Trinity's Child (17 page)

It was the night before graduation that Sarah Jean told him. They stood on the dunes, the sun setting in a brilliant spring evening, and she said she was not going with him. She would make the trip into the world with the president of their class—a kid with glasses, for God's sake; but a kid with a scholarship to Stanford, a sure ticket out—and they would be married the next week. Kazaklis stared into the falling sun and knew the reason was his pa's old truck, no ticket that, but he turned toward her anyway with cow-brown eyes dying and disbelieving.

“Why, Sarah Jean?” he asked, his words strangled in pain.

“Nothing is forever,” she said simply, and the sun sank.

“Why not?” he begged, but the pain broke his voice and he couldn't wait for an answer because the tears were welling and he couldn't let her see them. He couldn't let anyone see. So he ran. To the truck. He clattered up the river road, past the old moss-covered house to the trailhead, leaped out and raced into the woods, where it was raining. And he built a fire in the rain, using pitch as his pa had taught him—damn his pa—and he sat through the night, crying.

The next night he graduated, miracle everyone said that was, and took a hustled twenty down to the Sportsmen's and laid it on the felt in front of Nikko. Her talons flicked the Bicycles at him, his fingernails deftly nicking a few edges, and the twenty turned to fifty. Which he pushed across the felt, knowing it was twice the price. The next morning, at the house on the Coos, the raven lady's clinging black trousers were hanging from the antlers over the door. Pinned to the kid's trophy was a note saying he was joining the Air Force because he didn't want to get drafted and muck around in the woods in Nam the way he had mucked around in the woods of the Coos. The real reason was that he wanted to ride the jet contrails. It was a long while before Kazaklis learned that Sarah Jean's first baby had been born just six months later. He never allowed himself to see wisps of gossamer again.

The radio silence became oppressive. For thirty minutes none of them spoke to each other, except for the occasional monotone course corrections from Tyler. And nothing had come in from the outside.

Moreau, even though she had been through this dozens of times before in long droning practice runs, felt fidgety. She squirmed in her seat, shifting against the discomfort of her parachute pack and finally relenting against the weight of her bulbous white helmet, lifting it off so her jet-black hair spilled over the fireproof green of her shoulders. She ran an ungloved hand through the hair, giving it a finger comb, and arched her back to loosen the taut muscles.

It was an inadvertently sensual show and Kazaklis cast a sidelong glance at her, surreptitiously, as if he had caught her in the shower. Without the helmet, she was a woman, all right, and a pretty one, he had to admit. Her face had a soft glow in the red light and the one blank eye gave her what Kazaklis suddenly saw as a mutated beauty, as if she had been transformed from moth to butterfly.

Shake your head, Kazaklis. Bitch to witch is more like it. Last-woman-in-the-world syndrome.

Moreau, pensive and restless, suddenly broke the silence. “We gonna make it?” she asked, not seeking confirmation as much as conversation.

Kazaklis chuckled. “Wull, uh, golly gee, I dunno, ma'am,” he mocked her. “You think we have time?”

Moreau's face snapped left to glare at him; then she merely shook her head in despair. “Kazaklis, I think you'd go to the Last Supper with your fly open.”

“You shock me,” the pilot replied gravely. “There
are
limits.”

“I'm glad to hear that.”

“That was a men-only outfit, Moreau. The way it was meant to be.”

“Jesus.”

“You know your history.”

“Well, we're making it now . . .” Moreau abruptly caught herself, trying to avoid that trap again. “History, Kazaklis, making history.”

Some of the bravado seemed to drain out of the pilot's voice as he replied, “Making it or ending it.”

The plane bumped, a good solid whack of clear-air turbulence, and Moreau automatically reached forward to reset the flashing yellow Master Caution light. She sagged back, pulling at a strap that was pinching at her chest, and saw that Kazaklis didn't notice this time. He seemed lost in thought.

“Do you care, Kazaklis?”

“I'm trained not to care. Just like you, Moreau. Just like all of us. PRP
uber alles.
Six little, six little, six little robots, flying off to war.”

