The Trinity Paradox Read online

  She entered the administration building through the same door she had crept into the night before. She slowed as she walked in, trying to be nonchalant. After the bustle on the street, the place seemed deserted. Until another busload of Project volunteers arrived, In-Processing probably had time to catch up with some of the paperwork.

  A young woman smiled at her from behind a stack of papers. She had tightly curled hair and wore thick red lipstick, which smeared the butt of the smoldering cigarette in a metal ashtray on her desk. “Good morning. Did you come up on the bus last night?”

  “Actually, the day before yesterday, but I forgot to check in. My luggage was lost with all my papers.” The story rolled more easily off her tongue after she had practiced it several times. “I was wet and tired, and just went to the dormitory. Sorry about that.” She handed over the assignment papers the captain had given her. “I guess I’m supposed to help you out here until my transfer comes through.”

  “Good luck! This is where they always stick their loose ends. You’re the second person this week they’ve stashed here until her papers were found. I can always use some help, but don’t plan on staying around for more than a few hours; they always seem to straighten things out just when the work is about to be finished.”

  Elizabeth hoped for exactly that, but she forced a smile. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and they won’t find my papers.”

  “Fat chance,” laughed the woman. She stood and extended a hand. “By the way, I’m Holly Vanderdeem.”

  “Elizabeth Devane.”

  “Nice to meet you. Do you go by Liz? Betty? Betsy?”

  “Betsy?” She raised her eyebrows. You’ve got to be kidding! “Elizabeth will do just fine, thank you.” She forced another smile. “I’m not much on cute nicknames.”

  “Sorry.” Holly got up to the crowded file cabinets and began to search in the D drawer. She took her cigarette along. Elizabeth tried to blink the smoke from her eyes. “Where were you supposed to be assigned?”

  “Uh, to one of the computation groups. At least that’s why I was recruited.” She went over and opened one of the windows to let in some fresh air. Outside she heard a man shouting orders to a construction crew.

  “Well, let me show you around the office for now. You can help me a bit. The work is mostly routine. Things tend to happen in spurts up here, mostly when the bus from Santa Fe brings in a new batch of workers. Sometimes a whole day will go by without anyone coming in. Every once in a while we get a real doozy—like that Russian physicist who could barely speak English.” She looked around and lowered her voice. “Have you had the security indoctrination yet?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll find out you’re not even supposed to say ‘physicist’—they’re all called engineers.” She straightened. “Anything out of the ordinary goes to the captain. The rest of our time is spent filing the new assignment actions.” She nodded to the pile of paper by the back window. “I’m way behind on that, so if you don’t mind helping me file them…”

  “It’ll keep me from going crazy.” Unless I’m already crazy, dreaming I’ve been thrown back in time to old Los Alamos.

  Holly tried to glance at Elizabeth’s finger. “Not married, huh? Plenty of available men here if you want to grab one and settle down.”

  For some reason Elizabeth felt like an old maid. “No, I’m not married.” And I think I’ll refrain from “grabbing a man and settling down” for the moment, she thought with annoyance. “How about yourself?”

  “My Eddie heads up the Chemical Nuclide Division. We were at Cornell when he got tapped for the Project. It’s all so exciting, and it’s great to be doing something, you know, important for the war effort.” She laughed. “It was bad enough dragging me away from Louisiana to go to New York in the first place. But now, bringing me to the Wild West, I guess I shouldn’t have bad-mouthed the Northeast. Where are you from?”

  “Montana.”

  “Jiminy! I didn’t know they even had universities there. What on earth is Montana famous for?” Holly looked shocked, then suddenly apologetic. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Elizabeth smiled tightly. “That’s all right. My, er, husband was a professor at Montana State, and I used to be involved with the ladies’ club there.” She had to force the words out of her mouth. Emotions welled up in her, cutting off her voice, but she dug her fingernails into the meat of her palm. She had to keep up the act. “After Jeff died, I was asked to come here, get my mind off him.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. How did he die? In the war?”

