"Indeed so, but this was before the war. And Oppenheimer brought back vital knowledge from Germany."
"What kind of knowledge?"
"Physics. The work of men like Pauli and Heisenberg. Oppenheimer came back and taught at Caltech and Berkeley. When the war started he was brought into this project, the Manhattan Project, to calculate the critical ma.s.s of uranium 235."
"Uranium?" said Ace. "So the Manhattan Project wasn"t about renovating the architecture of New York?"
The Doctor shook his head. "Regrettably not. It was about building the atom bomb."
A b.u.t.terfly fluttered past, a darting, small, black-and-orange shape. Loud drunken laughter rang out from the house. Ace looked at the Doctor. "The atom bomb?" she said.
"Yes."
"What have you got us into this time?"
Butcher parked the car outside his quarters, popped open the trunk and dragged the luggage inside. He got a beer from his ice box and sat down and inspected the stuff. Two large steamer trunks, both ocean blue with bright bra.s.s fittings. One was stencilled with the initials JS PhD. The other had ACE16.
on it. Acacia Cecilia Eckhart, thought Butcher. So that"s where she got the nickname.
Both trunks were sealed with heavy, formidable-looking padlocks. It took Butcher just under thirty seconds to open them with a bent hairpin. He searched the girl"s first, to get it out of the way. It mostly consisted of clothing, including many pairs of shoes and an amazing amount of underwear some of it of astonishing brevity. The only item of any professional interest to him was a used train ticket for the journey from Chicago to Lamy.
Some of the suspicion eased off Butcher"s mind, like a rucksack coming off his shoulders after a long day"s forced march. He relocked the girl"s trunk and delved into the Doctor"s. Here he found another train ticket from Chicago, more clothing, an umbrella, thankfully only a few pairs of shoes and the most ordinary of boxer shorts, numerous letters, which he took out, spread on the floor and laboriously photographed, a large number of books on physics, which he found incomprehensible but leafed through nonetheless (remembering the girl he had once known in New Orleans and the twenty dollar bill), finding nothing. Some of the textbooks were in German, but that was only to be expected. At the bottom of the stack of books he found two hardcovers with lurid jackets and a dog-eared paperback. The three books were Yellow Yellow City City, h.e.l.l"s Inheritance h.e.l.l"s Inheritance and and The Hawk of Gibraltar The Hawk of Gibraltar, all by Rex Butcher.
Butcher stared at them. They were all well thumbed and had been read numerous times. Of course, he told himself, they might have been purchased second-hand. He opened the books and found the name John Smith written inside each one in distinctive angular handwriting. That didn"t necessarily mean anything, either. The Doctor could still have purchased them second-hand, writing his name in afterwards. It certainly didn"t mean he"d been devotedly reading and re-reading them. Butcher flipped through the novels just as he"d done with the physics texts, looking for concealed papers. All he found were a number of underlinings and marginal notations, all very obviously in the same angular handwriting as the name at the front of the books. The pa.s.sages marked were all pieces of prose of which Butcher was himself particularly proud. Indeed, they represented a keen selection of what he regarded as his finest writing. The comments written in the margin were things like Excellent. Vivid. Sharp. Hilarious! Wickedly subversive! Concise and beautiful. Excellent. Vivid. Sharp. Hilarious! Wickedly subversive! Concise and beautiful.
Verging on the profound.
He hastily snapped the books shut and returned them to the trunks along with the texts, the letter and the clothing. As always, he placed everything back in the reverse sequence to taking it out, ensuring that the original order of packing was restored. He had done this so many times before it was second nature. But he had never done it with quite the nascent sense of shame he felt now.17.
Butcher relocked the Doctor"s padlock and dragged both trunks back outside. He smoked a cigarette, gathering his strength, and then put the trunks in the car again. He went back inside, took the film from the camera and locked it in his desk to be developed by one of the technicians on the Hill that night. He would read the content of the Doctor"s correspondence at his leisure tomorrow. He"d already recognised the handwriting on at least one letter Oppenheimer"s. So the Doctor hadn"t been lying about that either.
But then, Oppenheimer had been involved with some very dubious characters over the years.
Butcher shaved and changed into his dress uniform before taking the car to the Fuller Lodge and dropping off the trunks. From there he drove up Bathtub Row to the Oppenheimers" party.18.
Chapter Two.
At the Party By the time the Doctor and Ace joined the party it was in full swing.
The Oppenheimers" small wooden house was invitingly rough hewn and rustic, decorated with Indian artefacts and handicrafts. The doors and windows were all open and the warm breeze from the mesa blew through, thankfully dispersing the incredible toxic miasma of cigarette smoke that greeted Ace, causing her eyes to water. She repressed the urge to cough as she followed the Doctor inside.
