“Wait a minute,” Forest said. “You’re saying you didn’t see anything? There wasn’t a malfunction?”
“That’s right,” January said, and cleared his throat. “It wasn’t necessary, do you understand?”
Forest was looking at Colonel Dray. Dray gave him a disgusted shrug. “He told me he saw evidence of sabotage.”
“I want you to go back and ask the scientists to intercede for me,” January said, raising his voice to get the man’s attention, “I haven’t got a chance in that court-martial. But if the scientists defend me then maybe they’ll let me live, see? I don’t want to get shot for doing something every one of you scientists would have done.”
Dr. Forest had backed away. Color rising, be said, “What makes you think that’s what we would have done? Don’t you think we considered it? Don’t you think men better qualified than you made the decision?” He waved a hand— “God damn it—what made you think you were competent to decide something as important as that!”
January was appalled at the man’s reaction; in his plan it had gone differently. Angrily he jabbed a finger at Forest. “Because I was the man doing it, Doctor Forest. You take even one step back from that and suddenly you can pretend it’s not your doing. Fine for you, but I was there.”
At every word the man’s color was rising. It looked like he might pop a vein in his neck. January tried once more. “Have you ever tried to imagine what one of your bombs would do to a city full of people?”
“I’ve had enough!” the man exploded. He turned to Dray. “I’m under no obligation to keep what I’ve heard here confidential. You can be sure it will be used as evidence in Captain January’s court-martial.” He turned and gave January a look of such blazing hatred that January understood it. For these men to admit he was right would mean admitting that they were wrong—that every one of them was responsible for his part in the construction of the weapon January had refused to use. Understanding that, January knew he was doomed.
The bang of Dr. Forest’s departure still shook the little office. January sat on his cot, got out a smoke. Under Colonel Dray’s cold gaze he lit one shakily, took a drag. He looked up at the colonel, shrugged. “It was my best chance,” he explained. That did something—for the first and only time the cold disdain in the colonel’s eyes shifted to a little, hard, lawyerly gleam of respect.
The court-martial lasted two days. The verdict was guilty of disobeying orders in combat and of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The sentence was death by firing squad.
For most of his remaining days January rarely spoke, drawing ever further behind the mask that had hidden him for so long. A clergyman came to see him, but it was the 509th’s chaplain, the one who had said the prayer blessing the Lucky Strike’s mission before they took off. Angrily January sent him packing.
Later, however, a young Catholic priest dropped by. His name was Patrick Getty. He was a little pudgy man, bespectacled and, it seemed, somewhat afraid of January. January let the man talk to him. When he returned the next day January talked back a bit, and on the day after that he talked some more. It became a habit.
Usually January talked about his childhood. He talked of plowing mucky black bottom land behind a mule. Of running down the lane to the mailbox. Of reading books by the light of the moon after he had been ordered to sleep, and of being beaten by his mother for it with a high-heeled shoe. He told the priest the story of the time his arm had been burnt, and about the car crash at the bottom of Fourth Street. “It’s the truck driver’s face I remember, do you see, Father?”
“Yes,” the young priest said. “Yes.”
And he told him about the game be had played in which every action lie took tipped the balance of world affairs. “When I remembered that game I thought it was dumb. Step on a sidewalk crack and cause an earthquake—you know, it’s stupid. Kids are like that,” The priest nodded. “But now I’ve been thinking that if everybody were to live their whole lives like that, thinking that every move they made really was important, then… it might make a difference.” He waved a hand vaguely, expelled cigarette smoke. “You’re accountable for what you do.”
“Yes,” the priest said. “Yes, you are.”
“And if you’re given orders to do something wrong, you’re still accountable, right? The orders don’t change it.”
“That’s right.” .
“Hmph.” January smoked a while. “So they say, anyway. But look what happens.” He waved at the office. “I’m like the guy in a story I read—he thought everything in books was true, and after reading a bunch of westerns he tried to rob a train. They tossed him in jail.” He laughed shortly. “Books are full of crap.”
