Virus: The Day of Resurrection (46 page)

Silverland. That infamous man was already dead. But Yoshizumi realized that his palms were now wet with sweat.

“Silverland held two oddly misplaced fears,” continued Carter. “He always acted like he was the cheerful sort who never sweated the details, but like any bully who gets the bully pulpit, his focus on the big picture was just a mask meant to hide what a scared little boy he was. He was a lot like a Southern gambler. In the end, a gambler places more value on a reckless, fearless, all-or-nothing bet than he does on reason. Silverland had reckless courage, but his intellect was just pretense, and in extreme situations, he couldn’t stop himself from making childish decisions. In other words, it was his own despotic creed that no matter what contemptible thing he might do, the person who held the highest position was unconditionally the greatest person, and it followed that the highest level decisions must always be made
only
by the person in the highest position of authority.”

“Enough with the psychological theorizing about Silverland!” Conway spat. “Hurry up and tell us about ARS.”

“But, sir, his personality is an important point when it comes to explaining the nature of this system,” Carter said, his tone quiet. “So, his misplaced fears were these: the first was not the danger of accidental war—after all, he himself had been seriously considering starting a war under the pretext of an accident if it became necessary in the face of world opinion. Rather, he feared that the top brass would defy his command were he to declare all-out war. As is the case with every tyrant, he was unable to trust anyone. His other fear was of an attack by chemical or biological weapons without warning.”

“I see …” murmured Barnes. “When you’re in a gang, everyone in the world looks like a gangster.”

“Because of that, the
new nuclear framework
that he and Garland came up with included a system by which missile launch control could be switched over to the White House, allowing the president to launch the missiles
with his own hands
directly
. ‘And now, behold, the hand of the Lord
is
upon thee … ’ That was another of his favorite phrases. And then there was one other thing. In the second year of his presidency, the ARS was installed: the complete Automatic Reaction System.”

“Automatic Reaction,” Yoshizumi repeated, without thinking. “You mean …”

“Yes, exactly. In the event of either a mutiny in the armed forces or an accident of some sort, or even if the nuclear framework were paralyzed by human incompetence, all he’d have to do is switch over to this system, and the instant enemy missiles hit the US, a retaliatory strike would be launched. Silverland hunted the Reds and the spies with several times the intensity of Senator McCarthy, and just because of that, he truly believed that right before the enemy launched a missile attack they would use spies or spy planes to deliver gas attacks or biological attacks and paralyze our defense organization. He used to call this thing ‘my patriotism, crystallized.’ Even if America was on the receiving end of the first strike, we would strike back automatically. ‘Even if I am killed, the arrow of vengeance will fly from my cold, dead hands,’ he once said. You must think his ways were those of a madman, but to the very end, the Nero of the White House never trusted his subordinates. He, along with the far-right military authorities, had considered a
coup d’état
had he lost the presidential election, so once he became president he was terrified of revolts from within the military. While he said he was doing his duty to defend the country, his state of mind was in fact that of someone rolling the dice. I remember him saying, ‘Look here. This is my last trump card. My grand slam.’ ”

“And so, this system … is still operational?”

“The whole system is powered by an unmanned, underground nuclear power station. All you’d have to do is throw a hidden switch in the White House’s special underground command chamber … and the whole command system is taken out of the hands of the defense personnel and put under ARS control—and ARS doesn’t even have any hands.”

“Still …” Colonel Lopez put in gloomily, “Silverland was voted out in the next election, and the final president took up Kennedy’s mantle again. During the summer of the Year of the Calamity, President Richardson was trying to realize a treaty that would have abolished all nuclear weapons in one fell swoop. It’s unthinkable that he would have thrown that switch, isn’t it?”

“There’s a fifty-fifty chance that it’s active,” said Major Carter. “Silverland’s influence persisted beyond his administration. Garland continued in his position as general. When I was sent to Antarctica the winter before the Year of the Calamity, the system still hadn’t been deactivated. If someone in the Silverland faction were to have used the confusion just before the end to infiltrate the White House …”

“That is a possibility,” said Admiral Conway. “I remember talking to President Richardson. He was at the White House—probably just before he died. He was indignant because the Silverland gang was trying to put pressure on him in the middle of all that great confusion.”

“But even if that thing is still … alive,” said Yoshizumi, “what does that have to do with an earthquake in Alaska?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” said Carter. “The geographical point you showed us—it’s relatively near the Distant Early Warning line. If the US radar stations in Alaska are destroyed by a major earthquake, the ARS Command Center will transmit a six-minute warning, and if the base doesn’t answer, intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads will be automatically fired at the Soviet Union.”

4. The Hands of This God …

The room was pervaded with a deathly quiet. Nobody was moving a muscle.
In the world that had died, a mechanism of hatred still survived …
and now the hands of chance were about to pull its trigger.

“But the nuclear missiles will only be fired at an
uninhabited
Soviet Union,” said Dr. la Rochelle, the French representative, hesitantly. “What effect will that have in Antarctica?”

“Our country’s highest ranking officer will explain,” said Dr. Borodinov. “May I introduce Captain Nevski of the Soviet Union’s Department of Defense.”

With his short-cropped hair, Captain Nevski looked up and began to speak in precise, fluent English. “To tell you the truth,” Nevski said with fists clenched, “there exists in the Soviet Union a system exactly like ARS.”

“Why on earth!” exclaimed Professor Bjornsen. ”The Soviet Union never had anything like Silverland’s reactionary period.”

