“-melt the polar ice caps and drown the American continent.”
“You know?”
“Of course we know. We’ve known for some time.”
“But-but-” sputtered the deputy premier, “we have had no reports to that effect.”
“Yes, sometimes the peril to America is so great that we manage to keep our big mouths shut. We’ve known for weeks. And we’re doing something about it, too.”
“What, pray tell?”
Castle mentioned entirely spurious scientific committees that had been formed to discover technical solutions to the coming rise in the level of the oceans. They would deliver their report within two months. Meanwhile, select committees of Congress were discussing the best manner to raise the immense sums that would be required for passive defense of the nation. Groups of experts were considering how to relocate displaced populations. Other groups…
“Lies,” Anatoliy Badalovich said complacently. “All lies. We have your establishment penetrated. To the KGB, the United States officialdom resembles a thoroughly ripened Swiss cheese. No such discussions on a scale that would be effective could possibly take place without our knowledge. Your great coastal cities are going to drown. And you Americans are going to go broke, meanwhile, doing too little too late to remedy the situation. Your whole history assures us of this fact: World War I, Pearl Harbor, Korea-you’ve always avoided pressing problems until destruction was almost inevitable.”
“True. But we won eventually.”
“Not this time, my dear Mr. Vice-President. This catastrophe will overwhelm you. When your economy is completely shattered, your people in distress, and large-scale rioting begins in the streets, you will welcome the order Soviet occupying troops will bring. You’ll react as if you were all given a huge dose of beta-3.”
David D. Castle was silent. The bluff had not worked. But then, with those arch-bluffers the Russians, it hadn’t been expected to work. Everything he’d said so far was mere buildup.
“Lies, as you say,” Castle said resignedly.
“Aha! You admit it.”
“We hoped you’d see the futility of pursuing this madness of polluting the world and come to reason.”
“We pollute the world first. America the Soft will give up. America the Fat always does when the going gets tough-Viet Nam being proof, if proof were needed. Only when you have thrown in the towel will reason assert itself-Marxist reason.”
It was time for the trump. Castle played it.
“I realize your impatience to rule the world,” he said, “but I’m afraid we can’t allow you to destroy it in order to satisfy a national whim.”
“Indeed? And how do you propose to stop us?”
“Actually, stopping you is easier than you think. Our scientists have not put all our eggs in one basket. We have a fallback position, and we are prepared to take it.”
“Threats from Americans are not only ridiculous but tedious. I recall that, back in the last century, Iran tweaked your noses, and you responded with fire-eating declarations. But what did you do? Nothing. The pathetic little Nicaraguan people spat upon the foot of the helpless giant, and he removed the foot instead of stomping the life out of the Sandinista clique. We invaded Afghanistan, and you bombed us with pious platitudes. You are a gutless people, waiting to be swept aside by the tides of history. You will die as cowards always do-miserably.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was just about to tell you how you will die-you and your people, unless you extinguish the fires in your Siberian lignite mines immediately.”
“Indeed?” Deputy Premier Badalovich chuckled. “Come-frighten me.”
“I will do my best, Comrade,” Castle said evenly. “Our scientists have developed a great many biological agents during our decades of uneasy peace. One of them is a strain of anthrax for which there is no known cure. A vaccine or even a serum against this strain could be devised and manufactured. The process would, however, take two or three years. You do not have that leisure because we have been sowing that bacillus by ‘weather’ satellite the length and breadth of the Soviet Union for more than six weeks.”
“I thought we were going to be frank, Mr. Vice-President,” Badalovich said sadly. “And here you are trying to pull my leg again. I am not a biologist, still less a microbiologist, but we, too, have our laboratories, and I have read many reports on our progress. The incubation period of Bacillus anthracis is, as I recall, two to three days. It is highly infectious. Its symptoms appear very quickly. I have the pleasure to report that we have not had a single case of anthrax in many months in the Soviet Union.”
“We know that. We do not kill people without warning. As for the warning-I have just given it. If you do not take it, if you do not put out those fires within two days, this is what will happen: we have other satellites aloft, dozens of them, with a capacity of twenty-five tons each. They are programmed to distribute an aerosol over the Soviet Union. That aerosol consists of various chlorrofluorocarbons that, as you are well aware, destroy the ozone layer. With the ozone layer stripped from above the Soviet Union, the sun’s ultraviolet light will penetrate the earth’s atmosphere with its full intensity. Normally, the worst you could expect is a much higher rate of skin cancer. However, no one will be around for that slow-killing disease to develop. The ultraviolet light will break down the protein coating our scientists have wrapped up the bacillus in to keep it inactive indefinitely. Uncounted trillions of anthrax bacilli will be liberated, to be picked up by the wind and blown across the Soviet Union, to be inhaled by every single Russian with soon-fatal results.”
Badalovich thought for a moment, then spoke: “Your bacteriological warfare will not be so effective as you imagine, Vice-President Castle. Smoke will absorb the ultraviolet radiation fully as effectively as the ozone layer. Should you actually deploy the chlorofluorocarbons you threaten us with,” he said triumphantly, “we will simply ignite coal and lignite mines in European Russia, thus covering the entire nation with a blanket of smoke.”
“Exactly. And without sun, photosynthesis will cease entirely. Your forests will wither and die, and seeds of next year’s crop will lie ungerminated. You will have a choice: cancer, anthrax, or starvation.”
Badalovich’s jaw sagged. In a complete reversal of form, the Americans had opted for the clever and devious instead of brute force. They had introduced a Trojan horse into the Marxist camp. If what Castle had just told him was true, and the Politburo refused to close down the fires, the great Russian people would become extinct.
He thought fast. What could he say that would give the American vice-president-the Soviet Union’s top agent-the opportunity to indicate whether his threat was real or bogus? He had to be careful-very careful. He didn’t dare risk exposing his agent, but neither did he take the threat of Russian genocide lightly.
He realized that Castle didn’t dare to give him a negative wag of the finger of his gloved hand, indicating that his threat was not to be believed, for the American spaceship crew, like the Russian, would undoubtedly be filming the meeting in space and the gesture would be detected. Nor could Castle indicate by a wink or other facial gesture that he was anything but deadly serious, for the Americans would, like the Russians, be videotaping the meeting by means of optical-fiber surveillance of their “private” circuit.
In the end, before his own facial expressions gave away his thoughts, he yanked his jack from Castle’s box and abruptly signaled to Salyut 1183 to reel him in.
Castle hovered in space for a minute or two, wondering whether analysis of the tapes would somehow expose him. The strain of not knowing was too much for him. As he radioed to the James Madison to haul on the umbilical, first mist, then an acrid yellow liquid began to fill his helmet.
26. SIXTY-TWO CERTIFIED SAVANTS
6 OCTOBER 2009
Rpley Fote had made a science of moving billion-ton icebergs from the Antarctic to Texas. On the other hand, persuading sixty-two world-famous savants to move in the same direction, even to yoke them to the same wagon, proved impossible.
From the first days in August, when Forte took possession of the former Dutch Reformed Church retreat in Saldanha and received the scientists who were bused up from the Cape Town International Airport, they had been nothing but a headache. Most were from the free world-Canada, the United States, Japan, Australia, and South Africa, but fifteen were refugees from various communist countries-England, France, Poland, Brazil, Italy, and Israel. The mixture didn’t work.
The refugees complained about their cell-like quarters, the food, the cold wet wind off the South Atlantic, the occasional snake, the omnipresent blacks. They belly-ached about their companions, assignments, health, and pay. As for the free-world scientists, they were unhappy with the refugees for complaining so much.