The Trinity Paradox Read online

  Elizabeth had stood in the Santa Fe office of the United Conscience Group, her fingers clenched around the newspaper clipping. The office had little furniture, a phone and a few desks, a poster on the wall showing the burned corpse of a Nagasaki victim sprawled above the slogan, “Technical Excellence Brought to You by the Los Alamos National Laboratory.” The United Conscience Group looked like a fly-by-night company in a low-rent office, but they had been active since the Gulf War.

  Elizabeth scowled. If you could call this “active.”

  Dave, Tim, and Marcia all reacted with suitable outrage at the news of the lab accident, then they made the appropriate “You’re not serious!” response when Elizabeth told them that the other weapons tests were going to continue on schedule at Los Alamos. She knew what would happen next.

  Dave rubbed his hands together. “All right, people, we’ve got to get moving on this! Let’s contact the local radio stations, Albuquerque too, to see if we can get on the air. Tim, why don’t you draft a few letters to the editor? Marcia, you want to draw up some flyers and get them printed? We’ll have to go out and hit the street corners. I’ll get on the phone and round up all the help we can get. Let’s nip this in the bud—time to make ourselves felt!”

  Rah, rah, Elizabeth thought, then left the office before Dave could assign her some insipid duties. Letters to the editor? Flyers? Yeah, that would sure make people tremble in their seats and change the world; these guys must have thought they were back in the sixties. The United Conscience Group had never done anything but talk, and as the cliché said so appropriately, actions speak louder than words.

  That afternoon, she and Jeff had scaled the ten-foot-high fence that encircled the remote testing site. The canyon terrain was too rugged for most people even to attempt to hike, though the restricted area lay only a few miles from the wilderness of Bandelier National Monument. No one had questioned Elizabeth and her companion as they left the old visitor’s center building, setting off for the backcountry.’

  From their resting spot partway down the canyon wall, Elizabeth surveyed the surrounding terrain. In the coming darkness, it was impossible to see into the depths of the canyon. “Keep a watch for headlights coming up the road. Patrols are the only surveillance they’ll use.”

  “Yeah.”

  Elizabeth pulled her backpack over her shoulders. The equipment inside clanked together. Jeff turned her around and fumbled with rearranging the chisels, hammer, and several sharp spikes so they would make no more noise. They each ate a trail bar in silence, then Jeff led the way down the tortuous route he had spotted.

  She heard only his breathing as the two of them moved into the falling darkness. The shadows stretched longer, making it more difficult to find the appropriate handholds and footholds. The rocks felt warm against her skin, but they would cool rapidly at night. In little hollows along the cliffs, evening birds began to chatter with the sunset.

  Time contracted for her. She followed Jeff, made sure she did nothing clumsy or stupid focused her concentration on the ominous MCG equipment sitting under the tarp. She thought of it as a dragon waiting to be slain.

  They finished their descent without incident. She shot a quick glance up to the top of the cliffs—she couldn’t see the craggy steepness they had just negotiated.

  Rumbles from the approaching storm rolled down the canyon. Light from the full moon peering over the canyon rim splashed over the ground, lighting the rocks with an eerie glow. As the moon slipped behind the clouds they had to make their way by touch the last few hundred feet.

  Jeff stood beside her on the cement pad, catching his breath. The tarp stood high enough on its metal support poles that they could easily stand under the rippling cloth. He flicked his glance from side to side. “Feels like we’re on stage. Let’s hurry up.”

  Elizabeth shrugged the pack from her shoulders. She flicked on a flashlight and unzipped the back pocket, pulling out a pair of cotton gloves.

  “What are those for?” Jeff whispered. She didn’t know why he kept so quiet—they would be making enough noise in a few minutes.

  “They’ve got my fingerprints on file, when I was arrested at Livermore, remember?” She felt a flash of annoyance. The arrest had been a source of friction between them, over who was willing to go furthest for their beliefs.

