William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

“You’re kidding. Jesus Christ. What genius planned that one?”

Alice looked back at the map. The Asian landmass, including China—just in case world politics swung again as it had so often in his life—was covered with clusters of small colored dots. Areas of interest, the battle staff called them. Red for ICBM fields, blue for troop concentrations, yellow for submarine and bomber bases, black for oil fields and industrial sites. And green. The damned green dots. He shivered at the thought that it might be time to take the green out and that he might have to give the orders.

“What’s with Baton Rouge?” he asked.

“Still on the ground, sir. No radio contact.”

Alice sank deeper in his chair. What damnable twist of fate had placed him aloft tonight, one of the random eight-hour shifts he drew no more than once a month? Fleetingly he envied his boss—the commanding general, code-named Icarus. Quick, simple, reflexive decisions. No right. No wrong. No thinking. Then a quick, simple good-bye and carry on, a burned-out huzz on the phone in the Looking Glass, and no second thoughts.

“I shouldn’t make this decision, Sam. I’m not even sure it’s legal.”

“It’s legal, sir. Under PD 58.”

“Screw Presidential Directive 58 and its blasted nuclear-command line of authority. It puts me in charge only if there’s no constitutional successor around. We may have a President on the ground in Louisiana.”

The general looked at the colonel wearily. They had known each other many years.

“I don’t want to make this decision, Sam.”

“I know, sir.”

“I’m not sure if it’s right.”

“It’s debatable, general.”

“Goddammit, Sam, I know it’s debatable! That’s the point!”

“Bye-bye, Ulan-Ude,” Tyler repeated exuberantly. The navigator grinned from ear to ear. Radnor tried to ignore him.

“That doggone Kazaklis,” Tyler continued. “He’s so good at this, he just makes it feel real. Man, I could feel us down there in the weeds, skimmin’ over the tundra, cutting through the mountains. Just plain fun, that stuff. Couldn’t you feel it, Radnor? This big baby romping down Baikal, couple hundred feet over the ice, and coming in on Irkutsk. Ready… ready… Now! Ka-whump! And then Ulan-Ude. Ready… ready… Ka-whump!”

Radnor doodled with his pencil, making meaningless marks on a chart.

“I mean, Kazaklis is better at this than they are. They’re doing their damnedest to make this real. But when it comes to games, our boy has ’em all topped. He’s really doing this in living color. He almost had me believing it.”

Radnor’s thumb pressed, white-knuckled, against the center of the pencil. It snapped, sending a painful sliver-spear up under his thumbnail. He slammed the broken pencil down and turned angrily on Tyler, fighting back the urge to grab him, shake him, shout at him. He forced himself to relax and speak quietly.

“You gotta wake up, Tyler. You just gotta.” Radnor paused. “This is real.”

Tyler stared back at Radnor, a grin twisting across his face. He reached across their work console and put his arm on Radnor’s shoulder, as if to comfort him.

“Hey, old buddy, this is getting to you, isn’t it?” Tyler said calmly. “Hang in there, will ya? That wasn’t real. Look at the altimeter. We were at forty-six thousand feet the whole way. We were just talkin’ it through, the same way we do in the alert room.”

“Mission planning!” Radnor shouted, angrily pushing Tyler’s arm away. “Damn you! Wake up! Yeah, we were at forty-six thousand feet. Over Canada. Planning a mission. A real mission, dammit!” Radnor’s voice suddenly turned to quiet pleading. “Please, Tyler.”

The grin faded off Tyler’s face. “Radnor,” he said, pulling his arm back, “if you gotta believe this bullshit to do your job right, go ahead. I don’t need it.”

Radnor’s body wilted in frustration, his eyes catching the red V of O’Toole’s boots. “Tyler, look behind you. Is that real?”

“O’Toole screwed up,” the navigator said, refusing to turn his head toward the corpse. “I feel as bad about it as you do.”

“The missiles, Tyler. We got kicked in the butt by nudets. We almost packed it in. You saw it on your screen. You felt it. Polar Bear Three packed it in. The whole squadron packed it in. Fairchild packed it in. Spokane packed it in.”

“Simulated.” Tyler’s voice turned icily even. “They can simulate anything. You know that. It’s more war games. And when we get back, Radnor, they’re going to rate us on how well you handled it.”

Radnor slumped forward, forlornly taking his head in his hands. Maybe he was buggy, not Tyler. He felt his buddy’s hand on his shoulder again, shaking him gently.

“Hey, Radnor, look at that, will you?” Tyler tapped at the radar screen in front of him. “What does that tell you?”

Radnor looked at the radar screen and the jagged Arctic coastline passing beneath them. Good God, how could Tyler ignore that? They didn’t come up here on drills. They could run into MIG’s. Soon.

“We’re at our PCP,” Tyler said, jabbing at the center of the screen. “Now, how come we don’t have orders to pass through the control point?”

“I dunno,” Radnor said dully. “Communications maybe. You know what a few dozen nudets will do. Punch holes in the ionosphere, so you got nothing to bounce high-frequency radio beams off.”

“We got low frequency.”

“Maybe it’s EMP. I dunno, dammit! Maybe they’re changing targets on us. Maybe nobody’s back there. I dunno.”

“We haven’t got any orders, ‘cause it’s a game. It’s all another highfalutin, fancy war game, Radnor. That’s why we haven’t got any orders.”

Radnor looked at Tyler and felt downright afraid of him. Tyler smiled back warmly, reassuringly. Radnor braced himself.

“Tyler,” he said very quietly, “it is real. It is very real. Your wife’s gone. Your kid’s gone. We’re not going back, ‘cause there’s nothing there.”

Tyler’s eyes narrowed hostilely, causing Radnor to shiver. Then the navigator’s expression changed again, becoming pained. “I don’t know why everybody has to lay that one on me,” he said. “It’s cruel, Radnor. Very cruel.”

“Tyler…”

“You guys act like I’m screwing up. Have I screwed up? So they’re trying to make this one seem like the real thing. Another goddamn PRP test. Nothing to go home to. I’m playing along. I’m doing my job. I’ll pretend. But do I keep telling you that your wife is dead? Do I? And Timmie? Huh? It’s cruel. It’s very cruel.”

Radnor turned away. He slowly pulled the sliver from beneath his thumb and then concentrated on his radar screen to distract himself. The coastline slowly inched away from them. The screen seemed fogged, and he reached for a tissue to clean it. The fog did not want to go away.

“Nav!” The commander’s voice cut into the downstairs compartment. “Are we on our PCP?”

“Dead center, commander,” Tyler radioed back firmly.

“Shit,” Kazaklis said. “Okay, we’re gonna put it in a slow orbit.”

Tyler looked over at Radnor and smiled smugly. Radnor took out a second tissue and rubbed at his screen.

Upstairs, the commander’s fingers began an agitated drumbeat on the white engine throttles. “You take it, copilot,” he said to Moreau. “Throttle her back just above stall speed and put her in a goddamn circle.” Moreau began the maneuver without comment, banking the plane to the right. “Assholes,” Kazaklis said, fidgeting angrily in his seat. “So this is what we’re going to do with Elsie’s gas. Bastards! God damn those bastards!” The Master Caution light flashed at Moreau. She pushed the lighted yellow button and it flickered, then came back on. She checked the aircraft’s speed and pushed the button again. It blinked off, then came back on. She ran her eye quickly over the controls, saw no problems, and decided to ignore it. Gremlins, she thought. You get used to that in a thirty-year-old airplane. A high, staccato pinging entered her earphones. She looked quickly at Kazaklis, who stared back at her, perplexed.