Fat Man and Little Boy Page #8

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Put more simply,

it's a bill for two billion dollars.

Now, let me show you

what else your money's bought.

The initiator.

And the other half.

Now, all we gotta do

is throw them together and...

Well, let's begin final assembly.

OK, Mr. Merriman.

Well, you're quiet.

It's coming close, what you're

working towards, isn't it?

Yeah.

I can feel it pressing down

on everybody.

There's something going on here.

It's got everybody mesmerized,

doesn't it?

Yeah.

There's a regular run

on sleeping pills and aspirin.

And it's not just the work,

it's something else.

- Look, I know you can't talk about it.

- I can't.

Well, then talk to Dr. Oppenheimer.

I mean, if anyone has,

he'll have thought it through, right?

OK.

Touch me.

Naked.

Isn't that a beautiful word?

Tonight.

I want to make love.

And I want a future.

That's what I really want...

...for you and me.

So do I.

- Oh, for chrissake, George.

- This pitting, must be the mold.

I'm not an explosives expert,

but I've been called

to look at something

that's unacceptable.

We must use hand lathings.

You should have used hand

lathings before.

- Hand lathings, you know what it is?

- Yes.

- Michael, what are you doing here?

- Chicago, Leo Szilard.

I read it on the train.

- Well, what do you think about it?

- It unnerved me.

Are we gonna discuss this ever?

Amongst ourselves?

- Are we going on?

- I don't see anyone stopping.

Now, look, we've been asked

to solve a technical problem,

to build this device.

We're not responsible for its use.

Oppie, it's for you.

Peter's got revised figures.

Look, let me keep this paper.

We're expecting the initiator.

We need your lab results, all right?

All right?

All right.

Everybody ready?

- Meter's ready.

- Here we go.

Twenty-one.

Twenty-nine.

Thirty-one.

Thirty-eight.

Got it? Forty.

Everybody back, right now.

Behind the wall.

Turn it off!

Nobody move! Don't anybody move!

Damn it!

Take off everything metal. Drop it.

Mark the positions

you're standing in and get out.

The incident never happened.

If anyone should ask,

it did not happen.

Everybody should make it.

Except me.

I'm dead.

Doctor! Doctor!

I've been looking all over for you.

We've got a problem.

- Bad allergy.

- When?

- An hour ago. They're bringing him in.

- Who?

Mr. Merriman.

- Michael?

- Yes, sir.

Oh, sh*t.

Let's go.

- Come on, let's go!

- Yes, sir.

This one won't do.

- In here. This one's good.

- Take it easy. All right, all right.

- Michael, what's the matter?

- Nothing, everything's fine.

- Doctor, how much did he get?

- More than 1 ,000 rads.

- Goddamn it.

- What's happening?

Sweetheart, it's under control.

Everything's under control, OK?

- Steven, what's going on?

- You should not be here.

Excuse me, there's no patient here.

No one's to hear about this.

Not Oppenheimer. Nobody.

- OK?

- Goddamn it, what happened here?

I want this ward sealed off.

Come with me.

I want military doctors in here.

Get the hell out of here!

It's the detonation circuits.

I don't know.

I would like another 24 hours.

I think so, but I can't be certain.

I said one more day.

I need one more day.

No, no, Merriman brought me

a copy from Chicago.

Some of the physicists

have signed it.

Pinko fruitcakes. Get that thing

to work, I'm gonna drop it on Chicago.

I swear I will.

Yes, I hear you. You hear me?

Finish the damn thing. That's an order.

Well, I got other business.

But I got a plane. I'll be there.

Every time I turn around,

somebody gets to him.

Now they're talking about postponing.

- Cleared for Washington?

- Yes, sir. We are.

''Truman, Stimson arrive Potsdam

for conference with Stalin.

''Advise results of Trinity Test soonest.''

Stalin's gonna eat Truman alive

at this meeting.

- Unless we...

- Yes, unless...

...we give the president something

lethal to stick in his back pocket.

I'll tell you something

it won't be...postponement.

Oh, Lord...so close.

Sir.

Keep going down slow.

His heart looks larger. Could be

fluid in the pericardial sac.

- Radiation induced?

- Probably.

It's almost doubled in size overnight.

If this continues, his heart will drown.

- Is he lucid?

- In and out.

There's tremendous brain swelling

from the radiation.

- What happens next?

- I don't know. I mean, I have no idea.

No human being's ever gotten

this dose of radiation before.

He's dying from the inside out.

Other problems. His gastrointestinal

tract has been destroyed by radiation.

Excuse me, doctors.

You've got to believe

we're doing everything we know how.

Absolutely everything.

It's not gonna do any good

to have you ripping yourself apart.

- You've gotta go home and sleep.

- Richard, I can't.

- Some orange.

- Sure is.

Hey, Oppie?

Look out!

Hornig?

- Hornig?

- It's all right.

The other safety's holding.

Does anybody else need a martini?

- What's the word?

- Oppie, it doesn't look good.

We have a chance of thunderstorms

over the next five days. I'm sorry.

I'm not telling you

what this guy's got up there.

- Why wasn't I told?

- Too much panic.

- How is he?

- Difficult to tell.

- I'd like to see him.

- We're not permitting visits.

But the men who were

with him have been spoken to.

Security. Delicate time.

He's a strong young man.

He'll pull through.

Schoenfield, how is he?

- Is he conscious?

- He's in and out.

He wants to know

if you read the petition.

- It means a lot to him.

- Yes, I have.

And then, that's it? That's all?

Yes, I have and then now

I wash my hands of it?

Now wait a minute, Oppenheimer.

I got a friend falling apart

who thinks you got the answers.

That's what you let him think.

Do you know what the Christ is going

on, or is the whole thing out of control?

If you're trying to make a point,

what is it?

I have spent the last

two years of my life

putting up with all your security

and your secrecy and your control.

I don't think that bullshit

was to keep what was going on

from the Germans

or the Japanese or the Russians.

It's to keep it from

American Jacks and Jills

because they may not

like what's going on.

American people don't

want to know what's going on.

They want to know

that their sons are alive.

I'm doing everything in my power

to see that they do.

Like Oak Ridge, where they're

injecting ill and old

people with huge doses of plutonium?

I don't know about Oak Ridge,

but if you want to ask

what's happening, ask this:

Will it be big enough?

Big enough to scare all of us

and make us stop and think?

Big enough to stop all war forever?

You want to ask a question, ask that.

Look, I've seen Oak Ridge, all right?

That place wasn't built

to make one or two bombs.

It was built to make

thousands of them. Thousands.

And soon everybody's

gonna have a bomb. They will.

What do they do with them?

Sit and wait till they go off, until ''boom''?

Then we got one world

full of Michael Merrimans

dying from the inside out.

Is that what you're looking for?

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