by Dean Ing
Chapter Thirteen
The murmur of voices from Little's tent was distant, carrying only sad phatic overtones. Ted, quarreling internally with new unwelcome wisdom, thought Ray Kenney asleep until Ray said, "I'm glad we got you out of that."
"After you got me into it? The least you could do—but thanks." It had not escaped Ted that his friend had asked for gratitude without once giving it.
"We kept you from getting booted out," Ray insisted.
"Getting out anyway, soon as we get home."
"You can't; you're our leader."
Silence. Ted Quantrill knew that he could lead; knew also that he did not want followers.
Ray, through a yawn: "Things'll be different now that Little understands what happened."
"He doesn't. He never will," Ted replied, and discouraged further talk. Ted knew that with one hostile glance, Purvis Little had given him a valuable discovery: most people will hate you for identifying their illusions.
The lesson was worth remembering; the whole day was memorable. Ted Quantrill wondered why he felt no elation, why he wished he were alone so that he could cry, why it was that he felt like crying. He had not yet learned that new wisdom is a loss of innocence, nor that weeping might be appropriate at childhood's end.
Chapter Fourteen
While Quantrill slept in Tennessee, savants in Peking and New Delhi gauged America's response. Once, India would have looked to Moscow for counsel and arms, but no more. The RUS had been forced to cut foreign aid, and to yield more autonomy to the predominantly Islamic peoples of her southern flanks from Lake Baikal to the Black Sea. One sign of her troubles, as the RUS well knew, was the damnable tariqat.
Tariqats, Moslem secret societies, were flourishing in the 1980's while Russian-speaking USSR bureaucrats sweated to modernize Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, sprawling Kazakhstan, reluctant Afghanistan. The tariqat was a far older tradition than Marxism, more staunchly rooted, in some ways harsher in its discipline. And Allah met His payrolls: despairing RUS bureaucrats joked that their earthly rewards could not match baklavah in the sky. No wonder that first the USSR, then the RUS, became alarmed as tariqats flourished in the Islamic RUS republics. The tariqat was a broad covert means to reject Russianization, and RUS moslems embraced it. Moscow knew her underbelly was soft on Islam, and worried about ties between its tariqats and the AIR next door.
Directly to the south of the RUS lay the Associated Islamic
Republics, in a vast crescent from Morocco to Iran, abutting India which was still officially the world's largest democratic nation; unofficially a polyglot nation in the process of trading chaos for Islam.
Since the 1960's, pundits had been predicting that India '… can't keep this up much longer.' Some observers meant her overpopulation; India's women, a miracle of dreadful fecundity, steadily produced mouths that could not be fed, much less find employment. Some referred to India's acceptance of fourteen official languages. Still others indicated India's rejection of western ties while fumbling away her parliamentary democracy.
Underlying India's manifold ills was the central fact that, until recent years, three-quarters of her citizens espoused caste restrictions in some form of Hinduism. But recently, tens of millions ofharijans—untouchables scorned by ruling castes—had become literate, and at that point began an accelerating conversion to Islam urged on by India's already prominent Moslem minority. One might almost suggest certain parallels between the fast-rising conservative religious movements of the two most populous democratic nations on earth. By 1988 the Reformed Jan'ta party, a coalition of reform groups, was led by Moslems. Amid these delicate adjustments came the River War with Pakistan.
Moslem Pakistan had several times struggled to produce a democracy, falling back on martial law each time. Thanks to her draconian rule she lost her eastern half to India in 1971, and when India annexed Bangladesh she welcomed more Moslems into parliament. Still devoutly Moslem, still incapable of sustaining a democracy, still wrangling with India and fumbling with nuclear energy, Pakistan existed largely with western aid until 1988, when she lost the River War.
The Sutlej River cascades from Himalayan headwaters, crossing India's Punjab before entering Pakistan. Pakistan was well into her project to irrigate fallow land with Sutlej water when India, with desert property of her own, began to divert too much of the Sutlej. Pakistan protested. India borrowed a smile from Buddha. And while debate smouldered in the UN, Pakistan's agribiz choked on dust. Pakistan gathered her American tanks and RUS Kalashnikovs, and struck.