“Five little robots.”

“Yeah.”

“You ever think much about PRP?”

“Only when the colonel stares into my bloodshot eyes at oh-eight-hundred.”

“Like today.”

“It
's such bullshit.
Who
got the only
B-52
off the ground at Fairchild?”

“I don't mean that part. Not whether you should show up in the morning swallowing aspirin with Listerine. Not the part about writing letters to your congressman or fighting with your husband.”

“Wife. The regs say wife.”

Moreau ignored him. “The sanity part,” she continued. “The part that's designed to make sure that insane men won't throw the switch and sane men will.”

“You want insane men doing it?”

“You think sane men
would
do it?”

Kazaklis, the commander, flinched. He looked at Moreau very carefully. Then he gurgled up a slow, mad cackle and flamboyantly placed his right hand inside his half-open flight jacket. “Josephine,
ma chere,”
he said in a brutalized French accent, “Pear-ee is yours for zee bidding, Moscow mine for zee taking.”

“You tried that once before, Nap,” Moreau replied caustically. “In the winter. Froze your pecker, as I recall, giving half the feminine population of Paris a badly needed rest.”

“A rest?
Chere,
my poor
chere.
How little you knew in those days. How, my dear Josephine, did you think I thawed it out?”

“Okay, okay, okay. PRP's working just fine. It's got you acting like Napoleon and Tyler acting sane. I'm not sure which worries me more. We've got ourselves an Earth-to-Mars case in the basement. He's really spaced out.”

Kazaklis looked nervously at the radio-channel dial to make sure they were on private, a channel which other crewmen could, but rarely did, interrupt.

“He's numb. He's denying. And he's functioning. That's the way it's supposed to work.”

“I'll remind you of that when he wakes up. Meanwhile, Halupalai's too spooked about his own future, about getting too old to do all this, to do any thinking at all. Too old. Now, that
is
funny. And Radnor's too mesmerized by his oath to God and country.”

“That's PRP, pal. Five little robots, programmed differently but heading in the same direction, flying off to war.” Kazaklis, the commander, paused for a moment. “Or is it four?” His voice went flat and strained.

“You'd love that, wouldn't you, macho man?” Moreau pronounced it Match-O, with a bite. “Got your hand on your forty-five? No, PRP's got me hooked, too. Proving I'm one of the boys, just as Match-O as Captain Shazam.”

“There, along with Maggie Thatcher and Indira Gandhi, goes the theory that rule by the womb will save mankind.”

“But that's what we robots five are doing, commander,” Moreau said. “Remember?”

“Saving mankind from the Red Menace,” Kazaklis responded. “Better dead than Red.”

“We're deterring war, Kazaklis. Did you forget?” She added the last line with a bite. Kazaklis sat silently a moment, then laughed. She turned away abruptly, angry again.

“Reminds me of my first SAC briefing.” Kazaklis ignored her, continuing to chuckle. “Colonel gave us the full works—failure of deterrence, men, means the failure of our mission! We are here to prevent war, not fight it. But one of the new guys pops up: 'Does that mean if it all starts we don't have to go?' Jesus. You'd think the Russians had just infiltrated a commissar onto the Command Balcony. The colonel wriggled like he had a SAM up his behind. 'Son,' he said, the others being men, of course, 'are you on Dris-tan?'“

“And you never saw him again,” Moreau said.

“Nope.”

“Probably the sanest one in the room. You tell him nuclear war is insane. So the world goes nuts and he asks if it's sane or insane to go nuts with it. Not exactly an illogical question.”

“Sanity is what everybody else is doing, Moreau.”

“Right. Like Jonestown. Nine hundred little robots marching up to the Kool-Aid barrel. Like the arms race. Crazy to build fifty thousand nuclear weapons. But if everybody else is doing it, it's crazy not to build them. That means mass suicide is sane. It's crazy to do it, but if everybody is doing it, it's sane. Right?”

“You think too much, college girl,” Kazaklis said. Suddenly he didn't like this. At all.