The sitting room had whitewashed walls and dark wood spanning the high, beamed ceiling. It was jammed with people, most of them a good decade or two older than Ace and all of them, men and women, smoking like there was no tomorrow. A group of men stood around leaning on the stone mantelpiece of the big open fireplace (thankfully with no logs burning on this hot summer evening), arguing about something. They had gla.s.ses in their hands and looked fairly drunk, with flushed red faces.
All the people were drinking from martini gla.s.ses and the woman in the red-and-white print dress she"d glimpsed earlier was circulating with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g pitcher, making sure they all remained well topped-up.
They all looked like normal people. But from what the Doctor had said they were getting ready to build a bomb that would be used to incinerate thousands of j.a.panese men, women, children and babies. Ace had seen a doc.u.mentary about Hiroshima once at school and she hadn"t been able to eat kebabs for nearly a year afterwards.
Everybody looked at her and the Doctor as they came into the room. The place didn"t exactly fall silent, because there was still the record player in the corner, a genuine old antique blasting out some kind of depressing cla.s.sical garbage. But the volume of conversation definitely dropped. Everybody seemed to be looking at them. The Doctor smiled cheerily and swept off his Panama hat. "Good evening," he said brightly. There was a ragged chorus of response from the party guests, the sort of thing you got when people wanted to be polite but weren"t really certain who you were.
A man hurried across the room, grinning, to seize the Doctor"s hand and shake it. The man had a lopsided narrow face, a long nose, a wide sensual 19mouth, dark brows and a dark uneven hank of hair. His face was flushed and his eyes bright with drink. He was standing so close to Ace as he pumped the Doctor"s hands that she could smell the cigarette smoke, sweat and cologne emanating from his tweed jacket. Who could wear a tweed jacket in weather this hot? Mind you, thought Ace, she couldn"t point a finger at anyone.
She still had her raincoat tightly belted shut. And with a bit of luck it would stay that way all evening. . .
Ace realised that the Doctor was talking to her. "This is the man you"ve heard so much about," he said. "Our host Robert Oppenheimer."
"Call me Oppy," said the man, taking Ace"s hand and shaking it. His grip was limp and sweaty and he dropped her hand almost immediately, turning back to the Doctor. "Let me introduce you to the boys," he said, leading the Doctor across the room with a hand over his shoulders. The Doctor glanced back at Ace, smiling and shrugging helplessly.
Ace was left standing alone in the middle of this smoky room full of drunken strangers. For a moment she felt like crying. The music was blaring and the voices of the packed room were a blur of strident joviality. Ace considered making a run for it. But then she saw the woman in the red-and-white dress making a beeline for her. Ace looked at the door, checking her escape route, but it was too late. The woman joined her.
"Let me take your coat," she said. It was the moment that Ace had been dreading. She forced a smile.
"No thanks. I"m fine," she said.
"Oh come on now. Just because Oppy insists on sweltering in that ridiculous jacket of his doesn"t mean you have to."
"Well it"s just that, er, I"m not really dressed for a party."
"Oh fiddlesticks. We don"t stand on ceremony here."
"No, really "
"Come on now. Oppy"s only wearing those smelly old tweeds because he"s too drunk to get out of them." The woman giggled and plucked at the belt of Ace"s raincoat. Ace realised that the woman was also drunk. She had hold of the belt now and before Ace could stop her, she"d unbuckled it and thrown the coat open.
The conversation in the room stopped again, with just the record player wailing away in the silence, as everyone stared at Ace. Everyone except the Doctor, who shrugged and smiled apologetically again. Ace could feel all the blood gathering in her cheeks as she went bright red. With the raincoat spread wide, everyone could see what she was wearing. Which was a ta.s.selled leather skirt with gold trim and big silver stars, a broad snakeskin belt adorned with silver dollars, a western style shirt in bright red cotton with black shoulder 20patches, mother of pearl b.u.t.tons and deep pockets in a virulent shade of blue.
Over this she wore a sleeveless suede vest decorated with beads.
In short, she was dressed like a cowgirl.
A fat, oriental-looking man with a goatee blundered drunkenly past Ace.
He was wearing a beret, shorts and a brightly coloured shirt decorated with a strange abstract zigzag pattern. "Dig Annie Oakley," he said loudly as he lumbered towards the fireplace and scooped a martini gla.s.s off the mantelpiece.
A red-haired man frowned at him and tried to take the gla.s.s away.
"That"s my drink Morita."
"I don"t think so, Henbest."
"It certainly is."
