Nothing So Strange

by James Hilton

  “Well … I took my turn at fire-watching, air-raid work and so on. I wanted to see what was happening.”

  “And you saw?”

  “Yes, I saw plenty. I guess you did too. Only I hadn’t the excuse of a book to write—it was just for my own private education.”

  “What did you use for money while you were idling as you call it?”

  He laughed. “Those twenty A.T. and T.‘s that my uncle had left me. I sold ‘em without a qualm.”

  He went on to say that he lived quite happily—yes, that was a true word, however strange it might sound—throughout 1941. Once he tried to enlist in the R.A.F. (he had always wanted to learn to fly), but there were difficulties about his citizenship. They didn’t worry about that in air raids, though. He liked the English very much, he said—much more than he had during his earlier period in London. But of course after Pearl Harbor he wanted to return to America. He reached New York in January 1942, an out-of-work and practically penniless mathematician, than which there is normally no more maladjusted person on earth. But for him, just then, his own country seemed a wonderful place. He tried again to enlist, and again in the Air Force, but to his surprise they found something wrong with his blood count—it was the first time in his life he had ever had to think of his body in a way that less fortunate people do all the time. The doctor heard where he had lived during recent years and suggested that he take things easy for a while, fatten up on sunshine, fresh air, and plenty of good food. But he had no money to idle any more, besides which, he wasn’t in any mood to idle in America. The only thing he could think of was to go back “home,” and home was North Dakota, where members of his family still lived. To his surprise he got quite a warm reception, which was just as well, because almost immediately his health broke down, the accumulated strains and stresses of many years exacting a sudden price.

  He said: “I don’t know what I’d have done if it hadn’t been a farm. When you’re ill on a farm people don’t bother much about you, they don’t fuss, they have their own work that can’t be neglected, and their contact with animals and animal ailments makes them very considerate yet also very practical. And then when you get better you can always find some little job that really helps them yet doesn’t tax you too much.”

  “What really was the trouble—your trouble?”

  “I suppose you’d call it a nervous breakdown. If I’d taken much notice of it I’d probably be having it still.”

  “I’m not sure that you aren’t having it still.”

  He retorted harshly: “Oh, nonsense. There’s nothing the matter with me now except … well, anyhow, let’s get on with the story. I improved. I worked on the farm. I learned to fly—got my license—did quite a bit of local flying. That took me up to pretty near the end of 1943. Then one day I went on some farm business to Chicago. On the train I ran into an old school friend who had since gone into teaching and was science professor at a college in Iowa. He knew roughly what my own field was because he was interested in it too, and he told me of some important research being done in Chicago that was altogether in my line. ‘It’s war work,’ he said, rather mysteriously, ‘and I daresay they could use you.’ So while I was in Chicago I called at the place. They were cordial if also a bit mysterious; they said it was quite likely they could give me a job. But they had to pass me on to someone else who made all the appointments, and after more questions and form-filling I was told they would let me know. I went back to the farm and didn’t really expect to hear from them again. But after a few weeks I did—they wanted me in Chicago for another interview. This was a different kind—very thorough, not quite hostile but almost—a bit like a cross-examination in court. I found they knew much more about my association with Framm than I had told anybody. Anyhow, in due course they sent me to this place in Tennessee—I see one can mention its name now. They gave me a job there. Perhaps I’d better not say what, though it couldn’t be much of a disclosure, because it was the sort of thing any sixteen- year-old physics student at college could have learned in half an hour.”

  “Why didn’t you ask for something more suitable?”

  “I did, and nothing came of it. Then I figured that after all, my name was unknown and my credentials weren’t of surpassing weight. But the real reason was probably in me—I’m not personally ambitious, never have been, and if that was the way they wanted me to help win the war, it was perfectly okay. They had some fine mathematicians already working for them—I wasn’t boastful enough to think I had anything unique to contribute.”

  “Not even your knowledge of the kind of thing Framm had been doing?”

  “I’d told them about that. It wasn’t exactly on the same lines as their work. I’m sorry I can’t explain more fully.”

  “I probably wouldn’t understand it if you did. So you settled down at this elementary job and what happened?”

  “Nothing much. There’s really no eventfulness in this part of my story. After Vienna and Berlin it’s quite without drama. I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m glad. You’ve had enough drama for one lifetime. Or don’t you think so?”

  “Yes, I think so too.”

  “What was it like to live at this place? Tell me all the unscientific things about it.”

  He answered grimly: “That would certainly get to the root of the matter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind…. I know what you mean. The everyday details. Well, that’s fairly easy. The place grew to have a population of sixty or seventy thousand—mostly laborers on the actual construction of buildings. They had to be housed, with their families, so there were shops, banks, schools—just like any other town. But you couldn’t drive in and look round. You had to have some business there before they’d give you a permit, and even then you couldn’t get in the plant without another permit. And inside the plant you had to have extra permits to go from one part to another. One got used to it after a time.”

  “Where did you live?”

