The Trinity Paradox

by Kevin J. Anderson

  She would have to fight against Groves after Germany surrendered. She studied his lantern jaw, his crest of dark hair edged with gray, and his peppery moustache. She would have to work to convince him to do a demonstration shot rather than annihilate human beings.

  That was her next chance to change things.

  Groves cleared his throat and gripped the podium as if he wanted to break it. He wore his khaki dress blouse. Semicircles of sweat stood out under his arms in the heat, but he showed no sign of discomfort.

  “All right, everyone on the Project! I didn’t pull you away from your work to mince words, so I’ll get straight to the point. Straight to it. You’re all aware that what you’re doing, developing the Gadget, is the most noble and patriotic act your country could ask.”

  Oh brother, here it comes, Elizabeth thought. She tried to remember exactly when Germany had surrendered. Maybe that was the announcement. The war had already been going badly for Hitler, if she could believe the non-objective newsreels. She thought the war in Europe had not ended until sometime in mid-1945, but could things have been changed by her presence?

  She had tried to alter events here, but her actions appeared to have had no immediate effect. She couldn’t conceive of anything she had done having repercussions around the world. Could Germany have surrendered early, thus invalidating the need for the Project? Was Oppenheimer upset now because he had not completed his Gadget in time for it to be used in this war? She forced herself not to smile. Too bad, Oppie, she thought.

  Groves turned around to look at the blank screen. “They say a picture is worth a thousand words.” He pointed to his aide. “Kil1 the lights.”

  As the lights went off, officers standing by the outside doors swung them shut, plunging the hall into darkness. Elizabeth saw a match flare up, then a red glow as someone lit a cigar at the front of the hall. Groves’s voice came from the direction of the cigar.

  “I flew into Albuquerque this morning, direct from Washington. These films have been shown exactly twice— first to the War Department, then an hour later to the President. The rest of the country is going to know soon. We might be able to hide a town the size of Los Alamos, but we can’t possibly keep New York City a secret. Go ahead and roll it.”

  A movie projector at the rear of the hall spewed a ghostly light as smoke shot up from the incandescent bulb. The makeshift screen displayed an aerial view of buildings and streets, endless rows of suburbs and identical All in the Family style houses, that showed how little New York had changed over the years. In the background, Elizabeth could see the famous city skyline, which the camera approached.

  “You’re looking at reconnaissance photos from a modified Army Air Corps P-51, traveling close to three hundred knots a thousand feet off the ground. We didn’t know how safe it was to fly over the area, but we needed to get in close. We had a few dozen volunteers to go in on the ground, and doctors are being flown in from around the country.”

  The black-and-white film jumped, then settled down as the aircraft soared into the air. Elizabeth caught a glimpse of what looked like a bridge—the Brooklyn Bridge?—but she couldn’t see any signs of activity. The view jumped to an overhead of downtown Manhattan and Wall Street. But again the streets appeared deserted.

  “At three thousand feet, you can’t tell anything unusual. Unless you know New York.” The film jumped again. This time the view was from the plane racing not more than fifty feet above a wide avenue. Broadway? Elizabeth knew only the landmarks she had seen on television.

  Gasps of disbelief and astonishment broke out in the crowd. She felt her own horror building.

  No traffic moved. No pedestrians ran across the pavement. Smoke rose from cars that had crashed into streetlights. The scene looked more powerful in black and white than any color splatter movie she had ever seen. She saw a body sprawled here and there. The pictures seemed to go on forever. Then the view swayed as the plane turned tightly in the air and just missed a tall building.

  “Two nights ago the Germans launched three new bombs over New York. We believe a U-boat slipped into the harbor. Only one person died from shrapnel—all three of the bombs exploded in midair. We thought they were failures. We couldn’t figure out what the point was.”

  The plane made another run over a different street. The desertion looked the same.

