This Is the Way the World Ends (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by James Morrow

  ‘Is that like a country?’

  ‘It’s . . . you know. A war.’

  ‘A war?’

  ‘A war.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Mr Aquinas.’

  Bonenfant rose, his eyes hurling freshly sharpened daggers in Aquinas’s direction. ‘Your Honors, I move that all of this witness’s testimony be stricken. He possesses no expertise concerning nuclear weapons.’

  ‘Mr Aquinas, are you planning to take up a more relevant line of questioning?’ asked Justice Jefferson.

  ‘Jared Seldin’s testimony serves to underscore the defendants’ lack of vision,’ said Aquinas.

  ‘Lack of vision is not a crime, sir,’ said Justice Jefferson.

  ‘Negligence then,’ said the prosecutor. ‘Criminal negligence.’

  ‘The decision on this motion is mine, Mr Aquinas, not yours,’ said Justice Jefferson, ‘and I am now ruling that Jared Seldin’s testimony be removed from the record in toto.’

  Brat and Wengernook toasted each other with cocoa mugs.

  ‘That concludes the case for the prosecution,’ said Aquinas in a small, gelded voice.

  ‘Case?’ said Brat. ‘What case?’

  ‘I didn’t hear any case,’ said Wengernook.

  The chief prosecutor returned to his table wearing an inverted smile, as if fishhooks were tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘The part about eliminating the weapons was interesting, don’t you think?’ said George.

  ‘Weaponless deterrence is like bodiless sex,’ said Wengernook. ‘It gets you nowhere.’

  ‘A grin without a cat,’ said Randstable.

  ‘Smoke,’ said Brat.

  ‘Particularly when your agency is inadequately funded,’ said Overwhite.

  If Holly had lived, wondered George, would she have traveled to Mars?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In Which the Nuclear Warriors Have Their Day in Court

  On the seventeenth of March, as the long polar night crept across the continent, creating glaciers of coal and bergs of pitch, Martin Bonenfant opened the case for the defense.

  Throughout the courtroom lampwicks flared, fed by oil from killer whales and Weddell seals. Jagged shadows slithered around the glass booth. Bonenfant’s young face glowed orange, as if a candle burned inside his skull.

  ‘Call Major General Roger Tarmac.’

  Fearlessly, Brat rose.

  ‘You’re gonna be great,’ said Wengernook.

  ‘Break a leg,’ said Randstable, who was setting up his little magnetic chess set.

  ‘Good luck,’ said George, whose mind was crowded with images of high-school students lowering intermediate-range missiles into a volcano.

  Prompted by Bonenfant, Brat offered a rousing account of his Indiana boyhood, from which the tribunal learned that he had on two different occasions prevented school chums from drowning in the Muscatatuck River. Then came the Air Force Academy, a juggernaut progression through the ranks, and a brilliant career as a target nominator for the Strategic Air Command in the former city of Omaha.

  ‘Several days ago,’ said Bonenfant, ‘your name was mentioned during the testimony of Quentin Flood, founder of an organization called Generals Against Nuclear Arms.’

  Brat polished his Distinguished Service Medal with his scopas glove. ‘He took exception to one of my articles, “Our Achilles Leg: Triad Theory and Land-Based Defenses.” ’

  ‘That article identified a problem with your country’s Guardian Angel missiles,’ said Bonenfant.

  ‘America’s security has traditionally stood on three legs – the Triad. First, you had your submarine-launched ICBMs. Then you had your manned bombers. And the third force, which I called our Achilles Leg – that was the Guardian Angel land-based missiles.’

  ‘Why had they become an Achilles Leg?’

  ‘Because of the SS-60 – four hundred and thirty highly accurate Soviet ICBMs designed to remove our Guardian Angels in a first strike.’

  ‘A frightening development.’

  ‘After such an attack, an American President would have only two options – he could surrender, or he could retaliate against Soviet cities.’ Brat chopped the air with his hand. ‘But that would naturally bring reciprocal measures, and then he’s really in thick shit.’

  ‘And your solution was . . . ?’

  ‘Missile Omega.’

