Binding Energy
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
—John Donne
—There! Stop there!
EMIL’S BBQ. A smiling pig in a clean white apron leans against the Q, brandishing a wicked looking knife. Emil first came here amused at the confluence of names, but he returns for the dark smoky sauce laced with cayenne.
The driver looks at him in the rear-view mirror, nods, and pulls into the parking lot. Bits of silica wink like stars in the soft asphalt.
—What can I get for you, sir?
Flat military monotone. Cold eyes, brown like river silt. This driver is new and Emil doesn’t like him much. The man is a herring—Emil has tried to engage him in conversation several times, but there has been no response other than the monosyllabic. The Negro makes a good soldier but this one is a lousy chauffeur.
—Stay, stay. I’ll go.
He reaches for the door handle, but the driver is too quick. Heat slaps Emil in the face, rising in waves from the asphalt. It is like peering into an oven. Almost immediately, a thin film of perspiration covers his forehead and hands. He slides the cane from his lap and plants it on the pavement. Cut from rough oak, this cane, knotted and polished smooth. His staff. His oaken staff. The ground yields slightly under its tip as he heaves himself to his feet. Shakes off the soldier’s hand on his elbow.
—Stay, sit.
Familiar stab of pain from his right hip, not exactly an old friend but always there to remind him that he is no longer young, nor even middle-aged.
A handful of tables sprout like linoleum mushrooms under the harsh fluorescents. A man in greasy coveralls and a long, thick ponytail sits next to the window, tearing strips of flesh from the carcass of a chicken, washing it down with deep pulls from a brown long-necked bottle.
The jukebox is playing a plaintive country song about lost love, redolent with pedal steel and nasal male harmonies. The vinegary barbecue smell makes Emil’s stomach rumble; beneath that, a shadow of pain. To hell with the ulcer, he thinks.
—Can I help you, sir?
He looks at the woman behind the counter for the first time. A sudden, hollow silence descends. The smell of burnt wiring fills his nostrils. His mouth opens but he cannot speak.
It is her. The traitor. Black eyes bruised with loss, set far apart in a moon-shaped face. Rough olive skin. Coarse, dark curls. Thick lips perpetually poised on the brink of a sneer.
—Sir?
Emil backs up until he bumps into the door. He shoulders it open and spills back into the heat. His limo waits, blinding white, parked astride two spaces.
—Are you all right?
—Yes, yes. Take me to the Lab.
Ensconced in the cool dark of the limo, Emil still feels those eyes on him. The years recede like snow under a lit match and he sees her in the Senate chambers—1953? 1954? Six months before the executions. She has no shame.
—No, I am not a Communist. No, of course not. Never. Besides, what do I know of nuclear physics?
Ridiculous, Emil thinks. I am an old fool. He raps on the plexiglass divider.
—Sergeant, back to the barbecue place.
He’ll think I’m going senile. Like poor Ronny.
The driver makes a U-turn, threads back through the wide suburban streets.
The man with the ponytail stares rudely, hunched over bones and scraps. The woman behind the counter affixes a nervous smile to her face.
—Can I help you?
—I’m sorry—you look so much like—tell me, please, what is your name?
She hesitates, looks him over, seems to decide that he is odd but not dangerous.
—Jane. Jane Lucent.
—Not Rabinowicz?
That nervous smile again.
—No. Not Rabinowicz.
Emil sighs. She looks remarkably like her. But it’s impossible. The traitor had one daughter who committed suicide in an insane asylum before producing any offspring of her own. That branch of the family tree is kindling.
—No, of course not.
Suddenly, his appetite returns. He looks at the menu posted behind the counter, adorned with garish color photographs, platters of food glistening with grease.
—I’ll have the ribs.
Two seasons in California, green and brown. Thirty years here and Emil still longs for the red and gold death of autumn, the sharp smell of snow on the air, the distant snap of pond ice breaking under spring’s first thaw.
From eight stories up the land acquires definition: tawny prairie ripples with gentle contours like muscles beneath the skin of a great cat. Hundreds of windmills break the ridgeline at the edge of the valley. Legacy of the peanut farmer’s tax credit. Who not once answered Emil’s calls, even during that Syria business.
This one is better. At least he sends smiling young men in crisp suits to listen to Emil’s ideas. But Emil is still the leprous magician laboring in the castle dungeon, conjuring potions and spells that harness the elemental forces, his ugly visage kept from public view. He has delivered them from a thousand Hells and they treat him like the carrier of a social disease.
Ronny was the best. Not much of a thinker, but the heart of a lion. Emil loved the visits to the White House, not skulking in through the tunnel but delivered by helicopter to the front lawn. The dreams Emil could spin to a receptive ear!