Twenty days later, Pakistan was only a memory. If India was poor in fertilizer, it was because a full one-third of her national budget was spent on arms. As her exports of steel, cement, and machinery mushroomed, so did her imports of French helicopters. Profits from her new shipyards funded her navy. Pakistan had suicidally attacked a nation whose one prosperity lay in arms, a growing giant with growing power.
India overflew Sukkur and Karachi in two waves. The first was a horde of small choppers firing minicannon and homing missiles; the second was a wave of larger choppers transporting whole infantry companies. Pakistan surrendered, obtained recognition as the State of Sulaiman, and was instantly absorbed by India as educated Moslems everywhere gave thanks. It was thought possible that India had deliberately provoked the River War. Perhaps 'possible' was too weak a word.
Now, in 1996, the fifty million Moslems of Sulaiman formed a gentle buffer as India's border with the AIR crescent. India was now one-third Moslem; her Hindu majority found it easier to accommodate Islam every day.
In capitals from Moscow to Washington—with a studied pause in Brussels, the real nerve center of common-market Europe—one glance at a map could bring cold sweat. The Islamic co-prosperity sphere ran from Gibraltar to Indonesia; and now that China had made her peace with Islam and forged links to Japan, the still-floundering RUS might be excused for fearing herself savaged by COMECON, the Asiatic common market. It was well-known that India had taken Chinese aid to build her 'irrigation' conduits near the old Pakistani border. But the RUS had only now discovered that China was irrigating her subterranean tanks with oil via the new conduit.
The RUS sabotage, then, was a ploy to reveal Sinolnd duplicity, while interrupting it, using American hardware so that retaliation might be delayed and, when it came, less tightly-focused on a RUS barely able to defend its huge perimeter since 1985. Surely the RUS never expected the reprisal to spread across the globe as World War Four.
So much for expectation. India's furious militants scanned American foreign and domestic crises, judged despite Peking's counsel that Washington's response to the tanker reprisal was one of weakness, and made a terrible mistake.
Chapter Fifteen
Ted Quantrill surged up from his mummy bag, mumbling, then fully awake as Ray Kenney continued to shake him. "Ah, jeez, I thought we'd settled all that last night," he said. "What shit's in the fan?"
Ray's eyes were haunted. "On your radio," he said. "Everybody's at Little's tent; come on!" With that Ray ducked out, leaving Quantrill to translate as he would.
In jeans and sneakers, Quantrill plodded to Little's tent. He could hear his radio before he arrived; saw in Purvis Little's face a bleakness deeper than ever before.
"…in Trincomalee fear that the Indian assault group has subdued the leased US base on Sri Lanka. From New Delhi comes a warning that captured American personnel will be held hostage against any loss of Indian lives. This, unless American cruise missiles are turned back from their present course toward New Delhi.
"A report just in—did you check this, Curt?—A report from UPI confirms the Xinhua announcement that a Chinese jing ya satellite is monitoring a wave of cruise missiles proceeding south from a RUS base near Magnitogorsk, near the Urals. Black Star agency denies the Chinese allegation of widespread destruction at the RUS launch complex, but admits several booster launches aborted by saboteurs firing hand-held missiles.
"Meanwhile, sources in Washington remain silent
after the early-morning White House statement aired earlier. In the words of Press Secretary Newhouse, 'A measured reprisal, a demonstration of American determination designed to halt the unprovoked Indian aggression in Sri Lanka, is now underway from elements of our Seventh Fleet in the Arabian Sea. The President has asked me to stress that this demonstration is against Indian property, and not against the blameless Indian people. For the duration of this emergency, all military reserve personnel are ordered to report immediately to their units; all leaves are cancelled. We pray God that the modest American response will terminate this rash military adventure by India."
"We have no more word on that report of general mobilization in the Sinolnd countries. Stay tuned. Now this."
A syrupy baritone began. "Tired, listless, logy this summer? Don't be downcast on dog-days, ask your pharmacist—" Click.
Purvis Little drew a shaking hand from Quanta-ill's radio, saw that it was shaking, clasped his hands together and stared past them at his feet. "Idon'tknow. Ijust—don't—know."
