Trinity's Child (42 page)

Halupalai felt, rather than heard, Tyler's grunt. The navigator started to go down, but Halupalai went first, one of his legs plunging into the open well to the basement. He teetered briefly, gave one last painful wrench at the handgun, and lost his balance, careening backward into the steel seat braces. He heard the gun clanging faintly as it skittered across the metal floor. For a moment his head spun foggily and he couldn't move, his leg tangled in the ladder, his back aching where the two sharp-edged braces—the ejection tracks—stabbed into his shoulder blades.

Groggily, he saw Moreau wheeling out of her seat and Tyler on his hands and knees between them, groping for the weapon. Halupalai let out a wild, animal yell and flung himself at Tyler, catching him by the collar. He pulled with such desperate strength that the young navigator flipped backward in a half-somersault, his legs flailing upward, his head crashing down over the edge of the open well. Halupalai heard the crack, even over the engine noise. It was not the noise of a collarbone snap on the playing field, not the curdling crack of the Buff s aging back as it roared over a ridge. It was a crack he had heard only in his youthful imagination—the quick, clean spinal snap of a haole caught in a wave he had not been meant to ride.

Moreau stood at the front of the plane, staring vacantly at the scene. The music clawed through her helmet, scratchily huzzing in and out as the beam faded and reemerged.
Helter-skelter . . .
huzz . . .
birds flew off to the fallout shelter. .
. huzz . . .
got up to dance . .
. huzz . . .
never got the chance . .
. She pounded at the helmet with two clenched fists. Stop it, stop it, stop it!

Slowly she bent over into the darkness behind the pilot, retrieved the .45, removed the clip, and dropped both on her seat. Kazaklis looked at her desolately.
Generation lost in space . . .
“Four little robots,” Moreau said emptily.
No time to start again . . .
Moreau reached to pull the radio plug
. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Squire sat on a candlestick . . .
Then there was only the roar of the engines, and she started down the narrow walkway.

It was clear at a glance that Tyler was dead. His head wobbled loosely but peacefully in the open well, only the vibration of the aircraft stirring him now. She examined him most briefly, then looked up at Halupalai. The big Hawaiian stood with his back pressed awkwardly against the far wall of the defensive station, his arms spread slightly. Moreau reached out to comfort him, but Halupalai pushed back more tightly, as if he wanted to withdraw beyond the barrier. Moreau smiled wanly at him—poor, lost, gentle friend—and knelt beside the well hatch. She carefully took Tyler's lolling head in her hands, edged it over to a resting place on the deck, and started down the ladder.

She first saw O'Toole stretched tranquilly in the alcove, his body faintly luminous in the red light. Then she turned toward Radnor and her knees buckled. She grabbed Tyler's seat to support herself, then sagged into it. She laid a hand on Radnor's sandy hair, tenderly stroked it, and gently moved him upright, briefly catching and then forever avoiding his faint smile.

Moreau shrieked. “No-o-o-o-o-o-o!” In the aircraft no one heard her. She plugged in the radio cord.
In the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried and the poets dreamed . . .
“No-o-o-o-o-o-o!”
Not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken . .
. She pulled herself erect and switched the radio to all channels, so she could speak through the dirge.

“Three little robots,” she said dully.

“Moreau?” The alarmed voice of Kazaklis cut through the hollow rhythms.

The three men I admire most, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day the music died . . .
Moreau lifted a leaden arm to disconnect the radio.
They were singing bye-bye, Miss American pie . . .
And the sounds were gone again, the endless drone back, and Moreau stared into Tyler's screen, its whirling arm seeing no high terrain, no pulsing clouds, no incognitos. Moreau placed her head in her hands, and she cried.

“So what do you folks do, Alice, when one of your crews goes gutless?”

Alice floundered. He looked up from the black phone, his eyes pleading with Sam. Sam shrugged.

“Sir, there's no precedent—”

“Hell with precedent! No precedent for nothin' tonight!”

“Normally, sir, we'd send up interceptors,” Alice said weakly, “and try to bring them down.”

“Shoot 'em down?”

