Also Lanny had to visit his father’s lawyers and find out about the money he was going to get. All the legal formalities had been complied with, and one of the great Wall Street banks had an order to turn over to him the securities specified in Emily Chattersworth’s will. Lanny identified himself and arranged to leave them where they were and let them accumulate interest and dividends according to their nature. The Sept Chênes property in Cannes was in charge of caretakers, and he would wait for conditions to improve before putting it on the market.
Major Jim Stotzlmann came to town. He had been out in San Francisco attending the birth pangs of the United Nations. It was his practice to be in all places where important things were happening; he could always pull some wires and have some brass hat or bureaucrat or newspaper publisher send him, and he would write accounts of the event which showed that he knew everybody connected with it and enjoyed the confidence of the most exalted. That made him good company, and he brought his newest young wife to the Budd apartment, and they sat and swapped gossip until the small hours of the morning. Life was so exciting that it always seemed a shame to go to sleep; you raided the icebox and ate a snack and then went on talking, and just as you were thinking about leaving you flushed some new and delightful item of gossip.
It was the first time Jim and Lanny had met since Roosevelt’s death, and they mourned together. Naturally Lanny wanted to know all about the New Man, the Tru-man, and naturally Jim possessed the information. Harry was a kind and decent sort but tragically unequipped to run the affairs of the world. When word of the death had come he had been like a man caught under an avalanche; he had exclaimed to one of his friends, “Look what’s fallen on me!” He wanted to follow in F.D.R.’s footsteps, but the steps were too far apart for him. Of necessity he wanted people he knew to help him, and he had brought from Missouri a bunch of friends who didn’t know any more about world affairs than he did; they were a pretty crude sort, according to the scion of the Stotzlmanns. The new President had been a captain of artillery, so he had a great respect for the high brass; he seemed also to trust the Wall Street fellows. F.D.R. had been able to manage them, but now they were managing Truman, and the prospects for the New Deal looked dark indeed.
“What are you going to do now?” inquired Jim, and Lanny said he was going back to buying old masters; he wouldn’t mention Emily’s money to one of the town’s most celebrated gossips. Lanny said that he had lost his status, and when the other offered to introduce him to Truman he declined politely; he wouldn’t promise to serve any man until he knew what sort of service the man would ask. If things in Washington were going to be as bad as Jim feared, Lanny would stay away. They went back to mourning their dead Boss, the greatest man they had ever known, the greatest President the country had ever had—so they agreed. Lanny recited the verses which Rick had written, and they sorrowed for the sheep wandering alone in the hills.
VIII
Another mourner was Charles T. Alston, who also had lost his status by that apoplectic stroke in Georgia. The old gentleman had been in San Francisco, not as a leading adviser, but as a humble assistant to one of these; his advice had been asked occasionally but rarely taken. Now he was going back to his old occupation; he had accepted a position in one of the smaller New England colleges, this time to teach, not geography, but industrial relations, in which he had become something of an expert. A summer session was just starting, and Lanny drove out and sat in on one of his old friend’s lectures, then spent the night in his home. Alston was a widower and lived with a widowed sister.
He was well content to have a rest, he said; after the hectic life he had been living a college campus was an Elysian field and a lecture room a sanctuary. But he was dreadfully unhappy about the world. He judged that the charter adopted at San Francisco was wholly inadequate, and in some ways worse than a disagreement, because it lulled the world with a false sense of security. There was looming a conflict between the capitalist and the Communist worlds, and the UN would be powerless to prevent it. What was the sense of a police force if any would-be lawbreaker had the right to veto what the police proposed to do? And where was the leadership that was going to work out a compromise among greedy and self-willed great powers?
Inevitably this led to the new President—all roads led to him, for he controlled the greatest single lump of power in the world. Alston said, “The man’s an enigma to me. He says he believes in the principles of the New Deal and means to carry them out, but apparently he has no use for any of our crowd. One after another, our policies are disapproved, and we find ourselves shunted aside; when we ask politely if our resignations would be welcomed we are answered coldly. I think perhaps the Governor spoiled us; he let us have our own way too much, and we set too high a value upon our attainments. Anyhow, we see our duties being turned over to men who don’t understand the New Deal and would hate it if they did.”
Again Lanny recited the poem “The Shepherd Is Dead,” and this time it brought tears to the eyes of a man whose hair had turned white in the service of Franklin Roosevelt. Alston had given sixteen years to helping the “Governor” plan his programs and carry them out. He said now, “We have to keep our faith in democracy and believe that the people will raise up a new leader.”
IX
This pair had lost their influence over affairs, but they had not lost their interest. They were like parents who have seen their children go out into the world; the parents’ advice is no longer sought, but their love and their fears follow the children in whatever they do. Both Lanny and Alston worried about what was left of the war. Would the Japanese yield to the air attack, or would their home islands have to be invaded? And if the Russians got into China would they ever get out? Alston had thought it a great mistake to invite Stalin to declare war upon Japan; he felt certain that when the Emperor gave up, the troops in China and on the conquered islands would follow his lead. Alston was troubled by the idea that the revolutionary fervor of the Soviets was evolving into plain Russian patriotism of the old imperial type.
