The Green Glass Sea (27 page)

“The gadget?”

“We hope so. ”

Dewey sipped her Ovaltine and thought for a minute. “But isn't the Trinity place like three hundred miles from here?”

“Not quite. More like two-twenty. ”

“But still, we won't be able to see anything. I mean, the earth curves too much, doesn't it?”

“Ah, my practical little scientist. ” Mrs. Gordon smiled. “A good question. Yes, it does. For most normal phenomena. But if everyone's calculations are correct, we'll have visual confirmation, even way up here. ”

She saw Dewey frowning, biting her lip, and patted her hand. “Still worried about the atmosphere igniting?” she asked gently.

Dewey nodded. It was one of the things she was worried about.

“Well, as I said before, I don't think it will. I really don't. But you're in good company. There's half a dozen Nobel laureates out there right now wondering the same thing. A lot of questions are going to get answered in the next couple of hours. ”

Not all of them
, Dewey thought.

They sat in the kitchen for a few minutes staring out into the darkness. Mrs. Gordon smoked a cigarette, Dewey finished her Ovaltine. At quarter of three, Mrs. Gordon stood up and stretched. “Why don't you go get your clothes. Grab a sweater. It may be windy. You can change in the bathroom while I try to wake Sleeping Beauty. That could take a while. ”

By the time Dewey was dressed, Suze was up, more or less. She stood in her pajamas staring blearily into her dresser drawer as if she had never seen underwear before. Dewey took a
Captain Marvel
into the kitchen to wait.

They trooped down the wooden stairs in complete darkness, carrying blankets, thermoses, and a paper sack of sandwiches and cookies out to the car. The eastern sky was cloudy, but directly above, the night sky seemed to have a million stars, with the haze of the Milky Way arcing across the inky dome.

No streetlights on the Hill. Rectangular patches of light spilled onto the dirt road from a few apartment windows, and when they were past the Lodge, Mrs. Gordon drove with her low beams on. All Dewey could see were the trunks of trees, streaks of bright water in the road, and the occasional green-gold glow from a foraging raccoon's eyes. Everything else was darkness. They drove in silence for ten or fifteen minutes, Dewey figured, Suze half asleep against the passenger-side window, Mrs. Gordon drumming her fingers softly on the steering wheel. Then she pulled off the road and turned off the engine. “We can walk from here, ” she said.

Dewey opened the car door and was glad she'd brought a sweater. The air was cool and smelled clean, as if the rain had washed the mesa, leaving only the scents of piñon and damp earth.

Mrs. Gordon had a big silver flashlight and walked ahead, shining it on the path, a faint trace slightly more compressed with footprints than the surrounding gravelly sand. Up ahead Dewey could see little pools of light from other flashlights and the smaller metallic glints of eyeglasses and wristwatches. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she made out a cluster of people, fifteen or twenty rounded shapes against the flat angles of the mesa rocks.

Friends called out greetings, and Mrs. Gordon laid the plaid blanket down in a clear space next to them. People were talking in small groups, some subdued, some excited, and every few minutes a circle of light winked on and off as someone checked his wristwatch for the time.

“Any word, Nance?” Mrs. Gordon asked a woman on her left. Suze lay down and put her head in her mother's lap.

“Still storming, but the meteorology guys say it'll clear within the hour. Zero's been moved back to five thirty. ”

Dewey heard a crackle of static. “Is there a radio here?”

A man two blankets over—too far for Dewey to see his face—said, “Two of the SEDs brought a shortwave. We were getting transmissions from the observation planes over the site, but the weather's grounded all but one. ”

“Can I go see?” Dewey asked Mrs. Gordon.

“Sure. Take the flashlight. But point it down and keep your hand over it so no one loses their night vision, okay?”

Dewey nodded and followed the sound of the radio, stepping carefully between the blankets. It was like being on a beach that had no ocean. She didn't need the flashlight. Her eyes had adjusted enough to make out the lighter shapes of shirts and hands and sandwiches.

