“Beautiful.” I repeated the word like a curse, not certain if it was agreement or bitterness that edged my voice. Beauty is Truth, the poet once observed, and I have said it is not so, for there are hideous truths. But Truth is good, I thought then—and think now—even when it is hideous, and the atomic light and fire of the devastation playing out on the screen before Bassander and me was good, for it destroyed much that was evil.
