“In films, the guy always has the secret for the new poison gas,” O’Doull said.
“Yeah, and the blonde with the big boobs teases it out of him, and he loves every minute of it,” Hodding said. “Doctors in films never treat ringworm, either. But if the Confederates have trouble moving supplies, that makes our life a hell of a lot easier.”
He wasn’t wrong. Granville McDougald murmured, “Pentothal?”
O’Doull nodded. “Best chance I’ve got.” He turned to the Intelligence officer. “Sodium pentothal may make him not care so much about what he says. Or it may not. Drugging a guy and making him spill his guts is another one of those things that work better in films.”
“All right. Do what you can,” Hodding said. “He’s likelier to blab with the stuff in him than without it, right?” O’Doull nodded again-that was true, and didn’t commit him to anything. Captain Hodding gestured toward the door. “Come on, then.”
The Confederate officer was wounded in the leg and shoulder. He glared at O’Doull. “I am Travis W.W. Oliphant, colonel, C.S. Army.” He gave his pay number.
“Pleased to meet you, Colonel. I’m Major O’Doull. I’m a doctor, and I’m going to give you something to make you feel a little better,” O’Doull said. Colonel Oliphant looked suspicious, but he didn’t try to fight as O’Doull injected him.
After a little while, the Confederate said, “I do feel easier.” Pentothal sneaked up on you. It didn’t make your troubles go away, but it did mean you weren’t likely to remember them once you came out from under it.
Captain Hodding started questioning Oliphant. The logistics specialist didn’t seem to worry about what he said. A lot that came out was drivel, but enough wasn’t to keep Hodding scribbling notes. O’Doull gave the colonel more pentothal. Too much and he’d stop making sense altogether. Not enough and he’d clam up. O’Doull found what seemed the right dosage by experiment.
“Thanks, Major,” Hodding said when Colonel Oliphant ran dry. “I think you helped.”
“Well, good,” O’Doull answered, and wondered if it was. Would he want to look in a mirror the next time he passed one?
Instead of going off to the peaceful, even bucolic campus of Washington University, Clarence Potter summoned Professor Henderson V. FitzBelmont to Richmond. Potter wanted the nuclear physicist to see what the war was doing to the capital of the CSA. Maybe then FitzBelmont wouldn’t think of his experiments as abstractions that could move along at their own pace. Maybe.
If some Florida cinema studio needed a professor out of central casting, it could do much worse than Henderson FitzBelmont. He was tweedy. He was bespectacled. Clarence Potter wore eyeglasses, too, and had since he was a young man. But he didn’t look perpetually surprised at the world around him the way Professor FitzBelmont did.
He met the physicist in Capitol Square, across Ninth Street from the War Department. The bench on which he waited was the one where he and Nathan Bedford Forrest III hadn’t quite plotted against Jake Featherston. It gave a fine view of the bombed-out ruins of the Capitol, of the craters whose dirt sported new grass and even flowers as spring advanced, and of the sandbagged statues of George Washington and Albert Sidney Johnston. If you looked around, you could see more of what almost two years of Yankee air raids had done to Richmond.
Professor FitzBelmont came into Capitol Square at two o’clock, just when Potter asked him to. Potter stood up and waved. He kept waving till FitzBelmont spotted him. A look of relief on his face, the professor waved back and picked his way over the battered ground to the bench.
“Hello, uh, General,” FitzBelmont said, sticking out a hand.
“Professor.” Potter shook hands. Henderson FitzBelmont did have a respectable grip. Potter gestured to the bench. “Have a seat. We’ve got some things to talk about.”
“All right.” Professor FitzBelmont looked around. “I must say I’ve seen views that inspired me more.”
“You surprise me,” Potter said.
“I do? Why?” the physicist said. “It’s dreary, it’s battered, it’s sad-I can’t think of one good thing to say about it.”
“That’s why it ought to inspire you,” Potter said. Behind the lenses of his spectacles, Henderson V. FitzBelmont blinked. Potter went on, “It shows you that your country’s in trouble. If any one man can get us out of trouble, you’re him. If we have uranium bombs, we win. It’s that simple.”
“Mr. Potter-” FitzBelmont began.
“General Potter, please,” Potter broke in. He saw the faint scorn the other man didn’t have the sense to hide. Nettled, he did his best to explain: “It means as much to me as Professor does to you, and I had to go through a lot to earn it-not the same kinds of things you did, but a lot.”
Henderson FitzBelmont weighed that. He evidently didn’t find it wanting, for he nodded. “I’m sorry, General Potter. I’ll remember from now on. You must understand, we are doing everything we know how to do to make a uranium bomb. One of the things we’re finding out, unfortunately, is how much we don’t know how to do. When you go through unexplored territory, that happens. I wish it didn’t, but it does.”
He was calm, sensible, rational. Clarence Potter had no doubt that made him a splendid scientist. It didn’t help a country at war, a country fighting for its life, a country whose fight for its life wasn’t going any too well. “How do we go faster?” Potter asked. “Whatever you need, you’ll get. President Featherston has made that very clear.”
“Yes, I certainly can’t complain about the support I’m getting, especially after the…sad events in Pittsburgh,” FitzBelmont said-maybe he did own something resembling discretion after all. But then he went on, “What this project needs most of all is time. If you can give me back all the months when the President believed it a foolish waste of money and effort, we will be better off; I guarantee you that.”
So there, Potter thought. “You’re the physicist,” he said. “If you can undo that…Hell, if you can do that, forget about the uranium bomb.”
“Time travel is for the pulp magazines, I’m afraid,” FitzBelmont said. “No evidence that it’s possible, and plenty that it isn’t. The bomb, on the other hand, is definitely possible-and definitely difficult, too.”
“I remember your saying before that working with uranium hexafluoride was giving you fits,” Potter said. “Are you doing better with that now?”
“Somewhat,” FitzBelmont answered. The physicist didn’t blink when Potter got hexafluoride out without stumbling. He chose to take that as a mild compliment. Henderson FitzBelmont continued, “We’ve come up with some new chemicals-fluorocarbons, we’re calling them-that the uranium hexafluoride doesn’t attack. Nothing else seems to, either. They’ll have all kinds of peacetime uses-I’m sure of it. For now, though, they give us much better control over the UF6.”
UF 6 ? Potter wondered. Then he realized it was another way to say uranium hexafluoride. If he weren’t used to hearing CO2 for carbon dioxide, he would have been baffled. “All right,” he said after a pause he hoped FitzBelmont didn’t notice. “So you’ve got better control over it. What does that mean?”
“It puts fewer people in the hospital. It doesn’t eat through so much lab apparatus. Those are good starting points,” FitzBelmont said, and Potter could hardly tell him he was wrong. “Now we actually have a chance to separate the UF6 with the U-235 from the UF6 with the U-238.”