This is the Way the World Ends

by James Morrow

  A stairwell dropped from the courtyard into the white, cold interior of the glacier. Gila Guizot’s assault rifle steered George down the steps and then through several hundred feet of rising and falling, twisting and turning passageways. Seal-oil lamps sputtered along the dungeon walls. Guards streamed back and forth, their faces evincing anger, hatred, sadness, and badly developed consciences.

  CELL 6—PAXTON said the sign on the iron door. Stepping inside, George was shocked to see muted February sunlight spreading everywhere. He looked up. A transparent slab of ice roofed his cell. Gray, ugly clouds clogged the sky.

  The place had been thoroughly suicide-proofed. The ice ceiling offered no purchase for a noose, and the edges of the furniture—bed, chairs, writing desk, commode—had been sanded into blunt little knolls. For some reason they let him keep his Leonardo, though he might easily have shattered it and then opened his wrist with a fragment. Why this privilege? One day a clue appeared, etched in the transparent ceiling. It was a quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky: “The end of the world will be marked by acts of unfathomable compassion.”

  And so George settled into prison life. He expected a repetition of his recent solitary confinement aboard the submarine, boredom without end. And for the first seventy-two hours, boredom is exactly what the dungeon delivered. Nothing happened there, not even the passage of the sun, the continent being in the twilight of its six-month day. George lay on his ice bed, sleeping, not sleeping, brooding, reading the indictment, visiting his psychic museum—Morning in her wedding dress, Morning suckling Aubrey.

  Then the tortures began. Contrary to Brat’s fears, the genre of excruciation practiced at the Antarctic National Dungeon fell well within the definition of civilized behavior prescribed by the Geneva Protocols.

  The prisoners’ torture was this: they were given whatever they wanted. They had only to name a pleasure, and it was theirs. Food? At six o’clock each evening Ramos’s underlings would serve a dinner that regarded every human taste bud as an erogenous zone; several bestselling cookbooks could have been derived from the secrets of preparing Adélie penguin en brochette and sea lion flambée. Drink? The milk of the Weddell seal displayed extraordinarily un-milklike properties when fermented. Sex? What the local prostitutes lacked in experience they made up for in eagerness. Intellectual stimulation? Antarctica’s population included a large supply of hypothetical Pulitzer Prize recipients.

  Above each cell, lively little mobs gathered, and as the prisoners indulged themselves, the darkbloods stared down through the transparent roof. Eyes filled the heavens like dying stars. The spectators clapped, whistled, stomped their feet, and chanted, “Let us in!” It was a sport of ever-growing popularity. People brought lunch.

  The first time George was offered a mug of coffee under these conditions, he swallowed it with equanimity. The second time, he took the mug to a corner and faced the walls, drinking in small, furtive sips. The third time, he let the coffee grow cold.

  A prostitute named Trudy came calling. She had gained the continent in her physical prime. “Sorry it isn’t more private,” she said, fiddling with George’s Velcro. “Just pretend they aren’t there.”

  He glanced up. A young man with a Göttingen University patch on his scopas suit returned his gaze. “I would like you to go,” said George.

  “Go?” said Trudy.

  “You are very pretty,” said George. “Please leave.”

  “Okay…but I want you to answer me a question.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll bet you can imagine what my question is.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Imagine.”

  “I can’t.”

  “My question is, why the fuck did you end the world?”

  Although the large central cell was intended for exercise, the defendants preferred using it for poker, which was permitted once an evening for ninety minutes. They bet food. Whenever a game ended, Juan Ramos appropriated most of the winnings and ate them on the spot. “We are not good,” he explained. “Merely innocent.”

  On the night before the trial was to begin, George returned from the poker game to find two lawyers in his cell. Gorgeous Dennie Howe he remembered from his inquisition at McMurdo Station. (Oh, the hearts she would have shattered…) Her companion, who introduced himself as Parkman Cleave, looked even more callow than the rest of the defense team. George offered his visitors ice chairs. Children, he thought, always they send children. I’m being defended by a goddamn kindergarten.

