James Morrow - This Is the Way the World Ends

‘Hey, look,’ said Wengernook. ‘It’s the periscope lady.’

‘Somebody that frigid should feel right at home around here,’ said Brat.

‘Why don’t you be quiet?’ hissed George.

After Morning had been sworn in, Bonenfant asked, ‘Are you a war refugee?’

She closed her eyes and said, in a voice George and his spermatids found overwhelmingly sensual, ‘I practiced psychotherapy in Chicago when it existed.’

‘Did you treat the six defendants for survivor’s guilt aboard the City of New York ?’ Bonenfant asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you wish to testify?’

‘I know something that will help Paxton’s case.’

‘Something you learned while treating him?’

George grimaced internally. Nothing makes you as self-conscious, he realized – no magnitude of nakedness or public blunder – as the experience of observing others discuss you.

‘No, my testimony comes from before that time,’ said Morning. ‘Mr Bonenfant, members of the tribunal, let me take you back to the day of Paxton’s rescue. Our submarine lay in Boston Harbor, waiting for the abduction team to return. I trained one of the periscopes on the defendant’s hometown.’

‘Why?’

‘I was trying to spot my new patient.’

‘Did you?’

‘No. I became fascinated by the town itself. I realized that it was about to disappear, and I wanted to see how everyone was spending his time. The people’s faces were tight and grim. They went about their Saturday morning duties – getting their mail, buying their doughnuts – and I could find no joy. This was seven days before Christmas. But then a little girl and her mother came out of a store. The mother carried a bag of groceries. The child had a small plastic snowman in her hands. She was bubbling about it. Her lips said, “You’re going to live on our Christmas tree!” I began feeling much better… and much worse.

‘The warhead was groundburst, and the mother became trapped under a brick wall. Everything was dark. I had to use the infrared. “I’m thirsty,” the woman said. The initial radiation, of course. So the little girl ran into the burning store and came back holding a carton of orange juice. It was hard to tear open. She said – children’s lips are easy to read, they put so much into talking – she said, “Look, Mommy, I opened it! Will this make you better, Mommy?” She nursed her mother with orange juice. “Everything will be all right, Mommy,” the little girl said. The mother closed her eyes – stopped breathing. Then a man who knew the child came along. I think he worked at the bank. He seemed to be sleepwalking. “Is my mommy dead?” the girl asked. “Is my mommy in heaven now?” she wanted to know. The man fell down. The little girl began to cry. “I want my daddy,” she said. A few seconds later, another warhead arrived.

‘And then, the following month, while I was treating the defendant, he showed me his daughter’s nursery school photograph, and I realized who had given the dying woman the orange juice. The point I wish to make, your Honors, is that George Paxton is much more a victim of this war than a perpetrator. His wife and daughter were innocent civilian casualties, and he would have been one too if the prosecution hadn’t pulled his name out of a hat, entrapped him, and brought him to this ridiculous trial. Do you want revenge? Convict him. Justice? Let him go… I shall not answer any further questions, nor shall I submit to cross-examination.’

George’s sobs were slow and regular, like tympani notes at a funeral. Somebody – Brat? Wengernook? – gave his knee a firm, sympathetic squeeze.

‘Mr Aquinas, are you satisfied not to interview this witness?’ Justice Jefferson wanted to know.

‘I would like to ask her one question,’ said the chief prosecutor.

‘All right,’ said Morning. ‘One.’

Aquinas stomped on a WHEN? balloon and approached the stand. ‘As I understand your testimony, Dr Valcourt, you were on the City of New York during the whole of its seven-week passage from the United States to Antarctica. I also understand that, during this time, you engaged George Paxton in an intimate series of psychoanalytic sessions. Assuming that you do not wish to deny these facts, then my question is this – to what extent are you romantically involved with the defendant?’

The unpregnant expectant mother frowned gently and straightened up. ‘I am not now,’ she said, ‘nor have I ever been, romantically involved with the defendant.’

‘The tribunal will hear the closing argument of the prosecution,’ said Shawna Queen Jefferson.

Aquinas rose, approached the bench, and stood silently before the judges.

‘Fifteen billion years ago,’ he began at last, ‘the cosmos came into being. Nobody, even the best of our unadmitted scientists and clerics, quite knows how, or why.’ Looping his arms together behind his back, he paced around the pile of frozen missiles. ‘Later, some three and a half billion years ago, another miracle occurred. On one particular planet, Earth, organic molecules formed. We do not know whether the same miracle happened elsewhere. The opportunities were overwhelmingly for it, the odds overwhelmingly against it.’

‘At this rate he won’t get around to us for a week,’ said Wengernook.

‘Shut up,’ said Overwhite.

‘The organisms evolved,’ said Aquinas. ‘Great apes appeared. Some of these apes were carnivorous, perhaps even cannibalistic. It is probable that the human species branched off from bipedal, small-brained, weapon-wielding primates who were stunningly proficient at murder.’

George noticed that Reverend Sparrow appeared to be suffering from apoplexy.

‘Are we innately aggressive?’ asked Aquinas. ‘Was the nuclear predicament symptomatic of a more profound depravity? Nobody knows. But if this is so – and I suspect that it is – then the responsibility for what we are pleased to call our inhumanity still rests squarely in our blood-soaked hands. The killer-ape hypothesis does not specify a fate – it lays out an agenda. Beware, the fable warns. Caution. Trouble ahead. Genocidal weapons in the hands of creatures who are bored by peace.’

‘I think I’m going to throw up,’ said Brat.

‘But the fable went unheeded. And the weapons, unchecked. And then, one cold Christmas season, death came to an admirable species – a species that wrote symphonies and sired Leonardo da Vinci and would have gone to the stars. It did not have to be this way. Three virtues only were needed – creative diplomacy, technical ingenuity, and moral outrage. But the greatest of these is moral outrage.’

‘Self-righteous slop, you needed that too,’ said Brat.

‘You needed a trough of it,’ said Wengernook.

‘Shut up,’ said Overwhite.

‘For the past twenty days the walls of this sacred palace have enclosed a curious world,’ said Aquinas. ‘A world where peril is called security, destruction is called strategy, offense is called defense, enlightened self-interest is called appeasement, and machines of chaos and ecological horror are called weapons.’

‘And kangaroo courts are called tribunals,’ said Brat.

‘It is the world of Major General Roger Tarmac, the MARCH Hare, who believed that his Holy Triad meant salvation for America. In the name of the Bombers, and of the Subs, and of the Land-Based Missiles – Amen! It is the world of Brian Overwhite, the weapons industry’s favorite arms controller, who never in his entire career denied the Pentagon a system it really wanted. It is the world of William Randstable, the doomsday doctor, whose smart warhead was just one more bullet in the revolver with which humanity played, you should forgive the expression, Russian roulette. It is the world of Peter Sparrow, the Ezekiel of the airwaves, who wanted America to demonstrate her moral superiority over her adversary by becoming just like her adversary, adopting the economy and mentality of a garrison state. It is the world of Robert Wengernook, the auditor of acceptable losses, who forgot that a species as inquisitive as Homo sapiens cannot draw up plans for a war, even a war of extinction, without eventually needing to find out how well they work. And it is the world of George Paxton, citizen, perhaps the most guilty of all. Every night, this man went to bed knowing that the human race was pointing nuclear weapons at itself. Every morning, he woke up knowing that the weapons were still there. And yet he never took a single step to relieve the threat.’