  ‘The Omegas were effective against the new Soviet missiles?’

  ‘Such targets place a premium on response time. Omega is a fast mother. She also has terrific accuracy, long range, and ten high-yield warheads on her business end.’

  ‘Did you ever hear the argument that without a survivable basing mode’ – Bonenfant fixed his mouth in a condescending curve – ‘Omega had little retaliatory potential and was thus a socalled “first-strike weapon”?’

  ‘We’ve never given up on the basing problem.’

  ‘What modes have you studied?’

  The general splayed his fingers and began ticking them off. ‘So far we’ve considered basing the missiles in blimps, underwater canisters, circular trenches, coal mines, and barges on the Mississippi River.’

  ‘You should have based them up your ass!’ a young woman called from the gallery. It took Justice Jefferson a full minute of gavel pounding to quell the laughter.

  ‘You had an unusual nickname around SAC,’ said Bonenfant.

  ‘I was the MARCH Hare,’ replied Brat. ‘Modulated Attacks in Response to Counterforce Hostilities.’

  ‘Some people have accused the MARCH Plan of being a warwinning scenario disguised as a deterrent.’

  ‘The very best way to prevent a nuclear war is to show that you believe you can win one.’

  ‘The court may have trouble—’

  ‘Forces that cannot win cannot deter. Is that clear?’

  ‘It’s certainly clear to me. No further questions.’ Bonenfant walked away from the stand with the self-satisfied air of a cat bringing a mouse to the back stoop.

  Justice Jefferson invited the chief prosecutor to cross-examine.

  ‘He was swell, don’t you think?’ said Randstable, concentrating on the chessboard, where he was about to launch a king-side attack against himself.

  ‘A real pro,’ said Wengernook.

  ‘He certainly gave them the sort of data they’re looking for,’ said Overwhite.

  Forces that cannot win cannot deter. George thought about this particular truth as hard as he could.

  ‘General Tarmac,’ said Aquinas, sidling up to the stand, ‘I’m bewildered by your Achilles Leg notion. Weren’t America’s landbased missiles kept in concrete silos?’

  ‘The new Soviet SS-60s had a hard-target kill capacity,’ Brat explained patiently.

  ‘Hard target?’

  ‘An ICBM silo is a hard target.’

  ‘As opposed to a soft target?’

  ‘Right. We worked long hours on silo hardness, but there are limits – two thousand pounds per square inch or so.’

  ‘In other words, this whole arms race can be traced to a lot of men trying to get it hard enough?’

  ‘You can joke about it, Prosecutor, but a vulnerable land-based force is no laughing matter.’

  Aquinas assumed a posture of dismay. ‘But didn’t the Triad, being so redundant, allow for vulnerabilities to emerge from time to time?’

  ‘We had a serious parity problem when it came to land-based missiles,’ answered Brat. ‘We needed the Omegas.’

  ‘Are you saying that the Triad was ill-conceived, and America should have been mimicking Communist strategy instead?’

  ‘No, I’m saying that the Russians had more land-based missiles than we did. Why is that so hard to understand?’

  ‘And you really believed they were about to take out your own fixed ICBMs in a nuclear Pearl Harbor?’

  ‘This was on the low end of the probability curve, but we were still worried.’

  ‘And, before the Omega program, the Soviets could have expected to
get away with such an attack?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘After which you would have to surrender?’

  Brat gulped down his annoyance. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Aquinas.

  ‘We would have been disarmed.’

  ‘Couldn’t the American President have used the two surviving legs to disarm the Soviets in turn?’

  ‘Be logical. If the SS-60s have already hit us, then their silos are empty.’

  ‘So you have to surrender?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just explained that. We’ve been disarmed.’

  ‘So have the Soviets. You just explained that, too.’

  ‘They’ve probably kept a reserve force,’ Brat noted.

  ‘Then you could retaliate,’ Aquinas replied.

  ‘No. The enemy would protect the reserve.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By launching it.’

  ‘So you have to surrender?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘How many times do I have to say it?’ Brat snapped an icicle off the stand and crushed it. ‘We’ve been disarmed! Can’t you grasp the most elementary piece of strategic doctrine?’