Glossy photographs of test shots adorn the oiled mahogany walls of his office. Mike, Priscilla, Romeo. Shrimp, Token, Bravo. Emil was the youngest and he knows that a father’s favorite child is always his first. Mike. A 10.4 megaton Rube Goldberg nightmare of pipes and gauges, valves and switches, filling a building the size of an airplane hangar. It was a miracle it worked at all, but it vaporized the island of Elugelab and punched a hole in the ocean floor. Emil remembers the light of Creation flashing against the high Pacific clouds, minutes later the attenuated shock reaching the observation ships fifty miles out as a stiff, sudden wind. The breath of God.
It was a moment of pure, Wagnerian joy, all his own.
The phone rings, two short bursts. His secretary. He pushes the speaker button.
—Yes?
—Fifteen minutes, sir.
—Ah, yes. Thank you.
It has been a couple of years since he has addressed the Laboratory. Emil feels out of touch with the daily workings of the place. His Emeritus status gives him no official power, but he still has allies in the ranks of physicists, particularly X-Division. He can walk over to Building 88 at any time, argue theory with the young, Coke-swilling firebrands, politics with Wade, his star disciple.
But every now and then he likes to speak to the rank and file. The illiterati. The Laboratory’s publicity machinery ensures that the main auditorium in Building 70 will be full; by electronic proxy, his image reaches all corners of the mile-square complex.
Emil could give up this indulgence. Tollbridge is doing a fine job as Director—the ritual Beltway gavotte, keeping the Regents happy and uninformed. His insipid Management Chat, twice a month on LabNet. But the guilty pleasure of a captive audience is a powerful drug. And besides, Emil sacrificed everything for this place. The respect of his colleagues, his standing in the scientific community. They loved Oppy so. His big sad eyes. Emil showed them the way but still they shunned him, saw only his failures. Heat rushes to Emil’s cheeks as he recalls the humiliation of the first failed test, a miserable fission firecracker. The flaccid mushroom tickling the tropopause. Ten kilotons, barely a Hiroshima.
The phone rings again. Annoyed at the interruption of his reverie, Emil punches the speaker button.
—What is it?
—Dr. Wade is here, sir.
—Ah, good. Send him in.
Emil’s spacious office seems smaller when Wade enters. Six-four, with the ruddy-cheeked enthusiasm of a college athlete, Wade belies the public stereotype of physicist. He is no skinny, bespectacled caricature scuttling beneath a bank of fluorescents from lab bench to computer terminal, clipboard clutched to white-coated breast. With Wade’s square jaw and rough good looks, he could pose for L.L. Bean. But he was Emil’s finest student. An extraordinary experimentalist and a first-rate theoretician, he wields the ideas and techniques of physics like a carpenter building a house. No, not a carpenter, a blacksmith—the forge and the anvil are metaphors more suited to the manipulation and control of the elemental forces. For the last decade, he has been, methodically, surreptitiously, stripping Emil of authority in the Lab hierarchy. Or trying to. Emil plays along. He admires Wade’s feral cunning. His own position in the history books is secure. Besides, the old magician still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
—Emil. You are looking fit.
—You are a liar, John.
Wade eases his big frame into the leather chair in front of Emil’s desk, set slightly lower than Emil’s own. As usual, he wastes no time.
—What are you going to talk about?
Emil was expecting this. Make sure the old man isn’t going to violate national security in his enthusiasm for a good yarn.
—The usual. State of the Lab. Current funding cycle. I thought I’d drop a hint or two about Diamond Prism.
Emil watches with amusement as Wade’s jaw clenches.
—I, um, don’t think that would be a very good idea. Weintraub from the Herald is going to be there—he already thinks you’re the anti-Christ. Diamond Prism is entirely black budget right now …
Emil holds his hand up, palm forward, as if directing traffic.
—Relax, John. I just wanted to see whether you actually think I’m incontinent.
A frown creases Wade’s smooth forehead.
—Incompetent.
—I beg your pardon?
Wade opens his mouth, closes it.
—Never mind.
The two men are silent. The room fills with ambient sounds—a white noise air-conditioner hum, the distant ringing of a phone, the electronic squeal of a fax machine in the outer office.
—I’ll be out of your hair soon enough, John. I am an old man.
He leans toward Wade, lowers his voice.
—I am sure you don’t know this, but Tollbridge is being groomed for Secretary.
The gratuitous improvisation rolls off Emil’s tongue like a dollop of oil. Wade’s eyebrows raise.
—Ah, yes, I knew that would get your attention. I still have sources inside the Beltway. We could bring Collins up to take over X-Division and put you in as Director.
