Alas, Babylon

On his desk, Mark found copies of three more urgent dispatches. One, from the Air attach, in Ankara, reported Russian aerial reconnaissance over the Azerbaijan frontier. Another, from the Navy Department, gave a submarine-sighting two hundred miles off Seattle, definitely a skunk. The third, received by the State Department from London in the highest secret classification, said Downing Street had authorized the RAF to arm intermediate range missiles, including the Thor, with nuclear warheads.

In an hour Helen’s plane would touch down in Orlando. In two hours, if the plane was on time, Helen and the children would be in an area of comparative safety. Mark prayed that for the next two hours, at least, nothing more would happen. He held fast to the thought, so long as there was no war, there was always a chance for peace. As the minutes and hours eroded away, and no word came from Moscow, he became more and more certain that a massive strike had been ordered. He diagnosed this negative intelligence as more ominous than almost anything that could have happened, and determined to awaken General Hawker if it persisted.

At three-thirty in the morning Randolph Bragg waited in Orlando’s air terminal for Helen’s flight. With only a few night coaches scheduled in from New York, plus the non-stop from Chicago, the building was almost empty except for sweepers and scrubwomen. When he saw a plane’s landing lights, Randy walked outside to the gate. On the other side of the field, near the military hangars used by Air-Sea Rescue Command, he saw the silhouettes of six B-47s, part of the wing from McCoy, he deduced, using this field in accordance with a dispersal plan. The military hangars and Operations building were bright with light, which at this hour was not usual.

The big transport came in for its landing, approached on the taxi strip, pivoted to a halt before him, and cut its engines. He saw that only a few people were getting off Most would be going on to Miami. He saw Peyton and Ben Franklin come down the steps, Ben incongruously wearing an overcoat, Peyton carrying a bow, a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. Then he saw Helen and she waved and he ran out to meet them.

Randy rumpled Ben Franklin’s hair. The children were both owl-eyed and tired. He leaned over, kissed Peyton, and relieved her of the bow slung over her shoulder. Helen said, “She’s been watching Robin Hood. She thinks she’s Maid Marian.”

Helen was wearing a long cashmere coat and carrying a fur cape over her arm. She appeared fresh, as if starting rather than completing a journey. She was slight-Mark sometimes referred to her as “my pocket Venus-” yet Randy was never aware of that except when he saw her completely relaxed. At all other times her body seemed to obey the physical law that kinetic energy increases mass. Her abundant vitality she somehow communicated to others, so that when Helen was present everyone’s blood flowed a little faster, as Randy’s did now. She tiptoed to kiss him and said, “I feel like ten kinds of a fool, Randy.”

He said, “Don’t be silly.”

They walked toward the terminal. She presented him with a sheaf of baggage checks. “Mark made me take everything. We’re going to be an awful nuisance. Also, I feel like a coward.”

“You won’t when you hear what’s just happened in the Med.”

Ben Franklin turned, suddenly awake, and said, “What happened in the Med, Randy?”

Randy looked at Helen, inquiringly. She said, “It’s all right. Both of them know all about it. I didn’t realize it until we were on the plane. Children are precocious these days, aren’t they? They learn the facts of life before you have a chance to explain anything.”

While they waited for the luggage, Randy spoke of the news.

They listened gravely. Ben Franklin alone commented. “Sounds like the kickoff. I guess Dad knew what he was doing.” Nothing more was said about it for a time.

Randy felt relieved when the suburbs of Orlando were behind them and, with traffic thin at this hour, he was holding to a steady seventy. He thought his apprehension illogical. Why should he be upset by the remark of a thirteen-year-old boy? When he was sure the children slept in the back seat, he said, “They take it calmly, almost as a matter of course, don’t they?”

“Yes,” Helen said. “You see, all their lives, ever since they’ve known anything, they’ve lived under the shadow of war-atomic war. For them the abnormal has become normal. All their lives they have heard nothing else, and they expect it.”