The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) by Kim Stanley Robinson Page B

off the coast, watching us all the time and bombing every attempt we make to rebuild! That’s what good it would do. That coward Eliot put America in a hole for good. We’re the bottom of the world now, Tom Barnard, we’re bears in the pit.”
    “Raarrrr,” Steve growled, and took another drink. I took the next one.
    “We were goners as soon as the bombs went off,” Tom said. “Makes no difference what happened to the rest of the world. If Eliot had decided to push the button, that just would’ve killed more people and wrecked more countries. It wouldn’t have done a thing for us. Besides, it wasn’t the Russians or the Chinese that planted the bombs—”
    “You don’t think,” Doc said.
    “You know it wasn’t! It was the God damned South Africans.”
    “The French!” George cried. “It was the French!”
    “It was the Vietnamese,” Leonard said.
    “No it wasn’t,” Tom replied. “That poor country didn’t even own a firecracker when we were done with it. And Eliot probably wasn’t the man who decided not to retaliate, either. He probably died in the first moments of the day, like everyone else. It was some general in a plane who made the decision, you can bet your wooden teeth. And quite a surprise it must have been, too, even to him. Especially to him. Makes me wonder who he was.”
    Doc said, “Whoever it was, he was a coward and a traitor.”
    “He was a decent human being,” said Tom. “If we had struck back at Russia and China, we’d be criminals and murderers. Anyway if we had done that the Russians would’ve sent their whole stockpile over here to answer ours, and then there wouldn’t be a single damn ant left alive on North America today.”
    “Ants would still be alive,” George said. Steve and I bent our heads to the table, giggling and pushing our fingers in each others’ sides—“pushing the button,” as the old men said. Tom was giving us a mean look, so we straightened up and drank some more to calm ourselves.
    “—over five thousand nuclear blasts and survived,” Doc was saying. Every meet the number went up. “We could have taken a few more. Our enemies deserved a few of them too, that’s all I’m saying.” Even though they had this argument every time they joined the other antiques, almost, Doc was still getting angry at Tom. Bitterly he cried, “If Eliot had pushed the button we’d all be in the same boat, and then we’d have a chance to rebuild. They won’t let us rebuild, God damn it!”
    “We are rebuilding, Ernest,” Tom said jovially, trying to put the fun back in their argument. He waved at the surrounding scene.
    “Get serious,” Doc said. “I mean back to the way we were.”
    “I wouldn’t want that,” said Tom. “They’d likely blow us up again.”
    Leonard, however, was only listening to Doc: “We’d be in a race with the Communists to rebuild, and you know who would win that one. We would!”
    “Yeah!” said George. “Or maybe the French.…”
    Barnard just shook his head and grabbed the jar from Steve, who gave him a struggle for it. “As a doctor you should never wish such destruction on others, Ernest.”
    “As a doctor I know best what they did to us, and where they’re keeping us,” Doc replied fiercely. “We’re bears in the pit.”
    “Let’s get out of here,” Steve said to me. “They’re going to start deciding whether we belong to the Russians or the Chinese.”
    “Or the French,” I said, and we slithered off the bench. I took a last gulp of the old man’s liquor and he whacked me. “Out of here, you ungrateful wretches,” he cried. “Not willing to listen to history without poking fun.”
    “We’ll read the books,” Steve said. “They don’t get drunk.”
    “Listen to him,” said Tom, as his cronies laughed. “I taught him to read, and he calls me a drunk.”
    “No wonder they’re so mixed up, with you teaching them to read,” Leonard said. “You sure you got the books turned right way