by James Morrow
The center. Ashes, stench, dead refugees, another survivor. The man was naked but for his utility belt, a few hunks of scopas suit, and a cracked, Humpty-Dumpty helmet. He negotiated the rubble methodically. Now and then he would kneel down, unzip a corpse’s suit, and study with scientific intensity the dead flesh beneath. Approaching, George recognized the survivor, who was examining the corpse of a child.
‘Tsk, tsk,’ the survivor muttered. ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk.’
The attack had wrecked John Frostig’s good looks. Much of his nose was gone, and all of one ear. His brow was a swamp of blood and perspiration.
‘John?’
‘Afternoon, buddy-buddy.’ The blaze in John’s eyes, the cackle in his voice, would have made Theophilus Carter seem by comparison as rational as a grammarian. ‘Looks like we’ve got a failure-to-meet-specifications problem here, eh? Of course, with the fallout still trickling down, it’s too early to say how they’ll handle the cumulative doses, but obviously we should beef up thermal shielding and overpressure protection by at least twenty percent, at least twenty percent, wouldn’t you say? All these holes in the fabric – shoddy workmanship, plain and simple. Those jackasses in quality control are going to hear from me, you’d better believe it, they’re going to hear from John Frostig. They’re going to hear from Alice and Lance and Gary – shit, George, have you ever seen so many dead people? Gives me the berries, I don’t mind telling you. They’re going to hear from Gary, too. And Lance and Gary and . . . and—’ The scopas suit salesman, who had probably not wept since the doctor swatted his rump to prime his lungs, was weeping now, torrents of stored tears.
George said, ‘Your showroom used to be around here, didn’t it?’
‘Fucking Cossacks!’
‘It’s amazing you aren’t dead.’
‘I was at the Lizard . . . a quick drink, that’s all, and a minute of talk with . . . a lady, nothing wrong with that, two minutes of talk, because my boy . . . Nickie – you just asked about him, didn’t you? – well, he’s off sledding at the Barlows with this nice old person we use for a baby-sitter, the Covington lady, though I can’t even find the Barlows, which is where my boy is, with Mrs Covington, who’s a good baby-sitter, we can definitely recommend her, so I’m sure he’s alive, I mean, the units can’t all have been defective, just the Palo Alto line, probably – the Osaka ones must be okay, especially Nickie’s, who was sledding at the Barlows – right? – broken suit or no.’ The salesman groaned, and a viscous mix of water and pink solids poured from his mouth. ‘The point is, I’m not having my company associated with a cheapjack product, people will lose faith. The customer is always right – you probably learned that at the tomb works, eh, buddy-buddy? If we don’t get a better performance out of these units next time, why, the whole industry will go down the toilet. What’s that gold thing?’
‘Scopas suit.’
‘Never saw a gold one before.’
‘It’s special. Custom-made.’
‘Kind of small.’
‘It’s for Holly – her Christmas present. She’s going to get this and a Mary Merlin doll.’
‘You’re mistaken,’ said John, who had drawn the Colt .45 from his utility belt and was now aiming it at George. ‘It’s for Nickie. He’s sledding with Mrs Covington. Damn good baby-sitter.’
George vomited. ‘Forget it, John,’ he said, wiping his mouth.
The pistol was ugly. It did not waver. Is this where the bomb had come from? No, too small. An airplane had brought it, or a missile. Was there any hope? Yes, there was, lying in the holster of Holly’s suit . . .
‘I’ll bet it doesn’t even work,’ said the salesman. ‘It’s not an Eschatological.’
George made a swift, calculated grab toward the utility belt. He heard a sound like a firecracker exploding.
The bullet rammed through the left glove of Holly’s suit and entered his stomach, throwing him to the ground. The suit embraced him. He felt nauseated, terrified. A burning poker had spitted him, drilling his bowels. It hurt more than anything possibly could, and yet it did not hurt enough, did not punish him sufficiently for failing to bring her salvation home.
‘Oh, shit, I’m sorry, George. I didn’t mean to do that. I don’t even want that stupid suit. You shouldn’t have moved. I hope I haven’t killed you. Nickie’s off sledding. Jesus, what a horrible day this has been. Have I killed you? I told you not to move!’