  “We’ve just come from the Documents Division,” said Dennie. “It’s like a monastery over there—papers culled from every corner of the United States and Western Europe, scribes copying page after page by candlelight.”

  “They arrived on a barge,” said Parkman. His smile was as flashy as the clasps on his briefcase. “The Spirit of the Law.”

  “First, the good news,” said Dennie. “Out of twenty tons of cargo, the entire case against you consists of one scopas suit sales contract.”

  “I know,” said George.

  “Anything to drink around here?” Parkman asked.

  “Cocoa. Coffee.”

  The lawyers smiled in unison, ordered cocoa. George began heating water on a whale-oil stove.

  “Now, the bad news,” said Dennie.

  “The chief prosecutor is Alexander Aquinas,” said Parkman.

  “Never heard of him,” said George.

  “Really? Oh—of course not,” said Parkman. A smile pushed aside his cheeks, which were as smooth and pink as buffered Oklahoma granite. “If you’ve got Alexander Aquinas around, you can put away your steel traps.”

  “His books would have dealt mortal blows to plea bargaining and the insanity defense,” Dennie explained with an admiration George thought might have been a touch more reluctant. “Alexander Aquinas would have gotten judges to hang their mothers.”

  George spooned brown powder into two mugs, added hot water, served the sweet-smelling results.

  “You’re not having any?” Parkman asked. Chocolate steam rolled through the cell.

  “No.”

  “We want to tell you how to plead,” said Dennie.

  “Not guilty,” said George.

  “That’s almost right,” said Parkman.

  “You must say, ‘Not guilty in the sense of the indictment,’” said Dennie.

  “Why?” said George.

  “Because you’re not guilty,” said Parkman.

  “In the sense of the indictment,” said Dennie. “That’s how the Nazi war criminals pleaded,” she added merrily.

  “We also want to teach you some tactics,” said Parkman. “You must make a good impression on the judges.”

  “Keep your suit clean,” said Dennie.

  “When the barber comes around, avail yourself of his services,” said Parkman. “Let’s go for less hair, a neater beard, right?”

  “When you’re on the stand, it’s okay if you look nervous,” said Dennie.

  “Try to look nervous, in fact,” said Parkman. “We want to avoid that cold-blooded nuclear warrior image.”

  “Pretty child,” said Dennie, lifting the Leonardo from the nightstand. “Your daughter?”

  “Bonenfant thinks he can get us off,” said George, snatching away the priceless painting. “He said there’s a rabbit or two in his hat.”

  “It all depends on whether we find a vulture expert,” said Parkman.

  “A what?” said George.

  “Vulture expert,” said Dennie.

  “Ever hear of the Teratornis?” asked Parkman.

  “No,” said George.

  “A species of vulture,” said Dennie.

  “Obviously you’re not a vulture expert,” said Parkman.

  Vultures.

  A shock of recognition surged through George. He had seen Parkman Cleave before…on the submarine…wearing a business suit…holding a bag of carrion. “I know you! You’re the one who takes care of my vulture!”

  “Your vulture?”
said Parkman.

  “Dr. Valcourt calls it my vulture. It’s not really mine. I first ran into it at ground zero, then again on the boat, when you fed it.” George returned his family to the nightstand. “Dr. Valcourt told me that vultures can reproduce without males. They’re inseminated by the winds—that’s what people used to believe. Do you keep it as a charm? Perhaps it will bring your race good luck. It’s certainly big enough.”

  “Nothing can bring our race good luck,” said Parkman.

  “No animals are inseminated by the winds,” said Dennie.

  “Not even teratorns,” said Parkman.

  “When you’re defending the men accused of ending the world,” Dennie explained, “you try everything you can think of.”

