Trinity's Child

by William Prochnau

  “I cannot assure you of anything, Mr. Premier. I can only tell you that I have taken every possible step and some of my people are making great personal sacrifices—ultimate sacrifices—to give us a chance.”

  “There are many sacrifices being made,” the Premier said after a brief pause. “You do know that both our nations are continuing to lose cities?”

  “Lose cities?” The President was staggered. “All the bombers returned hours ago,” he said in disbelief.

  He could hear a great sigh on the phone. “You did not know,” the Premier said sadly. “I regret to be the one to inform you, but your lack of that knowledge may help illustrate my problem. My nation has lost the cities of Nadhodka, Pushkin, and most recently Kursk. Your nation has lost Baton Rouge, Raleigh, and, just moments ago, the city of Phoenix.”

  The President lay back in his bed, exhaustion eating at him. “How, Mr. Premier? How could such a thing happen now? Why?”

  “Mr. President, your submarines and mine have been pursuing each other for fourteen hours. As good as they are, it was inevitable that a few would be caught like fish in a net. When trapped, they operate on the same principle. They fire their missiles before the net closes. Thus far, we have been ... it is difficult to say, with so many lives lost . . . but thus far we have been most fortunate. The submarine commanders have shown great restraint in choosing relatively minor targets and not spraying their weapons.”

  Phoenix. Raleigh. Baton Rouge. Minor targets. The President groaned, bringing a nurse rapidly to his side. He brushed her away. “We have created a relentless dragon, Mr. Premier.”

  “A most relentless dragon. But to satisfy your curiosity about my situation, Mr. President, I must warn you that the dragon's breath may be hotter in my cave than yours. My people are aware of the loss of those cities. They are nervous, and many are mourning the loss of families.”

  Deep in the bowels of the Cherepovets bunker, the Premier stopped and the translator looked at him expectantly. The Soviet leader pondered whether to tell the President of his own bellicose Condor whom he had to harness in the distant deserts of Zhangiztobe. He knew he also had other rebellious birds, held on a short tether right here in his own nest. The translator cleared his throat to bring the Premier back. “Not all my people are certain of your intentions, Mr. President,” he finished.

  “Mr. Premier,” the President said wearily but firmly, “you are aware of my intentions. You overheard my conversation with the commanding general of the Strategic Air Command. You are aware of his intentions, the personal totality of his commitment.” The President paused and took a deep breath. “I have asked you for one hour.”

  “Mr. President,” the Premier said slowly, “I believe in your intentions. I will try to grant you your hour—and guarantee my commitment to it with the same totality given by your general. But I must warn you. The control has largely left our hands. If one of your submarine commanders, trapped in a net, decides Leningrad or Moscow is a more attractive target than another Pushkin . . .”

  This time the translator stopped, asking the Premier to repeat his final words.

  “. . . If that happens, Mr. President, I cannot guarantee you two minutes.”

  Sixteen

  2000 ZULU

  Around the world, on the various clocks set to Zulu, the hands moved silently past twenty hundred hours. A certain lulling fatalism settled in among the players in the last act. The system functioned.

  In the cavernous bunker beneath Cherepovets, the Soviet Premier missed the marking of the last hour. His head nodded from exhaustion. His mind skittered in a dozen foggy directions. His heavy eyelids drooped, then snapped back open again, focusing fuzzily on the small red canister over which he had burned the American codes and shredded the ashes through its rarely used and rusted grille.

  His eyes moved ponderously to the blur of the huge display screen from which the symbols of his remaining ICBM's gleamed mockingly. Zhangiztobe, tucked far away in the high plains of Kazaklistan, throbbed rather than gleamed at him. He forced his fatigued eyes away to the next screen, where a handful of computerized white cursors fluttered in a taunting reminder of the tattered remains of his nation's other, and more exhilarating, use for rockets. He sighed. They had beaten the Americans into space—stunned the world with Sputnik, charmed it with the orbiting of the little dog Laika, awed it with the human triumph of Yuri Gagarin. I am eagle! They had placed stars in the heavens, but now the stars were blinking out, only a few white cursors remaining as testaments to Gagarin's glory. From its low orbit, Molniya, a survivor, his only link to the American President, winked at him like the setting evening star. Too few others twinkled—a Volna, a Cosmos, another Volna launched into high geostationary orbit in 1980. I am mole, he thought despairingly. His heavy eyelids drooped further. The screen blurred. He reached for another amphetamine. His last one, he told himself ruefully. Of that, and only that, he was certain.