“Not all of them,” the priest said. “Besides, you weren’t flying to rob a train.”
They laughed at the notion. “Did you read that story?”
“It was the strangest book—there were two stories in it, and they alternated chapter by chapter, but they didn’t have a thing to do with each other! I didn’t get it.”
“…Maybe the writer was trying to say that everything connects to everything else.”
“Maybe. But it’s a funny way to say it.”
“I like it.”
And so they passed the time, talking.
* * *
So it was the priest who was the one to come by and tell January that his request for a Presidential pardon had been refused. Getty said awkwardly, “It seems the President approve s the sentence.”
“That bastard,” January said weakly. He sat on his cot.
Time passed. It was another hot, humid day.
“Well,” the priest said. “Let me give you some better news. Given your situation I don’t think telling you matters, though I’ve been told not to. The second mission—you know there was a second strike?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they missed too.”
“What?” January cried, and bounced to his feet. “You’re kidding!”
“No. They flew to Kokura, but found it covered by clouds. It was the same over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, so they flew back to Kokura and tried to drop the bomb using radar to guide it, but apparently there was a—a genuine equipment failure this time, and the bomb fell on an island.”
January was hopping up and down, mouth hanging open, “So we n-never—”
“We never dropped an atom bomb on a Japanese city. That’s right.” Getty grinned. “And get this—I heard this from my superior—they sent a message to the Japanese government telling them that the two explosions were warnings, and that if they didn’t surrender by September first we would drop bombs on Kyoto and Tokyo, and then wherever else we had to. Word is that the Emperor went to Hiroshima to survey the damage, and when he saw it he ordered the Cabinet to surrender. So. . .“
“So it worked,” January said. He hopped around, “It worked, it worked!”
“Yes.”
“Just like I said it would!” he cried, and hopping before the priest he laughed.
Getty was jumping around a little too, and the sight of the priest bouncing was too much for January. He sat on his cot and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
“So—” he sobered quickly. “So Truman’s going to shoot me anyway, eh?”
“Yes,” the priest said unhappily. “I guess that’s right.”
This time January’s laugh was bitter. “He’s a bastard, all right. And proud of being a bastard, which makes it worse.” He shook his head. “If Roosevelt had lived…“
“It would have been different,” Getty finished. “Yes. Maybe so. But he didn’t,” He sat beside January. “Cigarette?” He held out a pack, and January noticed the white wartime wrapper. He frowned.
“You haven’t got a Camel?”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Oh well. That’s all right.” January took one of the Lucky Strikes, lit up. “That’s awfully good news.” He breathed out. “I never believed Truman would pardon me anyway, so mostly you’ve brought good news. Ha.
They missed. You have no idea how much better that makes me feel.”
“I think I do.”
January smoked the cigarette.
“…So I’m a good American after all. I am a good American” he insisted, “no matter what Truman says.”
“Yes,” Getty replied, and coughed. “You’re better than Truman any day.”
“Better watch what you say, Father.” He looked into the eyes behind the glasses, and the expression he saw there gave him pause. Since the drop every look directed at him had been filled with contempt. He’d seen it so often during the court-martial that he’d learned to stop looking; and now he had to teach himself to see again. The priest looked at him as if he were… as if he were some kind of hero. That wasn’t exactly right. But seeing it…
January would not live to see the years that followed, so he would never know what came of his action. He had given up casting his mind forward and imagining possibilities, because there was no point to it. His planning was ended. In any case he would not have been able to imagine the course of the post-war years. That the world would quickly become an armed camp pitched on the edge of atomic war, he might have predicted. But he never would have guessed that so many people would join a January Society. He would never know of the effect the Society had on Dewey during the Korean crisis, never know of the Society’s successful campaign for the test ban treaty, and never learn that thanks in part to the Society and its allies, a treaty would be signed by the great powers that would reduce the number of atomic bombs year by year, until there were none left.
