On July 13, Berthe came forward with calculations from Theoretical Division, and a prophecy. The chain reaction would not be limited to the bomb’s materials. It would set the entire atmosphere on fire, annihilating the planet. Bronsky insisted that Horn’s wiring team continue working, while senior physicists from other divisions met for a debate that kept lights on in the ranch house long after all the tents had gone dark.
On July 14, Berthe retracted his prediction. There had been a mathematical error.
Meanwhile a bulldozer inadvertently drove over the control wires, severing the connections between facilities. Glad to have something to do, Charlie took shovels and two soldiers and they unearthed the broken links. Under a scorching sun, he spliced and secured the wires, then helped the soldiers bury everything again.
“See there?” Bronsky crowed to the other division heads. “Science and army are cooperate.”
On July 15, word came down: The test code-named Trinity would occur that night, at midnight. No one was permitted to leave or arrive. Charlie returned to his bunk and started a letter.
Dear Brenda,
I do not know what it means to be a man in wartime. No one is shooting at me. But hundreds of thousands of people are shooting at one another. What is my job? Am I simply a soldier, following orders? What has become of my conscience?
He put the paper facedown, as he had with his calculations back in Chicago, and went back outside to wait with the others. The humidity thickened all afternoon. At dusk, the wind picked up. Heat lightning glimmered behind the mountain range. Charlie stood outside the mess tent and Giles joined him. “Did you eat anything?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Me either,” Giles said. “What if we actually have a storm?”
“It’s July in New Mexico,” Charlie answered. “Nobody imagined it could happen.”
A long convoy of army trucks drove past, noisy behemoths trailing plumes of gritty dust. They were headed back to The Hill.
“Only three hundred are staying,” Giles explained. “The official reason is to protect us, but I suspect it’s actually to prevent sabotage.” He scratched his arm. “Did you hear about the press releases?”
Charlie glanced at him sideways. “Do I want to hear?”
“There are three, already time-stamped for tomorrow. The communications chief showed me this afternoon. One, assuming the test makes a large noise and bright light, says an ammunition dump exploded, the fire is under control. The second one adds that gas canisters blew as well, so nearby communities had to be evacuated. The last one says there has been loss of life. I asked the officer what the blank space at the bottom was for, and he said that’s where they’ll put the names of the dead.”
Charlie held his stomach and said nothing.
“He also told me they’ve informed the governor of New Mexico about the test. In case things go extremely wrong, and the army needs to declare martial law.”
Charlie nodded. “You are my friend, Giles, and a good, smart guy. But you need to shut up now.” He staggered away across the sand.
“If I don’t tell you, Charlie,” Giles called after him, “who can I tell?”
Charlie remembered with affection the thunderstorms of his New England childhood. Whether over the Fourth of July weekend up at Lake Winnipesaukee, or in late August back in Boston, the humidity would gather for days, building, until the scale tipped and the skies opened. If it happened during the day, the winds would strengthen, the leaves show their undersides, and the rain would deliver a deluge for half an hour or so, after which steam rose from the roads. At night, he’d wake to thunder rumbling in the dark and listen as the storm approached. Then the downpour unleashed, with lightning every few seconds until one bolt flashed simultaneously with the thunder, a great crash overhead, right above the house, and then the storm passed on, the flashes winked out, the rumbling faded, leaving the air washed and cool.
That night in New Mexico, the storm flickered with menace on the horizon, but drew no nearer. Rumbles came like muted drums, and the wind arrived in bursts of stinging sand, followed by ominous calm. Charlie sat at the tent opening, watching in perfect stillness.
Passing by, Giles pointed at the paper in his lap. “Another epistle to your girl?”
“I write to Brenda the way some people go to church.”
“I’d like to meet her someday.”
“I would not be here.” Charlie waved one hand in a circle, as if to take in the tent, the desert, everything. “Hell, our nation would not be here, if not for Brenda.”
A flash of lightning illuminated their faces, unmasked them to each other. Giles scuffed his shoe in the dirt. “You will tell me, won’t you, when I need to be terrified?”
Charlie scratched his forehead with the pen. “You should have started being terrified two years ago.”
By nine o’clock, Project Y leaders sent a message that countdown would be delayed till two a.m. By ten the wind had steadied out of the west, a light rain teemed across the desert, and the detonation was put on indefinite hold. By midnight the storm had intensified, sheets of rain slashing across the rows of tents.
Out of the darkness came Bronsky, holding an umbrella over his head though it had been inverted by the wind. Charlie observed the urgency in his stride, like a man on his way to a fistfight. He moved aside so his boss could enter the tent.
Bronsky held up a hand while catching his breath. Water dripped from his earlobes. “We are not find Horn anywhere.”
“I haven’t seen him,” Charlie said. “I don’t even know which tent he’s in.”
“Not important now.” He wiped his eyes with fingers that Charlie noticed, for the first time, were long and graceful. The man would have made a good violinist. “We need to know danger level. If we have lightning strike, device will detonate, yes or no?”
“Hard to say, sir.”
A flash lit the ground around the tent opening, puddles in the dirt.
“Do you see this?”
“I did, sir. Of course.”
“What in hell? Are we safe?”
Charlie stood shoulder to shoulder with Bronsky, observing the rain. “How do you define ‘safe,’ sir?”
“Fishk, you have build detonators. Can lightning start them?”
“We never tested for external electricity, sir. We assumed the juice would be coming from us.”
“Chert voz’mi.” Bronsky rubbed his eyes again, and Charlie noticed there were sores on the man’s brow—made, perhaps, by anxious rubbing. Could the unflappable Detonation Division director be afraid? “So many geniuses,” his boss said, “and here is thing we do not anticipate. What else are we forget to plan for? And what are we do now?”
“There are hundreds of yards of wire on the Gadget, and that platform is the tallest thing for twenty miles.” Charlie squared his stance. “My advice would be to treat it like a lightning rod.”
Bronsky hesitated, trying to tell if Charlie was joking. He opened and closed his broken umbrella. “Do you know they are have betting pool, up at command?”
Charlie raised his eyebrows in surprise. “They do not.”
“One dollar each. Oppenheimer have bet on output of three hundred tons of TNT. Teller bet forty-five thousand tons. Ramsey says zero, total dud.”