After that, all the fuze needed was the sharp blow of impact to explode.
He frowned, looking down at it in the yellow glow of the dome light. This didn't look all that different from Allied Joint Design Mark 47, the standard coast artillery impact fuze. Here were the lock-in prongs, the male threading at the head of the body, and the central exploder cavity, with bored holes to allow the shock wave from a few ounces of detonator to transmit itself to the main charge. The Union fuze was slightly bigger, but all the elements were there; not too surprising when one considered that, to meet the same requirements, physical laws required both blocs' designs to be at least roughly similar.
He laid it on the dashboard and sat thinking. Obviously he couldn't accelerate or spin a one- to two-ton shell hard enough to overcome the safeties. With proper tools, though, he might saw the fuze open and hold the safeties out manually; but, rummaging in the truck's tool chest, all he came up with was a crescent wrench and a couple of much-used screwdrivers. Disassembly was out.
He thought for a little while longer, then abruptly got out and popped the hood open and studied the engine for several minutes.
Maybe.
He could duplicate setback with a sharp blow along the long axis of the tube. But the rotational safeties were trickier. Well, he couldn't lose by trying. Even if I can't set it off properly I might be able to damage it. Enough to make it useless. That was the main idea, after all.
He broke out a flare from the truck's emergency kit and lit it and balanced it on the side of the frame so it lit the exposed engine, and set to work. With the crescent wrench he backed off the fan belt retaining nut until the generator axle was bare. Using four feet of friction tape he fixed the fuze to the hub so that as the generator turned the fuze did also. He wiggled it and it held.
He got in the cab again and started the motor and got out and studied the fuze as it spun, then moved to the side of the cab and reached in and held his hand on the accelerator until the motor roared and smoked under the open hood.
It all depended on what rpm it was designed for. He couldn't remember what initial RPM was for a fired shell, but the generator was certainly whirling at a hell of a rate. Should be enough, he reassured himself. He wedged the gas pedal down and went forward again and stared at the silvery-red blur of the spinning cylinder. It would take two axial accelerations to fire it, assuming that the radial acceleration being supplied now was sufficient to force the retaining pins out. One, to mimic the setback as the shell was accelerated into flight; the second, in the opposite direction, to imitate its impact at the end of its miles-long trajectory.
He held the wrench carefully, eyeing the end of the spinning tube, and swung hard into it. The impact was satisfying. The tube, knocked off-center, began to wobble, then the tape loosened and it spun from the hub and whanged hard against the engine block and fell rattling to the ground. He searched for it, holding the sputtering flare carefully, and held it up. It was dented but otherwise unharmed, and he smiled as ruddy light glinted off brighter metal at the detonator end. The axials had tripped; the blow had set it back; one more blow, in the opposite direction, would fire it.
Except for one thing. It was dangerous to fire a shell that armed instantly; it might strike a piece of ship's superstructure and go off close aboard. With a nuclear shell the danger would be even greater. Ergo, there would be a time-delay built into it, so that only after a given time — probably several minutes, considering the range from which this shell had to be fired — would an impact set it off. He cut the truck's motor and held the fuze to his ear. A faint ticking told him he was right.
He laid it on the hood and sat down on the running board, prepared to wait.
It was then, in the fitful light of the guttering flare, that he saw the ground moving in bits of shadow. He bent down, curious, and picked up one of the weakly fluttering things.
It was a cicada, one of the seventeen-year "locusts" he'd heard a week before in Sharon's garden. The insects whose lurid wings predicted war. How long ago that seemed.
But this one was different. It buzzed weakly but barely moved as he placed it on his palm and held it close to the light.
There was very little left of it.
The foreparts, the head, were wizened, dull, and withered. The wings were no longer glossy but wrinkled and cloudy brown.
But it was the insect's body that made him frown. The fat thorax was almost gone, eaten away, ragged-edged. It was hollow and he could see within it the pulsing of the tiny drum as the creature rasped weakly, dying.
He tossed it back down among its fellows — coaxed into a final frenzy of activity by the daylike glare of the flare-and watched it flutter its wings a few times and fall.
Now, as he bent toward them, he saw they were all dying, all of them, the last survivors of the hordes that had milled thick as aphids on the trees, the crops, and lawns, that had called from the forests in waves of sound like the beating heart of doom. Survivors of birds and bats and the other predators that had feasted on the unnumbered hosts. Survivors that now were dying, eaten away from within, conquered only by the inexorable working of time and the decay within themselves. He stared down, tranced by the spectacle, until amid their sporadic buzzing he sensed the cessation of another, more regular sound; and he bent his ear toward the fuze. It was silent. It was ready.
Now, he knew, it was dangerous. A base fuze might go off only when the shell carrying it hit six feet of waffle armor and concrete… or might explode with a relatively minor jolt. It all depended on how it had been set, and that, of course, he was only guessing at.
He cradled it gently in his hands. It seemed warm. His imagination? No, it might have picked up some of the heat from the engine.
Carrying the flare, he went to the rear of the truck and swung himself up into it and squatted respectfully beside the hulk of the shell. Curving, massive, it cast great moving shadows in the brilliant scarlet flame, reminding him of some pagan idol worshipped with fire. He held the armed fuze beside the base cavity and considered for one last time. Was there no way he could leave it? Rig it to detonate after an hour, when he might, with luck, be safely away?
No. He saw now that it was inevitable. His class, the finest of the Old South, had let it happen. They'd taken the Confederacy out of the Union for their own ends. Watched, with equanimity and even approval, the development of a system that destroyed humanity — not only in the colored, but in the poor whites as well; the Kuklos was the white shadow of the institutionalized injustice the Confederacy dealt out to all.
To all save its favored, aristocratic few.
He knew he wasn't very smart. Aubrey Lee Quidley IV wasn't clever enough to deny what he realized; or to fool himself, like Turner or Sawyer, into believing more injustice and violence could wipe out the results of the old.
He wasn't a genius, but he was a Quidley. Old and eaten-out the line might be; but he had one thing left of it. However others might define it he knew it and held it before him like a shining sword. What he was about to do, above all else, was a matter of honor.
He slid the fuze home, feeding it inch by inch into its fated cavity, its receptacle, its home, and when it reached the stopping-point he began to screw it in the remaining turns with his bare hands.
POSTSCRIPT
When she saw the brilliance she braked, panicky, steering the little car to the side of the road not far east of Windsor. She turned round, ignoring Turner's groan, and stared west, shielding her eyes with her hand.