Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet (shoe dog free ebook .txt) 📕

—Do you want to have kids or not, Ice Queen, said Clint.

—None of your business, said Leslie.

Webster the yoga practitioner had been uncertain about the Test Site field trip when they discussed it the night before. He liked to keep his body pure and preferred a macrobiotic diet. But he was coming with them anyway, mostly because he did not like to be far from Oppenheimer, whom he tended to follow around. His scrawny body was sheathed in bright canary yellow, in what looked to Ann like a high-tech drysuit. But Adalbert the Belgian food activist had refused unconditionally. He was staying in his room. He had told Larry there was no way he would be able to find safe food to eat in “this incredibly toxic agribusiness city.” Preemptively he had launched an all-liquid fast as soon as they touched down from the Marshall Islands. His custom-blended juices, often containing blue-green algae from Klamath Lake, were delivered to the room daily by a gourmet food store.

There were too many of them to fit in a single elevator, so Ann waited with Tamika and Leslie and Clint and Big Glen for the next.

—Did you see the posters? Clint asked her, standing too close. His pigtail shot up from the back of his head, gathered on the crown instead of at the nape of his neck as per usual with a black leather cord.

—I did.

—Awesome, huh? They’re like three-D.

—I like three-D, said Big Glen solemnly, in his deep voice.

Outside between the black statues of Anubis they waited for the stretch limousine. When it pulled up in front of them Larry herded them in eagerly.

—2621 Losee Road, Szilard told the driver before the door slammed, —and make it quick. We have to be there by 7:20.

Plutonium-239, the isotope best suited for nuclear weapons and most often used in them, has often been called “the deadliest substance known to man.” Yet in the years since Trinity, underground nuclear tests have left more than eight thousand pounds of plutonium in the ground, while aboveground tests—with a total yield roughly equivalent to twenty-nine thousand Hiroshimas—have put at least nine thousand pounds into the atmosphere.

Scientists estimate that a single pound of the substance, if it were distributed directly and uniformly among all the people of the world, could induce lung cancer in everyone.

Glenn Seaborg, who discovered plutonium in 1940, later had six children with a woman named Helen.

It was Fermi who first noticed the gray sedan parked down the street from the mansion. They were on their first break of the morning, drinking the strong coffee he had brewed and poured carefully into his small thermos.

—You know that car has been there three days in a row, he said to Ben, and nodded toward the road beyond the high wall as he sipped from the thermos lid.

—So? Isn’t it the neighbors’?

—But there’s always someone in it.

After that Ben found himself watching the long car often throughout the morning, walking with studied casualness across the mansion’s flat roof to get a glimpse of it. He would kneel on the roof as though tying a shoelace or bend to fish a tool out of his five-gallon bucket, which he had set down near the edge. Once he climbed into a tall spruce and pretended to be pruning the cottonwood beside it.

Fermi was right: there was always a man in the driver’s seat, his face indistinct behind the tinted windshield. The silhouette was visible and he seemed to sit without moving. Occasionally the tilt of his head changed slightly, or he lifted his hand to his head and Ben imagined he was talking into a telephone.

—You think he’s one of the ones who threatened you or Oppenheimer? he asked Fermi finally.

—How should I know? asked Fermi, and shrugged.

Ben crept around the corner of the house where he could not be seen from the car and called Ted the lawyer on his cell.

—Are you still being followed?

—I’m not sure. I haven’t seen them in a while, but I guess they might just be doing a better job of staying out of view.

—The guys who were following you, he said. —Do you remember what they were driving?

—You know, a car you don’t really notice. American-made, of course, said Ted.

—Do me a favor, said Ben. —Would you drive by and take a look at a car that’s parked here? I’m at work.

—Shit, said Ted. —I mean, if it is them I don’t want to piss them off.

—Borrow someone else’s car, said Ben. —Wear a disguise.

From the informational materials of the Nevada Test Site: Pregnant women are discouraged from participating in Test Site tours because of the long bus ride and uneven terrain.

The bus that takes tourists to the test site, however, is merely a comfortable, air-conditioned chartered bus, equipped with a bathroom and compact video monitors for watching movies. Visitors may watch old propaganda reels, transferred to video, on the way to the Test Site, or they may watch something less educational, purely for their viewing pleasure. When Harry Met Sally, say, or Saturday Night Fever.

The ride to the Test Site, which is not unduly rough since it travels smoothly along the interstate at a high and steady rate of speed, lasts a little more than an hour each way.

—OK, said Ted, calling back a while later. —I’m pretty sure it’s them.

—Shit, said Ben.

—Is it them? asked Fermi, leaving his trencher behind and approaching.

—What can I do? asked Ben. —Call the cops? Is there a legal basis for that?

—You have nothing.

—Ben! called Lynn from the back door. —The crane’s coming!

—Thanks, Ted. I should go, and he snapped his phone shut.

—It’ll be here in fifteen minutes.

—What crane?

—Didn’t Yoshi tell you?

—No, he didn’t.

—They’re bringing a crane over to drop the boulder.

He studied her for a second, noticing her lipstick. It went outside the lines of her lips.

—So, he said slowly, —exactly how big is this rock?

—Ladies and gentlemen, said the elderly tour guide, standing at the front of the bus talking into a mike