* * *
When the week of shiva passed, I called every mechanic in the phone book. None of them had the parts or time to repair my plane. But I had to do something.
I had survived, and there must be some reason for that. Some purpose or meaning or … something. I took to going to the hospital with Mrs. Lindholm every day to roll bandages, clean bed pans, and serve soup to plane after plane after plane of refugees.
They kept coming. I called the mechanics again. And then again.
One of them made vague promises about maybe looking into ordering a propeller, if he had time. If Nathaniel were home during the day, I would have asked him to make the call for me.
But each night he came home even later than I did. Friday night, two weeks after the Meteor, he came home well after sundown. Mind you, we had never been terribly religious about keeping the Sabbath before the meteorite, but somehow after it … I needed something. Some continuity.
I met Nathaniel at the door and took his coat from him. Major Lindholm—Eugene—and Myrtle had gone to a prayer meeting at their church, so we had the house to ourselves. “You aren’t supposed to work after sundown.”
“I’m a terrible Jew.” He leaned down to kiss me. “But I was occupied with convincing generals that no, the Russians could not have dropped the Meteor on us.”
“Still?” I hung his coat on a peg by the door.
“The problem is that Parker had mentioned it to … someone … probably several someones … and now it’s spread through the military as, ‘I heard there was a possibility that this was an offensive action by the Russians. ’”
“Ugh.” I gestured toward the kitchen, where the Lindholms had left the lights on. “There’s some chicken and potatoes, if you haven’t eaten.”
“You are a goddess.”
“You really are a terrible Jew.” I laughed and pulled him into the kitchen.
He dropped into one of the chairs with a groan, sliding forward to rest his head on the table. “Elma, I don’t know how much longer I can survive these meetings. I keep saying the same thing over and over. Thank God that the UN’s been called in, or there’s no telling where we would be now.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I pulled the refrigerator door open and found the plate I’d prepared for him.
He straightened. “Actually … yes. If you have time.”
“In abundance.”
“Do you think you could calculate the size of the meteorite?” His voice broke a little as he asked, and he had to pause to stare at the table.
Normally, a question like this would have gone to his colleagues at Langley. I pretended to busy myself with the plate to give him time to recover. We both tended to break at odd moments, and the tears were exhausting. Sometimes the best course was to pretend it wasn’t happening.
Nathaniel pressed his lips together in a dry grimace that tried to masquerade as a smile, and cleared his throat. “I figure if I know that, I can show that there’s no possible way the Russians could have moved it.”
I put the plate in front of him and kissed the back of his neck. “Yes. I’m presuming you can get me government charts.”
“Just tell me what you need.”
It’s funny. I’d been helping Myrtle with refugees all week, but since they kept coming, and each group was in worse shape than the last, it had felt like nothing had changed—like I made no difference in the world. I kept wondering why I had survived. Why me? Why not someone more useful?
I know. I know that’s not logical or reasonable, and clearly I was helping people, but … but the jobs I was doing could have belonged to anyone. I was an interchangeable cog.
Calculations? This pure abstraction of numbers belonged to me. This, I could do.
SEVEN
CIVIL DEFENSE TO USE “HAM” RADIOS
PHILADELPHIA, PA, March 17, 1952—To coordinate relief efforts after the Meteor strike, civil defense agencies are using various types of emergency communications equipment to transmit messages in the disaster area. In addition to the customary telephone, officials are employing portable radio transmitting sets, “walkie-talkies,” Army field telephone equipment, and amateur “ham” radio sets. These will be carried in cars manned by volunteer operators who will set up a secondary means of communication.
I worked on Nathaniel’s calculations in the evenings. It helped to have the solace of numbers to retreat to after helping with the refugees during the day. Today I had served soup to a group of Girl Scouts and their scout masters. They had been on a camping trip when the Meteor hit, and by sheer luck had been spelunking in the Crystal Caves. They’d felt the earthquake and thought it was disaster enough. Then they’d come up and everything was just gone.
So, numbers. Numbers were a solace. There was logic and order in the calculations. I could take disparate events and wring sense from them.
The other place where I found order amid the chaos was in the kitchen. It had taken a week before Myrtle would trust me in the kitchen, and another couple of days before I convinced her to let me make dinner. Now we took turns.
Was the kitchen kosher? Not even a little. Ask me if I cared. I opened the drawer next to the sink and rummaged through it until I found the measuring cups. Tonight I was making chicken potpie.
The filling simmered on the stove, scenting the air with the savory aroma of butter and thyme. In some ways, making pastry was like mathematics. Everything needed to be in proportion in order for the mass to come together.
I walked over to the refrigerator, glancing into the living room. Myrtle sat on the couch with her feet up on Eugene’s lap. He was rubbing them while she sipped from a glass of wine.
“… nothing you can do?”
“I’m sorry, baby. I’ve tried.” He grimaced and bent his head as he rubbed a thumb into the ball of her foot. “But I can’t go where they don’t send me.”
“It’s just … plane after plane of white folks. Where are our people? Who’s rescuing them?”
How had I not noticed that? I stopped with a hand on the refrigerator and ran through the refugees in my head, willing myself to see one spot of color amid the masses.
