This is the Way the World Ends

by James Morrow

  “Two,” said Overwhite.

  “We should be glad,” said Brat. “It’s a good sign when a jury is out for a long time.”

  “That’s just in the movies,” said Wengernook.

  “There is no jury,” said Overwhite.

  “There are no movies,” said George.

  “Raise,” said Brat.

  JUSTICES TO ANNOUNCE VERDICT TODAY, said Mount Christ-church.

  The final week of school, the final day of a summer by the sea, the final hour of a long train trip—George could recall all of these experiences. In each case the space in question had changed, abandoning him even as he attempted to abandon it. For nearly a month the Ice Palace of Justice had been his home, but now it was regaining the aloofness and unfamiliarity it had worn on the first day.

  The judges entered slowly, their black robes soaking up the oily gloom, each wearing a face that could have bluffed its way through a thousand losing poker hands. Shawna Queen Jefferson, who carried a ream of paper and a biography of Abraham Lincoln in her arms, was mumbling to herself. Theresa Gioberti seemed worried, Jan Wojciechowski bemused, Kamo Yoshinobu sad.

  They sat down.

  The cold, muffled stillness of a planetarium seeped through the palace. George scanned the gallery—the faces, the signs. Yes, there she was, between LET US IN and GIVE THEM A VOICE: Aubrey’s mother. His spermatids longed for the South Pole and the strength they knew they would find there.

  At the defense table Bonenfant, Dennie, and Parkman held hands.

  Justice Jefferson took her whalebone glasses from her scopas suit and put them on. She spread out the papers, selected one.

  “I shall begin by stating that, in the opinion of the tribunal, the doctrine of armed deterrence remains vigorous, credible, and intact.”

  A vast and spontaneous “NO!” thundered down from the gallery. The judge smashed her gavel into the bench, launching a spray of ice chips.

  “Even while undergoing certain disturbing variations during the last administration, the armed-deterrence doctrine continued to boast such resilience that it could be used to make as good a case for expanding America’s thermonuclear arsenal as for scaling it down.”

  A smile jumped onto Dennie’s impossibly pretty face.

  “Hot damn!” said Wengernook.

  “Guys, we brought it off,” said Brat.

  “All they wanted was an explanation,” said Overwhite.

  “We agree with Mr. Bonenfant that armed deterrence might have lasted until the nuclear powers grew tired of maintaining their pointless stockpiles, subsequently scrapping them,” said Shawna Queen Jefferson. “And we agree with the defendant Randstable that the warheads might also have disappeared through a kind of technological evolution.”

  When the groans and catcalls finally subsided, the judge continued.

  “In his closing argument the chief counsel put a crucial question to us. What would we have done in his clients” place? A fair question. A tormenting question…

  “Oddly enough, Mr. Aquinas miscalculated when he introduced his scale-model weapons as evidence for the prosecution. For we learned that, whether carved from ice or from metal, such technology has a fearsome glamor. We found ourselves saying, ‘Yes, yes, give us these sensual missiles, these steel boats, these wondrous planes, these high-IQ warheads. Give us these things, and no one will ever dare to attack us.’ So we too would have wanted that Triad, in all its completeness and power.”

  Randstable and Wengernook exchanged thumbs-up signals. Transcending their differences over STABLE II, Overwhite and Sparrow embraced. Brat offered his bony right hand to George; the tomb inscriber shook it.

  And then, after taking a drink of cocoa, Shawna Queen Jefferson removed her glasses and slammed them klack against the bench. “It is not we four judges who are on trial here, however,” she said swiftly, tersely. “It is you six defendants,” she added. “Thank God,” sighed the president of the court.

  She opened her Lincoln biography and, moistening her black thumb with a pink tongue, flipped back several pages. “In a message to Congress on December 1, 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote, ‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves…’” She slammed the book shut. “Gentlemen in the dock, you know as well as I that the vast record assembled in this courtroom admits of but one interpretation. It is true that your crimes had the outward appearance of legality. It is true that you committed them under conditions that made it difficult for you to feel you were doing wrong. It is even true that you tried to limit their essentially illimitable implications.

