James Morrow - This Is the Way the World Ends

‘Provided that the conservation of electric charge and the balance between particles and antiparticles are obeyed,’ said Randstable, ‘there is nothing to stop a lot of molecules, even organic molecules, from materializing and then combining into lifeforms… er, assuming that the discrepancy is never noticed, of course.’

‘And if the discrepancy is noticed?’ asked Wengernook.

‘The molecules disappear, naturally,’ said Randstable.

‘But we did notice,’ said Brat. ‘And the zombies are still around.’

‘That’s got me stumped too,”’ said Randstable.

‘Know what I think, William?’ said Wengernook. ‘I think you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

‘I wonder if we’ll get a fair trial,’ said George.

‘I wonder if wishes are horses,’ said Brat. He tried to shuffle, made a mess of it. ‘Believe me, fellas, the whole thing is a sham, like those show trials of Stalin’s. Our best chance would be a prison break.’

‘My father was a lawyer,’ said Wengernook. ‘All those counts against us – it’s what you call a retroactive indictment. We didn’t violate any laws, so they had to go out and invent some, ex post facto . If Bonenfant knows his stuff, he’ll get the case dismissed for lack of precedents.’

‘Maybe we should testify,’ said Overwhite. He checked himself for jaw tumors. ‘I see their point of view, more or less.’

‘Hell, Brian, they’re a bunch of hanging judges,’ said Brat. ‘This is vigilante vengeance. Don’t you understand?’

‘I think we owe them something,’ said Overwhite.

‘We owe them nothing,’ said Brat.

‘We owe them an explanation,’ insisted Overwhite.

‘We’re innocent,’ said Wengernook.

‘They’re more innocent,’ said Overwhite.

‘If I was in their shoes,’ said George, ‘I’d be curious about a lot of things too.’

She was not in her office. She was not in the skating rink. The bowling alley held no trace of her. The movie theater was empty.

He stayed for the feature, Panic in the Year Zero . In this low-budget melodrama from American International, Ray Milland survived a thermonuclear holocaust by driving into the country in a car full of groceries.

He went to the library. Morning was not there. He found a college biology text, leafed through it. The section on the male reproductive system was surprisingly detailed and frank. A gonad appeared in cross-section. Explicit drawings depicted the seminiferous tubules , the spermatids , the spermatogonia , and the spermatocytes . ‘Your secondary spermatocytes are failing to become spermatids,’ Dr Brust had told him. He closed the book and smiled with satisfaction. When I get to the marble city, he thought, I’ll be able to tell them exactly what needs doing…

He decided to try Lieutenant Grass’s hydroponic orange grove. Perhaps she liked oranges.

A fruity scent throbbed through the missile compartment as he slipped into Tube Sixteen. The tree looked vigorous and fecund. He grabbed an orange, tore it from the branch. Succulent. Perfect. Were oranges now extinct? Had unadmitted orange trees been permitted a fleeting tenure on the earth?

He left Tube Sixteen and, sitting down on the cold steel deck, began his vigil. In his mind the portrait of his latent family multiplied into an entire museum. He saw himself walking along a bright corridor, sun-washed windows on one side, paintings on the other. He paused before Morning in a wedding dress – at least, it was probably Morning, though it also looked a bit like Justine. The signature was Leonardo’s. Next he inspected a mental painting of himself and Morning making love, brewing the next generation. Oh, how he missed sex, how he hated subsisting on onanism. (We must never be seen together… I’ll be gone from your life.)

International Military and Civilian Tribunal: phooey. International Kangaroo Court. Yes, Brat had his faults, he was too hasty with his man-portable thermonuclear device, and he hadn’t understood that a nation that doesn’t exist doesn’t need to defend itself, but this ‘crimes against the future’ stuff was really stretching it. Overwhite? A windbag, sure, but not a dangerous man. Randstable? He could barely walk across a room. Wengernook? He cheated at poker, but that was about it. Reverend Sparrow? Come off it. No, not one of George’s new friends deserved to be in this jam.

A hideous odor cut into his thoughts. He stood up, peered around Tube Sixteen. A young civilian reminiscent of Martin Bonenfant, but with blond hair and a baby-pink complexion, crouched in the middle of the compartment, opening a hatch in the floor. He wore a business suit. The stench evidently traced to the duffel bag on his shoulder.

The intruder disappeared through the hatch. Creeping forward, George followed him down.

A dark, mucosal passageway lay under the missile compartment. It might have been tunneled out by a large earthworm. (Were there unadmitted worms in the world?) The young man stepped into an alcove bathed in a sallow light of uncertain origin. Rusty iron rods went floor to ceiling, turning the alcove into a cage. Inside, a trapped bird the size of a pterodactyl snorted and squirmed.

George thought perhaps he was again seeing Mrs Covington’s magic lantern show. But no, this vulture – his vulture, as Morning would have it – was alive, as alive as eaters of the dead ever get. It looked exactly as it had at ground zero – tattered wings, rancid eyes, steam-shovel beak, broken posture. And Morning had assumed it was a hallucination. Hah…

The vulture’s young keeper pulled a penguin carcass from the bag. He looked foolish standing there in his business suit, holding carrion. He pushed the penguin between the bars. The vulture pinned it against the floor with its claw, tore it to pieces, feasted noisily. The keeper winced and gagged, unable to constrain his disgust.

Sneaking back down the passageway, George began to tremble. My family is dead, my planet is dead, my gonads are dead, I’m a prisoner of the murdered future, I’m going to be hanged for a crime I didn’t commit, there’s a vulture on the submarine, a real vulture, a huge crazy real vulture… He climbed to the missile deck. A species without males – that’s what the ancient Egyptians believed, according to Morning. Inseminated by the winds.

It occurred to him that he knew nothing about Morning’s religious convictions. On Sunday he went to church, hoping she might show up.

The City of New York ’s chapel was an all-purpose facility, with missals and icons suited to almost any sacramental need a sailor in the US Navy might have. George sat in the back pew along with the Presbyterian Brat, the Lutheran Wengernook, and three noncommissioned officers of indeterminate denomination. Ship’s Chaplain was a lieutenant named Owen Soapstone. George felt at home in Soapstone’s flock, for had the chaplain been born, he would have followed up his navy stint with a long career as a Unitarian minister. He mounted the pulpit and opened an Unadmitted Bible. A respectful hush settled over the congregation.

‘In the end Humankind destroyed the heaven and the earth,’ Soapstone began.

‘Oh, boy,’ said Brat.

‘One-track minds,’ said Wengernook.

‘And Humankind said, “Let there be security,” and there was security. And Humankind tested the security, that it would detonate. And Humankind divided the U-235 from the U-238. And the evening and the morning were the first strike.’ Soapstone looked up from the book. ‘Some commentators feel that the author should have inserted, “And Humankind saw the security, that it was evil.” Others point out that such a view was not universally shared.’