  Elizabeth winced, then turned away. “I’d, rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

  Thinking of Jeff, knowing he was lying somewhere in a shallow cave in a canyon wall, made pain rise up in her again. But the ease with which she fabricated her story surprised her. Thank you, Mrs. Canapelli. Now she had the perfect alibi for being here, unless someone else showed up from Montana State—which seemed unlikely from Holly’s reaction.

  Holly fidgeted in her chair. “You poor dear. Here, let me show you what to do.” The simple instructions lasted another five minutes, repeated and stressed, though Elizabeth had figured out the task in thirty seconds. Holly asked no further questions about her personal life, and Elizabeth did not encourage conversation.

  As she started filing, Elizabeth felt thankful that it would give her a chance to glance through the personnel files and help her get a better grasp on what this era was like, who else was here.

  In the back of her mind, she tried to recall everything she knew about World War II and the Manhattan Project. She found her mind wandering, mixing up dates, so she tried to write down snippets of facts on a sheet while filing people’s folders. She kept the notes in her own shorthand code, something cobbled together from years of college note-taking. If somebody else found it, the scribbles would seem nonsensical.

  After three straight hours of filing and no one entering the office, Holly stood and put a hand to the small of her back. She carefully touched her hair. “I’m running down to the lodge. Do you want to come and take a break?”

  “The lodge?”

  “Fuller Lodge has the only real meal in town, until they get the cafeteria built. If you want to chance the food at the civilian mess, that’s up to you. But if you can’t eat at the dorm, I’d stick to the lodge.”

  Elizabeth straightened and surveyed her pile of paperwork, half as high as it had been when she entered the room. She wanted some time alone, so she could snoop around. “Tell you what,” she said, “if you’re right about my reassignment coming today, I won’t be able to finish this. Why don’t you just bring me back something and I’ll try to get done here.”

  “You’re a gift, Elizabeth. I really appreciate this.” Holly rummaged for her purse. “What should I bring you?”

  “Oh, a salad is fine. With ranch dressing on the side.”

  Holly stopped and stared, then a wry smile spread across her face. “A salad— what a riot! You’re starting to fit right in! What in the world is a ranch dressing? How about a cheeseburger or a hot dog? Depends what they have warmed up.”

  “Yum.”

  Holly didn’t notice Elizabeth’s lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll spell you when I get back. That way you can catch lunch and take the afternoon off after your papers arrive.”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  As Holly left, Elizabeth blinked and thought to herself that she couldn’t even take the food here for granted. Cholesterol city—no low-fat, no high fiber, everything loaded with preservatives. No diet drinks—or else they’d probably be filled with saccharine—no caffeine-free drinks, and no mineral water for sure. She felt her stomach turning already.

  Once Holly left, Elizabeth moved to the back of the office and pulled out her list. She skimmed her cribbed notes:

  —Okay, WWII started around 1940, ended 1945 (?). Germany (Nazis); Italy (Fascists); and Japanese.

  —FDR is Pres, then Truman. FDR died in office. When? Truman d
ropped the bomb.

  —Manhattan Project set up the secret town of Los Alamos in New Mexico mountains (Jemez). Bunch of scientists gathered together to develop the bomb. Headed by Oppenheimer. Tested bomb near Alamogordo: “Trinity” site.

  —Built two bombs, Fat Man and Little Boy, to drop on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Wish I could remember the dates!) One bomb used a gun method and one used implosion scheme. Plane carrying the bomb is Enola Gay. Left from somewhere in the South Pacific. Not sure if the Enola Gay was used for both bombs. Don’t know how long between Hiroshima and Nagasaki; a few weeks most between Trinity and Hiroshima.

  —Germans dabbled in their own bomb concept, but they screwed up something. Heisenberg goofed a calculation, wrote down a wrong cross-section (?). Can’t remember what it was.

  Elizabeth sent a thousand silent curses to her former high school history teachers. She had never been an expert in history, but her years at Berkeley had given her the basics of when the major scientific advances had occurred. The time working for United Atomics, although in the fusion reactor group, helped her get comfortable with the jargon; and the real education started with the protest work, the Livermore incident and her time in New Mexico with the Santa Fe activists.

