There Won't Be War

I looked into the teacher’s calm gray eyes, and wondered at the intelligence behind them as it described a still unfinished process. Despite my father’s warnings, I felt no threat, only wonder and curiosity.

“As an interim measure,” the teacher went on, “human nature had to be convinced in its deepest domains that the new peace could not be subverted. The festival demonstration is a physical proof, not an argument or treaty, affirming that peace can be preserved every time it is imperiled. Ours is a renewable peace, and it has endured, even though the old human animal struggles against it. But one day even that inward struggle will end.”

The teacher was speaking about my father, I realized, but I felt only a vague threat.

“Old humanity tried to have it both ways—by arguing that a shield would destabilize the old nuclear deterrence, which implied that it might work, and at the same time that a shield was technically impossible. They neglected to consider that few would wish to test such a system by starting a war. At the very least, it would foil attempts at a decisive first strike. In practice it was completely effective in stopping all enemy missiles—because they would never be launched. And that is what happened.”

Silently, the teacher looked around at us, and I knew suddenly that there was a peace beyond this one.

“Consider these three statements,” the teacher continued. “They unmask the old humanity within you all. We reserve the right to kill living creatures, including human beings, under the appropriate conditions. There can be no peace which abolishes this right. The second asserts that The ability to be violent in the name of survival is the Sacred fire at the center of every living organism. And finally, There must always be the possibility of war, even if war never comes.”

My father struggled within me. Trembling, I raised my hand and heard him say, “Given enough time, there will be war. Sooner or later, something will always go wrong.”

The teacher gazed at me calmly, then nodded. “It would seem so—but many possible things never happen. At first, peace demands a tradition of vigilance. The founder of our peacekeeping order said that Violence lives in each human being as a small flame, burning always, but flaring only with impatience and anger. It is both their strength and greatest weakness, since it can consume itself Human hearts will never be at peace. They war with themselves even in sleep. But this heart of fire has never turned on itself decisively. Peace is as possible as war. In time, something even better will be born of our rational faith. Our festival confirms this understanding, and prepares us for the way ahead.”

We saw holos of great cities destroyed in past wars, The broken bodies seemed unreal, and it would never happen again, because the peacekeepers would prevent it.

The last day arrived. We gathered on the flat desert as the stars came out. Facing west, we saw a holo of three giant mushroom clouds swell up with a roar from the sands. Screaming human shapes twisted in the rising fireball, ballooned to massive size, and were torn apart. Torsos, limbs, and entrails fell on cities of cinder. People around me turned away, dropped to their knees and moaned; others clutched their heads and wailed. I gazed into the glow, feeling nothing.

A peacekeeper wearing a blindingly white one-piece suit stepped out of the roiling clouds of fire, gazed down at us as if we were ants and said, “Welcome to the 98th Peace Festival.” His voice was intimate and reassuring. He raised his hand. “The test area today takes in the cities of the west coast, including Los Angeles and New San Francisco. There is one live warhead in the first wave just launched by our partners in peace.”

I looked around at the parents with their sons and daughters. My father was in his shelter, in the strike zone, as required.

“The armed warhead,” the keeper’s figure continued, “is the possibility of war in each of you, but you shall not fear it.”