  “By the next morning a lot of people were very sick. The worst ones died within hours. The doctors didn’t have any idea how to treat them. Vomiting, diarrhea, massive skin damage like burns, hemorrhaging. Many of them died on the street, taken so quickly that they couldn’t get anywhere. That’s what you see in the pictures. Nobody wanted to go back in and get the bodies.

  “Then panic set in. The mayor decided to evacuate the city. Most of the casualties occurred in the frenzy to get away.”

  The film changed to a different shot of a hospital filled with moaning patients. The camera showed lines of beds, many of which held two patients. Other people lay on the floors, in the corridors. Then the scene jumped to a subway station, also filled with sick-looking people. Doctors, nurses, priests, nuns, and any other healthy-looking person tried to help the sick, but they didn’t seem able to do anything but console them. A little girl sat bawling in abject grief beside her mother, who lay wide-eyed and motionless in death; the woman’s skin looked horribly burned.

  Someone got sick at the rear of the hall. Wedges of sunlight spilled into the room as several people fled outside. Elizabeth could smell vomit.

  “At first we thought the krauts were using some new kind of poison gas. We sent teams in to study it. What they found surprised us all.” The film showed soldiers walking cautiously down the deserted streets, wearing gas masks, holding Geiger counters in front of them. A close-up of the counter showed the needle pushed to the top of the scale.

  “The Geigers went nuts,” Groves continued. “We don’t know exactly what happened, but I think we can make a good guess.”

  The picture jumped, then went black. Bright light blazed on the screen. The sound of the loose end of the film flapped on the reel, but it took the stunned operator a moment to shut off the projector.

  “Hit the lights,” Groves said.

  Overhead, the bulbs shone down. Army officers swung open the doors, allowing sunlight and fresh outside air to enter the room.

  Groves waited a good ten heartbeats before speaking; no one in the hall moved during the wait. A few groans and outraged comments came from the audience. Elizabeth found herself drawing in short, quick breaths. Her heart raced and she couldn’t slow it down. She kept picturing the little girl screaming beside her mother in the crowded subway tunnel.

  “We’ve already got an estimated five thousand dead, the ones who received a massive dose in the first day and the ones killed during the evacuation. You know as well as anyone that ten times that number will probably die within the next couple of weeks. Worst of all, New York City will not be habitable for years.”

  Groves smashed his fist down on the podium and made a startling, animal sound of anger. “You have just witnessed actual, uncensored photographic evidence of the Nazi nuclear research effort. Their weapon was directed against the millions of men, women, and children in New York City. But it was also to show us how far ahead they are. They have scared the pants off of me!” He lowered his voice. “No doubt they have the capability of using it again. Whenever and wherever they want.”

  A murmur swept through the crowd. Groves rapped on the podium. “All right, now listen up. You men up here on the Hill have a reputation around the White House of being prima donnas, living in your own little world and pouring two billion dollars down a rat hole while the rest of the country struggles with real problems to win this damned war. In fact, other than yourselves, I don’t think there’s more than a handful of people who actually believe you can do it.”

  Groves lowered his voice. “But thank God Almighty the President is one of those people who does believe.” His voice trailed off. Then, stiffly
, “If you need a pep talk after seeing that film, if you need someone to come around and kick you in the butt to get you working harder on our own Gadget, then you are in the wrong place. You’d better practice your sieg heilsl

  “The Germans have hit us hard, and unless you… ‘wizards’ can come up with something and do it fast, we might as well roll over and play dead. Because I guarantee you that the krauts aren’t going to stop with New York.”

  Groves motioned for Oppenheimer to stand beside him on the stage. “I don’t care how you do it—just do it. Those boys fighting in Europe need you. Our Pacific forces need you. Your country needs you—” He hesitated as his gruff voice fell to a whisper, “And I need you. This may be it. Don’t let us down.”

  He abruptly strode out a side door of the meeting hall. “Dr. Oppenheimer, let me see you in your office.”

