by Lydia Millet
—Where’s Leo? said Oppenheimer urgently when they made eye contact. —I couldn’t find him!
—In the bus, she said. —The white one. He wants the media there.
—Is he OK? I saw him fall off. I was having trouble myself.
—He was shot!
—Shot with a gun?
—They said the guy was aiming for you, Oppie! said Larry. —This one ORV guy was boasting that he was gonna get Oppenheimer, he said turning to Ann, —but we haven’t tracked him down. Big Glen’s working on it.
—Are you with a news channel? she asked the cameraman, as the Megadeath teen elbowed past them carrying a mangy cat.
—Yeah. That’s Sharon, over there with the pink suit and the blond hair? She’s the reporter.
—Can you take me to him, Ann? asked Oppenheimer anxiously. —All the people make it hard for me to move by myself. They stop me, it’s impossible to—just get me over there, would you?
With Larry and the cameraman clearing a path through the people in front of them she held Oppenheimer’s hand and pulled him after her.
—I feel claustrophobic, he said. —Annie! Don’t leave me!
Then she heard something and they stopped walking and looked up into the sky. There was a helicopter descending, litter flying out from beneath it in a swirl. It was dark and wide.
It has been estimated that fallout from American atmospheric testing between 1945 and 1963 has caused or will cause fatal cancers in between seventy thousand and eight hundred thousand people in the U.S. and around the world. Soviet testing likely has yielded a similar number.
—Are you kidding me? The DEA? squeaked Szilard from his prone position on the bed.
They had retreated into the bus quickly, taking cover from the chopper. It was too big, big and loud, and who knew what it would bring.
Szilard turned to the cameraman. —Don’t film yet. This is private!
—The Dog Enforcement Agency? asked Tamika, musing gently. She stood in the corner of the bus kitchenette barefoot, holding a small potted cactus. On the top of the cactus sat a doll-sized cowboy hat.
—It’s like some kind of a raid, said Clint. —Guess they ran out of immigrants to persecute.
—You mean the Border Patrol? asked Tamika. —They’re so mean to those poor little Mexicans.
—I have nothing to hide, said Szilard. —Neither do any of us.
—Well, actually, said Clint.
—I mean, there are a few narcotics, said Larry. —I mean, not ours of course. Mostly. Nothing heavy. At least in quantity.
—Narcotics? asked Oppenheimer.
—See? said Tamika to Oppenheimer, sidling over and leaning against his side, drooping her head onto his shoulder with a dreamy smile. —It’s from Arizona. It’s really alive. It’s an actual real cactus. But it says Tombstone on it.
She held up the cactus in its souvenir pot.
—Ah? asked Oppenheimer, puzzled.
—Not the pizza, the Old West thing. This cactus pot? It’s very, very beautiful. Isn’t it?
—I wouldn’t go that far.
—Sweet sorrow pot.
—Are the DEA men coming in here? asked Szilard impatiently.
—How should I know? asked Ann.
—OK, take me outside. I need someone to carry me. Two people. I’m still weak. I could fall down. But we have to finish our speech, said Szilard. —And the webcast.
—The webcast?
—It’s being webcast on our site. Right now all they’re getting is the party out there. Waste of bandwidth.
—But you need medical attention, Leo!
—The splint will do for now, said Szilard. —It’s a flesh wound, that’s all.
—I really don’t advise it, Leo, said Oppenheimer. —You have a serious injury. I think we should cut our losses.
—But we weren’t even done with our speeches!
—You are injured, said Oppenheimer calmly. —And the salient points had already been made.
—Stay right where you are! Government agents! barked a man behind them, and the door of the bus crashed against the wall again and splintered beside him.
Larry shrieked and Ann shrank away, holding the back of the couch.
Behind him were other men with long guns. They wore vests and dark jackets marked DEA. The guns were real, no doubt, but Ann found herself drifting. Whenever she saw a gun these days the world became less real. She told herself to stay there, to remain. It was not right that she felt lightheaded right now, not right that she had begun to feel like a dream.
—Man, said Clint, and whistled through his teeth. —That a Saco M60? Nice!
—We have nothing to do with the meth lab, said Szilard stoutly.
—Put your hands in the air! All of you!
—Jesus Christ, said Larry.
—I’m just press, said the cameraman to the SWAT guys, and bobbed his camera up toward them as proof. —KLAS-TV Eyewitness News?
—We don’t have weapons, said Ann, trying for calm and gentle, as though soothing a maniac. —None of us. These people are all peace activists. We’re harmless!
—Hands in the air or we will shoot. All of you! Get up against that wall, put your hands up against it above you and turn your backs.
—What is this, some kind of fascist firing squad? asked Larry, as the rest of them started to shuffle toward the wall. —We have civil rights here, man. We’re American citizens.
—Omigod, you’re all so cool-looking! Just like on TV! said Tamika brightly to the SWAT team, and held out her potted cactus in both hands, smiling. —Where do you get those outfits?
