William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

“Except us.”

Icarus had changed moods dramatically. To the President, he sounded disconsolate, like a general assigned to a desk in wartime.

“General,” he asked, “do you allot no credibility whatsoever to the possibility that the Premier’s intentions are exactly as he stated them?”

The President ignored the grunt from behind him. On the phone, Icarus sounded almost despondent. “Mr. President, must we go through this?”

“Yes.”

“I allot none. If I did, wouldn’t an attack on our missile silos have been much more reasonable, much more humanitarian? They are far more isolated than the bomber bases. Far fewer civilians would have been killed.”

“General, I don’t think you believe that. Such an attack would have left us almost naked. Unfortunately, we can afford to lose the people more than we can afford to lose the ICBM’s. The Premier knows that.”

“Mr. President, as God is my witness, it does not make any difference. It has gone too far.”

“So, what does SIOP say about the solution to our problem?”

“SIOP has composed a relatively simple two-part sequence,” the general responded eagerly. “The computer recommends launching half our ICBM force from alternating silos. The target would be Soviet silos. The plan has several advantages. If the Soviets respond, even their computers will be hard put to determine which of our silos are empty and which are not. They will be required to deplete a large part of their ICBM force attacking our missile sites, half of which will be empty. If they do not respond, we will have destroyed a significant part of their land-based missiles.”

“And how does our little Russian toy, RSIOP, say it would respond under the circumstances?”

The general paused. “RSIOP,” he said finally, “cannot read what we have to assume is extreme political confusion in Moscow at the moment.”

“How would RSIOP respond, general?”

The general paused again. “In a politically normal situation,” he began slowly, “RSIOP predicts a major launch of Soviet ICBM’s—perhaps half their land-based arsenal.”

“The targets?”

“Double targeting of the missile fields, all NATO installations in Europe, the remainder of the military targets in the United States…”

“And?”

Silence.

“Cities?” the President asked.

“More than likely,” the general replied.

The President closed his eyes once more. His mind felt rubbery again. Damn. He forced himself to think. One ICBM warhead from either of the superpowers could destroy any city in the world. Utterly.

“And the second half of SIOP’s sequence?” the President asked.

“If the Soviets respond while our first missiles are in the air, we launch the rest of ours. At other military targets—and some cities, for maximum effect. I believe you know from your briefings what the normal sequence is after that—the programmed pauses for bombers and submarines, the wait to see what they do….” Icarus paused. He did not want to go into detail about the problems with communications, preserving a chain of command, all the imponderables about which the President had been briefed but for which no one had certain answers. He saw no choice in the decision. He did not want to clutter the issue. He continued on a positive note. “Even at the end of such an exchange, we would be in a vastly superior military position. The Soviets have used part of their submarine resource. We have not. You also must understand the Soviets are able to launch such an attack at any moment without action by us. You have an opportunity to deter part of that.”

The President’s eyes remained closed. He suddenly felt a great affinity for the Soviet Premier, a man with the same problem he had, than he did for the men around him. He wondered if the Premier, ensnarled in his own trap in some Kremlin hideaway, felt the same pressures he did, the same doubts, the same certainties. He wanted to believe him. Knock the crap, off, bucko. The soppy liberal crap. His mind spun. Did it make any difference? He tried to calculate what already was lost or doomed. Little towns like Utica and Colorado Springs, where the Chambers of Commerce published proud brochures about economies thriving on the magical multiplier effects of defense spending. Cities like Seattle, where men had built missiles for decades and sublimated that reality in the more soothing reality of ranch homes and Winnebagos and Chris Crafts. Farm towns like Omaha that forgot over the years that something else had taken root in their soil. Places like Spokane that the world seemed to pass by but suddenly remembered this morning. “Three minutes, sir.” Little submarine weapons. Toys. Weapons fifty times that size were arriving from Polyarnny, three minutes, in Seattle, Omaha, Colorado Springs. Thousands more were waiting. “Sir.” He had gone to most of those places, thanking the patriots who worked there to keep America secure. He had asked them to do more. To build more. To deter. Now, to deter, he had to use what they built, use the patriots, too. He felt trapped, trapped by his own rhetoric, trapped by a liturgy never questioned. He had talked about limited nuclear wars, heard rational men argue persuasively in this room that such wars could be won. Now the world had at least five limited nuclear wars under way. “Mr. President.” Should he let Icarus go? He shuddered. There was no more time for thinking. He was drifting again, the doomed steer prodded, numbly, dumbly, too many little electric shocks, down the last narrow chute. A world of men. Do you think we can control such a place, Mr. President? Apparently not, Mr. Premier. “No, we cannot,” he mumbled, barely audibly, in answer to the Premier’s question.

Through his daze he heard a shuffling noise behind him. Then the thunder knocked him from his chair again. His eyes opened to gaze up at a sign that asked: “Are you EWO Ready?” He nodded automatically, still clutching the phone. He reached for the blue-and-red card that had skittered out of his hand in the fall. He beckoned for the Emergency War Orders officer, whose face remained blank.

Then he turned to look behind him. The Secretary of State lay sprawled on the floor over a carbine he had wrested from a marine. Every other weapon in the room was trained on the Secretary’s body. Most had been used. The eyes above them twitched nervously. Wondering if they had chosen the right target, the President guessed sadly. He maneuvered painfully to position the phone. “General?”

“Mr. President?’ the general replied uncertainly. “We seemed to have a brief communications problem.”

“Yes, briefly.”

“Mr. President, the Russians launched more land-based missiles thirty seconds ago.”

The President wondered if Icarus was lying. Did it make any difference? In less than three minutes his communications system would be in such disarray, he might not be able to respond at all.

“At the Chinese or us?” he asked.

“We can’t tell yet.” Icarus sounded despairing. Then he added, with a bite: “Is it really relevant?”

Relevant. Good God. Control such a place? The President slumped, as if in surrender. He began speaking very quietly. “I will go with SIOP. We will do it in the prescribed fashion. We have an assistant secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs in place in the Pentagon. The order will be issued through them. It will not take long.” The President barely heard the last word from Icarus.

His mind had floated a far distance away now. He took the briefcase from the Emergency War Orders officer and handled the details as routinely as he had signed milk-support bills, reading a quick code sequence from the Sealed Authenticator System card that identified him and let the Pentagon know they were dealing with the real thing. The real thing. He shook his head. He looked up and saw the duty officer, the man he knew only as Sedgwick. The President had pain in his eyes.