He decided to try Lieutenant Grass’s hydroponic orange grove. Perhaps she liked oranges.
A fruity scent throbbed through the missile compartment as he slipped into Tube Sixteen. The tree looked vigorous and fecund. He grabbed an orange, tore it from the branch. Succulent. Perfect. Were oranges now extinct? Had unadmitted orange trees been permitted a fleeting tenure on the earth?
He left Tube Sixteen and, sitting down on the cold steel deck, began his vigil. In his mind the portrait of his latent family multiplied into an entire museum. He saw himself walking along a bright corridor, sun-washed windows on one side, paintings on the other. He paused before Morning in a wedding dress – at least, it was probably Morning, though it also looked a bit like Justine. The signature was Leonardo’s. Next he inspected a mental painting of himself and Morning making love, brewing the next generation. Oh, how he missed sex, how he hated subsisting on onanism. (We must never be seen together… I’ll be gone from your life.)
International Military and Civilian Tribunaclass="underline" phooey. International Kangaroo Court. Yes, Brat had his faults, he was too hasty with his man-portable thermonuclear device, and he hadn’t understood that a nation that doesn’t exist doesn’t need to defend itself, but this ‘crimes against the future’ stuff was really stretching it. Overwhite? A windbag, sure, but not a dangerous man. Randstable? He could barely walk across a room. Wengernook? He cheated at poker, but that was about it. Reverend Sparrow? Come off it. No, not one of George’s new friends deserved to be in this jam.
A hideous odor cut into his thoughts. He stood up, peered around Tube Sixteen. A young civilian reminiscent of Martin Bonenfant, but with blond hair and a baby-pink complexion, crouched in the middle of the compartment, opening a hatch in the floor. He wore a business suit. The stench evidently traced to the duffel bag on his shoulder.
The intruder disappeared through the hatch. Creeping forward, George followed him down.
A dark, mucosal passageway lay under the missile compartment. It might have been tunneled out by a large earthworm. (Were there unadmitted worms in the world?) The young man stepped into an alcove bathed in a sallow light of uncertain origin. Rusty iron rods went floor to ceiling, turning the alcove into a cage. Inside, a trapped bird the size of a pterodactyl snorted and squirmed.
George thought perhaps he was again seeing Mrs Covington’s magic lantern show. But no, this vulture – his vulture, as Morning would have it – was alive, as alive as eaters of the dead ever get. It looked exactly as it had at ground zero – tattered wings, rancid eyes, steam-shovel beak, broken posture. And Morning had assumed it was a hallucination. Hah…
The vulture’s young keeper pulled a penguin carcass from the bag. He looked foolish standing there in his business suit, holding carrion. He pushed the penguin between the bars. The vulture pinned it against the floor with its claw, tore it to pieces, feasted noisily. The keeper winced and gagged, unable to constrain his disgust.
Sneaking back down the passageway, George began to tremble. My family is dead, my planet is dead, my gonads are dead, I’m a prisoner of the murdered future, I’m going to be hanged for a crime I didn’t commit, there’s a vulture on the submarine, a real vulture, a huge crazy real vulture… He climbed to the missile deck. A species without males – that’s what the ancient Egyptians believed, according to Morning. Inseminated by the winds.
It occurred to him that he knew nothing about Morning’s religious convictions. On Sunday he went to church, hoping she might show up.
The City of New York’s chapel was an all-purpose facility, with missals and icons suited to almost any sacramental need a sailor in the US Navy might have. George sat in the back pew along with the Presbyterian Brat, the Lutheran Wengernook, and three noncommissioned officers of indeterminate denomination. Ship’s Chaplain was a lieutenant named Owen Soapstone. George felt at home in Soapstone’s flock, for had the chaplain been born, he would have followed up his navy stint with a long career as a Unitarian minister. He mounted the pulpit and opened an Unadmitted Bible. A respectful hush settled over the congregation.
‘In the end Humankind destroyed the heaven and the earth,’ Soapstone began.
‘Oh, boy,’ said Brat.
‘One-track minds,’ said Wengernook.
‘And Humankind said, “Let there be security,” and there was security. And Humankind tested the security, that it would detonate. And Humankind divided the U-235 from the U-238. And the evening and the morning were the first strike.’ Soapstone looked up from the book. ‘Some commentators feel that the author should have inserted, “And Humankind saw the security, that it was evil.” Others point out that such a view was not universally shared.’
‘I didn’t come to hear this crap,’ Wengernook announced, rising.
A tremor passed through the chapel. The bulkheads moaned. As Wengernook stalked out, a lily-filled vase fell over and shattered.
Casting his eyes heavenward, Soapstone continued. ‘And Humankind said, “Let there be a holocaust in the midst of the dry land.” And Humankind poisoned the aquifers that were below the dry land and scorched the ozone that was above the dry land. And the evening and the morning were the second strike.’ Soapstone closed the Bible on his hand, a bookmark of flesh. ‘Many commentators reject the author’s use of the term “Humankind” as bombastic and sentimental, arguing that blame should be affixed more selectively. Other commentators—’
The chapel was on the move, pitching and rolling. Altar candles took to the air like twigs in a gale. Rivets detached themselves from the ceiling and rained into the aisles. Twisting in their seats, the panicked churchgoers grabbed the backs of their pews and hung on like people who had lives.
George decided that he could not cope with another unexpected effect of nuclear war.
Round and round went the room, ever rising, as if traveling up the surface of an enormous corkscrew. The ride seemed to unleash some latent fundamentalism in Soapstone. He embraced his pulpit, binding himself to it like a helmsman lashed to a ship’s wheel. The chaplain’s reading became a fire-and-brimstone sermon, his eyes spinning, his tongue spiraling, each word a scream.
‘And Humankind said, “Let the ultraviolet light destroy the food chains that bring forth the moving creature!” And the evening and the morning—’
A candlestick clipped Soapstone’s nose, releasing black blood. His Bible flew up as if being juggled by a poltergeist, then crashed through a stained-glass window. The congregation tumbled into the aisles, George sputtering, Brat cursing prolifically. Still hugging the pulpit, Soapstone continued from memory.
‘And Humankind said, “Let there be rays in the firmament to fall upon the survivors!” And Humankind made two great rays, the greater gamma radiation to give penetrating whole-body doses, and the lesser beta radiation to burn the plants and the bowels of animals! And Humankind sterilized each living creature, saying, “Be fruitless, and barren, and cease to—”’
George sailed into the outstretched arms of Saint Sebastian. As he and the statue collided, skullbone against marble, he experienced sensations reminiscent of being shot by John Frostig, but when he looked up he did not see his vulture. Of course – it’s under the missile deck, he thought. It’s in a cage. It can’t come for me this time…