forest fire through which, from the satellites,
the slag pits of the bombed cities were invisible except as high spots in the radiation contours. The Northwestwas in much the same shape, although the West Coast in general had taken far fewer missiles. Indeed, the sky all over the
world was black with smoke, for the forests of Europe and northern Asia were burning too. Out of the pall, more death fell,
gently, invisibly, inexorably.
All this, of course, came from the computer analysis. Though there were television cameras in the satellites, even on a clear
day you could hardly have told from visual sightings, from that height-nor from photographs, for that matter-even whether
or not there was intelligent life on Earth. The view over Africa, South America, Australia and the American Southwest was
better, but of no strategic or logistic interest, and never had been.
Of the television cameras on the Earth’s surface, most of the surviving ones were in areas where nothing seemed to have happened
at all, although in towns the streets were deserted, and the very few people glimpsed briefly on the screen looked haunted.
The views from near the bombed areas were fragmentary, travelling, scarred by rasters, aflicker with electronic snow – a procession
of unconnected images, like scenes from an early surrealist film, where one could not tell whether the director was trying
to portray a story or only a state of mind.
Here stood a single telephone pole, completely charred; here was a whole row of them, snapped off the ground level but still
linked in death by their wires. Here was a desert of collapsed masonry, in the midst of which stood a reinforced-concrete
smokestack, undamaged except that its surface was etched by heat and by the sand blasting of debris carried by a high wind.
Here buildings all leaned sharply in a single direction, as if struck like the chimney by some hurricane of terrific proportions;
here was what had been a group of manufacturing buildings, denuded of roofing and siding, nothing but twisted frames. Here
a row of wrecked automobiles, neatly parked, burned in unison; here a gas holder, ruptured and collapsed, had burned out hours
ago.
Here was a side of a reinforced concrete building, windowless, cracked and buckled slightly inward where a shock wave had
struck it. Once it had been painted grey or some darkcolour, but all the paint had blistered and scaled and blown away in a second, except where a man had been standing nearby,
there the paint remained, a shadow with no one to cast it.
That vaporized man had been one of the lucky. Here stood another who had been in a cooler circle; evidently he had looked
up at a fireball, for his eyes were only holes; he stood in a half crouch, holding his arms out from his sides like a penguin,
and instead of skin, his naked body was covered with a charred fell which was cracked in places, oozing blood and pus. Here
a filthy, tattered mob clambered along a road almost completely covered with rubble, howling with horror – though there was
no sound with this scene – led by a hairless woman pushing a flaming baby carriage. Here a man who seemed to have had his
back flayed by flying glass worked patiently with a bent snow shovel at the edge of an immense mound of broken brick; by the
shape of its margins, it might once have been a large house…
There was more.
Šatvje uttered a long, complex, growling sentence of hatred. It was entirely in Czech, but its content was nevertheless not
beyond, all conjecture. Buelg shrugged again and turned away from the TV screen.
‘Pretty fearful,’ he said. ‘But on the whole, not nearly as much destruction as we might have expected. It’s certainly gone
no
higher
than Rung thirty-four. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to fit any of the escalation frames at all well. Maybe it makes
some sort of military or strategic sense, but if it does, I’m at a loss to know what it is.
the slag pits of the bombed cities were invisible except as high spots in the radiation contours. The Northwestwas in much the same shape, although the West Coast in general had taken far fewer missiles. Indeed, the sky all over the
world was black with smoke, for the forests of Europe and northern Asia were burning too. Out of the pall, more death fell,
gently, invisibly, inexorably.
All this, of course, came from the computer analysis. Though there were television cameras in the satellites, even on a clear
day you could hardly have told from visual sightings, from that height-nor from photographs, for that matter-even whether
or not there was intelligent life on Earth. The view over Africa, South America, Australia and the American Southwest was
better, but of no strategic or logistic interest, and never had been.
Of the television cameras on the Earth’s surface, most of the surviving ones were in areas where nothing seemed to have happened
at all, although in towns the streets were deserted, and the very few people glimpsed briefly on the screen looked haunted.
The views from near the bombed areas were fragmentary, travelling, scarred by rasters, aflicker with electronic snow – a procession
of unconnected images, like scenes from an early surrealist film, where one could not tell whether the director was trying
to portray a story or only a state of mind.
Here stood a single telephone pole, completely charred; here was a whole row of them, snapped off the ground level but still
linked in death by their wires. Here was a desert of collapsed masonry, in the midst of which stood a reinforced-concrete
smokestack, undamaged except that its surface was etched by heat and by the sand blasting of debris carried by a high wind.
Here buildings all leaned sharply in a single direction, as if struck like the chimney by some hurricane of terrific proportions;
here was what had been a group of manufacturing buildings, denuded of roofing and siding, nothing but twisted frames. Here
a row of wrecked automobiles, neatly parked, burned in unison; here a gas holder, ruptured and collapsed, had burned out hours
ago.
Here was a side of a reinforced concrete building, windowless, cracked and buckled slightly inward where a shock wave had
struck it. Once it had been painted grey or some darkcolour, but all the paint had blistered and scaled and blown away in a second, except where a man had been standing nearby,
there the paint remained, a shadow with no one to cast it.
That vaporized man had been one of the lucky. Here stood another who had been in a cooler circle; evidently he had looked
up at a fireball, for his eyes were only holes; he stood in a half crouch, holding his arms out from his sides like a penguin,
and instead of skin, his naked body was covered with a charred fell which was cracked in places, oozing blood and pus. Here
a filthy, tattered mob clambered along a road almost completely covered with rubble, howling with horror – though there was
no sound with this scene – led by a hairless woman pushing a flaming baby carriage. Here a man who seemed to have had his
back flayed by flying glass worked patiently with a bent snow shovel at the edge of an immense mound of broken brick; by the
shape of its margins, it might once have been a large house…
There was more.
Šatvje uttered a long, complex, growling sentence of hatred. It was entirely in Czech, but its content was nevertheless not
beyond, all conjecture. Buelg shrugged again and turned away from the TV screen.
‘Pretty fearful,’ he said. ‘But on the whole, not nearly as much destruction as we might have expected. It’s certainly gone
no
higher
than Rung thirty-four. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to fit any of the escalation frames at all well. Maybe it makes
some sort of military or strategic sense, but if it does, I’m at a loss to know what it is.
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