Joseph Kanon: Los Alamos

By the time he got to Compania Hill, the wind had died down to the still hush before dawn. Busloads of scientists and visitors lined the sandy ridge, talking in groups around the jeeps and trucks like guests at a tailgate party. Some were looking southeast, toward the small tower in the distance, waiting for the signal flares. The rockets` red glare, Connolly thought, the bombs bursting - a macabre new version of the song. Someone handed him a piece of welding glass and he held it up, the barely visible light disappearing completely behind the tinted square. Was it really necessary? Did anyone know? Some of the scientists had smeared their faces with suntan oil, so their skins gleamed. He recognized Teller, pulling on heavy gloves like a good boy bundling up for the storm. They were twenty miles from the gadget. Could it really burn the air, like the ball of fire over Hamburg, sucking breath out of lungs? Carpet bombing? But this was supposed to be something else.

Most of the men had been there all night and were stiff with cold and waiting. Now they grew quiet, fiddling with the squares of welding glass, stamping their feet warm. There was nothing left to say. Cameras had been set up at N 10,000. Here there were only people, knotting together on a sandy grandstand, anxious and expectant, like Romans at a blood sport. Connolly thought about the first time he`d seen the Tech Area - secretaries passing through the fence, men darting in and out of lab buildings as if they were late for class, everyone too busy to stop, an endless film loop. Now, finally, they were at an end, waiting to see their work, all those meetings and calculations, go up in smoke.

Mills handed him a Thermos cup of coffee. "They say you`re not supposed to look," he said. "Even this far. What`s that?"

"The rocker. Five minutes."

"Jesus, this stuff goes right through you, doesn`t it?" he said, agitated.

"Dark glass, everyone," someone shouted down the line.

"The hell with that," one of the scientists said, excited. "I`m going to see this. Even if it`s the last thing I see."

"That`s a possibility, Howard." A gruff Hungarian voice.

Connolly picked up his welding glass. "What`s the matter?" he said to Mills, who was shaking.

"Goddamnit," he said. "I have to take a leak."

Connolly smiled. "Just turn around. I won`t look."

"Now?"

"I`ll tell you if you miss anything."

"Fuck," Mills said, then whirled around and took a step away.

Connolly heard the tear of a zipper, then the splashing on the ground, and smiled to himself, wondering if years from now, in Winnetka, Mills would tell this children how he peed the night they exploded the gadget, or whether that story would have to be changed too.

No one else seemed to hear. They stood as still as stone, looking straight ahead. The second rocket. Connolly was aware of Mills beside him again, holding the welding glass up like a mask. there was nothing to see. Black space, the tiny light of the tower. They passed the last minute. But it didn`t go off. Nothing moved.

Suddenly there was a pinprick, whiter than magnesium, a photographer`s bulb, and he was blinded with light. It flashed through his body, filling all the space around them, so that even the air disappeared. Just the light. He closed his eyes for a second, but it was there anyway, this amazing light, as if it didn`t need sight to exist. Its center spread outward, eating air, turning everything into light. What if Fermi was right? What if it never stopped? And light was heat. Bodies would melt. Now a vast ball, still blinding, gathering up the desert at its base into a skirt that held it in place, like a mesa made entirely of light. The ball grew, glowing hotter, traces of yellow and then suddenly violet, eerie and terrifying, an unearthly violet Connolly knew instantly no one had ever seen before. Eisler`s light. His heart stopped. He wanted to turn away, but the hypnotic light froze him. He felt his mouth open in a cartoon surprise. Then the light took on definition, pulling up the earth into its rolling bright cloud, a stem connecting it to the ground.

How long did it take for the sound to follow? The hours of light were only a blink of seconds and then the sound, bouncing between the mountains, roared up the valley toward them, tearing the air. He staggered, almost crying out. What was it like near the blast? A violence without limit, inescapable. No one would survive. Then he dropped  the piece of welding glass, squinting, and watched the cloud climb higher, rolling over on itself, on and on, its stem widening until the cloud finally seemed too heavy and everything collapsed into the indeterminate smoke. He stared without thinking. Behind it now he could see the faint glimmer of dawn, shy behind the mountain, its old wonder reduced to background lighting.

He turned to Mills, but Mills had dropped to the ground as if he`d been knocked over by the blast, had lost whatever strenght it took to stand . His eyes seemed fixed, mesmerized by their glimpse of the supernatural. Connolly heard shouts, loud whoops and spurts of spontaneous applause, and looked at the crowd. Scientists shook hands or hugged. Someone danced. But it was only a reflex, the expected thing, for then it grew quiet again, solemn, and people just stared at the cloud, wondering what they had seen. He felt an urge to swallow, to make some connection with his body. What had he thought it would be - a bigger explosion?  A giant bonfire? All this time on the Hill they had talked in euphemisms. What was it but a larger version of the terrible things they already knew? A sharper speat. A better bow and arrow. But now he had seen it. Not just a weapon. He felt himself shaking. Oppenheimer must have known. Maybe nobody knew. It didn`t have a name yet. Not death. People had ideas about death. Pyramids and indulgences and metaphors for journeys. Connolly saw, looking out at the cloud in the desert, that none of it was true, that all those ideas, everything we thought we knew, were nothing more than stories to rewrite insignificance. This was the real secret. Annihilation. Nothing else. A chemical pulse that dissolved finally in violet light. No stories. Now we would always be frightened.

He heard a retching sound and looked over toward the trucks, where one of the scientists was doubled over, throwing up on the other side of the hood. A relief from the long tension. Perhaps the first of the night terrors to follow. The men nearby turned their heads away, comforting him with privacy.

After a while people bagan getting into buses for the long drive back to Los Alamos. There would be a party tonight. The pulse would reassert itself. Otherwise they would have to admit to the fear. In the morning light, people looked haggard and drained, pale under the shiny lotion, their faces scratchy now with morning stubble. They shuffled unsteadily, like guests at an all-night party finally ready for bed. But Connolly couldn`t move. This is what they had been doing here, all of them. The could was beginning to disappear. He stood watching it drift into the atmosphere, not moving until he could pretend in hadn`t really been there.