“If necessary. We'd try to force them to land first.”

“Land.” The scorn cut across the distance. “Then you'd shoot 'em. What's the difference? Deserters are deserters. Shoot 'em down.”

“Good God, Condor—”

“And stop callin' me Condor, dammit. This is your President speakin', not some damned dyin' bird.”

Alice felt the blood rise in his face. “Sir, ears are opening. They can mouse us. We can mouse them. We're getting the first bits of messages moving inside Russia.”

There was a pause. “You don't think you should've told your . . . me . . . about that, Alice?”

“Sir, we can't make sense out of it yet. It's snatches. Bits and pieces. All we can determine is they're rattled. Just as we are.”

“You think we're rattled?”

Alice sighed. “Yes, sir.” The general felt someone hovering at his elbow. He impatiently brushed the figure back.

“I'm gonna tell you somethin', Alice. Straight out. Thing that's rattlin' me most is my own damned military geniuses.”

Alice took a deep breath. “In this one, sir, there are no military geniuses.” The figure tugged persistently at his sleeve. He turned angrily and saw his communications officer waving papers at him. “Excuse me a moment, sir,” Alice said, cupping the phone. He could hear protests squawking out of the receiver. “For Christ's sake, lieutenant, I'm talking to your Commander-in-Chief,” he snapped at the young woman.

“He needs to know this, sir,” she replied, unyielding. “The Bisons have turned. Shortly after
Polar Bear One
turned, the Soviet squadron approaching them also turned.”

Alice looked at her in disbelief. “You positive?”

“Positive?” The woman shrugged. “Tonight?” She shrugged again. 'Tm as sure as I am about
Polar Bear One.
Same data. Same source.”

Alice scanned the readouts hurriedly. “And the rest of them?” he asked.

“Proceeding, sir. As before.”

Alice stared into the black phone, from which he could hear a persistent babble tugging at him. To the general it seemed an eternity before he spoke into the phone again.

Beneath the Maryland farmlands, the dismayed radio operator ran his fingers through his still-damp hair, massaging the roots thoughtfully. He could hear the hum of the giant turbines, one floor below, methodically cleansing their air. It wasn't that dirty out there, he thought. Yet. He glanced at the bank of telegraph machines to his left, leafing through the last printouts. Routine stuff until almost an hour after his midnight shift had begun. A string of the usual fifteen-minute communications checks in Greenwich mean time: “
NORAD COMM CHECK
0500
CHEYENNE . . . NORAD COMM CHECK
0515
CHEYENNE.”
The last had come at 0545, followed by a gushing volume of increasing status alerts, urgent alarms, and finally the list of impact areas. Then the machine stopped at 0630 and the paper roll was blank. He glanced at a clock marked Zulu—1204. Four minutes past seven. The sun would be coming up soon. He turned to the tall balding man watching him.

“I just don't understand it, sir,” the technician said. “Half the time I can hear the
Looking Glass
talking to the
E-4.
But I can't hear the
E-4,
and neither of them seems to hear us.”

“Keep trying,” the man said halfheartedly. “We don't have a helluva lot to tell them anyway, do we?”

“Maybe not. But one more EMP whomp and we won't be talking to anybody.”

“Son,” the man said, “after the next whomp we won't be talking to each other.”

The technician slumped in his government-issue secretarial chair. “Dammit—pardon me—but wouldn't they want to know about the signals from Russia?”

“Hmmph,” the older man grunted, unimpressed. “Moscow calling.”

“It's not Moscow. It's north of there, in the dingleberries. But they're directing the messages at the United States.”

“Son,” the man said patronizingly, “you're listening to some spook from the CIA trying to tell us we left a bridge open over the Volga. We know that.”