Frank January would never know any of that. But in that moment on his cot looking into the eyes of young Patrick Getty, he guessed an inkling of it—he felt, just for an instant, the impact on history.
And with that he relaxed. In his last week everyone who met him carried away the same impression, that of a calm, quiet man, angry at Truman and others, but in a withdrawn, matter-of-fact way. Patrick Getty, a strong force in the January Society ever after, said January was talkative for some time after he learned of the missed attack on Kokura. Then he became quieter and quieter, as the day approached. On the morning that they woke him at dawn to march him out to a hastily constructed execution shed, his MPs shook his hand. The priest was with him as he smoked a final cigarette, and they prepared to put the hood over his head. January looked at him calmly, “They load one of the guns with a blank cartridge, right?”
“Yes,” Getty said. ‘
“So each man in the squad can imagine he may not have shot me’?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
A tight, unhumorous smile was January’s last expression. He threw down the cigarette, ground it out, poked the priest in the arm. “But I know.” Then the mask slipped back into place for good, making the hood redundant, and with a firm step January went to the wall. One might have said he was at peace.
—1983
t figures, just as sure as shift-start, that on our big day there’d be trouble. It’s a law of physics, the one miners know best: things tend to fuck up.
I woke first out of the last of several nervous catnaps, and wandered down to the hotel bar to get something a little less heavyweight than the White Brother for my nerves. On one level I was calm as could be, but on another I was feeling a bit shaky (Shaky Barnes, that’s me). Now, we drank the Brother during performances back on the rocks, of course, between sets sitting at the tables, or during the last songs when someone offered it; and Hook would make his announcement, “We never know if this’ll make us play better or worse, but it sure is fun finding out,” and then pass it around. Which was the point; we had to play good this day, so I wanted something soothing, with a little less pop to it than the White Brother we’d brought with us, which amplifies your every feeling, including fear.
So when I threaded my way through the hotel (which was as big as the whole operation on Hebe or Iris) back to our rooms, I expected the band to still be there sleeping. But when I’d finished stepping over all the scattered chairs, tables, mattresses and such (the remains of the previous shift’s practice session) I could find only three of them, all tangled up in the fancy sheets: Fingers, Crazy, and Washboard. I wasn’t surprised that my brother Hook was gone—he often was—but Sidney shouldn’t have been missing; he hadn’t gone off by himself since we left Ceres Central.
“Hey!” I said, still not too worried. “Where’d they go, you slag-eaters!” They mumbled and grunted and tried to ignore me; I gave Washboard a shove with my foot. “Where’s Hook? Where’s Sidney?” I said a little louder.
“Quit shouting,” Washboard said fuzzily. “Hook’s probably gone back to the Tower of Bible to visit the Jezebels again.” He buried his head in the pillow, like a snoutbit diving into bubblerock; suddenly it popped back out. “Sidney’s gone?”
“You see him?”
Fingers propped himself up on his elbow. “You better find Hook,” he said in his slow way. “Hook, he’ll know where Sidney gone to.”
“Well, did Hook say he was going to the Tower of Bible?” No one spoke. Crazy crawled over to a bed and sat up. He reached behind the bed and pulled out a tall thin bottle, still half filled with cloudy white liquid. He put it to his mouth and tilted it up; the level dropped abruptly a couple of times.
“Crazy, I never seen you hit the White Brother so early in the dayshift before,” I said.
“Shaky,” he replied, “you never seen me get the chance.”
“You going to get us in trouble,” I said, remembering certain misadventures of the past.
“No, I’m not,” Crazy said. “Now why don’t you run down Hook, I’m pretty sure he’s in Sodom and Gomorrah, he liked that place”—he took another swallow—”and we’ll hold down the fort and wait for Sidney to come back.”
