The One Man (18 page)

“Ah, I see you are Dr. Freud now, too, as well as Dr. Mendl.” Leo sniffed with a roll of his eyes.

“In this case, boy, studying the atom is as good as studying the mind. In the end, she is the Lagerkommandant's wife. And you are just a Jew.” He turned over Leo's arm. “With that number on your wrist. She'll watch out for you until your time is up. Then she won't give you a thought.”

“We'll see.” Leo shrugged. “In the meantime, the cakes and chocolates she gives me are nice.”

“Yes, well, you're right, we'll see…” Alfred coughed, bringing up a little phlegm, and wiped his mouth with his hand. “Anyway, let's get back to work.” The cough had worsened, growing a bit more hacking with each day, and his bones and ribs were starting to show through even more. “Sorry that all you get to look at here is me.”

“Yes, the view is decidedly less appealing. Here, let me put a blanket over you, old man. Sorry, excuse me,” he grinned. “I meant, Professor, of course.” It was one of the thin, grimy pieces of burlap that did nothing to protect you from the cold.

These past weeks, Alfred had begun to grow fond of the boy. And he thought Leo felt the same about him. You learned on your first day in this place it wasn't wise to have feelings for another prisoner or to even invest in a person's history. You never knew how the next day might unfold.

“It's nothing,” Alfred said. But he wrapped the cloth around himself nonetheless and, for a moment, it stopped the chill. “Thank you, boy.”

*   *   *

As Alfred warned, the work grew harder and more complex each day. Now he was taking Leo through something called
Bessel functions
—complex, mind-stretching equations that were almost like going through an entire chess game in his head. A dozen games, Leo felt, each requiring the concentration of playing against a master, though Alfred rattled off the detailed numbers and values without a moment's hesitation, as familiar to him as was his own birth date or house address.

“Remember, we are dealing with highly charged materials here,” he explained, “that are in flux from state to state and, in the case of diffusion, through a confined space, in this case, cylinders. So we must introduce the general neutron diffusion equation for such a state.” He scribbled on the back of a torn-down health notice:

“Okay…” Leo stared at it, a little numb. “I see.”

“You have to know it, Leo. Know it cold. That is a must.”

“I'm trying, Alfred.”

“Then try harder. You must focus more. The goal here”—Alfred coughed into his rag—“is to apply the neutron population within a cylinder. The spatial part of the neutron density, characterized as N, will be a function of the cylindrical coordinates (
p
,
o
,
z
), and is assumed to be separable and expressed as…” He leafed through the scraps of paper he kept from yesterday's session:

N
pϕz
(
ρ
,
ϕ
,z) =
N
ρ
(
ρ
)
N
ϕ
(
ϕ
)
N
z
(
z
)

Leo looked at him blankly.

“Are you with me, son?”

The boy puffed out his cheeks and blew out a long blast of air. “You're going too fast, Alfred. I'm not sure.”

“
Not sure?
I thought we went over this yesterday.”

“I know, but it's not like chess. I don't fully understand why it's important.”

“Right now, it's important because I say it's important. So let's do it over again. What is the coordinate
o
in the equation, if you don't mind?” Alfred asked him.

“
O
…?”

“Yes, small
o
. Where is your head, boy? We've been through this several times. It's the angle between the cylinder's width and radius. And
p
?”

“
P…?
P
must be its height then?” Leo answered tentatively.

“Yes. Height. Dimension. I thought you were smart, Leo. I thought you could grasp this. You must concentrate, this is the easy part. Otherwise there is too much to learn.”

“Can we take a break, Professor? My head's about to explode. And what is the purpose of all this, anyway? Did you invent it or something? This precious, gaseous diffusion process? We just keep going over and over the same boring things!”

“Because you must learn it, boy. Like you know your own name! Do you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you!” Leo leaped up from the cot.
“I hear you. I hear you…”
His head was bursting with all these numbers. A feeling of total frustration and pointlessness swept over him. “Maybe we should just call it a day.”

Alfred looked at him, knowing he had pushed too far. He let the boy calm a moment. Then, “No, I didn't invent it,” he said. He put down the sheet. “In fact, the Brits are developing it as well at the same time. And I've heard researchers at Columbia University in New York are on the same track as well.”

“Then let
them
learn it,” Leo said testily.

“That would be easy, wouldn't it?” Alfred nodded, sitting back. “All
I've
done,” he said, “is simply to carry the data to a further state.
Here…”
He took the back of a poster on the spread of typhus that had been put in the block and drew out a rough, hand-sketched drawing. A kind of an interconnected system of tubes with long cylinders feeding into smaller tubes, through a network of coils and pumps. “If the uranium gas, hexachloride 6, which is extremely caustic, is pumped against a porous barrier of some kind, the lighter molecules of the gas, containing the enriched U-235, would pass through the cylinders more rapidly than the heavier U-238. Right?”

Leo nodded. That much he
had
learned.

“Which is exactly what this formula represents. You must have this down cold, Leo. No matter how dull or complicated it may seem. This is the heart of what you need to know.”

