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

to reduce their stockpiles of strategic weapons by several thousand by 2012.

This so-called historic agreement was actually non-binding and in fact set the same levels of reduction already outlined in old treaties. In the meantime, the men in charge of the American government were dreaming of a future where nuclear weapons loomed large once again.

Szilard and Oppenheimer would make their opening speech from a balcony that overlooked a square, with Fermi standing behind them. The rest of them would not go upstairs with the scientists but would watch from the ground with the crowds.

The van pulled into an underground lot and let them out, and bodyguards led Oppenheimer and Szilard and Fermi and Bradley to an elevator. When the doors closed behind them other soldiers in the Righteous Army led the rest of them up a car ramp to the street.

—Is Bradley going to talk too? Ann asked Larry.

—Say some of that Christian shit? I don’t think so, he said.

She looked sidelong at the soldiers but their faces betrayed nothing.

—So why is he going up with them?

—He has to be where the action is, said Tamika.

They were on the street then and walking toward a police barrier, behind which crowds were teeming. Ann saw a wavering, dipping handmade sign that read HAIL THE SAVIOR. In small print beneath this was written INTO YOUR HEART WELCOME HIM.

The square was packed and further out, down the streets that fed into it, there was no end of people. It struck Ann as they moved along the margin of the crowd with their bodyguard escort that the marchers were very well-behaved, even orderly.

—Can you hear me? boomed a voice over their heads. It was Szilard, but his voice was deeper than usual, a rich baritone. They had come to a concrete barrier and Ann looked up at the balcony, almost immediately overhead. All she could see was brick, and all she could hear was the drone of conversation, now dropping off around her as the crowd began to clap. Behind her someone was singing in a high, off-key voice. Glory, glory hallelujah, glory, glory hallelujah.

—Thank you all for the effort you’ve made to be here today! We couldn’t have an impact without you!

—We can’t even see them here! complained Tamika to one of the guards. —Can’t we move? We’re like right under their feet!

—Instructions. This is the most secure location, said the guard, and turned away to speak into his headset.

—This sucks, said Tamika.

—Secure location my ass, said Larry.

—But Dory’s taping it, hon, said Tamika. —She wangled a deal where she can be up there with the network news people, where she has a good view of the mall. At least we can watch it on tape later. Right?

—This is a day that will herald the dawn of a new age, came Szilard’s distorted and magnified voice.

Around them people cheered and screamed, and more voices took up the hymn the single voice had been singing. Ann turned around to see who it was but could not pick out the singers from the crowd.

—How many people did they say were showing up? Ben asked Larry.

—Somewhere around three hundred thousand, I think they were telling me, said Larry, and turned to Tamika. —Is that right, honey? I know it’s more than they had at that million-man march way back when.

—Today we march for an end to warlike things, said Szilard, and the crowd screamed again.

—Where are the floats? said Ann into Larry’s ear.

—They’re coming. Should be here any minute.

Szilard spoke of “the imperative of ridding the world of the nuclear menace” and below the balcony where he an Oppenheimer were standing Ben could see nothing, only hear. Around him he read the signs of the marchers, which did not refer to peace but rather to the Rapture, not of the need to bring together the community of nations but of the final annihilation in which God’s justice will be done.

Bodyguards flanked them. When he looked past a burly shoulder he could see down a wide boulevard: over the crowds loomed a missile, easily the size of three eighteen-wheelers. It pointed straight up like a rocket.

—Oh my God, said Ann beside him, and Larry grinned.

—That’s the lead float, he said. —It’s a reproduction of an ICBM!

—Very lifelike, said Ben.

It was white and written on the side in somber black were the words U.S. Air Force.

—And I give you my colleague, said Szilard, —Dr. Julius Robert Oppenheimer.

The crowd surged hard against Ann’s back, all of them pressing forward, the pitch of their cries rising into a scream. She raised her hands to her ears and leaned against Ben.

—The king! The king! chanted a group nearby, and she turned to look at them. They were teenagers, holding signs that bore pictures of the porkpie hat.

Oppenheimer was not surprised by the crowds. If there was anything he was used to by now it was multitudes. Whether in their vastness they were only a dream of crowds or actual crowds he was not sure, but he would give them the benefit of the doubt. Pretend the world is real. This had been his creed at the very beginning and lately he had returned to it.

But lately it had been a stretch because the dreams stayed with him when he was awake. Their tone lasted throughout the morning, haunting him as he drank his coffee and smoked his cigarettes and even talked to the people around him, the dreams covering their faces. All the dreams were of multitudes. There were multitudes of people or multitudes of things, but they were all multitudes.

One of them was of women weeping, the kind of abject women he had begun to see everywhere and feel beholden to, women to whom he could give nothing. In the dream he owed a debt to all women and all children. He was guilty before them, guilty even before animals of which he did not know the names: he was guilty before the world of the living.

Now all of them,