  In the smaller bunker beneath Olney, the American President lay in the clinic now, eyes closed, neither asleep nor awake, drifting. Occasionally he emitted a loud moan, bringing the nurses rushing to his side, but the occasional moans were not products of the pain. Those, he suppressed. These rose from a deeper source, wrenched out of the depths of his soul as his sightless eyes drifted into new visions of America, its purple-mountained majesties, its fruited plain, its alabaster cities pockmarked like the moon.

  Sedgwick manned the radio room, his bed rolled into the cramped slot vacated by the President. He, too, missed the passing of the Zulu clock's hands as he pushed the radio operator through futile probe after futile probe—UHF, VHF, HF, LF, frequency after frequency, dead satellite after dead satellite. He picked up an increasing gaggle of world sounds now—curt Europeans, an excitable Portuguese voice out of Brazil, a New Zealander who babbled incoherently about Nevil Shute, an occasional dirge from some unknown and unmanned American radio station. His frustration was total, the flutter of other radio conversations infuriating. He knew the TACAMO planes were there, one having lifted out of Bermuda, the other out of Guam. But they made no sounds.

  In the E-4, Condor did not notice the passing of the hour. He rested comfortably, even contentedly. Each man is presented with his moment of truth, and Condor had faced his, meeting it to his satisfaction. The Librarian had moved to the radio compartment. If any American communications center had a chance to reach the TACAMO planes, the E-4's chance was best. The communication was not necessary, but the Librarian was an efficient man. He could negate any possible breakthrough by creating a conflict, so he worked as diligently as Sedgwick at reaching the planes.

  Of the crucial players aboard the E-4, only the pilot was troubled. Just inside the locked cockpit door the Secret Service agent stood cradling his Uzi, the pilot's security against further madness of the kind that had brought Harpoon down almost at his side. He forced himself to accept that Alice, closing in on him again, suffered from the same battlefield malady. It was difficult to believe of men he had respected, but strong men had cracked under far less pressure. He followed orders—just as he followed orders to no longer avoid radioactive clouds. The fate of his nation was at stake.

  In the Looking Glass, Alice felt the pressure. He gazed out the cockpit window at the shimmering plane ahead of him and saw both his nation and the world slipping out of his fingers. The E-4 had become desperately artful, racing at full bore, darting into billowing clouds, maneuvering in the opaque vapor, and then darting out in a different direction. Smitty swerved the Looking Glass onto the surprise course, only to have the E-4 swing again. The Looking Glass measured its gains in feet. It was not enough. Alice wanted a cigarette.

  In the placid depths of the world's oceans, in silently roaming behemoths, American submarine commanders methodically noted the hour. Beneath their feet giant gyroscopes, one of the true marvels of American technology, whirred relentlessly with precision even greater than that of the Zulu clocks. The gyros guided both the submarines and their deadly cargo, in
extricably linking the two. With timing measured in microseconds the gyroscopes monitored the submarines' forward progress, their depth, their direction, their turns and pauses. Through huge umbilicals, the gyros fed the data to the missiles, adjusting their trajectories microsecond after microsecond so they were forever trained precisely on thousands of far-off targets. When the time came, and it was scarcely an hour off now, the commanders would turn simple keys from positions at Hold on the left, to Tactical straight up, to Fire on the right. The gyros would send the last microsecond's trajectory adjustment, the umbilicals would fall away, and the commanders would feel a lurching whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. The gyroscopes were called the Ships Inertial Navigation System. Aboard the boats, they were known simply as SINS.