"Forget it man. You"re just projecting." The fat oriental man chuckled. He lurched away, grinning and pouring the drink into his mouth so hastily and clumsily that half of it ended up running back down his shirt in a broad dark stain. He didn"t seem bothered. The red-haired man cursed succinctly but inaudibly behind his back. Ace was grateful for the altercation. It had taken everybody"s attention away from her. She looked at the woman who had opened up her raincoat. She was smiling at Ace and gently eased the coat off her shoulders. Ace didn"t resist. The woman took the coat and folded it carefully, as if it was something precious.
"You must have been sweltering under that thing," she said. "What"s that vest made of? Suede?"
"Hey," said Ace. "I know I look like a complete idiot."
"You look wonderful!" The woman didn"t seem to be lying, but then she was drunk as a skunk.
"The thing is," said Ace, hearing a quaver of emotion in her voice and feeling tears begin to gather in her eyes. "I thought he said we were going to the the Alamo Alamo."
The woman saw the tears and heard the quaver and swiftly guided Ace out of the room, down a cool hallway and into a big tiled kitchen, where a young dark-skinned woman was busy at the stove, black hair tied back in a bun and a sheen of sweat on her smooth forehead. She was stirring a pot of some reddish concoction, which smelled so good that Ace"s mouth watered and she forgot all about crying.
"Let me fix you a drink," said the woman who was still carrying Ace"s raincoat. "My name"s Kitty, by the way. Kitty Oppenheimer."
"What"s that cooking on the stove?" said Ace, speaking loudly enough to cover the eager rumbling of her stomach.
"Speciality of the house," said Kitty. "Chilli con carne. We"ll be serving it up soon, to stop those jokers next door from getting too drunk. Would you like some?"21.
"Yes, please," said Ace. Kitty was selecting a martini gla.s.s from an a.s.sortment that were drying on a white towel spread beside the sink. She took the gla.s.s over to a brown ceramic bowl half full of a strange gelid-looking yellowish mixture. She dipped the gla.s.s into it. "What"s that?" said Ace.
"Lime juice and honey. Another speciality of the house." Kitty carefully smeared the rim of the gla.s.s with the mixture then took Ace by the elbow and guided her back down the cool hallway to the room full of smoke and heat and noise. "Have courage," said Kitty. "Once more unto the breach."
Back in the living room she collected the pitcher she had been wielding earlier and used it to fill Ace"s gla.s.s. She picked up her own gla.s.s and held it up to Ace. "Bottoms up," she said, clinking gla.s.ses. Ace took a sip. She had never been big on gin, especially warm gin, but the honey and lime mixture made it quite palatable. Kitty winked at her and c.h.i.n.ked gla.s.ses again.
Ace sipped again. With the third sip she felt her lips go numb and thereafter the music and voices of the party seemed to be buzzing away pleasantly like a fly beyond a sheet of gla.s.s. Kitty introduced her to a lot of people whose names Ace promptly forgot, or at least promptly forgot to whom they were attached, though a lot of them sounded strangely familiar. Names like Fermi and Feynman and Fuchs. At one point the fat oriental-looking man in the beret staggered past and lurched into her, almost spilling her drink. Kitty stared daggers at him as he retreated.
"Who is he?" said Ace.
"Cosmic Ray."
"Cosmic who?"
"Ray Morita. The big clown. Look at those ridiculous shirts he wears. Word is he has some of the local Indian craftswomen run them up for him. They must be knocked out on some kind of Indian bug juice to come up with those designs."
"I think they"re quite nice," said Ace. "Jazzy."
"Oh for Christ"s sake don"t mention the word jazz jazz anywhere in his hearing." anywhere in his hearing."
After a second and third round of martinis, and three bowls of the utterly delicious chilli (which did surprisingly little to ameliorate the effects of the booze), Ace found herself experiencing alternating drunken and lucid intervals. In one lucid interval she found herself in a corner decorated with wall hangings, having a heart-to-heart with Kitty about her relationship with the Doctor. Kitty Oppenheimer was prying in a salacious, gossipy, good-natured way. "I understand," she said, her eyes gleaming wickedly. "He"s like a father to you."
"No. More like a combination of best friend, teacher and comrade in arms,"
said Ace. She enunciated each syllable with great care and when she finished speaking reached up what seemed a terribly long way, to touch the side of 22her own numb mouth and make sure there wasn"t a copious quant.i.ty of drool flowing out of it.
"Well," said Kitty sighing, evidently disappointed by the lack of scandal, "I can"t point a finger. I was married three times before I got to Oppy."
"Three times?" Ace"s sluggish mind got to grips with the arithmetic. "He"s your fourth husband?"
