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

formica counter men in brown-camouflage, proto-military gear signed them in.

—Fascists, man, said Clint. —You know what these guys are famous for? They beat the shit out of people doing civil disobedience. They work for like the IMF and Three Mile Island.

—Just sign here, said a uniformed man with a crewcut, impervious.

Back on the bus Virgil described the rigors of life as a security guard.

—These guys have to be able to run an eight-minute mile, or they won’t be employed here too much longer, he said. —See? There’s the track they run on.

They passed a nondescript track and crept down a low street of ugly, temporary buildings. It looked like a small gray city, except that no one had bothered to plant any grass or trees. Everything was drab and barren, official sterility.

—Now I personally, ladies and gentlemen, I never worked security. However, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to tell you, I did have the honor and privilege of escorting some Russians around. They visited here in ’92 to see the facility. Unfortunately soon after that the moratorium went through under President George Bush Senior. So we didn’t have more tests after that, and I never got to go to Russia and visit them. I’ll tell you one thing those Russians told me, ladies and gentlemen: a family in Russia gets only one half-pound of beef every week. That’s for the whole family.

—Leo, said Oppenheimer, leaning up from the seat behind Ann, —how long is this going to last?

Fermi had packed a lunch for them: egg-salad sandwiches cut diagonally. But Ben wanted to patrol the street. He needed to know whether they were still under observation, whether the dark sedan was hulking somewhere nearby waiting for them. He talked Fermi into coming with him.

After the crane had rolled off, ponderous and tanklike, they changed their shoes, washed their hands and set off down the hill toward Canyon Road, toward a café where Ben knew the staff.

The sedan was nowhere in sight, but as they were walking Ben’s cell phone rang. It was Ted the lawyer.

—They came to see me again, he said. —Tell Leo I’m off the case. Would you? From this day forward I’m not working for him. It’s giving me too much grief.

—You should tell him yourself.

The passengers got out of the bus at the lip of Sedan Crater, a vast and yawning conical hole in the dirt.

—This was a one-hundred and four kiloton blast, said Virgil, leading the crowd behind him to peer over the edge from a white metal platform. —That’s about seven times the explosion at Hiroshima. I would call it an underground blast but as you see it did cause a large subsidence crater, what we call them, and yessir, ladies and gentlemen, it did release some small amount of nukular radiation at that time. It was part of Project Plowshares as we called it, which was the peaceful use of nukular weapons.

—They were going to blow up Panama City to make a new Panama Canal, announced Szilard, turning to their group of twelve to orate as the other passengers rubbernecked. —One of my old friend Edward Teller’s pet projects. Single stupidest idea the AEC ever had.

—Now we do have some opinions here, ladies and gentlemen, said Virgil, smiling broadly. —I personally, as a layman, I think it definitely would have worked. Do you know how much earth we moved here in just a matter of two seconds? Ladies and gentlemen, it was twelve million tons.

Project Plowshare was Edward Teller’s baby, a plan he pursued with funding and approval from the Atomic Energy Commission between 1957 and 1962. The idea was to re-engineer the earth using nuclear weapons. They would be exploded to build canals and harbors, change the climate, redirect ocean currents and in general, as Teller put it, “change the earth’s surface to suit us.”

Teller—with the full support of the U.S. government—planned eventually to use three hundred and fifty megatons of hydrogen bombs to blow open a new Panama Canal. To practice for this, for years he pursued a project to set off a five megaton blast in Alaska, near a native community called Point Hope. This sub-project of Plowshare was called Project Chariot. Ostensibly the massive blasts in remote northern Alaska would be meant to create a harbor, although there was no need or use for one in the region since there was nothing nearby to export. Between Point Hope and oil that might be shipped out of the new harbor was a massive range of mountains.

A handful of Alaska natives finally stopped Project Chariot with the help of powerful friends in Washington. But Project Plowshare’s “nuclear excavation” program—a multimillion dollar effort that resulted in no excavations—lasted until 1970, when it became illegal.

Roger came in for a bagel while Ben and Fermi sat eating. They sat quietly, reading the newspapers that were spread out on the table between them. He was sweaty from squash, carrying his racquet.

It occurred to Ben that the courts were nowhere near. Roger was carrying the racquet ostentatiously.

It also occurred to him that if he faced down and appeared to be reading Roger might not notice or speak to him. Consequently he peered hard at a story about a young girl who was raising money for abandoned pets by collecting recyclable bottles.

—Hey man, what’s with that giant fucking boulder?

—Roger, how are you? The rock was your wife’s idea. We didn’t feel it was the best choice for the space, but we’re here to please the client. She didn’t discuss it with you?

—I was on a business trip. That thing’s fucking huge. It’s right where my putting green was going to be.

—Yes it is.

—She did this just to piss me off, said Roger.

—Yoshi objected but she overruled him, said Ben. —She said it was feng shui.

—It’s a fucking boulder.

Virgil Williams gave a nod out the window, smiling and deferential.

—There on your right we have the tower we built for the last bomb we were going to set off,