The fall wind blew steadily from the east, dead across Elbow Cay, and the big, vertical-axis wind machines, running synchronously in the steady breeze, gentled the island with their hushahushahusha, a giant snoozing in the lowest frequencies. Susan Peabody toyed with her coffee and half watched the tiny, jewel-like TV screen at her elbow, thinking of nothing in particular. Or, really, much in particular such as the department, and the university, and the screwing, literal and figurative, she had taken from that bastard… But that was already six months past, and how big a plum would it have been anyway, in a riotous, unheated Boston?… Susan, a forty-year-old, tall, thin woman, her brown hair cut short and severe, her thin lips pressed thinner still, thought to herself, hating herself as she thought it: I have a good face, high color, a straight nose and a strong chin. I have tits and my legs are long. Oh, for God’s sake!
Susan focused on the TV screen, a brilliant spark of color. The 8 A.M. Miami news kicked off with a fire fight between the Pennsylvania Highway Patrol and a teamster cadre after diesel fuel. In Vermont, they were shooting wood thieves at the side of the road. Then came the latest skirmish in the Arizona-California war over the water… At least in Boston she would have been totally involved in her profession instead of pissing away her life here in paradise…
The scene shifted to London, where Scottish nationalists wrecked two government buildings and killed a number of police. “No longer drunken soccer hooligans, the Scots were well-equipped with Mark Eleven Uzi automatics…” There was a knock on the door. Susan looked down at her drab and torn dressing gown and dashed from her living-room-kitchen combo into her small bedroom to pull on a halter and jean shorts, shouting, “Coming! Coming!” Who in Hell was calling at 8 A.M. in Hopetown, for God’s sake?
Susan smoothed her hair and pulled the door open. It was Frank Albury; well, one of the three Frank Alburys, the electronics one. “Hi, Susan,” said the portly little man, “Can I talk with you a sec?” He was perhaps thirty-five, a small roll in the gut, and completely nondescript. With an even, round, bland face and thin blond hair, he ran the island C.B. operation. An electronic wizard, Jerry Ravetz had said, but all Frank had ever talked about with Susan was the discovery of Christ and scuba diving. And she shared in this second life, in his love of the water. The first time they went together to the outer reefs where the long, hot waves broke and the massive surge ebbed and flowed over the great coral heads, Susan imagined she entered the magical Lewis story of Perelandra and the floating islands on the great-warm sea of never-Venus. Her father, a gentle classics professor, had read her all those books, Narnia, the Langs, Lord of the Rings, Oz, and as she rode the long surge of the reef looking down on its society, she flew over fairy kingdoms and the ride was magical.
But Albury watched the fish. Studying the fantastic interlocking detail of their behavior and survival, he understood absolutely that only God could make such an intricate puzzle fit together.
“Hi, Frank. Going scuba?” asked Susan.
Albury shook his head and shrugged. “Sure would like to, Susan, but we got some problems.” He looked at her and rubbed his chin. Then he pointed at the TV. “You seen that fellow in Miami, that Abaco independence fellow?”
Susan didn’t watch the TV much, but she had noticed an occasional reference on the Miami public station to such a group, one of the many splinter and terrorist gangs looking for fun and trouble in Florida. She smiled. “Is he coming over to run the place, Frank?”
Albury shrugged again. “Maybe. It looks like they got some planes and ships, Susan. From Munoz, the Florida Governor. We figure Munoz has some kind of understanding with Castro to let him go at us and Freetown, and maybe New Providence, while the Cubans work over the islands closest to them.”
Susan laughed. “Come on, Frank! I realize the U. S. is coming apart at the seams, but an attack on Abaco from the state of Florida? Are they commandeering yachts?”
Albury sat down soberly at her table. “Susan, do you know about the satellite time-lease system?”
“Sure. The Third World rental military satellites open to anyone who can pay the rip-off price. You guys subscribers?”
“The Bahamian government is. We’re monitoring Florida ship movements now, at highest resolution, and they’ve put a fleet to sea. All shallow-draft boats, tank-landing vessels with National Guard tanks, an old destroyer escort, some Coast Guard stuff.”
“Coast Guard is federal, U.S. Treasury,” said Susan.
“Susan, President Childers isn’t minding the store. The governors are all going off on their own. We think Munoz is looking to set up his own Caribbean state and shut off the flow of U.S. northerners. The Abaco energy communes look awful handy.”
“The Israelis would never work for Munoz.”
Albury looked down at his Bermuda shorts and rubbed his chubby knees. “Munoz doesn’t really understand what’s going on out here. But he probably figures they’ll either work or starve.” He looked up. “Susan, there’s a meeting of the Abaco Defense Council at ten this morning, and they asked me to come and see if you would attend.”
“The WHAT?” laughed Susan. “Abaco Defense Council, those dolts at the customs shed?”
“More than that,” said Albury seriously. “We have a command post at Marsh Harbor out at the Wind Commune Headquarters on Eastern Shore. If you could be there at ten, we surely would appreciate it, Susan.”
After Frank Albury left, Susan turned to the commercial channels and sought news of the Abaco Independence Movement, but the morning talk and game shows were in full swing. The world was breaking into tiny splinters and these fools were mesmerized by garbage…! Susan shook her head angrily and watched the simpering host lead a young woman through some personal sex questions… She flicked off the set and stared out at the palms and the gentle, sunny morning. Off across the brilliant blue and green Sea of Abaco the squat solar boilers centered in their mirror nests bulked behind the palms and white houses on Man-o-War Cay. The causeways and locks of the tidal-basin control system joined Elbow and Man-o-War by an incomprehensible network of underwater walls and control gates, all operated from a concrete building on tiny Johnnies Cay, a white spider sitting in a huge web of life and energy.
Susan rubbed her hands together and bitterly stared about her small house. Four months, and she knew nothing about this place, these people! Her book on Shastri cycles untouched. Her U.N. duties carried out just as perfunctorily as the locals could hope, from an uninvited snooper checking to see that UNESCO money wasn’t decorating casinos or whorehouses.
She had made only a few friends, and most of them among the Israelis, the other arrivés. Face it. Frank Albury was the only Abacoan who called her Susan. That’s why they sent him this morning.
She rubbed her hands back and forth across her eyes until the flashes and spots came behind the lids, and she thought about taking the drug. She probably couldn’t help them anyway; she hadn’t done her homework on Abaco. Yet her only possibility would be to vector for them. She drew back and remembered her lover, intense, brilliant, corrupt Jamie. She had used the drug with him, but he did not believe in Shastri Vector Space. And he had told the committee she was addicted to cocaine. She lost the chairmanship. That bastard…! She still couldn’t reconcile his tenderness and strength with…
Oh, Hell. She was going to dress and ride to the Marsh Harbor ferry. But just before she stepped out the door, she swallowed two small pills and popped the tiny box, not knowing what might happen, or for how long, into her skirt pocket.
Pedaling south the mile to Hopetown Harbor on her bike, Susan saw no one until she arrived at the ferry dock. There, several young Israelis and black Abacoans were wrestling some generator parts off a Wind Commune barge. The Donnie-Rocket glided into the dock right on time and disgorged several wind workers and some school children. Everything seemed very ordinary and peaceful, but the drug was doing its work and Susan vectored on the suppressed excitement among the children.
She waited quietly while they revved up the flywheel on the ferry, listening carefully to the children as they babbled, walking off down the dock.
“I is in D-south tracker, Joan!” said a little black boy excitedly. “Dat’s de whole end of the system. I is bound to get some tracks.” The boy looked back, saw Susan staring at him and abruptly and silently ran off the dock. The very incomprehensibleness of his conversation rang alarm bells in Susan’s head. What in God’s name were they up to? She turned back to watch the repowering of the Donnie-Rocket.
The large island of Abaco and its chain of cays to the north and east were linked and looped together by the ferry system, originally, the Donnies had been I.C.-engined cabin cruisers, twenty to thirty feet in length. Then in the late seventies, the gas-turbined hovercraft, the Donnie-Rockets, had arrived, spectacular, high speed, and kerosene guzzling. Although the relatively new Swiss flywheel boats now ran in total silence, the name, Donnie-Rocket, had stuck with them, for they still went like blazes, up on their stalky foils, forty feet of praying mantis doing thirty-five knots.
The captain of this Donnie-Rocket was skinny, fourteen-year-old Gerald Beans, black as night with a head like a chestnut burr. He cut off the magnetic clutch and signaled the dock superintendent to hoist the torque bar out of the Donnie’s engine compartment. Down below, in a hard vacuum, six tons of steel flywheel spun in perfectly vibration-free gas bearings at over twenty-thousand revolutions per minute. Captain Beans noticed Susan’s intense inspection of the Donnie-Rocket’s power plant and flashed her a great many large white teeth. “Plenty of crayfish to buy that wheel, Dr. Peabody,” he suggested.
But Susan, fully into the drug, suddenly, blindingly, saw how incredibly little she had seen in Abaco. These children and their talk. A fourteen-year-old ferry captain. This incredibly diverse technology. The Israelis, their energy communes, Governor Munoz and Fidel Castro. She was staggered at the vector complexity, and yet the alarm bell in her head was clanging continuously. She suddenly realized she had not thought of Jamie for at least ten minutes, and she smiled, really grinned in fact, at Captain Beans.
The Donnie-Rocket ambled out of Hopetown Harbor as a displacement boat, past the tall, old red-striped lighthouse with its 130-year-old Trinity House lamp and spring-driven occulting gear. Then Captain Beans clutched the propellers into the flywheel more strongly, and they rose up and scooted for Marsh Harbor. The only other passenger, an Israeli computer specialist whom Susan hardly knew, was studying an instruction manual. So Captain Beans turned to Susan. “Did you see that crazy Abaco independence man on TV, Dr. Peabody?”
Susan shook her head. “I didn’t watch it last night, Gerald. Is he really nutty?”
Gerald Beans whistled and nodded his head. “Mad as can be, I think. But he’s not the real one, I think. Those politicians want us… Abaco. All these kilowatts!”
“Yes,” said Susan. “We Americans had all the toys, but they’ve gotten broken and we waited too long to fix them. All we can see to do is steal from somebody else.”
“Those folks up north, with the snows. Who are they going to steal from?” asked Captain Beans.
Susan, distracted in her attempts to vector Abaco and its problems, looked at the boy sharply. “They’ll steal from each other, I suppose, Gerald. We had it awfully soft for a very long time.”
“Then,” said Captain Beans inexorably, “why won’t Abaco get the same way?” and Susan found she had no answer.
The Donnie-Rocket made a side trip up Sugar Loaf Creek to drop Susan at the big dock of the Wind Commune Headquarters. For the first time she saw a group of young Abacoans with side arms and some Uzi whistle guns on slings. One of them, a customs agent in fact, detached himself and nodded politely. “They’ve been waiting for you, Dr. Peabody, ” he said. “Let me show you the way.”
She followed the soldier in his short khaki pants and knee socks up a path brilliant with bougainvillaea, the soft coral crunching underfoot. As she walked, Susan watched a big instrument kite leave its launching rack on the top of the building and climb into the sky. The local wind communes in the South Abaco area were fed data from here, and from similar installations on Man-o-War and Hopetown.
On-line computers continuously load-matched the entire system and updated weather predictions. Susan tried to remember who had worked the kites out. The Swedes? The French?
