“This does seem to be reasonable,” Kirel said, “but reason is not always a governing factor in Tosevite affairs. For instance, do I not remember that the American Big Uglies are among the minority who attempt to govern their affairs by counting the snouts of those for and against various matters of interest to them?”
Atvar had to glance back through the reports to see whether the shiplord was right When he had checked, he said, “Yes, that appears to be so. What of it?”
“Some of these not-empires use snoutcounting to confer legitimacy on leaders in the same way we use the imperial succession,” Kirel answered. “This may tend to minimize the disruption that will arise in the United States as a result of the loss of Roosevelt.”
“Ah, I see your point,” Atvar said. “Here, though, it is not valid; Roosevelt’s viceregent, a male named Wallace, also chosen through the snoutcounting farce, has predeceased him: he died in our bombing of Seattle. No not-empirewide snoutcounting has ever been perpetrated for this Hull. He must surely be reckoned an illegitimate usurper. Perhaps other would-be rulers of America will rise in various regions of the not-empire to contest his claim.”
“If that comes to pass, it would indeed be excellent,” Kirel said. “I admit, it does fit with what we know of Tosevite history and behavior patterns. But we have been disappointed so often with regard to the Big Uglies, I find optimism hard to muster these days.”
“I understand, and I agree,” Atvar said. “In this case, though, as you note, the Big Uglies’ irksome proclivities work with us, not against us as they do on most occasions. My opinion is that we may reasonably expect control over major areas of the not-empire of the United States to fall away from its unsnoutcounted leader, and that we may even be able to use the rebels who arise for our own purposes. Cooperating with the Big Uglies galls me, but the potential profit in this case seems worthwhile.”
“Considering the use the Big Uglies have got out of Straha, using their leaders against them strikes me as fitting revenge,” Kirel said.
Atvar wished Kirel hadn’t mentioned Straha; every time he thought of the shiplord who’d escaped his just punishment by fleeing to the American Tosevites, it was as if he got an itch down under his scales where he couldn’t scratch it Despite that, though, he had to admit the comparison was fair.
“At last,” he said, “we shall find where the limits of Tosevite resilience lie. Surely no agglomeration of Big Uglies lacking the stability of the imperial form can pass from one rule to another in the midst of the stress of warfare. Why, we would be hard-pressed ourselves if, during such a crisis, the Emperor happened to die and a less experienced male took the throne.” He cast down his eyes, then asked, “Truth?”
“Truth,” Kirel said.
Leslie Groves sprang to his feet and forced his bulky body into as stiff a brace as he could take. “Mr. President!” he said. “It’s a great honor and privilege to meet you, sir.”
“Sit down, General,” Cordell Hull said. He sat down himself, across from Groves in the latter’s office. Just seeing a President of the United States walk into that office jolted Groves. So did Hull’s accent: a slightly lisping Tennessee drawl rather than the patrician tones of FDR. The new chief executive did share one thing with his predecessor, though: he looked desperately tired. After Groves was seated, Hull went on, “I never expected to be President, not even after Vice President Wallace was killed and I knew I was next in line. All I ever wanted to do was go on doing my own job the best way I knew how.”
“Yes, sir,” Groves said. If he’d been playing poker with Hull, he would have said the new President was sandbagging. He’d been Secretary of State since Roosevelt became President, and had been Roosevelt’s strong right arm in resisting first the human enemies of the United States and then the invading aliens.
“All right, then,” Hull said. “Let’s get down to brass tacks.”
That didn’t strike Groves as sounding very presidential; to him, Hull looked more like an aging small-town lawyer than a President, too: gray-haired, bald on top with wisps combed over to try to hide it, jowly, dressed in a baggy dark blue suit he’d plainly been wearing for a good many years. Regardless of whether he looked like a President or sounded like one, though, he had the job. That meant he was Groves’ boss, and a soldier did what his boss said.
“Whatever you need to know, sir,” Groves said now.
“The obvious first,” Hull answered. “How soon can we have another bomb, and then the one after that, and then one more? You have to understand, General, that I didn’t know a thing, not one single solitary thing, about this project until our first atomic bomb went off in Chicago.”
“Security isn’t as tight now as it used to be, either,” Groves answered. “Before the Lizards came, we didn’t want the Germans or the Japs to have a clue that we thought atomic bombs were even possible. The Lizards know that much.”
“Yes, you might say so,” Hull agreed, his voice dry. “If I hadn’t happened to be out of Washington one fine day, you’d be having this conversation with someone else right now.”
“Yes, sir,” Groves said. “We don’t have to conceal from the Lizards that we’re working on the project, just where we’re doing it, which is easier.”
“I see that,” the President said. “As may be, though; President Roosevelt chose not to let me know till the Lizards came.” He sighed. “I don’t blame him, or anything of the sort. He had more important things to worry about, and he worried about them-until it killed him. He was a very great man. Christ”-he pronounced itChwist — “only knows how I’ll fill his shoes. In peacetime, he would have lived longer. With the weight of the country-by God, General, with the weight of the world-on his shoulders, moving from place to place like a hunted animal, he just wore out, that’s all there is to it.”
“That was the impression I had when he came here last year,” Groves said, nodding. “The strain was more than his mechanism could take, but he took it anyhow, for as long as he could.”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head,” Hull said. “But, speaking of nails, we’ve forgotten about the brass tacks. The bombs, General Groves-when?”
“We’ll have enough plutonium for the next one in a couple of months, sir,” Groves answered. “After that, we’ll be able to make several per year. We’ve about come to the limit of what we can do here in Denver without giving ourselves away to the Lizards. If we do need a lot more production, we’ll have to start a second facility somewhere else-and we have reasons we don’t want to do that, the chief one being that we don’t think we can keep it secret.”
“This place is still secret,” Hull pointed out.
“Yes, sir,” Groves agreed, “but we had everything set up and going here before the Lizards knew we were a serious threat to build nuclear weapons. They’ll be a lot more alert now-and if they catch us at it, they bomb u
s. General Marshall and President Roosevelt never thought the risk was worth it.”
“I respect General Marshall’s assessment very highly, General Groves,” Hull said, “so highly that I’m naming him Secretary of State-my guess is, he’ll do the job better than I ever did. But he is not the Commander-in-Chief, and neither is President Roosevelt, not any more. I am.”
“Yes, sir,” Groves said. Cordell Hull might not have expected to become President, he might not have wanted to become President, but now that the load had landed on his shoulders, they looked to be wide enough to carry it.
“I see two questions in the use of atomic bombs,” Hull said. “The first one is, are we likely to need more than we can produce here at Denver? And the second one, related to the first, is, if we use all we produce, and the Lizards retaliate in kind, will anything be left of the United States by the time the war is done?”
They were both good questions. They went right to the heart of things. The only trouble was, they weren’t the sort of questions you asked an engineer. Ask Groves whether something could be built, how long it would take, and how much it would cost, and he’d answer in detail, whether immediately or after he’d gone to work with a slide rule and an adding machine. But he had neither the training nor the inclination to deal with the imponderables of setting policy. He gave the only answer he could: “I don’t know, sir.”
“I don’t know, either,” Hull said. “I’ll want you to be prepared to split off a team from this facility to start up a new one. I don’t know whether I’ll decide to do that, but if I do, I’ll want to be able to do it as quickly and efficiently as I can.”
“Yes, sir,” Groves repeated. As a contingency plan, what the new President proposed made good sense: you wanted to keep as many options as possible open for as long as you could.
“Good,” Hull said, taking it for granted that Groves would do as he’d been told. The President stabbed out a blunt forefinger. “General, I’m still getting into harness here. What should I know about this place that maybe I don’t?”