the study, where he picked up the black phone and dialed the operator. He read her the number from a slip of paper. I tried to imagine my mother giving him our number, and what it might mean. Lizzie marched right across that living room to stand beside me. What a pal. I held her hand.

  “It’s going through now.” He handed me the phone.

  “Hello?” My mother sounded throaty.

  “It’s Brenda, Mother. Is everything all right?”

  “Sweet girl. How nice it is to hear your voice.”

  “Who is hurt, Mother? What happened?”

  “Why, no one is hurt, Brenda. Hold on.” She coughed, I could hear her doing something, then she came back. “How are you, my girl?”

  I felt confused. Her voice sounded fine. “Is there some kind of emergency?”

  “Not at all. I’m just waking up. I told the Morrises there was nothing wrong.”

  Something inside me went cold. I turned and Mrs. Morris was concentrating on her needlepoint, calm as a sleeping cat. Why had she scared me like that? “Is that so?”

  “After you left,” my mother was saying, “the house was too empty to bear. I closed the store for a bit, and went to Aunt Claire’s. You remember.”

  “On the lake in Wisconsin, I sure do.”

  “Well, I’ve been wanting to call anyway. But when I came home and saw the letters, it was the perfect excuse. But no one’s hurt, honey. I’ve heard from your father and Frank and it’s business as usual.”