The soldier held open a door and Susan stepped into a large, dim, air-conditioned room with picture-window views of the entire horizon. Around the walls under the almost continuous windows were the various consoles of the wind engineers: instrument boards, video readouts, and interactive computer monitors. The entire center of the room was now filled with a long plain table at which sat perhaps twenty people. Susan looked at her watch. It was just ten. “Sorry,” she said to the seated people, “Frank Albury told me…” she noticed Albury in a chair… “You told me ten, Frank.”
Albury popped to his feet and the other men followed. “You’re right on time, Susan. We haven’t started.” They had, of course, started. They had been talking about her. Susan looked curiously around at the Abaco Defense Council and selected a chair next to Jerry Ravetz, toward which she walked. She was fully vectoring now, and selecting that chair had involved a certain extension of mental activity. She suddenly realized that Ravetz, with whom she was friendly, was perhaps the most important person in the room. Provost of the Abaco Technical College and called Jerry by almost everyone, Ravetz seemed to represent all the Israelis in Abaco in some generalized and unstructured way. And much of the new technology of Abaco, the energy farms, the huge, still-building thermocline system, the tidal impoundments running laminar-flow, low-head turbines, the crayfish farms, all were basically Israeli-engineered. As she mentally projected various vector trees, she began to see how it must have developed. Kilowatts were not the only problem!
“Hi, Jerry,” she said firmly.
Ravetz smiled cheerfully. “Hi, Susan, sorry to bother you, but we do seem to have this little… ah… problem with the State of Florida.” Several of the men around her grinned.
“You’ve got plenty of problems, Jerry,” said Susan, and she did not smile. As was often the case of retrospective vectoring, the picture was clearing even as she spoke. “For one thing, you should never have left Fidel out of all this. Who else is Munoz thick with? There’s some kind of Washington connection in this, Jerry.”
Ravetz, a stocky, crew-cut man in his forties, wearing white tennis shorts and a purple T-shirt, blinked and let his smile slip away, turning to peer more carefully at Susan and her bright, sharp eyes. “It’s a little late to get geopolitical, Susan. We may be under attack before dark.”
At that moment a tall black man in the same simple khaki uniform as the soldiers walked briskly into the room. He was about forty, lean and muscled, and it was perfectly evident that now he was in charge. Susan looked and looked, then turned to Ravetz. “Who is that, Jerry?”
Ravetz smiled again, “Colonel John Gillam, C. in C. of all Abaco defense forces and presently the acting military governor of Abaco,” he whispered.
“Jerry,” said Susan rather more loudly than she intended, “that’s my garbage man!”
Colonel Gillam turned and smiled frostily the length of the table at Susan. “I do the garbage when things are quiet, Dr. Peabody. It’s a way of… keeping an eye on things. I’m sure we’ll have this Florida business under control in a day or so. Don’t worry about the Friday pickup. I’ll get your stuff.” His voice was like ice. His eyes glinted and his big fat lower lip jutted red and wet at her. Susan flinched at the shock of his hostility. Here was one real hard conch eater, a North American hater. She was at this table over his dead body! He had obviously refused to even be present when they discussed what to tell her.
Jerry Ravetz pulled awkwardly at his T-shirt with its pink, Day-Glo words, “Crayfish Need Love Too,” an obscure logo popular with biotechs. “Johnnie,” he said quietly, “could we sort of get people introduced and go on?”
John Gillam sat down at the head of the table and pulled a sheet out of his briefcase. “Well, OK, Jerry.” He looked around. “Most of you know each other, but maybe some of you don’t know who it is you know.” He grinned at a young Israeli across from Susan. “Now Merv there is our boat man, kind of our admiral. He bosses the Donnie-Rockets, work boats, and the rest.”
The Israeli grinned back. “Just so I don’t have to go outside the reefs, John. I’m the Dramamine kid, you know.”
“Communication,” said Colonel Gillam, “is Frank Albury. You all know him. At ten this morning we put all C.B. on scrambler and took the lid off the broadcast power.”
Frank looked around and gave them all a gentle smile. “John,” he said softly, “could we have a short prayer before we get into this?”
Colonel Gillam shook his head. “You’re the chaplain, Frank. But the time for that is when they’re on the screens. OK?”
Several other men were introduced, and Susan suddenly noticed that there were only two other women in the room: Dr. Francis Foot, chief of the Abaco hospital; and Frank’s niece, Mary Albury, whose main function seemed to be to select which computer outputs would be displayed and where. Susan looked at Gillam’s coal-black face, the flat nose and high, shiny cheekbones. A black honky-hating macho garbage man, just what the crisis doctor ordered!
Colonel Gillam finally turned to Susan and said evenly, “Dr. Susan Peabody is a newcomer. As most of you know, when Professor Hollister of Princeton retired here, we approached him to advise us in our political relations with the U.S. Dr. Hollister had a stroke last month and this, ah, problem required us to bring in someone not familiar with our situation.” Gillam paused and looked at some notes. “Dr. Peabody is a professor at Harvard and one of the founding members of the Department of Contemporary Politics, a current academic euphemism for crisis management. Dr. Peabody has come to Abaco as a U.N. Fellow and will make a report to UNESCO on the economic and political effects of our energy program and other developments.”
The room suddenly became very quiet, and Susan realized they were waiting for something they had been told by Gillam would happen. The colonel looked at her steadily. “Before we go on, I’d like to ask you a couple of frank questions, Dr. Peabody. If you don’t like them, or you don’t like this situation, please feel free to go back to Hopetown. OK?”
Susan looked at him as evenly as she could. He radiated anger and resentment at her. She was suddenly standing in for Castro, Governor Munoz and God knows who else. “Shoot, Colonel.”
Gillam took a deep breath. “We’re probably going to be attacked by American forces today. If you have any doubts about which side you might be on, or if you think you might play U.N. lady bountiful or peace dove, please just go away.”
Even the whites of his eyes were brown. He was a most thoroughly colored man. Susan looked steadily into the brown-on-brown eyes. “My tenure with the U.N. is six months, Colonel. They’ve already forgotten why I’m here. As far as any choice between you or Governor Munoz, I’ll take you and the rest here, even though you hate my bloody guts and wish I were dead.”
That was vector talk, right down the middle. Colonel Gillam looked at his papers. “I don’t hate you, Dr. Peabody. I don’t know you.”
Susan shook her head. “You can’t imagine why we, and I mean Harvard and the State Department and all the big shots who have patronized and snooted you here for years, are now throwing you to Munoz and Castro. Because it’s coming apart up there, Colonel! President Childers is yellow to the core and incompetent besides. We counted on more time than the Arabs gave us, than the Arabs could ever give us. Do you know there’s a cruise missile battalion in north Florida? Munoz hasn’t got much now, but give him some successes, and who knows? Federal troops have gone over to a state before in our history. So hate away, all of you!”
Jerry Ravetz sat up in his chair and cleared his throat.“Johnnie,” he said plaintively, “don’t we need all the help we can get? There’s nobody else here who knows the U.S. situation like Susan. You said yourself, her professional field is crisis management. What do you want, somebody in English lit., for Heaven’s sake?”
Colonel Gillam nodded grimly. “Welcome to the Abaco Defense Force, Dr. Peabody,” he said evenly. Then, “OK, Frank, let’s show everyone last night’s TV spec.”
Frank Albury nodded to an assistant at one of the consoles and a big flat solid-state screen dropped over the north window and began to flicker. “You mostly saw this before,” said Frank.
The TV tape cut into the eleven o’clock news and a black woman who gave a short spiel on the Abaco Independence Movement and introduced its leader, one Basham Kondo, dressed in flowing robes and a busy afro. Basham had hardly gotten into his slurring, high-speed speech about the enslaved blacks of Abaco and the many Alburys and their Yiddish masters from across the sea, when the screen blanked and retracted. “Sorry,” said Frank Albury gently, “but the prime minister is coming down on the roof.”
The swish of big rotor blades above slowed and then they heard a flurry of footsteps. The far door opened and in swept Prime Minister Sean O’Malley and an entourage of two uniformed and two seersuckered assistants. The old man walked rapidly over to Colonel Gillam and briskly shook his hand. O’Malley was light coffee-colored with a white, kinky poll and a grandfatherly look. Susan suddenly remembered parlor car rides on the New Haven Railroad with her father when she was a very little girl. There was always one porter who was sort of the Old Boss Man, the Chief, and they had all looked exactly like Bahamian Prime Minister Sean O’Malley.
“Colonel,” said O’Malley, “don’t let us interrupt or slow you up. This is your battle. I’m here if there should be any policy problems.” Susan tried to remember what sort of strength the Bahamian navy possessed. Customs and fishery protection vessels certainly, but with what caliber arms? If Florida had DE… No, no, there was much more to this, These men weren’t fools. Susan vectored continuouly but the tree was too open, too diffuse. She had been all over Abaco. Where could they have the emplacements? The magazines? What about aircraft? Susan looked up startled to see Ravetz and O’Malley bearing down on her.
“Dr. Peabody,” said the old man, “Jerry tells me you’ve agreed to help us and that you’re a crisis expert. You couldn’t be in a better place!” He shook her hand strongly. “Jerry,” he said, “can’t we get back to whatever you were doing? I know you have plenty of things to get ready.”
Colonel Gillam beckoned for more chairs. “We were watching a replay of last night’s extravaganza.”
O’Malley’s face registered the distaste of a man handed an overfilled diaper. “Well, I’ve watched it twice, but once more can’t hurt.”
Everyone adjusted chairs, the screen came down again, and that great lover of freedom and justice, BashamKondo, told south Florida the way it was. When it ended, Ravetz turned immediately to Susan. “How in the devil can he go on with that Yiddish and Zionist masters baloney? Don’t the Jews in Florida listen to TV or vote?”
Susan shrugged. “Demographics. The old old Jews are dying off and the new ones don’t come down anymore. Munoz and his Cuban gang disavow the worst stuff, but they know how the Sunbelt is going.” She turned and looked directly at Colonel Gillam. “Is that man, that Kondo, an Abacoan, Colonel.”
Gillam snorted in disgust. “He worked here as a crayfish harvester but his work record was hopeless. We think he was born on the Berry Islands and his name was Smythe, but it’s hard to trace drifters like that. He has perhaps two dozen with him, similar types, misfits from the out islands.”
“He wasn’t much of a find for Munoz,” said Susan thoughtfully, “but I suppose he was the only game in town. Mr. Prime Minister, what steps are you taking in the U.S. about this fleet?”
O’Malley turned to Susan in surprise. “Why, my ambassador to the U.S. is carrying a note of protest to the Security Council this morning… ”
“Good grief,” said Susan impatiently, “I don’t mean that Tower of Babel. Why, they won’t even know where Abaco is, with no casinos, racetracks, or fancy houses. I’m talking about Federal District Court in Miami. Don’t you have a law firm there that can get on this for you?” She looked around quickly. “Does anyone have a copy of the Florida state constitution? I’m sure you can nail Munoz on at least a dozen violations of his authority in Dade County. With a federal restraining order, the Coast Guard will have to function. Furthermore, you can get injunctions so that federal marshals and state police must keep his Guard planes on the ground. They couldn’t be coming over with a fleet and no air cover. These are simple, traditional thinkers, Mr. Prime Minister. Break this chain anywhere and they’ll crawl back into the woodwork!”
The room fell silent as everyone looked at everyone else. Colonel Gillam looked grimly at Susan but said nothing. Finally Prime Minister O’Malley’s ancient face broke into a grin. “I’m chagrined, Dr. Peabody, that we did not think of that,” he said gracefully, then turned and nodded at an assistant in a seersucker suit. The man rose and hurriedly left the room. Frank Albury also stood up, smiling at everyone. “I’ll make sure he gets through on priority to Miami,” he said. “We have protected channels through the satellite link.” And he dashed out.
