Meanwhile, she kept to herself, sitting alone at meals and making sure that Fox did not bother her. She felt totally justified in her decision to help Feynman, and her feelings could not be swayed by more rhetoric from Fox. He frightened her, now that she had seen an entirely new sliver of fanaticism peeping out from him. Or maybe she was hiding from a similar streak in herself.
Things changed—circumstances and people. In her younger days she could not have imagined anything worse than nuclear proliferation as the ultimate crime against humanity. A year ago—six months ago, in fact—she could not have foreseen herself supporting the Project to the degree she was now.
She would never believe in the bomb as the ultimate peacemaker, but now the country had to protect itself from another Nazi attack. The U.S. needed to keep the bomb as a defense, not to explode it on already-pounded Japanese cities just to show off the nifty toy they had concocted.
The cafeteria in Tech Area 1 had previously closed at eight p.m., but now stayed open twenty-four hours a day—one of General Groves’s incentives to keep the scientists working round the clock. They could work however and whenever they wanted, as long as they worked all the time.
Elizabeth’s eyes widened when Feynman dragged Oppenheimer into her work area. She felt all her muscles lock. She had never met the man face to face. In her mind she saw him riding his Appaloosa in the morning snow. Legs trembling, she started to rise when they entered.
Oppenheimer took charge; even Feynman seemed cowed in the director’s presence. “Please sit, no need to stand. Betsy, I don’t think we’ve formally met. I’m Robert Oppenheimer.”
“Dr. Oppenheimer.”
“Please, call me Oppie. Everyone else does.”
“Then call her Elizabeth,” said Feynman, “not Betsy.”
Oppie’s dark eyebrows shot up. He looked genuinely upset, as if he had not been thoroughly briefed about an important subject. “I’m sorry—”
Elizabeth extended her hand. Her skin went clammy, but she forced herself to meet the man’s eyes. “A common mistake these days.”
Oppie offered a firm grip, his fingers long. “But it’s a mistake that should be avoided. Thank you.” He tapped his pipe against his palm and looked around the cluttered office. “Dick tells me you’re doing a smash-up job for him.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary.” Elizabeth tried to behave appropriately demure.
Oppie found the edge of a desk and sat on a stack of handwritten papers she had not yet transcribed. Feynman flopped down in a chair and just smiled, showing white teeth, content to have the director do the talking. Elizabeth got the strange feeling that this wasn’t going to be one of Oppenheimer’s infamous pep talks. He sucked on his unlit pipe, looked at it, then continued in his soft voice, taking special care to pronounce every single word correctly.
“To the contrary, Elizabeth, I think it’s extraordinary to make sense out of any physicist’s notes—especially to the point of finding flaws in equations and writing a logical sequence of conclusions. And when you throw in the fact that it’s Dick Feynman’s penmanship…” Oppie pulled the pipe from his mouth. “I’d say that we’ve found a real gem in you.”
Elizabeth started to argue, but caught a glimpse of Feynman nodding. She suddenly realized she was being set up. She said slowly, “I don’t see what you’re getting at, Oppie.” She couldn’t help the edge of sarcasm in her voice; it felt like a defense against her fear of him, and her shame at what she had tried to do.
Oppenheimer set his pipe beside him on Feynman’s desk and said pointedly, “I think you were too modest describing your background, Elizabeth. A typical faculty wife never gets a scientific background like yours. It’s a shame that your records were lost, otherwise we might have spotted your experience and put you to work helping out the Project in a more meaningful manner.” He held her gaze. “By the way, what is your background? Montana State University can’t find a copy of your transcripts. They say they would have sent their entire file if the Army requested it.”
Elizabeth noticed that Feynman watched her intently. She attempted to make herself blush. She couldn’t tell if Oppenheimer was trying to frame her, to catch her at her lie. Had Feynman told Oppie about finding her breaking into the administration building a year before, falsifying her records?
“Well, I was always close to Jeff’s work—he was my husband. You probably don’t remember him, but he says he met you once or twice. He was a student at Berkeley when you were there.” Elizabeth tried to draw from all the details she had heard about the director.
“I can’t say I remember him too clearly, but I’m sure I would if I saw his picture. I taught a lot of students.”
“Jeff was pretty shy,” Elizabeth said, feeling weak inside. “Not having children gave me an opportunity to attend classes in the department. Montana State was not very strict about who audited what.” She shrugged. “I helped Jeff grade papers as well, so I guess I just picked up most of my physics background.”
“Impressive. You really should be proud of yourself.” Oppenheimer fell silent for a moment. Elizabeth glanced at Feynman; he gave her a thumbs up and grinned his support. He fidgeted in the chair.
Elizabeth pushed back her hair, adjusting a barrette that itched. “So what’s up? You didn’t come here just to compliment me on transcribing Dr. Feynman’s notes.”
“You’re right. I didn’t.” Oppenheimer stood up from the desk, looking like a gangling marionette with flopping stick arms. He started to pace about the room. “The Project has a chance to achieve its goal with this implosion concept. Our other theoreticians have solved the predetonation problem with uranium-235. Everything up here at Los Alamos is falling into place. Except we still have one problem—our liaison with the places making the material. General Groves is hot to get out to Hanford and Oak Ridge to chew some of the contractors out and get things into higher gear.”
“So why does this concern me?”
Oppenheimer shot a quick glance at Feynman, who stared at the floor. “The general needs to leave directly from here to Washington State. And he wants someone knowledgeable about the physics of the Gadget to accompany him. We’ve got everyone I can spare on this implosion scheme, and pulling any of the scientists off that project might be disastrous. We’re spread very thin here, and every man has his particular area of expertise. If I send the wrong man away with Groves, and we end up needing his experience…” Oppenheimer shrugged. “It could set back the Project, give the Nazis time to hit us again.”
“You want me to accompany Groves?” The tubby, overbearing man had rubbed her the wrong way each time she had seen him. He reminded her of a gravel-voiced drill sergeant, an impatient man always one cup of coffee behind being cured of his grouchy mood. “Um, I’m not sure I know enough about the Gadget to give him any advice.” And he probably wouldn’t listen anyway.
“You know just the right amount, don’t worry,” said Feynman. “Most people here are only concerned about their specialized part. When you’ve been transcribing my notes, you’ve been concerned with the Gadget as a whole.”
“It will be a good opportunity for you,” Oppenheimer said.
“Opportunity for what?” She felt defensiveness rise up again, some of the old annoyances that had been building for the past year. She had tried to ignore them, to adapt to the 1940s environment. “How is General Groves going to react to having a woman along with him, especially a smart woman?”