"My mother's in the reserve. Will she be gone when I get home?" This from Thad.
Tom Schell: "Indian bastards! We'll show 'em."
Wayne Atkinson: "Indians and Chinese both! And since when are Russians our allies?"
Ray Kenney: "I want to go home—"
A chorus tuned up, its most prominent word being 'home'. Without a word, Little began to strike camp, ignoring the narrowed eyes of a watchful Wayne Atkinson. Slowly at first, then with haste that bordered on panic, the troop repacked.
Quantrill tarried to help Thad stuff his pack, saw Atkinson take up his rearguard position, smiled reassuringly as Thad watched them stumble out of sight at a half-trot. "They aren't waiting, Teddy! What're they doing?"
"I don't know; they don't know. Don't worry, Thad, the trail's still there."
Thad shouldered his pack, tried a tremulous smile. “If we hurry, we can catch up and listen to your radio."
"If we hang back, we still can," Quantrill said. He held up his hand, and Thad saw that Quantrill had quietly stolen his radio back. They headed for the trail, switching frequencies, making no effort to catch the others. Long before he reached the trailhead and the rest of the troop, Quantrill knew the target of the Allied US/RUS reprisal.
Chapter Sixteen
India's Uttar Pradesh region lay between New Delhi and Nepal, fed by Himalayan silts, feeding much of India from her huge grain fields on either side of the upper Ganges. Kanpur was more than a railhead: it was the nexus of mountainous wheat surpluses on which India depended. During last-second attempts to flee in half-light over New Delhi's hopelessly choked thoroughfares in a chopper, the co-pilot called back to Prime Minister Casimiro: "Hostiles still twenty minutes from us—"
Punjabi State Minister Mukkerji, trading frowns with Casimiro: "Impossible! Can cruise missiles hover?"
Casimiro licked dry lips, lurched forward as his stomach lurched upward, fought his innards and grabbed for the headset. "Here, give me that thing…" Two minutes later, after a near-mutiny by the pilot, Casimiro's chopper was swinging back toward the parliament complex. The old US cruise missiles could not hover, but could and did change course near Jaipur, hurtling eastward fifty meters above Indian soil toward her brobdingnagian breadbasket at near-sonic velocity. New Delhi, then, was not the American target, and nuclear weapons were not the threat. In hurried parley with General Kirpal, Casimiro and the available cabinet ministers deduced much from scattered reports filtering into their blastproof—though it was feared, not firestorm-proof—digs near Parliament.
I. F. Stone was right, of course; the Americans had lied in saying the cruise missiles had come from a Seventh Fleet Shangri-La. The birds had approached as parasites carried by US bombers from Diego Garcia Island to the Arabian Sea, then launched in their long dog-leg, to put the fear of a Christian God in New Delhi before dashing their brains out against Uttar Pradesh granaries.
Of the seventy-two cruise missiles launched by the Strategic Air Command, sixty-four carried conventional high explosives. The other eight carried aerosol-dispersed chemical poison as lethal as botulism toxin, with special loiter programs to distribute the stuff over what was left of the granaries after the earlybirds had strewn them across the landscape. Seventy-two conventional weapons are far too few to munch all the wheat in Kanpur's vicinity, even granting pinpoint accuracy and complete mission success—which it was not. Six missiles succumbed to natural ills en route, three were actually downed by Indian-manned Mirage fighters in an insane treetop rabbit-chase, and five missiles missed their targets. But following the fifty-eight bull's-eyes sauntered over all eight of the dispersant drones, pumping out cargoes of poison that contaminated exposed wheat and the outsides of many granaries still untouched by explosives.
Then came the RUS cruise missiles, fleeing zero-length launchers from Magnitogorsk. There had been no agreement with Washington; but there had been a RUS recon satellite tracking the US birds, and a volte-face correction in the RUS robot flight path so that, wherever US birds roosted, RUS birds would also. This blatant me-too ploy by Moscow was based on the computer-derived conclusion that only an instant alliance with the Americans could possibly deter China, who alone had the technology and the will to evaporate supertankers, from moving onto RUS soil while the US was embroiled with India. All sixty of the RUS cruise missiles were tipped with conventional explosives. A handful of them hit Kanpur. The rest exploded against granaries, bridges, and a rail depot.
