The Peace Machine

by Bob Shaw

  Pleased at having judged the effect of the humidity on the bow’s cast so closely, he fired two more sighting-in arrows, making fine adjustments on the windage and elevation screws of the bowsight. He retrieved the arrows and settled in to shoot a York Round, meticulously filling in the points scored in his record book. As the round progressed one part of his mind became utterly absorbed in the struggle for perfection, and another turned to the question of how well qualified Lucas Hutchman was to play the role of God.

  On the technical level the situation was diamond-sharp, uncomplicated. He was in a position to translate the figures scribbled on his charred sheet into physical reality. Doing so would necessitate several weeks’ work on thousands of pounds’ worth of electrical and electronic components, and the result would be a small, rather unimpressive machine.

  But it would be a machine which, if switched on, would almost instantaneously detonate every nuclear device on Earth.

  It would be an antibomb machine.

  An antiwar machine.

  An instrument for converting megadeaths into megalives.

  The realization that a neutron resonator could be built had come to Hutchman one calm Sunday morning almost a year earlier. He had been testing some ideas concerned with the solution of the many-particle time-independent Schrodinger equation when — quite suddenly, by a trick of conceptual parallax — he saw deeper than ever before into the mathematical forest which screens reality from reason. A tree lane seemed to open in the thickets of Hermite polynomials, eigenvectors, and Legendre functions; and shimmering at its farthest end, for a brief second, was the antibomb machine. The path closed again almost at once, but Hutchman’s flying pencil was recording enough of the landmarks, the philosophical map references, to enable him to find his way back again at a later date.

  Accompanying the flash of inspiration was a semimystical feeling that he had been chosen, that he was the vehicle for another’s ideas. He had read about the phenomenon of the sense of givenness which often accompanies breakthroughs in human thought, but the feeling was soon obscured considerations of the social and professional implications. Like the minor poet who produced a single, never-to-be-repeated classic, like a forgotten artist who has created one deathless canvas — Lucas Hutchman, an unimportant mathematician, could make an indelible mark on history. If he dared.

  The year had not been one of steady progress. There was one period when it seemed that the energy levels involved in producing self-propagating neutron resonance would demand several times the planet’s electrical power output, but the obstacle had proved illusory. The machine would, in fact, be adequately supplied by a portable powerpack, its signals relaying themselves endlessly from neutron to neutron, harmlessly and imperceptibly except where they encountered concentrations close to critical mass. Then there had come a point where he dreamed that the necessary energy levels were so low that a circuit diagram might become the actual machine, powered by minute electrical currents induced in the pencil lines by stray magnetic fields. Or could it be, he wondered in the vision, that merely visualizing the completed circuitry would build an effective analog of the machine in my brain cells? Then would mind find its true ascendancy over matter — one dispassionate intellectual thrust and every nuclear stockpile in the world would consume its masters…

  But that danger faded too; the maths was complete, and now Hutchman was face-to-face with the realization that he wanted nothing to do with his own creation.

  Voice from another dimension, intruding: You’ve fired six dozen arrows at a hundred yards for a total of 402 points. The neutron resonator is the ultimate defense. That’s your highest score ever for the range. And in the context of nuclear warfare the ultimate defense can be regarded as the ultimate weapon. Keep this up and you’ll top the thousand for the round. If I breathe a word of this to the Ministry of Defence I’ll sink without a trace, into one of those discreet establishments in the heart of “The Avengers” country. You’ve been chasing that thousand a long time, Hutch — four years or more. And what about Vicky? She’d go mad. And David? Pull up the studs, and ground quiver, and move down to eighty yards — and keep cool. The balance of nuclear power does exist, after all — who could shoulder the responsibility of disrupting it? It’s been forty-three years since World War Two, and it’s becoming obvious that nobody’s actually going to use the bomb. In any case, didn ‘t the Japanese who were incinerated by napalm outnumber those unfortunates at H and N? Raise the sight to the eighty-yard mark, nock the arrow, relax and breathe, draw easily, keep your left elbow out, kiss the string, watch your draw length, bowlimb vertical, ring sight centred on the gold, hold it, hold it, hold it…

  “Why aren’t you at the office, Luke?” Vicky’s voice sounded only inches behind him.

  Hutchman watched his arrow go wide, hit the target close to the rim, and almost pass clear through the less tightly packed straw.

  “I didn’t hear you arrive,” he said evenly. He turned and examined her face, aware she had startled him deliberately but wanting to find out if she was issuing a forthright challenge or was simulating innocence. Her rust-coloured eyes met his at once, like electrical contacts finding sockets, an interface of hostility.

  All right, he thought. “Why did you sneak up on me like that? You ruined a shot.”

  She shrugged, wide clavicles seen with da Vincian clarity in the tawny skin of her shoulders. “You can play archery all evening.”

  “One doesn’t play archery — how many times have I… ?”

  He steadied his temper. Misuse of the word was one of her oldest tricks. “What do you want, Vicky?”

