Fail Safe by Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler Page B
Authors: Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler
Ads: Link
into one monstrous body. We're at the mercy of our monster and the Russians are at the mercy of theirs. They toy with us as the Olympian gods toyed with the Greeks. And like the gods of Greek tragedy, they have a tragic flaw. They know only how to destroy, not how to save. That's what we're now watching in our cold war: a Greek tragedy in modern form with our godlike monsters playing out the last act of their cataclysmic tragedy."
She stopped and looked at Black quickly, as if seeking help. But before he could speak or move toward her she was speaking again.
"We all know that the big explosion is going to happen. Your concern, the two of you, is to make sure that you die intellectually correct. But my problem is more primitive. I only want to make sure that when it comes and my boys are dying that I am there to ease their last pain with morphine."
She finished in a flat voice entirely without self-pity. Her last statement seemed to give Groteschele a new assurance, a place to get back into the conversation and guide it into safe channels. His words came on gently and kindly.
"Betty," he said, "those of us who know anything about the situation feel almost exactly the same things that you have expressed. But what should we do? All go out and buy morphine? You see, Betty, I'm trying to save your two boys, not narcotize their death. That's
the whole point of everything I've written. In spite of all our efforts, thermonuclear war may come. We must face that possibility rather than, ostrichlike, dose our minds to it. And I'm trying to see that if war comes, men, our kind of men, have the maximum possible chance of surviving it."
Betty looked composed now but her fingers were digging into Black's arm.
"General Black, what do you think?" asked Senator Hartmann.
Black looked up slowly from Betty. He fixed his eyes on Foster and thought for a minute.
"I think that Betty is mostly correct," he said slowly. "Once one knows where he wants to go he can summon a magnificent array of logic and fact to support his argument. I have the awful feeling that. we are reconciled, both we and the Soviets, to mutual destruction. We are now rallying our different logics to support our identical conclusions. We will probably both get the results that we want. In that case, morphine is more. important than a bomb shelter." He stopped and for a moment he felt an excitement. It was wild and irrational: he understood the Dream. He was in a game in which the things that held him together were being stripped away. Then, quite suddenly, be could go no further.
Betty's comments had just about done it for the party. Everyone drank and chatted politely for a few minutes. Then there was the Intricate ballet of social disengagement. Black knew that their host would not forget his heretical position. The Senator was a methodical man.
In the taxicab back to their apartment neither Black nor Betty had spoken. She had fallen asleep on his shoulder; her teeth grinding.
General Black snapped back to the present as the Cessna 810 approached Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington. Looking down on the water-veined flats of the Chesapeake Bay area, he regretted that the air approach to Andrews didn't take him over Washington proper. He never ceased to be stirred by the splendor of the Washington Monument's slim white spire, the awesome majesty of the Lincoln Monument The Pentagon, though, that was something else again. Its low, squat improbable shape was not designed to capture an airman's fancy. It was more like a great, bureaucratic land battleship pulled up alongside the Potomac. That's about what it was, mused Black, laying siege to the helpless flotilla of weaker bureaucratic ships across the Potomac.
Back to work, Blackie, boy-general, he said to himself. Life is earnest, life is reaL
He brought the plane in for a skilled and effortless landing. Ten minutes later he was in a staff car and on his way to the Pentagon.
The President looked across the
She stopped and looked at Black quickly, as if seeking help. But before he could speak or move toward her she was speaking again.
"We all know that the big explosion is going to happen. Your concern, the two of you, is to make sure that you die intellectually correct. But my problem is more primitive. I only want to make sure that when it comes and my boys are dying that I am there to ease their last pain with morphine."
She finished in a flat voice entirely without self-pity. Her last statement seemed to give Groteschele a new assurance, a place to get back into the conversation and guide it into safe channels. His words came on gently and kindly.
"Betty," he said, "those of us who know anything about the situation feel almost exactly the same things that you have expressed. But what should we do? All go out and buy morphine? You see, Betty, I'm trying to save your two boys, not narcotize their death. That's
the whole point of everything I've written. In spite of all our efforts, thermonuclear war may come. We must face that possibility rather than, ostrichlike, dose our minds to it. And I'm trying to see that if war comes, men, our kind of men, have the maximum possible chance of surviving it."
Betty looked composed now but her fingers were digging into Black's arm.
"General Black, what do you think?" asked Senator Hartmann.
Black looked up slowly from Betty. He fixed his eyes on Foster and thought for a minute.
"I think that Betty is mostly correct," he said slowly. "Once one knows where he wants to go he can summon a magnificent array of logic and fact to support his argument. I have the awful feeling that. we are reconciled, both we and the Soviets, to mutual destruction. We are now rallying our different logics to support our identical conclusions. We will probably both get the results that we want. In that case, morphine is more. important than a bomb shelter." He stopped and for a moment he felt an excitement. It was wild and irrational: he understood the Dream. He was in a game in which the things that held him together were being stripped away. Then, quite suddenly, be could go no further.
Betty's comments had just about done it for the party. Everyone drank and chatted politely for a few minutes. Then there was the Intricate ballet of social disengagement. Black knew that their host would not forget his heretical position. The Senator was a methodical man.
In the taxicab back to their apartment neither Black nor Betty had spoken. She had fallen asleep on his shoulder; her teeth grinding.
General Black snapped back to the present as the Cessna 810 approached Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington. Looking down on the water-veined flats of the Chesapeake Bay area, he regretted that the air approach to Andrews didn't take him over Washington proper. He never ceased to be stirred by the splendor of the Washington Monument's slim white spire, the awesome majesty of the Lincoln Monument The Pentagon, though, that was something else again. Its low, squat improbable shape was not designed to capture an airman's fancy. It was more like a great, bureaucratic land battleship pulled up alongside the Potomac. That's about what it was, mused Black, laying siege to the helpless flotilla of weaker bureaucratic ships across the Potomac.
Back to work, Blackie, boy-general, he said to himself. Life is earnest, life is reaL
He brought the plane in for a skilled and effortless landing. Ten minutes later he was in a staff car and on his way to the Pentagon.
The President looked across the
Similar Books