“You know what would happen, even if the brass were to send us to our peoples’ neighborhoods. Say we pick them up, and then what? Our people would be put in different camps.”
She sighed. “I know … I know. I’ll bring it up in church. See if we can get a relief effort going ourselves.”
Measuring cup still in my hand, I walked over to the kitchen door. “Excuse me.”
Myrtle looked around, and as she did, it was like a mask had slipped over her features. She smiled. “Do you need help finding something?”
“Oh—no. I just … I couldn’t help overhearing. Do you—do you want Nathaniel to talk to someone?”
Eugene and Myrtle exchanged a glance that I couldn’t begin to understand, and then he shook his head. “Thank you, ma’am. I think we’ve got this.”
* * *
After dinner, I retreated to the Lindholms’ study. I had strewn papers all over the desk as I tried to pull the data points together into the order I needed. Opening the drawer, I pulled out the little notepad we were using as a log book and jotted down the time so I could pay them back for the long-distance call. Then I picked up the receiver and dialed my brother’s work number.
“United States Weather Bureau, Hershel Wexler speaking.”
“Hey, it’s Elma. Got a minute for a weather question?”
“That is the literal definition of my job. What’s up?” Paper rustled on the other end of the line. “Planning a picnic?”
“Heh. No.” I pulled the equations I’d been working on closer. “I’m helping Nathaniel figure out how big the meteorite was, and composition and … The Chesapeake was steaming for three days. I could sort it out on my own, but … I thought there might be an existing equation for figuring out what temperature it would take to make a body of water that big steam.”
“Interest
ing … Give me a sec.” Beyond him, I could hear the Teletype bringing in reports from weather stations around the world. “You’ve got the depth and volume of water, I assume?”
“Average depth twenty-one feet. Eighteen trillion gallons.”
“Okay. So … during March, the Chesapeake Bay is around forty-four degrees. So we’d need a temperature change of 199.4…” A drawer opened, and the timbre of his voice changed. I could picture him with the phone pressed between cheek and shoulder, brows creased as he worked the slide rule. His crutches would be leaning against the edge of his desk. His glasses would be down at the tip of his nose to help him focus better, and he’d have the corner of his lower lip tucked between his teeth, humming between muttered phrases. “… divided by water’s molar mass … and that gives me 1.54E20 J of energy … hm-hmmm … Adding the two energies together … hmmm … 1.84E20 J of energy. You’d need … It would need to be approximately 518 degrees.”
“Thanks.” I swallowed at the number and tried not to betray how much it frightened me. “You could’ve just given me the formula.”
“What? And admit that my kid sister is better at math than I am?” He snorted. “Please. I have an ego.”
I could now plug the temperature into an equation that took the approximate angle of entry into account, and that should tell me generally what sort of composition we were looking at, based on what would heat to 518 degrees during passage through the air. It wouldn’t be precise, but it would be good enough for Nathaniel’s purposes.
“You said you were figuring out what the Meteor was?” The timbre changed again as he brought the receiver closer to his mouth.
“Yeah. Based on the size of the crater—eighteen miles—and the initial water displacement, I have a pretty good estimate of the meteor ite’s size.” I started noodling with the numbers that he’d given me. “At some point, they’ll get divers down to find out its actual composition, but every one is focused on the refugee and recovery efforts…” And that made me think of Eugene and Myrtle.
“Maybe you can answer a question for me.”
“I’m not doing your math homework.”
He snorted. “How’s Nathaniel doing?”
“Oh…” I sighed and checked the door to make sure it was shut. “He’s exhausted and frustrated and a bunch of it is classified, so … I keep thinking it’ll be better when everything is over, but…”
“But it’s not going to be over.”
“No.” I rubbed my forehead. “How is it out there?”
“We’re just starting to see refugees, but mostly it’s business as usual.” He sighed. “That’s going to change when the weather patterns start to shift.”
“Shift how?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but that’s what I’m working on. That much sediment and smoke in the air?” I could imagine him pulling his glasses off as he sighed. “Maybe you can answer another question for me.”
“I’m still not doing your math homework for you.”
“Yes, you are, actually. What was the water displacement?”
“I’ll be able to give you an approximate value once I know how big the thing was. Why?”
“Because you kick that much water up into the air, and it’s going to have an impact on the weather. I want to see if we can predict what the hurricane season is going to be like because of this.”
I smiled at the wall, as if Hershel were sitting opposite me. “Okay. Fine. I’ll do your math homework, but you know the deal.”
“Yes.” He laughed. “You can read my comic books, but that is going to require coming to visit.”
“As soon as we’re finished here.” Once Nathaniel was finished with his meetings, I’d talk to him about maybe moving to California.
* * *
I shoved the calculations away from me and rested my head on my hands. Crap. It had taken me two evenings to get all the variables lined up. And now? I’d gone through the numbers three times, and if there was a mistake, I wasn’t finding it. I had called Hershel, but it was after work hours, and they were out for the evening. Goodness knows what their babysitter made of my message.