  “But you did not rise with the occasion. You did not think anew. You did not disenthrall yourselves…And you failed to reckon on the vulture.

  “There will always be a vulture, gentlemen. History is full of vultures. When you booby-trap an entire planet, you cannot cry ‘Non mea culpa!’ if some faulty computer chip, misfiled war game, nuclear terrorist, would-be Napoleon, unmanageable crisis, or incomprehensible event pulls the tripwire. You cannot say that you were simply obeying your constituents or leaders. To quote Hannah Arendt, ‘Politics is not like the nursery. In politics, obedience and support are the same.’”

  Bonenfant was shivering as if his scopas suit had ceased to function. Dennie’s exquisite face had turned ugly with anger and frustration.

  “Support,” repeated Justice Jefferson. “There is where your guilt lies. For when all is said and done, what remains is this. Each of you in his own way encouraged his government to cultivate a technology of mass murder, and, by extension, each of you supported a policy of mass murder.”

  George looked at Morning and realized that he had never before seen anyone weeping at a distance. He felt his spermatids shaking with dread.

  “Speaking personally,” Justice Jefferson continued, “I would like nothing better than to say, ‘Gentlemen, there has been enough slaughter already, and we have decided to answer your crimes with love. You are free to leave this courtroom and survive as best you can here in Antarctica.’” She bent her head for a moment. When she looked up, tears were poised on her eyelids. “But I cannot say that, for the tribunal’s duty at this moment is to tell all creation that we loathe what you did, and we know only one way to accomplish this.”

  Parkman left the defense table and, throwing up his hands in a gesture of contempt, stalked out of the courtroom.

  “The defendant Overwhite will please rise,” said Justice Wojciechowski. “Mr. Brian Overwhite, the court finds you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.”

  “I thought you just wanted an explanation,” Overwhite sputtered.

  “The defendant Randstable will please rise,” said Justice Yoshinobu. “Dr. William Randstable, the court finds you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.”

  “If I may say so, your Honors, that is the poorest decision I have ever heard,” responded the former whiz kid.

  “The defendant Sparrow will please rise,” said Justice Gioberti. “Reverend Peter Sparrow, the court finds you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.”

  The evangelist pulled the little Bible from his three-piece suit and kissed it. “I am with you always,” he said with great dignity, “even unto the end of the world.”

  “The defendant Tarmac will please rise,” said Justice Wojciechowski.

  “There’s a pattern developing here,” muttered the MARCH Hare.

  “Major General Roger Tarmac, the court finds you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.” Brat pantomimed his opinion that Justice Wojciechowski should be subjected to an involuntary and unpleasant sexual experience.

  “The defendant Wengernook will please rise,” said Justice Yoshinobu.

  The assistant defense secretary
did not move. His eyes looked packed in wax. His hands vibrated like chilly tarantulas. Gila Guizot entered the glass booth and hauled him to his feet.

  “Mr. Robert Wengernook, the court finds you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.”

  Gila repositioned the defendant in his chair.

  Brat is right, thought George. A pattern is developing here. But not for me. My luck is too good. Cancer? Nah, it’s only scar tissue, the family doctor had said. Yes, I’ll marry you, Justine had said. Sure, I’ll give you a job, Arthur Crippen had said.

  “The defendant Paxton will please rise,” said Justice Jefferson.

  I’m a survivor, he thought. Nuclear war, radiation poisoning, human extinction—nothing can touch me.

  George felt himself rising. He realized that he was standing, that Morning was studying him with moist eyes.

  It’s positive, George! The pregnancy test was positive!

  “Mr. George Paxton, the court finds you…”

  Nothing to worry about, folks, every baby gets ear infections.

  “Innocent—”

  Innocent!

  “…on Count One, Crimes Against Peace. Innocent on Count Two, War Crimes. Innocent on Count Three, Crimes Against Humanity.”

  Aubrey, Morning, we’ve done it!

