James Morrow - This Is the Way the World Ends

The solution to the dilemma came from George’s Aunt Isabel. ‘Daddy would want us to celebrate,’ she asserted. ‘Daddy would be angry at us if we didn’t have a good time,’ she insisted.

The picnic happened, and with a vengeance. Horseshoes flew, beer flowed, banjos sang, chickens vanished without a trace, blueberry pies were reported missing in action, and rockets glared redly over Fort McHenry. Everyone agreed that Aunt Isabel had made the right decision.

And so it was that whenever Chief Petty Officer Rush brought the dinner menu around, George always checked off the most opulent and sauce-laden dishes. He began frequenting the Silver Dollar Casino, making wild, Scotch-inspired bets at the blackjack table. The invitation to Captain Sverre’s banquet sent waves of joyous anticipation – food! coffee! dessert! – through his body.

‘Your species would want you to celebrate,’ he told himself. ‘Your species would be angry at you if you didn’t have a good time,’ he decided.

Swathed in velvet drapes, lit by crystal chandeliers, the main mess hall of the City of New York proved just how tasteful and sophisticated defense spending could be. The banquet itself, by contrast, followed the gaudy lines of Imperial Rome, with an eye to Babylon and a nod to Gomorrah – gold plates, bejeweled goblets. The tablecloth was thick enough to blot a liter of priceless wine without leaving a drop. The serving staff – a dozen seamen and noncorns – patrolled the borders in their dress blues, pushing carts brimming with slabs of ham, planks of beef, heaps of bread, cauldrons of soup, and pots of satiny black coffee.

Ceramic dolphins held the place cards. George ended up between Overwhite and Reverend Sparrow – in the crossfire of a debate over the STABLE II treaty. (Evidently one of Sparrow’s broadcasts had figured decisively in the US Senate’s decision not to ratify this agreement.) Sadness and confusion enveloped his friends like gray scopas suits – the human extinction was not sitting well with them. Wengernook sucked on an unlit cigarette. Randstable built strange perpetual-motion devices out of the silverware and then knocked them over. Brat was down to about a hundred and thirty pounds. Overwhite’s beard looked mangy. Sparrow’s voluminous smile had wilted. They should all go see Mrs Covington, George decided. They should find out about their futures.

At the far end of the table Captain Sverre spoke with a civilian, a small, raffish fellow who managed to look youthful and eminent at the same time. Between remarks they stuffed themselves in gluttonous rivalry, Sverre favoring ham, the young man specializing in roast beef. Sverre’s gin bottle sat faithfully at his elbow. Gravy stains bloomed on the young man’s dark suit.

Brat was saying, ‘Personally, I think this race-loss business has been exaggerated. Psychotherapists like to be dramatic.’

Wengernook nodded in agreement. ‘The earth is really much more resilient than those periscope views suggest.’

The serving staff was well-meaning but graceless, dumping food on the table as if shoveling coal into the furnace of a tramp steamer. Champagne came forth in torrents. George drank enough to put music in the air and a pleasant buzz between his ears.

He had to admit it – Morning had not taken to the Aubrey Paxton idea with great enthusiasm. Just remember, he told himself, it’s a big step for a woman, having a kid, restarting a species. You must let the idea grow on her.

‘They don’t run very good movies on this ship,’ said Reverend Sparrow. ‘ War and Peace , what a boring mess.’

‘What should they run, your old TV shows?’ sneered Overwhite.

‘Ever see King of Kings ?’ said Sparrow. ‘It’s wonderful the way Orson Welles pronounces the T in “apostles.”’ He placed George’s shoulder in a warm grip. ‘I’m still praying for you.’

‘That’s nice,’ said George.

As soon as dessert arrived – the evacuees could corrupt themselves with either German chocolate cake or lemon meringue pie – Sverre drew a carving knife from a ham and clanked it against his water glass. All eyes shot toward him. The serving staff scurried out of the hall.

‘Antarctica,’ whispered Randstable. ‘He’s going to tell us about Antarctica.’

‘Tonight’s banquet was advertised as a celebration,’ the captain began. ‘Dr Valcourt reports that, when we dock at McMurdo Station, six rational and competent survivors will disembark. We are here to rejoice in your cure. You have looked extinction in the face and lived. Operation Erebus will succeed.’

He set the carving knife on a linen napkin, poured gin into a gold goblet, drank.

‘Extinction. Such a sterile word, so Latin. What does it mean? When you kill a species, good guests, you do not simply kill its current members, you also kill the generation that lies dormant in its germ cells – and, thus, the generation that the descendants of those germ cells would have made, and the next generation, and the next. Extinction is an endless crime, quietly slaughtering all the lives that would have been. The human birth canal is the only way into human existence, gentlemen. There is no other port of entry.’

‘What is this guy, one of those warrior intellectuals?’ whispered Wengernook.

‘Lawrence of Arabia joins the Navy,’ said Brat.

Sverre took off his claw-hammer coat, tossed it on the floor, and rolled up his shirt sleeve.

‘At a certain moment in the great nuclear arms race, it became common knowledge that an extinction was in the offing. The universe trembled with the news. Your species mattered, gentlemen – more than you knew. The planets reeled, the trees wept, the rocks cried out. But from which place did the greatest anger issue? From the place that keeps my kind. We have always been with you, waiting to get in… and now the door has been shut.’

‘That keeps his what ?’ said Brat.

‘His kind,’ said Overwhite.

‘Oh God,’ said Randstable.

‘Shut,’ repeated Sverre.

George’s bullet wound began to throb. Waiting to get in…

‘So great was our anger that, shortly before the war, we achieved a tenuous hold on life,’ said Sverre. ‘We even managed to insert ourselves into your affairs.’

‘Do any of you know what he’s talking about?’ said Brat.

‘Oh, dear, I think so,’ said Randstable. ‘Oh, God.’

Sverre picked up the knife, which was long and shiny with fat. What happened next would visit George’s dreams for many nights to come. Slowly, wincingly, Sverre opened his arm. Arteries came asunder. Muscles perished. A lustrous black liquid spurted from the wound, as if someone had drilled for, and found, oil in his flesh. A sulphurous odor rushed out. Once on the tablecloth, the blood did not die, but collected itself into a viscous lump. The lump became a small, screaming, human head with a face that bore a disquieting resemblance to Sverre’s.

‘We are the inheritors who can never take title,’ said the bleeding captain. ‘We are the darkblood multitudes whose ancestors were exterminated before they could sire us,’ asserted the pilot of the City of New York .

He sat down, pressed a napkin against his wound, and anesthetized himself with gin. The blood-head dissolved into a puddle.

‘We are the unadmitted,’ said Lieutenant Commander Olaf Sverre of the United States Navy.

Nuclear war entails many surprising effects. George had learned this from his therapist. The unadmitted…

Overwhite’s lips encircled words he could not voice. Brat looked dredged in flour. Wengernook tore the unlit cigarette from his mouth and eviscerated it. An aura of wrath surrounded Reverend Sparrow. ‘Foul wizard!’ he cried. ‘“But the abominable and sorcerers shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire!”’ he quoted.