The Heat of the Sun

timber buildings, could be glimpsed between the mean, low clutter that had overwhelmed it.
    ‘You can bunk with me,’ he added, pulling up beside a low galvanized-iron hut. Our route had taken us some distance from Main Street, weaving between lines of similar huts, and I
wondered how I would ever find this one by myself. The ground outside was dusty, deeply rutted. Duckboards did service for sidewalks; laundered clothes, unstirring in the heat, hung on lines
between the huts, and electricity poles jutted untidily skywards.
    ‘You’re not telling me the senator lives in one of these places?’
    ‘Don’t be silly. The VIPs are in the old school buildings. Not for us, alas. Space is tight up here.’
    We made our way into a single-room apartment. The heat under the tin roof was savage. Sunlight pressed behind a drawn blind, and two metal cots, made up precisely, stood side by side; there were
lockers and simple chairs, but no strewn magazines, no empty beer bottles, no ashtrays filled with butts. On the sill beneath the window was the room’s sole ornament: a twist of branch with
two jutting twigs, a desiccated piece of debris retrieved, perhaps, from a desert roadside.
    ‘This one’s yours.’ Trouble thumped down my knapsack on a cot. ‘Tonight, it’s dinner with the senator. But you’ll want to wash up, I guess. I’ll show
you to the showers.’
    ‘Shouldn’t you tell me what all this is about?’ I said.
    ‘What, and steal the senator’s thunder?’
    Curiosity consumed me, but when I returned from the showers Trouble had vanished, leaving a message in neat handwriting, telling me that something was up – some sudden duty – and our
dinner must be postponed. I found it strange to think of Trouble as an important, responsible man.
    That night I found my way to the mess hall alone, and had applied myself to a surprisingly edible rabbit stew when a fellow across the table said to me, ‘I know you. You’re one of
us.’
    The voice suggested Brooklyn, and the face that blinked into mine belonged to a journalist I had met some years back, a plump, round-faced fellow who looked perpetually eager to please, like a
schoolboy stabbing up his arm to answer questions in class before any other pupil had a chance.
    ‘Sharpless, ain’t it? I’m Miller, remember? You’ll be replacing McKenna, then?’ he asked me.
    I suppose I looked blank.
    ‘Tell you fuck-all, don’t they?’ cracked a dishevelled, rangy fellow who bore some resemblance to the actor Robert Mitchum, complete with waggling, ill-made roll-up in a corner
of his mouth. ‘And once you’re here, you can’t go back. Unless you do a McKenna.’
    ‘Can’t?’ I said. ‘What is this place, a prison?’
    ‘Hush-hush. Stands to reason, don’t it? McKenna, he went loopy. Let’s hope you don’t do the same.’
    ‘Raving, tearing his hair,’ said Miller. ‘This foul-mouthed bastard’s Meyer, by the way – and that one,’ he added, pointing to a young man with
thinning blond hair and round gold-rimmed spectacles, ‘is Maybee – Miller-Meyer-Maybee. Think of us as the Andrews Sisters. Maybee’s LaVerne.’
    ‘Yes, quite an amusing little corps we are,’ said Maybee in a Boston Brahmin voice, looking me over with patrician eyes. ‘I prefer to call us the End of the World Archivists
– I’m an historian,’ he explained, not without pride, and asked me what my own ‘discipline’ might be.
    ‘Propaganda, ain’t it?’ said Miller, and Maybee, somewhat sourly, pursed his lips.
    ‘Nobody’s told me a thing yet,’ I said. ‘I’m not even sure what all this is for .’
    Meyer, or Robert Mitchum, laughed. ‘Fucking hell, you really haven’t heard of the Manhattan Project?’
    Maybee rolled his eyes. ‘It is secret, isn’t it?’
    ‘What’s going on in Manhattan?’ I said, foolishly.
    ‘Not Manhattan – here! It’s a code name.’ Meyer called down the refectory table, ‘Hey, fellas, this fucker don’t know about the Big One!’
    ‘The Bomb.’ Miller puffed out his plump cheeks, then expelled a spitty explosion. Droplets sprayed my face. ‘It’s the ultimate weapon, ain’t it? Ming the Merciless!
Just one and we can flatten a city. Enough of them, we can wipe out the world.’
    Startled, I looked between grinning faces.
    ‘I told you,’ said Maybee, ‘we’re the End of the World Archivists.’
    ‘End of the Japs, anyway,’ said Miller.
    ‘Hah! If the fucking thing works,’ said Meyer.
    ‘It