The networks were carrying the new war as breaking news. As Doug watched and listened, he felt the presence of others come into his cubicle. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Teresa and William Jurgens had joined them. “Hi, Will, Teresa, join the crowd. Last one here gets to go back and fetch the coffee.”
Teresa grimaced, but it was a friendly gesture. “Why do women always wind up bringing the coffee?” she asked rhetorically, but was back in a couple of minutes, juggling three cups and plastic spoons with packets of creamer and sweetener.
“Black,” Doug said shortly when she asked him how he took it. He groped for the cup, trying not to take his eyes from the screen, and almost dumped it all in his lap. It was showing a map of the Middle East and beyond, with starbursts where Israel jets had purportedly bombed. There were too many of them to count immediately, but his eyes tracked toward Iran and Pakistan first, countries known to possess nuclear weapons.
“They’re attacking Pakistan, too! Why them?” Gary asked, bewildered because she thought it wasn’t an Arab country.
“They have nukes—and while they may not be Arabs, they are Muslims. Same for Iran, for that matter; they’re Persians,” Doug informed him. “The Jews are just making damn sure they don’t get an A-Bomb lobbed at them. But I don’t understand why they started a war now.”
“Maybe they’re afraid the Muslims are blaming them for the Harcourt virus. It’s killing lots of Arabs, and other Muslims besides, the dark skinned ones.”
“Could be,” Doug admitted, but he had seen nothing in the news or his briefings to support that idea.
“They’ll play hell getting us to help them this time,” Teresa remarked.
“Yeah. That’s what’s puzzling. But maybe they think this is an opportune time to get rid of the nukes in the Middle East. Other than their own, of course.”
The others laughed, but there was no humor in the sound; it was simply a typical human response, where laughter sometimes serves when nothing else will do. It was common knowledge that Israel possessed nuclear weapons and had for many years.
There was little factual information being broadcast, other than Israel had launched air strikes on several countries, and that they were continuing. When the network began relaying the usual strident posturing by political leaders, with Pakistan, Iran and the other nations claiming they were attacked without warning and Israel stating that they had been provoked beyond all reason, Doug turned it off. It still didn’t make much sense to him, but rather than discuss the subject without access to more facts, he shooed the others out of his cubicle and got back to work. Noon rounds were coming up.
“Are you sure that woman we put in charge of CDC knows what she’s doing?” President Marshall asked across the conference table.
“Administratively, I can’t say, Mr. President, but that really doesn’t matter too much right now. I can tell you she has top notch credentials as an infection control specialist, which is what the CDC is about, after all. If she says we’ve got a new virus loose, I think we can believe her.” Lurline Tedd was beginning to wonder if the rest of her life was going to be spent in a state of crisis. She didn’t mind political turmoil nor the bone grinding travel schedule of election years, but death dealing pandemics were something new to her—and now there appeared to be a second one on top of the Harcourt virus.
“Okay, assume she’s right. Who did it this time?”
“Israel,” General Newman said flatly. “Not much doubt about it. According to the Foster woman, it’s targeting Arabs and Middle Easterners only. Who else would do that?”
He didn’t seem particularly concerned, which made Edgar Tomlin uneasy. “Are we going to help them?”
“Of course we are,” General Newman said. He flicked an imaginary piece of lint from the sleeve of his uniform and stared at Tomlin until he looked away. “You don’t want the Russians or Chinese grabbing all the oil fields, do you?”
“Is it really going to be that bad?” Lurline asked.
“According to Amelia Foster, it is. Her scientists say it’s targeting a gene that’s specific to damn near every person in the Middle East except Jews. It’s even getting their Arab citizens. Another problem solved.”
“What—oh.” Lurline suddenly realized what the general was thinking of.
“Right,” President Marshall said. “No more Arabs in our country either, if it spreads to here. Maybe we can use their Mosques for barracks.” He chuckled to himself.
“Sir, all Muslims aren’t Arabs. In fact, they aren’t even a majority,” Lurline informed him, while she felt sick inside at the way the president and General Newman were reacting.
“What? What do you mean?”
Lurline looked around and saw that the others were leaving it up to her to correct the president’s erroneous assumptions. She knew that in this case it was a common mistake, not just something the president didn’t know. A majority of the population of the United States was woefully ignorant of geopolitics, particularly where it involved religion. Most citizens equated Arabs and Islam in their minds—or rather Arabs and Muslims. Most didn’t even know that Muslims were simply practitioners of the Islamic religion and numbered at least a billion. “Arabs are just a small fraction of the Muslims in the world, sir. It doesn’t even include Iran and Pakistan, though it appears that they’re susceptible, too.
Actually, only about fifteen per cent of Muslims are Arabs. Indonesia is mostly a Muslim nation, for instance, but has few Arabs. In fact…”
The president waved a hand, indicating that he wasn’t in the mood for a lecture. “Never mind.” He turned his attention to General Newman again. “General, just tell me what this means for us. Who are we going to have to fight, if anyone?”
“The Jews are going to have to handle this one themselves, sir. Remember, a quarter of the army was black before this crisis started and they’re either dead or likely to be. Or they’ve deserted to be with family members who are ill. As it is, we’re barely keeping order here at home and what troops we can spare for overseas are going to be busy securing nuclear power plants left untended and rescuing our expatriates. What we can do is funnel some munitions to Israel under the guise of using their airfields to refuel the planes we’re sending for our distressed citizens. However, I’ll continue with our contingency planning for taking over the oil fields in Iraq and Nigeria, and maybe a few other countries that are going to become depopulated fairly quickly.” The general still didn’t seem concerned about the war Israel had initiated.
“And you don’t think anyone else will jump in?”
“Well, the Europeans certainly aren’t going to challenge us. By the time they get around to agreeing on anything, we’ll have the army back up to levels high enough to discourage them or anyone else, except maybe India and China—and they haven’t the naval power to project their strength like we do. If China attacks anyone it will be Taiwan, and why should we care about them now? There’s a whole new continent rapidly becoming depopulated, and enough oil there for the taking; enough to last for decades.”
“You’re sure they won’t fight us?” President Marshall was liking this more and more. No American casualties, oil fields open for easy occupation, a whole empty continent to exploit. And perhaps best of all, no more racial problems. At least not from blacks.
“Mr. President, China and India are in almost the same shape as us—except that most of their citizens will recover, while most of our blacks will die. In the meantime, their economies are collapsing faster than a popped balloon and their manpower is tied up treating the enormous number of people sick with the virus.”
“But our economy is going downhill, too,” Lurline interjected. “We can’t lose over ten percent of our population and expect it to stay healthy.”
“All the better,” Tomlin said, suddenly recognizing the benefits of the rapid inflation of the dollar. “We can pay off our debts with inflated dollars, where we have to pay at all. Once we get past the hard part, this virus will be thought of as a Godsend for us, not a catastrophe.”
Lurline was as pragmatic and exacting in thought as a research scientist but this was going too far. “You both sound like you’re
“Lurline, there’s not a damn thing we can do for them. Isn’t that what Amelia… what’s her name, Foster, told us yesterday? And if we can’t, why not take advantage of the situation? It’s not like we started the damn virus.”
“Five of our citizens did.”
“But we didn’t order it done,” President Marshall said. “Look, I’ll have our U.N. Ambassador make a major