This was good shooting, but bad tactics. India's first conclusion was that she must scrap all the wheat stockpiled within ten klicks of reported contamination, meaning roughly a third of her Uttar Pradesh supply. Her second was that the US/RUS strikes, instead of killing a million Indians outright, had doomed many millions to slow starvation unless India accepted mortifying ceasefire terms for American grain.
The American terms, hastily sketched in by pill-popping diplomats in Washington, were not inhuman; but they did specify an American presence on Indian soil. It was undemocratic, it was Judeo-Christian. It would be humiliating to India's leaders in the sight of Islamics everywhere.
India's third conclusion sprang from reports by tariqat members in Tazhikistan, warning of RUS troops moving into a region that adjoined both China and India. The report was false; had been generated in Peking and released among Tazhiks for a purpose which would, in time, become all too scrutable.
While Washington, Brussels, and Moscow sought some way to engage in meaningful dialogue with Peking and Riyadh as a conduit for calm negotiation with New Delhi, India's war-horse Kirpal was already coordinating a Sinolnd reply to the US terms. This coincided perfectly with China's plans: she alone, except for the RUS themselves, knew just how inflated were the population figures across the enormous breadth of Siberia, and just how much RUS oil was being drawn from Siberian wellheads.
Chapter Seventeen
"I absolutely forbid it," Purvis Little shouted toward the sedan that rolled away toward Asheville. Gabe Hooker did not look back. Wayne Atkinson jabbed a scornful finger skyward from the car.
Tom Schell sat on a guard rail at roadside in the dusk. "Face it, Mr. Little, the bus isn't coming on a Sunday. Maybe hitching rides is better; what if there's no bus tomorrow?"
"Safety in numbers," Little said testily. "And I'm still responsible for your safety. It's a long way back to Raleigh, boys." The scoutmaster moved nearer to the group that lounged on packs around the Quantrill boy, listening to the radio which Quantrill had flatly refused to surrender again. Not that it mattered much; on AM or FM, only a few stations were broadcasting and all said the same things. The federal freeze order had stabilized wages and prices while outlining consumer rationing; Russians were championing the US cause; Indian wheat had been the target of our 'bloodless' demonstration; Peking was silent; stay tuned.
Presently Quantrill pocketed his radio. “Too dark for the solar cells; I'll save the batteries for later," he apologized, then raised his voice. "Mr. Little
, should we set up camp and eat?"
It gave them something to do. A few vehicles passed, most at high speed. Propane stoves soon glowed under panniers of tea. None of the boys seemed hungry. Those who felt like weeping crept off to do it alone, so it was bedtime before Little realized that four more of his scouts had hiked off to hitch rides to the east.
Ray Kenney's mummy bag was deployed next to Quantrill's. Both of the boys were still awake when the late bulletins came, and both listened with breathless awe until the highway blockage bulletins began to repeat. “How're we gonna get to Raleigh now?" Ray whispered.
"The question is, will it still be there?" Quantrill regretted his reply but felt curiously detached from Raleigh. His father was on active duty; his mother had left to spend a week with kinfolk in Danville; his little sister had died two years ago. Quantrill thought of his upstairs room with its soccer posters, the pylons he used to fly his formula racers in the room, his hidden trove of pornflick cassettes, his suspended model of the Venus lab. It all seemed priceless to his childhood, valueless to his future.
Quantrill framed several replies to Ray Kenney, heard the boy weeping hoarsely, and realized that he was as likely to make things worse as to improve them. He recalled something his father had said once: "Talk is cheap, but silence is just about free." The smile of reminiscence was still on his face when Quantrill began to snore.
Once in the night, Quantrill waked for a moment; puzzled at the heavenly—hellish—display overhead. A meteor-bright line scrawled a curve, winking regularly before a final yellowish flash. The line disappeared almost instantly. Halfway across the sky a tiny star flared, then winked out just as abruptly. Quantrill thought sleepily of Perseid showers; failed to note that meteorites do not maneuver; rolled over and slept. Thus he did not see the awesome streaks that laced the night sky later when space junk began to plummet into the stratosphere.