Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

“Quite a party,” Connolly said, smiling.

“Wait till they really start drinking,” Mills said.

He led Connolly toward the drinks table, where a ruddy-faced man whose hair stuck out on the sides like flaps was furiously attacking a block of ice in a zinc wash-tub. Chips flew out on the table as he drove the pick up and down.

“Careful, professor,” Mills said.

“Gott im Himmel,” the man said. “You would think in such a place someone would invent a machine for this. Here,” he said, handing Mills a glass with ice. “On the rocks, yes?”

“Always. Meet Mike Connolly. Hans Weber.”

“Hello, Mr. Connolly. You’re new? You must be in Kisty’s group. There’s someone new every day. We can’t get one more person, not one, and for Kistiakowsky they never stop coming.”

“No, I work with Lieutenant Mills in the security office.”

“Ah,” he said, pausing to look at Connolly. “So. You replace poor Karl.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “A terrible thing. Terrible. So young. And for what? Some wallet? Some pocket change? How much could such a person have?”

“You knew him well?”

“No, not well. Sometimes he was my bodyguard. That’s right, yes? Bodyguard?”

“We prefer ‘escort,’ ” Mills said, smiling. Then he turned toward Connolly. “Professor Weber is one of the engineers who’s always given protection off-site.”

“Hah, protection,” Weber said good-naturedly. “Snoops. This time it was the protector who needed the protection. What a world we are becoming. So,” he said, changing tack, “you like music, Mr. Connolly?” His intonation made mister a literal translation of Herr. “Not this screeching of cats, but real music?”

“Very much.”

“You play?” he asked eagerly.

“No.”

“No, that would be too much luck. Our group lost a member last year,” he explained, “and I keep trying to find a new one, but no. People keep coming, but no one plays. But you like to listen? We meet on Thursdays. My wife likes the visitors. You would be most welcome.”

“Thank you. I’d like that very much.”

“Well, we’ll see. How is the saying, don’t count the chicken before the hatching? We are amateurs only. But sometimes it’s good.”

“Oh, there’s Oppie,” Mills said, clearly looking for an excuse to begin pulling Connolly away. “I have to introduce Mike,” he said to Weber. “You know how Oppie likes to greet the newcomers.”

Weber smiled and moved his hand in a churning benediction. “Circulate, circulate.”

Oppenheimer was standing with his back to them, talking animatedly to a colleague, but when he turned to be introduced, he looked at them with his full attention, as if the entire evening had been arranged for this meeting. Connolly had seen photographs, but he was unprepared for the focus of Oppenheimer’s gaze, eyes that took him in so quickly that he was enveloped in an intimacy even before he spoke. Oppenheimer was thin, even frail, so that the hollow face offered no distraction from the eyes. Oddly, Connolly thought of Bruner, but those eyes had simply been intense; these were quick and curious. Behind them was a tiredness so profound that their shine seemed almost feverish. He had a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, so he had to bow his head in greeting, which he managed with an ironic oriental grace. His voice was low but as quick as his eyes.

“Sorry I couldn’t see you earlier-there was a meeting I couldn’t get out of. I hear you saw the general?”

“Yes.”

“And how did you find G.G.?”

“Colorful.”

Oppenheimer laughed. “Did he mention his bark and his bite?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Connolly said, surprised.

“Good, then you must have given him a bit of trouble,” he said, drawing on his cigarette. Connolly felt the words come at him like the fast balls of a Ping-Pong match, and he saw that Oppenheimer enjoyed conversation as a form of recreational sport.

“And is it worse? His bite?”

“Oh yes, very much so. The general never lies. I don’t think he knows how, actually. The most honest man I’ve ever met. Not an ounce of guile. How he copes with the Washington maze I don’t know, but he just plunges in, full steam ahead, and before you know it, the thing’s done.”

Oppenheimer, with his almost feline elegance, might have been describing his opposite, and Connolly wondered again about their odd friendship. With Oppenheimer, everything must be charm and coercion and subtle juggling-it couldn’t get done otherwise. Maybe his was the admiration of the master politician for the effective battering ram.

“Maybe they’re so used to looking for tricks that he takes them by surprise.”

Oppenheimer enjoyed the return and smiled. “Maybe so. No doubt you’ve experienced a good deal of that yourself in Washington. How they love intrigue. Poisonous place.”

Connolly laughed. “Well, the air’s better here, but offices are pretty much the same wherever you go.”

Oppenheimer looked up at him, an appreciative glance. “Think you can find mine in the morning? Say, seven-thirty?”

Connolly raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, don’t let this fool you,” Oppenheimer said, raising his glass. “We start early here. Officially at eight, and I’m afraid I’ve got a meeting scheduled first thing, so we’ll have to make it earlier. I do apologize-not very civilized, is it? But Janice will get you a good cup of coffee-the commissary stuff is swill-and besides, it’s really the best part of the day here. Wonderful for riding. Do you ride?”

“No. Just the subways.” The phrase was involuntary, a casual signaling of the distance between his New York and the Riverside Drive where Oppenheimer had grown up, busy with lessons and parties and privilege. But Oppenheimer seemed not to notice.

“That’s a shame. We’ve still got a few horses left from the ranch school, and there’s nothing like it in the mornings. Wonderful trails up the mountains, all the way to the caldera. Well, maybe someone will give you a few lessons-there’s nothing to staying on.”

“I doubt I’ll have the time.”

It might have been rude, but Oppenheimer caught it and chose to ignore it.

“No, none of us have that, do we? Less and less. But we must have some of this,” he said, gesturing with his cigarette to the dancing, “or we’d all get very dull. I expect you’ll be especially busy.” He looked directly at Connolly. “But we’ll discuss all that tomorrow. Have another drink?” He turned toward the table to find his colleague still standing there, waiting to continue the interrupted conversation. “Friedrich, I am so sorry. Let me introduce Mr. Connolly. Professor Eisler.”

Connolly looked up at the tall, graying man with soft, almost liquid eyes, but after a shy nod, Eisler ignored him. “We were discussing Planck’s lectures,” Oppenheimer said politely. “Hardly anybody reads them anymore, which is a pity.” But Eisler now had all his attention again, and Connolly saw how much of Oppenheimer’s charm lay in exclusion-you were so interesting there wasn’t room for anyone else. What could be more flattering than attention? Connolly wondered if the scientists fought for it like students, all of them eager for their private time with him. Even he had felt his spirit dim slightly when the light passed to someone else. And it was all done gently, with flawless courtesy. He had not been dismissed but released to drift.

He wandered slowly around the room, thinking he’d have one more drink before heading for bed. The altitude and his sudden letdown had made him lightheaded, and he worried that he had passed the point of making sense of what he saw. The whole party seemed improbable. The ordinary people stumbling out of time to country music had won Nobel prizes. The young American kid in cowboy boots might be an expert in quantum mechanics. The man in the boxy suit holding a brownie might be-what? A chemist, a metallurgist, a mathematician? The two nattily dressed gentlemen, refugees from a gossipy afternoon tea party, might be discussing critical-mass geometry or, for that matter, the real secrets of the universe. Nothing was farfetched here. People lived in air as rarefied as the altitude. And it must be just as exhilarating for them. Their ideas could leap from one mind to another, racing with the excitement of meeting none of the usual resistance of the ordinary world. The army had strung wires around them to keep the rest out, and it had worked. With all the bad water and dirt roads and inconvenience, they lived in a state of excitement. Everybody was intelligent; everything was possible. Something as ordinary as a murder victim seemed almost vulgar, an unfair intrusion.