This is the Way the World Ends

by James Morrow

  “You can joke about it, Prosecutor, but a vulnerable land-based force is no laughing matter.”

  Aquinas assumed a posture of dismay. “But didn’t the Triad, being so redundant, allow for vulnerabilities to emerge from time to time?”

  “We had a serious parity problem when it came to land-based missiles,” answered Brat. “We needed the Omegas.”

  “Are you saying that the Triad was ill-conceived, and America should have been mimicking Communist strategy instead?”

  “No, I’m saying that the Russians had more land-based missiles than we did. Why is that so hard to understand?”

  “And you really believed they were about to take out your own fixed ICBMs in a nuclear Pearl Harbor?”

  “This was on the low end of the probability curve, but we were still worried.”

  “And, before the Omega program, the Soviets could have expected to get away with such an attack?”

  “Right.”

  “After which you would have to surrender?”

  Brat gulped down his annoyance. “Yes.”

  “Why?” asked Aquinas.

  “We would have been disarmed.”

  “Couldn’t the American President have used the two surviving legs to disarm the Soviets in turn?”

  “Be logical. If the SS-60s have already hit us, then their silos are empty.”

  “So you have to surrender?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I just explained that. We’ve been disarmed.”

  “So have the Soviets. You just explained that, too.”

  “They’ve probably kept a reserve force,” Brat noted.

  “Then you could retaliate,” Aquinas replied.

  “No. The enemy would protect the reserve.”

  “How?”

  “By launching it.”

  “So you have to surrender?”

  “Yes!”

  “Why?”

  “How many times do I have to say it?” Brat snapped an icicle off the stand and crushed it. “We’ve been disarmed! Can’t you grasp the most elementary piece of strategic doctrine?”

  “Suppose that, instead of surrendering, the President ordered the strategic submarine fleet to destroy Soviet society?”

  “No President would answer a surgical strike with an all-out attack. That’s jumping far too many rungs on the escalation ladder.”

  “How many American civilians would have been killed in this surgical strike?”

  “Worst-case scenario is twenty-five million.”

  “Might not a President mistake such slaughter for an all-out attack?”

  “Not if he was willing to calm down for a minute and look at how those casualties occurred.”

  The interview continued in this manner for over an hour, interrupted by a recess for a box lunch of hardboiled penguin eggs and blubber sandwiches, until Aquinas suddenly asked, “Wasn’t Omega in fact a first-strike weapon, General Tarmac?”

  “No,” Brat replied.

  “What was it?”

  “It was a functional and credible second-strike retaliatory deterrent.”

  “A sure-fire deterrent?”

  “A functional and credible second-strike—”

  “No further questions,” grunted the chief prosecutor, lurching away from the stand in a spasm of exasperation.

  Brat rose, folding his arms across his chest. The interview seemed to have bestowed about twenty pounds on him. He sauntered back to the booth and asked, “So—how’d I do?”

  “Academy Award time,” said Wengernook.

  “Hope I come off half as well,” said Randstable, putting himself in check.

  “I hadn’t realized that forces that cannot win cannot deter,” said George.

  Overwhite was next on the stand. The oil lamps sprinkled flecks of bronze onto his snowy beard as he narrated his life’s story—the Foreign Service, the Diplomatic Corps, the State Department, and, finally, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. To George, Overwhite still seemed like a windbag, but he was obviously a resourceful and intelligent one, a windbag woven of the finest material.

  “Two treaties that you helped negotiate have been read into the record by the prosecution,” said Bonenfant. “Evidently my learned opponent feels that your efforts did not go far enough.”

  “I can see Mr. Aquinas’s point of view,” replied Overwhite, examining himself for jaw tumors. “However, let me remind the tribunal that general and complete disarmament was always the stated goal of my agency. Unfortunately, the massive Soviet buildup made this impossible in our time.”

  “But your achievements were still impressive.”

  “Any man would be proud to have on his tombstone, ‘He negotiated STABLE I and STABLE II.’”

  Design No. 4015, thought George. Vermont blue-gray.

  After reviewing the details of both STABLE agreements, Bonenfant concluded that, “We might well have introduced them as exhibits for the defense.”

  Overwhite agreed.

  Bonenfant said, “Critics have charged that the STABLE treaties allowed the US military too much latitude with multiple warheads and cruise missiles.”

