Trinity's Child (26 page)

“They're minutes away, sir. We might have to try several frequencies to get through the crud in the atmosphere.”

On the
Looking Glass
map a seam ran through the center of the Asian landmass, creating an artificial ridge in a straight line south through central Russia past Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bombay was in the middle of the hump and then the ridge continued through the Indian Ocean to Antarctica. Even here, the general thought, we had to cut and paste to bring our world view into line with others. But it wasn't conformity, like Americans begrudgingly adopting metrics, that dictated the change in the
Looking Glass
map. The
Looking Glass
wanted the target in the middle. All the targets. He pondered, only briefly, whether his Russian counterpart flew high over the ruins of Omsk or Sverdlovsk, staring at a pasted ridge of Middle America—Winnipeg on the hump, and Sioux Falls and Wichita and Oklahoma City and Corpus Christi, cut away from the edges of the world and glued together so they could become unglued now.

“Where is their PCP, Sam?” Alice asked. “Precisely.”

“About seventy miles northwest of the old DEW-line radar site at Tuktoyaktuk. Over the Beaufort Sea.”

“You're kidding. Jesus Christ. What genius planned that one?”

Alice looked back at the map. The Asian landmass, including China—just in case world politics swung again as it had so often in his life—was covered with clusters of small colored dots. Areas of interest, the battle staff called them. Red for ICBM fields, blue for troop concentrations, yellow for submarine and bomber bases, black for oil fields and industrial sites. And green. The damned green dots. He shivered at the thought that it might be time to take the green out and that he might have to give the orders.

“What's with Baton Rouge?” he asked.

“Still on the ground, sir. No radio contact.”

Alice sank deeper in his chair. What damnable twist of fate had placed him aloft tonight, one of the random eight-hour shifts he drew no more than once a month? Fleetingly he envied his boss— the commanding general, code-named Icarus. Quick, simple, reflexive decisions. No right. No wrong. No thinking. Then a quick, simple good-bye and carry on, a burned-out huzz on the phone in the
Looking Glass,
and no second thoughts.

“I shouldn't make this decision, Sam. I'm not even sure it's legal.”

“It's legal, sir. Under PD 58.”

“Screw Presidential Directive 58 and its blasted nuclear-command line of authority. It puts me in charge only if there's no constitutional successor around. We may have a President on the ground in Louisiana.”

The general looked at the colonel wearily. They had known each other many years.

“I don't want to make this decision, Sam.”

“I know, sir.”

“I'm not sure if it's right.”

“It's debatable, general.”

“Goddammit, Sam, I know it's debatable! That's the point!”

“Bye-bye, Ulan-Ude,” Tyler repeated exuberantly. The navigator grinned from ear to ear. Radnor tried to ignore him.

“That doggone Kazaklis,” Tyler continued. “He's so good at this, he just makes it feel real. Man, I could feel us down there in the weeds, skimmin' over the tundra, cutting through the mountains. Just plain fun, that stuff. Couldn't you feel it, Radnor? This big baby romping down Baikal, couple hundred feet over the ice, and coming in on Irkutsk. Ready . . . ready . . . Now! Ka
-whump!
And then Ulan-Ude. Ready . . . ready . . . Ka
-whump!”

Radnor doodled with his pencil, making meaningless marks on a chart.

“I mean, Kazaklis is better at this than they are. They're doing their damnedest to make this real. But when it comes to games, our boy has 'em all topped. He's really doing this in living color. He almost had me believing it.”

Radnor's thumb pressed, white-knuckled, against the center of the pencil. It snapped, sending a painful sliver-spear up under his thumbnail. He slammed the broken pencil down and turned angrily on Tyler, fighting back the urge to grab him, shake him, shout at him. He forced himself to relax and speak quietly.

“You gotta wake up, Tyler. You just gotta.” Radnor paused. “This
is
real.”

Tyler stared back at Radnor, a grin twisting across his face. He reached across their work console and put his arm on Radnor's shoulder, as if to comfort him.