“He better come back,” I said. “Shit. Here it is the biggest day in our lives and you guys don’t even have the sense to stay in one spot.”
“Don’t worry,” Crazy said. “Things’ll go fine, I’ll see to it.”
I took one of the slow cars through the track-webbed space between our hotel and the Tower of Bible. The Tower is one of Titania’s biggest experiments in Neo-Archeo-Ritualism, sometimes called Participatory Art. Within the huge structure, set right against the wall of the Titania Gap, the setting for every chapter in the Bible is contained, which means you can participate in a wide variety of activities. The lobby of the Tower was unusually crowded for the early hours of the dayshift, but it was Performance Day, I remembered, and people were starting early. I worked from ramp to ramp, trying to make my way through the oddly assorted crowd to the elevator that would take me to Sodom and Gomorrah. Finally I slid through the closing doors and took my place in the mass of future Sodomites.
“What I want to know,” one of them said happily, “is do they periodically sulfurize everyone in the room?”
“Every two hours,” a woman with round eyes replied, “and does it feel real! But then they unfreeze you and you get to begin again!” She laughed.
“Oh,” said the man, blinking.
The elevator opened and the group surged past me toward Costumes. I stood and looked down some of the smoky streets of Gomorrah, hoping to see my brother in the crowd. Just as I decided to get one of the costumes and start searching, I saw him coming out of the door marked JEZEBELS one arm wrapped around a veiled woman.
“Why, he must have just got here,” I said aloud, and took off after him. “Hook!” I called. “Hook!”
He heard me and quickly steered the woman into a side street. I started running. Sure enough, when I rounded the corner they had disappeared; I made a lucky guess and opened the door to a house made of sediments, and caught up with them moving up the narrow stairs. “Hook. God damn it,” I said.
“Later,” he mumbled back at me, face buried in the Jezebel’s neck.
“Hook, it’s important.”
He waved his right arm back at me in a brush-away motion, and the metal rods of his hand flashed in my face. “
Not important!” he bellowed. I grabbed his arm and pulled on it.
“How can you say that?” I cried. “Today’s the day! The six bands those judges pick today get to go to Earth and everywhere—”
He finally stopped dragging us all up the stairs. “I know all that, Shaky, but that don’t happen for a few hours yet, so why don‘t you go down to Psalms or Proverbs and calm down some? No reason for you to be so anxious.”
“Yes, there is,” I said, “a real good reason. Sidney’s gone.”
Hook tucked his chin into his neck. “Sidney’s gone?” he repeated.
“Nobody’s seen him all shift.”
His three metal fingers waved up and down, scissoring the air; it was the same nervous sign of thought he’d made when he had his hand, and played the trumpet. “Did you search the hotel good?” he said after a bit. “I don’t think he’d leave the hotel.”
I shook my head. “I came here, I thought you’d know where he is.”
“Well, he’s probably in the hotel somewhere, take a look why don’t you?”
“What if he’s not there? Come on, Hook, if we don’t find him we’re sunk.”
“All right,” he said. “Shit. You’re as bad as Sidney. I’ve been playing with that man near twenty years, and I never seen him so scared.”
“You think he’s scared?” That had never occurred to me. Sidney was quiet, not too forward, but I’d never seen him scared of playing music.
“Sure he’s scared.” He looked at the Jezebel, who hadn’t made a sound so far. “I got to find Sidney,” he explained. “I’ll be back to celebrate tomorrow.”
Her veiled head nodded, and I could see the flash of teeth. “We better hurry,” Hook said. “We’re due to be turned into a pillar of salt any minute now.” We ran back and dived into the elevator, just behind the man who had been asking questions on the way up. Down in the lobby we dodged through a group of wide-eyed Venusian monks and then through a stumbling crowd of wet people from one of the aquatic scenes. Then we made it to the exit, jumped in a car, and popped out into the Gap.
“That Participatory Art,” Hook said, “is really something.”
The Planet on the Table Page 17