For the next hour they watched the successive satellite transmissions of high-magnification video showing the invasion fleet assembling in calm waters off Palm Beach. There were Naval Reserve and Coast Guard vessels from Port Everglades, National Guard tank-landing vessels from Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and a collection of state fishery and patrol craft. A young Abacoan stood up and gave the intelligence appreciation: twenty-nine craft, approximately twelve hundred crewmen and about fifteen hundred troops, tank personnel, and drivers. E.T.A. at present course and speed, assuming a Marsh Harbor destination, 8 P.M.
While they were awaiting an update from the satellite, Prime Minister O’Malley slipped into a chair next to Susan. “Dr. Peabody, at what level of combat do you think the U.S. Federal government might intervene?”
Susan looked sideways at the shrewd old face. “That would depend on who was winning, Dr. O’Malley.”
O’Malley looked at her very piercingly, as though seeing her for the first time, and then smiled thinly. “Let’s assume we are overwhelmed here and Fidel takes a hand at New Providence, Andros, and points south.”
Susan jerked her head around and spoke fiercely, directly at him. “That must not happen. You must never count on Washington! Don’t you understand? That’s exactly what they want!”
Her vehemence startled O’Malley. “Who, Dr. Peabody? Who would want that?” he asked softly.
“Munoz’s friends, of course. You don’t think he got this together without help in Washington, do you? He’s being used!”
“But, Fidel?”
“My God, the same! Fidel’s a puppet, a decoy. He’s their next step. The Bahamas, Abaco, mean nothing to them. Dr. O’Malley, have you ever heard of Shastri cycles… ? No, no, let’s not get into that. This may be blunted.” Susan shook her head staring at the old brown man.
“Do you have any idea who these people in Washington are, Dr. Peabody?”
Susan nodded. “Yes, but there is nothing you can do here and now about this, Dr. O’Malley, except stop the war. And if it starts, win as quietly as possible.”
Susan was vectoring powerfully. She had never achieved this formidable a high, and the great integrating power of her amplified consciousness created clouds of possibilities, the Shastri vector trees, growing and bunching in the created spaces of her mind. The whole development was transparent to her, Munoz, Castro, the cabal of horrible old men in Washington, made by disaster and uncertainty into monsters more fearsome than the rawest, maddest S.S. camp commandant in the worst days at the end of the last great convulsion of a Shastri cycle, over forty years ago. But through some incredible chance (or mischance, that would only vector clearly after the attack was met), these Florida amateurs had decided to drown a pussy cat that was looking more and more like a hungry tiger. As she waited in an ecstasy of speculation and computation, she thought briefly again of Jamie, naked, his cock wilting that night she had dazzled him with the theory of the Shastri cycle. She realized suddenly that he had never been even close to her in intelligence or ability, and it seemed odd that she had never seen that now-obvious fact.
At that moment, Frank Albury said, “Governor Munoz is on Channel Seven, impromptu news conference on the capital steps.” The screen flashed in bright color, and there was Munoz, a short, stocky brown man with a thick mustache and receding hair, waving at some supporters. Around him were his guards and staff, black, brown, and white, as befits the modern Southern governor.
“Governor, is it true the State of Florida is supporting an invasion of the Bahamas?” The question came from offscreen.
Munoz passed a hand across his brow. “We’re not supporting anything. As I understand it, there may be a volunteer group attempting to liberate certain islands in the Bahamas group. In all fairness, I think…”
Another reporter shouted, “Is it true that John Amsler of Amsler, Bigelow and Parke is in Federal District Court right now getting a restraining order on moving those ships into Bahamian waters?”
Munoz shrugged. “That’s between the feds and their people. If they can’t control discipline on the cutters, that’s hardly Florida’s problem.”
Now there were several reporters shouting at once. “Governor, what if they get an order in Dade County restraining the state and National Guard boats?”
Munoz held up his hand. “Look, let me make a statement. It’s simply this. Washington, the federal government, is no longer able to protect or even deal with regional interests. When we had everything, it was easy to resolve these differences. With the price of oil at its present level, it’s becoming impossible. Now, the State of Florida has no intention of encouraging a foreign power, a very controversial and bloody-minded foreign power… I’m talking about Israel. Let’s please get that straight… to penetrate to within one hundred miles of the Florida mainland, displacing as it does hundreds of poor blacks and disturbing the only friends who count today, and I obviously mean the Arab nations. The health, safety , and good life of all Floridians is the only thing that motivates me. This administration is…”
Suddenly a small young woman popped into camera range, her pad pointing and waving at Munoz. “Then you intend to violate the law, Governor? You intend to defy any court order to ground the Guard jets?”
Munoz shook his head mildly but his magnified eyes were as thick and cold as a snake’s. “I have no such intention. This office will obey all federal and state laws and orders of the courts. This office…”
A red light over the C.B. speaker rack went on, and all sound in the room went suddenly dead. Then came a cool young voice on a C.B. monitor. “Attention! Attention, Abaco! This is Argus North. I have twenty-six single-seat bandits leaving the Florida coast. Estimated flight time to Little Abaco, seventeen minutes!”
Susan took an involuntary deep breath. Governor Munoz would evidently obey the court’s orders by flying his weapons before the orders arrived.
Colonel Gillam made two long steps to the C. B. center and pressed a protected red button. Priority lights shone all across the monitors and Gillams’s voice was multiply projected, still clear and sharp. “This is Big John. Prepare for air attack. All trackers make final calibrations now. All protection vessels, put to sea at once. Argus North, take direction. Execute!”
“Ten-four, Big John. Trackers all, this is your Argus North. We will number targets consecutively and assign you in groups. Report your calibrations to subdivision leaders as available. I repeat…”
John Gillam turned and grimly nodded at Frank Albury. “Time for that prayer, Frank,” he said softly.
Albury stood up and looked out over the room. “Please bow your heads, whatever you may believe,” he said in his gentle voice. “Dear Lord, we do not kill and maim our fellow men in Thy name, but because Thy Kingdom has not yet been achieved on this sinful world. Forgive us our pride and our cruelty, for we are imperfect seekers after Thy Truth, and though our sins offend Thy sight, bless us in simple love, we Abacoans and our friends from Thy ancient land of Israel, Amen.”
“This is… your Argus North. Our bandits are dividing their forces. We anticipate twelve to attack north from Cherokee Sound. E.T.A. Cherokee, nine minutes.”
Colonel Gillam turned to Frank Albury. “Picture, Frank!” The big screen showed a radar presentation, a glowing map of the Abaco chain. “Project that squadron at twenty-X, Mary,” said Gillam.
Twelve bright dots, moving far faster than in real time swept across the southern Bight of Abaco and out over Tilloo Cay. “Argus South, are you tracking?”
“I see the picture, Big John,” came a new voice. “Trackers all, Marsh Harbor and south, this is your Argus South. We will number targets consecutively…
Susan watched all this intently. By God, they could keep a secret here! What in Hell: “Jerry,” she started to say…
“Urgent! This is Argus North! Enemy in sight! Six bandits on the deck! Numbering consecutively: target one, batteries A and B; target two…”
Colonel Gillam peered out the window to the northwest. “Frank,” and now he could not conceal the tightness in his voice, “optical blow on these first ones.”
The screen flickered and then a projected telescope image showed two large jet aircraft head on, their images made wavery by the intervening hot air layers, growing in size slowly. Suddenly the closer one’s wings showed two bright flashes. “He’s firing rockets, Johnnie!” Susan could hardly recognize Ravetz’s voice, it was dry and tense. Colonel Gillam grinned fiercely.
“This is Big John. All shutters open! Execute!”
Susan looked out at Man-o-War Cay and she seemed to see a glitter, a sudden flash as though lightning had darted across the distant low land, the two jets came at 600 miles an hour southeast down the Sea of Abaco just off the water and heading for Marsh Harbor, a huge, growing roar. In an instant the leading plane cartwheeled and splashed gigantically. His wing man went into a sudden vertical climb, up and up, north of them, and Susan could see without magnification that the plane was glowing red. Smoke began to plume from the entire fuselage, and the pilot ejected, a black bundle. But the bundle smoked too, and when the chute opened, it was no more than a bag of tatters.
Now the C.B. monitors were alive with urgent talk.
“Track! Track! Carol! Hold your target!”
“Harden my focus, Benji!”
“Left, B Battery, left!”
Planes were coming in on several angles now. One of the southern group went directly over them and crashed within a hundred yards of the harbor at Man-o-War. Two more went south on fire, and a third was glowing so brightly that it simply blew apart before ever smoking at all.
Susan turned to Ravetz, her surprise unconcealed. “Solar weapons, Jerry! You’re using the mirrors on the energy farms!”
Colonel Gillam turned and his smile was now cruel and twisted. “Not quite what UNESCO had in mind, eh, Dr. Peabody? But on the right day, a nasty toy. You see, even if we don’t hold them in the mirror battery’s focus long enough to cook them, it’s usually long enough to blind them. Of course, if they had brought welding goggles they might stop that, but it’s hard to strafe nigger conch-eaters when you’re wearing welding goggles!”
“This is Argus South! Batteries M and N, redirect to target eleven. You’re tracking too fast, Dawn!”
“I got two already, Argus!” The girl’s voice was high and tense, total excitement. “Harden my focus!” she shrieked; then: “Mine’s on fire! Mine’s burning!”
“Jerry,” said Susan thickly. “That’s Dawn LaVere! That child is only fifteen! What in Hell are you doing here?”
But now Ravetz looked at her coldly and his voice was low, yet as hard as Gillam’s. “Cut the shit, Susan! Don’t you see it yet? This is a Shastri community. We’re living what you people gave seminars on. You’ve been too close to it!”
And Susan, watching horrified another ejection at one hundred feet, this time the pilot enclosed in a bright orange tongue of flame, suddenly saw the whole puzzle unfold and, in chagrin put all the pieces into place.
A jet came over Matt Lowes Cay firing cannon at Marsh Harbor, and Gillam raged into the mike. “Argus South! We’re being hurt by target sixteen!”
“A-OK, Big John! We’re tracking sixteen! Carrie, you’re too low! Track! Track!”
The plane continued over the town and crashed into the Bight of Abaco to the west.
Susan turned firmly to Colonel Gillam. “Colonel, stop! Let some of them go home, for God’s sake!”
Gillam whirled on her. ‘To their fucking subdivisions and their insurance offices? To their darky babysitters and cleaning women!“ he shouted.
Susan shrank before his anger, but she stared resolutely back. “Probably a third of those pilots are black, Colonel,” she said bitterly. “You’re living in another age. I don’t give a damn about those men, but if you kill them all, if you win absolutely, it’s almost impossible to vector the effect!”
She whirled on Ravetz. “Jerry, you fool! What would Shastri have said? This is a Shastri community? Bullshit! You’re all on raving ego trips!” She spun again, frantic. “Mr. O’Malley! I said you must win, but quietly! Don’t you understand…?”
But it was too late.
“Trackers all, this is your Argus North. We have zero… repeat zero targets! We are checking the tapes now, hang on… Trackers all! We have twenty-six kills! We wiped the sky clean!”
The C.B. monitors lit up like a Christmas tree and a confusion of shouts and cheers burbled out. To the north, several huge meteorological balloons surged upward carrying fluttering Bahamian and Israeli flags. Windpattern smoke rockets flew skyward from Marsh Harbor and Hopetown painting sudden red vertical columns as high as the eye could see, and over it all came the high, sexy, excited voice of Dawn LaVere. “Ohhhh, Big John! I got five! I’m an ace… an ACE!”