The technician returned disconsolately to his radio. His superior, a retired brigadier general now running the Central Atlantic regional civil-defense program, wandered slowly out of the room. As he left, he glanced at a wall map of the Washington metropolitan area with 466 pinpoints for the air-raid sirens he had triggered at 1:10 in the morning—after the first missile had landed. Shit-pot full of good they did, he thought, moving on into the empty briefing room. The plans called for the governors and leaders of a half-dozen states to relocate here. Not a one had arrived. Neither had his staff of forty. He was stuck down here with the normal nighttime crew of seven, plus two. The only outsiders who had shown up were two young nurses from the standby list. The way they looked when they showed up—bruised, clothes torn—he figured they had been more worried about being raped than nuked. Not even a doctor had shown up. He felt very left out.

“As I said, sir,” Alice replied, slightly irritably, “there are no geniuses in this one. I don't know what this means. I can make an optimistic guess.”

“A smoke signal.” The voice was contemptuous.

“You might call it that.”

“Alice,” the successor said slowly, “Harpoon told me all about smoke signals. So fifteen Russian bombers turned around. I read this little war chant as sayin' we got one deserter and they got fifteen. You read it different?”

Alice took a long deep breath, letting the air out slowly. “Yes, sir, I believe I do.”

“Maybe you want to believe it more than you do believe it.”

“Perhaps, sir.”

“I ain't into wishful thinkin'.”

“Please, sir. Turn the bombers.” Alice closed his eyes, embarrassed. He thought he sounded more pathetic than convincing, and he didn't like those near him to be listening. “See what happens. We have so little time.”

The general waited through a brief pause. Then the successor continued. “Alice, lemme ask you somethin'. You say ears are openin' up and we're hearin' folks and folks're hearin' us?”

“Yes, sir. Not very well.”

“Wel-l-l-l, Alice, I truly hope the Premier is eavesdroppin' right now. 'Cuz he can shove his Bisons right up his rosy-red bee-hind. He started this and he better start duckin'. And you hear this, general. You put another bomber on the henhouse. Damned fast. Got that?”

Alice clamped his eyes tightly closed. He saw the black hole of Omaha, the surf crashing over a reef forever forbidden to him. “I hear you, sir,” he said.

“And if there's ears out there, Alice, some of 'em's ours. So you send out general orders, right now, to shoot down
Polar Bear One.
No questions. Just shoot. Hear?”

Alice could feel beads of sweat popping on his forehead. He brushed at his face with a sleeve that was already damp. When he spoke, his own voice sounded foreign. “I hear you, sir,” he said again.

“Don't sound very convinced, general.”

“I don't believe I am, sir.”

The pause was quite brief. “You tread careful, Alice, or you'll find yourself in deep shit. Deep shit indeed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We can send out the orders from here.”

Alice thought only for a split second. “I'd suggest you do that, sir.”

“I hear you right, Alice?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a moment of silence. Then the phone connection clicked and huzzed out.

“You get the duty, Kazaklis,” Moreau said. Kazaklis looked into her ghostly white face and the wet smudges she had tried to blot away. “Or we'll be down to two little robots.”

“I know,” the pilot said.

“Send him up here first, will you? He's really a case.”

“Help him, Moreau,” Kazaklis said in tones more tender than she had ever heard him use.

The pilot then swung slowly out of his seat and started down the aisle. Tyler's boots rested pigeon-toed a few feet behind the cockpit, his body pointing directly down the middle of the walkway. Only his head was out of line, crazily crooked, where Moreau had moved it from the well which had broken his neck. It rested at the foot of the jump seat on which the red code box sat, and directly behind Halupalai's seat. Halupalai, however, still stood frozen against the instrument panel, his arms stretched outward almost in a crucifixion stance, little yellow gauge lights glowing around him. Kazaklis moved carefully past Tyler and placed a hand on Halupalai's elbow.

“Come on, old boy,” Kazaklis said soothingly. “Go up front with Moreau.” The gunner didn't move. Halupalai's arm was leaden. Kazaklis tugged at it lightly before noticing the shredded radio wire. He reached up and gently eased Halupalai's helmet off his head, dropping it into O'Toole's seat with one hand and softly massaging the tight tendons of his friend's neck with the other. He leaned forward and placed his mouth near Halupalai's ear. “Please, ace,” he whispered. “Go up with Moreau for a while. You know how women are. She's a little twittery. She needs you. Please.”