  ‘Suppose that, instead of surrendering, the President ordered the strategic submarine fleet to destroy Soviet society?’

  ‘No President would answer a surgical strike with an all-out attack. That’s jumping far too many rungs on the escalation ladder.’

  ‘How many American civilians would have been killed in this surgical strike?’

  ‘Worst-case scenario is twenty-five million.’

  ‘Might not a President mistake such slaughter for an all-out attack?’

  ‘Not if he was willing to calm down for a minute and look at how those casualties occurred.’

  The interview continued in this manner for over an hour, interrupted by a recess for a box lunch of hardboiled penguin eggs and blubber sandwiches, until Aquinas suddenly asked, ‘Wasn’t Omega in fact a first-strike weapon, General Tarmac?’

  ‘No,’ Brat replied.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘It was a functional and credible second-strike retaliatory deterrent.’

  ‘A sure-fire deterrent?’

  ‘A functional and credible second-strike—’

  ‘No further questions,’ grunted the chief prosecutor, lurching away from the stand in a spasm of exasperation.

  Brat rose, folding his arms across his chest. The interview seemed to have bestowed about twenty pounds on him. He sauntered back to the booth and asked, ‘So – how’d I do?’

  ‘Academy Award time,’ said Wengernook.

  ‘Hope I come off half as well,’ said Randstable, putting himself in check.

  ‘I hadn’t realized that forces that cannot win cannot deter,’ said George.

  Overwhite was next on the stand. The oil lamps sprinkled flecks of bronze onto his snowy beard as he narrated his life’s story – the Foreign Service, the Diplomatic Corps, the State Department, and, finally, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. To George, Overwhite still seemed like a windbag, but he was obviously a resourceful and intelligent one, a windbag woven of the finest material.

  ‘Two treaties that you helped negotiate have been read into the record by the prosecution,’ said Bonenfant. ‘Evidently my learned opponent feels that your efforts did not go far enough.’

  ‘I can see Mr Aquinas’s point of view,’ replied Overwhite, examining himself for jaw tumors. ‘However, let me remind the tribunal that general and complete disarmament was always the stated goal of my agency. Unfortunately, the massive Soviet buildup made this impossible in our time.’

  ‘But your achievements were still impressive.’

  ‘Any man would be proud to have on his tombstone, “He negotiated STABLE I and STABLE II.” ’

  Design No. 4015, thought George. Vermont blue-gray.

  After reviewing the details of both STABLE agreements, Bonenfant concluded that, ‘We might well have introduced them as exhibits for the defense.’

  Overwhite agreed.

  Bonenfant said, ‘Critics have charged that the STABLE treaties allowed the US military too much latitude with multiple warheads and cruise missiles.’

  ‘I can understand that sentiment,’ said Overwhite. ‘However, you should always remember that new systems become bargaining chips when you sit down at the negotiating table. They force the Soviets to get serious about reductions.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Justice Wojciechowski. ‘You seem to be saying that by declining to regulate particular weapons, you were serving the cause of arms control.’

  ‘My point is that technical innovation has diplomatic as well as military benefits.’

  Bonenfant asked, ‘In retrospect, Mr Overwhite, could your agency have done anything more to prevent the recent war?’

  ‘If we knew for a fact that it was coming – yes, we would probably have pressed for certain confidence-building measures. For example, the hotline between Washington and Moscow badly needed upgrading.’

  ‘Well, nobody can blame you for not owning a crystal ball.’

  ‘I would have trouble empathizing with such an attitude.’

  ‘No further questions.’ Returning to the defense table, Bonenfant sniffed emphatically, as if his nose could barely accommodate all the victory it sensed in the sub-zero air.

  ‘Why does not regulating weapons serve the cause of arms control?’ George asked Brat.

  ‘Brian just explained that,’ the general replied.

  ‘This trial must be pretty boring for a guy like you,’ said Wengernook.

  ‘I’m not bored,’ said George.