  She felt a knot growing in her stomach, and not just at the thought of a greasy cheeseburger or a goat-meat hot dog. I’m letting this get to me! she thought. Relax, it’s only my mind. I couldn’t screw up if I tried. None of this is really happening.

  She would still have to return to the MCG site soon and look around. Maybe she had missed something there and could figure things out. She also had to find a place to bury Jeff, before the coyotes found him. She pushed that thought from her mind and tried to concentrate on her list. Jeff had always called her a pragmatist.

  I have to know more than this about World War II! But she didn’t. She knew a bunch of movies, but who could tell how accurate they were? The list served only to orient herself, anchor her mind so that whatever happened was consistent with what she remembered about history. If her mind was undergoing some sort of healing process, then this experience would feel as true to her as anything her memory could dish out. But yet… the urgency of the people around her, what else could it be? If it wasn’t her mind, she kept getting the same damned answer of time travel, but didn’t want to face it—

  “Excuse me. Would this be In-Processing?”

  Elizabeth jumped in her chair. She crumpled her list in a ball and rose from her chair.

  “The door says this is In-Processing,” the man said, as if pointing it out to Elizabeth. His words carried a British accent.

  A thin man, wearing an oversized coat and a narrow black tie, twisted a hat in his hands. His elbow held a manila envelope to his side. His eyes darted around the cluttered office, and when they rested on Elizabeth, they revealed a sad look. Elizabeth could see deep lines of experience etched onto his face.

  “Yes, what can I help you with?”

  “Thank heavens.” The man smiled nervously. He slapped his hat against his leg and entered the office. “What with all the commotion outside, I wasn’t certain which way was up. I’m from the British MAUD program, sent here to help out. Some of my fellows came a few weeks ago, but I had to take a side trip to Princeton. Szilard was still there and wanted to see me.” He smiled, focusing on her again. “Your office looks to be rather deserted compared with the rest of the camp.”

  “It is.” Elizabeth smiled. She tossed her crumpled list along with a couple of used forms into a wastebasket stenciled burn. “May I help you?”

  “Most certainly.” The man fumbled with the manila envelope and withdrew some papers. He held them out to her. “I’m Graham Fox, Doctor Graham Fox, actually. The MAUD people had me doing setup studies for them for the past year. Imagine my surprise when I discovered they were shipping me to this, er, enchanting place with the rest of the MAUD chaps. Didn’t even bloody bother to ask.”

  Fox’s lack of enthusiasm struck a chord with her, though she didn’t know what in the world a MAUD was—the code name for the British nuclear program?

  “How did you get up here, Dr. Fox? Did another bus pull up?”

  “No, they told me it would be another day until the next one. I obtained a military taxi this morning. Santa Fe failed to excite me. Is it like most towns out here in the West?”

  Elizabeth looked over Fox’s papers. She didn’t have a clue about what she should do next—maybe send him over to Assignments. She could always find an Expedite form to assign him to the Project.

  The Project.

  She found herself doing it. Give the work a nice plain euphemism and nobody will think about what it is they’re trying to accomplish. Maybe it took away some of the inhumanity from the whole idea—did these people really think about what they were doing? They had no idea how their work would snowball, what would happen a half century after they had opened Pandora’s box.

  The Project.

  “From far away the town looked pleasant enough,” Fox muttered. “But the buildings were made of adobe—just mud, like wattle and daub huts you see in the National Geographic magazine!”

  Fox kept complaining, but Elizabeth turned to glance over his form. He had received his Ph.D. at Cambridge in 1935, directed by Rutherford—that name sounded familiar; a post-doc came next under Sommerfeld. The curriculum vitae listed his age at thirty-six. Though two years older than her, Graham Fox looked more like ten. Maybe the “eggheads” of this era squirreled themselves away and didn’t get out.

  “Where do I go now, Miss…?”

  “Devane. Elizabeth Devane.”

  “Yes, most pleased to meet you. But might I ask where I should report next? I’m rather hungry and would like to relax a bit.”