Pushing back from the desk, I stood and paced around the study. A casserole sat congealing on the table next to me. Myrtle had brought it in at some point. Part of it was gone and the fork was dirty, but I had no memory of eating anything.
An ache ran from my right eye and over the top of my head. I needed Nathaniel. I gathered the pages together, both my original calculations about the meteorite impact, and the tidier sheets where I’d reworked them. He would still be at HQ. I could … what? Pull him out of a meeting? Nothing on these pages would change if I waited for him to come home.
But I needed my husband, and I needed him now. Rubbing the ache above my eye eased it a little. If my math wasn’t wrong, then some of the original data must be. One of the reports probably exaggerated numbers. I must be wrong.
I snatched the plate off the table and carried it into the kitchen. The house was dark, except for the light over the stove. Nathaniel needed to come home. And he would, probably in not too much longer. I could be patient.
I scraped the rest of the casserole into the garbage then stood at the kitchen sink to wash the dish. The Lindholms had a shiny new dishwasher, but the water running over my hands calmed me. After I put the dish in the rack, I stood for a moment and let the water trickle through my fingers.
The front door opened. Thank God. I wiped my hands on the dish towel and ran to meet Nathaniel. He smiled when he saw me, and leaned in for a kiss. “Hello, beautiful.”
“I need to show you something.” I winced. “Sorry. I mean, how was your day? Convince them that the Russians aren’t after us yet?”
“Not quite. And now President Brannan wants to restart NACA and have us look for other asteroids.” He loosened his tie. “What did you want to show me?”
“It can wait until morning.” This was me trying to be a good wife despite my anxiety, because, truly, showing him tonight would accomplish nothing beyond making him as sleepless as me.
“Elma. No. I don’t want to be kicked all night.”
“Kicked?”
“Yeah. When you’re this worked up, you toss and kick in your sleep.”
“I—” How do you argue about what you do when you’re asleep? “Do I hurt you?”
“Let’s just say that I’d like to see whatever it is.”
Really, I needed no convincing at all. I grabbed his hand and pulled him into the study. “I was trying to calculate how much energy it would take to move the Meteor to prove that there was no way the Russians could have done it.”
He stopped in the doorway. “Please don’t tell me that they could have done it.”
“No.” In a way, that would have been better. I stood next to the desk and looked at the pages covered with calculations. “No, but I think this could be an extinction event.”
EIGHT
FEED GRAINS PRICES CRASH
CHICAGO, March 26, 1952—(AP)—Feed grains dropped significantly on the Board of Trade today in a continuation of the preceding session’s crash. Brokers thought the downturn, both today and yesterday, was based largely on the fact that export of corn and oats were blocked due to harbor damage on the East Coast ports.
God help me, I wanted to be wrong. Nathaniel sat at the desk in the Lindholms’ study and worked his slide rule, double-checking my calculations. The desk was scattered with encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, and newspapers from the last week with reports of where damage was showing.
I leaned against the wall next to the window, chewing on the inside of my lip. The night outside had started to turn silver, and if I had any more coffee, I would vibrate through the ceiling.
He hadn’t asked me any questions for the last hour. Every time his pencil scratched against the paper, I hoped it was an error, that I’d forgotten to invert a differential or square a root or something. Anything.
Finally, he set the slide rule on the desk and rested
his head on his fingertips. He stared at the last page. “We have to get off this fucking planet.”
“Nathaniel!” Why I was chiding him about language, I couldn’t tell you.
“Sorry.” He sighed, sliding his hands over his head until his face was hidden between his arms. His voice was muffled against the table. “I really wanted you to be wrong.”
“My starting numbers might be off.”
“If they’re that far off, someone at Encyclopedia Americana should be fired.” He sat up, still scrubbing his face and squinting. “I thought we had gotten lucky that the meteorite was a water strike.”
“It’s the steam that’s the problem.” I crossed the room to sit on the desk, but Nathaniel caught my wrist and pulled me down onto his lap. I leaned against him and rested my head on his. “Things are going to get cold for a bit, and then all that water vapor in the air…”
He nodded. “I’ll see if I can get you a meeting with the president.”
“The president?” Heart kicking sideways, I straightened a bit. “It’s just … I mean, a lot of this involves stuff that’s not in my field of study and … maybe we should talk to other scientists.”
“Sure. But … right now, they’ve got me and Wernher von Braun working on a program to spot other potential asteroids and blow them up with rockets.” He leaned back in the chair and scratched one of the scabs on his chin. “You know military bureaucracy as well as I do.”
“Once a program starts, it’s hard to stop.”
He nodded. “And we’re working on the wrong damn problem.”
* * *
I stood in front of the closet, staring at my meager wardrobe. Every time I reached for a dress, my stomach knotted itself. Everyone would be staring at me. What if I picked the wrong dress? What if my calculations were wrong? It would be better, for Nathaniel, if I stayed home instead of going with him to meet the general.
“Elma? Which tie should I—you’re not dressed?” Nathaniel stopped just inside the door to our room. “We’re supposed to meet General Eisenhower in thirty minutes.” He had a borrowed tie in each hand.
The Calculating Stars Page 6