  The audience sat stunned for countless moments, trying to think of what to say, how to react, and what to do. The scientists stood up and broke into heated arguments. A cacophony of foreign accents filled the room, with many of the émigré” scientists lapsing into languages other than English.

  “At least there was not an atomic explosion! None of the buildings were leveled—”

  “What else could it have been? Fairy dust? Something killed those people—”

  “Chemical weapons?”

  “No, no, no! Think of the Geiger counter readings! What about radioactive dust? Do you think it’s possible”

  “But why? If they were working on their own Gadget… ”

  Elizabeth stared at the blank screen; vivid memories cascaded through her mind in a jumble of terror. New York City had become a radioactive wasteland. Much worse than Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Groves had guessed that thousands more would be dead within a few weeks, but Elizabeth knew they couldn’t be counting on all the cancer deaths in the coming years. This one attack would last for decades and decades. Even in World War II, this made Pearl Harbor look like a picnic.

  But what about comparing it to her own memories of Hiroshima? Nagasaki? Those images seemed too dim now, the horrors too displaced. Was it really that different?

  She squeezed her eyes shut and wished she could be holding Graham Fox again. Or Jeff.

  This seemed worse man what she knew of the two Japanese cities that would be bombed. Those other occurrences had been historical events, gruesome snapshots of people who had died long before she was born.

  Hadn’t Japan at least been warned, to surrender or else? As far as she could remember, several cities including Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been notified days before that an attack was going to take place. But New York—had the Nazis warned America? She tightly shook her head.

  Yes, there was a difference between America and Germany—like the difference between a fencer and a mad dog. The swordsman fights with finesse and honor, but the mad dog attacks indiscriminately, savaging any target in sight and stopping only when someone puts it down.

  Hitler could strike again at any time.

  So what would the Project do now? They were far behind with uranium-235 separation at Oak Ridge, and the theoreticians had not yet developed an alternative to the gun concept for the plutonium weapon. It looked as if they would not develop the Gadget anytime soon.

  But this wasn’t as she remembered it at all. While not an expert by any means, she did have some knowledge of the bomb program because of her protest work. The scientists were supposed to be converging on the best of two solutions, not chasing after a single concept. Not just the gun.

  What was it… the names of the two devices? She knew there were two, one plutonium and one uranium. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And they had to prove the plutonium design at the Trinity test down at Alamogordo, New Mexico. She had written down the names of the bombs on that damned sheet of paper a year ago when she had first showed up at the administration building for work.

  Fat Man—yes, Fat Man and Little Boy! Two bomb designs. But why were they only pursuing the one design, when they knew it wouldn’t work with plutonium? Teller had died—did he have anything to do with them neglecting one of the concepts?

  She remembered something about an… implosion scheme…

  .Elizabeth pushed out of the meeting hall, leaving the crowd behind. She held her hand to shade her eyes in the brilliant sunlight. She wanted to find Graham Fox, but she didn’t know what to tell him.

  She drew in a breath of pine smells and flowers that had remained in bloom late in the spring. The outdoors seemed to cleanse her, soften the guilt and hurt from the films she had just seen.

  She felt all mixed up inside. Nothing was simple anymore, nothing was assured—she had not felt so devastated since Jeff had died, or maybe not since she had tried to kill Oppenheimer.

  Living in the past had been predictable up to now. But the New York City attack put an entirely new parameter on how she viewed things, how she lived. And what she lived for.

  How could she reconcile working for the Project? Especially when the stakes had changed so drastically? How could she reconcile not working for the Project, knowing what the Nazis might do now? And it scared her.

  She turned to the women’s dorm. She needed a long walk. Some time to be alone, maybe even get back out to visit Jeff’s grave, or to Bandelier. She had avoided the place since that morning the previous December.