“Getting a little close to home?”

“You on Dristan?” the commander asked, his voice betraying no humor at all. “Be careful. PRP would give you the hook right now. Pull your ejection lever.”

“When we get back, you can report me to PRP while I'm turning you in to the Equal Rights Commission.” She paused. “Dristan. You never did understand the narcotic, did you? Pumping your goddamn quarters into that goddamn machine. You got better. It got better.” She paused again. “Who won, Kazaklis?”

Kazaklis looked at her curiously, then very carefully. He wanted her to stop. Now. But Moreau, caught up in it all, went on.

“Remember Yossarian in
Catch-22?
Only sane man in a crazy world. So sane they thought he was crazy. He didn't want to fly his B-25 on any more of those World War II suicide runs. So he told the shrinks he was crazy. And why do you think you're crazy, Yossarian? Because I don't want to fly anymore. Then you must be sane, because it's crazy to want to fly into flak and Messerschmitts. You mean you think I'm crazy but if I'm crazy enough to want to stop flying I must be sane because it's crazy to want to fly? That's right, Yossarian. Catch-22.”

“Next,” Kazaklis said wearily, “you'll tell me B-25 spelled backwards is B-52.”

“Very shrewd, Kazaklis.”

“I think you'd better shut up. Now.”

“Oh, don't worry, commander. PRP's working. The five little robots are droning mechanically along. We're all heading for Irkutsk on the Doomsday Express, each for our own individualized, preprogrammed reasons. Me too. PRP's ingenious. PRP's the Catch-22 of World War III. Commander. Sir.”

Kazaklis tuned her out. Damn her. This was a new side of her. Unexpected. But he blamed himself for playing along with her too long. Everyone was spooking. Even he was spooking.

The plane hit another pocket of clear-air turbulence.
Thwack!
The big bomber shuddered. Moreau efficiently pulled on the wheel, flicked out the Master Caution light, and did a routine sweep of the instrument readings.

She's all right, Kazaklis decided. Her way of venting. Everyone in the plane could use some venting, but he didn't want the rest of the crew hearing hers. He switched to all channels.

“This is your captain speaking,” Kazaklis said brightly. “On behalf of Strangelove Airlines and your flight crew I'd like to welcome you aboard our Stratocruiser flight to Irkutsk, with possible intermediate passovers—little pun there, folks, heh-heh, for our Jewish passengers—in Leningrad, Moscow, Vladivostok, and other scenic Soviet cities. Our estimated time of arrival in Irkutsk is ten
p.m
., local time. Barring local air-traffic problems, folks, and you, heh-heh, know how pesky those can be . . .”

The pilot's mind was racing in one direction while his words moved in another. Damn, he wished he would hear something.

From Omaha, from the Pentagon, from the
Looking Glass.
From the tanker. From somebody.

“. . . As you may have noticed, we have been experiencing some mild clear-air turbulence. Absolutely nothing to concern you, of course. For those of you who are not familiar with our safety procedures, however, I wish to point out that the little red lever to the left of your seat is not an armrest. I repeat, the little red lever is not an armrest. . . .”

He knew he wouldn't hear much in any case. Just orders. Go or don't go, although there seemed little doubt about that one. And where. That could always change.

“. . . From time to time I will point out some areas of interest along our flight path. At the moment, we have just passed into Canada's Northwest Territories. Those of you on the right of the aircraft would have a magnificent moonlight view of frozen Great Slave Lake. On the left the panorama of the Mackenzie Mountains, and beyond them, the romantic Yukon, would also be stunning. If we had windows, heh-heh. . . .”

PRP wouldn't want them to know what had happened back home. PRP wouldn't want them to know if they were expected to penetrate Russia against full defenses or massive clouds of fallout. Not yet. PRP would want them to be five little robots.

“. . . Now, folks, please settle back, enjoy your flight, and if our charming stewardess can be of any assistance to you, please call on her.”

Kazaklis bowed grandly toward Moreau.

“Coffee, tea, or Kool-Aid?” she said sweetly into the open mike.