It was a great radio, a Zenith Trans-Oceanic. The two men operating it seemed surprised when she asked a question about its reception—probably because she was a girl. But they answered it, and Dewey had a very interesting conversation with them about the wave magnet antenna until another transmission came through and the engineers had to go back to work.

Dewey sat on the hard-packed dirt a few feet away, listening to the crackling report from the faraway pilot and looking out over the edge of the world. It was too dark to see much difference between sky and land, except the sharp edges below which the star-speckled black was solid. A thousand feet down, on an invisible road, a single pair of headlights as tiny as pinpoints moved slowly across the featureless darkness.

When she began to feel stiff from sitting on the damp ground, Dewey made her way back to their blanket, Mrs. Gordon's face recognizable in the red glow of her cigarette's tip. She drank a cup of Ovaltine, warm in the cool night air, and ate half a pot-roast sandwich. To her left, a few pale streaks were beginning to appear in the eastern sky when one of the radio men shouted, “This is it!”

Dewey stared out into the darkness, not looking
at
anything, her fists clenched in excitement and fear.

And suddenly there was a bright light, as bright as the sun. It lit up the faces of the people and the leaves of the trees. Dewey could see the colors and patterns of blankets and shirts that had been indistinct grays a second before, as if it were instantly morning, as if the sun had risen in the south, just this once.

Time stood still for a moment, and then the light faded. A minute later she heard—and felt—a long, low rumble, like distant, alien thunder. It faded as well, and after a moment's pause, everyone on the mesa stood and began hugging each other. Conversations grew louder, happier, as their silent vigil became a party. Several men pulled out bottles and silver flasks, which quickly made a circuit of the group. One of the radio men did a spirited Irish jig.

Mrs. Gordon hugged Suze, then Dewey, then took a long swig from the nearest flask. Someone began to sing, and in the commotion, Dewey slipped away. Ten feet from the celebration she sat down against the rough trunk of a pine tree, hugged her knees to her chest, and began to tremble.

The gadget worked.

MRS. GORDON SHOOED
the girls off for naps as soon as they returned to the apartment. A nap at 7:00 in the morning? Dewey fretted and tossed and turned for more than an hour, but fatigue won. She awoke again to the sound of horns blaring, a little after 1:00 that afternoon.

Dewey padded out to the kitchen in her pajamas. A makeshift parade had gathered in the road below. Kids pounded wooden spoons on tin pans and blew across Coke bottles for low-pitched whistles. Women waved handkerchiefs and flags, and every few minutes an impromptu song or a cheer swept through the crowd as it gathered more and more members.

The buses had returned.

Dr. Gordon came bounding up the back steps ten minutes later, grinning from ear to ear, his fingers raised in a V-for-Victory sign. He grabbed Mrs. Gordon and kissed her, then twirled her around the kitchen. He had dark circles under his eyes and needed a shave, but Dewey had never seen him happier.

“We did it!” he said. “My god, Terry, you should have seen it. ” He saw Suze standing sleepily in the doorway and lifted her off the ground in a huge hug.

“We saw the light, Daddy, ” she said when he put her down. “Was it brighter down there?”

“It was the most incredible goddamn thing I've ever seen. The light—oh, Jesus, the light—a fireball, gold and purple and blue and red, climbing up into the sky, climbing and climbing. It kept changing colors, like a kaleidoscope, a huge monstrous kaleidoscope of fire and gases. It lit up every crevice of every mountain for a hundred miles, as clear as daylight. Clearer. ” Dr. Gordon leaned against the icebox and rubbed his fists against his eyes as if he could still see it.

“We were flabbergasted. I mean, we've worked on this thing for two years. We thought we had a good idea of what it would do. But none of us were ready for this. It just kept getting bigger. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. It was—” He shook his head. “No words for it. Nothing like it ever before. Not on
this
earth. ” He reached up and opened the cupboard, putting two glasses and the bottle of whiskey on the counter. He poured an inch in each, and handed one to Mrs. Gordon.

“To success, ” he said. They clinked glasses and drank.

“Now what happens?” Mrs. Gordon asked.