  In scores of tiny mole holes across the Soviet Union, pink-cheeked young officers of the Rocket Forces had no way of knowing the significance of the hour change. They waited, locked deep in the frozen earth with their SS-17's and SS-19's. A few sat with rockets designated SS-18's. They were loaded with twenty-five-megaton warheads, the world's largest—a weapon that would dig a hole, killing everything within a diameter of thirteen miles, igniting winter-dry shrubbery as well as children's clothing twenty-five miles from its target. The young men sat nervously, their imaginations at work. Unlike the submarine crews, they were not yet sure of their role. But they would act, as surely as the submarines. Upon instruction, they would utter the final count: tri . . . dva . . . odin . . . pust! On the display boards in front of them, green lights marked with Cyrillic lettering would begin to flick rapidly: Enable Command . . . flick . . . Launch Command . . . flick . . . Launch in Progress . . . flick . . . Missile Away . . . flick.

  World away.

  Flick.

  Aboard the Polar Bear, where two stragglers still struggled against the system, the system rebelled against the rebellious. In the B-52, buffeted violently just barely above seas far more angry than the serene depths in which the submarines roamed, the gyros functioned less well, as did the display lights. Torrential rains, whipped by the fury of the tropical storm, flooded through Halupalai's escape hatch. Water pellets lashed into the sophisticated electronic jamming equipment at the rear of the topside compartment, jamming the equipment instead, shorting it out in sizzles and snaps that flashed like devils' beacons in the murk.

  Kazaklis turned off the equipment, and the navigational gear downstairs as well, both being useless to him anyway. But on the instrument panel in front of him, which he needed, the yellow lights began to sputter and fail too. The directional gyro went, as did the horizon gyro. So did various of their compasses and altimeters, as well as the fuel-flow indicator. They had almost two hundred gauges and switches, most of which were dead, malfunctioning, or simply lying. They had no idea if they were flying level or descending, although common sense told them the latter. At eye level in front of Kazaklis and Moreau the two green screens still shimmered, the trustworthy nose cameras probing ahead. But the images they fed back told the pilots nothing. They were computer-scrambled green visions of hell.

  By no measure—neither the pilot's percentage baseball nor the manufacturer's stress guidelines—could the B-52 survive this punishment. It groaned and shrieked in protest. It fell hundreds of feet in downdrafts, belly-flopping into new air currents that racked human and aluminum bones alike, wrenching at arms, tearing at fragile wings more comfortable in the thin reaches of the stratosphere long since abandoned. After more than half an hour, Kazaklis and Moreau had no idea how high above the ocean they flew. Each time they bellied out, certain they had struck the swells, they bulled the aching aircraft back upward, or so they hoped, through the turmoil. They spoke only when necessary, but they acted as one now.

  Kazaklis looked out the window. Through the sheets of water he could not see the wingtip. He could not see beyond the feeble gray outline of the nearest engine. Kazaklis glanced back at Moreau. She stared rigidly ahead, unaware of him, her face quietly intent.

  “Fire in Number Three,” she said mechanically.

  Kazaklis looked back out into the murk but saw no more where one of their inboard engines was giving out.

  “Shut it down,” he said calmly. She already had done it.

  The Librarian grinned broadly, the very audacity of his discovery giving him great satisfaction. The radio-room crew watched him strangely, finding no humor in their predicament. But to the colonel the others were not present. He had found a way to break through to the TACAMO planes, guaranteeing beyond any doubt that the submarines would fire. He congratulated himself for his relentless and unappreciated years studying the Soviets. It now had paid off so handsomely! He would contact the Navy command planes with the Russians' own communications equipment! He chuckled aloud at the triumph, then paused for a moment, testing the wisdom of the idea. Would the Soviets catch on? Probably. Would their awareness make any difference? No. Could they stop him? Highly unlikely. His grin spread from ear to ear. He glanced at the clock. 2015.