Susan felt a real chill of panic. She looked around the room at the arrested figures, many of them still unable to believe what they had done, yet already believing and starting to live in a world in which it had happened.
“Well,” she said soberly, suddenly remembering with a real pang of love her cheerful, gentle father and one of his favorite Yankeeisms, “You all really pissed on the stove this time!”
Cleaning up after the great battle consisted mainly of locating the pilots’ bodies or getting them out of the sunken planes, and this grim business was taken in hand at once by Marv, the Donnie-Rockets, and the biotech scuba teams.
“For,” said Colonel Gillam to Susan in as deliberately callous a way as possible, “we wouldn’t want any missing-in-action problems, would we? All those wives petitioning your Congress? They’re going to get everything back, the charcoaled remains, the dogtags, and the TV tapes showing just how and where we put the sun in their cockpits!”
Susan, sitting slumped in a chair, shook her head. “Come off it, Colonel!” she said with irritation. “Neither the Florida National Guard or the Pentagon is going to want to talk about this very much. Those widows will be an embarrassment to Munoz, all right, but the press will probably represent the pilots as undisciplined and incompetent adventurers. No, no. You’re missing the point. Once the power centers hear that an exuberant bunch of thirteen-year-old colored kids and sexy-poos like Dawn can total two squadrons of jets without a single local casualty, they’re going to look much closer at Abaco and this Israeli thing. They’ve been looking and thinking plenty already, and I specifically mean Fidel.”
Prime Minister O’Malley, who had watched, wide-eyed and silent, the first great battle of the Abaco reefs, now turned to Ravetz.
“Jerry, I think this is all unbelievable, too miraculous to take in. But I find Dr. Peabody’s words more and more disturbing. Could we talk…?”
“Hang on, everybody!” Frank Albury dashed into the room with some tapes. “It looked like the invasion fleet had stopped, but now it’s headed our way again.”
The cheerful chatter in the room stopped abruptly. “E.T.A., Frank?” said Gillam.
“Hard to say, John, right at this minute. They aren’t really up to speed yet.”
Susan started. She had completely forgotten the fleet! Hastily she rose and located a ladies’ room and went into the toilet to take two more pills. This continuous confrontation with Gillam was wearing her down. She sat, resting and alone, on the cool John and rubbed her eyes. How was it possible that a Shastri community… for Ravetz had been absolutely right in so describing Abaco, she saw that with blinding clarity… could trigger a Shastri cycle? Or, as Shastri had called it, a spasm, for completed cycles were always accompanied by a multitude of unvectorable changes. Ravetz was right. In the seminars you could always keep things in their compartments; but the moment the insights became more than theoretical, the moment you built a community, weapons, life patterns, tools, ideals, then you rippled the pond; and the more successful and radical the insight, the more ripples there were. Susan gave herself five minutes of luxury, a mental vector investigation of the mirror weapon in all its Shastrian ramifications. Ravetz, or someone in Israel… or, what the Hell, Archimedes if you like!… had achieved an almost perfect Shastri null-weapon. A weapon so totally integrated into the community that it had no vector strength whatever in most of the critical and dangerous areas. Such as standing armies and their officer corps, almost always more destabilizing than the real and imagined enemies they faced. And all the ideal, extraneous, deadly hardware. Susan wondered how much extra it cost to turn the solar heating mirrors into weapons; they had to move in altitude and azimuth to track the sun anyhow. Ten percent for the control stations, logic chips, and hard wire connections? Probably not even that much. And the beautiful, Shastrian idea that in destroying the weapon, an attacker would be destroying the very reason for his attack; the booming energy wealth of the Bahamas in a world of dry oil wells. And the fact that it could only be used part of the time and only for defense, a fatal flaw no doubt in the tired imaginations of the old incompetents at the Pentagon, was completely in accord with that essential, really primary Shastri vector: self-realization and the necessity for diverse answers in a society.
The greatest enemy in the Shastri canon was traditional systems analysis in which cost, profit, growth, safety, or some other single value dictated a decision. Of course, without the drug they really had to use single-vector analysis; they could not control the vector tree, could not see the cloud of, not end points, but extensions of now. Susan suddenly grinned. How it worked! Gerald Beans went to school, but he captained a high-speed foil boat of the most sophisticated sort. Dawn LaVere, with her pouty red mouth, melon breasts, and tanned white flanks that Ravetz had described as simultaneously a treasure and a disaster… she with five kills against modern aggressively flown jets. The vector tree always showed that there were several equally good solutions to a problem. This diversity led to wealth and to more diversity, to a social system in which almost everyone could gain somewhere a sense of themselves and their integration into their community. The children were cast in that role by age, but they were also full-fledged and useful members of Abaco society. Doubtless the Israelis had found their tracking reflexes superior to any adults‘. Susan had to agree, Shastri would have absolutely approved of that! It totally nulled the whole hero, macho, glory, bravery vector so excrutiatingly dominant in war-beset, single-vector societies, so utterly useless in a Shastri society where heroes were replaced by experts, by persons whose confidence comes from their heads, not their balls or that mystical“backbone” her New England father made reference to when he really had no idea why someone behaved, or failed to behave, in a particular way.
But there was still a problem with the children! That most elusive of all vectors, ethics, the vague, but powerful human-based standards, how a society thinks about itself. Five dead men, fathers of children like Dawn LaVere, but prepared to kill Dawn and her black and Israeli friends from on high, impersonally as pilots always did. Dawn knew she directed the mirrors because she, and that little boy at the dock—God, twelve? thirteen? —they were the best in the community at that task. They knew and the community knew, that was important. And yet, the children also know, many would never be able to forget, that they burned those men! Susan rubbed and rubbed her eyes. Will Dawn love differently, or not be able to love, because she burned five pilots? Five bastards! Five of the main fucking reasons why there’s burning in the world…
The ladies’ room door opened. “Susan, you OK, honey?” It was Mary Albury.
“ OK, Mary. I sort of fell asleep for a sec.”
“Oh, don’t I know it! This is really too much for everybody. Listen, honey, the new stuff on the boats is coming in, and Dr. O’Malley wondered if…”
“Be right out, Mary. Thanks.” Susan washed her hands and thought of Frank Albury and decided she would take up the matter of the children with him.
They were all seated when she returned, watching a blow-up of the satellite pictures of the fleet, which was apparently steaming at about eight knots so as to bring it into Abacoan waters well after dark. Susan saw that Dr. O’Malley was now across the table from her, and as soon as the pictures ended, he turned to Colonel Gillam. “I think I’d like to hear Dr. Peabody’s appreciation, Colonel,” he said a trifle stiffly.
Colonel Gillam inclined his head, and O’Malley turned immediately to Susan. “Why are they still coming, Dr. Peabody?”
“At what level do you want to discuss that, Dr. O’Malley, the fleet itself, Munoz, or his helpmeets in Washington?”
“All three, if you please,” said O’Malley.
“Well, as to the fleet, I would imagine they left Florida with all communications, especially receiving stuff; radios and C.B.s, ripped out and confiscated. The one thing you folks didn’t think about, Federal District Court would be the first thing to occur to Munoz’s gang. So they would have perhaps one man per ship with ways of talking either to the mainland or at least to a central communication vessel. That way, some judge can’t get them on contempt, for failing to obey a court order which they claim they never got because they had twenty-nine busted radios. For this, the Coast Guard writes each captain a letter asking him to do better next time. Of course, they’ve been warned, through whatever hidden radios are left, about the solar weapons. So they’re coming in at night.”
O’Malley looked at her and shook his head. “They wouldn’t be so stupid as to think we had no other arrows in the quiver? Mister Kondo is doubtless a psychotic, but it defies belief…”
Susan shook her head. “Who knows what even Munoz’s closest man in the fleet actually has found out? I’m sure the news and TV stations are filled with rumors of death rays and general wild talk…” She looked over at Frank Albury, who grinned and nodded vehemently. “The more important question is, why is Munoz still at this?”
“Exactly!” said O’Malley in a tense voice.
“Two reasons, I think. First, because he’s already in plenty deep. If they could have gotten most of the pilots back, the thing might have dribbled away, a flaming sensation and nuisance, but something that could be handled. But all twenty-six… that’s what I was trying to tell you… absolute victories are… absolute. They have nonvectorable elements. Munoz is the gambler suddenly in over his head with one last buck in his pocket.” Susan looked around the room and even Colonel
Gillam sat silent.
“The second pressure is the scary one, the one on Munoz from Washington. He’s had to have help all along, and he certainly couldn’t keep the fleet coming without both help and, probably, pressure from that same direction. Do you see what that means, Dr. O’Malley?”
The old man nodded at once. “I do. It means they don’t care whether they lose the fleet or capture Abaco. That has become irrelevant.”
“Exactly!” said Susan, and the room became silent for many moments.
“Dr. Peabody, do you use political cocaine?” said Colonel Gillam. “Specifically, are you on it now?”
Susan flushed involuntarily and turned to face him. “I am, Colonel. I wouldn’t dare attempt vector analysis without the drug.”
“Dr. Peabody, I spent three years with the C.I. A., and much of my time was spent working with Shastri vectors,” said Gillam coldly. “They established that the drug was not only unnecessary but gave erratic results. Crisis experts in Washington vector using computer branching and cluster algorithms.”
Susan curled her lip. “Right! And look at the U.S. political turmoil! The reason, Colonel Gillam, that your beloved C.I.A. could never really work in Shastri vector space is that in 1981, President Carter suddenly eliminated the Drug Enforcement Administration, by then an international scandal, and turned the whole, nutty U.S. drug hunt over to the C.I.A., thereby making it absolutely impossible for them to make any serious studies of drug-enhanced decision-making.”
Jerry Ravetz ran his hands through his crew cut and pinched his pudgy nose. “Well, this is my fault. I didn’t take my pills today, Susan. Believe it or not, the first Shastri null-weapon battle, and I thought it would be so simple I wouldn’t need all that vectoring. I wanted to savor it emotionally instead of being endlessly into all that damn thinking.”
“I didn’t know you used the political cocaine, too, Jerry,” said Colonel Gillam stiffly.
“You never asked, Johnnie, and I didn’t offer to tell,” said Ravetz quickly. “The point is, Susan was right this noon and she’s right now. We’re in the initial stages of a Shastri cycle. Somehow the Abaco community has triggered it, chance, something else, I just don‘ t know.”
“Yes,” said Gillam angrily, “providing we all believe in this drug-fevered hokum! Jerry, the C.I.A. used Shastri’s stuff all the time, but they vectored on a computer.”
Ravetz shook his head firmly. “No way! Johnnie, the C.I.A. showed you a lot of useful stuff, but you can’t vector in real time on a computer. It’s simply impossible. It takes weeks to write even a rudimentary program, and by then the crisis, decision, or whatever is past.”
“Jerry, this drug, what is it anyway?” asked Sean O’Malley.