“‘Need to know'
why…?
Who gives a fart about this stupid diffusion process anyway? Or is it
ef-
fusion?” Leo snatched the drawing from the cot, crumpled it into a ball, and flung it into the corner. “Do you know what I saw today…? I watched as six men were pulled from my line at work and ordered to lie down. Then told to ‘
Get up!
' And then, ‘
Lie down'
again. Snap, snap, double time. And then,
‘Up
again!
Then down! Faster!
Faster!' And then to ‘
Run in place!
' and then ‘
Squat!
Squat ten times!' And then to ‘
Get up again! Quick. And then lie down. On the double! Schnell! Schnell!
Faster.' Until, one by one, they all just stopped in complete exhaustion, totally out of breath, and were finished off with clubs while they attempted just to suck oxygen into their lungs. The last one, red in the face, barely able to lift his legs, the guards laughing at him as if he were a marionette on a vaudeville stage. Until they beat him dead as well. So tell me, what did Graham's Law do for them?”

Alfred just looked at him.

“And did you hear? Two nights ago, everyone in Block Forty-Six was marched into the night and never came back. Did all these cylinders and diffusion equations save
them
? Soon it will be us. You're a fool, Alfred, to think the Germans will ever let any of us leave. Any of us! You know that as well as me. We're all going to die in here. You
and
I. So what does it matter, in the end, if it's small
p
or large
P
 … U-235 or 238? My head is bursting, Alfred. Every day we do this. Over and over. And
why
…? You force these things in my brain and you won't even tell me why?”

Alfred nodded. He sat back against the wall and let out an understanding breath. “It matters a lot, my boy. You're right, I probably will die in here. But
you …
The war has turned, Leo. You hear it from the new people coming in. The German Army is in tatters in the East. The Allies are set to invade. You can see it in the guards' eyes. They are growing concerned. One day you may well get out of here, and I will give you the names of people to ask for. Respected people. Because what I am showing you on these torn slivers of paper and on the backs of these filthy food labels is worth more than all the gold the Germans take out of our teeth. A thousand times more.”

“I know. You keep saying that, Alfred. But
why…?
”

The professor bent down and picked up the crumpled diagram Leo had thrown against the wall and smoothed it out on the cot. “Right now, in laboratories in Britain and in the United States, even in Germany, the most accomplished scientists, ones who make me seem as dull as an oxen, are going over the very same things…”

“So then what do they need you for?” Leo pressed. “And all these equations you're jamming into my head?”

“Ultimately, they don't.” Alfred shrugged. “Except that I know this one thing, and know it very well. And that is how to assemble a sufficiently large mass of uranium to capture and use the secondary neutrons before they escape through the surface of the material. And though this may not seem like much to you, Leo, because there's no chessboard to mull over or pieces to move, be assured that whoever understands this process, understands it
first
 … it is
they
who will win the war. And all the guns and tanks and planes in the sky won't be able to stop them.”

“This
effusion
process…?” Leo squinted back at him. “Or
dif
fusion, whichever?”

“Diffusion.” Alfred nodded with a smile.

“You keep using the words ‘sufficient quantities,' Alfred. Quantities sufficient for what?”

This time Alfred just looked at him, with an elder's gravity that it was time to explain difficult things to a boy who would now become a man. “You asked me once, what is the purpose of separating U-235 from U-238…?”

“I can see now, it's clearly some form of harnessing energy,” Leo said. “Maybe some kind of powering device? An engine. For a tank, perhaps? Or a ship?”

“Yes, but much, much larger than that, I'm afraid. And with a far more devastating effect.”

“You're talking a bomb?” Leo's eyes grew wide.

Alfred sank his back against the wall and smiled with a kind of resignation. “A small part of one, yes. But a larger and far more destructive bomb than the world has ever seen. More like a thousand bombs, Leo. In one.”

“A thousand bombs…” Leo looked at the flattened-out drawing again. “And all from this? This diffusion process?”

Alfred shrugged guiltily. “My friend Bohr postulated that the bombardment of a small amount of the pure isotope U-235 with slow neutron particles of atoms was sufficient to start a chain reaction great enough to blow up his laboratory, his building, and everything in the surrounding countryside for miles.
If
you can separate the isotope, Leo … And in sufficient quantities.” He nodded. “There's your answer, boy.”

Leo sat back down. He saw the pallor on the old man's face and his eyes grew solemn. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry I crumpled your drawing, Professor…”

“That's okay. Happens, from time to time. Among colleagues. Look, I know this is difficult. I know your head is loaded with things I haven't fully explained. I know you'd rather be playing chess in whatever time is free here. Indisputably, I know your new opponent is a lot more captivating than me to look at.”

Leo grinned, a hint of guilt in his blush once more. “So who is it you want me to get this information to? All you've crammed in my head. If I make it out.”

“Scientists.” Alfred shrugged. “Famous ones. They will want to see this. Maybe in Britain. Or even America.”

“America?”
Leo's eyes grew wide. “That
is
a dream, Professor.”

“Yes. It's a dream. But, trust me, it's no dream that they will want you when they hear what it is you know. They will need you. They will.”

They both sat for a while, staring at the diagram. Leo seemed to be taking it all in. A bomb.
The size of a thousands bombs. In one. Larger and far more devastating than the world had ever seen
. The kind of knowledge that turns a boy into a man.

Then Leo looked back up at Alfred and said, without a blink in his eye: “Neutron density for coordinates, small
p,
small
o,
small
zed,
equals the neutron small
p
times small
p,
times the neutron small
o
times small
o,
times the neutron small
zed
times small
zed
 … where
p
equals a cylinder's radius,
o
equals the angle between the diameter and the radius, and
zed
equals the cylinder's height.”