Trinity: Coda by pandemonium_213  

Maybe it was the third martini, or the fourth, that had triggered the dream.  The dinner party with the faculty turned into a more momentous occasion that Oppie anticipated.  Although he had told the trustees earlier in the day that he planned to retire in June next year, he had not planned on making the news public just yet.  That very evening, Kitty, well into her cups, blurted out to all the dinner guests that he planned to retire as director of the Institute.  It was all so awkward.

Later, he had collapsed into bed, where sleep set in hard and fast.  Then came the dream. Once again, he found himself seated at the oak table out in expanse of the Jornado del Muerto desert with those two strange men, Fionn and Saunders.

Steadying himself, Oppie took a long drag on a cigarette. Fionn burst out, his tone at once chiding and sorrowful.  “I’m telling you, Robert.  Those things will kill you.  Surely your doctor surely has…”

“Please, Fionn.  Enough,” Saunders said, surprising gentle.  “So, Kitty announced your retirement before you were ready?”

Oppie didn’t even question how Saunders knew this. This otherworldly man had taken up residence in his mind, after all.

“Yes.  I intended to make it public later this year, but well, she’s more than ready for me to retire, and I suppose I am, too.  She’s quite ill, and the doctors say it’s incurable.  That and I’m sick of squabbling with the mathematics faculty. It’s intolerable.”

Saunders huffed in what sounded like sympathy. “Yes, keeping the rabble in line is a challenge. My god, managing all those uruks was impossible.”

“Saunders, really, no! Don’t do that to him.” 

Just as before, these two shared some hidden knowledge that they dripped and drabbed before Oppie.  They squabbled briefly in an unfamiliar language. Oppie thought he recognized Northern European roots, but like so much of what he experienced with Fionn and Saunders, the foreign words slithered from his intellectual grasp before he could identify what their origins.

Fionn and Saunders fell silent, and the only sound was the desert breeze rattling the scrub.  The sun was brilliant, and the sky was the kind of intense blue that an arid climate produces.  Oppie squinted at the horizon, which shimmered from a heat that he did not feel in this dreamscape.  As he stared, a distant figure emerged from the wavering air, blurred, but steadily walking toward them.  Fionn and Saunders turned in their chairs to watch this stranger who intruded on their dream.

As the figure approached, it resolved into a man, and from what Oppie could see, he was Tewa, although taller and lankier than most men of the San Ildefonso Pueblo who had worked at Los Alamos as truck drivers, construction laborers, and maintenance crew.   He had long black hair, tied back from his face; turquoise and silver earrings dangled along the sides of his neck.  He wore khaki trousers, a black vest and a kerchief held in place with a turquoise and silver broach, nothing out of the ordinary for a Tewa fellow.  But the leather vambraces on his arms, tooled with elaborate, curling designs, almost reminiscent of Art Nouveau, and the three rings on the fingers of his left hand were distinctive and decidedly not Tewa in origin.  Each ring held a different gemstone, which appeared to be a sapphire, a diamond, and a ruby.  Once Oppie’s eyes fell on them, he could not look away from their beauty until a sharp intake of breath from Saunders drew away his attention.  Saunders, who had turned pale, whispered, “Oh, my god.”  Fionn, on the other hand, squinted and seemed puzzled, but then his grey eyes widened, as if he now recognized the stranger.

The tall Tewa man stepped forward to the table and extended his hand to Oppie.  “Please to meet you, Dr. Oppenheimer.  And you two?” He glared down at Fionn and Saunders.  “Gentlemen, I’d like a word.”

Chapter End Notes

As with Trinity, I highly recommend American Prometheus, The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

I also recommend Dmitri Brown's work that addresses a Tewa Pueblo history of the Manhattan Project and the atomic age.  Dr. Brown is currently an assistant professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley and is a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo.  Here are two of his presentations:
Tewa Pueblos at the Dawn of the Atomic Modernity
“Give It Back to the Indians”: Commemoration and Place in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer

Leave a Comment