  The chief prosecutor approached the stand carrying a slab of ice under his arm. ‘Mr Overwhite, if complete disarmament was so dear to your agency’s heart, why didn’t you ever propose an abolition treaty?’

  ‘Well, as soon as you entertain radical proposals, you run into horrendous problems deciding which technologies to ban and which to allow. Take delivery systems . . .’

  ‘Why are delivery systems hard to negotiate?’ Aquinas knitted his momentous brow.

  ‘Because as warheads get smaller, almost anything can be a delivery system. A Wasp-13 manned bomber is obviously a delivery system, but what about a Piper Cub? What about a hot air balloon?’

  ‘So you never eliminated any missiles or bombers because you couldn’t tell them from hot air balloons?’

  ‘I’m saying it’s a real pain arriving at certain definitions.’

  ‘It’s a real pain having your face burned off, too.’

  Bonenfant rose. ‘Your Honors, might we declare a moratorium on cheap shots?’

  ‘The court was not amused by that last remark, Mr Aquinas,’ said Justice Jefferson.

  Aquinas made a modest bow and renewed the examination. ‘STABLE I dealt with missile launchers, right? Each side was granted eight hundred fifty-six submarine tubes and eleven hundred seventy-five hardened silos.’

  ‘Those were the limits.’

  ‘They don’t sound very limiting.’

  ‘If you let the numbers get too Spartan, Mr Aquinas, you increase the temptation to strike first.’

  ‘So it was inconceivable that you would ever negotiate the launchers down to zero?’

  ‘We felt it best to err on the side of safety.’

  Aquinas held a seal-oil lamp near his ice slab. Graphs and statistics danced in the spectral glow. ‘STABLE II addressed the bombs themselves . . .’

  ‘We put ceilings on fractionation – twelve warheads per missile.’

  ‘According to my arithmetic, the number of warheads on both sides increased dramatically after STABLE II.’

  ‘But each missile carried only a dozen.’

  ‘Mr Overwhite, did you ever tell a Time magazine reporter, quote, “We must not saddle the economy with agreements negotiated just to impress the public”?’

  ‘I was thinking of those men who wouldn’t be
showing up for work if, say, the Omega program were suddenly canceled,’ Overwhite knocked frost from his beard. ‘We had to keep the arms control process from, you know . . .’

  ‘Escalating?’

  ‘Falling prey to special interests.’

  ‘Let’s talk about bargaining chips.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Could you please name three fully developed offensive weapon systems that your team relinquished at the negotiating table in exchange for concessions by the Soviets?’

  ‘We were always retiring bombs and missiles as they became obsolete.’

  ‘That’s not the question. I want you to name three systems that were bargained away.’

  ‘I can’t think of three off hand.’

  ‘Can you name two?’

  ‘Not two exactly, no.’

  ‘Can you name one?’

  ‘Well, as you can readily imagine, once a new weapon is actually in production, it becomes more valuable as a deterrent than as a chip.’

  ‘Mr Overwhite, it seems to me that, when all is said and done, you and the arms builders were really in the same line of work.’

  ‘Your bitterness is quite understandable, Mr Aquinas. Your conclusion, however, is not.’

  The chief prosecutor shuddered theatrically and told the court that he had no more questions.

  ‘That was an excellent point about general and complete disarmament,’ said Randstable, tipping over his king to concede defeat to himself.

  ‘He was in charge all the way,’ said Wengernook.

  From the gallery a red-faced old man called, ‘Hey, Overwhite, here’s a weapon for you to control!’ He stood up and hurled an icicle shaped like an independently targetable warhead. The malicious little cone zoomed through the frosty air, missing the negotiator’s head by an inch.

  That was uncalled for, George decided.

  The next morning the court heard the autobiography of Dr William Randstable, who had worn almost as many hats in his life as there were in Theophilus Carter’s inventory. Chess prodigy. Inventor of the popular computer game Launch on Warning (the royalties had put him through M.I.T.). Author of the bestselling science fiction novel, The Dark Side of the Sun. Youngest whiz kid at the think tank known as Lumen Corporation. Head of the Missile Accuracy Division at Sugar Brook National Laboratory.