‘Thank you,’ said Flood.
‘I imagine they tell of your meteoric rise to the rank of brigadier general.’
‘Some of them would have come after that.’
‘Oh? Might any of these medals testify to your talents as a commander in the field?’
Flood tapped a metal sunburst. ‘I was awarded this one after Skovorodino.’
‘Some of us may not be up on our unadmitted history.’
‘Skovorodino would have been a major battle of the Greco-Russian War.’
‘Which occurred after the Einstein VI arms control agreement went into effect?’
‘Yes.’
‘Evidently this treaty you’re so fond of permitted further Soviet expansionism.’
‘Bull’s eye, Bonenfant,’ said Wengernook.
‘Kid does his homework,’ said Brat.
Flood’s mouth was as straight and rigid as a chisel mark in a granite tombstone. ‘That’s hard to say.’
‘Would many Americans have died in the Greco-Russian War?’ asked Bonenfant.
‘Almost two hundred thousand,’ said Flood.
‘Almost two hundred thousand,’ Bonenfant echoed. ‘You have much on your conscience, General… Now, a little while ago I heard you claim that nuclear weapons have no military utility. Suppose that, as a field commander, you had been charged with repelling an attack on West Germany by the Eighth Soviet Shock Army. Wouldn’t a few enhanced-radiation charges be pretty useful to you?’
‘West Germany doesn’t exist.’
‘Just answer the question.’
The general’s mouth melted into a frown. ‘Battlefield nuclear weapons might have been useful in the immediate crisis. But after that—’
‘Useful, did you say?’
‘Useful in the—’
‘One final question. Exactly how many Soviet officers belonged to this organization of yours?’
‘There were no Soviet military officers in Generals Against Nuclear Arms. However, we did—’
‘How many Soviet officers?’
‘None,’ grunted the witness.
‘Thank you, General Flood.’ Bonenfant strutted away from the stand, a smile strung between his bulging cheeks like a hammock.
‘We blew him out of the water, don’t you think?’ said Brat.
‘Definitely our inning,’ said Wengernook.
‘Definitely,’ said George.
After lunch Aquinas called to the stand a rosy, elfin woman dressed in a black scopas suit with an inverted collar. She was rolypoly and roly again.
‘A lady?’ said Brat. ‘They’re using a lady against us?’
‘They’re getting desperate,’ noted Wengernook.
The witness was sworn in on a Douay Bible, giving her name as Mother Mary Catherine.
‘If admitted, would you have been a Catholic priest?’ asked Aquinas.
‘Yes.’
‘Female Catholic priests used to be a rare commodity.’
‘Times change.’
‘Were you also a Vice President of the United States?’
‘I would have been, yes.’
‘And did you leave office before serving out your term?’
‘When I accepted the second spot on the ticket, I had a secret in my heart.’ Mother Mary Catherine’s high, scratchy voice suggested an early Hollywood sound film. ‘I knew that, shortly after being elected, I would resign over my President’s defense policies.’
‘And who would that President have been?’
‘He’s over there in the dock – Reverend Peter Sparrow.’
George glanced at the defendant in question. Flabbergasted by the news of his would-be election, Sparrow alternately smiled and grimaced.
Mother Mary Catherine turned to the bench, winked impishly, and said, ‘Be sure to convict that chucklehead. He thinks a country’s Christianity is measured by the size of its thermonuclear arsenal.’
Sparrow now wore the look of a boy engaged in wetting his pants.
‘Objection!’ shouted Bonenfant, rising. ‘The witness is giving slander, not testimony!’
As Justice Jefferson instructed the stenographers to delete Mary Catherine’s last remark, a glimmer of chagrin crossed the prosecutor’s face. He denied his distress with a smile and said, ‘Before resigning, you would have used your office in an unorthodox manner.’
‘Let’s face it, Mr Aquinas, I was a cut-up.’
‘Some of your activities—’
‘Stunts. They were stunts.’
‘Didn’t you propose a rather strange arms control agreement?’
‘I tried to start something called SWAP – the Strategic Weapons Adjustment Plan.’ Mary Catherine folded her hands and placed them on her lap in a neat little bundle. ‘The idea was to let the superpowers build any sort of crazy arsenals they wanted, but with the stipulation that they would trade once finished. No quicker way to get the warheads defused, I figured.’
‘You also wanted to set up Genocide Prevention Centers.’
‘Telephone hotlines staffed twenty-four hours a day. Whenever a missile engineer got the urge to design some fiendish new weapon system, he would call his nearest Genocide Prevention Center and somebody would try talking him out of it.’
‘Tell us about the Preschooler Empowerment Act.’
‘If adopted, it would have prevented the Pentagon from contracting for a new type of bomber or missile until its pros and cons had been explained to a four-year-old chosen at random from any nursery school in Washington, DC. Whatever the four-year-old decided, that was the weapon’s fate.’
A dozen spectators held up a huge banner. WE LOVE YOU, MOTHER MARY CATHERINE, it said.
‘I would like the tribunal to know about your National Day of Shame,’ said Aquinas.
‘My husband’s idea, really. We called for everyone involved with thermonuclear weapons – technicians, politicians, professors – to stay out of work for a day. We said that the next morning they should bring in notes from their mothers.’
‘Notes saying…’
‘“My child was absent yesterday because he was sick of being up to his neck in excrement.”’
‘Nuclear weapons make you mad, don’t they, Mother Mary?’
‘Mad as a hornet.’
‘No further questions.’
In the gallery a second banner was unfurled: MOTHER MARY CATHERINE FOR SAINTHOOD.
‘Well, men, what do you think?’ said Brat.
‘She said nothing we haven’t all heard before,’ Sparrow replied.
‘Except the stuff about your being elected President,’ said Wengernook.
‘There’s no telling what a Christian will be called upon to do,’ said Sparrow.
‘Congratulations,’ said George.
‘You would have gotten my vote,’ said Brat.
Eyes flashing, mouth set in a formidable smile, Bonenfant charged up to the stand.
‘He’d better go easy,’ said Wengernook. ‘Everybody likes a nun.’
‘She’s a priest,’ said Randstable.
‘She’s heading for hell,’ said Sparrow.
‘She’s unadmitted,’ said Overwhite. ‘She’s in hell.’
The chief counsel began, ‘Miss Catherine – these various antics of yours, how do you suppose they went over in Moscow?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘The old men in the Kremlin must have been delighted knowing that an American Vice President was calling for SWAP talks and so on.’
‘I’ve never visited the Kremlin.’
‘Evidently not. Now, when you first proposed the Soviet Day of Shame, was the plan to hold it simultaneously with the American one? Or did you perhaps neglect to call for a Soviet Day of Shame?’
‘My goal was to educate the American public concerning the absurdities of—’
‘Just answer the question, please. Did you or did you not call for a Soviet Day of Shame?’