  Elizabeth looked around the room. She had almost finished the filing—and she knew her own nonexistent papers and baggage would never be found. It wouldn’t hurt for the office to be closed. She extended a hand to Fox.

  “My supervisor can’t help you until she returns. I was just going to lunch myself. Would you care to join me?” Fox might prove to be as much a source of information as Mrs. Canapelli; he could tell her everything official new arrivals were supposed to know. Besides, he seemed as displaced as she was.

  His puppy-dog eyes lit up. “I’d like that very much, Miss Devane.”

  “Elizabeth. Please, call me Elizabeth.”

  “Thank you. The British are supposed to be stodgy, but I go by Graham.” He stuffed the papers back into his manila envelope.

  Elizabeth nodded to the envelope. “You don’t want to lose those. I learned the hard way. I came here to do calculations, but they have me filing instead. Paperwork mix-up.”

  Fox grimaced at the thought. He held the door open for her. Elizabeth waited until he had gone ahead, then closed it behind them as they left.

  They found the civilian mess hall by trial and error, watching the flow of people on the street. Once Fox learned that Elizabeth was just as new to the Project, he opened up and began to tell her of his schooldays at Cambridge, how marvelous it had been to work on physics, the only place where political borders made no difference. He had even had a close German friend—until the war, of course, when secrecy had clamped down on everything Fox tried to do.

  Elizabeth dug out the money Mrs. Canapelli had loaned her. The smells of the civilian mess didn’t make her any less uneasy about the food. “My supervisor warned me about this place.”

  Fox shrugged and stared down at his tray as they stood in line to pay. “This is the American West, Elizabeth. According to your Hollywood movies, we are supposed to be eating beans cooked over a campfire. Therefore, I shall not complain.”

  The military cashier tallied up her lunch: “Cheeseburger, twenty-five cents; fries, fifteen cents; Coke, a dime. That’s four bits, ma’am. Anything else?” The man looked barely old enough to be in the military.

  “No, thank you.” She had to figure out in her head how much “four bits” was. As she paid, Elizabeth
kept from shuddering at the grease glistening on her plate from the harsh light bulbs. The only fruits and vegetables laid out on the counter bore some sort of green mold. Probably oozing pesticides, DDT, whatever.

  She joined Fox at an eight-person table. Three young men in white shirtsleeves nodded briefly as Elizabeth sat down, then returned to reading copies of Physical Review and a two-day-old Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. The man reading the newspaper commented to no one in particular about how long he thought it would take the Allies to capture the Solomon Islands, over which air battles were now apparently taking place. Elizabeth didn’t remember anything about that part of World War II.

  She cut her hamburger in two, then took a bite. She looked around the dining area. “See any mayonnaise?”

  Fox glanced up from his meal. “For your hamburger? Is that how you Americans eat it?”

  Elizabeth forced a swallow. “Of course not. Never mind.”

  “I see.”

  Elizabeth didn’t realize how hungry she had become. She had only pecked at Mrs. Canapelli’s huge breakfast of eggs, sausage, and hash browns fried in lard. Now removed from the matronly woman’s presence, Elizabeth tried not to gulp.

  As she looked up, she saw the mysterious man who had helped her in the Admin building the night before. He turned from the cashier and looked at her. Elizabeth recognized the short, curly hair, the angular face, the broad smile. He raised one eyebrow and winked at her, taking his plate off to a different table.

  Elizabeth grabbed Fox’s wrist. “Who is that? Do you know him?”

  Fox looked around, took a moment to locate the man she meant, but shook his head. “Sorry, I’m new to all this.”

  One of the others at the table glanced up from his technical journal and answered, “That’s Dick Feynman, a brilliant kid. A wise guy, too, from what I hear.”

  Two of his companions chuckled. “He drives the security folks nuts—keeps breaking into safes, just to prove that anyone with brains and patience can outsmart any of their precautions.”

  “I heard he has his wife tear up her letters to him in at least fifty pieces, then send the shreds here. The security guys have to put the thing back together before they can read it. Feynman doesn’t mind.”