Free Trinity's Child by William Prochnau Page A

were during the 1962 crisis. I must say that I see the point of both factions. I think we all, the leaders of both our nations, knew that someday something would have to give. . . .”
    Something would have to give. . . . The President read hurriedly, but part of his mind drifted to his triumphant return from Vienna and the summit meeting with the young, new, and presumably inexperienced Soviet Premier. On the flight over, the Secretary of State had badgered him for hours about being tough. The Soviets, the Secretary had said, are like burglars who walk down a hotel hallway trying every door until they find one unlocked. Lock every door on them, Mr. President. During the summit conference, the Premier had surprised him. He had almost pleaded with him to back down on the weapons buildup. The President had stonewalled, as prompted, telling the Premier to loosen his grip on Eastern Europe if he wanted to talk arms reductions. On the return flight the Secretary gloated ecstatically. This was a complete affirmation of the administration's policy. The new toughness had left the Soviets in an American policy pincer movement. The Soviets were trapped with an ailing economy, the Secretary beamed, and the Vienna meeting had forced them to make choices among escalating arms costs, the relentless ruble drain needed to prop up the satellite nations, and the increasingly tense internal pressure for consumer goods demanded by a deprived citizenry. Now something would have to give, the Secretary enthused, and it could even be the Soviet system itself.
    “... I confess, Mr. President, to a persistent fantasy. I had fantasized that proliferation of nuclear weapons among other nations was a good thing. Perhaps two less stable nations, with small arsenals, would use their weapons first and take the monkey, to use your idiom, off our backs. Perhaps a million people would have been killed, but the horror would bring both our nations to their senses. We had no such luck. The monkey remains on our backs, his claws dug in deeply. At best, now, we can become the symbols that my fantasy would have passed on to other nations. To be blunt, Mr. President, you have three choices, only two of which are acceptable to us. You can accept the damage and we will stop, the world divided between us as it is now. Like you, I am a politician. I cannot imagine my political system allowing me to accept that choice, as clearly as we would prefer it. Your second choice is to respond with a limited counterattack that inflicts upon my nation a similar amount of military damage and other losses. We will accept that, provided the world's spheres of influence remain the same and the arms increases cease. Our calculations show that you will lose six to nine million persons in our attack. We will accept a similar loss. It is a tremendous price to pay. But perhaps it can serve as the symbol my fantasy would have granted to Riyadh or Islamabad. Perhaps, without ending all our aspirations, it can show all factions in both our nations the madness of the game we have been playing. The losses are huge, but smaller and more survivable than the world's losses in earlier wars. It has a certain raw logic—considerably more than your third choice, which is not acceptable to us. You will be under tremendous pressure, as was I, to respond massively. If this is your ultimate choice, my government already has decided to reply in kind, even before your missiles land. I pray now, Mr. President, that the distrust is not total and that, through the pain of the next few minutes, you make the decision that can bring this to a less-than-perfect end, but an end.”
     
     
    Halupalai slapped O'Toole hard, very hard, the snapping impact of the blow cracking through the rising engine noise like shattering glass. O'Toole did not flinch. Halupalai's eyes adjusted slowly to the red night lights of the cramped upper crew compartment. At O'Toole's side, just below the code box, the young airman's