John slid the Colt .45 muzzle between his lips. He moved it back and forth as if operating a bicycle pump, licked the metal, pushed it tight against the roof of his mouth. Odd behavior, George thought, for a man who has just survived a thermonuclear war. There was a pop. Something coral-colored and soggy flew out of the back of John’s head, and he fell.
George looked heavenward. A bloated, bellied shape wheeled across the scorched sky. It had a scraggy neck and a beak like the jaws of a steam shovel. Its eyes were yellow, glowing, crosshatched by veins. The beating of its wings, loud and violent as a stampede, raised a wind that stirred the ashes in the pit and heaped them on George’s body.
He named the creature. Vulture. The mightiest vulture in the world, big as a pterodactyl. It had come to pick his bones.
CHAPTER SIX
In Which a Sea Captain, a General, a Therapist, and a Man of God Enter the Tale
Lieutenant Commander Olaf Sverre, who could see beyond the horizon, stood in the periscope room of his strategic submarine, watching the Commonwealth of Massachusetts burn down.
‘God help them,’ he mumbled, pressing his good eye against Periscope Number One. Each town’s flames had a distinctive tint. Stockbridge burned orange, Worcester violet, Wellesley gold, Newton vermillion.
The periscope was a wondrous blend of mysticism and know-how. Its lenses were made of beryl, the very substance from which Roger Bacon, the thirteenth-century wizard, had fashioned a looking glass that enabled him to observe events occurring a hundred miles away. When Sugar Brook National Laboratory, working under a cost-plus contract from the United States Department of Defense, had aligned these fabulous glass disks according to doodles found in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci and then linked them to an array of geostationary satellites, the result was a periscope of infinite range. The US Congress had recently bought the American people forty-two such devices, one for every Philadelphia-class fleet ballistic missile submarine in the Navy. The people were for the most part surprised and delighted by these gifts, and pleased to learn that the people of the Soviet Union did not have any yet.
Sverre narrowed the focal length, bringing the glowing mass of Boston into view. Confused sea gulls soared through the skies above the harbor. They were on fire. He closed his right eye and opened his left, which was made of gutta-percha. There, that was better, no burning gulls. Each evening Sverre would remove his rubber eye, soak it in gin, and replace it, whereupon the alcohol would seep into his brain, giving him a unique and copacetic high. In these troubled times, it was the only way he could get to sleep.
Although Sverre could monitor places as remote as India and Argentina, he could not see what was happening on his own ship. For this he relied on his executive officer. ‘Mister Grass,’ he growled into the intercom, ‘bring me a status report.’
It would take Lieutenant Grass several minutes to reach the periscope room. Time for a drink. Time for two. Sverre yanked a bottle from his claw-hammer coat, poured gin into a Styrofoam cup. Black fur thrived on the sides of his stovepipe hat. Dark, silky hairs sprouted along his cheeks, rushing down his jaw and coming together in great torrents of beard.
A stanza of poetry jumped spontaneously into his mind. Grabbing a booklet called The MK-49 Torpedo: Repairs and Servicing, he turned it over and scribbled:
Midgard’s serpent now unfurled
Its circuit round the mortal world.
When Jormungandr shakes its coils
The slimy ocean swirls and boils.
Lieutenant Grass came in, brass buttons sparkling, white uniform croaking softly w
ith starch. His freckles looked newly polished. He loved the Navy.
Sverre crossed out the stanza. ‘Can we leave this ghastly place?’
‘They pulled the man free an hour ago,’ said the exec. ‘He’s in surgery.’
‘Surgery? Hell. I’m not delivering any corpses, that’s not how my orders read. Prognosis?’
‘Fair. The bullet probably would have finished him, but it went through some kid’s scopas suit first. He’s a strong fellow – carved tombstones for a living.’
‘Tombstones?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What do they want with him?’
‘Beats me, Captain.’
‘Contaminated?’
‘Over two hundred and fifty rads, the needle said.’
‘Got any more bad news, as long as you’re here? Tell me the ward can’t handle another case.’