“Okay,” said Ravetz, turning to look at everyone. “Quickly, here it is for those who don’t know the story… or have the wrong one. Bar Singh Shastri was an Indian pharmacologist and general all-around genius working in a London hospital on synthesis problems. He got into cocaine as a recreational drug in the early seventies, but it had the same effect on Shastri as on Freud. He gained intellectual power, or at least felt he did, and set about searching for that part of the coca plant that carried the intellectual part of the high. Well, eventually he managed to isolate and synthesize a group of alkaloids that apparently reduce the time delay at the nerve synapses. They do other things as well, but the effect is that the mind can carry many more coherent thoughts simultaneously, in parallel, and can process thoughts more quickly. Short-term memory is also enhanced. Interestingly, even though Shastri was a really top-level scientist, he immediately recognized that his enhanced abilities under the drug would be most extended and useful in a political context, he ran for Parliament and spent three years forming a brilliant political career, then dropped it all and went to Israel, becoming a recluse to study and write. Shastri was far beyond becoming the first Indian prime minister of Britain. He had found a way to reorganize the world using vectoring and the vector tree. Most of you know where the theory leads: null-weapons, multiple, labor-intensive energy communes, decisions based on vectoring a cloud of factors.”
Prime Minister O’Malley rubbed his cheek and shrugged. “Well, Dr. Peabody, what projection do you… ah… see? Why do they attack us but not care if they win?”
“A Shastri cycle,” said Susan, “can progress in two ways. With primarily external vector interactions, such as Europe in 1914, or with primarily internal vector interactions, such as Germany in 1939. We are in an internal cycle, in which a small, very powerful group in Washington is attempting to escalate a twenty-six plane raid on Abaco into, I’m afraid, an open-ended, transcontinental-level nuclear strike interchange. If you defeat the Florida navy, and especially if you defeat it as decisively as you did the jets, they will attempt, and they obviously have considerable hope of doing it or they wouldn’t be taking these risks, to induce Fidel to fall upon you. Or at least make demands upon you.”
Susan looked from Ravetz to Prime Minister O’Malley. “The Bahamas government has an agreement with Israel to accept some substantial number of refugees, if the Palestine situation becomes irretrievable. That’s correct, isn’t it?”
The room now remained very quiet for some time. O’Malley’s face flushed darkly, but then the smooth brown calm slowly returned. “You know, Dr. Peabody, that was a very carefully held confidence between our governments that you perceived.”
“Yes,” said Susan coolly, “but Fidel perceived it too. I won’t attempt to guess how many might come, one hundred thousand perhaps? But it would totally transform the Bahamas, this end of the Caribbean. And now Fidel sees that these Israelis, far from dancing the hora and raising yummy crayfish, have the strike of a cobra. No doubt your plans for the Florida navy are equally spectacular, and Fidel can watch them on his own satellite link, and what do you think will happen after that? All of you?”
Susan looked around. She had to vector them too. They must be led to this, inescapably. She looked at her watch. Four-thirty, and the fleet here a little after midnight! She took a deep breath. “Munoz’s bosses in Washington, through some ghastly chance, have stumbled into something that could be an all-win situation. If Abaco falls, Munoz will taste blood and go for Freeport. Fidel will have to move or have a far more hostile and expansionist neighbor than yourself, Dr. O’Malley. If, as they now probably expect, Florida goes down to defeat, they throw Munoz to the wolves, who will really be howling at this point, and panic Fidel with now-documented stories of Israeli superiority and hegemony in the Caribbean.
“In either case,” and Susan paused and looked around the silent room, “the end result is a move by Cuba against the Bahamas followed by a spasm strike from the U.S. to protect freedom, save Jews, stop Communism, or whatever best serves them. One of the first conclusions Shastri came to when he began to use drug-enhanced analysis was that once the cycle reached a nuclear-explosion level, it could be driven to conclusion. The very fact of a burst over, say, Havana or Miami, would enable a leader to induce other crews and commanders to fire, whatever the dampers or restraints.”
Sean O’Malley nodded. “And so, Dr. Peabody?”
“And so, Dr. O’Malley, we must immediately attempt to get Fidel here, tonight… to Abaco… and let him watch the big show. And, Jerry, you must decide how to get your government to send Israeli energy communes to Cuba and, I suppose, how to convince them to go.”
“It’s impossible!” spat Ravetz in sudden anger. “There’s no way to vector that through, Susan. Cut the crap! You know what Cuba’s like!”
Susan stared calmly at him. “What’s it like, Jerry?”
Ravetz spluttered, “Phony elections, snooping! Secret police! Come on, Susan!”
“Listen,” said Susan. “Cuba has softened and Fidel is old. And you Israelis have something big to offer, bigger than anyone else can offer. A transformed society within Communism! Shastri showed that multivector planning requires a collective approach. Everybody has to give somewhere in this, Jerry. The point is, once Fidel sees a Shastri society at work, he’ll be like a child after candy.
“That bastard won’t come here!” said Colonel Gillam. “Mr. Prime Minister, I’ll resign if…”
Sean O’Malley looked darkly at Susan. “Even if I were willing to see the man, what could we offer him? It may be possible in your computer crisis-gaming to call up dictators and have them run over, Dr. Peabody, but in the real world such talks require weeks of preparation…”
‘Nonsense!“ said Susan fiercely. ”Fidel is aware of Shastri concepts. Say that you’ll talk with him about sharing all this. Just talk!“
O’Malley, flushed and angry, shook his head. “You don’t understand. What do I do? Call him on the C.B.? I tell you…”
“Dr.O’Malley,” said Susan, “if Frank Albury can get me Major José Martino at the Department of State in Havana on diplomatic channels, that is guarded channels, it may be possible, but you’ve got to agree…” She turned and looked at Colonel Gillam, her lips a thin line. “Before you resign, Colonel, you might consider that Fidel will certainly be more fascinated by your efforts than, say, me. The Cuban military forces are… crack. If those had been Cuban jets, you probably wouldn’t have burned them all and you would have lost some mirrors too!”
“Who is this Major Martino, Dr. Peabody?” asked O’Malley and he suddenly sounded worn and tired.
Susan smiled. “A Shastri scholar.He studied with Shastri the same time I was in Israel. He is close to Fidel, Dr. O’Malley. Nobody is handing the Bahamas to anyone, just remember that. What it really amounts to is you extending your good offices assist in getting energy communes into Cuba. Of course Jerry is right. There are political problems aplenty. But they won’t get smaller!”
O’Malley squared his shoulders. “All right. Let’s try it. Mr. Albury, my Mr. Steen will assist you in putting through the call.” Steen, a middle-aged black in seersucker shorts, walked to a communications panel on the west wall and began dialing on a picture phone.
Susan turned and stared coldly at Colonel Gillam. “I’ve been assuming through all this that there will be a show for Fidel tonight, Colonel, and I don’t mean a rifle regiment running ashore on Elbow Cay!”
“That,” said Gillam bitterly, “is the one and only certainty in any of this. If the bastards come ashore, they’ll be swimming!”
“Susan,” called Frank Albury, “Major Martino is on the hook!”
Susan jumped up and ran across the big room, dropping into the seat vacated by Steen. “José, how are you, old friend?” said Susan quickly, looking at the thin officer’s image, with his slicked hair and tiny pencil mustache, smiling primly at her.
“Hello, Susan. I knew you were on Abaco and I hoped we would talk.” Susan took her deepest breath of the day and held it for a moment.
“José, we may have a chance to socialize but there is now an urgent problem. A Shastri cycle has begun, José.”
She watched his brown color fade on the screen, and then he blinked several very long blinks. “Abaco… Susan?…”
“… And Cuba,” she finished relentlessly.
“I cannot see it, Susan. I sensed there were deeper problems when you burned the Florida planes, but…”
“But you don’t have all the vectors, José!” said Susan, looking at him intently. “Cuba is to serve as an excuse for a destabilization strike from the U.S.A. That is all I can say on electronics, but it is true. We are in deadly danger, José.”
The little Cuban wiped his forehead and patted his thin hair. “And so…” he almost whispered.
“Prime Minister O’Malley has agreed to invite Fidel to Abaco, to watch our defense against the Florida navy. We can talk about it all, José: the cycle, the Israelis, the energy… it can be worked out, José!” God, she was sweating in this cold room! She took more deep breaths.
Major Martino nodded. “Hold the channel, Susan. I will ring Fidel. We have been approached…” He paused and thought a moment. “Hold the channel!” and the screen went bright and empty.
There seemed to be nothing much to do at that point but have supper, and most of them staggered down to the wind engineers’ dining room, one flight below. Ravetz and O’Malley disappeared to some private place, while Colonel Gillam and some of his young staff and engineers ate in a quiet, closed group.
Susan sat down at a table alone with her tray and picked at the fried chicken. She sighed and rubbed her eyes.
“Cheer up, cheer up,” said Frank Albury, putting his tray down across from her. “Moses never stepped on the soil of the Promised Land, but he knew his people would, Susan.” His soft eyes peered into her shadowed, pinched face.
“Oh, Frank.” She gave a deep, shuddery sigh. “This morning before you came I was sitting in a dirty dressing gown feeling sorry for myself. Now suddenly I’m telling everyone how to run the world. These are your islands, your technology, your weapons, and in a few hours I’ve… Oh, Hell, Frank, of course Jerry doesn’t want to put Israelis into Cuba, to deal with all that political hassle on top of the whole Shastri and technical thing. And Prime Minister O’Malley, after eight years of stiff-arming Fidel, suddenly has to face him under the worst kinds of pressures and dangers, no agenda, no plans, no data.”
She rubbed her cheeks hard. “And Colonel Gillam. The miracle worker, the one man in the world who translates a lot of theoretical, academic hokum into a pure Shastri defense. And by carping and needling him, I’ve reduced his miracle to crud. He’s better, more honest than I am, Frank. He always knew what was right and what needed doing, and he did it with his super toys and his wonder children… and, oh, Frank. The children. I can’t make them fit. I just can’t!” And she wiped her eyes on her napkin and stared at her plate.
Frank Albury rubbed his pink knees and cleared his throat several times. “I’m not sure I can make them fit either, Susan,” he said finally, “but David was a young boy. God needed David, not only to kill an enemy of his people, but to teach a lesson, to men, to us.”
Susan nodded. “Oh, I know that. I’ve thought about that. David is very much a Shastrian figure. The small, confident expert facing macho bluster and baloney.”
Frank nodded hard. “Susan, the Shastrian society is, at its base, a meritocracy structured to continuously maximize diversity, to maximize the ways in which merit can be achieved. To use adults for tracking aircraft when the children test better would simply admit they were less than full members of the Abaco community.”
“Yes, Frank. It’s all true. I see it now. But to kill so easily, like a contest or game. To kill with such glee. What if it hardens them, turns them callous, Frank?”
Albury nodded. “And if those troops were to land tonight and rape Dawn LaVere,” Frank colored a bit thinking about that, “would she be less hard afterwards because she hadn’t killed any of them? Or wouldn’t she be both hard and a victim besides?”
A young man dashed up to their table. “Frank! We’ve got Castro on the wire! I’ve sent for the Prime Minister!”
Frank rose at once. “Coming, Susan?”
Susan shook her head. “I’ve meddled enough, Frank. Either Dr. O’Malley sells it or he doesn’t, and all I could do is watch and fidget, Frank.”
He nodded looking down at her. “I know you pray for us all the time and I don’t believe a word of it, but… don’t stop, OK?”
At almost ten that night, three huge Cuban VTOLs settled down out of the dark to crouch on their tails at the Marsh Harbor airport, their jet-prop engines whining shrilly. Susan and Ravetz stood in the floodlit landing area, in front of two dozen Abaco civil police who held back a mass of gaping Marsh Harbor residents, come to catch a glimpse of the terrible old man.
“It’s like the three-shell game,” said Ravetz. “You never know which one he’s in until they open the doors.”
