The Heat of the Sun

Something – had I met Miss Something?
    ‘And Bob,’ he said, turning to a lean man on the fringe of the group, who appeared, I thought, a little out of place. ‘That son of mine’s introduced you to Bob,
surely?’
    ‘Oppenheimer,’ said the lean man, and I shook his hand.
    ‘Bob’s the sultan of this desert kingdom,’ said the senator.
    Yes, I thought, and isn’t happy that you’re taking it over.
    I said to Oppenheimer, ‘So you’re the man who’s made the ultimate weapon?’
    ‘He’s making it,’ said the senator. ‘And he’s nearly there. We’d better hope so, anyway!’
    ‘Big test any day now,’ said Trouble. ‘ Boom! ’
    Oppenheimer eyed them both disdainfully.
    ‘I wouldn’t say ultimate , Major.’ He drew on his cigarette. He had the sort of ascetic beauty one finds in a certain type of thin Jewish man. Cropped hair and prominent
cheekbones provided the frame for eyes of a piercing blue, incongruous in a face so Semitic. ‘Let’s say it’s the best we can do for now. Do you know anything about atomic
physics?’
    ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘But I hear it’ll change the world.’
    ‘It’s changed it,’ he said. ‘It’s already changed it.’
    ‘And this,’ said the senator, slapping me on the back, ‘is the fellow who’ll explain it all to the American people. Major Sharpless here is our new chief of
propaganda.’
    ‘Public relations, sir,’ said Miss Something in a motherly voice.
    ‘And why,’ I asked, ‘does a secret project need public relations?’
    ‘It will,’ said the senator, winking at me. ‘It will soon enough.’
    ‘So what do you think?’
    It was early next morning and Trouble had insisted, against my protests, on driving me back to the airfield himself. I had half-expected to be told I was not allowed to leave Los Alamos, but it
seemed that – like Colonel B. F. Pinkerton II – I was under the senator’s protection and afforded special privileges. I had been given a week to tie up my affairs before returning
to New Mexico, more or less for ever, or until the world was obliterated.
    ‘Quite an opportunity,’ Trouble burbled on. ‘History in the making, and you’ll write the first draft.’
    ‘Tell lies, more like it. Was it your idea, getting me this job?’
    ‘You’re the best man, everybody says so. Besides, I don’t think you’ll end up like McKenna.’
    ‘My predecessor? Did he really go crazy?’
    ‘Me, I blame Dr Atomic.’
    ‘Oppenheimer?’
    ‘He’d turn anyone’s wits. We’re winning the war, that’s all we need to know.’
    Trouble’s words seemed hollow to me. The night before, I had watched him undress for bed, laying out his things neatly for morning; he stripped to his shorts and, though I could have
stretched my hand between our cots and touched him, I felt as distant from him as if he were still in Japan.
    That afternoon I had seen him play baseball. Miller pitched; Trouble hit a home run and pelted around the bases; all was as it had been at Blaze, yet all was not. After the cocktail party we
took in a movie show, a rowdy affair of hurled popcorn and squeaky folding chairs. Trouble seemed happy enough, laughing when the others laughed, groaning when they groaned, but his mind, I felt
sure, was not really on the trials of Rita Hayworth.
    ‘Aren’t you worried about the sniper?’ I said as we rounded a rocky corner. I should have been frightened, but Trouble had enfolded me in his magic again. He could do it so
easily. All he had to do was look at me and I lost all my strength. I might almost have believed we were still young, setting off on another reckless spree. ‘You never said why they’d
want to kill you,’ I added, but my voice was light. ‘Why you? Who are they , anyway?’
    ‘Jap agents. Maybe they’re getting at the senator through me.’
    ‘Japs, running around in the desert up here?’ It was too fantastic. ‘And you’re not worried?’
    ‘About dying? Wouldn’t it solve a few dilemmas?’
    Shadows cut across the twisting road.
    ‘You can’t support all this, can you?’ I said after a moment. ‘One bomb that wipes out a city! It’s wrong. It’s evil.’
    ‘It’ll win the war, Sharpless.’
    ‘Tokyo’s flattened. What more can we do?’
    ‘Complete and utter destruction.’
    ‘Sink the islands into the sea? The Japs will surrender soon. They have to – they’re finished.’
    ‘Tell that to the kamikaze pilots.’ By now the mesa lay far above us, and Trouble