‘Well, they’re still treating Wengernook and Tarmac, but even after Paxton’s admitted they won’t be near capacity. This is a fine boat they gave you, sir.’
Sverre contacted the control room and ordered the diving officer to bring them around. ‘Take her down, Mister Sparks. Two hundred feet.’
‘I’m curious, sir,’ said Lieutenant Grass. ‘When they picked up Paxton, he was at ground zero – right in the crater. A crazy place to be, wouldn’t you say? What do you suppose he was doing there?’
Turning his good eye to the periscope, the captain watched the red, boiling waters of Boston Harbor splash across the deck. ‘He was doing what we’re doing,’ said Sverre. ‘Trying to get home.’
‘Facts,’ a woman said. ‘You need facts, Mr Paxton. Facts will steady your mind.’
George became conscious of several varieties of pain. He concluded, with mixed emotions, that he was still alive. Despite the bullet from John Frostig, the thermonuclear bomb, and his keen desire to be dead, he had evidently not yet left the world – unless, of course, the blurry creature standing near him was an angel.
‘Facts. You are in the radiation ward aboard US Navy submarine SSBN 713 City of New York, out of McMurdo Station. Displacement – thirty-four thousand tons submerged. Draft – sixty-five feet. Delivery system – thirty-six tubes loaded with Multiprong missiles. Warheads – W-76 reentry vehicles, eight per bus, five hundred kilotons each.’
Fever coursed through George’s body. His brow oozed sweat. His bowels ached. His stomach churned sour milk. Barbed wire flossed his brain.
‘There is a document,’ she said. ‘The McMurdo Sound Agreement. Six names appear in it. You are all being evacuated to the Ross Ice Shelf.’
George suddenly realized why the angel was so fuzzy. He was inside a plastic tent. She was outside.
‘Aurhgh,’ George responded. Two marbles seemed to be lodged in his throat. As if to diagnose the problem, he inserted his fingers. The back of his hand was covered with purple spots. His gums were bleeding.
‘Your benefactor is Operation Erebus. When they rescued you, there was a bullet in your stomach and a scopas suit in your arms. The bullet came out last week. The suit is now in the cabin you will occupy if and when your convalescence begins.’
Why is my head so cold? George wondered. Your head is cold because you are hairless, his fingertips revealed. You are as bald as a slab of South African granite.
‘Final fact. For the last six days you have been unconscious, during which interval you passed from the prodromal phase of radiation sickness through the latency phase and into the life-or-death phase. And that’s your situation. I’m sorry it’s not better.’
Beyond his physical pains lay additional anguish, emotions that rested on him like the stones with which his New England ancestors had pressed witches to death. There was a stone for loss, a stone for fear, a stone for Holly, a stone for—
‘I have a wife,’ he said. Four words, four swallows of acid. A coughing fit possessed him, and he expectorated onto the pillow case. Dots of blood were suspended in the sputum. ‘And a daughter,’ he rasped. ‘I’m supposed to tell her a story about an elf who casts a golden shadow.’ He struggled to sit up, collapsed in a heap of pain and fatigue. ‘Ice shelf? Submarine? You mean – under the water? Why are there purple spots on my hands? What’s in my throat?’
‘The spots indicate intradermal bleeding. The things in your throat are infected tonsils. My name is Morning Valcourt. I’m a psychotherapist, and I intend to help you.’
George coughed, less severely than before. He vibrated with fever. His lungs felt as bloated as unmilked udders.
After strapping a surgical mask over her face, Dr Valcourt pushed back a corner of the tent and entered.
One glance was enough to disprove George’s angel theory. A silk kimono enveloped a body that was decidedly secular. The woman’s eyes were a saturated blue-green, her hair thick and red like the coils in the electric heaters back at the Crippen Monument Works. Six days unconscious, is that what she said? Then he had missed his Monday appointment with Mrs Covington.
‘What you must realize . . . just after you were evacuated, another warhead found its target. Direct hit.’ She came closer, her mask pulsing with her breaths. ‘Nobody except you got out of Wildgrove. Do you understand?’
His dislike of Dr Valcourt was not far from disgust. How did she know whether anybody got out? What right had she to speak of such things?
