Alas, Babylon

“My wife,” Randy said. “It’s her lunch day.”

“Your wife? Congratulations. My wife-I’ll save it for later.” Randy saw that the men with the Geiger counters had stripped off their plastic suits. “You’ll all have a drink before lunch?” he suggested, thinking that this had been the proper thing to say, long ago, and would still be proper and expected.

“Why, I’d be delighted!” Paul said. “I haven’t had a drink since-” he asked a question: “You people haven’t saved your liquor all this time, have you?”

“Oh, no. This stuff is new. Well, it’s aged a bit. In a charcoal keg. We think it’s very good.”

He led them up to his apartment and mixed sours with the corn whiskey and fat, ripe limes. Then there were the introductions. There was a Captain Bayliss, the pilot, a Lieutenant Smith, chief radiologist, and the two sergeant technicians. They all considered the sour very good and Paul said, “It’s impossible to find anything to drink, even in Denver. Not even beer. Shortage of grains, you know. Nobody would dare make his own whiskey in the clear zones. He’d go to jail. The older people say it’s worse than prohibition.”

There were a thousand questions Randy wanted to ask but at that moment he only had time for one because Lib called from downstairs. Lunch was ready. The men all wore brassards with the letters D.C. on the right arms. “What’s that?” Randy asked, touching Paul’s brassard. “District of Columbia?”

“Oh, no,” Paul said. “there isn’t any District of Columbia. Denver’s the capital. That stands for Decontamination Command. It’s the biggest command, nowadays, and really the only one that counts. I was seconded to the D.C. last spring. I put in for a C.Z. right away and asked for Florida and Florida was the C.Z. I got.”

Paul Hart thought the soup was wonderful and said he had never tasted anything exactly like it before and Randy replied that he wasn’t surprised. They always kept the big soup pot simmering on the fire and everything went into it. “This particular soup,” he explained, “is sort of a combination. Armadillo, gopher, and turkey carcass.”

Lib brought a dozen quail, and more were broiling, and placed pitchers of orange juice in front of them and they all drank it greedily. Captain Bayliss kept mumbling that he felt they were imposing, and that there were K-rations in the helicopter and that he actually expected to find C.Z. people all starving, because certainly most of them were in other parts of the country. He also kept on eating.

“How does it happen,” Randy asked Hart, “that you found us?”

Hart said, “You haven’t heard anything from my wife, Martha, have you?”

Randy shook his head, no, apprehending Paul’s tragedy. “Of course that’s why I asked for duty in this C.Z. I wanted to find out what happened to Martha and the children.” He looked up. “It was just a year ago, wasn’t it, that I met you at McCoy Operations? Wasn’t it on the day before H-Day?” “H-Day? We just call it The Day.”

“Hell day or Hydrogen Day or The Day, it’s all the same thing.”

“Yes. That was the last time I saw you.”

“It was also the last day I saw Martha except to kiss her goodbye the next morning. Post-strike we went on to Kenya, in Africa. When I got back to this country I learned right away, of course, that McCoy received one. But it wasn’t until I flew over Orlando last week that I gave up hope. I suppose you know what happened to Orlando.”

Randy said, “Oh, no! Nobody’s been that far off!”

“It’s as if no man was ever there. Even the shapes of the lakes have changed and there are a couple of lakes that weren’t there before. Find my wife? I couldn’t even tell where my house stood.

I think they must’ve dropped a five-megaton missile on McCoy and another on Orlando municipal. Nothing stands. Everything is burned and still hot. It’s the damn C-14 that does it.” “C-I4?”

“Radioactive carbon. It’s half-life is more than five thousand years. That and U-238 and cobalt and strontium is what makes rebuilding impractical in the T.D.-the totally destroyed—cities. You have to start somewhere else, here for instance. Did you know that you are living in the center of the largest clear area in the whole C.Z.?”

“No, I didn’t, but I’m glad to find out.”

Helen had been waiting, tensely, to ask the question that she must ask, yet knowing the answer before she asked it; for had there been any other answer Paul would have told her before now. She said, “Paul, nothing about Mark, I suppose?”

“I’m sorry, Helen. Nothing. There were a few survivors from Omaha but Mark wasn’t one of them. After all, it was a primary target with SAC Headquarters, Offutt Field-itself an important base-and the biggest rail complex between Chicago and the Coast all grouped together. I don’t think we’ll ever find out exactly what happened.”

Helen nodded. “At least I know for sure. That’s important-to know.” No tears, Randy thought. He glanced at the children. Ben Franklin stood firm, chin outthrust, taut facial muscles containing his emotions. But Peyton, eyes lowered, slipped away into the other room.