"Yes," said Kitty, grinning sardonically. "I can see what they said about your mathematical gifts is true. Anyway, I saved him from that Tatlock b.i.t.c.h." A note of genuine venom, as opposed to mere conversational malice, surfaced in Kitty"s voice. "She nearly ruined Oppy, dragging him down with those types she used to cavort with." She looked at Ace, her eyes cold, then looked past her. "That Tatlock woman is one reason we"ve got all these cloak-and-dagger-types skulking around here." She nodded at a handsome-looking man in uniform who was standing nearby with his back towards them. He shifted to let a drunken party guest stumble past him and Ace was shocked to see that the man in uniform was Major Butcher.
"You know what he did?" said Ace, feeling drunken outrage well up in her.
Kitty smiled at her.
"Who?"
"Major Bulldog Butcher."
"Bulldog? I like it. What did he do, darling?"
"He pretended to be our driver. When he picked us up. So he could eavesdrop on us. Eavesdrop. That is a word isn"t it?"
"It certainly is. But I shouldn"t be too upset, dear. You might as well get used to it. I imagine the Major is eavesdropping on us right now."
"Is he?" said Ace. "Then he"s a "
But before Ace could vocalise the terse Anglo Saxon epithet that sprang to mind to characterise the Major, a shadow loomed over them. It was the shadow of the fat drunken oriental man Ace had noticed earlier. He was even more drunk now, swaying noticeably. "h.e.l.lo ladies," he said.
"h.e.l.lo Ray," said Kitty, in a cool, noncommittal voice.
"What"s a couple of hip chicks like you. . . " Ray paused, evidently losing his thread, his large face nodding like some kind of novelty candy dispenser, before he suddenly focused on Ace. He grinned at her and stared at her, a long appraising gaze that moved from her forehead to her toes and back up again.
This would have been offensive enough if he had merely been a.s.sessing her s.e.xual attributes, but somehow the knowledge that he was actually surveying her bizarre garb made it even worse. "Hey, Calamity Jane," he said, leering.
"I thought I was Annie Oakley," said Ace.
"Calamity Oakley, Annie Jane," muttered Ray. "That"s quite some get-up."23.
"Haven"t you had enough to drink?" suggested Kitty in a sweet, reasonable voice.
"h.e.l.l man, no, no, no," said Ray firmly, shaking his head again.
"Well then, hadn"t you better go and have another martini?" said Kitty. Ace admired her adaptability. "The pitcher"s over there. Help yourself."
But Ray just ignored her and kept grinning at Ace. "Look at you. You"re headed for the last round-up. Your spurs they jingle jangle jingle. You"ve got to throw a la.s.soo. You got to bust a bronco. You"re a lonesome cowpoke. You got to get along little doggie, get along. You, you, you. . . "
"Run out of cowboy cliches?" said Kitty. "Maybe another little martini will help."
Ray didn"t seem to hear her. The look of alcoholic puzzlement that had clouded his face suddenly abated. He stabbed a chubby finger at Ace, stopping just short of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, hovering there in drunken menace. "It"s time you were back in the saddle!" he chortled. Ace and Kitty exchanged a glance. The crude innuendo in the man"s remark was abundantly clear.
Kitty Oppenheimer slapped his hand away from Ace"s b.r.e.a.s.t.s and opened her mouth to give vent to what Ace fully expected to be blistering invective, and which Ace was rather looking forward to hearing.
Just then, though, the record player, which had fallen mercifully silent, began to blare again. Ace winced at the loud, loathsome pomposity of the cla.s.sical music that poured from it. There was a simultaneous sound of wordless loathing from Ray, and Ace looked at him, surprised to see a look of disgust on his face that was identical to her own. "What is is that c.r.a.p," he moaned. that c.r.a.p," he moaned.
"Wagner," said Kitty in a clipped, discursive tone. "Tristan and Isolde. The Liebestod."
"I know what it is is, man," said Ray, his face corrugated with suffering. "But I mean, why are they playing it why are they playing it?" He glared at a tall, thin stick insect of a man who stood over the record player, nodding with satisfaction as the music keened and thrilled. A young man with a huge, domed forehead, tiny ears and a risible little lick of hair adorning his large curve of skull. The young man"s eyebrows echoed the curve of the huge round spectacles that gave him a bug-eyed look. His Cupid"s bow mouth was bracketed by the scattered trace of scarring from adolescent acne.
"It"s Fuchs," said Kitty Oppenheimer, half to Ace and half to Ray.
"Of course it"s ficking fickle fricking Fuchs, baby," said Ray. "Making with the Germanic jive again. It"s enough to make you puke, man. Puking Fuchs."