“I don’t care about the rest. I can’t lose you.”
“No,” she said, her head back, shaking it happily. “No. You can’t. Tell me again.”
“Come to bed.”
And this time, she took his hand and led him into the other room.
The drought had brought summer early and with it one of the electrical storms that usually waited for July. Outside Weber’s house, Connolly could see the giant dark anvil of a thunderhead rolling toward the mesa, the sky crackling with branches of lightning that shot through the air like X-rays, leaving an inverted image on the eye. Inside, an Indian maid was refilling the coffee urn, edging her way through the crowded living room. Despite the absentees down at the test site, the room was full, the low thunder outside barely audible over the noise of the party voices. Nothing seemed to have changed. Kitty Oppenheimer was again curled up in a corner of the sofa, while Johanna Weber scurried about, playing her hostess memory trick. The air was close, warm with bodies, and Connolly, bored and beginning to sweat, had been there only a few minutes before he began planning an escape. Weber came to his rescue, asking him to fetch Eisler from his lab.
“He’s always forgetful, Friedrich. But it’s the Beethoven. Without him, we can’t-”
The music was outside, deep cello moans of thunder under the viola staccato of the moving clouds. For once there was no dust; even the earth was holding its breath. Eisler’s lab was near the edge of the plateau, not far from X Building, where the cyclotron was, and the rain began before Connolly could reach it, so that he sprinted the last few yards. Now the noise was everywhere, and when the wind banged the door behind him it was lost in a crack of thunder. The hallways brightened for a minute with lightning, and Connolly expected the dim of a power surge, but the overhead lights were steady. When he opened the lab door and stepped in, the sounds were hidden by more thunder, so that Eisler was unaware of his coming. He was about to call out but instead stood for a moment watching, afraid to interrupt.
Eisler was bending over a table in front of a blackboard, stacking small plum-colored metal cubes in a surrounding well of what looked like soft aluminum blocks. Critical assemblies. His body was tense, his long fingers barely moving with slow precision. In the noise of the storm he seemed to stand in his own vacuum, oblivious to anything beyond the table. Connolly watched as he tentatively lowered his right hand, dropping the metal a fraction, then held it still to listen for the increased clicking sound, his whole frame rigid with concentration. So this is what it was like, this awful attention, tickling the dragon’s tail. Then he straightened for a minute, staring ahead at the blackboard as if it were a mirror, and took a deep breath. When he bent over again his movements were fluid, no longer hesitant, and Connolly watched, fascinated, as he lowered another cube in a steady, deliberate push.
Suddenly the clicking erupted and a blue light flashed in the room, some terrible new lightning, and Connolly gasped. Eisler whirled around, seeing him for the first time, then swept his arm across the pile of blocks, knocking them over to the floor with a crash. Connolly instinctively froze. The blue light and the frantic clicking noise stopped. For a moment they held their positions, Connolly listening to his own ragged breath, Eisler looking at him in anguish. When Connolly moved, Eisler held his hand up in warning.
“Please stay where you are,” he said calmly. “You’ve been exposed.” Then slowly, with the inevitable movements of a dream, he went over to the blackboard. “I’ll be with you in a minute, Mr. Connolly,” he said distantly, absorbed. “How many meters would you say? Ten?” The blocks lay scattered at his feet, now just harmless metal. He picked up a piece of chalk and quickly sketched an outline of the room, like one of Connolly’s maps, then began to fill the space to its side with the numbers and signs of a formula. Connolly stood trembling, watching him move his chalk across the board, methodical as a madman.
“What are you doing?” he said finally, his voice hoarse, scraped by shallow breathing.
“The effect of the radiation,” Eisler said, his back still to him. “It can’t have been more than two or three seconds. That’s something. But it’s the distance that matters. It’s good you stopped where you are. You have good manners, Mr. Connolly,” he said dispassionately, as if it were no more than another factor to compute. “Not to walk in. They may have saved your life.”
“You did,” Connolly said, shaking involuntarily.
Eisler turned to face him. “Unless I have taken it.” He paused. “We will have to do some tests.” Then, sensing Connolly’s shock, “I think you will be all right. It was a very small exposure.”
“But what happened? Was that a chain reaction?”
“Oh yes.” Eisler came away from the board, his shoulders drooping. “I am so very sorry, Mr. Connolly. I didn’t know-”