But only in the first, upthrust fuselage did a door slide back and steps swing down, and Susan saw Major Martino start down the ladder. In that instant, Frank Albury was at their elbow. “Susan! Jerry! We got it off the diplomatic wire ninety seconds ago, and now it’s coming over the commercial channels! President Childers has been assassinated! His helicopter was attacked by some kind of missiles, wire-guided or heat-seekers, they don’t know which yet, just after he took off from the White House!”
“Oh, my God, Jerry,” breathed Susan and she began to shiver. “I’ve never been so scared, never!”
“Look! said Ravetz tensely. ”They’ve just gotten the news too!“ Major Martino had been followed down the ladder by the old man himself, white-bearded and wearing an O.D. baseball cap, but then two more Cubans ran down the steps shouting and all four clustered at the bottom of the ladder.
“Jerry,” said Susan suddenly. “They mustn’t go back! Not now!” And she ran across the asphalt waving and shouting, “José! José!”
The dapper thin Cuban turned and watched her come up. “Ah, Susan, how fine…”
“José! You’ve heard about Childers? Do you see now how it’s happening? José, the cycle will diverge. We must all talk!” The shadowy figure behind Major Martino stepped up beside him and Susan suddenly gulped. Close up, Fidel Castro looked like an aging Ernest Hemingway, the same round beard and shape of face. She blinked and shook her head.
“Dr. Castro! Within an hour, Vice-president Demarest will be sworn in. He is mad, sir! A manic-depressive who can barely be stabilized on lithium!”
The old Cuban looked at her coolly.“Dr. Peabody, José has told me about you and your call this afternoon. But, sane or mad, what is that to us?”
Susan pushed a strand of hair back. “Dr. Castro, have you ever heard of the Last Mile Study?” The old man shook his head. “Sir, the study was kept very secret because of its monstrous conclusions, but basically, Last Mile proved a number of things, all based on defective, single-vector analysis. First, they showed that the U.S. total-war capacity could only slip, was slipping, with time in relation to Russia and the Third World. Second, they claimed that in any all-out nuclear war, and especially a rapidly opening one, the Russians would be revealed as far weaker than believed. Third, that the longer the war continued, the greater would be the U.S.‘s relative strength at the end.” She paused and swallowed to moisten her dry throat. “The… the loss of life in Asia would be… beneficial, reducing the population pressure and breaking down super states like India that have become ungovernable. Even in the U.S., the tremendous damage and horror would turn people to the federal government for help, give it back its old clout…” She shook her head angrily. “Oh… I won’t give you any more of that horrible nonsense, Dr. Castro. It’s just that President-designate Demarest believes it all, and all his advisors are ready to try it out if they can just get the first one to go off! Cuba, then the Soviets is their sequence.”
Major Martino turned to the old Cuban excitedly. “Fidel, that is why they offered…” but the old man’s narrow and snapping eyes stopped Martino instantly.
“Dr. Peabody,” he said, “you urged this meeting tonight to insure that these people could not possibly connect me with this invasion?” Susan nodded. “But that was before this murder. Cannot Demarest do whatever he chooses? To Cuba or anyone else?”
Susan shook her head vehemently. “There has to be a context, Dr. Castro. A logical development. Don’t you see that to get even the lowest commander to fire his own missile involves a whole mass of intangibles? What sergeant, no matter how plausible the codes and signals, would fire his missile when he’s watching a Lucy rerun on Miami television with no sign of war or sense of trouble?”
Castro pulled his white whiskers and looked at Major Martino. “José?” he asked softly.
Martino nodded. “She is right, Fidel! Now we see many things that we did not see before. We must at once null the political vector between the Bahamas and Cuba. We will force this man Demarest to look elsewhere for his provocations.”
“Oh,” said Susan, taking long breaths in sudden relief and really smiling at the two men, “I expect Demarest will be dealt with almost immediately, providing our friends here in Abaco can carry out their part tonight.”
Castro, Ravetz, and O’Malley left the airport in a staff car and went into private session for an hour, when suddenly all arrived back in the window-room center of the Wind Commune building. It was almost midnight when Frank Albury said, “Hold it everybody,” and the big screen slid down. “Here’s Channel Two.”
The inside of the newsroom behind an open-shirted young black at his desk looked, for once, authentically busy. “Continuing Channel Two’s coverage of the incredible Abaco and assassination stories,” he said excitedly, “we have learned that Prime Minister Fidel Castro, Cuba’s aging patriarch, has made a sensational visit to the island of Abaco, scene this noon of an air battle involving renegades of the Florida Air National Guard and elements of the Abacoan defense forces. Cuban Radio announced that the prime minister wished to demonstrate his solidarity with other island nations who, Dr. Castro was quoted as saying, must now contend with the fall and death throes of the entire Yankee elephant rather than just the tramplings of his large and careless feet, unquote. Channel Two has also learned that the extraordinarily effective Abacoan anti-aircraft defense, which registered a sensational one-hundred percent kill against the Guard jets, was not a laser weapon as first thought but a solar mirror concentration system that can be rapidly tracked. Channel Two also…”
The breathless disclosures continued, but the old, white-bearded Cuban sat quietly down next to Susan and whispered, “That was what you wanted, was it not, Dr. Peabody?”
Susan nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Castro, and… sir?” He looked at her and nodded. “Shastrian ideas can work in Cuba. I…” But he only smiled distantly and held up his hand.
“I know all about that from José, Dr. Peabody. We will see how it all works out.”
They continued watching the developing stories on the Miami channels when Ravetz suddenly spoke. “Hush, let’s catch this!”
“We have learned,” said a frazzled young lady staring down blearily at the prompter readout in front of her, “that Israeli Ambassador Mishka Gur is attempting to see the new president in his Camp David retreat. Sources at the Israeli embassy say that Ambassador Gur is attempting an eleventh-hour appeal to stop the continued Florida-based attacks on the Jewish settlements in the Abaco Island group. Sources at Camp David have refused to comment on the appeal and say that President Demarest is in seclusion with his closest advisors.”
“What’s that all about, Jerry?” asked Susan, suddenly puzzled, but Ravetz, his face grim, only shook his head.“Johnnie,” he said turning to Colonel Gillam, “we can’t win too big tonight. There’s no limit on this one!”
Gillam laughed bitterly. “I thought absolute victories were a Shastri no-no, Jerry.”
Susan spoke up. “This noon that was true, Colonel, but not now, not with the fleet. The cycle may be damped, but Demarest is still as dangerous as a mad dog. Nothing will help his enemies more than total victory here.” Gillam said nothing and Susan noticed that Castro was watching them with quick narrow eyes.
Suddenly, they all turned to stare at the lighted C.B. monitor board. “Attention! Attention, Abaco, this is your Argus North. Our pirates have increased their speed to twenty knots. E.T.A. Man-o-War, entrance-channel buoy, fourteen minutes.”
Colonel Gillam jumped up and peered out the north windows. The moon was less than a quarter full and the Sea of Abaco was dark, only an occasional navigation marker winking or glowing along the five-mile channel leading in from Man-o-War to Marsh Harbor. “Infrared, Frank,” said Gillam.
The big screen lit with a faint eerie light and in the center was a detailed whitish image of a destroyer escort bow on, with a black bone in her teeth. “She has a missile battery amidships, Jerry,” said Colonel Gillam softly. “We mustn’t provoke her as long as she…” He lifted up the mike. “Man-o-War Traffic Master. This is Big John. Prepare for lamp messages. Send at the DE, the leading vessel.”
“Ten-four, Big John. We’re waiting.”
They were all waiting now. Everyone frozen in the room, watching the infrared, magnified images of the incoming ships. “They’re pretty well bunched, Colonel,” said a young Abacoan operating the search radar. “Except for the last one. He’s hanging back.”
“He won’t come,” said Susan suddenly. “That must be their communications center. They wouldn’t want to lose their main radio contact with Florida.”
“Imagine,” said Ravetz in wonder. “Just plowing in here like that. Of course they have acoustic front-scanning so they can see the channel clear, but after what happened this noon, it just…”
The DE was heading directly for the lighted entrance markers at twenty knots. Colonel Gillam picked up the mike. “Traffic Master, this is Big John. Send in plain English the following: Welcome, please identify yourself. Repeat it over and over. Execute.”
“Will do, Big John. Commencing message: Welcome, please identify yourself.”
A signal lamp flickered at the north end of Elbow Cay, although they could only see it at Marsh Harbor on a video picture of the entrance area.
Immediately the DE began signaling rapidly back from its bridge toward Man-o-War.
“Big John, this is Traffic Master. We are getting return signal lamp traffic as follows: The Abaco Independence Movement reiterates its solidarity with its… oppressed black brothers of the Abacos… we emphasize our peaceful intentions to all…” Colonel Gillam pressed the priority button and silenced Traffic Master.
“Thank you, Traffic Master. Continue sending our message without change. Crawdaddy North?”
A new voice of a young woman came out of the monitor. “This is Crawdaddy North, Big John. We see your targets.”
“Crawdaddy North. Is Harmon tracking?”
“Positive, Big John. Harmon is accepting targets.”
The great Sea of Abaco, stretching forty miles north and ten south of Marsh Harbor lay in faint moonlight. The small cay towns of Man-o-War and Hopetown were completely black, as was all of Marsh Harbor. Susan peered out of the dark room at the dark water, and far across the flat sea she suddenly had a sense of motion, of activity.
“He’s entering the channel now,” whispered Gillam. “Here they all come. Crawdaddy North, do we have a wave simulation yet?”
“Hang on, Big John. Here is Harmon’s proposed wave now. This is a thirty-X projection.”
The big screen suddenly lit up with an outline map of the Sea of Abaco from Treasure Cay south to Cherokee Point. A thin green line starting at Treasure Cay moved south across the image, shifting in shape and thickness until it reached the Marsh Harbor area, where small green ship targets were also moving more slowly in an irregular line. As the green line passed across the ship pips, they winked out, one after another, and the green line continued past Marsh Harbor and disappeared.
Gillam watched the simulation scan closely. “Crawdaddy North. How soon until decision-zero time?”
“Harmon says four minutes, Big John.”
“Crawdaddy, I don’t like the north end of the wave. See if Harmon can truncate it.”
“Will do, Big John… Stand by, here comes Harmon’s new try.”
This time the green line did not overlap Man-o-War at all, but passed directly centered over the line of ships. “Crawdaddy North. This is Big John, I like that simulation. Put Harmon in real time and turn him loose.”
“Will do, Big John. Harmon has control… now!”
Susan turned to Ravetz in puzzlement. “Who is Harmon, Jerry?”
“The hydrodynamic computer,” said Ravetz with a grin. “The only self-adjusting, boundary-condition simulator in the world. But Harmon isn’t just a thinker. When he gives us what we want, then we let him go ahead and do it.”
Susan looked at Ravetz and then at Gillam. “You’re going to pull the plug on them, aren’t you Jerry? Empty out the bathtub?”
Ravetz grinned again. “We couldn’t keep you guessing very long on this one, Susan.”
“Big John, this is Crawdaddy North. Harmon is dumping now.”
Gillam peered and peered into the night.
“This is Crawdaddy North. The basin is down five feet, and the sinkage is accelerating.”
“That DE should touch anytime now,” said Gillam tensely to himself.
Susan looked down from the considerable height of the Wind Commune building and gasped. The land beneath her had suddenly increased. The revealed sand and coral bottom stretched out away from the shore and into the night, no water in sight anywhere. “But, Jerry,” she asked, “how do you get it to come back as a wave instead of just rising and floating them again?”
