Гарри Гаррисон - There Won't Be War

BACHELOR NUMBER FOUR:

Even when we were starving, we fought!

BACHELOR NUMBER FIVE:

We done what dey tole us to do, ma’am. We was supposed to break right through to Richmond, an’ we dang near done it, too. We would’ve, iffen de generals hadda got some more troops into de Crater ‘fore we was all kilt ourselfs.

JANE:

Oh, gosh, nobody said you weren’t all brave. I mean, not counting if you pooped your pants sometimes, right? But you went right on and did the job you were supposed to do. The thing is, what were you so brave about!

BACHELOR NUMBER ONE:

It was the Huns, miss. They was doin’ awful fings in Belgium.

BACHELOR NUMBER SEVEN: For the Emperor!

BACHELOR NUMBER THREE:

Dey whupped us, ma’am, when we was slaves. Freedom! An’ we kilt dem back.

BACHELOR NUMBER EIGHT: For the Aryan race!

BACHELOR NUMBER FOUR:

For the Soviet motherland!

JANE:

(As the bachelors are all speaking at once.) Boys, boys! Let’s kind of hold it down, okay?

(She looks at Bachelor Number Six.) What about you, Ensign? Don’t you have anything to say?

BACHELOR NUMBER SIX:

(Grinning.)

Seems to me you’re doing all the talking, hon. Me, I’m just a fly-boy. Drop a couple five-hundred pounders, shoot up a column of trucks, back on the ship for a malted milk and the night movie—except for that damn MIG. I bet it was a Russky pilot that got me. No damn slopey could’ve flown like that.

I know what you’re saying, though. I was always glad I was a carrier pilot. We didn’t get into that real lousy stuff they did on the ground. So don’t talk to me about rape and looting and all that—I wasn’t anywhere near it. I was in the air, and we had a nice clean war.

JANE:

Do you suppose they felt the same way in the Enola Gay?

BACHELOR NUMBER SIX:

Now, wait a minute, honey! You've got the wrong guy here. I never dropped any atomic bombs!

JANE:

They didn’t give you any atomic bombs to drop, did they?

BACHELOR NUMBER SIX:

Damn right they didn’t, and you know why? Because the U. S. of A. decided not to use the Bomb then! We could’ve, easily enough! We had ’em! Plenty of them. Only we held them back for humanitarian reasons.

JANE:

And maybe also, a little, because they were scared that the Russians had them too?

(Bachelor Number Six shrugs and looks away, losing interest.)

And then everybody had them, remember? England and France, and India and China, and Brazil and South Africa and Israel and Pakistan—And people said that was really okay, because that was MAD, the Mutal Assured Deterrent, the thing that would keep anybody from ever using one, because everybody knew that nobody could possibly win a nuclear war?

They were wrong about one of those things, remember? But they were right enough about the other. Nobody won.

Here, take a look. Give me a hand, will you?

She goes behind the desks and pulls out a new backdrop, puffing with the effort. Bachelors Numbers Six and One help her, then go back to their places. All the others crane their necks to see.

We are now looking at the New England town again, only it has been nuked. All the church spires are broken and burned out. A few people are moving about in the dirty, ash-tainted snow. We see that some are children in rags, looking hungry, freezing in the cold weather. A few adults look obviously sick. One or two figures seem more energetic; they are shepherding the others to a waiting “ambulance”—it is someone*s large sleigh, pulled by a swaybacked old horse.

Jane takes off her hat and gathers up the tails of her coat to tuck into the waistband of her tights.

JANE:

The trouble was, the deterrent didn’t deter everybody.

She picks up a TV remote controller from the floor, aims it at the screen and flicks from scene to scene. We see New York, Tokyo, Moscow, Beijing, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv, San Francisco, Capetown, Paris, Rome, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Singapore, Mexico City, St. Louis, Cairo, Stockholm. They are all in ruins. Jane is talking while she changes channels.

JANE:

It only took one to start it, you know. Then everybody got together to finish it.

BACHELOR NUMBER TWO:

(He is bewildered and angry.) Hey, it wasn’t supposed to happen that way! They was supposed to make sure there wasn’t any more wars!

BACHELOR NUMBER ONE:

They said the same about mine, too, miss.

JANE:

Well, what the hell, one out of a million isn’t bad, is it? Because this time they were right.

BACHELOR NUMBER SEVEN:

(He is incredulous, but dares to be hopeful.) Pardon, mamselle, is it that peace is here at last?

JANE:

You bet, sweetie. Only it’s a little late for you guys, isn’t it? I mean, being all dead and like that.

(She comes over to them and pats the nearest one on the shoulder—insistently.)

So really, now, you better all just lie down again, okay? Go ahead. That’s the way ....

Grumbling, all eight bachelors get up and tip their desks down onto the floor When they do so, we see that each of the desks is actually a plain pine coffin. The eight men reluctantly climb in, one after another, each one putting the lid on for the one before him.

Jane, grunting, lifts the last lid in place to cover Bachelor Number Eight. Then she begins putting her suit back on. Now we see that it isn’t really a spacesuit. It’s an anti-radiation suit, and it is spotted and stained with long use.

JANE:

(Bowing to audience.) Well, Merry Christmas to you all, and good will to men, and peace on Earth. Really. I mean, this is the war that finally meant it.

(She gazes at the screen, then flicks the remote controller and the screen goes blank. All is black. The only thing we see is Jane herself, alone and brightly lit on the empty stage. She puts on her helmet, but before she closes it she adds:)

There aren’t enough of us left for anything else.

There was a time when science fiction writers seemed to be inventing all of the new ideas. Youthful SF readers in the thirties were inspired to become rocket engineers—then went on to build the rockets that up to then had existed only in fiction. Atomic power and, unhappily, atom bombs were science fiction commonplaces, along with television, personal radios, and many other devices and concepts too numerous to mention; many of which exist today. It is however the regrettable fact that in recent times SF invention has given way to a rather mindless repetition that produces uninspired copies of copies of Tolkien, rehashes of ancient plots strung out in mind-numbing volumes. Even more depressing are the military-minded writers, and even publishers, who consider war to be a Good Thing, almost a commonplace event. They tell us over and over again that violent conflict and destruction will be with us forever. The idea that there will always be war is an abomination and an insult to human intelligence. War is about fear and death—and nothing else. Those who write about the glories of future conflict are writing the pornography of war.

This volume is an attempt to correct that false assumption, to balance negative with positive. The most imaginative science fiction writer today is named Gorbachev. He invented a story plot called Glasnost and Perestroika—he made the story come true. No other SF writer ever managed to produce a story with such daring and novel concepts.

The authors of the stories in this anthology have risen to Gorbachev’s challenge. All of them are aware of that very simple yet tremendously vital concept: