"Burdic, Eugene and Wheeler - Fail Safe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burdic Eugene)

Groteschele was familiar' with every gambit. His reply was reasonable, quietly uttered, and difficult to refute. He drew it out to great length. The spectators listened respectfully.
It was Betty who broke the spell. Before Black realized it, she had moved from his side, drunk, yet at the same time rigidly controlled.
"It is hopeless," she said, staring at the two men. "You are both romantics caught up in your fantasy world of logic and reason and that is why it is so damned hopeless. Because man himself has become obsolete. He is like the dodo and the dinosaur but for the opposite reason. His damned brain has gotten us into this mess because of its sophistication and we cannot get out of it because of his pride. Man has calculated himself into so specialized a braininess that he has gone beyond reality. And he cannot tap the truth of his viscera because that, for a specialist, is the ultimate sin."
Black had not heard her speak with such overcontrol for years. Her 'words fell like a pall on the group. Even Groteschele was at a loss for the right thing to say. He went through a ritual of taking a Philippine cigar from a small leather cigar case in his pocket. Since the Bay of Pigs episode he had stopped smoking Cuban cigars.
"You think I've overdone it?" As Betty spoke a new quality seemed to come over her. Black looked at her with increasing concern. An inner intensity was flow-
big from her, almost visibly. It acted like a powerful magnet on everyone present, drawing their eyes to her, holding their rapt attention.
"The world," Betty continued, her voice now edged with despair, "is no longer man's theater. Man has been made into a helpless spectator. The two evil forces he has created-science and the state-have combined 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 desk at Buck. Buck knew that the President did not see him. His eyes were slightly squinting. Buck twisted in his chair. The motion caught the President's eye. His face suddenly hardened and he seemed to come back into the room.
"What do you think of that list, Buck?" he asked, pointing at the card that Buck still held. Buck hesitated, lifted the card as if it were very delicate, glanced again at the names. He felt like licking his lips, but resisted. His mind reached for an answer, something that would make sense. It was impossible.
"I only know them as names," he said quietly. "A few'I have never even heard of."
He saw approval in the President's face. Then the President was not seeing him any more, but was abstracted.
"Relax, Buck," the President said. "We're in an emergency, but we've got time, a little anyway. Time and a decision. That's what an emergency is. Now the decision is what those people on the list have to help us with. The time we can't control. It just passes."
It sounded silly, but Buck knew that the President was not thinking what he was saying. His voice and his mind 'were operating on different levels. Then they came together and the President was seeing Buck again.
"Buck, that group sees one another all the time, day after day," the President said. "They've probably talked over things so much that they've got a nice committee solution for everything. Right?"
"Yes, I imagine they have," Buck said.
"The only problem is that this is something they have no solution for," the President said. "Bogan told me that in Omaha they had no standard operating procedure for this kind of thing. So we've got a novel situation, something completely new."
The President swung in his chair and looked at his secretary. Quite automatically her pencil lifted, moved toward the notebook.
"Blackie's in the Pentagon group, isn't he?" the President asked.
Buck's eyes ran down the list
"There is a General Black, Mr. President," he said. His throat felt dry.
"That's Blackie," the President said. "We went to college together." He paused. "Blackie's a bright boy, got guts and I'd trust him with almost anything. He can think on his feet, deal with a novel situation. Trouble is that either they'll 'make a committee solution or they'll all listen to someone like Blackie. He doesn't talk much, except when he believes in something. . . ." His voice dropped and he stared at the wall, not seeing it. Then be swung back to them, entirely in focus, speaking briskly. "Next we need someone who's not a Pentagon person, but who knows his way around. Whom do you suggest?"
He asked the question of both Buck and Mrs. Johnson. Buck stiffened. His mind went flat, incapable of memory. He could, quite literally, not recall the name of a single person. His mother? Gypsy Rose Lee? Old Mr. Carmichael in the apartment below? He must be losing his mind.
'Mrs. Johnson looked at the President, then flicked over a few pages in her notebook. "They've got that Professor Groteschele out there for the 'briefing," she said. "He's not one of them. I mean he doesn't work at the Pentagon."
The President rocked in his chair.
"lie doesn't work for the Pentagon. That's right," he said slowly. "But that book of his almost made him one of them." He paused. "O.K., Johnnie, he'll add something to a bunch of people that have been seeing one another too often. Tell the Pentagon to include Groteschele in the advisory group. Tell Swenson that Groteschele is personally cleared by me and that he can say anything he wants on any subject."
"As long as it's relevant," Mrs. Johnson said and smiled tightly.
The President grinned. "Swenson has a pretty well-developed sense of the relevant," he said.
"I know that, Mr. President," Mrs. Johnson said.
"I know that you know that, Mrs. Johnson," the President said and made a mock bow.
She smiled, turned, and left the room.
Buck sat silently with the President of the United States. He knew they were waiting but he did not know what for.
Walter Groteschele awoke at precisely 5:80 A.M. He did not awake at the sound of an alarm dock and, indeed, he did not even wear a wrist watch. Despite this he was certain of the time. He was awake fully. As he swung out of bed his mind began to block out the day. It was a quick, neat process, something that occupied him only from his bed to the bathroom. By 6:10 he would be showered, shaved, dressed, nourished by one cup of instant coffee, and waiting for the train at Scarsdale. An hour to La Guardia-8:30. An hour to Washington (and his second cup of coffee, at 10,000 feet)- 9:30. At the Pentagon by ten minutes to ten.
The check list was complete. The day was under control.
Groteschele stepped on the bathroom scales-i 85. He had weighed 165 when he was twenty-one. He knew some men who refused to weigh themselves, were afraid to get the bad news. Groteschele weighed himself every day of his life. As he stepped off the scales he even forced himself to think what the additional fat meant. Face reality, he told himself with a quiet pride. Facing reality was what had gotten him where he was.
As he showered, rubbing his body with a rough natural sponge, he ran over the physical differences between
twenty-one and forty-eight Then he had been lean and muscular. Now there was an overlay of fat about the torso. Not gross, but noticeable in a suit. Softer. Around the waist the flesh was a bulge. Where it showed most was in his neck and face. His collars were usually tight and bit into the flesh, making his face slightly pink. As he shaved he calculated whether or not it would be possible to exercise the fat off. The calculation did not take long.