Chapter 13
The sun was well up before he woke again. The familiar teeth of his nightmares faded away. He swung his feet to the floor from the couch. His clothes felt damp and sleazy, with the odor of stale beery sweat from the shirt bunched up under his arms. After finding his way back from Blenek’s car he had collapsed on the couch without even taking off his shoes. But that’s over now, he told himself. That little interlude. I’m back in my own universe again. The comforting alcohol had drained away.
A cold shower perked up his circulation. Then he opened his bedroom closet, threw his wadded-up civilian clothes into the corner and took one of his Opwatch uniforms from a hanger. Just like an old skin, he thought, pulling on the shirt. I thought I’d gotten rid of it for good.
Half of a box of saltines was all he could find in the kitchen cupboards.
The crackers clung so tightly to the roof of his mouth that he could barely swallow. Now what? he thought, staring out the window as his molars ground together. If I ever had a permanent answer to that question. . . .
Spencer had babbled on the phone about—what? With an effort, the frantic words came up from Ralph’s memory. The Manhattan Project. 1942. Something about that didn’t seem quite right. Had it been called something else? The first nuclear pile. Through his mind floated vague notions of what he’d learned in some physics class in college. Hadn’t they put it together in an underground tennis court or something? He shook his head. This, he thought, is what comes from being asleep all your life. You never know what important stuff you’re going to miss. And what, for Pete’s sake, is a “zip rod”?
He walked into the front room and stared out the sliding glass door.
Muehlenfeldt’s jet was still out there, gleaming in the sun, painful to the eye. The senator might know what Spencer had meant on the phone. His men in L.A. might even have pumped Spencer for information before they killed him. So what’s the point in asking me anything? thought Ralph. Everybody around here seems to know more than I do. He crumpled the empty saltine box in his hands, dropped it, and went back into the bedroom to get his Opwatch jacket.
There was no one in the Rec hall when he entered. It was still too early for any of the watchers to be awake after their shift last night. Good thing I’m still on vacation, he thought in a mixture of irony and relief. He walked down the corridor to the last room, the one least used by anybody on the base—a tiny library with metal shelves crammed full of shabby-looking volumes.
Ralph stepped into the room and ran his eyes over the faded book spines until he located what he was looking for. One shelf held an outdated encyclopedia set. He pulled out the M volume and started leafing through it.
He felt no surprise when he found that the pages had been neatly razored out where the article on the Manhattan Project would have been.
That’s real cute, he thought. Why not throw away the whole hook? Who would have noticed? The sense of deranged ingenuity annoyed him. He didn’t even bother to open any of the other volumes.
“An encyclopedia?” The shopkeeper frowned and held the sides of the cash register drawer. “What would we carry something like that for? Don’t think we’d get much call for it. This ain’t a bookstore, you know.” He fished change for a dollar from the drawer and slid it across the counter.
“No,” said Ralph, pocketing the pack of gum he’d bought in order to start the conversation. “I mean, do you have a set at home? Where you live?”
“Now that’s a funny thing.” The man stroked his chin meditatively.
“Sure are a lot of people asking about encyclopedias lately.”
“Yeah? Who else?”
“Oh, they said they were from some publishing company back east.”
The shopkeeper nodded his head in the general direction. “They sure had mean little eyes, though. Never can tell, I guess. Anyway, they said their company was bringing out some new fancy type of encyclopedia, and they were going around Norden giving people cash for their old ones. Fred Webb—you know, the barber—he said they gave him two dollars a volume for an old set of Globals that his kids used to do their homework with.
“They’re all grown up and moved out now, of course, so Fred figured he might as well have the money for the books. There probably weren’t more than four or five sets in the whole town, and those publishing company people most likely got ’em all. Encyclopedia paper must be getting pretty scarce.”
Muehlenfeldt, thought Ralph. Just ahead of me. There’s some kind of info about the old Manhattan Project that he’s trying to keep me from finding out. Just like he thinks I’m keeping something secret from him. But what?
“Whatcha need one for, anyway?” asked the shopkeeper. “Something you wanted to look up?”
“Yeah.” Coin by coin he picked up his change from the counter.
“What was it? Maybe I’d know something about it.”
He smiled wearily, without hope. “I don’t think so. I needed some information about the first nuclear pile experiments.”
“The ones in 1942?” said the shopkeeper. “At the University of Chicago, with Enrico Fermi?”
Startled, Ralph looked at the man on the other side of the counter. “I guess that’s the one,” he said slowly. “The Manhattan Project. What do yo know about it?”
“That’s not what it was called. The code name was ‘The Metallurgical Project.’ ” He slapped the counter and looked pleased with himself. “I was reading an article about it just the other day. In an old copy of the Reader’s Digest. I save all my issues—got ’em complete for, oh, some forty years back.”
The skin on Ralph’s arms and neck tensed with a small but growing current of excitement. “Do you still have that one? Can you find it?”
“Oh, sure. Watch the register for a minute, will you?” The shopkeeper left the counter and headed for the stairs in back that led to the rooms above the store. After a few moments, during which Ralph could hear grunting and sliding noises from above, he reappeared carrying a cardboard box. It was haphazardly filled with copies of the Reader’s Digest, the top layers of the mound threatening to slide and capsize onto the floor.
“Uff.” The shopkeeper was red in the face as he heaved the box onto the counter. “Here we go,” he said after a moment of labored breathing. “Let’s see now . . .”
Ralph leaned forward and watched the man shuffle the thick, squarish magazines about. The covers had all faded into pastels while the edges of the pages had darkened into a dirty brown.
“I think it had a picture of some kind of birds on it.” The shopkeeper frowned in concentration. “Or was it two deer standing in a forest? No, this is it. This is the one.” He held the copy up between them. A cactus blooming with yellow flowers was on its cover. The shopkeeper leafed through it, stopped, and folded it open upon itself. “Look at that.”