“Pay attention to your classwork!” snapped Miss Simmons. “Now, class, if the UN would ever do its duty,
we could end utterly and forever man’s lemming fixation on self-destruction.”
“What’s a lemming?” said a girl.
“They are hordes of horrible rats that go plunging in masses into the sea annually, committing mass suicide,” said Miss Simmons helpfully. “If it wished, in a single, soul-stirring surge, the UN could rise up with clarion voices and cry ‘DEATH TO THE CAPITALIST WARMONGERS’ Wister, what in the name of God are you looking at NOW?”
There were three seagulls lying along the concrete parapet. Their feet were stuck into black blobs of oil, pinning them to the concrete. Two were dead. The third, his feet stuck and his feathers saturated with oil, was still making feeble efforts to get free.
“Those birds,” said Wister. “They got into an oil slick.”
“And I suppose that will make it easier for you to trap them and blow them up with an atomic bomb! Ignore his antics, class. There is always some student who tries to get others to laugh.” A helicopter was coming down the river very low and the sound blotted her voice out.
Heller was putting on a pair of gloves from his kit. He went over and verified that the two motionless ones were actually dead. Then he went to the third one. It feebly tried to defend itself with its beak.
Kneeling, Heller got a small spray out of his haversack. By Gods, he skirted on the edges of real Code breaks: it said Solvent 564, Fleet Supply Base 14 right on it in Voltarian! I made a note of it. Somebody might notice!
He took out a redstar engineer’s rag and protected the bird’s eyes and air holes and rapidly sprayed its feathers. Of course, the oil vanished.
Then he unstuck its feet, wiped them off and sprayed them. He inspected the bird, found a couple of spots he had missed and handled those. He was always so maddeningly neat!
He took out a water bottle and filled the cap. The bird, head loose by now, started to strike, then thought better of it and took some water from the cap. The bird did it several times.
“You were dehydrated,” said Heller. “It’s the hot sun. Now take a few more sips.” What a fool. He was talking to it in Voltarian and it was an Earth bird!
Then he took out half a sandwich and broke it up and laid it on the grass. The bird stretched its wings, doubtless with some surprise. It was going to fly away but saw the sandwich and decided to have lunch first.
“Now, that’s a good bird,” said Heller. “You stay away from that black stuff. It’s oil, understand? Petroleum!”
The bird let out some kind of a squawk and went on eating the sandwich. I don’t know why it squawked. It couldn’t understand Voltarian.
Heller looked around. Of course, the Nature Appreciation class was gone. Heller listened intently. He heard nothing. He did a fast scout.
And then he was sniffing. What the Hells was he sniffing about?
He glanced back. The seagull was just taking off. It sailed by him and curved outward over the river and was gone.
Sniffing some more, Heller trotted ahead and was shortly in the reception center of the General Assembly Building, according to the signs. There was even an information sign but he didn’t approach it.
He seemed to find the place very curious. The light was coming through the walls from outside in a translucent effect. He went over to a wall and examined it to find out why, probably.
He went over into the Assembly Hall and there was the class.
Miss Simmons was lecturing. “…and here it is that the delegates could rise with one voice and in stentorian and noble tones denounce nuclear weapons forever. But alas, they do not. The men who occupy this place are silenced by their own fears. They cower…”
Heller was examining some marble.
The class trailed out on Miss Simmons’ heels and, with her still lecturing and totally ignoring the guide who seemed to have attached himself to the party, went into the Conference Building and were shortly in the gallery of a chamber labelled:
They gazed across the two hundred or so empty public seats — for, of course, nothing was in session and would not be for another couple of weeks — and Miss Simmons continued her lecture. “…And so we come at last to the lair of the powerful few who, even if the General Assembly did act, this fifteen-nation body would veto any sensible ban proposed. The five permanent members — United States, France, United Kingdom, Russia and China — each have the right to turn down, individually, the anguished pleas of all the peoples of the Earth! They block any effort anyone makes to outlaw nuclear power and disarm the world! Greed, lust for power, megalomania and paranoia cause these self-anointed few to surge onward and onward, closer and closer to the brink.”
Heller had been admiring the gold and blue hangings and a mural. But at her last words, he spoke sharply. “Who keeps preventing a solution?”
Miss Simmons spoke out with a clarion voice of her own. “The Russian traitors who have sold out the revolution and asserted themselves the tyrants of the proletariat! Who asked that question? It was a very good one!”
“Wister did,” said a girl.
“Oh, you again! Wister, stop disturbing the class!” Miss Simmons led them back outside.
Heller’s eyes lingered on a huge statue of a muscular figure that was putting a lot of effort into something.
Heller asked, “What is that statue doing?”
Miss Simmons said, “That is a Russian statue. It is a worker being forced to beat a plowshare into a sword. It personifies the betrayal of the proletariat.” She had looked back, moving her glasses off her eyes to see. “Ah, that was a good question, George.”
Wister was looking around to see who George was and so were the other students.
She had gathered them together under the Statue of Peace. “Now, today, students, was just a start, an effort to orient this course for you. But I will review why we started here, so pay very close attention.
“All that you will see in our future Sundays of Nature Appreciation is doomed by nuclear war. It will make it far more poignant for you, as you admire the beauties of nature, to realize, as you look at every blossom, every leaf, every delicate paw and each bit of soft, defenseless fur, to realize that it is about to be destroyed forever in the horror and holocaust of thermonuclear war!”
Oh, she was right there! If Heller didn’t win and a Voltar invasion got turned loose, those crude atomic bombs would seem like a picnic!
“So, class,” she went on, “if you do not yet feel, individually and collectively, the craving urge to instantly sign up with the Anti-Nuclear Protest Marchers, I assure you that you soon will — New York Tactical Police Force or no New York Tactical Police Force. Class dismissed. Wister, please remain behind.”
The students wandered off. Heller came up to Miss Simmons.
She lifted her glasses up to try to see him. “Wister, I am afraid your classwork is not improving. You were interrupting and disturbing the others. You were not paying attention!”
“I got everything you said,” protested Heller. “You said that if the UN couldn’t be made to function, the planet would destroy itself with thermonuclear weapons.”
“Weapons made by such as you, Wister. My words were far stronger. So you get an F for today. If your daily classwork is a bad average, you know, of course, that even a perfect, INFLUENCED, final examination won’t save you. And if you flunk this course, Wister, you won’t get your diploma and then nobody will listen to you and you’ll never get that coveted job of blowing up this planet. Small as it is, I do my bit for the cause, Wister. Good afternoon.” And she stalked off.