Los Alamos

“People do funny things when they’re scared to death. I’m worried about you,” Connolly said, unable to keep the intimacy out of his voice. He looked at the frail figure beside him, the hollow cheeks and anxious eyes, and suddenly wished him back at the blackboard at Gottingen, thinking out puzzles.

“I’m worried about all of us,” Oppenheimer said.

“I can’t think about that many. Right now I’m just worried about you.”

But Oppenheimer had recovered and had moved his chalk to the larger problem. “They won’t stay scared,” he said. “A little learning’s a dangerous thing. A lot isn’t. Maybe it’s what we need-to know this much. To change.”

“It won’t change anything. They’ll hate you for trying.”

“Well-” he said, then looked over at Connolly, an almost jaunty gleam in his eyes. “You know, the trouble with you, Mike, is that you don’t trust people.”

Connolly flushed. It was the first time Oppenheimer had ever used his name, and it took him by surprise, the pleasure of it.

“Sometimes you have to have a little faith,” Oppenheimer was saying.

And Connolly felt that he was losing him, that he was drifting away, unwilling to be distracted from his new theorem. “Not them,” he said urgently, taking Oppenheimer’s elbow as if he were trying to anchor him. “You don’t know them. They can’t stop now. You have to be careful. You have to protect yourself.”

Oppenheimer’s eyes wandered to the tower site. “How do you do that?” he said. Then he looked down at Connolly’s hand and gently pulled his elbow away. “You know, you may be wrong.”

“I’m not.”

Oppenheimer looked at him, his eyes tired and knowing. “Well, we’ll see,” he said. “I’m going to hope for the best.”

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