Wade rubs his chin thoughtfully.
—Collins isn’t ready. The Oberon shoot had lousy energy density …
—Engineering, John. It’s just engineering. What you’re really saying is you’re not ready, yes? To give up your little fiefdom.
Wade laughs, a short, barking sound.
—I’m ready.
The auditorium in Building 70 is full, a restless sea of silvery-haired heads. Emil scans the crowd for younger faces and sees a few, but not many. The old man is a circus act and they have no time. He limps down the center aisle—step, thump, step, thump—his staff making a hollow sound on the deep pile carpet. They have wheeled out an old upright piano for him and without preamble, he mounts the stairs at the side of the stage and seats himself with his back to the audience.
Where did they dig this thing up? The wood is pitted and scarred; there is a neat, black chevron of cigarette burns to the left of the music holder. Cigarette burns! He hopes the piano is tuned, at least.
Suddenly his hands feel huge and clumsy; his arthritic knuckles are golf-ball sized knots of pain. His breathing quickens and a flicker of agony lashes up from his sciatic nerve. He was going to play a little Bach, a little Mozart, but that mathematical precision seems out of reach. Stupid indulgence! It’s all out of reach.
Without thinking, he launches into the Promenade from “Pictures at an Exhibition.” He hates the acoustics in this room—the ceiling baffles turn all sound into a homogeneous, milky paste. The power of the stately opening is muffled and compressed. Remembering suddenly the demands of the next movement, “The Gnome,” Emil feels something tighten across his forehead and a spastic tremble flows down his arms and out his fingertips. The missed note hangs in the air like a fart.
—Shit.
The word echoes in his ears and he realizes that his lapel mike is on.
Cheeks burning, he stumbles through another couple of movements. Each time he returns to the refrain it is a little more uncertain, a little more out of tempo. Finally he just stops. Breathes. His shoulders sag as if something has left his body.
A tenuous vapor of whispers rises from the crowd. Somebody applauds. Someone else. A weak, uncertain ripple surges and dies.
Emil takes a deep breath, leans on his staff. Stands and turns around.
—Poor Mussourgsky.
A few nervous laughs.
—A simple demonstration of quid pro quo. I just did to Russia what they did to us for forty-five years.
More laughter. Another scattering of applause and it catches this time, fills the hall, fills Emil.
He’s got them.
—Imagine, if you will, the following scenario. Yeltsin has a fatal heart attack. In the ensuing chaos, the hard-liners prevail. There is a coup, perhaps bloodless, perhaps not, and the Russian government is in their hands. Our intelligence tells us that Lebed—or somebody—will be addressing a huge crowd in Red Square. With only few minutes notice, one of our deep patrol submarines in the Pacific launches a missile. It pops up into a low ballistic trajectory and, at the peak of the parabola, a low-yield thermonuclear device is detonated in close proximity to a long, thin rod of metallic foam. Computers have aligned the rod to within a micron’s tolerance so that its aim is as true as the resolve in our own hearts. Microseconds before the rod is vaporized, a highly energized beam lances out of the blue, Russian sky. Lebed, and the hopes of the hard-liners, are now a rapidly expanding plasma.
Emil scans the crowd. He recognizes Weintraub, scribbling furiously on a small notepad. And there, Habermas, a protégé of Wade’s, with a pained look on his young face.
—Terrorism, insurgency, and financial instability are the threats that will shadow us as we move into the twenty-first century. In order to maintain our position as leaders of the Free World, we must pursue an aggressive policy of surgical countermeasures. Surgical countermeasures.
The repeated phrase fills the hall, pregnant with possibility. He relishes for a moment that unfolding, then continues. He does not mention Diamond Prism directly, but he lays it out, all of it. Wade will be furious, probably try to pull Emil’s clearance. But it’s the right thing to do. The right time. Back in Ronny’s administration they used to come from Washington like dogs to a bitch in heat. The Congressmen and their dull, eager staffers. The spooks. The generals. Everybody but the scientists. From a distant nexus within, he sees himself, a gnarled, stooped gnome standing before a lectern, spinning candied lies to an audience of idiot children. And looking out in to the crowd, he sees her.
Dark hair falling like wings across her face, not quite hiding her bruised eyes. It is her. The close air in the auditorium is suddenly charged with an ozone stink. The hot smell of metal on metal. Solder and sulfur. Burning rubber.
He reaches out a hand. His staff clatters to the floor of the stage.
—You.
A susurrus rises from the crowd, like the cicada-hiss of summer. Emil staggers back, grabs the lectern for support, lurches into the wings. Sees the red EXIT sign. Pushes into the dry, sweltering heat.
