Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, Lydia Millet [top romance novels .txt] 📗

up to the side of the van with a camera in hand and snapping a picture of Szilard. —You don’t think he looks kind of too orange?

—Trust me, said the makeup artist.

The crowd from Tokyo pulled up in its own vans and Clint and Leslie walked past Szilard’s makeup station toward the nylon wall that hid the floats from public view.

—Sorry, no entry, said a guard, and Clint swore loudly.

—Lar! Larry! he bellowed, and Larry rolled his eyes and walked away from them toward the blue wall. Tamika put her hands on Szilard’s shoulders and stared into the mirror in front of him.

—You look so cute! she said. —You’re like a teddy bear!

Fermi emerged from the van carefully, looking both ways before he stepped down onto the pavement.

—What are they doing? he asked Ben, and pointed to a group of Righteous Army soldiers clustered along the fence.

—Praying, said Ben. —They say prayers several times a day.

—I will go there, said Fermi, and walked over to the circle of praying soldiers, his own guards trailing him.

Ben watched as he stood on the outskirts of the circle gazing in.

In 2003 North Korea, named by President Bush as one of the three “axis of evil” powers inimical to the U.S., revived its nuclear weapons production program and planned the production of five or six weapons.

Also, reported the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, between thirty-five and forty countries beyond those who already possessed nuclear arms had become capable of producing them. Should any of these countries choose to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, they could have a weapon ready in months.

In 1998 India and Pakistan exploded their first nuclear weapons, with the exception of a so-called “peaceful” bomb India had tested a quarter-century before. Pakistan declared itself willing to sign the nonproliferation treaty if India did, but India declined.

The physicist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who headed Pakistan’s atomic weapons development program for years, was lauded as a national hero in Pakistan, where he was often called the father of the atom bomb.

Most of the reporters did not have difficult questions, rather their questions were repetitive and superficial and required nothing but rote responses. Because of this Oppenheimer found himself distracted as he talked to them. He gazed beyond them, his eyes skimming over the people he did not know until they rested on someone he recognized.

In the corner of the walled lot Bradley’s wife stood staring back at him, clutching a handkerchief he recognized because she had asked him to bless it. Beside her Dory was filming, crouched with her camcorder on her shoulder. Above them a sign on crumbling brick read $7.99 Early Bird Special.

Seeing the two of them together he could not help but consider them in the same light, two faithful camp followers, humble and submissive, deferring. Dory had begged for service, and thinking of it made his bones feel cold as steel. He flinched without moving.

He could perpetrate any insult or injury against them without provoking anger or outrage. And yet of course there was no injury he wished to give them. He was without urges of any kind, mean or lustful or disparaging. He had first seen his pity as a relief from neutrality, but since then it had become a burden. It was the only thing he knew how to feel anymore. And the fact that he was left with pity, one sad small shade from the broad spectrum of emotions, seemed pitiable itself. Wherever he looked over these past few days he saw something worthy of condescension—a repulsive inclination. In theory he rejected everything about it but in practice there was nothing he could do. Pity was simply how you felt when everything around you was mortal.

But when he first came here, he remembered, he had cried. He had had feelings then. How quaint he had been. He recalled himself sitting at a bus stop in Los Alamos, the crisp air of the high plateau around him, weeping for his lost house and neighborhood and wife and children as though he was human.

Ben first became aware of the noise while he was walking around the block with Fermi, bodyguards behind and in front of them. They had both gotten cold and needed to walk to generate heat, despite Fermi’s alarm at the squalor of the street, which he said he could hardly believe was actually a street “in the downtown of America’s capital city.”

—What is that? Sounds like someone humming, asked Ben. Fermi only shook his head.

—It’s the crowd, said one of the bodyguards. —They’re meeting up about a half-mile away.

As they walked around the block the faint hum grew louder and Ben could see that streets were cordoned off, crowds massing at the ends of them, banners held and megaphones blaring.

—I’m afraid of it, said Fermi suddenly, coming to a dead stop. His lips were blue. —I prefer to go back.

—You’ll be fine today, said Ben. —And you can go back tomorrow. OK? Right now we need to get you warmed up.

After a few moments Fermi seemed to forget his alarm.

—We used to wear long underwear, he mused, and picked up his stride. —Woolen. I had a red pair. In those days we kept warm.

In 2001, the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the longstanding anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972 and began to agitate for the placement of a “Star Wars” type anti-ballistic missile system in California and Alaska, though such a system, since it did not yet exist, was still only science fiction.

The following year, when it made its argument for small, usable nukes, it published a “Nuclear Posture Review” that recommended expanding the U.S. nuclear program. The paper outlined a plan to deploy a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile by 2018, a new submarine-launched missile by 2030, and a new heavy bomber by 2040.

Knowing how much the public likes to see reductions in nuclear weapons, however, the American and Russian presidents made a great public show three months later of agreeing