sheaves, as in the old days) were outnumbered by gaggles of fresh-faced Reconstruction and Reconciliation Corps volunteers in jeans and Planning For Peace T-shirts. A team of wise-cracking construction engineers sat on their tool boxes, watching the human parade. A column of troops in black coveralls and what looked like silver motorcycle helmets marched past at double time. Soldiers and civilians milled around kiosks where girls in Stars-and-Stripes T-shirts were handing out free cigarettes and coffee and sandwiches. As he followed Welch toward a turnstile checkpoint tucked under the dome’s white curved flank, Stone thought that the noise under the dome was like the cackling of the sky-blotting flocks of geese that flew down the Hudson ahead of the first winter blizzards.
At the checkpoint’s steel and glass booth, Welch pushed the sheaf of travel order papers into a slot. The marine inside the booth checked the papers and returned them through the slot with two square white plastic badges - dosimeters. A light overhead turned from red to green, the turnstile unlocked with a heavy clunk, and Stone and Welch walked out into grey light, warm gritty air, and the smell of recent rain. Aid workers were climbing into a long line of yellow school buses. In the distance, the superstructures of troop ships and cargo ships rose above cranes and warehouses.
A black stretch Cadillac equipped with smoked bulletproof glass and anti-mine flooring drove them down the Long Island Expressway toward Manhattan. Welch handed one of the dosimeters to Stone. ‘We’ve done a lot of rebuilding, but we can’t do much about the radiation.’
‘What happened here?’
The file hadn’t given Stone much information about the Johnson sheaf’s pre-contact history.
‘They had themselves a Second World War in the middle of the century,’ Welch said. ‘The US, Britain, and Soviet Russia defeated Nazi Germany and Japan, a cold war developed between the free world and the Soviets. In 1962, the Soviets stationed missiles in Cuba, which was part of the Communist bloc. After a standoff, their premier, a fellow by the name of Khrushchev, agreed to withdraw the missiles, but a bunch of high-ranking military officers assassinated him and staged a coup. The Soviet Navy tried to break a shipping blockade around Cuba and the President, one of the Kennedys, responded by sinking several of their ships and threatening to invade. The Soviets took out Guantánamo Bay and Miami with tactical nukes, and it stepped up from there.’ Welch was examining the cut-glass decanters in the little drinks cabinet. ‘We have generic whiskey, generic brandy, generic gin, but no ice, and no mixers. I guess we’ll have to rough it.’
‘Nothing for me.’
‘It helps sluice the radiation out of you,’ Welch said, and slopped an inch of amber whiskey into a tumbler.
‘I guess New York got hit,’ Stone said.
‘Plenty of places got hit. The Soviets threw everything they could from Cuba before the US nuked it down to bedrock. Short-range missiles took out most of Florida, New Orleans and Atlanta; sub-launched missiles hit Washington, DC , and most of the West Coast. And a fair number of long-range bombers got through a defensive line above the Arctic Circle, too. They hit Detroit and Chicago, they hit Boston, and two of them hit New York. One dropped its load on the Brooklyn Naval Yard, but the bomb didn’t go off. The second was shot up by a fighter plane, blew itself up over the Hudson, and took out most of downtown. The bomb it was carrying wasn’t big, twelve kilotons or so, but it was dirty, jacketed with iodine-125 and cobalt- 60. And that’s why we’re wearing dosimeters more than twenty years later.’
The limo overtook a column of army trucks. It sped past a gang of shaven-headed men in orange coveralls lengthening a trench alongside the Expressway under the watchful gaze of soldiers with assault rifles.
Stone said, ‘It looks like they’re still at
At the checkpoint’s steel and glass booth, Welch pushed the sheaf of travel order papers into a slot. The marine inside the booth checked the papers and returned them through the slot with two square white plastic badges - dosimeters. A light overhead turned from red to green, the turnstile unlocked with a heavy clunk, and Stone and Welch walked out into grey light, warm gritty air, and the smell of recent rain. Aid workers were climbing into a long line of yellow school buses. In the distance, the superstructures of troop ships and cargo ships rose above cranes and warehouses.
A black stretch Cadillac equipped with smoked bulletproof glass and anti-mine flooring drove them down the Long Island Expressway toward Manhattan. Welch handed one of the dosimeters to Stone. ‘We’ve done a lot of rebuilding, but we can’t do much about the radiation.’
‘What happened here?’
The file hadn’t given Stone much information about the Johnson sheaf’s pre-contact history.
‘They had themselves a Second World War in the middle of the century,’ Welch said. ‘The US, Britain, and Soviet Russia defeated Nazi Germany and Japan, a cold war developed between the free world and the Soviets. In 1962, the Soviets stationed missiles in Cuba, which was part of the Communist bloc. After a standoff, their premier, a fellow by the name of Khrushchev, agreed to withdraw the missiles, but a bunch of high-ranking military officers assassinated him and staged a coup. The Soviet Navy tried to break a shipping blockade around Cuba and the President, one of the Kennedys, responded by sinking several of their ships and threatening to invade. The Soviets took out Guantánamo Bay and Miami with tactical nukes, and it stepped up from there.’ Welch was examining the cut-glass decanters in the little drinks cabinet. ‘We have generic whiskey, generic brandy, generic gin, but no ice, and no mixers. I guess we’ll have to rough it.’
‘Nothing for me.’
‘It helps sluice the radiation out of you,’ Welch said, and slopped an inch of amber whiskey into a tumbler.
‘I guess New York got hit,’ Stone said.
‘Plenty of places got hit. The Soviets threw everything they could from Cuba before the US nuked it down to bedrock. Short-range missiles took out most of Florida, New Orleans and Atlanta; sub-launched missiles hit Washington, DC , and most of the West Coast. And a fair number of long-range bombers got through a defensive line above the Arctic Circle, too. They hit Detroit and Chicago, they hit Boston, and two of them hit New York. One dropped its load on the Brooklyn Naval Yard, but the bomb didn’t go off. The second was shot up by a fighter plane, blew itself up over the Hudson, and took out most of downtown. The bomb it was carrying wasn’t big, twelve kilotons or so, but it was dirty, jacketed with iodine-125 and cobalt- 60. And that’s why we’re wearing dosimeters more than twenty years later.’
The limo overtook a column of army trucks. It sped past a gang of shaven-headed men in orange coveralls lengthening a trench alongside the Expressway under the watchful gaze of soldiers with assault rifles.
Stone said, ‘It looks like they’re still at
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