  “I want to know why you’re not at the office this afternoon.” She examined the skin of her upper arms critically as she spoke, frowning at the summer’s fading tan which even yet was deeper than the amber of her sleeveless dress, face darkened with shadows of the introspective and secret alarms that beautiful women sometimes appear to feel when looking at their own bodies. “I suppose I’m entitled to hear.”

  “I couldn’t take it this afternoon.” I can make neutrons dance to a new tune. “All right?”

  “How nice for you.” Disapproval registered briefly on the smooth-planed face, like smoke passing across the sun. “I wish I could stop work when I feel like it.”

  “You’re in a better position — you only start when you feel like it.”

  “Funny man! Have you had lunch?”

  “I’m not hungry. I’ll stay here and finish this round.” Hutchman wished desperately liat Vicky would leave. In spite of the wasted shot he could still break the four-figure barrier provided he could shut out the universe, treat every arrow as though it were the last. The air was immobile, the sun burned steadily on the ringed target, and suddenly he understood that the eighty yards of lawn were an unimportant consideration. There came a vast certitude that he could feather the next arrow in the exact geometrical center of the gold and clip its fletching with the others — if he could be left in peace.

  “I see. You want to go into one of your trances. Who will you imagine you’re with — Trisha Garland?”

  “Trisha Garland?” A bright-red serpent of irritation stirred in the pool of his mind, clouding the waters. “Who the hell’s Trisha Garland?”

  “As if you didn’t know!”

  “I’ve no idea who the lady is.”

  “Lady! That’s good, calling that one a lady — that bedwarmer who can’t sing a note and wouldn’t know a lady if she saw one.”

  Hutchman almost gaped — his wife must be referring to the singer he had glimpsed on television the previous evening — then a bitter fury engulfed him. You’re sick, he raged inwardly. You’re so sick that just being near you is making me sick. Aloud he said, calmly: “The last thing I want out here is somebody singing while I shoot.”

  “Oh, you do know who I mean.” Vicky’s face was triumphant beneath its massive helm of copper hair. “Why did you pretend you didn’t know her?”

  “Vicky.” Hutchman t
urned his back on her. “Please put the lid back on the cesspit you have for a mind — then go away from me before I drive one of these arrows through your head.”

  He nocked another arrow, drew, and aimed at the target. Its shimmering concentricities seemed very distant across an ocean of malicious air currents. He fired and knew he had plucked the string instead of achieving a clean release, even before the bow gave a discordant, disappointed twang, even before he saw the arrow fly too high and pass over the target. The single ugly word he spat out failed to relieve the tensions racking his body, and he began unbuckling his leather armguard, pulling savagely at the straps.

  “I’m sorry, darling.” Vicky sounded contrite, like a child, as her arms came snaking round him from behind. “I can’t help it if I’m jealous of you.”

  “Jealous!” Hutchman gave a shaky laugh, making the shocked discovery that he was close to tears. “If you found me kissing another woman and didn’t like it, that would be jealousy. But when you build up fantasies about people you see on the box, torture yourself, and take it out on me — that’s something else.”

  “I love you so much I don’t want you even to see another woman.” Vicky’s right hand slipped downward, purposefully, from his waist to his groin, and at the same instant he became aware of the pressure of her breasts in the small of his back. She rested her head between his shoulder blades. “David isn’t home from school yet.”

  I’m a fool if I fall for this so easily, he told himself; but at the same time he kept thinking about the rare event of the house being empty and available for unrestrained love-making, which was what she had been suggesting. She loved him so much she didn’t want him even to look at another woman — put that way, under these circumstances, it sounded almost reasonable. With Vicky’s tight belly thrust determinedly against his buttocks, he could almost convince himself it was his own fault for inspiring such devouring passion in her. He turned and allowed himself to be kissed, planning to cheat, to give his body and withhold his mind, but as they walked back to the house he realized he had been beaten once again. After eight years of marriage, her attraction for him had increased to the point where he could not even imagine having a sexual relationship with another woman.

  “It’s a hell of a handicap to be naturally monogamous,” he grumbled, setting his equipment down outside the rear door. “I get taken advantage of.”

  “Poor thing.” Vicky walked into the kitchen ahead of him and began to undress as soon as he had closed the door. He followed her to their bedroom, shedding his own clothes as he went. As they lay together he slid his hands under her and clamped one on each shoulder, then secured her feet by pressing upwards on the soles with his insteps, immobilizing his wife in the physical analog of the mental curbs he had never been able to place on her. And when it was all over he lay dreamily beside her, completely without triste, hovering deliciously between sleep and wakefulness. The world outside was the world he had known as a boy lying in bed late on a summer’s morning, listening to the quiet sanity of barely heard garden conversations, milk bottles clashing in the street, the measured stroke of a hand-operated lawnmower in the distance. He felt secure. The bomb, the whole nuclear doom concept, was outdated, a little old-fashioned, along with John Foster Dulles and Senator McCarthy, ten-inch television sets and razoredge Triumph cars, the New Look, and the white gulls of flying boats over The Solent. We passed a vital milestone back in July ‘66 — the month in which the interval between World War One and World War Two separated us from V-J Day. Looking at it dispassionately, from the historical pinnacle of 1988, one can ‘t even imagine them dropping the bomb. …