  Alice irritably ripped off the cigarette filter, concluding that John Kennedy had been all too correct: life is not fair. The Pall Malls were gone and the copilot had offered a Carlton—one of those infernally denatured weeds that threatened to give you a heart attack trying to inhale it. He dragged hard and looked out the cockpit window, furthering his irritation. The giant presidential command plane screamed through the thin air and dancing clouds ahead of them, always just beyond reach. He looked at his watch. 2016. The Looking Glass had lost its edge. There was no point in calling the President to tell him that.

  The last amphetamine had jarred the Soviet Premier's sensibilities into a jangled alertness again. He sat in the same chair and stared into his display screens. Under the artificial stimulus of the drug, the ICBM cursors appeared to throb rather than gleam, taunting him—Yoshkar Ola field ready, comrade; Zhangiztobe field ready, comrade. Zhangiztobe.

  The Premier suddenly felt uncomfortable, a presence hovering near him. He looked away from the screen into the grim face of the new commander of the Rocket Forces.

  “The silo doors are open,” the Premier said. He had no question in his voice.

  “Yes, they are open.” The reply was sullen.

  “They will fire if necessary.”

  “It is quite a simple act, Comrade Premier.”

  “Yes. And closing the doors also is simple?”

  The general stared probingly into the Premier's drawn face. He cocked his head, averting his gaze to the map without answering.

  “Zhangiztobe,” the Premier said forlornly.

  The general continued to stare into the map, unresponsive.

  “General! Can we stop Zhangiztobe?”

  The general turned slowly and looked at the Premier. The general was no fool. He could see the ravages of the man's fatigue. He also could see the effects of the amphetamines and the occasional vodka. “Can the Americans stop their submarines?” he asked, a slight touch of hostility in his voice.

  The Premier bristled, then snapped: “Comrade general, I do not need a Viennese psychiatrist answering questions with questions.”

  “The rocket-base commander is not rational, comrade. His family is dead. Killed by the Americans. He is holding. I do not believe he will continue to hold if we order him to close his doors.”

  “Not even if the American submarines are stopped,” the Premier said. It was not a question and it received no answer. He looked at the clock. 2017. “How many rockets remain at Zhangiztobe?”

  “About forty, comrade.”

  “With multiple warheads?”

  “Most of them.” “Their targets?”

  “Petroleum facilities and ports.”

  “But they can be retargeted? On site?”

  “In minutes, Comrade Premier.”

  “And to what targets?”

  The general's eyes darted away from the Premier, nervously and evasively. He gazed back into the map of the missile fields over which he had taken command just hours ago at this man's behest. “The ret
argeting has its limitations.” Behind him, he heard a fist pound powerfully into a desk. Chert voz'mi! The devil take it! “I am losing my patience, comrade! Can you see the clock?”

  “The warheads can be retargeted on most of the major cities in the central and northern United States,” the general said rapidly.

  The Premier slumped. His tortured nervous system sent electric shocks down his arms and legs. How had he let this sit so long? “Where are our nearest bombers?” he asked.

  The general wheeled on the Premier, his eyes narrow and accusatory. “Comrade Premier, you called them back to crashes into the Arctic Ocean. A handful made northern airfields. Zhangiztobe is one of our more isolated fields, more than two thousand kilometers south of the northern frontier—”

  The Premier pounded his fist again and again. “Find me an answer, general!”

  “You trust the Americans that much?”

  “I trust nothing except this infernal system we created!”

  Reflexively the general's hand edged over his button-holster sidearm. The two men stared at each other coldly, the Premier's weary face slowly breaking into a half-smile.

  “You think that is the answer, comrade general?”

  The general sagged in despair. “But how can we do this before the Americans have their submarines under control?”

  “Will it do any good afterward? The submarines will still exist. The Americans will have thirty Zhangiztobes floating beneath the sea. With commanders as irrational, comrade, if more of their cities are destroyed.”

  The general's hand dropped away from his sidearm, but he could no longer hold his eyes on the Premier. “We have several Backfire bombers stationed 150 kilometers away near Ust-Kamenogorsk.” His voice was dull and lifeless. He paused and added sadly, “They were deployed against the Chinese.” “They can destroy the command post?”