“You say, Harvey, that the Japanese are all but defeated. By any rational measure, they should be, I agree. You think it would be feasible to set off the bomb in a publicly announced demonstration. An island in Tokyo Bay would be ideal, somewhere they could bring their best scientists and generals. If we do drop the bomb on them, you want it to be employed against a remote, purely military target, a base as far as possible from civilians. You don’t see why women and children should die simply because we want to make a point. You add that there are American POWs in a number of the Japanese cities we may have contemplated attacking. You believe that if we are the first nation to use such a weapon we will be historically tainted, that we will sacrifice the goodwill of the entire world. Much worse, you fear an armaments race, a building of horrible weapon after horrible weapon such as mankind has never known and cannot survive. That our actually using such a weapon in war will poison any chance of international agreement about the future control of such apocalyptic devices. Lastly, we bear the direct and special responsibility of these weapons because we are the men and women who created them. Who should say how and if these weapons are to be used if not us? Is that a fair summation of your arguments?”

These indeed were Harvey’s points better than he himself had put them. Abashed, he kept his eyes to the clipboard. “Eight inches more.”

“We all have the same nightmares,” Oppy said as he walked, hands in jacket pockets, toes out, around Harvey, the tables, the Dragon. “These are the years of nightmares, and they are not ended yet. If you quit before Trinity, I would not blame you. I’d envy you.” He lifted his gaunt face, evidence of his fatigue. “We’d all envy you.”

Joe did figures in his head. By calling in loans and cashing his last gas coupons and travel vouchers, he could bring his bankroll to $20,000. How could he more than double it in two weeks? How much scotch and commissary sugar could a man sell?

Maybe high explosives were the answer. Hilario had mentioned contractors down in Albuquerque. With a couple of mules, he could clean out the magazine bunkers on Two Mile Mesa.

“To go up into the mountains for a year,” Oppy said. “Not see a headline or hear a radio. Not come down until the entire, awful thing is over.”

Harvey glanced at Joe for psychic support. “Five inches.”

Assuming he got the money together, there was the problem of musicians. He could only afford a couple of men from New York or Kansas City. He’d have to use some Mexicans. Horn players. There was a trolley that ran from Juarez to El Paso, and he could slip them over the border that way.