  Hutchman was roused by a hammering on the front door, and guessed that his son had arrived home from school. He threw on some clothes, leaving Vicky dozing in bed, and hurried to the door. David crowded in past him wordlessly — brown hair tousled, scented with October air — dropped his schoolbag with a leathery thud and clink of buckles, and vanished into the toilet without closing the door. His disappearance was followed by the sound of churning water and exaggerated sighs of relief. Still suffused with relaxed optimism, Hutchman grinned as he picked up the schoolbag and put it in a closet. There are levels of reality, he thought, and this one is just as valid as any other. Perhaps Vicky is right — perhaps the greatest and most dangerous mistake an inhabitant of the global village can make is to start feeling responsible for his neighbours ten thousand miles away. No nervous system yet evolved can cope with the guilts of others.

  “Dad?” David’s smile was ludicrous because of its ragged emerging teeth. “Are we going to the stock-car racing tonight?”

  “I don’t know, son. It’s a little late in the year — the evenings are cold out at the track.”

  “Can’t we wear overcoats, and eat hot dogs and things like that to keep warm?”

  “You know something? You’re right! Let’s do that.” Hutchman watched the slow spread of pleasure across the boy’s face. Decision made and ratified, he thought. The neutrons can wait for another dancing master. Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast… He went into the bedroom and roused Vicky. “Get up, woman. David and I want an early dinner — we’re going to the stock-car racing.”

  Vicky straightened, pulled the white linen sheet tight around herself, and lay perfectly still, hipless as an Egyptian mummy. “I’m not moving till you tell me you love me.”

  Hutchman crossed to the bed. “I do love you.”

  “And you’ll never look at anyone else?”

  “I’ll never look at anyone else.”

  Vicky smiled languorously. “Come back to bed.”

  Hutchman shook his head. “David’s home.”

  “Well, he has to learn the facts of life sometime.”

  “I know, but I don’t want him writing an essay about us for the school. I’ve been branded as a drunkard since the one he did last month, and I’ll be expelled from the PTA if word gets around that I’m a sex maniac.”

  “Oh, well.” Vicky sat up and rubbed her eyes. “I think I’ll go to the stock-car racing with you.”

  “But you don’t enjoy it.”

  “I think I’ll enjoy it tonight.”

  Suspecting that Vicky was trying to atone for the scene in the garden, but gratified nonetheless, Hutchman left the room. He spent an hour in his study tidying up loose ends of correspondence. When he judged dinner was almost ready he went into the lounge and mixed a long and rather weak whisky and soda. David was at the television set, working with the channel-selector buttons. Hutchman sat down and took a sip from his glass, allowing himself to relax as the greens of the poplars outside darkened slightly in preparation for evening. The sky beyond the trees was filled with dimension after dimension of tumbled clouds, kingdoms of pink coral, receding toward infinity.

  “Bloody hell,” David muttered, punching noisily at the channel selectors.

  “Take it easy,” Hutchman said tolerantly. “You’re going to wreck the set altogether. What’s, the trouble?”

  “I turned on ‘Grange Hill’, and all I got was that.” David’s face was scornful as he indicated the blank, gently flickering screen.

  “Well you’ve got lines on the screen so they must be broadcasting a carrier wave — perhaps you’re too early.”

  “I’m not. It’s always on at this time.”

  Hutchman set his drink aside and went to the set. He was reaching for the fine-tuning control when the face of a news reporter appeared abruptly on the screen. The man’s eyes were grave as he read from a single sheet of paper.

  “At approximately five o’clock this afternoon a nuclear device was exploded over the city of Damascus, capital of Syria. The force of the explosion was, according to preliminary estimates, approximately six megatons. The entire city is reported to be a mass of flame, and it is believed that the majority of Damascus’s population of 550,000 have lost their lives in the holocaust.

  “There is, as yet, no indication as to whether the explosion was the result of an acci
dent or an act of aggression, but an emergency meeting of the Cabinet has been called at Westminster, and the Security Council of the United Nations will meet shortly in New York.

  “This channel has suspended its regular programs, but stay tuned for further bulletins, which will be broadcast as soon as reports are received.” The face faded quickly.

  As he knelt before the blank, faintly hissing screen, Hutchman felt the newly familiar sensation of cold perspiration breaking out on his forehead.

  CHAPTER 2

  Avoiding his son’s perplexed gaze, Hutchman walked slowly into the kitchen. Vicky was standing with her back to him as she prepared the meal. She was singing and, as usual, looking slightly out of place in a role of such utter domesticity. He hated having to destroy the evening they had wrested from the day’s misery.

  “Vicky,” he said, almost guiltily. “Something has happened. I just heard a news flash on the television. They say Damascus has been wiped out by a hydrogen bomb.”

  “How awful.” Vicky turned, her hands full of diced cheese, and nodded toward a glass-fronted cupboard. “How ghastly. Be a darling and reach me down the small casserole. Does it mean there’s a war?”

  He found the Pyrex dish mechanically and set it on the counter. “They don’t know who’s responsible yet, but there could be half a million dead. Half a million!”