  CHAPTER 12

  In Which It Is Shown that the End of the World Was More Necessary than Previously Supposed

  Across the interior plateau, down the great static swells of the Nimrod Glacier came the legions, shoulder to shoulder, bound for the trial of the millennium. The tromp of their boots sent fissures shooting across the continent’s ice fields and brought waves to its lakes and bays. Rushing from the Transantarctic Mountain Range, unadmitted tributaries flowed together in an endless torrent: male, female, young, old, Negro, Nordic, Alpine, Oriental, Pygmy, Eskimo. The pilgrims moved with exuberance and purpose, dodging nunataks, circumventing crevasses. Many of them whistled. A few skipped. Their signs and banners swayed in joyful arcs. Songs warmed the frigid air. For the first time since the darkbloods’ arrival, their future crackled with promise: at last they were to receive their due measure of cosmic knowledge, at last they would learn why it had been necessary to end the world.

  The sight of the Ice Palace of Justice sent their buoyant spirits even higher. This was the final great construction project undertaken on earth, Antarctica’s omega to ancient Giza’s alpha, and its white towers, glittery parapets, frisky pennants, and Gothic windows made the pilgrims stop and gape. The drawbridge trembled under the first wave of darkbloods, the lucky ones who would get seats. The throngs left outside cast their eyes on the great ice tablets that formed the eastern face of Mount Christchurch. DEFENDANTS TO BE ARRAIGNED TODAY, the news sculptors had carved in the slopes in letters three feet high. TRIBUNAL WILL HEAR OPENING ARGUMENTS.

  The courtroom was as solemn and self-important as the nave of a cathedral. End-of-summer sunlight streamed through the gut-covered windows, suffusing the air with ghostly cheer. Drooping from the balustrades and beams, a thousand melting icicles ticked away. The bulletproof glass booth in the center of the room had been intended to protect high-roller crap games aboard the City of New York; now it protected the Erebus Six. George sat between Brat and Wengernook, the latter sucking violently on an unlit cigarette and tying his fingers in knots. Reverend Sparrow pored over a small Bible. Overwhite napped after a sleepless night induced by darkblood tortures. Randstable worked on converting his suit’s primus stove into a device for keeping his cocoa at a constant temperature.

  Peering through the frost, George scrutinized the mob in the gallery, face after face, hundreds of them. That woman could almost be Morning—a stronger chin was required. And that one had the red hair for it—if only her mouth were thinner. A pimply boy held up a sign that said, NUKE THEM IN THE EAR.

  When the court usher, who bore a detailed resemblance to a rabbit, raised his halberd and rammed it against the floor, everyone rose. From a side door came four judges, dark robes trailing from their helmetless scopas suits. The president of the court, Shawna Queen Jefferson, was a spry little black woman who, as the Mount Christchurch news sculptors had recently revealed, would have become THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL SUPREME COURT JUSTICE IN AMERICAN HISTORY. Kamo Yoshinobu’s locked-out intellect had been destined to transform the World Court from a joke into the most respected forum on the planet, an accomplishment that would have brought him the first Nobel Peace Prize ever given to a Japanese citizen. Jan Wojciechowski would have one day exploited the shadowed courtrooms of Cracow to expose the travesty that was Soviet justice. The extinction had robbed Theresa Gioberti of the international acclaim that would have accrued to her even-handed trial of a papal assassin.

  “The tribunal will hear the indictment,” said Justice Jefferson upon assuming the bench. Hers was a musical sort of English, vibrant with theoretical experience.

  At the translator’s table a small army of darkbloods leaned toward an array of battery-powered microphones appropriated from the submarine and rendered the judge’s decree into fifty languages.

  George glanced at the prosecution table. Alexander Aquinas’s staff tormented the tomb inscriber with their manifest maturity. Like a hot air balloon cut free of its moorings, a rotund deputy prosecutor gradually left her chair, indictment at the ready. She attempted no theatrics, just smooth inflections, clean, clear, even a bit diffident.

  THE UNADMITTED PEOPLES OF ANTARCTICA

  —AGAINST—

  ROBERT WENGERNOOK, BRIAN OVERWHITE, MAJOR GENERAL ROGER TARMAC, DR WILLIAM RANDSTABLE, REVEREND PETER SPARROW, GEORGE PAXTON, individually and as members of the following groups and organizations to which they respectively belonged, namely:

  The United States Department of Defense, The United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, The United States Air Force, The Strategic Air Command, The National Security Council, Lumen Corporation, Sugar Brook National Laboratory, The Committee on the Incipient Evil.