The ex-P.A. told of the discoveries he had made in Germany, and said that he felt frustrated because he could no longer take them to the man at the top. “I’m back in my old days,” he said. “I take them to my English friend, and he puts them into the Socialist press. Apart from that, I’m out of everything.”
Alston sat in thought for a space. “Lanny,” he remarked suddenly, “I consider that you have earned a reward.”
“I’m not worried about that,” was the reply. “I can always earn what I need, and I don’t care anything for publicity.”
“That isn’t what I mean. There is a story about to break, the biggest in the world, and you have the right to be in on it.”
There was a special look of seriousness in the ex-geographer’s eyes, and Lanny read it. “You mean—?” he said, and stopped as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to say the words.
“Yes, I mean!” replied the other, smiling. “You ought to be there and see it, and when the news comes out your wife will have a story like nothing else ever.”
“Where should I go?”
“To a place called Los Alamos, in New Mexico.”
“Would they let me in?”
“I think I can fix it so that they will. You should go quickly because the event may happen any day. They don’t give me anything but a wink, but that’s enough.”
“I’ll start tomorrow,” Lanny said. A wink was enough for him too.
“I suggest that you make sure by calling on Einstein. Ask him to give you a note. He’s the king of the whole shebang.”
“The word being a pun?” inquired Lanny, and they both grinned.
Alston took one of his visiting cards and wrote on the back of it: “Dear Oppy: Trust Lanny Budd as you would trust me. He was Roosevelt’s confidential agent for eight years. Let him tell you his story, and you will understand why I have sent him. C.T.A.” He handed the card to Lanny and asked, “Does the name J. Robert Oppenheimer mean anything
to you?”
“I don’t think I have heard it.”
“He is a young Jewish physicist, the top theoretical brain in the project. He headed the group that took Einstein’s formula and turned it into physical reality. At the beginning F.D.R. called me in to help in the picking and choosing. Oppy won my confidence, and I hope I won his. You will find out for me.”
“You mean a young physicist has been running that enormous project?”
“Not in the business sense. That was General Groves. You have been talking about him for a year or more; but you don’t know Greek. The Greek word for grove is Alsos.”
So then Lanny saw. All he said was, “Oh!”
“General Groves is an Army officer and an executive; he runs the business. But he is not a physicist, and has to do what the physicists tell him. They tried the experiments and laid down the processes, the engineers worked out the techniques, and G.G., as they call him, let the contracts, paid the money, and protected the job. I am sure that never before has two billion dollars’ worth of labor and materials been risked on the basis of formulas worked out in a few mathematical brains. There had been laboratory experiments, but there wasn’t a bit of assurance that things that happened on an infinitesimal scale in the lab could be made to happen on a colossal scale in hundred-million-dollar factories.”
“People call F.D.R. a gambler,” remarked Lanny. “If the gamble succeeds they will call it genius.”
X
Lanny went back to his apartment and told his wife, “I have a chance to get in on the biggest thing going. Unfortunately it’s top secret; but some day soon it’ll be a story I can tell you and you can write it. Want to go along?”
“Where to?”
“A place in New Mexico that I never heard of before.”
“When do we start?”
“Early tomorrow morning. I have to get a trailer from Robbie. You can spend the time at his New Mexico plant and watch his new jets shoot up into the sky, and maybe make a story about them.”
“Righto,” said Laurel, who had recently visited Rick’s home on the Thames.
The ex-P.A. went to the phone. Robbie was purchasing new aluminum trailers every week, for he was still hiring new people and had to have a place to put them. Lanny said, “Laurel and I want a trailer, to start tomorrow for New Mexico. I can’t explain.”
“No harm in my guessing?”
“Not a bit, but don’t do it out loud. Laurel will stop at Budd”—the name of the plant where Robbie was trying out his jet engines.
“How early do you want it?”
“As early as you can get it here. Laurel doesn’t like to ride in city traffic with a trailer attached, so suppose you have your man meet us in front of the post office in Newark at nine tomorrow morning.”
“He’ll be there, unless the traffic is too much for him.”
“Newark, New Jersey, not New York,” said Lanny.
His father chuckled. “I have heard of it.”
XI
They left their apartment at eight. At that hour the traffic was mostly into the city, so they had their half of the tube and the Skyway pretty much to themselves. They got to Newark ahead of time. Robbie’s man had had the same idea and was waiting for them. They drove south on Highway I until they found a place where there was plenty of room on the side, and there the expert unhitched the trailer and attached it to Lanny’s car, which had been prepared with a “ball” when they had taken this same trip the previous year. Lanny handed the man a ten-dollar bill and all was well.
They turned off the highway and took the road to Princeton, and in that lovely old college town Lanny found a shady spot for car and trailer, so that Laurel could read comfortably. Then he walked to the imitation Gothic building where Professor Einstein had his sumptuous study. The Institute for Advanced Study has nothing to do with Princeton University; it is a separate affair, supplied with an endowment of five million dollars by two Jewish department-store owners. Here great thinkers in all branches of learning use their minds, free from other duties and cares. From here Albert Einstein, refugee from the Nazi lunatics, had written to President Roosevelt, calling his attention to the fact that recent discoveries in physical science had created the possibility of atomic fission on a significant scale. A curious sort of revenge which the whirligig of time had brought: it was upon Einstein’s formula governing the relationship between matter and energy that all these discoveries were based; and it was this formula which Lenard and the other Nazi lunatics had been banning by force from Germany.
