Selected Stories Read Online Free Page B

let it. You’d better tell me about it.”
    “All right,” she said, with a tired acquiescence that frightened something inside him. “You seem to have guessed right, though. It’s true. There are master firing keys for the launching sites. We have located and dismantled all but two. It’s very likely that one of the two was vaporized. The other one is—lost.”
    “Lost?”
    “I don’t have to tell you about the secrecy,” she said disgustedly. “You know how it developed between nation and nation. You must know that it existed between State and Union, between department and department, office and office. There were only three or four men who knew where all the keys were. Three of them were in the Pentagon when it went up. That was the third blast bomb, you know. If there was another, it could only have been Senator Vandercook, and he died three weeks ago without talking.”
    “An automatic radio key, hm-m-m?”
    “That’s right. Sergeant, must we walk? I’m so tired—”
    “I’m sorry,” he said impulsively. They crossed to the reviewing stand and sat on the lonely benches. “Launching racks all over, all hidden, and all armed?”
    “Most of them are armed. Enough. Armed and aimed.”
    “Aimed where?”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “I think I see. What’s the optimum number again?”
    “About six hundred and forty; a few more or less. At least five hundred and thirty have been thrown so far. We don’t know exactly.”
    “Who are we? ” he asked furiously.
    “Who? Who?” She laughed weakly. “I could say, ‘The Government,’ perhaps. If the President dies, the Vice President takes over, and then the Speaker of the House, and so on and on. How far can you go? Pete Mawser, don’t you realize yet what’s happened?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “How many people do you think are left in this country?”
    “I don’t know. Just a few million, I guess.”
    “How many are here?”
    “About nine hundred.”
    “Then as far as I know, this is the largest city left.”
    He leaped to his feet. “NO!” The syllable roared away from him, hurled itself against the dark, empty buildings, came back to him in a series of lower-case echoes: nonono no … no -no—n …
    Starr began to speak rapidly, quietly. “They’re scattered all over the fields and the roads. They sit in the sun and die in the afternoon. They run in packs, they tear at each other. They pray and starve and kill themselves and die in the fires. The fires—everywhere, if anything stands, it’s burning. Summer, and the leaves all down in the Berkshires, and the blue grass burnt brown; you can see the grass dying from the air, the death going out wider and wider from the bald spots. Thunder and roses … I saw roses, new ones, creeping from the smashed pots of a greenhouse. Brown petals, alive and sick, and the thorns turned back on themselves, growing into the stems, killing. Feldman died tonight.”
    He let her be quiet for a time. “Who is Feldman?”
    “My pilot.” She was talking hollowly into her hands. “He’s been dying for weeks. He’s been on his nerve ends. I don’t think he had any blood left. He buzzed your GHQ and made for the landing strip. He came in with the motor dead, free rotors, giro. Smashed the landing gear. He was dead, too. He killed a man in Chicago so he could steal gas. The man didn’t want the gas. There was a dead girl by the pump. He didn’t want us to go near. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay here. I’m tired.”
    At last she cried.
    Pete left her alone, and walked out to the center of the parade ground, looking back at the faint huddled glimmer on the bleachers. His mind flickered over the show that evening, and the way she had sung before the merciless transmitter. “Hello—you.” “If we must destroy, let us stop with destroying ourselves!”
    The dimming spark of humankind—what could it mean to her? How could it mean so much?
    “Thunder and roses.”