Alas, Babylon

“I’m really not a very hard guy,” Randy said, looking across the room at his guns and thinking, oddly, of the young buck he’d shot when a boy, and how he’d never been able to shoot a deer since that day. To change the subject he said, “You must’ve had a pretty harrowing day.”

Dan drank the second half of his bourbon and water. “I have had such a day as I didn’t think it was possible to have. Seven cardiacs are dead and a couple more will go before morning. Three miscarriages and one of the women died. I don’t know what killed her. I’d put down `fright’ on the death certificate if I had time to make out death certificates. Three suicides-one of them was Edgar Quisenberry.”

Randy said, “Edgar-why?”

Dan frowned. “Hard to say. He still had as much as anybody else, or more. He wasn’t organically ill. I’ll refer to Toynbee again. Inability to cope with a sudden change in the environment. He swam in a sea of money, and when money was transmuted back into paper he was left gasping and confused, and he died. You’ve read the history of the ‘twenty-nine crash, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Dozens of people killed themselves for the same reason. They created and lived in an environment of paper profits, and when paper returned to paper they had to kill themselves, not realizing that their environment was unnatural and artificial. But it wasn’t the adults that got me down, Randy, it was the babies. Give me another drink, a small one.”

Randy poured another.

“Eight babies today, three of them preemies. I’ve got the preemies in San Marco hospital. I don’t know whether they’ll make it or not. The hospital’s a mess. Cots end to end on every corridor. A good many of them are accident cases, a few gunshot wounds. And all this, mind you, with only three casualties caused directly by the war-three cases of radiation poisoning.”

“Radiation?” Randy said. “Around here?” Suddenly the word had a new and immediate connotation. It was now a sinister word of lingering death, like cancer.

“No. Refugees from Tallahassee. They drove through pretty heavy fallout, I guess. We estimate at the hospital that they received fifty to a hundred roentgens. Anyway, a pretty hefty dose, but not fatal.”

“Are we getting any radiation, do you think?”

Dan considered. “Some, undoubtedly. But I don’t think a dangerous dose. There isn’t a Geiger in town, but there is a dosimeter in the San Marco hospital and I guess we’re getting what San Marco gets. Most of the radioactive particles decay pretty fast, you know. Not cesium or strontium 90 or cobalt or carbon 14. Those will always be with us.”

“Lucky east wind,” Randy said, and then was surprised at his words. The danger of radiation was still there, and might increase. Long before this day scientists had been worried about tests of nuclear weapons, even when conducted in uninhabited areas under rigid controls. Now the danger obviously was infinitely greater, but since there were other and more immediate dangers-dangers that you could see, feel, and hear-radiation had become secondary. He wasn’t thinking of its effect upon future generations. He was concerned with the present. He wasn’t exercised over the fallout blanketing Tallahassee from the attack on Jacksonville. He was worried about Fort Repose. He suspected that this was a necessary mental adjustment to aid self reservation. The exhausted swimmer, struggling to reach shore, isn’t worried about starving to death afterwards.

When Helen called, they sat down to a dinner table that, under the circumstances, seemed incongruous. The meal was only soup, salad, and sandwiches, but Helen had laid the table as meticulously as if Dan Gunn had agreed to stay for a late supper on an ordinary evening. When Ben Franklin sat down Helen said, “Did you wash your hands?”

“No, ma’am.” “Well, do so.”

And Ben disappeared and returned with his hands washed and hair combed. They listened to the radio as they ate, hearing only the local broadcasts from San Marco at two-minute intervals. Their ears had become dulled to the repetitive, unimportant announcements and warnings, as those who live on the seashore fail to hear the sea. But any fresh news, or break in the routine, instantly alerted and silenced them.

Several times they heard a brief bulletin: “County Civil Defense authorities warn everyone not to drink fresh milk which may have been exposed to fallout. Canned milk, or milk delivered this morning prior to the attack, can be presumed safe.”

Dan Gunn explained that this precaution was probably a little premature. It was designed primarily for the protection of children. Strontium 90, probably the most dangerous of all fallout materials, collected in calcium. It caused bone cancer and leukemia. “In a week or so it can be a real hazard,” he said. “It can’t be a hazard yet, because the cows haven’t had time to ingest strontium 90 in their fodder. Still, the quicker these dangers are broadcast, the more people will be aware of them.”

Helen asked, “What happens to babies?”