Four years ago Lanny had come here to be briefed by one of the Professor’s assistants, preparatory to his going into Naziland in an effort to find out what progress they were making in atomic fission. The elderly cherub, as Lanny thought of him, had taken a liking to his pupil—something that he did frequently, being among the kindest of men. They had played Mozart’s sonatas for violin and piano, and Lanny had come back long afterward and been surprised to discover that this man who was trying to evolve a theory that would include the whole physical universe had room in his mind to remember which sonatas they had played. A sweet and gentle person as well as a great one, and these qualities are not always found together.
He received his visitor in an oak-paneled room containing a large center table, used no doubt for seminars. He was cordial, and deeply interested to hear what Lanny had seen of physical science in Germany. Having been director of the Physics Department at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and having attended congresses of physicists for thirty years or more, he knew all the men whom Lanny had helped to run down and question—Hahn and Weizsäcker, Bothe, Heisenberg, Plötzen, Salzmann. He listened with glee to the story of how Lanny had captured old Phillip Lenard and then been ordered to turn him loose because he was no good. A special and peculiar sort of vengeance over an ideological enemy, a sort which even the kindest-hearted scientist might enjoy.
After listening, he said, “Why don’t you stay, Mr. Budd, and we will play some music.”
Lanny explained, “I can’t stay. My wife is sitting outside in the car.”
“But why didn’t you bring her in?”
“What I want to speak to you about, Professor, is not for wives.” Lanny showed him the card which Alston had written and said, “He thought that I had done so much for the project that I was entitled to see what is expected to happen in New Mexico. He suggested that I should stop by, on the chance that you too might be willing to give me a note.”
“Indeed yes, Mr. Budd. Certainly you have earned that right.” He took a sheet of paper and wrote: “Lanny Budd is my close friend and has earned your confidence. A. Einstein.” So he always signed himself, and Lanny thought, A. Einstein and A. Lincoln.
The great man waved aside the ex-P.A.’s thanks. His face was deeply lined and his soft brown eyes were sad as he said, “I gave my sanction to this Manhattan District project, as they call it, because I felt it was my duty. Now that the war is so near to being won I find myself half wishing that the effort may not succeed.”
Said Lanny, “Our military people estimate that it may cost us a million casualties to take the Japanese home islands.”
“So I am told; and this project might be the means of saving them. But it is a moral question which I shall never be able to resolve to my satisfaction—whether we scientists have the right to permit our knowledge to be used for destruction on such a frightful scale.”
XII
The two travelers returned to Highway I and drove on to North Philadelphia, skirting the great city and heading westward on the famous turnpike that leads to Harrisburg. On their previous trailer trip it had been winter and they had got as far south as they could; now it was summer and they stayed north. The shiny new trailer followed obediently behind, and they drove through lovely farming country lush with ripening crops. Past the Gettysburg battlefield, where guides waited to show them the monuments, but they did not stop. Then the steel and coal country—Allegheny County, the heart of Amer
ica’s industrial power; it was ugly and depressing, but you couldn’t afford to look down upon it in wartime. Rather you must marvel and rejoice, while your car and trailer ran for miles past one single plant that turned out steel for guns and tanks.
The travelers crossed the Alleghenies by a broad pass, and then it was the level farmlands of Ohio, and now and then a great city throbbing with industry. They stopped for dinner and drove on until late, then found a trailer camp and had a sound sleep in their little one-room home. It was furnished completely, and they wondered how Robbie had managed to arrange that at such short notice. Perhaps he had them all fixed up in advance, so that mechanics and lady riveters wouldn’t have to go shopping when they might put in the time on a fighter plane.
Through Indiana and Southern Illinois and then across the Mississippi by a long bridge. They were in Missouri, from which President Truman and his cronies had come. When you said “I’m from Missouri,” it meant’ that you were of a skeptical disposition and wanted to be shown. All the world was waiting for Harry to show them, and ardent New Dealers like the son of Budd-Erling were cherishing no great expectations. He turned on the radio in the car and listened to news of the latest bombing raids over Japan, comforting himself with the thought that at least an artilleryman-haberdasher couldn’t lose the war.
There was a hot spell, and perspiration gathered on their foreheads; then came a thunderstorm, and it was pleasanter. They bought food in a grocery and did not stop for meals. Lanny was in a hurry but didn’t say why; Laurel might guess but didn’t ask. She dozed while he drove, and then it was turn about. Presently they were in Kansas, a wide state, with seemingly endless fields of wheat and corn. Trending southward, they came into the Panhandle, and then to a corner of Texas. The roads ran straight most of the time, and the men also ran straight, they would tell you. Lanny had seen them all over Europe, proud of themselves and certain that Texas was winning the war, with just a little help from Oklahoma and Kansas.