“Hey, old buddy, this is getting to you, isn't it?” Tyler said calmly. “Hang in there, will ya? That wasn't real. Look at the altimeter. We were at forty-six thousand feet the whole way. We were just talkin' it through, the same way we do in the alert room.”

“Mission planning!” Radnor shouted, angrily pushing Tyler's arm away. “Damn you! Wake up! Yeah, we were at forty-six thousand feet. Over Canada. Planning a mission. A real mission, dammit!” Radnor's voice suddenly turned to quiet pleading. “Please, Tyler.”

The grin faded off Tyler's face. “Radnor,” he said, pulling his arm back, “if you gotta believe this bullshit to do your job right, go ahead. I don't need it.”

Radnor's body wilted in frustration, his eyes catching the red V of O'Toole's boots. “Tyler, look behind you. Is that real?”

“O'Toole screwed up,” the navigator said, refusing to turn his head toward the corpse. “I feel as bad about it as you do.”

“The missiles, Tyler. We got kicked in the butt by nudets. We almost packed it in. You saw it on your screen. You felt it.
Polar Bear Three
packed it in. The whole squadron packed it in. Fairchild packed it in. Spokane packed it in.”

“Simulated.” Tyler's voice turned icily even. “They can simulate anything. You know that. It's more war games. And when we get back, Radnor, they're going to rate us on how well
you
handled it.”

Radnor slumped forward, forlornly taking his head in his hands. Maybe he was buggy, not Tyler. He felt his buddy's hand on his shoulder again, shaking him gently.

“Hey, Radnor, look at that, will you?” Tyler tapped at the radar screen in front of him. “What does that tell you?”

Radnor looked at the radar screen and the jagged Arctic coastline passing beneath them. Good God, how could Tyler ignore that? They didn't come up here on drills. They could run into MIG's. Soon.

“We're at our PCP,” Tyler said, jabbing at the center of the screen. “Now, how come we don't have orders to pass through the control point?”

“I dunno,” Radnor said dully. “Communications maybe. You know what a few dozen nudets will do. Punch holes in the ionosphere, so you got nothing to bounce high-frequency radio beams off.”

“We got low frequency.”

“Maybe it's EMP. I dunno, dammit! Maybe they're changing targets on us. Maybe nobody's back there. I dunno.”

“We haven't got any orders, 'cause it's a game. It's all another highfalutin, fancy war game, Radnor. That's why we haven't got any orders.”

Radnor looked at Tyler and felt downright afraid of him. Tyler smiled back warmly, reassuringly. Radnor braced himself.

“Tyler,” he said very quietly, “it is real. It is very real. Your wife's gone. Your kid's gone. We're not going back, 'cause there's nothing there.”

Tyler's eyes narrowed hostilely, causing Radnor to shiver. Then the navigator's expression changed again, becoming pained. “I don't know why everybody has to lay that one on me,” he said. “It's cruel, Radnor. Very cruel.”

“Tyler . . .”

“You guys act like I'm screwing up. Have I screwed up? So they're trying to make this one seem like the real thing. Another goddamn PRP test. Nothing to go home to. I'm playing along. I'm doing my job. I'll pretend. But do I keep telling you that your wife is dead? Do I? And Timmie? Huh? It's cruel. It's very cruel.”

Radnor turned away. He slowly pulled the sliver from beneath his thumb and then concentrated on his radar screen to distract himself. The coastline slowly inched away from them. The screen seemed fogged, and he reached for a tissue to clean it. The fog did not want to go away.

“Nav!” The commander's voice cut into the downstairs compartment. “Are we on our PCP?”

“Dead center, commander,” Tyler radioed back firmly.

“Shit,” Kazaklis said. “Okay, we're gonna put it in a slow orbit.”

Tyler looked over at Radnor and smiled smugly. Radnor took out a second tissue and rubbed at his screen.

