Robert Adams - The Memories of Milo Morai

His second contact, later that same night, was an anomaly and a one-in-a-million chance both rolled into one. He received and replied to a South African military field-radio transmission and found himself, to his surprise and pleasure, talking to an old friend from his own days in Africa, an officer named Meileneaux.

“Jan, is that you? How the hell are you, you old reprobate? I’d’ve thought they’d’ve hung or shot you, by now.”

“And just who the bloody hell are you, Yank? Get to hell off this band immediately, or I’ll have you shot. This is a military transmission, an urgent military transmission. Hear me?”

“I don’t think you can shoot that far, Jan. I’m near the western coast of North America . This is Milo, Milo Moray, Jan.” Milo chuckled into the microphone.

“Milo? It’s really you, Milo? Damn, it’s good to hear your voice again, though I’d much rather see you—we could certainly use you, just now. The kaffirs are dying like so many flies, both the good ones and the bad, the coloreds and a good many of the Asians, too. But this far, damn-all of us. I’ve just accepted the unconditional surrender of the Cuban forces for all of Angola—they were damned near all that were left alive in the whole bloody country. Their senior commander, one Jaime Villalobos something-or-other, seems bloody well anxious to sign his lot up with us, and Pretoria will likely accept him and them. If we stay well and the damned pitiful kaffirs keep dying, we’ll end owning most of the damned continent we . . .

Then, heartbreakingly, the voice dissolved into static and Milo never again was able to raise response from that wavelength, try as he might and did.

The next morning, he monitored a governmental broadcast from Sao Paulo, Brazil. The entirety of the broadcast, done in both the Brazilian dialect of Portuguese and in New World Spanish, was a grim warning that Brazil definitely possessed nuclear cap-ability, owned appropriate means of delivery and would not hesitate to nuke the population centers and military installations of anyone who violated Brazilian borders “during the current state of emergency.” Milo could raise no reply to any of his attempts to transmit to Sao Paulo . However, during the course of one such attempt, he picked up an answer from a totally unexpected quarter.

Vasili Vlasov identified himself as captain of a factory ship which also was flagship of a present mini-armada of his ship and three trawlers, proceeding from the South Pacific to Vladivostok. His command of English was marginal, at best, but Milo spoke excellent Russian, fortunately.

He had tried to put in at a Chilean port and been fired upon; one of his original four trawlers had been hit and sunk there, and another had been damaged by shellfire.

“The bastards accused me and the Motherland of having started this entire insanity, of initiating the nuclear exchanges and of having filled the air of all the world with poisons and deadly germs. Why did the United States of America do this atrocity to Russia and the rest of our world? Can you tell me that?”

Milo sighed. “Captain Vlasov, a couple of months back, I sent transmissions to, received transmissions from and/or monitored transmissions from most parts of the world. The consensus then was that neither your country nor mine started the short, deadly fracas . . . we just finished it and ourselves, and quite possibly all of our species, too.”

Vlasov’s heavy sigh came over the airwaves. “It’s as I suspected, Tovarich Moray, just as I suspected all along, then, I suppose. Who do you think did start it?”

“The majority of the people I listened to or talked to, a couple of months or so back, before the really large-scale dyings started, suspected three instigators—Libya, Israel, and India, in just that order of probability.”

“Most likely those damned aggressive, land-hungry, warmongering, racist Israelis, then,” rumbled Vlasov. “It was many times said that they would not be happy until they owned the entire Middle East and all of North Africa, as well.”

“My vote would go against Libya, captain,” stated Milo. “The inhabitants of India always hated each other far worse than they hated non-Indians, and teetering on the verge of a three- or four-sided civil war as they were, I doubt seriously that they would’ve gone outside of India in search of trouble.

“But Libya, now, that’s another kettle of fish, captain. Ruled over by an aging, egomaniacal dictator who has alienated every neighbor with which he shares a border and quite a few countries far removed from his borders, as well. He considered himself to be the savior of both Islam and all of Africa, at one time or another. I suspect that he finally lost the last vestige he still owned of sanity and commenced hurling nuclear missiles at every real and imagined enemy and that he kept it up until he ran out of missiles or until Egypt and Israel put paid to his long-overdue accounts.”

“Hmmm,” muttered Vlasov. “That makes a good bit of sense to me, tovarich. Before Vladivostok went off the air, they reported to us that the first nuclear strikes were all in the far southwest of the Motherland, and in parts of Rumania, Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria, even a few in both Greece and Turkey and at least one on Rome, in Italy. It was days later, I have heard, that the big strikes on the Motherland were launched from China and the United States of America . Yes, Libya could very well indeed be the culpable country. But what can now be done to retaliate, to punish such infamy, and who is now left capable of doing anything to them?”

“From what little I heard, in my earlier days on this radio,” said Milo dryly, “Egypt, Israel and France took care of the matter quite thoroughly. Libya’s population centers are now mostly flat and probably glow in the dark.”

“Good!” snapped Vlasov, forcefully and with clear feeling. Then he said,“Tovarich Moray, you have the sound of an honest man, and you must be a very strong man, as well, to have retained your reason in and among the horrors you have described in that place. I will tell you, I will go aboard one of the faster trawlers and we will steam to the Port of San Diego . You can meet us there, come aboard and return with me to Vladivostok. What do you say, tovarich?”

“San Diego was nuked, captain, hit by two or three smaller missiles, probably launched from just offshore by submerged submarines.”

After a few moments of rustling paper noises, Vlasov asked, “Well, then, we could as easily put in to, let’s see . . . Los Angeles or Santa Barbara or San Francisco, if you could easily get that far north in time to meet us. If as few people are now alive in the whole world as you have estimated to me, I think that we few must begin to forget outdated nationalism and band together in true internationalism.”

“You’re right, of course, Captain Vlasov—Vasili—but your worthy sentiments have come a bit too late for any of us, I’m afraid. Yes, I could get to any of the cities and ports you’ve mentioned, were I not afraid of going close to them, that is.”

“Nuclear destruction?All of them?All of those lovely, lovely cities, tovarich?”

“Yes, Vasili, and not just them, either. Portland, Seattle-Tacoma, Vancouver, in Canada, Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, Norfolk, Philadelphia. And that’s just on this continent. If you have an alternate home port or even if you don’t, steer clear of Vladivistok, my friend. I intercepted a transmission from a Japanese Self-Defense Force frigate that had seen that port hit and were so rattled that they didn’t even encode their message to their base.”

“Frankly, I have long thought that that was what happened, but I have tried hard to delude myself into the thought that it was not that way. It was easier thinking, you see, Tovarich Milo, for my dear wife, some of our children and most of our grandchildren live . . . lived nearby to the port. I suppose that I am alone, completely alone, now. Since it is so, then I just must make my family those brave mariners and fishermen who depend upon me.”