  Jeff didn’t reply, but stepped to the MCG. He put his hands on his hips; from the taut muscles on his back, Elizabeth could see he was angry. The tarp flapped in a breeze, making the support ropes creak.

  The explosive device looked like a torpedo lying on the pad. Elizabeth walked around it, stepping over the thick cables that ran up from a manhole to the device. Jeff squatted by the opening and directed his light down inside.

  “The wires run underneath the pad. Probably to the bunker.” One of the thick hoses leaked white vapor. He ran a hand along the hose, then jerked it away. “It’s cold as an iceberg!”

  “Probably liquid nitrogen.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  She made a deprecating comment about Humanities majors, but Jeff didn’t hear her.

  Elizabeth touched the MCG itself, half expecting the cylinder to rear up, expose teeth and devour her. Nothing happened. She glanced back at Jeff. “Come on. Looks like this is all set up. Keep away from the wires and just smash as much as you can.”

  “We should have brought those explosives.” He looked at the large machine. “Would have made this a lot easier.”

  “This will be more… personal. Think of it as smashing an abandoned car.”

  Elizabeth took the hammer and chisel and a handful of spikes from her pack. Jeff had a hand sledge and a rubber-handled hatchet. She followed the vapor-emitting hose to where a series of wires ran around the MCG’s circumference. She wanted to destroy the thing, but her own curiosity made her try to figure everything out. She had enough of a physics and engineering background that she should be able to identify the pieces of equipment at least.

  Though her MBA had come after she left United Atomics, after Ted Walblaken had died of his cancer, Elizabeth had taken an undergraduate degree in physics from Berkeley. She knew the basics behind the MCG. Explosives compressing magnetic fields could be used to power exotic strategic weapons. This device here would be only a simple test run before the big scale-ups to be conducted at the Nevada Test Site. But she and Jeff could never have broken into the giant Nevada complex. Here the security seemed ridiculously lax.

  But why use liquid nitrogen in the setup? The MCG didn’t need it. Unless it was for something else…

  She followed the cable to the front of the device. The cable split off to an array of solenoid rings.

  Jeff joined her, no longer sounding nervous; he hefted his sledge. “Let’s do it.” The tarp ropes made sharp noises as the wind gusted. A growl of thunder rumbled far overhead. “That storm is going to make this like something out of Wagner.”

  “I’d rather hear Rush,” Elizabeth said. “Their song about the Manhattan Project might be appropriate right now.” She pointed at the array. “I bet that feed line supplies liquid nitrogen to this solenoid—a superconducting magnet. Whatever they’re testing needs this to drive it.”

  “I’ll start at the other end.” He didn’t seem interested in what the device did or how it worked. That didn’t surprise her.

  Elizabeth turned for her tools as thunder exploded from the clouds above. Picking up the chisel and hammer, she decided to keep the nitrogen line intact—let that be the finale—and go after the magnet. Whatever damage she could do to the delicate magnet section would slow down the test. And if Jeff could smash the MCG itself, then the Department of Energy would have to invest time and money in constructing another one. A breach of the vacuum chambers, a distortion of the conducting walls, severed wires—anything could cause enormous damage to such a complicated setup.

  Maybe by then somebody would get the point.

  From the size of the device, the Los Alamos scientists must have packed a thousand pou
nds of high explosive around the various sections. The explosive must be nonvolatile, she thought, with the way the men had worked around the area. And if they had left it overnight, then it must not be any worse than leaving TNT secured. Nothing to worry about.

  Outside, the wind whipped through the canyon, rattling the brush and creaking the tent poles. Hadn’t there been a big storm the night before the first atomic test back in World War II? She seemed to recall they had almost canceled the shot because of it. If the Manhattan Project scientists had failed back then, she mused, she would not need to be here now.

  Elizabeth used the chisel to pry away the casing surrounding the magnets. She could hear Jeff banging away at the bottom of the MCG, tearing insulators from the conductive layers. Broken glass tinkled as he brought the sledge down on a diagnostic panel. The storm covered their noises, but it would be hell to climb back up the canyon wall.

