The War in 2020

Unprovoked, she suddenly thought of Yuri. Her husband. And she laughed at her utter inability to ever really enjoy anything without spoiling it for herself. The American pushed a second finger into her, and she canted a leg to accept him. She groaned, keying up to him now.

Well, she hoped Yuri was all right, anyway. With his beloved soldiers. They could keep him. She did not want to see him hurt. She simply did not want to see him at all.

She tasted the American, feeling the roughness of his beard stubble, letting her body react on its own. But she could not get her husband out of her mind. She began to grow angry, furious, flailing her hips against the American. Why did it all have to be such a mess?

You don't understand, she cried out in her native language, unsure now whether she was addressing the husband who had deserted her or this stranger who was taking her body away. You don't understand, you just don't understand….

PART III The Trial

14

November 2020

Night 2—3

Down the hill from the suburban home where George Taylor passed his childhood lay an orchard. Lost between some dead farmer's dreams and a developer's vision, the untended trees had gone wild. When you walked down from the careful plots of television-neighborhood houses, through the no-man's-land of cleared fields yet unbuilt, the paved road turned to gravel, then to red dirt. The last sewerage connection guarded the edge of civilization like an undersized cement and steel pillbox. Birds rose at your footsteps, and, in the summer, dull snakes sunned themselves in the dust. The tangled orchard encompassed a ravine that was perfect for rock fights (no rocks above a certain generally acknowledged size, and no aiming above the waist).

This little wilderness was unkempt, as are the very young and the very old. The trees were very old, and the denimed warriors who ran howling between them were very young. George Taylor was the youngest of the tribe, and one of the wildest, driven by his fear that his fears might be discovered by his older companions. Looking back with the genius of an adult, he could only shake his head at the terrified recklessness he had tried to pass off as a bravery he had never, ever felt.

When George Taylor was very young, the oldest member of the band with whom he explored the world was a strong, loud boy named Charlie Winters. One of Taylor's first clear memories was of being together with other males drafted by Charlie for a special expedition down to the orchard. Armed with sticks, the file of boys passed out of the brightness of the morning into the golden-green twilight of the grove. Charlie went first, searching through the brambles and tramped paths for the way he had gone the afternoon before. Amid the gnarled branches with their spotted, unworthy fruit, Charlie had discovered a perfect apple. But there were problems: the treasure dangled from a forbiddingly high branch and, still worse, no climber could retrieve it, since it grew very close to the gray pulp of a wasps' nest.

Each of the boys came from homes where select apples lay disregarded in decorative baskets. Candy was by far the preferred sustenance of the tribe. But the apple in the orchard was a jewel, not least because Charlie claimed it to be such. The chief had spoken, and the wild fruit took on something of the mystery of lost worlds, dangling in the wild grove where there was just enough sense of danger to thrill a boy's heart.

Charlie had devised a plan. At his command, they would all throw rocks at once, knocking the apple off the branch. It was a good combat plan, brutal and direct, save for a single hitch: one boy would need to position himself immediately beneath the branch, in order to catch the fruit and make off with it before the surprised wasps could strike.

The leader looked around for volunteers.

Not one of the bold band stepped forward.

'Come on,' Charlie said. 'It'll be easy. We can do it.'

All eyes rose to the high branch and its treasure. The wasps' nest swelled with a terrible splendor, and the lazy local activity of its guardians began to seem far more menacing than any of the boys had previously realized.

'Georgie,' Charlie said. 'You're the smallest. The wasps'll have more trouble spotting you. And you can run fast.'

The last claim was a lie. He always came in last in the sudden races with the older, longer-legged boys.

Taylor did not answer. He simply looked up at the hideous sack of the wasps' nest. Afraid.

'Ain't afraid, are you?' Charlie demanded.

'No,' Taylor replied. He wanted to run away. To go home and immerse himself in some other game. But he feared being called a baby. Or a puss.

'Well, prove it. I think you're chicken.'

'Yeah,' a third voice joined in, 'Georgie Taylor's a chicken.' The attack came from a gray, indefinite boy whose name Taylor would forget over the years.

'I'm not chicken,' Taylor said. 'You're more chicken than I am.' And he forged his way down through the briars and thirsty brush.

He positioned himself as directly below the apple as he could, staring up to keep his bearings. It was very hard. The sun dazzled down through the leaves, blackening the boughs and making him faintly dizzy.

'You ready?' Charlie called.

'I guess so,' Taylor said. But he was not ready. He would never be ready. He was indescribably afraid.

'Get ready,' Charlie commanded. 'Everybody, on three.'

The boys clutched their rocks. Taylor shifted nervously, trying to see the apple clearly up in the tangle of brilliance and blackness.

'One… two… three.'

Everything happened with unmanageable speed. Shouts, and the whistle of projectiles. A blurred disturbance in the world above his head. Cries of alarm as far too much came falling: a spent stone clipped his shoulder and the apple fell just beyond his grasp. Beside it, the cardboard waste of the wasps' nest landed with a thud.

He reached for the apple. But it was no good. The wasps were already at him. He ran. The world exploded with disorder. He swung his arms, howling at the living fires on his skin. A wasp flew at his mouth.

Everyone else was gone. He ran through the wilderness alone, scrambling through a world of relentless terror that would not stop hurting him. He raced through thorns and sumac, batting his paws at the wasps, at the air. Crying, screaming, he clawed his way up the dirt bank of the ravine and burst from the poisonous gloom, imagining that the wasps would have to quit now that he had escaped their domain and regained the freedom of the clear blue day.

But the remarkable pains would not stop. The creatures droned, plunged, pelted him. Far ahead, nearly back to the world of paved streets and perfect houses, he saw his comrades in full retreat.

Charlie slowed briefly to yell, 'Come on, Georgie.'

The older boy was laughing.

Seated in the cockpit of his war machine, leading his grown-up warriors into battle, Taylor found himself wondering to what extent he was still the boy standing under a wasps' nest, while other, distant figures threw the stones.

* * *

Things had already begun to go wrong. The United States Air Force had been scheduled to fly a strategic jamming mission along the old prerebellion Soviet-Iranian border, wiping out enemy communications over tens of thousands of square kilometers. But the ultrasophisticated, savagely expensive WHITE LIGHT aircraft remained