—Take me home.
Curt military nod in the rear-view mirror. Emil sits back in the soft leather, breathes, watches the temporary buildings at the outskirts of the Lab segue to grape fields and tract housing locked in a Darwinian tangle for dominance of the sunbaked prairie.
The air conditioning is on high but he can’t stop sweating. His shirt is drenched, plastered to his skin. Sharp, transient pains from his chest call to him like voices from the bottom of a deep well. He wonders if he is going to have a heart attack, a stroke, a breakdown.
He opens the small refrigerator in front of him and pulls out a bottle of spring water, changes his mind and from the freezer withdraws a slim flask of vodka. It goes down like liquid metal. Emil sees the driver looking at him in the rear-view as he tilts the flask back with shaking hands. The military lack of affect is a perfect vehicle for the contempt Emil knows is there. Emil presses a button in the armrest and an upholstered panel rises from the seat back, separating him from the driver’s compartment.
The phone trills at him from the armrest. Wade, no doubt, or Tollbridge. Let it ring. Emil leans back and closes his eyes.
Immediately her face begins to coalesce on the dark screen of his closed eyelids, taking shape from nothing until she is hovering before him, clear as a photograph. Her head is shaved and she is wearing a starchy, green prison shift. The cell behind her is a Caligari nightmare of distorted angles and false perspective.
—Why are you here? What do you want?
She does not respond.
Two guards appear, dressed in head to foot black with loose black hoods. They escort her through twisting stone tunnels lit by naked bulbs. Disembodied, powerless, Emil follows, like a balloon bobbing on the end of a string.
They come to a high-ceilinged room dominated by a large wooden chair. Metal cuffs decorate the arms and legs. Black-sheathed cables sprout from the chair and converge to a thick bundle that leads to a panel in the far wall. At one end, onlookers fill a row of bleacher-like seats. Emil recognizes J. Edgar and Roy, Ike and Nixon, Joe McCarthy.
One of the guards straps her to the chair; the other walks to the panel and places his hand on a large switch. When he sees his partner step away from the chair, without preamble he yanks downward. Her body stiffens, convulses, dances in the restraints.
Emil jerks awake with a start. The phone is ringing again. Laced with the chemical smell of the air conditioning is the stink of ozone and burnt wiring.
She is next to him in the cool dark of the limo, regarding him with wide, bruised eyes.
He slides away from her, pressing himself against the door.
—What do you want from me?
She puts her hand on his. Her touch is dry ice, burning cold.
—We were all so frightened, Emil.
—You betrayed your country. You deserved what you got.
She closes her eyes, breathes, opens them, says nothing.
—What do you want? Why now?
—You are dying, Emil. Your medical appointment next week will reveal a shadow on your left lung. Further tests will reveal that it has already metastasized. A chain reaction, eh? Filling your body with the light of Creation.
It is true. He can feel it. Something cold takes hold of his stomach and squeezes, hard.
—You come to gloat, then, to see me fall apart. I won’t give you the satisfaction. I am not afraid of God. I have met Him on His own terms.
She shakes her head sadly.
—No, Emil, not to gloat.
—What then?
She says nothing. Just looks at him with those eyes. Like Oppy at Princeton, days before he died. His body, rail-thin in health, wasted away to nothing. The cancer had eaten away his larynx so he could not speak, but he was fully alert. He took Emil’s hand in his and his hands were warm and strong.
Emil fumbled for words.
—Perhaps I should not have come.
Oppy shook his head, squeezed Emil’s hand. Emil met his eyes for the first time and recoiled at the expression. Not the loathing he expected that would allow him to gloat privately at his adversary’s demise, but a preternatural serenity. Compassion. Forgiveness. Emil pulled his hand away and fled into the hollow winter morning.
He feels himself being drawn into her eyes, wide like Oppy’s, all-encompassing. Feels unseen tidal forces pulling, as if he is nearing the event horizon of a black hole.
He looks away, slaps the intercom button.
—Driver. Pull over.
Rattle of pebbles against the undercarriage as the limo comes to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. The limo shudders as a large truck passes.
Emil looks to his side again and she is gone; the burnt electrical smell hangs in the air like a Cheshire grin.
He opens the door and steps out into the heat.
—Sir?
Emil gestures the driver back inside. The wake from another passing truck tugs at his suit. The shoulder of the highway is scattered with debris—a hubcap, glittering shards of amber glass, the decomposing corpse of a dog. Emil staggers down the embankment into the prairie scrub. The burning sun is pinned to the sky’s blue arch, a white, curdled eye. Behind him in the limo, the phone begins to ring.
—for Carter Scholz