James Morrow - This Is the Way the World Ends

‘Well, nobody can blame you for not owning a crystal ball.’

‘I would have trouble empathizing with such an attitude.’

‘No further questions.’ Returning to the defense table, Bonenfant sniffed emphatically, as if his nose could barely accommodate all the victory it sensed in the sub-zero air.

‘Why does not regulating weapons serve the cause of arms control?’ George asked Brat.

‘Brian just explained that,’ the general replied.

‘This trial must be pretty boring for a guy like you,’ said Wengernook.

‘I’m not bored,’ said George.

The chief prosecutor approached the stand carrying a slab of ice under his arm. ‘Mr Overwhite, if complete disarmament was so dear to your agency’s heart, why didn’t you ever propose an abolition treaty?’

‘Well, as soon as you entertain radical proposals, you run into horrendous problems deciding which technologies to ban and which to allow. Take delivery systems…’

‘Why are delivery systems hard to negotiate?’ Aquinas knitted his momentous brow.

‘Because as warheads get smaller, almost anything can be a delivery system. A Wasp-13 manned bomber is obviously a delivery system, but what about a Piper Cub? What about a hot air balloon?’

‘So you never eliminated any missiles or bombers because you couldn’t tell them from hot air balloons?’

‘I’m saying it’s a real pain arriving at certain definitions.’

‘It’s a real pain having your face burned off, too.’

Bonenfant rose. ‘Your Honors, might we declare a moratorium on cheap shots?’

‘The court was not amused by that last remark, Mr Aquinas,’ said Justice Jefferson.

Aquinas made a modest bow and renewed the examination. ‘STABLE I dealt with missile launchers, right? Each side was granted eight hundred fifty-six submarine tubes and eleven hundred seventy-five hardened silos.’

‘Those were the limits.’

‘They don’t sound very limiting.’

‘If you let the numbers get too Spartan, Mr Aquinas, you increase the temptation to strike first.’

‘So it was inconceivable that you would ever negotiate the launchers down to zero?’

‘We felt it best to err on the side of safety.’

Aquinas held a seal-oil lamp near his ice slab. Graphs and statistics danced in the spectral glow. ‘STABLE II addressed the bombs themselves…’

‘We put ceilings on fractionation – twelve warheads per missile.’

‘According to my arithmetic, the number of warheads on both sides increased dramatically after STABLE II.’

‘But each missile carried only a dozen.’

‘Mr Overwhite, did you ever tell a Time magazine reporter, quote, “We must not saddle the economy with agreements negotiated just to impress the public”?’

‘I was thinking of those men who wouldn’t be showing up for work if, say, the Omega program were suddenly canceled,’ Overwhite knocked frost from his beard. ‘We had to keep the arms control process from, you know…’

‘Escalating?’

‘Falling prey to special interests.’

‘Let’s talk about bargaining chips.’

‘Very well.’

‘Could you please name three fully developed offensive weapon systems that your team relinquished at the negotiating table in exchange for concessions by the Soviets?’

‘We were always retiring bombs and missiles as they became obsolete.’

‘That’s not the question. I want you to name three systems that were bargained away.’

‘I can’t think of three off hand.’

‘Can you name two?’

‘Not two exactly, no.’

‘Can you name one?’

‘Well, as you can readily imagine, once a new weapon is actually in production, it becomes more valuable as a deterrent than as a chip.’

‘Mr Overwhite, it seems to me that, when all is said and done, you and the arms builders were really in the same line of work.’

‘Your bitterness is quite understandable, Mr Aquinas. Your conclusion, however, is not.’

The chief prosecutor shuddered theatrically and told the court that he had no more questions.

‘That was an excellent point about general and complete disarmament,’ said Randstable, tipping over his king to concede defeat to himself.

‘He was in charge all the way,’ said Wengernook.

From the gallery a red-faced old man called, ‘Hey, Overwhite, here’s a weapon for you to control!’ He stood up and hurled an icicle shaped like an independently targetable warhead. The malicious little cone zoomed through the frosty air, missing the negotiator’s head by an inch.

That was uncalled for, George decided.

The next morning the court heard the autobiography of Dr William Randstable, who had worn almost as many hats in his life as there were in Theophilus Carter’s inventory. Chess prodigy. Inventor of the popular computer game Launch on Warning (the royalties had put him through M.I.T.). Author of the bestselling science fiction novel, The Dark Side of the Sun . Youngest whiz kid at the think tank known as Lumen Corporation. Head of the Missile Accuracy Division at Sugar Brook National Laboratory.

‘I’m impressed already,’ said Wengernook.

‘They don’t hang guys like this,’ said Brat.

‘I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be smart,’ said George.

Randstable finished explaining how he had checkmated a Russian grand master who was also a KGB agent.

Bonenfant said, ‘Now during your early days at the Lumen think tank, you—’

‘Think tank – is that a kind of weapon?’ asked Justice Yoshinobu.

‘No, not a weapon, your Honor,’ said Randstable.

‘I picture a Sherman tank with a disembodied human brain inside,’ said the judge.

‘That’s actually an interesting idea…’ Randstable pulled off his horn-rimmed glasses and chewed contemplatively on the ear piece. ‘The electroneural interface would be the trickiest—’

‘The what?’ asked Justice Gioberti.

‘Wetware modem,’ said Randstable. ‘Inter face is, now that I think about it, a misnomer, since you’d be removing the cranium and stripping out the eyes, nose, and other material.’ He elaborated for several minutes, until Justice Wojciechowski interrupted to remind him that he was on trial for his life. ‘Oh, sorry,’ said the former whiz kid, ‘Excuse me.’

‘Tell us something about Lumen,’ said Bonenfant.

‘Our group analyzed the logical difficulties raised by the superpower arsenals. The epistemological pitfalls of assured destruction, for example, or the tautologies encountered while climbing the ladder of escalation.’

‘What did you do about these problems?’ asked Justice Gioberti.

‘We thought about them.’

‘A nerve-wracking job, I imagine,’ said Bonenfant.

‘God, yes. When Sugar Brook Lab made me an offer, I jumped at it.’

‘I believe you directed their Inertial Guidance Project.’

‘Whenever a nuclear missile came my way, I made it more accurate.’

‘How accurate?’

‘Imagine Robin Hood standing in Nottingham Square and shooting the apple off William Tell’s kid in Switzerland.’

Bonenfant issued a slow-motion smile. ‘What was the ultimate result of inertial guidance?’

‘A safer world,’ said Randstable.

‘A safer world?’

‘Sounds paradoxical, huh? But when you know for sure you can stand on the old pitcher’s mound and throw a strike – that is, when you’re certain of taking out any given silo or command post – the amount of overkill you need goes way, way down.’

The chief counsel handed his client a large piece of sealskin framed in bone. Two line graphs were painted on one side of the membrane. ‘So as missiles become more accurate, they become less destructive?’ Bonenfant asked.