From way across the water there was a sudden, grinding, crashing sound. Ravetz cocked his head. “The DE wouldn’t float again anyway. She’s just ripped her bottom out hitting at twenty knots.” He pointed to the projected map of the Sea of Abaco. “We pump down the tidal impoundment basin north of Treasure Cay, which is also dredged deeper for load-equalization on very low tides. The water surges into it when the gates are opened by Harmon, gaining velocity so that when it strikes the north end of the basin it builds into a south-moving wave. It isn’t a wave really, but a bore, like in the Bay of Fundy, maybe twenty-five or thirty feet high.”
Fidel Castro, one liver-spotted hand rubbing his thin white hair, pointed to the screen. “And this, Professor Ravetz, is also a Shastrian weapon. Useful, community integrated, all the other things you have told us about?”
Ravetz nodded. “Quite practical really. With the entire Bight of Abaco, our backside, turned into a solar pond for the thermocline system, approach to our mainland really has to come across the Sea of Abaco.”
“But amphibious vehicles, Professor Ravetz?” said the old man.
Jerry Ravetz smiled. “Reserve judgment on that question until our defense is ended, Dr. Castro.”
“Big John, this is your Argus North. We believe all vessels numbering twenty-eight are now on the ground. We can see no movement anywhere.”
“Argus North. Light up the sky!”
Immediately a series of pops sounded far to the north and the first parachutes opened sending brilliant white light flooding down from the sky above the Sea of Abaco. Ravetz leaned toward the old man and spoke softly. “We’re using the Swedish day-night battlefield system, Dr. Castro. The pyrotechnic projections are programmed to provide a continuous, shadowless carpet of light for as long as we choose. This part of our operation requires much light.”
Brighter and brighter still glowed the once-green Sea of Abaco, but now without its water. Out as far as the eye could see were pools and puddles, but no continuous sea at all. And to the north, in its dry center, were the distant ships, an irregular line of beached and heeled craft of all sizes. And in under the high ceiling of flare lights that continued to fly up popping and bursting came three big Bahamian army helicopters. Susan could readily make out what the massively amplified voice said, over and over, booming downward on the little ragged line of doomed ships. “Put on your life jackets. A tidal wave is coming. Do not stay below. Put on… ”
Susan gave a sidelong glance at the old Cuban Prime Minister. His mouth was open. He was thunderstruck, transfixed by the scene. This was going to work out. Oh, dear God, this was going to work out!
And now Colonel Gillam turned on the room. “We must have absolute quiet now! Please, all of you!” He picked up the mike. “Crawdaddy South, this is Big John. Is Harmon working on Wave Two?”
“All right, Johnnie. He’s working but we’ve hardly assessed Wave One.” It was an ancient, cracked, crotchety voice, a voice Susan knew belonged to eighty-year-old Professor Stephen Morheim, of N.Y.U. and the Trondheim Institute for Hydrodynamic Research, long retired to Abaco where he taught physics and calculus to the freshmen of Abaco Technical from a wheel chair.
Gillam leaned forward, tense, his voice low. “Crawdaddy South, we have only three point seven minutes until decision zero on Wave Two.”
“Harmon knows that, Johnnie. He’s working out the best initial condition within the solution-time restraint. Now you just lay back and…” The irritable old voice trailed off and they heard him muttering to himself near the open mike. “Harmon, let’s depth-average and get Johnnie something before he craps his pants. Forget those higher terms, Harmon… All right, Johnnie,” the voice suddenly louder again. “Here’s your projection. Fifty-X, since you’re in such a raving hurry.” The screen still showed the southern part of the Sea of Abaco, and again they saw a green line projected on the map moving southeast toward Marsh Harbor from Treasure Cay, and as it moved south a second line of green detached itself from the Little Harbor Impoundment and moved north. The two lines came together between Hopetown and Marsh Harbor, and a third, fainter and more irregular line moved northeast over Johnnies Cay and into the Atlantic. But the original line, now very faint lit and tenuous, continued southeast to Elbow Cay. “This is Big John. Crawdaddy South, that was a simulated seven-foot runup on Elbow!”
“I know it and Harmon knows it. He’s correcting, aren’t you, Harmon? Let’s delay opening on the west end, Harmon, and phase shift the stream function…”
Susan leaned close to Ravetz and whispered in his ear. “Does he really… talk to Harmon, Jerry?”
Ravetz turned and whispered back. “He claims he does but John thinks it’s just his way of thinking, of organizing himself.”
“Here comes a better one for you,” came the creaky voice. This time there was no discernible wave hitting elbow, the entire result of the collision running northeast out over Johnnies Cay.
“Crawdaddy South. That was perfect! Put Harmon on line, we’ve only thirty-six seconds!”
“Don’t get so danged rushed, Johnnie. Harmon wants to bifurcate the outrun and keep the blockhouse dry. Now you give the boy his chance…”
Gillam suddenly turned and thrust his fingers through his kinky hair. “Jesus, God, Jerry. What…”
“Here’s the wave, Johnny.” And this time the green resultant line actually dimmed in the center as it reached Johnnies Cay and left the basin in two strong surges.
Gillam dropped his hands to his sides. “Oh, Hell. They’re actually going to do it!”
“Seven seconds, Johnnie, and I’m putting Harmon on line. Three seconds. Gates are opening. This is Crawdaddy South, Johnnie. Your Wave Two is off and moving!” And the old voice was grim and filled with powerful satisfaction.
Castro leaned towards Ravetz. “The second wave is to prevent the first one from doing damage within the sea, Professor Ravetz?”
Ravetz nodded. “The basin turns south at Marsh Harbor. So we have to modify the first bore by cue-balling a second one into it. The control station on Johnnies Cay is designed to go completely under water, but apparently old Professor Morheim and Harmon have the resultant bore splitting and going out on either side. Well, we’ll see…”
But Susan now gave a great gasp, for the northern bore was in sight! A great steaming, thundering white wall of water, it stretched almost from one side of the Sea of Abaco to the other, over three miles of blinding foam running like an express train. And it was growing in size rapidly. “It’s doing about thirty-eight miles an hour,” said Ravetz to the awe-struck old Cuban.
John Gillam stared hungrily at the great bore. “Optical blow on the crest, Frank.”
The big screen immediately showed a magnified and vastly foreshortened image of the crest. And riding back and forth along it were great insects, black and stalky in the intense light of the battle field flare carpet.
“The Donnie-Rockets!” breathed Susan.
“Yes,” said Ravetz. “Riding the bore to the ships to help pick up survivors. Saving these crews is the biggest systems problem of all, over twenty-five hundred people in the drink at once.”
Marv Weinstein, the Admiral of the Abaco Sea, shouted into his C.B. excitedly. “Gerald Beans, Captain Beans! Get back off that crest! You’ll skid to the bottom!”
“We riding just great, Marv!” came the high ecstatic voice of Gerald Beans. “Oh my, Johnnie, we Israelites are coming with the Hammer of God!”
“Here’s the picture from Gerald’s boat,” said Frank Albury, and now the big screen showed a blinding color view down the sloping, white, boiling front of the wave to the sea floor. There was no sense of forward progress, just the violent motion, pitching and rolling. The huge, smoking, ever-changing face of the bore fell away in front like a living, steaming sand dune, and as Susan watched, totally transfixed, the first ships came into view, distantly at the top of the screen, small and leaning in hurt attitudes. Now she turned and looked out the window and saw the great white monster itself, gigantic in the brilliant flat light and moving with implacable, terrifying speed. Now, back on the screen was the bore’s face and the DE growing suddenly huge beneath them and… The bore devoured it! Ate it completely in a second! Susan, shocked, looked again out the window and saw the monstrous, shuffling white confusion of the bore face vanish each ship in turn with no more effort than if they were seed pods or bits of driftwood.
“How bibilical, Jerry!” said Susan gaping. “You’ve outdone yourself!”
Ravetz shook his head. “This is completely Colonel Gillam’s show. Once he grasped the idea of the Shastri null-weapon, he turned this one up. I never believed it would work. I still don’t believe it will work!”
The great white bore swept, roaring, past them, the Donnie-Rockets falling back off the crest now to the sea behind that filled the basin from shore to shore with confusion, surge and chop.
But Captain Beans’ picture still showed the gleaming lumpy sheet of the face and, now, something in the right corner of the screen! Wave Two!
Marv urgently spoke. “Lay back, Gerald, lay back! We want the picture, not you in the picture!”
“Oh, Johnnie, Marv, I hate to leave her. She’s such a beauty! But there comes old man Number Two! Don’t he look mean, ole man Two! The last Donnie-Rocket fell back off the crest and let it roll ahead towards its turbulent destiny at Matt Lowes Cay. The southern bore, not so high but vast enough indeed, had thundered and smoked up past Lubbers Quarters. Now it was abreast of the old striped lighthouse at Hopetown, and then… The great meeting of the seas! A tumult in the basin, an endless roar, spume hundreds of feet high! On Gerald’s video they saw the boil and literal explosion of waters in breathtaking close-up, but through the east window a grander sight still, for the entire sweep of the horizon was suddenly intruded on, fragmented by a volcano of white waters, tumultuous and blinding under the flare carpet.
Susan felt suddenly dizzy. Is there nothing we cannot try? An ecstasy in the sea itself!
“This is Crawdaddy South, Johnnie. You want to bet ten crays that we won’t wet the top of that blockhouse, eh? ” The old man was cackling and breathing heavily.
John Gillam grinned, his teeth shining. “I’d rather bet that the sun wouldn’t rise tomorrow, you old…”
“Well, Johnnie, there goes the run-off. You just watch!” came the dry crackly voice.
And sure enough, the Donnie-Rocket camera showed that the smaller, but still impressive runoff bore did bifurcate, quite magically in fact, and roll by on each side of the Johnnies Cay blockhouse, and although some spray may have touched the roof, no green water did.
The ancient voice really crackled in satisfaction now. “Thought we couldn’t optimize in four minutes, eh, Harmon? Why Johnnie was pissing his diapers when I was jumping Navier-Stokes through hoops…”
But now the space north and west of them was blackly spattered with heads, and more were popping up every second. The Donnie-Rockets ran slowly into the thickest bunches, and Abaco police and troopers in bathing suits pulled the men aboard with desperate haste.
Fidel Castro, his face white with astonishment and shock under his white beard, suddenly turned to Major Martino. “José, how many guard machines do we have around Abaco?”
Martino looked surprised. “Why, eight, Fidel.”
“Colonel Gillam, if we could help, we have eight sea-surface, rotor machines available to you. They might perhaps come down into the larger groups and hold men until the more mobile…”
“We accept, Dr. Castro,” said Gillam quickly. “This was always the biggest problem. We simply don’t have the capacity to do this fast enough.”
As Major Martino and Frank Albury contacted the Cuban machines, Susan watched close-ups on several small screens of the moment-by-moment rescues. The scuba teams were down on the wrecks attempting to free those caught below in that precious moment before the sea water irrevocably damaged their lungs.
Now the first of the big Cuban guard machines settled ponderously into an area black with heads. Frank brought the scene into sharp optical close-up, and they saw the first man in white coveralls leap down a ladder onto the huge float and rip his clothing off in a single gesture, diving smoothly into the sea. His target was a head and hand slipping back into the emerald-green waves.
“He got him!” breathed Ravetz. But now more Cubans were in the water, and still others were rigging nets and ropes for the men in the water to grasp. As the next two Cuban machines settled down into the light, their floats were already crowded with brown lean bodies that dove from great heights at struggling figures beneath.