  Defendants.

  THE UNADMITTED PEOPLES OF ANTARCTICA, by the undersigned Alexander Aquinas and staff, duly appointed to represent them in the investigation of the charges herein set forth, pursuant to the McMurdo Sound Agreement and the Charter of this Tribunal, DO ACCUSE THE ABOVE-NAMED DEFENDANTS of the following crimes.

  Count One. Crimes Against Peace: planning and preparing for a war of aggression, whether or not in violation of the domestic laws of a defendant’s country of citizenship.

  Count Two. War Crimes: deploying weapons explicitly designed for the wanton destruction of cities, for the slaughter of civilian populations, and for other violations of the laws and customs of war.

  Count Three. Crimes Against Humanity: namely, biosphere mutilation, radiation poisoning, superfluous injury, unnecessary suffering, and other cruel and barbaric acts.

  Count Four. Crimes Against the Future: namely, planning and preparing for a war of extinction against the human species.

  “None of that is true,” George whispered toward his new spermatids. A vulture expert. Everything would be fine as long as the defense could locate a vulture expert.

  “The tribunal will arraign the defendants,” said Justice Wojciechowski. “Robert Wengernook, will you please come before the bench?”

  Locking his face in a sneer, the assistant defense secretary did as instructed.

  “How do you plead to the charges and specifications set forth in the indictment against you—guilty or not guilty?”

  “Not guilty in the sense of the indictment,” asserted Wengernook with a credibility George feared he would be unable to match.

  So it went, down the line. Only Reverend Sparrow departed from the script, asserting that he was “a sinful man, guilty as Adam and Eve, but soon to be redeemed by the Son of Man.”

  “A plea of ‘not guilty’ will be entered,” said Justice Wojciechowski. “George Paxton, will you please come before the bench?”

  Ten thousand unadmitted eyes drilled into George as he left the booth and walked across the courtroom.

  “How do you plead to the charges and specifications set forth in the indictment against you—guilty or not guilty?”

  “Not guilty in the sense of the indictment.” The vaulted ceiling replayed his words, filling his ears with the oddly-timbred, public version of his voice.

  There was a flurry of activity at the defense table. Martin Bonenfant, looking younger than ever, leaped up. “Your Honors, at this juncture we are compelled to challenge the competence of the tribunal.” He waved a docume
nt in quick little spirals. “We request that you accept our petition to have this case immediately severed.” Marching forward, he slapped the document on the frozen bench.

  “On what grounds?” asked Justice Jefferson.

  “We submit that the deterrence measures specified in the McMurdo Sound Agreement were not recognized as crimes under any statutes, national or international, passed prior to the war. Hence, this tribunal violates the most fundamental principle of justice—nullum crimen sine lege previa, no crime without preexisting law. It is an ex post facto instrument, organized solely to convict. The six men in the dock are not defendants, they are scapegoats. We further submit that, because your Honors are yourselves unadmitted, you are not qualified to pass judgment on men for whom that race bears an instinctual hatred.”

  The president of the court smiled, and the effect was of someone flipping back the dust cover on a piano. She removed her whalebone-framed glasses. “If you have truly forgotten the legal traditions underlying the trial, Mr. Bonenfant, then I commend to your attention the document from which our indictment takes its wording—namely the 1945 London Agreement empowering an international court to prosecute Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg, Germany. As for your second argument, I concede that the loss of the human race stirs every judge on this bench, and that the evidence is likely to arouse our abhorrence. But our professional duty is to restrain such feelings, listening with an impartial ear, and this duty we shall honor.” Justice Jefferson tapped her glasses against the icy bench. “Petition for severance denied,” she announced in a tone suggesting that, in her canceled life, she had denied many a severance petition.

  “The same to your cat, Judge,” muttered Brat.

  “All they want is an explanation,” said Overwhite.