Technically, the advantage came because each side thought it benefitted from the exchange, by an amount depending on the ration of perceived threat removed to the perceived protection lost.
This led to gradual reductions. Purely defensive weapons did not enter into the thousand-point count, so there was no restraints in building them.
The confidence engendered by this slow, evolutionary approach had done much to calm international waters. The U.S. and the USSR had settled into a begrudging equilibrium.
MC355 puzzled over these facts for a long while, trying to match this view of the world with the onset of the war. It seemed impossible that either superpower would start a conflict when they were so evenly matched.
But someone had.
SUSAN
I had to go with Gene, and they said I could ride up in the cab, but I yelled at them—I yelled, no, I had to be with the T-Isolate all the time, check it to see it’s workin’ right, be sure, I got to be sure.
I climbed on and rode with it, the fields rippling by us ’cause Bud was going too fast, so I shouted to him, and he swore back and kept on. Heading south. The trees whipping by us—fierce sycamore, pine, all swishing, hitting me sometimes—but it was fine to be out and free again and going to save Gene.
I talked to Gene when we were going fast, the tires humming under us, big tires making music swarming up into my feet so strong I was sure Gene could feel it and know I was there watching his heart jump every few minutes, moving the blood through him like mud but still carrying oxygen enough so’s the tissue could sponge it up and digest the sugar I bled into him.
He was good and cold, just a half a degree high of freezing. I read the sensors while the road rushed up at us, the white lines coming over the horizon and darting under the hood, seams in the highway going stupp, stupp, stupp, the air clean and with a snap in it still.
Nobody beside the road we moving all free, nobody but us, some buds on the trees brimming with burnt-orange tinkling songs, whistling to me in the feather-light brush of blue breezes blowing back my hair, all streaming behind joyous and loud strong liquid-loud.
BUD
Flooding was bad. Worse than upstream.
Must have been lots snow this far down. Fat clouds, I saw them when it was worst, fat and purple and coming off the Gulf. Dumping snow down here.
Now it run off and taken every bridge.
I have to work my way around.
Only way to go clear is due south. Toward Mobile.
I don’t like that. Too many people maybe there.
I don’t tell the others following behind, just wait for them at the intersections and then peel out.
Got to keep moving.
Saves talk.
People around here must be hungry.
Somebody see us could be bad.
I got the gun on a rack behind my head. Big .30-30. You never know.
MC 355
From collateral data, MC355 constructed a probable scenario: The U.S. chose to stand fast. It launched no warheads.
The USSR observed its own attack and was dismayed to find that the U.S. orbital defense system worked more than twice as well as the Soviet experts had anticipated. It ceased its attack on U.S. satellites. These had proved equally ineffective, apparently due to unexpected American defenses of its surveillance satellites—retractable sensors, multiband shielding, advanced hardening.
Neither superpower struck against the inhabited space colonies. They were unimportant in the larger context of a nuclear war.
Communications between Washington and Moscow continued. Each side thought the other had attacked first.
But over a hundred megatons had exploded on U.S. soil, and no matter how the superpowers acted thereafter, some form of nuclear winter was inevitable.
And by a fluke of the defenses, most of the warheads that leaked through fell in a broad strip across Texas to the tip of Florida.
MC355 lay buried in the middle of this belt.
TURKEY
We went through the pine forests at full clip, barely able to keep Bud in sight, I took over driving from Ackerman. The man couldn’t keep up, we all saw that.
The crazy woman was waving and laughing, sitting on top of the coffin-shaped gizmo with the shiny tubes all over it.
The clay was giving way now to sandy stretches, there were poplars and gum trees and nobody around. That’s what scared me. I’d thought people in Mobile would be spreading out this way, but we seen nobody.
Mobile had shelters. Food reserves. The Lekin administration started all that right at the turn of the century, and there was s’posed to be enough food stored to hold out a month, maybe more, for every man jack and child.
S’posed to be.
MC 355
It calculated the environmental impact of the warheads it knew had exploded. The expected fires yielded considerable dust and burnt carbon.
But MC355 needed more information. It took one of its electric service cars, used for ferrying components through the corridors, and dispatched it with a mobile camera fixed to the back platform. The car reached a hill overlooking Mobile Bay and gave a panoramic view.
The effects of a severe freezing were evident. Grass lay dead, gray. Brown, withered trees had limbs snapped off.
But Mobile appeared intact. The skyline—
MC355 froze the frame and replayed it. One of the buildings was shaking.
ANGEL
We were getting all worried when Bud headed for Mobile, but we could see the bridges were washed out, no way to head east. A big wind was blowing off the Gulf, pretty bad, making the car slip around on the road. Nearly blew that girl off the back of Bud’s truck. A storm coming, maybe, right up the bay.
Be better to be inland, to the east.
Not that I wanted to go there, though. The bomb had blowed off everythin’ for twenty, thirty mile around, people said who came through last week.
Bud had thought he’d carve a way between Mobile and the bomb area. Mobile, he thought, would be full of people.
Well, not so we could see. We came down State 34 and through some small towns and turned to skirt along toward the causeway, and there was nobody.
No bodies, either.
Which meant prob’ly the radiation got them. Or else they’d moved on out. Taken out by ship, through Mobile harbor, maybe.
Bud did the right thing, didn’t slow down to find out. Mr. Ackerman wanted to look around, but there was no chance, we had to keep up with Bud. I sure wasn’t going to be separated from him.
We cut down along the river, fighting the wind. I could see the skyscrapers of downtown, and then I saw something funny and yelled, and Turkey, who was driving right then—the only thing anybody’s got him to do on this whole trip, him just loose as a goose behind the wheel—Turkey looked sour but slowed down. Bud seen us in his rearview and stopped, and I pointed and we all got out. Except for that Susan, who didn’t seem to notice. She was mumbling.
MC 355
Quickly it simulated the aging and weathering of such a building. Halfway up, something had punched a large hole, letting in weather. Had a falling, inert warhead struck the building?
The winter storms might well have flooded the basement; such towers of steel and glass, perched near the tidal basin, had to be regularly pumped out. Without power, the basement would fill in weeks.
Winds had blown out windows.
Standing gap-toothed, with steel columns partly rusted, even a small breeze could put stress on the steel. Others would take the load, but if one buckled, the tower would shudder like a notched tree. Concrete would explode off columns in the basement. Moss-covered furniture in the lobby would slide as the gound floor dipped. The structure would slowly bend before nature.