He shrugged. “It's out of our hands now. The science worked. It's all Washington from here. ”

Mrs. Gordon looked at him for a long minute, then put her glass down with a soft but solid clunk. “I think I prefer physics. ” She wasn't smiling anymore.

“The genie's out of the bottle, Terry. No way to put it back now. ” He yawned, an enormous yawn, and picked up the whiskey bottle. “I know what's next for me, though. I'm going to have another knock of this, then sleep until the middle of next week. ” He poured another inch of whiskey in his glass and downed it.

“Why don't you kids get dressed and go join the parade?” he said, looking at Dewey and Suze. “Here. ” He dug into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out three crumpled one-dollar bills. “Get yourself a couple of hamburgs at the PX. Cokes too. We're all celebrating today. ”

Dewey didn't feel like celebrating, but she knew a grown-up order when she heard one. She and Suze put on their clothes and went out into the carnival atmosphere of the Hill.

It was as if a dam had burst after so many months of tension and pressure. Everyone was hugging. Some people were laughing, some were crying, some were doing both at once. And finally, everyone was talking about the gadget.

“Magnificent. Horrible too. But magnificent. ”

“So much for Japan. It'll only take one. ”

“Cloud looked like a glowing mushroom, eight miles high. Eight miles. ”

The men who had been on the buses were easy to spot. Many of them held whiskey bottles, and they had the same strange expressions on their faces, like space pilots in science fiction comics. Awestruck and solemn, as if they had looked into another world.

On the porch of the Lodge, a small knot of people huddled around a portable radio, listening to the news from Albuquerque that KRS patched in around lunchtime.

“Ammo dump my foot, ” said one man in uniform. “But I guess folks on the outside will believe what the army tells them. ”

“Will people buy that?” Dewey asked. “I mean, if we could see it from here—”

“Probably, ” Suze said. “If that's what's on the radio, I bet it'll be in the papers too. I'd probably believe it, if I didn't know what the gadget really was. ”

“Okay, what is it?” Dewey asked.

“It's a bomb, goofus. ”

“Well, yeah. But they've been bombing Japan for a year. And Hitler was bombing London forever. There were bombs all over the war. What makes this one so special?”

“It was
really
big, ” Suze said confidently. “So now we'll have the Japs on toast. ” She was skipping along and grinning as if she'd personally won a prize.

“How long do you think that'll take?” Dewey asked. She wasn't skipping and she wasn't thinking about the war. She was wondering if she should start packing.

“I don't know. Soon, I guess. Why would they wait?” Suze pulled the crumpled bills out of her pocket. “Two hamburgers and Cokes is only forty cents, ” she said. “And Daddy said we should celebrate. We can buy every comic in the PX with the rest of this!”

Dewey hesitated. Three dollars was a lot of money. But what if the army sent her off to someplace where comics weren't allowed? An orphanage run by ladies like Nana, or worse, Mrs. Kovack? This might be her last chance. She fingered the small stone in her pocket. “Sure, ” she said. “Shazam. ”

“Yeah. ” Suze smiled and linked her arm through Dewey's. “Shazam. ”

EVER SINCE HE
got back from the desert, Dr. Gordon had been home as often as he was in his lab, walking around the apartment whistling and singing, although his voice wasn't very good. Mrs. Gordon was home a lot too. Dewey figured there wasn't much to do anymore.

All her boxes had been packed for weeks. Nothing at the Gordons' had changed, but Dewey knew it could be any day. A few other families had already left. It was just a matter of time.

They had even given a party a week ago, a farewell for one of Dr. Gordon's colleagues who was going back to Columbia. A dozen people crammed into the small living room, drinking cocktails and laughing until 2:00 in the morning. Well, mostly laughing. They were making so much noise that Dewey couldn't sleep, and she'd gotten up about midnight to get a drink of water from the bathroom. She heard Dick Feynman talking, and stopped in the doorway to listen. “Well, yes. We
started
for a good reason, and we've been working so hard. It was pleasure. It was excitement, ” he said. “But you stop thinking about—you know? You just stop. And now . . . ”