The End of the Game td-60

by Warren Murphy

  Pamela told him to move over. He did but his fingers stayed in the same position. It took him a good two minutes to realize he was no longer facing the machine. When he did and looked around in bewilderment, Pamela told him to go to lunch.

  "Smoke, smoke," he said. "I need smoke."

  "Good," she said. "You go get smoke," and when he left, she explained to Remo that the young man was a "hacker," a self-taught computer expert whose specialty was breaking into other computer networks.

  "He's found a way to get into the Defense Department computers," she said.

  Remo nodded and she said, "See these numbers? We can call them up whenever we want. The first one tells you it's military and the second that it's the Air Force. The third says Strategic Air Command and the fourth tells you it's a missile base. The fifth tells you Russian activity and the sixth tells you where, which is where we are, in New York City, and the seventh tells what's happened to New York City."

  Remo didn't understand but he glanced at the numbers. Numbers five and seven were zeros, which meant the Russians weren't doing anything, he guessed, and that New York City was still in one piece.

  "So what good does this all do?" Remo asked.

  "Well, we don't have all the controls down yet. You know, we do this stuff as pure research, to find out how far computers can be pushed. But Harold, he's the one who just left, he thinks he'll be able to get into the Air Force and make them fire missiles if he wants them to."

  "Let's hope nobody gets him mad," Remo said. "I hope he finds some good smoke out on the street."

  The screen suddenly became a jumble of letters and numbers.

  "What's going on?" Remo said. He noticed that the fifth number-- Russian activity-- had jumped to nine.

  "Oh, God," said Pamela.

  "What's happening?" Remo asked.

  "I think the Russians have launched a nuclear attack against us," Pamela said.

  The seventh number-- the status of New York City-- suddenly jumped from zero to nine.

  Remo pointed at it. "What's that mean?"

  "It means we've all just been destroyed by a nuclear attack," Pamela said.

  "It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be," Remo said. "I don't feel anything."

  "There's got to be an error here. Nine means complete annihilation," she said.

  "So it's wrong," Remo said. "So much for this stupid machine."

  The third and fourth numbers on the screen began changing.

  "What does that mean?" Remo asked.

  "That means the Strategic Air Command has gotten a report of this false attack and they're checking."

  The third number returned to zero.

  Remo said, "That means they checked it out and there's nothing to worry about."

  Pamela nodded. "But look at the fourth number," she said.

  It was a nine.

  "What does that mean?" Remo said.

  "It means that somewhere in the United States there's a missile battery and it believes all of us have been destroyed. It's probably going to fire its missiles at the Russians." She turned from the screen and looked at Remo. "I do believe World War III has begun."

  "What a pain in the ass," Remo said.

  But Pamela Thrushwell didn't hear him. She thought of Liverpool, her native Liverpool, and the English countryside going up in a nuclear holocaust. She thought of tens of millions of people dying, and then, in what was perhaps an instinctive British reaction to massive warfare, she reached for Remo's pants.

  Lieutenant Colonel Armbrewster Naismith had been on duty in his missile bunker since exactly eight A.M. when he had parked one of his two Mercedeses in front of the battery headquarters.

  It was about noon when he was asked to destroy everything in Russia east of Moscow and west of Vladivostok. He could do this by turning a key. He would turn one key and his executive officer would turn another separate key, and then he would wait for final approval, and then he would press a button.

  "Quite a realistic alert," Naismith said.

  "No alert," his executive officer said. "New York has been destroyed. Total annihilation."

  "I hope it's not serious," Naismith said.

  "Sir?" said the exec.

  "Well, we don't know that it's war. We don't know that."

  "It's Bravo Red," the exec said. "We've got to key in."

  "We don't have to rush into things," Naismith said.

  "It calls for an immediate response, sir," the executive officer said. "We have to activate everything."

  "I know that, dammit. I'm the commanding officer."

  "Then what are you waiting for?"