  “On Count Four, Crimes Against the Future, the court finds you guilty as charged and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.” Justice Jefferson winced violently. “I am sorry, Mr. Paxton. We rather liked you.” Her gavel hit the bench for the last time. “The International Military and Civilian Tribunal is hereby dissolved.”

  CHAPTER 17

  In Which Orange Trees Sprout Nooses and Our Hero Is Reunited with His Vulture

  Even if George had heard the aphorism that nothing concentrates one’s mind so wonderfully as knowing one will be hanged at dawn, his mind would still have been woefully unconcentrated. A tribunal stenographer transcribing his thoughts would have produced only babblings, yipes, and the same chant he had improvised when the warhead was groundburst upon his home town. This cannot be happening, this cannot be happening, this cannot…

  Like a cancer victim scanning a medical dictionary in hopes that the standard definitions have been repealed overnight in favor of good news, George reviewed what Justice Jefferson had said to him, seeking to find alternative meanings for “guilty” and “hanged” and “sunrise” and “tomorrow.” Futile. He picked up his Leonardo. His tears hit the paint, turning Aubrey’s dress to mud. I must face all this with dignity, he recited to himself. But where was the audience? In what history book would his courage be recorded? He returned the glass slide to the nightstand.

  A discordant jangle of keys reached his ears, and then the door cracked open, sending a burst of torchlight across the cell floor.

  “Morning?”

  But it was only Juan Ramos, bearing a large, hourglass-shaped object and a plate of food. “Your last meal, brave extinctionist. Also, if you want it, an ice clock.”

  George’s last meal was a sumptuous pile of fried skua, boiled sea lion, and corn, the latter harvested “from the ice-free valleys near McMurdo Sound,” as Ramos explained. There was even a small glass of wine—“fermented penguin lymph”—and a fresh orange.

  “I would like some privacy,” said George.

  “My fear is the utensils, Señor.” Ramos set the ice clock next to Aubrey’s portrait. “You might try killing yourself, no?”

  The profundity of George’s appetite embarrassed and confused him. Didn’t his body know what was going on here? He devoured every morsel, scraping the plate with his knife, licking the blade. His wine vanished in three gulps.

  Ramos said, “The clock will tell you when dawn arrives. As we say, ‘It’s always darkest before the dawn in Antarctica, and it’s always darkest after that too.’” He demonstrated the device. At the base, a small seal-oil lamp. In the top chamber, a block of ice. As the heat rose, the ice dissolved drop by drop into the lower chamber, which already contained a puddle.

  “The design comes from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks,” the jailor explained. “Buenos noches,” he added softly. He collected the utensils and left.

  When the clock’s lower chamber was half full, so that barely ten thousand drops divided George from the scaffold, another visitor arrived, a person to whom he was certain he had nothing more to say.

  The trial had aged Bonenfant, wrinkled him. It was as if his face had been painted on a balloon, and now the air was leaking out. “Justice has miscarried,” he announced. Zags of white cut through his black hair. “No—worse. Justice has suffered a back-alley abortion. We’ve made all the appropriate appeals, of course.”

  “Hopeless, right?”

  “I thought you’d get a fair trial, I really did. The judges simply couldn’t see that most nuclear wars don’t end this way. All that high-flying talk about impartiality, and they never once stopped being darkbloods. I’m sorry, George. My best wasn’t good enough.”

  “See this?” George removed the glass painting from the nightstand, held it before Bonenfant. “An original Leonardo.”

  “Hmm?” The advocate examined the slide from several different distances. “Impressive. So much detail in such a small space.” His voice was redolent of rusty hinges. “Looks a bit like you and Dr. Valcourt, doesn’t it? Leonardo, you said?”

  “Following orders from that famous liar and charlatan, Nostradamus.”

  Bonenfant paced around the cell, a subtle limp in his gait, a minor stoop in his posture. “The tribunal wonders whether you have any final requests,” he said.

  George cast a weary eye on the ice clock. “I would like my family back, my planet restored, and my execution postponed fifty years.”