  “I can understand that sentiment,” said Overwhite. “However, you should always remember that new systems become bargaining chips when you sit down at the negotiating table. They force the Soviets to get serious about reductions.”

  “Excuse me,” said Justice Wojciechowski. “You seem to be saying that by declining to regulate particular weapons, you were serving the cause of arms control.”

  “My point is that technical innovation has diplomatic as well as military benefits.”

  Bonenfant asked, “In retrospect, Mr. Overwhite, could your agency have done anything more to prevent the recent war?”

  “If we knew for a fact that it was coming—yes, we would probably have pressed for certain confidence-building measures. For example, the hotline between Washington and Moscow badly needed upgrading.”

  “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. “Interface 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.

  “Exactly. Now as you can see, ever since the early sixties, megatonnage has steadily decreased in both America and the Soviet Union.”

  “How did your guidance device work?”

  The years dropped from Randstable like a heavy overcoat. He was Willie the Wunderkind again. “The basic unit was a beryllium ball chock full of gyros and accelerometers,” he said with the zest of a boy discussing electric trains. “Now, my idea was to float the thing inside another ball filled with a nonconducting liquid having neutral buoyancy. Presto! All during flight, the gyros keep warm and steady in their hydrocarbon bath. A human embryo is protected in much the same way.”

  “You also supervised the Smart Warheads Project.”

  “This approach allowed even greater targeting precision. Each warhead got its own personal computer, right? It could then compare, pixel by pixel, a radar picture of the target terrain with a stored reference image.”

  George liked the word pixel. It sounded like something an elf would use for self-gratification.

  “Did Sugar Brook develop the ground-launched Homing Hawk ballistic missile interceptor?” Bonenfant asked.

  “Yes,” said Randstable.

  George remembered that he had been planning to tell Holly a story about an elf who casts a golden shadow.

  “I guess it was a great day when you proved that a Homing Hawk could destroy an incoming warhead,” said Bonenfant.

  “We broke out the champagne and got a little bombed.”

  “Your Homing Hawk was actually a forerunner of the space-based defenses Mr. Seabird praised so lavishly in his testimony on Einstein VI.”

  “I guess it was.”

  “You must feel good about that.”

  “I feel good about all of Sugar Brook’s accomplishments.”

  “The prosecution, I am sure, will suggest that Sugar Brook was a dealer in the death trade, a cornucopia of demonic devices…I apologize if I’m stealing your rhetoric, Mr. Aquinas.”

  “That’s quite all right,” said the chief prosecutor.

&n
bsp; “What business were you really in, Dr. Randstable?”

  “The business of making nuclear weapons obsolete.”

  “No further questions.”

  Bonenfant danced merrily back to the defense table.

  “That was good, when he mentioned making them more accurate,” said Brat.

  “The part about making them obsolete, that was good too,” said George.

  After removing his right glove, Aquinas ran an extended index finger along the comforting decline on the sealskin graph. “An impressive picture.”

  “I think so,” said Randstable.

  “Do you truly believe that the megatonnage would have just kept dropping?” the chief prosecutor asked.

  “I do.”

  “Down past the extinction threshold?”

  “That’s what our extrapolations suggested.”

  “There’s another side to this accuracy business, isn’t there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As missiles become more accurate, they also become more usable.”

  “Yes, but if you ever get to that, it’s better to have usable missiles than unusable ones.”

  “Dr. Randstable, wasn’t it rather bizarre to be perfecting all these clever technologies knowing that their purpose was essentially psychological—that if they were actually fired, then the world would be better off if they didn’t work?”

  “Pessimism had no place at Sugar Brook.”

  “Tell me honestly, did you ever pretend that a missile had been successfully tested even though it had gone down in flames?”

  “No.”

  “I mean, so long as the Soviets believed the thing worked, its deterrent value remained the same. We could have built our whole arsenal out of uncooked spaghetti, right?”

  “My client has already answered that question,” said Bonenfant, rising.

  “Let it go, Mr. Aquinas,” said Justice Jefferson.

  When George glanced toward the gallery, he saw that several spectators had opened their veins with razor blades. The steaming blood spelled out SMART WARHEADS ARE A STUPID IDEA in tall, dripping characters.

  “You must have been happy when Sugar Brook became the prime contractor for the Homing Hawk interceptor,” said Aquinas.

  “Well, sure. I mean, we were in this life-and-death struggle with Winco Associates and General Heuristics.”