Winter of the World

The clicks became rapid. Greg waited for the increase to level off, as it had before, but it did not. Instead the clicking became faster and faster until it was continuous roar.

The radiation level was above the maximum of the counters, Greg realized when he noticed that everyone’s attention had switched to the pen recorder. Its scale was adjustable. As the level rose the scale was changed, then changed again, and again.

Fermi raised a hand. They all went silent. ‘The pile has gone critical,’ he said. He smiled – and did nothing.

Greg wanted to scream: So turn the fucker off! But Fermi remained silent and still, watching the pen, and such was his authority that no one challenged him. The chain reaction was happening, but it was under control. He let it run for a minute, then another.

McHugh muttered: ‘Jesus Christ.’

Greg did not want to die. He wanted to be a senator. He wanted to sleep with Margaret Cowdry again. He wanted to see Georgy go to college. I haven’t had half a life yet, he thought.

At last Fermi ordered the control rods to be pushed in.

The noise of the counters reverted to a clicking that gradually slowed and stopped.

Greg breathed normally.

McHugh was jubilant. ‘We proved it!’ he said. ‘The chain reaction is real!’

‘And it’s controllable, more importantly,’ said Greg.’

‘Yes, I suppose that is more important, from the practical point of view.’

Greg smiled. Scientists were like this, he knew from Harvard: for them theory was reality, and the world a rather inaccurate model.

Someone produced a bottle of Italian wine in a straw basket and some paper cups. The scientists all drank a tiny share. This was another reason Greg was not a scientist: they had no idea how to party.

Someone asked Fermi to sign the basket. He did so, then all the others signed it.

The technicians shut down the monitors. Everyone began to drift away. Greg stayed, observing. After a while he found himself alone in the gallery with Fermi and Szilard. He watched as the two intellectual giants shook hands. Szilard was a big, round-faced man; Fermi was elfin; and for a moment Greg was inappropriately reminded of Laurel and Hardy.

Then he heard Szilard speak. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘I think this will go down as a black day in the history of mankind.’

Greg thought: Now what the hell did he mean by that?

(v)

Greg wanted his parents to accept Georgy.

It would not be easy. No doubt it would be unnerving for them to be told they had a grandson who had been concealed from them for six years. They might be angry. On top of that, they might look down on Jacky. They had no right to take a moralistic attitude, he thought wryly: they themselves had an illegitimate child – himself. But people were not rational.

He was not sure how much difference it would make that Georgy was black. Greg’s parents were laid back about race, and never talked viciously about niggers or kikes as some people of their generation did; but they might change when they learned there was a Negro in the family.

His father would be the more difficult one, he guessed; so he spoke to his mother first.

He got a few days leave at Christmas and went home to her place in Buffalo. Marga had a large apartment in the best building in town. She lived mostly alone, but she had a cook, two maids and a chauffeur. She had a safe full of jewellery and a dress closet the size of a two-car garage. But she did not have a husband.

Lev was in town, but traditionally he took Olga out on Christmas Eve. He was still married to her, technically, though he had not spent a night at her house for years. As far as Greg knew, Olga and Lev hated one another; but for some reason they met once a year.

That evening, Greg and his mother had dinner together in the apartment. He put on a tuxedo to please her. ‘I love to see my men dressed up,’ she often said. They had fish soup, roast chicken, and Greg’s boyhood favourite, peach pie.

‘I have some news for you, Mother,’ he said nervously as the maid poured coffee. He feared she would be angry. He was not frightened for himself, but for Georgy, and he wondered if this was what parenthood was about – worrying about someone else more than you worried about yourself.

‘Good news?’ she said.

She had become heavier in recent years, but she was still glamorous at forty-six. If there was any grey in her dark hair it had been carefully camouflaged by her hairdresser. Tonight she wore a simple black dress and a diamond choker.

‘Very good news, but I guess a little surprising, so please don’t fly off the handle.’

She raised a black eyebrow but said nothing.

He reached inside his dinner jacket and took out a photograph. It showed Georgy on a red bicycle with a ribbon around the handlebars. The rear wheel of the bike had a pair of stabilizing wheels so that it would not fall over. The expression on the boy’s face was ecstatic. Greg was kneeling beside him, looking proud.

He handed the picture to his mother.