  Jeff pounded the long spikes through the vacuum chamber walls. Elizabeth jammed her chisel into the magnet and pried down on the solenoid connections. She looked up and saw Jeff raising the sledge above what looked to be the self-contained core of the MCG device, the chamber that held everything trapped within. A volley of lightning skittered across the sky, backlighting the scene with a silver and white glare. Jeff had a studied look on his face as he brought the sledge down…

  Her eyes barely had time to react to the explosion belching along the metal cylinder as everything blew up around Jeff. Blue-white afterimages mixed with the purple splotches blazing from inside her eyes. She couldn’t hear a thing—it all happened so fast. A wave of distorted force swept over her, like a gigantic fist hurling her out of the universe—

  2

  Los Alamos

  June 1943

  “History again and again shows that we have no monopoly on ideas, but we do better with them than other countries.”

  —J. Robert Oppenheimer

  “At present we can see no practicable technical method of producing an atom-bomb during the war with the resources available in Germany. But the subject, nevertheless, must be thoroughly investigated to make sure that the Americans will not be able to develop atom-bombs either.”

  —Dr. Werner Heisenberg

  Daylight again. It had to be—nothing could be that bright with her eyes still closed. But why did the light seem to come from inside her head?

  A splitting headache ran from the back to the front of Elizabeth’s skull. Her side ached, and she had trouble breathing. She felt giddy, as if she were spinning on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Her eyes wouldn’t work. What frightened her most was that her body wouldn’t stop twitching, as if every fiber had been stretched on a rack, and the nerves kept misfiring.

  At least the ground was soft. She must have been thrown clear of the concrete pad when the MCG… exploded. MagnetoCumulative Generator…

  Everything fell into place. The explosion, the lightning, Jeff standing with his sledgehammer held high like Conan the Peace Activist.

  She had to get up. She had to move. Someone must have seen the explosion. She and Jeff had to climb back out of the canyon, hide from the security guards. They had to run, to get out of the storm.

  She couldn’t even manage to open her eyes. But it felt like sunshine warming her skin.

  As Elizabeth drifted back to unconsciousness, she still couldn’t tell what exactly had happened….

  Elizabeth woke with a start. Try it again. She had no idea how much time had passed.

  She forced her eyes open and saw that she lay on a slope, her feet pointing uphill. She wondered if Jeff had dragged her away from the MCG site, into hiding. One arm flopped behind her head, numb with the ice prickles of impaired circulation. She tried to move, but her muscles felt so tired they hurt.

  The ground smelled damp. The storm had passed by, but clouds still covered the sky. Whatever had happened must have knocked them both senseless. She couldn’t hear Jeff beside her.

  The implications hit her at once: the Los Alamos scientists would be returning with the guards. They would find their test apparatus ruined. Security should have been here already.

  “Jeff—” She coughed from the dust in her throat. Where was he? She tried to turn her head, but black fuzz obscured her vision. As she lifted her left arm she yelped in pain. She flexed her wrist—the arm didn’t seem to be broken. She pushed up on the opposite elbow. Her eyes wouldn’t focus properly.

  “Jeff!” Elizabeth sucked in a breath, and at last her vision cleared. Her heart skipped a beat at what she saw.

  Jeff lay crumpled on the ground thirty feet away. Not moving.

  Elizabeth struggled onto her hands and knees. It took a second for the dizziness to pass, but she focused on Jeff and crawled over to him on all fours. “Jeff?” She slowed as she approached, then stopped a yard away, ready to retch.

  His legs beneath the knees were… missing; but no blood flowed from the wound. His legs looked as if they had been fused together. He lay at the lip of a shallow crater ten feet across, as if he had been caught at the edge of an explosion, too close to the fury that had knocked her senseless. His red-rimmed glasses lay undamaged beside him in the crater.

  “Oh, God. Jeff.” Elizabeth ignored her pain and knelt beside him. She fought to keep her consciousness. Tears stung her eyes and she trembled, just looking at him. Reaching out with one hand, she ran a hand over his chest, then knelt and put an ear to his mouth. Nothing. Touching the artery in his neck gave the same result. He felt cold to the touch.