  A memory of Oppenheimer flashed through her thoughts—watching his horse approach over the virgin snow, sighting Oppie’s angular head along the line of her rifle barrel—

  “Oops!” She ran into another man wrapped up in his thoughts. Elizabeth drew back. “Sorry. I wasn’t looking where—” She looked up and reddened. “Oh, Dr. Feynman. I’m sorry.”

  “Ah, please call me Dick, my dear. Allow me to get out of your way.” He made a dramatic show of stepping aside. “Especially if you’re heading for the Admin building. This just might be a good time to forge another reassignment, get out of the Gadget-building business.” He stepped aside and grinned; but the sparkle had gone from his eye.

  Elizabeth lowered her shoulders. “Things aren’t going all that well, are they?”

  Feynman cocked an eye at her. “Why do you say that?”

  “The calculations you’re giving us. The theory group, that is. I mean, everything used to be so straightforward, calculating small variations of one design. But now the designs are changing radically, they get much smaller or bigger. And you haven’t got the right idea yet.”

  Feynman looked alarmed. “You picked all that stuff up just from the numbers we were giving you?”

  Elizabeth swallowed, wondering how much of the “dumb girl” charade she should keep up. “It wasn’t hard. Not if you pay attention to the lectures at the beginning of the day, and if you watch the parameters change.”

  Feynman jammed his hands in his pocket. “My, my. What’s G-2 going to do when they discover we’re teaching a bunch of housewives how to build atomic bombs?”

  He remained silent for a moment, while Elizabeth resented being called a housewife. Glancing around, Feynman seemed satisfied that no one was looking in their direction. He lowered his voice. “Yes, we are having some difficulty. We can’t use our main design for a plutonium Gadget, and Oak Ridge is having trouble with the isotope-separation process for uranium-235. “He looked glum.” There’s got to be a simpler way to do things.”

  “Then what about the implosion scheme?” The one you’re going to use for Fat Man, she added silently.

  “Uh?” Feynman frowned. “Which design was that?”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes and swallowed, all too afraid of what she might be doing. “Implosion—you know, take a spherical shell of plutonium that’s subcritical, then crunch it together into a solid sphere that is critical. You can use symmetrical high explosives to do the compacting.” You’re going to do it anyway! she thought.

  Feynman spoke slowly. “Betsy, where in the hell did you hear that? And what makes you think an implosion would work?”

  Elizabeth
opened her eyes, acting innocent again. “You’re the physicist, you tell me.”

  Feynman’s eyes widened. He took his time thinking things through. Finally, he nodded to himself. “This is right up Neddermeyer’s alley.” He reached out and squeezed Elizabeth’s shoulder. “We’ll look into it. You’re pretty bright. Uh, thanks. And anytime you want a new job—”

  “Right. You’ll break into the Admin building and doctor the papers for me.”

  “No. Really.” Feynman put his hands on his hips. He looked serious for the first time she’d known him. “I can get you transferred out of Johnnie’s group just as easy as I got you transferred in. You’re too bright to be a cog in a wheel. I can use a good math assistant, someone to help me on these analytic solutions. Or maybe just to keep track of my notes.”

  “Ah, surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!” She paused, then mumbled, “Never mind, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “No, I’m serious. You know, helping me with my research, the stuff Oppie wants recorded?” She waited for him to drop to his knees or something. “Won’t you at least think about it?”

  Embarrassed, Elizabeth set her mouth. “Why me? I’m not that good.”

  Feynman let a smile spread across his face. “I don’t know. Maybe I believe in luck too much—but you’ve got something special going for you, and until I figure it out, I want to tap into it. Maybe you can really help the Project.”

  Elizabeth thought quickly. Things were moving so fast. She felt she had to jump onto the bandwagon before it rolled on and left her in the dust. This wasn’t a time she wanted to be left behind—not with the timeline turning out so differently from what she remembered. “Okay.” She stuck out a hand. “See you tomorrow?”

  “I’ll clear it with Johnnie. Just report to the design group tomorrow morning, my office.” He shook her hand and was off. “Implosion!”