She pulled away and stepped backward, so that the plastic veil parted and then dropped, walling them off from each other once again.
‘Please kill me,’ he said, quoting the Wildgrove burn victims as calmly as if asking for a glass of water.
Dr Valcourt paced behind the milky tent. She seemed to emanate from an unfocused movie projector. ‘My job is not to kill you, but to cure you.’
‘Of radiation sickness?’
‘Of shame. Survivor’s guilt, it’s called. To live through a disaster like this, where so many died – it’s a terrible burden on your psyche.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Home.’
‘Wildgrove?’
‘Antarctica.’
‘Please leave me alone.’
‘Here’s a straight opinion for you, Mr Paxton. That’s something you won’t often get from a psychotherapist – especially from a survivor’s guilt specialist – so listen carefully. I think you have a duty to learn why your name is in the McMurdo Sound Agreement. After you have found out – do what you will. Eat, drink, and be merry – or curse God, and die. I don’t especially care which.’
There were footsteps, and the distasteful psychotherapist melted away . . .
Curse God, and die. In the Book of Job, the Lord’s most pious follower is subjected to a kind of wager between God and Satan. With God’s sponsorship, Satan inflicts on Job everything short of a thermonuclear warhead. Job loses his oxen, sheep, camels, sheasses, servants, sons, and health.
‘Curse God, and die,’ his wife advises. Job is sitting on ashes at the time.
‘My bowels boil, and rest not,’ complains Job, who does not have the proverbial patience of Job. ‘I am a brother to jackals, and a companion to ostriches. My skin is black, and falleth from me, and my bones are burned with the heat. Therefore is my harp turned to mourning, and my pipe into the voice of them that weep.’
Curse God, and die. To George it seemed like remarkably sage and relevant advice.
If one had to say something good about acute radiation sickness, it would be this: either it kills you or it doesn’t. Knowing that success was a distinct possibility, the medical staff of the City of New York got busy. They cultured George’s mucus, blood, and stool, then loaded him up with appropriate antibiotics. They stuck a tube in his arm and gave him a new set of white blood cells. They bathed him in antiseptic solutions every twelve hours, shampooed him with chlorhexidine gluconate every twenty-four hours, and trimmed his fingernails and toenails every other day.
To the end of his life, George would be haunted by the notion that the onslaught of gamma rays had planted the seeds of God-knew-what diseas
es, but the United States Navy was still within its rights when they pronounced him well. His fever broke, his hair grew back, his purple spots vanished, his tonsils shrank, his lungs drained, his gums stopped bleeding, his platelet and white cell counts became exemplary. The paramedics assured him that he had inhaled very little fallout and that, thanks to his precipitous departure from ground zero via Operation Erebus, his cumulative dose had been well under three hundred rads.
‘More like two hundred and eighty rads, if you want my opinion,’ said the medical officer, a lieutenant senior-grade named Brust. ‘You’re in great shape, believe me. There’s only one thing we couldn’t fix.’
‘Oh?’ said George.
‘Your secondary spermatocytes are failing to become spermatids.’ Dr Brust was a small, tubby man with a face so incongruously gaunt it seemed to be on its own separate diet. ‘Blame the radiation.’
‘What are you talking about?’ George asked.
‘You’re sterile,’ said Dr Brust evenly.
‘Sterile?’
‘Sterile as a mule.’ Black stains covered Brust’s surgical gown. ‘I can’t imagine that it would make much difference to you at this point.’
‘My wife and I were planning . . .’ George closed his eyes.
‘Didn’t they tell you about your wife?’
‘Yes.’ When he opened his eyes, he saw only his tears.
‘I wouldn’t worry about my gonads if I were you,’ said Dr Brust. ‘You’re lucky to be alive.’
They moved George out of the radiation unit into an ordinary sick bay.
‘You in the McMurdo Sound Agreement?’ asked the patient in the next bed, a long, nervous, weasel-bodied man with an expression so intense George could not look at it without squinting.
‘Yes. George Paxton. You in it too?’
‘At the top of the list. Love to lean over and shake your hand, friend, but I’ve got this tube up my silo.’
‘Me too.’