They went through the railroad underpass and got caught in the coagulation of morning traffic between Main and Pennington. Nicole said, “I wish to hell this Dangerfield bastard had stayed home.”

“So do I. But we can’t do anything about it.”

“Do you think they’ll really go through with it? Or is it just part of some international bluff they’re trying to pull off?”

“I have no idea. You’re supposed to be the political expert—what do you think?”

“I think we’re in a son of a bitch of a mess,” she said. She stretched indolently on the seat and adjusted herself with her legs loosely apart. “I guess we asked for it. You can’t stand in the middle of the freeway and not expect to get hit by a truck.”

He fished out a cigarette. “We’ll just have to do the job and get out.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“They’ll have to get us out afterward. It would be too embarrassing for them if we were left behind and discovered and forced to talk.”

“I thought of that,” she said, “but let’s face it, if they want us to start pushing buttons it’s got to mean the big war and by the time it’s over with I can’t seriously believe there’ll be much left of Tucson but a big hot hole in the ground.”

“No. That’s what I thought at first but it doesn’t make sense that way. Figure it out. The targets have to be one of two kinds—Western or Communist. If the targets are in the Soviet bloc it could only be for one reason—Moscow wants the United States to start shooting first, so that Moscow has an excuse to ‘retaliate.’ But I don’t buy that because it’d be just too high a price to pay. We’ve got fifty-four warheads in this complex of silos and even if all of them landed on reasonably uninhabited areas the fallout would wipe out half the population of the Soviet Union. No, I think we eliminate that.”

“What about Europe? West Germany?”

“I can’t conceive of any reason to bomb Europe, can you? And the prevailing winds are westerly so you’d have the same problem—fallout over Russia. What’s left? The third-world countries? Israel? None of them’s big enough to justify using nuclear ICBMs.”

“You’ve just about ruled out everything.”

“It narrows down to home base. They’re going to have to shoot at targets in the United States. NORAD, maybe, the big SAC bases, the Pentagon, that kind of thing. It’ll leave the nuclear subs and a good deal of other firepower but it’ll damage this country’s military strength enough to discourage the United States from shooting at Russia, because the United States would lose. Besides, NORAD will see the missiles coming in, they’ll know where they were launched from—they’ll know they’re not Russian missiles. They’ll be confused; they won’t know who to hit back at. What can they do? Bombard Tucson with hydrogen warheads?”

“Why not?”

“Once these missiles are fired Tucson’s arsenal will be exhausted. Why bomb it then? No, all they can do is pick up the pieces and start an investigation to find out what happened down here. By that time we’ll all have to be out of the country—probably in Mexico on our way back to Russia. It’s either that or kill all of us and Dangerfield’s only one man, he can’t wipe out three hundred of us.”

“Once they get us all out of the country and in one group they can kill us easily enough.”

“But once we’re that far they’d have no reason to. As soon as we’re beyond the reach of the American authorities we’re no longer a threat to Moscow.”

“You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? But I still don’t see it the way you do. I still feel like a punchcard that’s been programmed to do a job without knowing why. We’re supposed to think it’s necessary just because a stranger comes in and says it’s necessary.”

“It’s not a hoax. I checked with Moscow—Dangerfield’s legitimate.”

“I never thought he wasn’t. That’s not the point.”

They had crawled two blocks in the traffic and a truck in front of them was gnashing its gears; they got stuck at the light.

In a different tone Nicole said, “I’m frightened out of my wits.” She turned and reached across the seat and put her hand on his thigh. “Ramsey?”

“Stop it. Christ you’ve got a one-track mind.”

The light changed and he put the car in gear and whipped it brutally out into the left-hand lane, nearly clipping the tailgate of the stalled truck. The car behind him screeched and he heard the angry yelp of its horn. When he was clear of the traffic snarl he floored the accelerator and took the Pennington Avenue turn too fast, clipping the curb and rocking the car violently on its springs. Nicole was laughing unpleasantly and when he pulled into the courthouse parking area he slapped her viciously across the face.

She stopped laughing but her mouth was still twisted with mockery; it turned itself inward now; she was bitter with herself. “Of all the impotent bastards in the world I had to pick you to fall for.”

“One of these days I’ll ream you out,” he said in a weary mutter. “You God damned supercilious bitch.”

Her face didn’t change but after a while she said, “Look at us. We’re both insane, you know we are. We’re utterly mad.”

“Aagh,” he said, disbelieving it, dismissing it.

“We are. You can deny it to me but you can’t deny it to yourself, can you? We’ve been living lies for twenty years, and they’ve eaten us away like acid. How can we be expected to tell the difference between lies and truth after all that? We’re examples of the legal definition of insanity: we simply do not know right from wrong.”

“Get a grip on yourself. You can’t afford to fall apart now. Do you know what Dangerfield would do if he heard you talking like this?”

“I’m not sure I really care. We’ve been falling apart for twenty years. But up to now we could hold ourselves together with the hope that they’d never decide to activate us. Now they’ve removed that and we haven’t got a damn thing left.”

“You’re talking treason,” he said, not as if it mattered.

“Of course. Whatever we do it’s treason—treason to one side or the other.”

“Don’t worry about sides for Christ’s sake. Worry about your own skin.”

“That’s all you’ve ever worried about, isn’t it?”

He said, “Don’t tell me you’re any different.”

“I suppose I’m not. I won’t martyr myself to save the world. But I don’t want to die.”

“Then just do what they tell us to do.” He got out of the car and slammed the door.

She caught up with him halfway to the courthouse. “We are, you know,” she said. “We’re both quite mad.”

Chapter Thirteen

She was sitting at the desk absently sorting the letters that had come in the morning’s delivery. A few of them required the Senator’s personal attention and those she put in his In box. The rest were letters from citizens, many of them from states other than Arizona, most of them concerning Phaeton Three. She stacked them in pro and con piles; someone in the Washington office would be doing the same thing with the mail there.

It didn’t require her concentrated attention; her thoughts were adrift, stirring with drowsy eroticism. Even when she was not with him now she was thinking of him. He had become all too important to her and it was no good; she didn’t belong to herself. For his sake she had to break it off. For the past hour she had tried to put up reasons she could give him for ending it but her mind kept twisting them and she kept finding reasons why she should not break it off.

When other men had approached her she had sized them up coolly and only dated them when she felt sure they had nothing permanent in mind; the others she had chilled quickly and effectively. But now she didn’t know what to do.

She didn’t want to work, to speak with anyone else. She didn’t want to do anything except be with him, to watch him wash and shave and dress and eat—and to sleep with him. She had caught herself thinking: He is my world and I want to be his. Her breasts ached; she felt light-headed; she looked at the clock and then she closed her eyes and said very softly and without great conviction, “No.”