  "I'm not waiting. I want to make sure we give a proper response. All right, New York is gone. That's a tragedy certainly. But is it an act of war? I mean, maybe our response will be a grain embargo. Maybe we won't go to the Olympics. We don't know. We don't run things. So we've lost New York. Lots of countries have lost cities. We don't have to be rash about it. We can always send a stern note of disagreement."

  "I think it's gone beyond that, sir," said the executive officer. "I've got my key. I see the command. I see your key. My key is in and I can't turn it until yours turns too, sir."

  "I am not here because I run off half cocked," Naismith said stiffly. "I have a responsible position and I intend to perform my duties."

  "The command is to key-insert," the exec said.

  "I see that."

  "Well?"

  "I'm doing it. So, I'm doing it."

  Lieutenant Colonel Naismith took the key from the chain around his neck and inserted it into the slot. He looked at the green screen. The missile bunker felt crowded now, crowded and hot. New York had been destroyed. Boston had gone up. Atlanta was in flames. Bravo Red flashed again on the screen and began blinking.

  Then a new message appeared on the screen.

  It warned that if Naismith didn't turn his key immediately, the bunker would be declared in violation of orders. And thus the real horror of military service stared Armbrewster Naismith right square in the face: if America should survive a nuclear war, he would face life without a pension.

  And possibly worse.

  Naismith wanted to run out of the bunker, get into his Mercedes, and drive away, possibly to an airport, perhaps to his winter condo in the Caribbean.

  The code-violation warning blinked again on the screen. The executive officer was about to withdraw his key and code back to SAC headquarters that the bunker was inactive because of personnel problems. Suddenly, Naismith inserted his key and turned.

  The missile battery was operational. Naismith smiled weakly. His crew looked up at him from their stations. His executive officer stared suspiciously.

  "That was an awful long time, sir."

  "I didn't want to rush into things."

  "Yes sir," said the exec, but he made a note in his log that the colonel should be given another Psych-Seven, the basic week-long psychological test for missile men to weed out anything but the basic vanilla. "Basic vanilla" was the slang phrase given to the correct character profile for an officer in a missile battery. First, he should not be the kind to panic. Second, he should not be the kind to panic. Third, he should not be the kind to panic.

  The other seven requirements were identical. The ideal missile officer was the sort of man who at the end of the world would make sure the front door was locked. They had happy marriages, modest bank accounts, neat homes, a two-year-old American car they repaired themselves, 2.10 children, no drinking or eating problems, and most quit smoking when the surgeon general's report came out.

  Of Ambrewster Naismith, it had been said he not only would lock the front door at the end of the world, but would file away the key in case the human race ever got started again.

  In brief, he was not someone who would delay arming his missiles for firing. He was not someone who would be trembling while he waited for the command to fire.

  He saw his men looking at him.

  "Well, it was only New York," he said.
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  "And Boston and Atlanta," his executive officer said.

  "Well, if you're going to nitpick--"

  Peasants, Naismith thought. He would have been just like them a few months ago, in their cotton or regulation underwear, their regulation shoes, their simple cars, their print-dress wives, and steak-and-corn cookouts. Did any of them appreciate a really significant mousse, a wine with a real nose to it, morning on a Caribbean beach while it was snowing in Dayton, Ohio?

  He had once been like them. Your basic vanilla. He had thought he had lived, thought he had lived well and decently, but he had been a fool.

  Valerie had taught him that. Valerie with her laughter and champagne and love of life. He knew how to live life now and to seize its precious moments. What were the others? Little breathing machines who would press a button or not press it on command. They were the pilotless drones of the world.

  He stared at the screen, ignoring his men. No matter what happened now, he knew he had taken life full and well. He had used that grand accident from Insta-Charge, and no matter what happened now, he was glad of it.

  He remembered how his account showed a higher than proper balance. He remembered letting it be, sure that it would be caught. When it wasn't caught the next month, he telephoned the bank to say they had made not only one mistake, but two. They couldn't find the mistake. The money grew. It became a family joke, about how he was going to be a millionaire until some computer chip somewhere got to working correctly.