“A nuclear defense framework is like a game of chess,” Captain Nevski said. “Regardless of whether you desire it or not, once your enemy gains a new weapon, you have to acquire one as well to maintain parity. When the enemy rearranges its pawns and makes preparations against an attack, our pawns get reshuffled as well. For the two decades following the war, the Soviet Union and America had continued this game. You should all be well aware of that. The Soviet Union’s defense framework reflected the coming of Silverland’s reactionary period as though it were a mirror. We were also extremely watchful and were well aware of what was going on from the very start of ARS’s implementation.”

“They were awfully good at spying on one another during that fearful age,” Captain Barnes said, sighing.

“The politics of fear always call for a response. Silverland’s policies gave rise to countless ‘spies for peace’ in the Defense Department, the State Department, and even in the military.”

Major Carter nodded bitterly. “That’s exactly right. At no other time did such a large number of national defense secrets ever leak out overseas.”

“Between the enemy’s methods of attack and their allies’ methods of attack, our soldiers got used to the terror of their enemy overlapping with the terror of their allies. We judged that if ARS was first and foremost born out of a fear of chemical and biological weapon attacks, this actually meant that the Americans intended to use such attacks against us. Fear is always like two mirrors placed opposite one another. And also—being as there are members of the former American army present, I’m hesitant to bring this up, but—the US Army, in the post–World War II world, had a previous record of using poison gas and biological warfare.”

Major Carter looked like he wanted to say something, but he swallowed back his words.

“So that being the case, the Soviet Union developed a device exactly like America’s ARS,” said Australia’s representative King, “and there is a possibility that it is still alive as well.”

“That possibility exists,” Captain Nevsky said with a nod. “I’d say the odds are fifty-fifty. The Soviet Union’s premier was not enthusiastic about the adoption of a system that seemed so wrong. However, a part of the Politburo, along with the Ministry of Defense and the heads of the Red Army, recommended it. We built it in great haste, in exact accordance with the schematics we received from America. So exactly the same system exists and is perhaps still functioning even now.”

“When the Alaskan earthquake pulls the trigger, the uninhabited United States of America will strike, and then the uninhabited Soviet Union will strike back,” said Grane, the representative from New Zealand. “And what of Antarctica?”

“First of all, if the surviving American and Soviet missiles are launched at one another, a large amount—and most likely a fatal amount—of radioactive material will be scattered throughout the atmosphere. In the case of WA5PS bacteria, the seas and the ice have most likely provided a barrier to protect us, but as for radioactive clouds, we can’t rule out the danger that Antarctica will be contaminated due to atmospheric cycles. However, the real danger isn’t that.” Nevski, looking rather pale, swallowed before continuing. “You see, there is a high probability that several of the Soviet missiles are
aimed at Antarctica
.”

This time a shock went around the room as though everyone had been struck by lightning. Their eyes snapped wide open and their faces went as white as paper.

“Why would they
do
such a thing?” Professor Bjornsen cried as his face turned red. “Why would the Soviet Union betray the faith of the international community and involve Antarctica in a nuclear war?”

“Wait, please,” Captain Nevski said, pain in his voice. “That ‘mirror principle’ I spoke of earlier applies here as well.”

“You’re saying America was up to something here?” shouted one of the NASA employees furiously. “That the Soviet Union was provoked by a station we built for space experiments? By the fact that we were experimenting with rockets for space exploration?”

“Before that station was turned over to NASA for experimental work,” said Captain Nevski, “the US Air Force, during the Silverland administration, walked all over the Antarctic Treaty trying to turn Antarctica into a secret missile base.”

“That’s outrageous!”

“No, it’s true,” one of the US Air Force officers who had been silent up until then put in suddenly. “In the ‘dark age,’ IRBMs were brought here. Silverland intended to deploy ICBMs as well. When the administration changed, and the soldiers who had been dispatched to Antarctica were removed
en masse
—before you were sent here—they had already gone back to the mainland.”

“The reason for this,” murmured Major Carter, “was that Silverland intended to turn this place into a secret base and ‘take care of the commies in Africa and South America.’ ”

“So, several years ago, when the launch devices were turned over to NASA jurisdiction and they brought in huge Centaur rockets big enough to put a lander on the moon, this was a completely unexpected development. Is it any wonder they were caught off guard and mistook them for ICBMs aimed at Soviet territory?”

“If this is true,” murmured Captain Barnes, “this earthquake in Alaska will
automatically
 …”

Silence fell all around the room.
Automatically
—from an uninhabited America, missiles would be launched at the Soviet Union, and when the Soviet Union
automatically
fired missiles back, a few of them would
automatically
rain down on Antarctica, where the last handful of human beings were still struggling for survival. It was God’s—no, the Devil’s—ultimate trick shot.

“This is where Silverland would say ‘the hand of the Lord’ or something,” said the NASA employee.

“If Silverland were a jealous god …” Barnes said, “then he must have been jealous of everything that lived on after him. The vengeful hands of a man who filled the White House with anger and despair six years ago, though he died along with the rest of the world four years ago, are stretching out above our heads now.”

“And so,” said Admiral Conway, looking around at the other seats, “this thing is like a stupid nightmare, but we have to believe that there is some degree of probability that a great danger is closing in on Antarctica.”

Everyone’s faces were still half believing, half doubting—steeped in the nightmare.

“ARS is still active in the American homeland, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance the switch has been pulled. There’s also a fifty-fifty chance that the Soviet Union’s system is also operational. So if we say there’s a fifty percent chance that there are still several missiles aimed at Antarctica—taking into account factors such as damage to the missile launch system—we have to think that there’s still several percentage points’ worth of probability that Antarctica is exposed to a great danger. Gentlemen … what should we do? If the dead world takes aim and fires, humanity will, as it were, die a second time.”