Chapter Six
Ten years later
She sat in the stuffy compartment, rubbing the burning circles under her eyes while looking out the window at a vast, snow-covered prairie rolling by in the darkness. Her eyes felt like molten pools deep within the frozen earth, and she felt a new line of perspiration beading on her forehead.
'Oh, God no,' she thought, 'I can't get sick. Not now...'
She shook her head, leaned back and palpated the glands in her neck -- but they felt soft and small so she relaxed and picked up the sheaf of papers and found her place -- again -- then dove back into the text, rereading an exploration of transuranic radiochemical fractionation presented only a few months ago in Naturwissenschaften, a journal of physics and chemistry published in Germany. It hadn't taken Oppenheimer's team at Berkeley more than a few days to grasp the importance of Hahn and Meitner's breakthrough, yet it turned out that several groups of physicists around the United States and Canada had made the same observation -- and in roughly the same time-frame. Now, varied groups of engineers, chemists and physicists were en route to Washington to meet with the president.
She almost didn't hear the soft knock on her compartment's door, but she looked up and shook her head, then rubbed her eyes again before speaking: "Yes?" she said to the darkness.
And then a kindly faced old porter stuck his head in past the door. "Doctor Aubuchon? Doctor Oppenheimer would like to speak with you now, down in his compartment. He says, if you don't mind."
"What time is it?" Claire asked.
"Not quite six, Ma'am."
"Morning? Or afternoon?"
"It's five-forty-three in the morning, Ma'am."
"Right," she sighed, adding: "I need a glass of water" -- then she fished for a bottle of aspirin from her purse as the porter slipped from away. She picked up the monograph, and her notes, after she downed the tablets when the water came, then she walked down the swaying corridor to Robert's compartment.
The door was standing wide open, and her brother Charles stood anxiously when he saw her eyes. He helped her into the chair then closed the door on his way out, never saying a word to her. No words were needed, after all.
"I think you look worse than I feel," Oppenheimer sighed. "I'd kill for an aspirin right now."
She nodded, pulled the bottle from her purse and passed it over, wanting more than anything else in the world to pour ice water into her burning eyes.
"You're rubbing your eyes too much," Robert chided. "You'll get episcleritis. Knock it off, and I mean right now. I can't have you going blind right..."
"I hear you."
"So? Any new conclusions?"
"We may have underestimated the forces involved. The energy release will be cataclysmic."
Oppenheimer nodded his head slowly. "That's my take, too."
"Have you heard from Werner?"
"Heisenberg? No. And I don't expect the Reich will let this kind of free exchange of ideas continue. The implications of this work are creating shockwaves throughout the community."
"What did Bohr have to say about it?"
"I think he's terrified, Claire."
"So, he confirmed?"
Oppenheimer nodded his head.
"What are you reading now?" she asked, looking at the colorful book on the little table under the window.
"This? Oh, the Bhagavad Gita," he said, passing the book over to her.
She opened the heavy tome and looked over a page or two, then passed it back. "You read Sanskrit?"
"Yes."
She shook her head as she looked him in the eye: "Why?"
"I get the impression, reading this now, that these events have been foretold."
She smiled, then looked out the window again and noted the prairie was shading from gray to purple, then his words registered and she wondered what he meant. "Foretold?"
"Eternal recurrence...something like that. Have you read Jung?"
She shook her head, then looked at him again. "Something about archetypes once."
"Precisely," he said. "You should try to get some sleep. We'll be in Chicago around noon."
"Straight to D.C. from there?"
"We should arrive tomorrow morning."
"Have you met him before?"
"Who? Roosevelt?"
"Yes."
"Only in passing. Why?"
"Oh, something that happened years ago."
"Something? Like what?"
"I'm not sure, but I recall seeing him on a ship -- and he seemed to know me."
He looked at her for a long while, then opened the book on his lap and began reading aloud; moments later she felt herself falling...
+++++
He looked younger...of that much she was certain. He had looked pale and used up when she'd seen him on the strange ship, but now he seemed stronger -- and very sharply focused. When she walked into the conference room he looked up at her briefly, but she saw no recognition in his eyes, nothing at all to indicate they'd ever met before, and his attention had soon shifted to something Harry Hopkins was whispering in his ear.
But it was him. It was Roosevelt she'd seen on the ship, and yet now -- here he was. And here she was. In the same room, looking right at him, and everything about him seemed so familiar -- again. She watched the way his hands moved -- soft yet decisive -- and the way his eyes seemed to suck up every detail in the room...like as soon as someone entered he made an inventory of their characteristics. A Navy captain stood behind him, a man named Carlton, talking with Hopkins just now -- but the captain was looking at her much more frequently, like he knew something she didn't.
Then her brother Charles walked up to the officer and the two shook hands -- and that seemed to answer that question -- for the moment, anyway, then Oppenheimer walked into the room. She watched Roosevelt look up -- nothing dismissive in his eyes now -- and she watched Oppenheimer work his way around the room to his place at the table -- by her right side. Directly across from Roosevelt, she thought. Eye-to-eye. Man-to man.
So, she thought, the president wants to look him in the eye. Wants to see beyond the truth of the moment.
Then three more men walked into the room -- three men she recognized from newspaper articles, and she watched them as they walked up to her brother and the Navy captain, then as they shook hands with the president -- before moving off to the shadows where Hopkins waited.