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

Oppenheimer sat with Szilard at an open-air restaurant on a thin spit of beach, brown palm fronds and long mounds of dead seaweed littering the sand. He drank beer and poked at a slab of greasy fish with disinterest as Szilard pushed away his plate and complained about the service.

They had been there an hour with only the cook for company, waiting for a small plane to land on a nearby airstrip and pick them up, when a man in an officer’s uniform appeared out of the straggly grove of palms beside the café, walked over to the building at a leisurely pace and sat down at the next table. He was tall and gray-haired, and if his insignia were authentic—and Oppenheimer had no reason to suspect otherwise—he was an Air Force Major General. Oppenheimer recognized the double star and the Air Force Cross.

He spoke softly.

—It would be a good idea for you to drop your lawsuit, Dr. Szilard.

It took Szilard only a few seconds to recover.

—Who are you? Are you one of the ones that questioned Enrico?

The major general raised a hand to the cook, hovering nearby in his smeared apron, and gave a curt nod. It was not clear to whom.

The cook bowed.

—Why do the armed forces care, asked Oppenheimer, —about our activities? Assuming the armed forces is who you represent.

—I’m afraid I did not come here to have a conversation, said the major general.

—What impact could our activities possibly have on the Air Force? asked Oppenheimer, and pointed at his empty beer bottle as the cook waited politely. —Another, please.

—It would be very embarrassing for you, said the major general, and smiled with an air of apology, —wouldn’t it? If the prints didn’t match.

—But they will, said Szilard. —They do.

—Really, said the major general, as the cook brought him a bottle of mineral water and broke the seal.

—If we’re such a threat to you, said Szilard, —why haven’t you already shut us up?

—You are still marginal, said the major general, and smiled again. —You have done nothing. We have time.

Oppenheimer looked at his face closely. He was a handsome man, with a straight nose and thick, arched eyebrows. A small scar, like a checkmark, bisected his earlobe. There was something of the patrician in his bearing.

But as he was gazing at the man’s face he heard the sound of the Cessna approaching and looked up. It was bearing down from the east, a red and white plane emerging from a low bank of clouds over the rolling surf.

—Excuse me, said the major general, and slipped a worn bill smoothly onto the tabletop as he rose. Then he turned and smiled at them and waved a hand over the waves curling onto the beach. —Both of you have worked hard in your lives. Why don’t you retire? The surf is lovely.

And he rounded the corner of the restaurant and vanished.

—He didn’t even touch his water, said Szilard.

He reached for the bottle and drank.

The Pacific Proving Grounds were selected as the preferred location for explosions so massive they could not be conducted on the American mainland due to the risk to life and property.

But for the many smaller tests that were desired, the U.S. military felt it needed a site closer to home—somewhere near enough to put troops and equipment cheaply, but far enough from human settlement that it would not attract undue negative attention.

For this purpose they selected the Nevada Test Site.

Chosen for its “remote” location in the desert, the test site is about sixty-five miles from the city of Las Vegas.

Before the worldwide ban on aboveground tests was imposed in 1963, one hundred and twenty-six aboveground tests were conducted in Nevada.

They were slated to stay at the Luxor, which Ann had never seen. Oppenheimer had professed a fondness for things ancient-Egyptian, including hieroglyphs, mummies, and pyramids. It was with great interest, he had told her before he left for the Pacific Proving Grounds, that he had once, in days long past, perused The Book of the Dead.

The airport shuttle left her at a side entrance and she wandered along a sidewalk to the front, passing weeping willows and clean, plastic-looking palm trees. Over the main entrance a massive sphinx guarded the door, and stretching up behind the sphinx’s haunches was the vast black pyramid of the hotel, its peak shooting a vertical white beam into the sky.

She walked past the taxi stands and twin black statues of what looked like dogs lying down. Anubis, she thought suddenly, remembering a book she had located up for Mr. Hofstadt in the old days, when he still came into the library. Jackal god. God of the deceased.

In the cavernous lobby there were pools of blue water lit from beneath. She wished she could wade in them. Kneeling rams presided over the pools, and above the rams, on either side of the tall doorway that led to the casino, massive female-looking figures with jugs on their heads were standing guard.

When she walked through them she found herself facing a maze of slot machines.

—Do you have some guests staying here under the name Szilard?

—Can you spell that for me, please?

—S-Z-I—

—Nothing, I’m sorry. Is there another name it might be under?

—Oppenheimer? Or Larry. Uh, Pickering.

—I do have a reservation under Pickering. Those guests have not checked in yet.

—I’m the first in that party, said Ann, relieved.

—The credit card that was used for the reservation, please?

—Oh! I don’t have it, it was a friend’s.

—I’m afraid we can’t let you into the suite until we have the credit card that was used to make the reservation, said the clerk. Ann gazed at his mouth as though it was a foreign object that had settled on his face. —Hotel policy.

Finally she rented a room of her own and took the elevator up. Signs referred to it as an “inclinator” because it traveled at a forty-degree angle up to the top of the pyramid. When she got out on the fifteenth floor she stumbled sideways.

One of the