Upstairs, the commander's fingers began an agitated drumbeat on the white engine throttles. “You take it, copilot,” he said to Moreau. “Throttle her back just above stall speed and put her in a goddamn circle.” Moreau began the maneuver without comment, banking the plane to the right. “Assholes,” Kazaklis said, fidgeting angrily in his seat. “So this is what we're going to do with
Elsie'
s gas. Bastards! God damn those bastards!” The Master Caution light flashed at Moreau. She pushed the lighted yellow button and it flickered, then came back on. She checked the aircraft's speed and pushed the button again. It blinked off, then came back on. She ran her eye quickly over the controls, saw no problems, and decided to ignore it. Gremlins, she thought. You get used to that in a thirty-year-old airplane. A high, staccato pinging entered her earphones. She looked quickly at Kazaklis, who stared back at her, perplexed.

“Radiation!” Halupalai cut in. “We're in radiation! The detector's jumpin' off the scale!”

Kazaklis spun around and saw Halupalai hovering over the small black radiation detector.

“Shut the vents!” Kazaklis shouted. Moreau lurched forward at the switches.

“Oxygen!” Kazaklis ordered. He stopped for a second, thinking.

“Can you guys see anything downstairs?”

Radnor stopped rubbing at his screen.

“It's just a blur, commander,” he said woodenly. “A fuzzy blur.”

“Where?”

“All over the screen.”

“Shit.”

“Fallout,” Moreau said.

“Thanks.”

“From a strike on the radar stations.”

“Thanks again.”

Kazaklis and Moreau sat mutely for a moment, the ping echoing in their helmets.

“I'm gonna have to take a look,” Kazaklis said. He reached forward and pulled at the corner of the flash screen. He froze in awe and horror. Then he gasped. Out the cockpit window, the Arctic air pulsated red. Kazaklis felt his skin creep. The air seemed to dance, tiny crystals glowing and careening off each other in electric spasms. The redness swept at him in relentless ghostly waves, like the fog over his boyhood dunes.

“Good God,” he whispered. Then he yelled, “Full throttle! Get us out of here!”

“Where?” Moreau could barely hear her own voice.

“How the hell do I know? North! They didn't blow up the whole damn Arctic Ocean!”

“General,
Polar Bear One
has gone through her PCP.”

“Gone through! On whose authority?”

“I don't know, sir. I don't imagine the northern coast of Canada is a very comfortable place to orbit right now.”

“Fallout?”

“It must be floating all over the place up there. The Russians took out every radar installation, Canadian and American, on the Arctic coast. By now the fallout is floating wherever the winds took it.”

Alice thought briefly. “Make it official.”

“Sir?”

“Send them through.”

“Through to where, sir?”

“Just through, dammit! I don't know where.”

“Winds!” Kazaklis demanded.

“Eighty-five knots,” Tyler responded. “Southerly.” The navigator paused. “Westerly now,” he said. “Ninety-five knots.”

The big bomber bumped violently, groaning under the new pressures. Moreau's left hand manipulated the throttles, pushing the aircraft to full power, while her right fought to hold it steady against the swirl of the shifting winds. Kazaklis peeked tentatively around the corner of the flash curtain. He looked like a spying spinster, Moreau thought—a spinster whose forehead was popping beads of nervous sweat. Moreau caught her first brief peephole look at the surging red poison outside. She turned away quickly.

“Where is Tuktoyaktuk?” Kazaklis asked desperately.

“One hundred ten nautical miles behind us,” Tyler replied.

On the pilot's forehead the little beads turned to globules, then to streams. Kazaklis slapped at his helmet to try to stop the pinging whine pounding at his temples. Through the corner of the window he stared into a sky throbbing in spasms of deep scarlet, fading to a hot red glow and then to softly dancing electric pink before the wave of scarlet rushed over them again. He saw no opening.

“Jesus,” he sighed.

“Komaluk?” Moreau asked.

“Good Lord, Jesus.”

“Komaluk?” Moreau repeated. “Is it Komaluk?”

“Oh, God in heaven, it's a horrible sight. Red fucking crud rolling at us in waves . . .”

“Commander.” Moreau sounded remarkably calm. She bit off the urge to tell Kazaklis he wasn't glowing in the dark yet. She knew the early-warning stations had been hit. But it was hours ago now. “The vents are closed. It's three hours old. We could fry an egg on the wing. Inside, we're okay. For a while. Let's figure out where it's coming from and how to get out of it.”