strategic nuclear weapons, and the neutrals protested about them all the time, but wars had to be fought, and they had to be fought with something, and since the small nuclear weapons were in production, they were used. What were several fewer species of animals compared with a hundred-mile advance and another medal on another general?
He cut off his thoughts, ashamed of their easy cynicism. Oh Lord, though I die, let me live!
He had lost the thread of Pilbeam’s discourse. It was with relief that he saw Algy Timberlane enter the canteen.
“Sorry I’m late,” Timberlane said, gratefully accepting a Bourbon and ginger on ice. “I went into the hospital to look at that kid we brought in from Mokachandpur. He’s in a feverish coma. Col. Hodson has pumped him full of mycetinin, and will be able to tell if he will pull through by morning. Poor little fellow is badly wounded – they may have to amputate that leg of his.”
“Was he all right otherwise? I mean – not mutated?” Pilbeam asked.
“Physically, in normal shape. Which will make it all the worse if he dies. And to think we lost Frank, Alan, and Froggie getting him. It’s a damn shame the two little girls got blown to bits.”
“They would probably have been deformed if you had got hold of them,” Pilbeam said. He lit a cheroot after the two Englishmen had refused one. His eyes looked more alert, now that Timberlane had joined the party. He sat with his back straighter and talked in a more tightly controlled way. “Ninety six point four per cent of the children we have picked up on Operation Childsweep have external or internal deformities.
Before you came in, Charley and I were on the stale old subject of the madness of the world. There’s the brightest and best example this last twenty years affords us – the Western World spent the first fifteen years of it legally killing off all the little monstrosities born of the few women who weren’t rendered out-and-out sterile. Then our – quote – advanced thinkers – unquote – got the idea that the monstrosities might, after all, breed and breed true, and restore a balance after one generation. So we go in for kidnapping on an international scale.”
“No, no, you can’t say that,” Charley exclaimed. “I’d agree that the legal murder of – well, call them monstrosities -”
” Call them monstrosities? Without arms or legs, without eyeholes in their skulls, with limbs like those bloated things in Salvador Dali’s paintings!”
“They were still of the human race, their souls were still immortal. Their legal murder was worse than madness. But after that we did come to our senses and start free clinics for the children of backward races, where the poor little wretches would get every care -”
Pilbeam laughed curtly. “Apologies, Charley, but you’re telling me history I had a hand – a finger in. Sure, you have the propaganda angle off pat. But these so-called backward races – they were the ones who didn’t do the legal murder! They loved their horrors and let them live. So we came round to thinking we needed their horrors, to prop our future. I told you, it’s an economic war. The democracies – and our friends in the Communist community – need a new generation, however come by, to work in their assembly lines and consume their goods… Hence this stinking war, as we quarrel over what’s left! Heck, a mad world, my masters! Drink up, Sergeant! Let’s have a toast – to the future generation of consumers – however many heads or assholes they have!”
As Timberlane and Pilbeam laughed, Charley rose.
“I must be going now,” he said. “I’ve a guard duty at eight tomorrow morning, and I have to get my kit cleaned. Good night, gentlemen.”
The other two filled up their glasses when he had gone, instinctively settling more closely together.
“Bit of a weeping Jesus, isn’t he?” Pilbearn asked.
“He’s a quiet fellow,” Timberlane said. “Useful to have around when there’s any trouble, as I discovered today. That’s one thing about these religious boys – they reckon that if they are on God’s side, then the enemy must be on the devil’s, and so they have no qualms about giving it to ’em hot and strong.”