  And then he met Valerie, laughing Valerie, darkhaired Valerie, who loved champagne and afternoons in fine cars and the Caribbean; Valerie, who just happened to have a flat tire and wouldn't accept help from just any airman.

  "Look, I don't want to be picked up. I just have a flat tire."

  "I'm not the sort who picks up strange women," said Lieutenant Colonel Armbrewster Naismith. "I am willing to help, but I do not pick up strange women."

  "You said that so well," she said. She had that mellow California accent as if words just happened to come out along with the sweetness of her voice, taking a ride, so to speak, with the song of her presence.

  "I don't like tires," she had said. "I don't like dirty things and I don't like mechanical things."

  "Then why are you leaning so close?" he had said. She had worn the sort of perfume you didn't smell but sensed.

  "Because I like men who do mechanical things," she said.

  Naismith reached for a wrench. He felt something soft. It was too soft for a wrench. It was a thigh. Her name was Valerie and she didn't move her thigh. She didn't move it the first time he asked or the second. He didn't ask a third.

  They met in a motel out of the state where his own men wouldn't see him. To keep everything above suspicion, Naismith used some of that computer money as he called it, money that had come into his bank account by a computer accident.

  It was going to be a quickie, one passionate affair, remove that overwhelming sudden lust he could not control and then go home to his wife. The only thing quick about it was the time it took.

  He started to apologize for being so premature. But Valerie did not mind. Valerie was like that. Beautiful and young, yet understanding in ways the colonel's wife could never comprehend. His wife called his snoring annoying and used earplugs. Valerie called it manly sleep. She was tired of boys and wanted a man. But she didn't like motels. She wanted a romantic weekend in Chicago. She wanted the Pump Room. She wanted the best hotels.

  By the end of the month, the colonel had used up almost all the extra money and was thinking of cashing in stocks when his checking account did the miraculous. It came up with enough additional money to cover everything. It was one small step to the pair of matched Mercedeses, the property in the Caribbean, Valerie, and life. Above all, life.

  He wanted to resign his Air Force commission but Valerie insisted he keep his job. Coming into the bunker became a torture. Dull men in dull uniforms with dull outlooks. He wanted to fly in the sun and all they wanted was to make sure all systems were functional.

  He wanted to smell the grass. Valerie had taught him that. Smelling the grass. The others only used their noses when they smelled wiring burning. They drank beer and ate steak, and corn with butter was a big treat. What did they have to live for? Colonel Naismith asked himself this many times, but most of all, he asked it when the missile battery was alerted and his key was required to activate the system.

  And if he didn't need his upcoming pension to add to his funds, he would not have turned it at all.

  And then when he did, the screen flashed. It screamed silently:

  FINAL. GO. GO. GO. CONFIRM GO. GO. GO.

  The war was on.

  Naismith had to press in the code to release the button to fire. There were three numbers and he hesitated over the first. The war was on. There was going to be nothing left of large parts of America. Would the battery itself be destroyed? He had sworn an oath. He pressed the first number and then the second and his hand trembled over the third. He felt his stomach jump and his hands were hot. He didn't know fingertips could sweat. He wiped his hands on his trousers.

  The system voided because of the delay and he had to press the three numbers again. He pressed the first two. His mouth tasted salty. He thought of life and he thought of Valerie and he thought of the missiles going off. He saw Valerie's face on the screen laughing. He saw her beautiful body. He saw so many things.

  When they finally removed him from the bunker, his hand was frozen over the last code key. It was still unpressed. The colonel was taken to the base hospital where his wife and children visited and were told by the base psychiatrist that their father and husband might never come out of his trance. It was, the shrink believed, a shock induced by a conflict so severe, so cruelly manipulated as to leave a human being the battleground between two powerful opposing ideas. The only way most people could respond was to go into severe shock. Very few ever recovered.

