James Morrow - This Is the Way the World Ends

A pounding halted Sverre’s progress of the Saga of Thor . He inserted his pen in the raven’s mouth, swallowed some gin, staggered across his cabin.

‘These evacuees insisted on seeing you,’ grunted Lieutenant Grass as Sverre yanked open the door.

Brat offered a hostile salute. ‘Captain Sverre, an activity that could seriously erode our security – evidently it goes by the code name Citrus – is presently under way in your missile compartment.’

‘You may leave, Mister Grass,’ said the captain in a foreign accent that refused to declare itself.

Certain that nothing good was about to transpire between Brat and Sverre, George attempted to absent himself by surveying the captain’s elegantly anachronistic cabin – dark wood walls, plush carpets, puffy sofas, antique globe. Perched on the writing desk was an alabaster raven that Holly would have liked.

‘I see you fancy my pet, Mr Paxton,’ said Sverre. ‘His name is Edgar Allan Poe.’

‘Somebody once asked me a riddle,’ said George. ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’

‘I’ve heard that one,’ said Sverre. ‘It has no answer.’

‘I’ll go to work on it,’ said Randstable, happily perplexed.

‘You’ll be wasting your time,’ said Sverre. ‘Now here’s one that does have an answer – when is a first strike not a first strike?’

‘When?’ asked Randstable.

‘When it is an anticipatory retaliation,’ said Sverre.

‘Hmm…’ said Randstable, sucking on his eyeglasses frames. ‘Right. Good.’

Brat’s face had acquired the color and proportions of a ripe tomato. ‘I am told that this Project Citrus carries your authorization, sir,’ he hissed, rapping loudly on the launching pad of his man-portable thermonuclear device, ‘and I wish to register the strongest possible objection!’

A smile stole out from Sverre’s black beard. ‘Those Multiprongs just slow us down, and the sooner Grass replaces them with a hydroponic orchard, the better.’ His eyes were glittery black discs. His nose, a noble pyramid, threw a quarter of his countenance into shadow. ‘What’s the matter, General, don’t you like oranges? The fact is, this war doesn’t interest me much any more, and neither does the United States Navy. Anyone want a drink? We serve gin around here.’

Brat twisted his mouth into the quintessence of contempt. ‘I know your breed, Sverre. You’re one of those renegades, aren’t you? You’ve got your emergency-action message, you’re supposed to take out some targets, and now you’re getting all philosophical or something.’

The captain set out four Styrofoam cups on his writing desk and procured a grungy bottle from his claw-hammer coat. ‘The Brazilian Indians foresaw all this,’ he slurred as he poured. ‘They believed the earth was suspended over a fire, like a chicken on a spit.’ He served the gin, then gestured his three guests onto a sofa with scrolled arms and a rosette that put George in mind of tombstone Design No. 8591. As Brat seethed, Sverre wandered back to his desk and took down a slide projector. ‘Before you start leading a mutiny, General’ – the oak paneling on a bulkhead parted to reveal a screen – ‘I want you to see some damage assessments.’

Flicking a switch, Sverre brought utter darkness to a room that had never seen the sun. He turned on the projector, and a bright wedge of light shot forward, hitting the screen. No specks hovered in the beam; the City of New York was a world without dust. Sverre stood before the rectangle of light, his silhouette gesturing broadly. ‘The transmissions we monitored from the National Command Authority suggest that the Soviet Union started the war. The first evidence reached NORAD via airborne look-down radar. A flurry of Russian Spitball cruise missiles was flying over Canada on a trajectory for Washington. Grounds for preemption, the Joint Chiefs argued. And so a surgical counterforce strike was launched against a few selected Soviet ICBM fields and bomber bases. And so the enemy… shot back.’

The captain went to his desk and, swallowing a mouthful of gin, dropped the first slide into place. ‘These pictures were taken through Periscope Number One’s geosynchronous satellite array.’

‘We worked on that rig,’ said Randstable.

‘Like any global conflict,’ said Sverre, ‘World War Three included many exciting and memorable battles.’ A blur lit the screen. Sverre twisted the projector lens, and a charred crevasse appeared. ‘The Battle of Joplin, Missouri,’ he narrated. He changed slides. A burning field, automobiles lying on their roofs like flipped turtles. ‘The Battle of Dearborn, Michigan,’ said Sverre. New slide. A prairie covered with dark scars. ‘The Battle of Dodge City, Kansas,’ the captain explained. New slide. A stand of blistered trees rising from a swamp. ‘The Battle of Winter Haven, Florida.’ New slide. An ocean of ashes. ‘The Battle of Twin Falls, Idaho.’

Now the images came in rapid fire. Racine: Amarillo. Hagerstown. Bowling Green. Chattanooga. Bangor. Within half an hour Sverre had spun through four circular trays, each holding a hundred and twenty slides.

He shut off the bulb, and the fall of Troy, New York, dissolved into nothingness. The evacuees sat in the thick darkness, drinking. Randstable made a sound like a dog having a nightmare. Brat alternated snorts with coughs. For five minutes not a word was spoken.

‘Just how reliable are these damage assessments?’ an invisible Brat said at last.

‘No doubt there are pockets of survivors,’ said Sverre, ‘and I’m fairly confident that ten or fifteen towns were overlooked.’ The lights came on. ‘But on the whole the post-exchange environment is accurately reflected here.’

‘Yeah? Well, that’s absurd,’ said Brat. ‘The MARCH Plan was chock full of escalation controls.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Randstable. ‘Oh, God. Oh, dear.’ The former whiz kid pulled a small magnetic chess set from his jacket. ‘Quick! Does anybody know a good chess problem? Give me a problem, please, somebody!’

Sverre said, ‘Put eight queens on the board in such a way that none can take another.’

‘Not enough queens,’ wheezed Randstable. ‘Doesn’t matter. I’ve solved it already.’

‘All right. Use all four bishops to—’ Sverre cut himself off, having noticed that Brat’s man-portable thermonuclear device was out of its holster and firmly fixed in the general’s right hand.

‘Captain Sverre, should you disobey my command, I shall exercise my option to fire this missile, thereby airbursting a one-kiloton warhead within ten inches of your body.’ Brat aimed the weapon at Sverre’s stomach. ‘I hereby order you to terminate Project Citrus. I further order you to feed the following strategic enemy targets into your fire-control computers.’ He removed a small key from around his neck and stuck it in the launching pad. ‘The ICBM complex at Novosibirsk, the ICBM complex at Kirensk, the Strategic Rocket Forces headquarters at Kharkov, the warhead factory at Minsk, the central command post at Gorky, the alternate—’

‘We have always been with you,’ interrupted Sverre, his smile ever-growing, his eyes hot and pulsing like those of the vulture George had seen at ground zero, ‘waiting to get in.’

‘I don’t know what school you went to, Captain,’ said Brat, ‘but at the Air Force Academy they teach that winning is better than losing.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Randstable as he set up his chess pieces. ‘Oh, God.’

Sverre placed a bony, weathered hand on George’s shoulder. ‘I think we’ll leave the key strategic decision with Mr Paxton here. Say the word, George, and I’ll send all thirty-six of my Multiprongs, fully armed, against the enemy. A grand-scale one hundred and forty-four megaton retaliatory strike.’