  “In a sort of two-by-four apartment—just a room and bath—or rather, it was a stall shower which I shared with three other men. I shared the room with one other. Rather primitive, but that couldn’t be helped—the place was impossibly crowded, you were lucky to have a roof over your head. The rent was low—the government fixed it that way; and we also got our meals at government cafeterias—cheap and fairly good. And there were movies and dances and tennis courts and everything else you could wish for in the way of normal recreation. I’ve no complaints against the physical conditions of living—they were as good as could be expected in the circumstances. My roommate was a nice boy out of Harvard. Presently he was drafted into the army, put through basic training, then sent back to the Project on army pay—that was done with a good many of the younger men. Some of them resented it, but compared with the boys who were doing the fighting overseas I couldn’t myself see what they had to kick against, except, of course, that munition workers and longshoremen weren’t treated that way—only scientists. I half expected the authorities would do the same to me, because I was sure I was quite fit again, and I wouldn’t have minded at all, but I was thirty-one and I guess that put me over an age limit they must have had. I got quite friendly with this Harvard boy—he had the same keen and almost emotional interest in science that I had had at his age, and so he was less able than I to accept our common fate—which was routine work far beneath our capacities. An even harder thing for him was that there were no facilities to continue study—no classes to attend that would have given him the feeling of not entirely wasting his time. There was a library in the place, but it contained no books of any advanced character in his field—in fact I was told that all such books were quietly withdrawn from every public library throughout the country. Anyhow, I taught him some tensor analysis in the evenings, and I think it was a relief to both of us while it lasted. When he came back from the army he was put on another job—not better, just different— and I
didn’t see much of him then. It wasn’t easy to make or keep friends except by the coincidence of working or rooming with them—times and places were hard to arrange, unless you were just satisfied to see a movie or watch a football game. Personally I’d been somewhat schooled to an isolated life by working with Framm, though there had been the compensation in that of doing a job that taxed me fully. And of course there were certain things that never did bother me at all anywhere—the regimen of work and sleep, plain meals, little social life, long walks in the country—it was all the kind of thing I’d been used to, and I was far happier with it than some of the others were. One thing it did—it gave me a chance to read, and I filled up some deplorable gaps in my general education—history, economics, literature, political science. You’ll find me not quite so stupid as I used to be.”

  “I’d already noticed it,” I said dryly. “And I’ve also noticed that you’re a bit on the defensive about this place. You didn’t really like it, did you?”

  He demurred; it wasn’t quite so simple as that. It was true there was an atmosphere there that weighed irksomely at times—an atmosphere hard to describe except by the negative word “unscientific”—which, of course, for a scientist was a very bad word indeed. All the paraphernalia of secrecy and counterespionage—possibly quite necessary—got on one’s nerves after a while— and especially on a scientist’s nerves. Maybe it didn’t get so much on a soldier’s nerves or a lawyer’s.

  “Why a lawyer’s?” I asked.

  He said there were a good many bright young lawyers working on counterespionage—the type that would have been forging ahead in district attorneys’ offices but for the war. “I expect your Mr. Small is one of them.”

  “And you didn’t like them?”

  “I rarely met them. You may be right, though—their presence didn’t make life any smoother. And yet, when I come to think of it, the only two lawyers I’ve ever known personally—Julian Spee and Hans Bauer—were men I liked very much.”

  “Tell me some more about the place.”

  “There’s not much more. As I said, nothing exciting happened—nothing in the personal sense. Plenty, of course, in every other sense, though I wasn’t high enough up to be told anything.”

  “But you knew what was being done?”

  “More or less. I knew what it was a race for between us and the Germans.”

  “And you stayed on the job because of that?”

  “Well, partly. It wasn’t hard to hope that we should win. And yet….”

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t quite put into words the feeling I had—and which others may have had, though I never discussed it with them. We didn’t want the Germans to get the thing first—that was firm enough in our minds to build a cathedral on. But, assuming that the Germans didn’t get it, did we want to get it ourselves? Did we?… Perhaps some of us did—I don’t really know. I can only confess that a sort of cynicism grew in me as I saw the whole place getting bigger and bigger and costing more and more—I’d have guessed the truth from that, even if I hadn’t known it from any other source. I’d have been sure that no government on earth could afford so much for anything except destruction. And I half wanted the thing to turn out to be a gigantic dud—not from mere technical mistakes, but because of some basic factor that would rule out the whole thing forever as an impossibility. There wasn’t much hope of that, I already knew, but I clung to it, and if in the end the damned thing hadn’t gone off and all the billions had been proved wasted I think I should have joined quite a few of my co-workers in the thankfulest horselaugh that ever was heard on government property.”

  He got up then and stretched himself. “Wind’s dropped,” he said, staring into space. But the still air was hotter. He walked a few paces, then came back to lie against my side.

  “Oh well,” he went on, “we’ve practically won the war and that’s quite a thing. If I were on a Pacific island or an aircraft carrier I’d help myself to some strength through joy tonight.”

  “So will thousands at home who have boys out there.”

  “Sure. Looks like there’ll be a surrender in a day or two. Must be—if we have a few more things like this up our sleeve. You’re a sap, Mr. Jap. I guess we’ve proved it.”

  “But as a scientist you feel that isn’t quite everything?”

  “Oh, forget the scientist. As a draftee I feel it’s a hell of a lot.”

  “I know. And it is. And yet….”

  “And yet what, for God’s sake?”

  “You were saying ‘and yet’ just now. Can’t I?”

  He didn’t answer. He lay back again, face to the sky. He looked old- young, like so many men these days; premature age and retained youth neatly packaged and telescoped into the standardized product, the sort of man you would like to be seen with, the sort that smiles at you in cigarette ads, or wisecracks from the screen in the zany comedies. All that on the surface. Beneath it there’s something you have to discover for yourself, if it exists— the freakishness or the frailty, occasionally the sainthood.

  I said: “Go on telling me what happened even if nothing happened.”

  He pondered. Then he said that one day he had grown mildly excited at a development in his work that seemed to offer scope for a promising though quite minor piece of research. It was mainly theoretical and required no special equipment, only time and patience, of which he had both to spare. So he began to work late, after most of the men in the same building had packed up for the day; and this went on for some time till he realized that his behavior was attracting notice.

  “You mean you were being watched?”

  He said they were all watched, but that in his case there seemed something a bit extra about it. Anyhow, he’d made no secret of what he’d been doing, so he went to the head of his department and explained the whole thing fully. Then he received a graphic demonstration of the size and character of what was going on, for this head of a department, quite a big shot in his way, proved to be only a somewhat larger cog in the complicated machine—he revolved with just as much precision and with a conditioned distaste for extraorbital behavior. All he said was—“H’m, very interesting.” And a few days later he called Brad to his office and asked if he would please discontinue the research.

  “He sounded rather embarrassed,” Brad said, “especially when he gave me some reason about keeping the guards on duty after hours, which I knew was nonsense, since guards were on duty everywhere at all times. However, I said that naturally I’d give it up if those were his instructions, and he didn’t like the hint that he’d been instructed, and because he didn’t like it I knew he had been instructed. That was the way one was apt to get to know many things, and it didn’t add to one’s mental or spiritual comfort. But of course the Project wasn’t designed for our mental and spiritual comfort. One had to remember that.”

  “And did you—always?”

  “I think most of us managed to, though there were moments when you felt you’d raise a little hell when the war was over.”

  “Which is practically now.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  He was silent and I tried to bring him back to the subject. “Well, so you were asked to stop the research and you did. Then what happened?”

  “Nothing. That’s the end of the incident. There were a few others—not similar, but equally unimportant. And nothing dramatic, as I warned you. No Central European high jinks. I just went on with the job.”

  “Getting more and more bored and cynical all the time.”

  “Not even that. At times, not all the time.”

  “Anyhow, you gave the job up and joined the army. What finally drove you to it?”

  “There again it’s hard to point to any specific cause. Perhaps meeting Sanstrom had as much to do with it as anything else….”

  “Sanstrom?” The name struck an echo in my mind; I tried to remember where I had heard it before; then suddenly I knew. It was Mr. Small who had asked me, during our first interview,
if I had ever met one of Brad’s London friends named Sanstrom.

  Brad caught my look. “What’s the matter? Heard of him?”

  “Yes.” And I told him when.

  He said grimly: “I see.”

  He relapsed into another silence and I had found there was no better way to start him again than by simple pestering. “Go on,” I said. “Tell me about this meeting with him.”

  He called his thoughts to order. “Yes, Frank Sanstrom. I hardly recognized him at first. A man suddenly rushed up and began pumping my hand one day as I was walking to the cafeteria for lunch. As I say, I hardly recognized him—he’d changed a good deal in ten years. We’d been friends at University College, partly because we were both Americans and studying physics, but chiefly because you couldn’t help being friendly with Frank. I think he left college the same year you came—that would be 1936. He had the lab next to mine before Mathews took over with those stinking animals…. We hadn’t kept in touch, but I’d followed his career sketchily—I’d read a few papers of his in scientific journals, so I knew he was doing advanced work and establishing a reputation. And here he was, full of the same warmth and geniality, though about thirty pounds heavier than he ought to have been. We said the usual things one does on such occasions—how good it was to see each other again, and what were we doing there, and how had life been treating us—all the questions that aren’t intended to be answered at the time they’re asked. ‘I’m just on a visit,’ he said, beaming. ‘The Cook’s Tour … and these gentlemen are the cooks.’ He had to say something, I suppose, because two army officers had by this time come up; I realized afterwards that they had been escorting him and he had broken away from them on seeing me. They didn’t look too pleased at his little joke. He seemed to think they’d know me, and when they didn’t he made the necessary introductions—explaining that I was an old friend of his London University days. I can’t remember their names or even their rank. They didn’t find his affability infectious, so he ended the conversation by shaking hands again and telling me to look him up if I happened to be in Washington during the next few weeks—he’d be at the Carlton Hotel….