  At Strategic Air Command headquarters in the bowels of the Rocky Mountains, the staff was grateful for this psychological horror inflicted on one of their officers. Naismith, by his paralysis on duty, had barely stopped World War III. Somehow, the system had malfunctioned and the battery had been given all the wrong information and all the wrong orders. New York had not been destroyed; the Russians had fired no missiles; and it was only a stroke of providential luck that America had not obliterated much of Russia.

  The Strategic Air Command appointed a committee to find out what had gone wrong.

  And in Malibu, on the California coast, Abner Buell gave himself ten-thousand points for Naismith and fifteen thousand for proximity to nuclear war. He was annoyed that the war had not started, but he did not deduct any points for that. He told himself that he had been turning people around and testing systems and next he would test the Russians, and then he would start World War III in his own good time. He decided to do it at night when the flash of nuclear weapons exploding would be more visible.

  He cleared the screen of the Nuclear War Game and the computer notified him that he was in a chase.

  It came from Pamela Thrushwell. The chaser had noticed the monitors at the New York computer center and the chaser had seemed to track every move the cameras made. The computer had footage of Pamela Thrushwell throwing her ample body at the chaser, who was a young white man with dark hair and eyes and very thick wrists.

  Abner Buell, boredom gone for a moment, began to trace the man who was with Pamela Thrushwell. It proved to be even more exciting than he had thought. Fingerprints were picked up from Ms. Thrushwell's desk but there was no evidence that those fingerprints were on file anywhere.

  A secret agent was after him, Buell decided. An agent so secret that he had no fingerprints on file anywhere.

  Maybe they were working together.

  If so, he could reach the man through Pamela Thrushwell.

  It might be fun, Buell thought.

  So few things were these days. These last few days that were left to the world.<
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  sChapter Five

  "Don't you eat?" asked Pamela as she put on her robe and went into the kitchen for a snack.

  "No," said Remo. "Tell me again why you couldn't trace that phone number the obscene caller gave you."

  "First we tried and the office manager had her ears blown out. Then we tried again and the phone company said there was no such number. There never had been. Why do you care so much?"

  "Because I'm with the phone company and we're trying to find out what's going on."

  "Is everybody in the phone company as good as you?" she asked.

  Good? Remo tried to remember what she was talking about. Good? Oh, sex. Remo hadn't even cared when they coupled in the computer center's back room. He had let his body be used to service her and she had had to notify him when she was done. He was busy thinking. Her sex life must be awful if she rated that as good.

  Now he asked her, "The cameras in your office that always watch when you get one of those calls? You don't know who controls them?"

  "You saw me check the circuits this afternoon. They're on random motion. It must have just been a coincidence that they were all aiming at me," Pamela said.

  "Not a chance," Remo said. "And that is the final word on the subject from your telephone company. Would we lie to you?"

  "Want some tea? Biscuits? Sausages?"

  "I wouldn't feed that to a cockroach," said Remo.

  "A bit cheeky, aren't you? It's my apartment."

  "It's my stomach," said Remo. He was impressed by the apartment, its modern rugs and good view across the East River. He didn't think computer salespeople made so much money from sales. There were three pictures on Pamela's dresser. Her mother, her father, and a young man in uniform. There was also a.25-caliber Beretta hidden inside her scrapbook of home in Liverpool.

  "Oh, that?" she said when Remo showed it to her. "I just keep that for protection here. America is so dangerous, you know. Do you think I'm being paranoid?"

  "No, not at all. Especially considering that there are four very big men on your windowsill, very big, with strange-colored hair," Remo said.

  The window came in like an explosion. The men lumbered through, one reaching Pamela, while the other three leapt on Remo. He tossed the gun away because guns always got in the way. The three men on him smelled of perfume and their hair shone in neon colors. Their faces were painted and they wore black leather jackets and one of them had a chain through his ear. Another used a chain as a belt. Another was swinging an ax wildly.