  She checked again, then pounded on his chest, more in despair and frustration than in any attempt to revive him.

  Elizabeth dug her fingers into Jeff’s curly hair, her face close to his. Tears gathered, and a paralyzing flow of memories overwhelmed her. Living with him in a small flat near the Berkeley campus. Arguing about political issues. Working on her MBA while he studied history, or poetry, or whatever he fancied that semester. They both played guitar on the doorstep, watching bicyclists or joggers go by.

  She had not seen him for several years after their breakup, not until she had called him to come down to Santa Fe. To come help her with this, and maybe rebuild their relationship. Now weapons research had claimed another victim….

  Elizabeth looked around, her shoulders trembling. She tried to swallow, and her throat ached from the dryness. But she began to think clearly. Jeff always admired her for that; even when she got emotional about the issues, she could somehow step back and take matters in hand. No matter how badly she was hurting.

  But not now. She couldn’t move. She stared at Jeff’s lifeless body for a long time. No one came—no security forces, no scientists, nothing. She forced her eyes from his legs. The sight was all wrong; it just did not belong. Something very strange had happened.

  Elizabeth didn’t know how much time passed before she snapped out of her daze and felt engulfed in panic. She had to do something, get him out of here. They couldn’t be caught now, not like this. She didn’t want the security forces to find either of them. It was a felony simply to trespass on federal grounds.

  “Jeff…” She leaned over to kiss his forehead. Dust stuck to his open eyes, and she brushed the lids closed.

  Jeff would have been disappointed with her if he knew she’d risked getting herself caught because of sentimentality over him. She had to smother the grief for now. Let it come back a little at a time, when she could afford it.

  With an effort, she visualized herself shifting into high gear, shutting down the unnecessary thoughts like extraneous subsystems. Survival of the fittest. She could do nothing to help Jeff now. She had to start thinking about herself.

  That was what he would have said to her. She would mourn later, Elizabeth told herself again, when it was safe.

  She looked around.

  Something else seemed wrong.

  From the location of the sun, it had to be early morning. She might have time to drag Jeff’s body out of the way, maybe hide it and come back later after the scientists had
left. No, the security crew would get here and comb the area once they found the wrecked apparatus. Someone should have been here long before to check if the storm itself had caused any damage.

  She could never carry Jeff far. There were thousands of places to hide, little cave notches in the cliffside, if she could only get the body far enough from the experimental site—

  And then it hit her: the experimental site.

  Even if the MCG explosion had sent them flying a hundred yards, she still should have been able to see the concrete pad, the dirt berm covering the explosive facility, even the road that ran down the canyon to the chain-link gate.

  Elizabeth got to her feet, swaying with dizziness as she surveyed the canyon. She spotted the ledge at the top of the cliff where she and Jeff had waited, the stream winding down the canyon floor, pinon and scrub brush. Everything looked unchanged.

  Except that every trace of human influence had vanished. It was as if someone had come along and completely cleaned up the MCG apparatus, the pad, the road, everything.

  As if the site had never been here at all.

  Elizabeth had never done drugs back at Berkeley, so this wasn’t some sort of flashback. Maybe she had hit her head in the explosion, she thought. Maybe none of this was really happening.

  Maybe it was.

  She took care to hide Jeff’s body in one of the natural caves that dotted the cliff wall, shallow impressions weathered into the soft tuff. The rock was too hard to dig. She couldn’t find any way to bury him, no way to keep the animals away. It made her sick to think of leaving him there, unprotected, unmarked. Not unremembered. She tried not to look at his fused legs or the blood splotches on his tan shirt as she piled rocks beside him. It took an hour to cover up the shallow depression in the rock, a cairn for him.

  When Elizabeth was done, she stared tight-lipped at his makeshift grave. She stood for several moments, then whispered, “Good-bye, Jeff,” and turned away while she still could.