Martin Smith - Stallion Gate

Fuchs took a deep breath.

"Sergeant, sometimes your simpleness seems almost clever. You have what we called in Germany a 'peasant wit'. Do you understand? But there is a great difference between cleverness and intelligence. Where you see pretty stones, I see phosphate. Where you see 'longhairs', I see an elite. To be honest, the war will be won by intelligence, by science, not by soldiers. Not to denigrate anybodys sacrifice."

"Klaus, we're all soldiers fighting for the same cause," Harvey said.

"And we all have different causes." Fuchs turned to Anna Weiss. "Take the necklace off, it looks foolish."

" Willst du lieber einen gelben Stern haben ?" she asked. " Oder einen roten ?"

At the sound of German, the entire dining room fell silent. In the hush Harvey whispered, "Joe, that old guy with the necklace stole your newspaper."

"You're seeing things. You need a cure," Joe said. "Let's get out of here. Let me take you up to some hot springs, some sacred healing waters. You're invited, too," he told Anna Weiss and Fuchs.

"Impossible," said Fuchs.

"When?" Harvey asked.

"Right now," Joe said. "Tonight. I'll lead you in the jeep."

Anna Weiss said, "Yes."

10

High above the Jemez road, a hot spring poured into a well of rock. Pink coralroot crept out of pine needles. Spruce bough and moon floated on sulphurous steam.

Joe was already in the black water. Harvey bobbled like a rubber duck. Anna Weiss laid her clothes on the edge and stepped in. As she sank, her eyes looked directly into his and she said, "Joy through strength." She went under and came up, her hair moulded to the sides of her face.

"Too bad Klaus didn't want to come up from the car," Harvey said. "He's getting a little testy. It's the pressure from Trinity. Only a month to go."

"Why Trinity?" she asked. "Why does Oppy call the test site that?"

"From an English sonnet," Harvey said and mimicked Oppy's hoarse whisper. "Batter my heart, three person'd God, for you as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend."

"Doesn't it have a name already?" Anna asked.

"Stallion Gate," said Joe.

"An American name, I like that better."

"So do I."

"This is the perfect example of average temperature," Harvey said. "Half of me is cooking and half of me is freezing, but the average temperature is very comfortable."

Every time one of them stirred, water - pungent, buoyant, black - spilled from the well and over moss soaked with the same sharp smell. Between branches they could see the peaks of the Jemez, some hanging in shadow, some shining with scree. Clouds on an easterly wind made the mountains move forward like a wave.

"There was a volcano here as big as Everest about a million years ago." Joe spread his arms along the rim of the well. "When it blew, it threw rocks as far as Kansas. There's still a volcanic vent beneath us."

"Like a deep-banked ember," she said.

"And all these hills are sacred to the old people. Shrines in the caves. You never know what you're going to stumble into. My father and I were hunting one day, when we both fell into a hole. A hole in the ground, dust swirling around. We'd fallen into an old kiva. We were sitting on the floor of it. All around us were these figures. A man with blue skin, blue as a bluebird, and the head of a buffalo. A purple swallow with the head of a girl. A mountain lion sitting like a man. The kiva could have been five hundred, maybe a thousand years old, but the colours were as bright as if they'd been painted the day before. And in about an hour, they faded. In two hours, you could hardly see them. I couldn't even find the place now. It's filled in with dirt and disappeared, but there are more."

Joe was surprised at himself for telling the story. First, that he remembered it. Second, because it smacked of noble-red-man-seduces-tourist. Maybe that's what he was trying to do.

"What is the religion here?" Anna asked. "Was Adam created on the sixth day? Was Eve created from his rib?"

"Different."

"How different?"

"There are different stories, which I remember poorly. Have you seen the clowns at the dances here?"

"No."

"Well, when the world was new, a brother and a sister set out across the mountains. He was handsome. She was beautiful. As they slept on a mountaintop, he realized that he loved her. When she woke up, she saw that he did. She tried to escape by stamping her foot and splitting the mountain so that a wide river flowed between them. He was so mad for her that he threw himself on the ground, and his face swelled and bled, and she felt so sorry for him that she swam back across the river and slept with him. The incest made them outlaws and their children became clowns. Not exactly the same story as the Bible."

"What about everyone else?"

"Everyone sort of wandered up out of the earth. Hard, finished, completed. I really can't tell you about Indians."

Least of all the Indian steeping in the water. Why the hell was he taking the chance of stealing high explosive to give the stuff to Cleto for nothing when he could make a killing out of the contractors in Albuquerque? Did he want to get caught and sent back to Leavenworth or shipped to the Pacific? There was an element not just of self-contempt, but of self-destruction.

"I can tell you about Indians," Harvey said. "When I was eight, some so-called civilized Cherokees threw me into a water tank. The walls were about six feet high and it was half full. It didn't have the aroma of this water, but it had slime, hence amusement value, the pay-off being what I would look like when I hauled myself out. As I climbed out, I noticed the water level sinking just a little bit. I got back in and the water level went up. I went in and out, in and out, then I calculated the volume of the water displaced and its weight and, from that, my weight and volume. I had recently read in National Geographic , between pictures of African breasts, that crocodiles weighted themselves by swallowing stones so they could swim lower and sneak up on those poor African girls. So I shouted from the water for the kids to throw some rocks into the tank. That was my real start in physics. You know, I'm starting to like this water. Does this mean I'm sweating poisons or I'm cooked?" He paddled back and forth between Joe and Anna Weiss. "What are you going to do after the war, Joe? Still thinking about opening a jazz club? I bet you'd need a silent partner."

"How silent? Does this include the clarinet?" Harvey stopped in the middle of the water. "Joe, do you think I'm drunk?"

"Are you?"

"Pi to ten places is 3.1415926535. Could a drunk say that?"

"You did."

"He's right," Harvey murmured to Anna. "In the Texas Panhandle we have tent meetings where people roll on the ground and drool and talk in Hebrew, Hittite and Welsh. It's nothing to speak the simple alphabet of algebra or the garbled Greek of physics. But, Joe, Joe, Joe, I don't want to get you into trouble."

"How could you get me into trouble?"

"I wouldn't say anything, but I wanted you to understand if I disappear. Because you're my good friend."

"What are you talking about?"

"Joe, I'm quitting the Hill."

"Quitting?"

"Nobody remembers that we started this project only because Hitler had his project, so he couldn't blackmail us with his bomb. Now it looks like he never made one. Now we say we're going to use it on Japan, which doesn't have any project."

"Hold it. This afternoon at the Hanging Garden, you nearly killed yourself working on this bomb."

"I was undecided then. I thought I'd let Fate choose for me."

"Well, that was a glorious pose, you and the cordite. This still doesn't make any sense to me. If the Japs had the bomb, you don't think they'd drop it on us?"