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father.
    Margrethe   The Pope. That’s what you used to call Niels behind his back. And now you want him to give you absolution.
    Heisenberg   Absolution? No!
    Margrethe   According to your colleague Jensen.
    Heisenberg   Absolution is the last thing I want!
    Margrethe   You told one historian that Jensen had expressed it perfectly.
    Heisenberg   Did I? Absolution .… Is that what I’ve come for? It’s like trying to remember who was at that lunch you gave me at the Institute. Around the table sit all the different explanations for everything I did. I turn to look … Petersen, Rozental, and … yes … now the word absolution is taking its place among them all …
    Margrethe   Though I thought absolution was granted for sins past and repented, not for sins intended and yet to be committed.
    Heisenberg   Exactly! That’s why I was so shocked!
    Bohr    You were shocked?
    Heisenberg   Because you did give me absolution! That’s exactly what you did! As we were hurrying back to the house. You muttered something about everyone in wartime being obliged to do his best for his own country. Yes?
    Bohr   Heaven knows what I said. But now here I am, profoundly calm and conscious, weighing my words. You don’t want absolution. I understand. You want me to tell you not to do it? All right. I put my hand on your arm. I look you in the eye in my most papal way. Go back to Germany, Heisenberg. Gather your colleagues together in the laboratory. Get up on a table and tell them: ‘Niels Bohr says that in his considered judgment supplying a homicidal maniac with an improved instrument of mass murder is …’ What shall I say? ‘ … an interesting idea.’ No, not even an interesting idea. ‘ … a really ratherseriously uninteresting idea.’ What happens? You all fling down your Geiger counters?
    Heisenberg   Obviously not.
    Bohr   Because they’ll arrest you.
    Heisenberg   Whether they arrest us or not it won’t make any difference. In fact it will make things worse. I’m running my programme for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. But there’s a rival one at Army Ordnance, run by Kurt Diebner, and he’s a party member. If I go they’ll simply get Diebner to take over my programme as well. He should be running it anyway. Wirtz and the rest of them only smuggled me in to keep Diebner and the Nazis out of it. My one hope is to remain in control.
    Bohr   So you don’t want me to say yes and you don’t want me to say no.
    Heisenberg   What I want is for you to listen carefully to what I’m going on to say next, instead of running off down the street like a madman.
    Bohr   Very well. Here I am, walking very slowly and popishly. And I listen most carefully as you tell me …
    Heisenberg   That nuclear weapons will require an enormous technical effort.
    Bohr   True.
    Heisenberg   That they will suck up huge resources.
    Bohr   Huge resources. Certainly.
    Heisenberg   That sooner or later governments will have to turn to scientists and ask whether it’s worth committing those resources—whether there’s any hope of producing the weapons in time for them to be used.
    Bohr   Of course, but …
    Heisenberg   Wait. So they will have to come to you and me. We are the ones who will have to advise them whether to go ahead or not. In the end the decision will be in ourhands, whether we like it or not.
    Bohr   And that’s what you want to tell me?
    Heisenberg   That’s what I want to tell you.
    Bohr   That’s why you have come all this way, with so much difficulty? That’s why you have thrown away nearly twenty years of friendship? Simply to tell me that?
    Heisenberg   Simply to tell you that.
    Bohr   But, Heisenberg, this is more mysterious than ever! What are you telling it me for? What am I supposed to do about it? The government of occupied Denmark isn’t going to come to me and ask me whether we should produce nuclear weapons!
    Heisenberg   No, but sooner or later, if I