If only they had not called him Trigger. It was insulting. It diminished the complexity of his work. It implicated him in the Gadget’s purpose. Charlie told himself for the hundredth time that he was neither building a bomb, nor slaughtering innocent civilians. He was a pawn, whose job was math involving arcs, and soldering. How the nation used those skills was not his affair. He was being a soldier. He was being a man.
Charlie glanced out the window. Dawn hinted vaguely in the eastern sky. Another full night in the lab. Maybe Uncle John and Oppie were right. Maybe demonstrating the Gadget would bring the Pacific war to a speedy end. Maybe it would prevent future wars.
“Right,” he told the empty room. “And maybe tomorrow’s Christmas.”
With that, he closed the initiator switch, the contacts touched, and twenty-four flashlight bulbs switched on.
He counted twice to be sure. Yes, every single one of them. Finally he’d done it.
Charlie flipped the switch back, the bulbs instantly extinguished. On another day, he might have felt proud. Relieved. Triumphant. Instead he felt exhausted.
Also there was the nagging feeling that the design was not right. He’d done his part. Still, there was something wrong.
Charlie threw a sheet over the assembly, to shield it from dust and discourage prying eyes. He turned off the light at his desk—one that illuminated his soldering, as Brenda had taught him. At the door, he switched off the room light as well, then navigated the hallway by feel and the stairs by their creaking under his weight. Fatigue followed Charlie all the way, through the access door and out into the high-altitude predawn morning—where the light on the hills behind Los Alamos stopped him cold.
All this time he had seen the landscape of New Mexico as uniform, one muddy red with lighter or darker hues, but lacking entirely the variety of well-treed New England, and its million shades of green. People carried on about southwestern beauty, and he nodded along out of manners, with no idea what they were talking about.
Now the highlands were a daybreak rainbow: blues and purples at the base of the hills to vibrant yellow at the peaks. Above that, a sky whose blue was so pale it seemed white. A giant bird, he did not know what kind, sailed over without a single flick of his wings. Although the atmosphere lacked the dewy morning scent of lawns and fields back home, there was a freshness to the air, a cleanness. The scent of ponderosa was wonderfully sharp. He found that his shoulders were dropping from their clench up beside his ears. He took a deeper breath.
Two soldiers patrolled the tech area perimeter, rifles down, chatting in low voices. A dog trotted along inside the fence, heading in the other direction. Charlie had been planning to go to the barracks, but something about that dog made him change his mind. Instead he turned toward Fuller Lodge.
The front door was unlocked, the offices corridor dark. He ambled into the main hall, where there was neither dance nor lecture nor church nor party. Simply a large open room with a high ceiling, pine beams, serapes hung on the walls. Along one side stood glass cabinets, holding striking black pottery made by local Indians.
Charlie strode past all of that, to the far end, to the piano. The usual padlock hung on the keyboard cover, but whoever played last had left it looped through the metal bracket, unlocked. He sat, pulling the bench under him with a scraping noise that seemed to offend the empty space. He opened the top, and there were all the keys. He wished like anything that he knew how to play.
“Brenda,” he whispered. She would know the perfect song for that moment too. And if it was a quiet one, he would get to see her face become sweet, unguarded.
Charlie placed his hands on the keys in the only way he knew how, the only shape, while pressing the pedal with his foot so the instrument would sound as loud and long as it could. Then with all of his strength: the G-major chord. He’d done it on a hundred organs, a thousand pianos, he’d played it one second before meeting Brenda.
And now, though the chord sounded powerfully—he felt it in his belly and heard it echo in the rafters—still it was no organ, the lodge no cathedral, those keys having no mighty pipes as loud as an entire orchestra. He played the chord again but arpeggiated, one note at a time from bottom to top.
And that was all. All he had, all he could offer to the woman in Santa Fe who held his heart. Given the speed of sound, how long would it take that G chord to reach her? Thirty-five miles, at give or take five seconds a mile, and the answer was a bit under three minutes, with Brenda’s head on a pillow of the bed where he had slept with her, in the boardinghouse he had snuck in and out of—those notes arriving like the faintest shadows, helping her the littlest bit to awaken.
What a pleasant thought for Charlie, to imagine those sound waves, descending the mountains and crossing the desert to her ears. They rang in every other direction, too, circular ripples dispersing around the world, the gentlest whispers for anyone who needed them. And all at once he realized exactly what was wrong with the Gadget.
The usual tech crew began filing in at about eight, turning on lights and heating up soldering guns, making conversation as they eased into the day. By then Charlie was already surrounded by papers that bore a pigpen of calculations. Those who said hello to him received a bland “good morning,” but he did not lift his head. He’d moved the large drawing of the Gadget’s sphere beside his desk, along with the specification sheets. The pages he was writing on were crowded with arcs.
“Hey there, Mister Charlie.” It was Monroe. “Word’s out you don’t sleep no more. Is it true?”
“As true as the rumor that you are never sober anymore.”
Monroe grinned. “I’m sober right now. Course, it is early yet.” He held a steaming cup of coffee out to Charlie.
“You’re a savior,” Charlie said, accepting the cup and taking a sip. “A saint among mortals. You wouldn’t happen to have a couple of gallons of this, by any chance?”
“Well dang.” Monroe patted his pockets. “Must be I left ’em in my other pants.”
Charlie gulped down more. “What are you fellows up to this week?”
Monroe rubbed the bald top of his head. “I figured you’d know better than me. On account of we’re dying to test your newest thing. All the talk at breakfast is you’re about ready.”
“It ran clean last night.” Charlie waved at the table, where a sheet still covered the assembly. “There’s still something not quite right though.”
“Say, Charlie.” Monroe sidled closer. “You getting enough to eat over here? Hungry horse can’t pull much plow.”
Charlie studied the Gadget design. “Do you know where I could find some sheets of metal? Maybe two or three feet on a side?”
“What kind? Steel and aluminum ain’t the same thing.”
“Well.” He considered. “All kinds, I suppose. Yes, I’d need a sheet of each kind of metal we have around here.”
Monroe scratched his chin. “Not to slow your thinking, Charlie, but I was asking about you getting enough to eat, which most times involves food. Not metal.”
“Oh, I’m fine, thanks.” Charlie waved it away. “I should wrap this little question up by noon or so anyway. I’ll have a big lunch then.”
“What little question is that?”