  Bonenfant forced a laugh. When you are about to be hanged, George concluded, you get laughs for your jokes.

  “Tarmac asked for a soldier’s death.” The advocate enacted a guard raising a rifle. “Firing squad.”

  “I’ve heard that your bowels let go when they hang you,” said George.

  “Request denied.”

  “Poor bastard.”

  “But they did grant his other wish—he’ll be hanged with that man-portable thermonuclear device in his holster. Defused. He told Jefferson, ‘I still believe that armed missiles served the cause of world peace, and I would be a hypocrite to reject them in my hour of adversity.’” Bonenfant pulled a sealed envelope from the hip pocket of his scopas suit. “This is for you.”

  George tore off his gloves, clawed at the envelope with frozen fingernails. A scrap of paper fell out.

  Dearest Darling,

  Some things are too painful.

  Human extinction.

  Reunion with the man I love on the eve of his execution.

  Do you hate me for not coming? I thought of the things we would try saying to each other, and it was unendurable. I shall not abandon you. I shall join you at the end. There is no justice. Forgive me.

  All my love,

  Morning

  Bonenfant touched the ice clock, failed to staunch its flow. “You’re quite a celebrity, George—do you realize that? People are saying your case should never have come to trial. They know you’re being hanged for symbolic reasons. Cold comfort, I guess, but—”

  “I would like you to leave now.”

  With more violence than he had ever brought to anything in his life, George shredded Morning’s letter.

  “Bad news?”

  “I said you should leave.”

  “I found a Presbyterian minister for Overwhite. I could try to get you a Unitarian.”

  “Mr. Bonenfant, in ten seconds I am going to strangle you to death, and my sympathizers out there will realize that I am not so symbolic after all.”

  George looked at the ice clock and saw that the lower chamber was two-thirds full. The slam of the cell door dislodged a particularly large and malicious drop.

  Latitude: 70 degrees 0 minutes south.

&nb
sp; Longitude: 11 degrees 50 minutes east.

  Dawn.

  Thrusting through the brash-ice that clogged the Princess Astrid Coast, Periscope Number One cast its eye on the frozen beach. The beholder of this panorama, Lieutenant Commander Olaf Sverre of the United States Navy, grinned expansively. The Astrid barrier was as deserted as he had guessed it would be. Not a single ice limbo rose from the sparkling silver cliffs. Home to the stations of Lazarev and Novolazarevskaya, Astrid had become like all other Soviet claims in Antarctica—an antimecca, unholy in the extreme, a land occasioning unspeakable profanities and pilgrimages of avoidance. A most reliable sanctuary, he decided.

  He went to the galley, brewed a cup of coffee, sweetened it with gin. Walking down empty passageways and past abandoned quarters, he considered the facts of his triumph: a twelve-day run beneath five thousand miles of harsh, ill-charted ocean, from McMurdo Sound to the open Pacific, then out past the Circle, around the Palmer Peninsula, and on to the Astrid Coast, with not one man to assist him. He entered the periscope room, pushed his good eye against the viewfinder. Aiming toward the base of the Nimrod Glacier, a place called Shackleton Inlet on his chart, he adjusted the zoom control and twisted the focus knob.

  A broad, flat hill of stone emerged from the blur. Clustered in the center of the nunatak were six trees—Lieutenant Grass’s hydroponic orchard, born and bred in the missile tubes, rocked in the cradles of death. Owing to rigorous applications of killer-whale dung and other indigenous fertilizers, the trees were healthy, oranges glowing beneath shawls of ice, branches bowing pliantly in the breeze, roots seizing stern nourishment from the bedrock.

  From each tree dangled a noose of steel cable.

  Several platoons from the Antarctic Corps of Guards stood between the orchard and the spectators. The infinite crowd spiraled outward from the nunatak to the glacial tongue, and from there to the plateau above and the Ross Ice Shelf below. Blazing torches grew from the pressure ridges, their jack-o’-lantern glow catching the branches and throwing serpentine shadows on the ground. GUILTY! Mount Christchurch shouted in letters ten feet high.