Colonel Gillam turned and looked straight at Fidel Castro. “These men are a credit to your nation, Dr. Castro. Their flexibility is superb!”
The old man nodded, his color almost returned. “Oh, we have learned some things from your Shastri and from José, Colonel.” The old man looked again out the window. “But we have still more things to learn, José, do we not?”
“Si, Fidel, si,” said Major Martino soberly, but Susan saw his face was now alight with joy.
The continual rescue and transportation of the prisoners to shore occupied every eye, and Susan turned tiredly to Mary Albury. “Oh, Mary, I’ll never get back to Hopetown tonight,” she said in a soft whisper. “Is there any place I can lay my head?”
Mary smiled, “Sure, honey, the night-duty weather watch bedrooms on the roof. C‘ mon, I’ll take you up. They don’ t use them much.”
They climbed to the roof and found a cozy, breezy bedroom that overlooked the far-flung rescues still going on to the northeast. Susan sat down on the firm bed, looking out at the brilliant light, and hearing the distant excited sounds. Mary Albury looked down at her. “We’re part of history now, aren’t we, Susan? Really part?”
Susan nodded drowsily. “Oh dear, yes, I really think we are, Mary.” And kicking off her shoes she rolled over and fell into a dreamless sleep.
At quarter to nine the next morning, they all reassembled in the window room of the Wind Commune building. Dr. O’Malley, who had watched the night’s events from a Bahamian naval vessel, was already seated, as was Fidel Castro and Major Martino. Susan picked a chair as unobtrusively far back as she could and leaned over to Frank Albury at one of his panels, “How did it all come out, Frank?”
He beamed at her. “Over ninety-eight percent saved, Susan. You know, we never got better than about ninety-two percent in the simulations. Having the Cubans really made the difference. That’s the answer, put as many swimmers in the water as you can.”
“You mean… the next time you do it, Frank?” asked Susan seriously. Frank Albury giggled, then laughed out loud.
“Well,” said Jerry Ravetz, “I’m afraid we’re not quite out of the woods yet. That ‘we’ means humanity in general, not just Abaco. President Demarest is to address the nation at nine A.M. We’ve done all that could possibly be done on Abaco, and with the help of our Cuban friends.” Jerry nodded at Castro. “But now the final act is elsewhere. To put this quite quickly, we are expecting Demarest to resign the office of President this morning, although not… ah, before certain unconditional pardons have occurred, I suspect.”
Susan could not resist leaning forward. “Jerry,” she said quickly, “what if he won’t do it?”
Ravetz shrugged. “He must do it, Susan. Munoz has fled to Nicaragua where his kind can plot endlessly. Demarest’s part in this is hours from exposure. And last night was a total disaster for him.”
“But he is mad, Jerry!”
“Channel Seven looks good,” said Frank suddenly, and they all stared as the big screen descended and flashed the image of the seal on the rostrum. From offstage came the heavy, stagy voice: “… the President of the United States.”
“All my fellow citizens…” Susan looked up at the jowly, age-sagged face, newly ruined by defeat and fear. But the eyes were bright, alive, darting about.
“Jerry, he‘ s mad as a hatter. Look at the eyes!” said Susan quickly.
“Hush,” said Ravetz. “Hush!‘
“I bring you a brief, sad message, my fellow citizens…” His eyes were darting even more, peering every which way, the hands fluttering, the cheek muscles jerking. “Last night a group of brave young Americans were brutally murdered by a cowardly, dirty kike trick…” The screen briefly blurred for several seconds. Then the image skipped and steadied. “But I must now announce to you all, my beloved friends and supporters, that my health will not permit me to continue…”
“That’s an electronic dummy, a piece-up!” hissed Frank Albury. Fidel Castro looked at Frank.
“What is a ‘piece-up,’ Mr. Albury?”
“Taking snips of video tape with separate words, facial expressions, and gestures and building a completely spurious TV appearance electronically. It’s easy to spot if you know the tricks.”
“Turn it off, Frank,” said Ravetz quietly.
“Off?”
Ravetz nodded and the screen retracted. “All right,” he said, and took a deep breath. “President Demarest is dead. Whatever I say here, I’ll deny absolutely I ever said… and I won’t say it again. Is that clear?” He looked around the room. “When Demarest became Vice-president or as he was becoming, a person joined his group who gained Demarest’s complete trust. That person, who will soon be identified with an extremist Jewish group… and you just had a scrap of Demarest on Jews… was given a radiation weapon, a no-blast neutron generator. This morning, Demarest was visited by Israeli Ambassador Gur and told that if he did not quit, his part in the Abaco activities would be revealed and the death of those sailors placed on his head.” Ravetz paused, then… “I’m guessing on some of this, but it must have happened something like this. Demarest balked, so Ambassador Gur played his final ace. if the president did not announce his resignation within the hour, he would be killed, and if he attempted to leave Camp David, he would be killed. Demarest agreed, but he is mad, as you said, Susan, and they were waiting for him with the taped piece-up ready. When that ‘kike’ popped out, they knew there was only one way to end it safely and they pushed the button.”
“And the rest of those at Camp David?” asked Castro quickly.
Ravetz shook his head. “Gone, of course. Sacrificed. Ambassador Gur, other good and brave men, some evil men, some innocent men.”
The room was still until Frank leaned forward and said quickly, “It’s true. They can’t raise Camp David. Phones, TV. Everything’s out there.”
Susan raised her hand diffidently. “Jerry, could I say one more thing?”
Ravetz shook his head and grinned. “Susan, you’ve never stopped talking since you got here, and thank God for that!”
“Well,” she said looking around at them. “Dr. Castro, Dr. O’Malley, the rest of you, it’s just this. The person who damped this Shastri cycle was Colonel John Gillam and no one else. If Munoz had gotten his way here, none of the rest of this would have happened. This was an epic, an historic defense, not only of Abaco and the Bahama Islands, but of Shastrian ideals as well!”
“Hear! Hear!” said Frank Albury loudly, and they all stood and clapped, turning toward Colonel Gillam.
Fidel Castro nodded vigorously, “Dr. Peabody, I will second that. Colonel Gillam, the matchless professionalism, planning and discipline of your action is eclipsed only by the skill and elan of your men.” The old man looked around excitedly. “Shastrian ideals can adapt Communism to the new, to the technical present. The sun shines forever, Professor Ravetz! And Cuba too shall have fourteen-year-old men who drive great foil boats to the very rim of the maelstrom!”
So, in the end, it was black, skinny Captain Gerald Beans of Dundas Town who would change the Caribbean and perhaps the world. Susan stared, transfixed, as the excited old man, his white beard spiky and erect, now not only looking like Hemingway, but talking that same romantic wild stuff about élan and style. Oh, how Shastri would have laughed at that!
Major Martino leaned over and whispered in Susan’s ear. “We will make the step, Susan. Someday they will light candles to you in Cuba!”
But Susan looked down at her brown knees and blinked and blinked.
“Oh, José. Oh, I hope not, José,” she whispered back.
The Cuban VTOLs took off at noon while all of Abaco buzzed, and met, and organized the victory celebration that night. After some excited C.B. traffic, Elbow Cay was selected as the site, since it had been in the thick of the air battle and stood the greatest risk of run-up during the use of the hydrodynamic weapon. Colored lights were strung in the small revival park in a parade, of sorts, organized before the crayfish barbecue.
The parade never actually ended but metamorphosed into a kind of combination conga line and boogaloo that stretched the length of Hopetown and kept busy every instrument and player in the entire chain of islands.
At the head of the great writhing chain of Abacoans and Israelis, or really in the middle since the head and tail had long since merged, was that ace of aces, Dawn LaVere. Dancing nearby, Susan noticed, was Prime Minister O’Malley, his eyes popping as Dawn’s long thighs and tiny ripped jeans shorts flashed like bonefish in the warm fitful light. The extraordinary tightness and brevity of those shorts suggested that they might not come off at all, a possibility Susan smilingly rejected.
She leaned against the fence at the rear of the field where the dancers dropped off momentarily to get food and drink. She was now without the drug and in full possession of the inevitable downer. Her moment, the greatest moment of her life, had just passed, but she had made no more friends, nor was she any more a part of this blooming Shastrian society than she had been yesterday morning.
Susan looked at the gyrating, grinning throng and listened to the blaring music. She sighed and rubbed her eyes and tried to tell herself, as Frank surely would have, that peacemakers were especially blessed. They didn’t seem to offer much to a lonely, overeducated, out-of-place woman in her forties, playing a brief, impromptu role in some larger…
“Dr. Peabody?” She looked up startled and saw Colonel Gillam, now neatly dressed in Bermuda snorts and a flowered sports shirt, standing before her. “I wanted to thank you for the speech this morning. We… ah…” he rubbed his shiny black face with a big pink palm.“We both wanted the same things, Dr. Peabody.”
Susan sighed deeply. “Yes, we did, and we do, Colonel.” she looked at the shadowed angular face, the high cheeks gleaming in the dim light, the brown eyes large and soft. If you judged a man by his friends— Dawn LaVere, Professor Morheim, Gerald Beans—John Gillam rated tops.
Susan threw her head back and bit her lip. “Colonel, John…would you like to try some political cocaine with me?” She looked openly into his face.
He rubbed his chin slowly. “Well, uh… Dr… Susan.” He smoothed back his kinky short hair several times. “Ah, well look, frankly, you scare the Hell out of me. I’m afraid I’d be sort of like a scout master trying to keep up with Mata Hari.”
Two bright tears popped into Susan’s eyes and she made no attempt to wipe them away. “Oh? Well, I guess I really asked for that, John. We Peabodys aren’t used to… Well, look, just forget I said it.” And she stared at his face made blurry with the tears.
John Gillam took her hand and smiled, his big lips just parting to show the bright teeth. “I’ve had my great victories, Susan. I guess I can stand a defeat,” and she unashamedly gripped his hand in gratitude for that.
They walked north from Hopetown, hand in hand, leaving the shouts, the happy laughter, and the tinkling music behind. As they paused at her front door and kissed for the first time, the fitful east wind drove the ridge-mounted wind rotors behind them at subtly different speeds and the air throbbed faintly with the beat frequencies. “Shastri’s heartbeat, John,” she said softly. But now she saw his eyes were holding her and that they had gone fuzzy and soft as his desire for her mounted.
John Gillam suffered no defeat that night. The great subjective time suspension possible with the drug not only drove him to the peak of sensation but held him in a timeless spasm out of which he perceived another Susan, her body in a tight, upward circle of ecstasy, her face rigid yet smooth and lost as a child’s. The softness of her arms and her gentle breasts caught John Gillam in a spiraling rush of tender lust. “Oh, how lovely,” he breathed again and again. “Oh, Susan,” and it seemed impossible that the relief, and yet not-relief could last so blissfully long. But Susan was riding a hard, upward-curving wave of white passion, a wave that would never break, or else break and break again forever. Her body lusted for John Gillam’s strong core, and when she saw his black face, now soft and heavy with desire, her own lust flamed higher. In that wrenching, protracted moment, she remembered her father, the fairy tales, how they lived happily ever after, and she knew that John Gillam and she would live within this moment for ever after, and that was better.
And in her final overwhelming submission to utter pleasure, Susan cried out, “Oh, Johnnie! Mine’s on fire! Mine’s burning too!”
When those words were spoken, the Battle of the Abaco Reefs came, as far as any such battle can, to an end. It was not the last battle in the history of the West, but it was one of the most decisive. And as Susan sensed that night, she and John Gillam did live together within that moment, through the rest of their long and useful lives.