He had certain tasks and took pride in performing them dutifully—public speaking, for instance, because Szilard had insisted on this pitiful effort. He had the full-time job of impersonating himself, a service he had never dreamed he would be called upon to provide.
But quietly, all the same, the turmoil of it had driven him far away. He had come to see himself as an observer in the late world, less a part of anything than a shade on the edge of the sun. If he was nothing more than perspective, nothing more than a fixed point outside the realm in which the action swirled, noisy and rude beyond his reach, he would not have to feel the pull of it, the tension and hope of being a participant. He would not have to contend with anger or disappointment.
He was not a fighter anyway, and he never had been. He described and he synthesized: he saw through the dirt to the skeletal roots of ideas. But he was not a politician. A diplomat, possibly. He could manage finesse, and a polite and civil distance. But he would not join in battle. He would speak and listen, he would do his best, but as far as he was concerned all that was before him now was a tapestry, the world after it had been mortally hurt, only moving slowly, feebly, the way an animal suffers in the undergrowth, left by a careless hunter.
To be released from desire was in fact a privilege, and when for moments or for hours he forgot how he had come to be alone here in this late, new world, forgot the absence of his wife and his children, of his own life, then he could sometimes breathe freely. Although he had made a promise to go through the motions, and he would be faithful to that on the off, off-chance there was still hope to abide by, still purpose, in fact, in the end, in the base of himself he knew everything was already over.
It was only a faint afterimage, printed on the eye.
4
—Why do they give you so much food?
—Because people demand it, said Ben.
Fermi was defeated by the imposing presence of his omelet, inert in a puddle of melted cheese. They were sitting in a diner across from their motel.
—If a man can put that in his stomach then he must be very fat, said Fermi, staring down at his plate.
The cell phone rang and Ben excused himself to answer it, going outside to shelter under the awning as he pressed the TALK button. In the distance a row of pines stood against the white horizon, and the parking lot was vast.
—It’s me, said Ann on the other en
d, faint and windy.
—Where are you?
—The DEA came in and did a mass arrest, she said.
—Pardon?
—But they didn’t take the scientists. They took some bikers with a portable meth lab. And that Belgian food activist.
—Are you bullshitting me?
—We’re still here, outside the Test Site, she said. —Szilard has a broken arm. He’s got some interviews lined up with TV. He thinks someone tried to assassinate him.
The connection was uneven.
— … Szilard … challenge to the Army, she said. — … them to show …
—I can’t hear you, Ann. You’re breaking up. Were these DEA people connected with the military?
— … he’s going to get them to exhume Fermi’s body and do a DNA test. It’s for PR.
—What?
—Yeah.
—Fermi’s body? Why not his?
—He and Oppie were cremated. Remember?
—Did Fermi authorize this?
—Szilard claims that he did.
Ben turned and looked in the diner window at Fermi, who was delicately smearing grape jelly onto a piece of toast. On the other end he heard static, and what sounded like a long wail in the distance.
—You’re breaking up. I have to go, sweetie.
— … don’t know what to …, said Ann. — … waiting for you to save me.
—It would be my pleasure.
Maybe it was not fear of death that motivated the people who were most alive, she thought, but some other force, say a capacity for delight.
—We do not have good intelligence on the culprit yet, said Szilard to the tabloid reporter. He squinted in the morning sun slanting into the food tent and stuffed pieces of stale-looking bagel into his mouth with his good hand.
Ann sat in a folding chair nearby, arms crossed on her chest, watching. Beyond Szilard, in the bus, Oppenheimer was sending out a press release. The door was closed and locked: he needed privacy. But he had opened a small window to let out his cigarette smoke, and she could see his dark head bent inside.
—Are the police investigating?
—Good question, said Szilard. —They took statements from us, but they did not seem overly concerned.
—Someone tried to kill you and the police aren’t even concerned about it?
—They seem to be taking a laissez-faire attitude.
—Do you have, uh, enemies?
—Elements of the military-industrial complex, clearly.
—You’re telling me that two men claiming to be resurrected A-bomb scientists—
—There are three of us, actually. Myself, Oppenheimer, and Enrico Fermi. He’s not here yet, but he’s coming.
—pose some kind of threat to the U.S. military, which has the largest weapons arsenal in the world?
—Exactly.
—The most powerful array of nuclear weapons known to man? And this Army would be threatened by—you?
—You said it all when you said it, broke in Larry.
Ann turned away and wandered past the breakfast picnic table, where Clint and Tamika sat discussing Adalbert’s incarceration.
—It’s because of the French accent!
—They probably don’t know he’s Belgian.
Over their shoulders Loni dealt out fried slabs of tofu on a spatula. Ann slid by her and walked out past the bush toilet, on which a small child was perched, blue sweatpants around his ankles, and wound through the dead-gray clumps of bursage beyond. The off-roaders had decamped leaving piles of milk and water jugs, juice cartons, crushed beer cans, cigarette butts, plastic bags, dirty rags of twisted cotton underwear and balled socks, and the odd rash of birdshot cartridges, bright red on the brown sand.
