Radiance Read Online Free PDF Page A

the first time, without equivocation, that the United States is indeed developing a new Superbomb. All of civilized humanity cannot help but be appalled. And as we know, the Soviet Union has also announced plans to build its own thermonuclear weapon.
    “Never, in the long road civilization has travelled, have we so badly needed human voices—voices raised in protest, voices raised to condemn, voices, like Miss Kitigawa’s, that can describe, from personal experience, the devastation caused by the atomic bomb.”
    A murmur of approval went around the room. Daisy, standing near the bedroom door, was only a few feet from Keiko. Her eyes were lowered, studying her punch glass. Atchity emphasized the devastating story she would soon tell, beginning immediately after her hospitalization. A surge of pity passed through Daisy. People had surrounded the girl since she had arrived at the apartment; every important person had been introduced to her. How insensitive they had been, squeezing her like an accordion, no thought to how tired she must be. If Daisy could have, she wouldhave sidled up to the girl now—she was, after all, hardly more than a child—and looked her right in the eye, past that disfiguring scar.
I know how it is with you.
That was what Daisy’s look might say.
I know how overwhelmed you are. Yes, I can see into you
—
a little, just a little.
Throughout the party, and even in the car from the airport, had she been waiting for this opportunity? It certainly felt that way now.
    Dean was describing how a fusion bomb would alter the course of civilization. “We are on the brink,” he said, “and soon we will pitch forward into the dark unknown.” A buzz went through the crowd. They liked those words,
the dark unknown.
And it was true, Daisy thought. They were, every one of them, staring into the future, trying to make out its dread shape. The very taste of nuclear weapons was in the room—their ashen dust, their radioactive itch.
    She was just a small stone’s throw from Keiko. This was Daisy’s opportunity and she decided to take it, as kind, gentle Dean began to wrap up.
    “We are the children of the atomic bomb,” he was saying. “All of us, in this room. It is our dark mother. We live now and forever in its shadow. People in the world are divided in many ways—particularly in the Soviet East and the freedom-loving West—but, if I might paraphrase the words of that great thinker Bertrand Russell—whose name you will see on the Project letterhead—‘Let us but remember our humanity—and forget all the rest.’”
    There were calls of
hear, hear,
and Keiko, perhaps sensing Daisy’s stare, glanced her way. Daisy smiled. It was the smile that had always done the trick in college: a tender, sweet, girlish smile that said,
I am a person of goodwill. I won’t hurt you.
In fact, when Daisy was a girl of ten she used to ride the bus smiling at complete strangers in just that way, trying to brighten their day.
    Oh that scar—the large, bubbled territory—and those ambereyes. The girl took in Daisy’s smile, the frightened edges of it, and then she frowned, just like that, and looked away. As though Daisy’s smile were a gift she had no use for. As though refusing a glass of punch.
    Daisy stood frozen, blushing deeply. She had an awful complexion for showing her feelings. The room seemed to thrum, that particular thrum of birds beating their wings against a window. She must have been mistaken. Why would this girl, whom they had brought to New York at such expense, be refusing her smile?
    Later she would think about that moment many times. In the spring and summer, after Keiko came to live with her, she would think about it, telling herself she must have imagined that glance of malevolence, the goosebumps rising on the girl’s arms. But later still, when Keiko was gone, she knew it was the realest image she carried of the girl. Never lose sight of your first impressions, she told herself then—they