The Deep End of Your Dreams Ch. 06

"The first time I saw you...well, it was almost ten years ago."

"What?" Roosevelt said, suddenly exasperated. "When was this?"

"My brother and I were headed west. I was on my way to Berkeley, to begin graduate school, and I felt myself phasing in and out of time, experiencing different outcomes to events that had happened long before. My father's death, the sinking of the Titanic..."

"The Titanic? Why, of all..."

"I was onboard, sir, the night she went down."

"Good God. Why didn't I read that in your dossier?"

She shrugged. "The night of our first encounter, she missed the iceberg. And I learned my father had passed away some two weeks before, not on that night..."

"So...time had been altered, and in more ways that one?"

"Yes."

"And you met me, for the first time?"

She nodded her head slowly. "By that window...looking..."

"At those rings?"

"Yessir."

"The walls inside that ship...what color are they?"

"Red, sir."

Roosevelt looked at her, trying to come to terms with these revelations, then a sudden thought came to him: "I say, you're looking much better now. Do you feel up to going downstairs?"

She nodded her head again. "Yes, I think so."

"Good. Let's give it a try, shall we?"

+++++

Sitting on the train, heading back to California a few days later, she thought about that encounter, and the evening that followed, for hour after hour. About the various discussions around the table, the palpable excitement surrounding the road ahead. Entire new industries would have to be created almost overnight...precision electromagnets capable of streaming off isotopes in electron streams. Vast new transport infrastructure to carry ores from Canada and Brazil, in wartime.

Yes, war. Roosevelt had made it abundantly clear that war with both Germany and Japan, and possibly Russia, now appeared inevitable. The United States would have to fight two well-armed adversaries on opposite sides of the earth, or risk being swallowed by an imploding wall of totalitarianism. It was as simple as that.

The last resort, Roosevelt said, might very well be the fission bomb under discussion -- but then he'd asked: "What then?"

"If we win this war, how in God's name do we win the unstable peace that must surely follow? What happens after we finally open Pandora's box?"

When they made it down to the room, a large ballroom where both cocktails and heated conversations were being consumed in unhealthy quantities, people were just shuffling off to a dining room, and Roosevelt had mysteriously disappeared. Charles and Oppenheimer saw her coming through a doorway and both rushed to her side.

"Ah," Oppenheimer said casually, "you didn't die, I take it?"

Charles shook his head as he walked up to her, rolling his eyes. "You look better, the color of a tangerine now. Better than that plum-red you were sporting..."

"And I feel better, too. Thanks for asking."

"We've taken the liberty of putting you next to Ben Goodman..."

"Benny Goodman? The...musician?"

"No, dear," Oppenheimer sighed, as if he was talking to a child. "Ben Goodman, the physician. The physician who held your wrist and took your temperature when you were upstairs. He seems to think you need to go to the hospital."

"The hospital?"

"Yes. Oddly enough, he thinks both you and Franklin have pneumonia."

"Bosh. I have no such thing. I've not coughed in days."

"Indeed. You must remind me...where did you take your medical diploma?"

Ignoring Robert, she turned to Charles. "Now, where am I sitting?"

"Follow me," her brother said, and when they gained the table a dapper looking man stood and held out her chair.

"Well, you're looking better," Goodman said. "How're you feeling? Still flushed?"

She smiled and sat, and Charles sat between her and Oppenheimer. "Aspirin seems to do the trick for me," she said, "whatever it is I've gotten hold of."

"Well, drink plenty of water tonight. They tend to over-salt the food here," Goodman said, frowning.

"You come here often, I take it?"

"I seem to have taken up residence here -- rather against my will, I should add."

"Oh?"

"Yes, it seems I've become the President's Personal Physician, or some such blather. That's what's on the door to my office, anyway. Are you Charles' wife?"

"Sister."

"Indeed? Splendid!"

She looked at Goodman and smiled. "Splendid? Truly?"

"Yes indeed. Take a look around, would you? There are three females in attendance, one is serving food this evening, and one of them is Mrs. Roosevelt. You're the third, and I'm sitting next to you. So, yes. I think that's very splendid indeed!"

"I see. You're not married, I take it?"

"No, but the night is young."

Claire grinned while she tried not to shake her head.

"So, why did Charles bring you along?"

"I'm Robert Oppenheimer's assistant."

"Indeed," Goodman said, frowning. "A physicist, then?"

She nodded her head, smiled a little smile, not at all triumphant. "Yes. Isn't that the bee's knees?"

"Are you working on all this uranium stuff?"

"I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Of course. It's just that I am, so I naturally assumed..."

"You are?"

"Yes. Well, you see, I'd been working on establishing new protocols for radiation exposure, primarily for use with or during diagnostic imaging, when Szilard tapped me to help out. When I'm not working here, I'm stationed at the Navy Yard."

"Oh? You're in the Navy?"

"Yes, and sorry...no uniform tonight. I was off duty when Harry called me in to check out the President."

"Harry?"

"Ah, you're not into politics, I take it? Harry Hopkins. He's been with Franklin since day one. The New Deal is his baby, if you didn't know. Harry is one of those Progressive Optimists you read about in the Times."

She shrugged again. "If you say so."

"Not interested, I take it?"

She shook her head gently, though she smiled at Goodman.

"Oh dear," he sighed, "I may fall in love with you before we get to our salads. Where are you working?"

"Berkeley."

"Yes, of course. How stupid of me. You did say you were working with Robert."

"Where did you go to school, Doctor?"

"Annapolis, then Georgetown. I began working with x-ray imaging devices when I did my internship, and I've been fascinated by the things ever since."

"And how did you get roped into being the President's physician?"

"Harry was out at the Yard and he had a bad cold. I ended up seeing him and that was that."

"Chance, then?"

"Yes. Bad luck."

She smiled when he grinned again, and she looked at his eyes a little longer this time. Kind, gentle, and deeply inquisitive. A scientist's eyes, in other words. "So, radiological dosing? You'll be working on this so-called uranium project, I take it?"

"Yes. So I'd imagine we'll see each other from time to time?"

"Would you like that?"

"Yes, you know, I think I would."

She felt her face flushing again, felt a few beads forming on her forehead, then she felt a glass of ice-water being thrust into her hand. "Drink it down, and take some ice into your mouth, roll it around..."

And without asking she did so, then she felt him grasp her wrist, begin counting-off her pulse while he watched her face and neck. "You know, even as sick as you are, you have the most enchanted eyes I've ever seen in my life."

"Enchanting, I think perhaps you meant to say?"

"No, enchanted. Like you've seen wild, magic things already. Like there's little that makes you afraid."

She could feel Charles looking at her, listening to this conversation, and she tried her best to ignore his eyes burning into the back of her skull, then she took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair. "You know, I've felt better."

"I'd like to run you over to Georgetown, that is if you don't mind."

"Perhaps after dinner, Dr. Goodman," she heard her brother saying -- then she was wrapped in warm blankets of deep sleep, adrift on a sunless sea -- and everywhere around her, she felt the deep vibrations of huge machinery...

(c) 2017 | adrian leverkühn | abw