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Even Carl started losing hope, by the end. He’d come to Werner with that expression on his face Werner had come to dread, because it usually meant bad news.
Instead, this time, it was apparently just ‘nothing has changed’ news.
“Maybe we should give up.”
Other people had told Werner the same. They seemed to think that Germany losing the war was in some way linked to his work, his great project.
Werner had expected better from Carl. He wondered, briefly, if this was how Bohr had felt when Werner had come to see him in Copenhagen.
You could never disappoint me. Bohr had told him that, one night at the Institute, when Werner had been fretting over some experiment or another that wasn’t working out. He didn’t even remember what it was now.
Of all of them, you burn the brightest. I have no doubt that you will do things the rest of them can only dream about.
“Werner,” Carl said. He looked the way he sounded. Defeated. Beaten down. As if he had wanted Germany to win, for the Nazis to end up controlling everything everywhere. “We can’t go on like this. And what’s even the point? We could achieve a break-through tomorrow, and it still wouldn’t change anything.”
“Could we?” Werner frowned, trying to remember what tests he had scheduled for today. It got hard to keep track sometimes. He’d never fully realized how much work Bohr had done at the Institute, how he had guided and encouraged and supported all of them.
Carl sighed. “It was only a matter of speech. What I meant to say was, there’s no point. To any of this.”
There’s nothing worse than giving up. A true scientist never gives up. Werner scoffed. With the benefit of hindsight, he suspected Bohr had only been goading them, trying to keep everyone in the poker game when common sense dictated they should have folded instead, to wait for a better hand.
Still. “Of course there’s a point. You think the Americans aren’t working on this? The British? The Russians?” They said Bohr was in America. Werner could almost convince himself that he wouldn’t mind if Bohr got there first.
He could almost picture it: a brief burst of gunfire, and then, an opened door, and Bohr, there, alive and buoyant and real, scowling at all of them as if they were still his students, his beloved pupils who had misbehaved by working themselves to the bones on some experiment that had been doomed from the beginning because the underlying principles were flawed.
Bohr might be a little patronizing as he explained it all to them. There might be a twinkle in his eyes when he looked at Werner.
I expected better from you.
“So what if they are working on it too?” Carl said. “Let them. We’re done, Werner. Whoever’s going to figure this out, it’s not us. We don’t have the will, we don’t have the manpower, and we don’t have the material.”
Werner changed his fantasy to what it should be, what he wanted it to be: Bohr, alive and buoyant and real, his scowl turning into an expression of wonder as he saw what they had done. Everything they had said to one another in Copenhagen would be forgotten, all the awkwardness and harsh words and misunderstandings. Bohr would smile at him and praise him and Werner would know that it had all been worth it, all the hardships and sacrifices.
“We can get the material,” Werner said.
Carl should have looked baffled, but instead, he only looked tired. “Where?”
Werner told him. Carl didn’t stop looking tired, but that was all right. Everything was going to be all right, once Bohr got here.