Three of them, fat as pigs, ate pancakes off a Coleman stove balanced on the tailgate of a truck.
Szilard would make his claims to anyone, she thought, make his claims baldly, unembarrassed by their absurdity. Others would be embarrassed to look the way he did, in preposterous insistence. But Szilard was not pinned down by concern for his own appearance.
The drum circle had formed again and she steered around it, walking out toward the road again, free and clear. Across the freeway in the distance she could see the Test Site buildings, a dull concrete pile. A dark van sped in her direction and then screeched to a stop on the road shoulder, raising dust, and behind it a bus had to brake hard, driver leaning on the horn. She turned away again and walked out into the flat of the desert, keeping the low mountains in front of her, her back to the road and the site, with Peace Camp on her right.
A few minutes later she stopped and sat on a rock. She could see back over the encampment, its makeshift tents and the trailers and trucks and motorcycles. Between her and it there were cholla trees with their toxic spines alit, awkward and sharp against the sky.
She watched people move in the camp, watched the drum circle and the stream of small crowds back and forth, cars pull up and drive away. A phalanx of cyclists in bright blue and yellow clothing approached along the freeway and passed by the camp without stopping.
She felt far away for a very long time.
Ben did not break the news to Fermi until they were almost there. He held off because he was reluctant to be the bearer of bad tidings: but then Fermi had to hear it now, in private, not later when there were people around them.
As the sprawl of Vegas hove into view he finally told him. Fermi said nothing for a long time, looking out the window. His fingers worked a frayed cord he had dug out of the glove compartment when he cleaned it.
—I mean, said Ben slowly, —he did ask you again since you refused initially, didn’t he?
—No, said Fermi.
If Fermi was not Fermi he would not care about Fermi’s family. Ben wondered how much he knew, whether he had covertly researched his descendants and learned the names of his grandchildren.
—It may not hurt them, said Ben softly.
—There’s nothing I can do, said Fermi.
—You can intervene.
—I’m not worried about exhumation, said Fermi. —That is nothing to me. I’m worried about what happens after. Will they contact me? The family?
—Don’t worry, because they won’t prove anything, said Ben. —So it won’t come to that. Szilard will be laughed out of court, if that’s where he’s going. Ann says it’s just a publicity stunt.
—I want him to succeed, said Fermi, —but this is not nice.
When she got back to camp, thirsty and sweating because she had taken no water with her, it was still and quiet. The wind had died down and the tents and the metal of the cars and motorcycles baked placidly in the sun. She saw hardly anyone anywhere until she noticed the crowd spilling out of the buses, lined up beside them, craning toward something within.
She went over but could not get through them to the front of the ranks, so all she could do was listen. It sounded like local news, except that Oppenheimer was speaking. She realized it was his speech from the demonstration, and behind his voice fireworks popped and engines gunned. She wished she could see the footage.
Then Szilard’s voice.
— … establish our identity through forensic pathology, which has made great strides since 1945, and with the apparent anomaly of our presence here widely acknowledged and recognized by the scientific community—
—I don’t get what he’s saying, whispered a woman next to her in a lime-green tube top and bellbottom jeans. —What’s he talking about? Can you explain it to me?
—I want to listen, said Ann sharply.
The woman sniffed and turned away from her, disapproving. Ann stared for a while at her mango-shaped breasts in the tube top. They were bigger than her head.
— … begin both to investigate the phenomenon in greater depth and pursue our campaign against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
—I understand that, along with a student group from Albuquerque, you are planning to sue the Army, said the reporter. —Under the Freedom
of Information Act?
—We filed suit already and we go to court the day after tomorrow, said Szilard. —Our case is finally being heard. The Army tried to get it dismissed but they failed. We know they have the records.
—Have you seen Robert? whispered Larry urgently, pushing past two men in net tank tops and the tube top woman to sidle up beside her. —None of us can find him!
—I was hiking, said Ann. —I haven’t seen anyone.
—Would you help me look for him? I mean why wouldn’t he be here watching this?
—Sure, said Ann, and they scooped around the back of the crowd, looking for Oppenheimer’s head above it. Around the back of the bus were some teenagers in lawn chairs taking bong hits as Father Raymond hovered nearby trying to convince them to stop, saying —It’s very important to build a community where people feel safe saying no.
Then they were up to the next bus, and crowds gathered there too. Larry was agitated.
—I already looked here, and at the port-a-john and the food tent, and over there where all the one-man tents are?—and behind the generators, and near the firepits.
—He might have gone for a walk like I did, said Ann. —He likes his privacy.
—But he’s not supposed to go anywhere without Glen. I mean he’s his full-time bodyguard till the hired guns get here! Glen took a five-minute break to separate these assholes that were fighting, and when he got done Robert was just gone.
—David! called Ann.
Always under cover, he knelt in some bushes in front of the second bus, fiddling with the knobs on his spotting scope’s tripod. His hair was loose from its ponytail and flew out around his head, and he had a cut on his cheek.
—Excuse me, she said. —Have you seen Oppenheimer?