“Which is?” Foster asked.
“It would be the victor in that it would be less damaged than its enemy,” Groteschele said. “Every war, including thermonuclear war, must have a victor and a vanquished. Are you suggesting, Foster, that we should be the vanquished? Do you value American culture less than the Soviet culture?”
Betty’s hand had tightened on Black’s arm.
“Marvelous,” Foster said and his grin was now so deep it was almost ferocious. “Simply marvelous. So neat, so logical, so well ordered.”
He paused and looked at Groteschele. Groteschele did not nod for he knew this was the opening of an attack. He smiled at Foster and for the first time it was a smile of condescension.
“Groteschele, it should persuade a monkey, a high-school kid, maybe an Air Force general, maybe a Senator, but not many others,” Foster said savagely. “It indicates only that you are a prisoner.”
“Of what?” Groteschele said.
“Of the past, of stale ideas, of cliches,” Foster said. He paused and looked around the group. “What is called for,” he said, “is a complete and revolutionary breakthrough in our thinking. We are like men enclosed in a paper sack of old ideas and assumptions. The sack surrounding us appears to be complete and seamless, when in reality all we have to do is to break out of it to stand in the freedom of entirely new thoughts and approaches. What the times call for is a new Karl Marx—”
“A new Marx, Foster,” Groteschele broke in, “an arresting thought What would the new manifesto proclaim?”
“It would proclaim peace,” Foster said without hesitation. “Not because peace is nice or I like. my fellow humans or it is Christian or Gandhi hated violence or the sick-sick-sick kind of liberal chants it. Peace because it is the only way we can live. Get with it, Grotesehele. Probability and the cobalt bomb made you oldfashioned ten years ago. Be realistic.”
Foster’s magazine had a circulation of only thirty thousand. The affluent and influential people he spoke before now were-one would think-more the Henry Luce type. Yet they were visibly impressed.
“Moving, very moving,” Groteschele said. “But somewhat dangling, a bit suspended, no indication of how we get from war to peace. No one wants war, Foster.’ But the possibility of war just happens to be a reality. I want us to face realities.”
“All right, Groteschele, look at it from the view-
point of the anthropologist,” Foster said. “What is war’s function?”
“The resolution of conflict,” Groteschele snapped.
“In primitive societies how do men resolve their conflicts?” Foster asked.
“By individual combat,” Groteschele said. He had pulled his shoulders back and was somewhat more tense. This type of dialogue where his opponent turned Socrates made him restless.
“And when they become organized into tribes?” Foster said.
“Then the fighting becomes collective,” Groteschele said.
“And when they become nation-states?”
“It is still violence, damn it, Foster,” Groteschele said. “What is irresponsible is to suggest that as groups become bigger and the power of weapons more immense that anything is changed.”
Foster cut in rudely. “Are you suggesting that a spear thrown and a nuclear bomb dropped are comparable? Just a difference in degree? Nonsenset Is it not possible, Groteschele, that war itself has become obsolete? Your superbly reasoned Counter-Escalation indicates that in any possible war the overwhelming majority of citizens are going to be killed. Does this suggest to you still that war is a resolution of conflicts?”
“Foster, you are hopelessly sentimental,” Groteschele said. “The situation is no different than it was a thousand years ago. There were primitive wars in which populations were totally destroyed. The point is, who is going to be the victor and who the victim? It is still a question of the survival of a culture.”
Foster rocked on his heels.
“A culture,” he said slowly, his voice full of wonder. “A culture with most of its people dead, the rotting smell of death in the air for years, its vegetation burned off, the germ plasm of survivors contaminated. You say I am the utopian and you are the realist. Do you really think that this world you describe is a culture?”
Groteschele was familiar’ with every gambit. His reply was reasonable, quietly uttered, and difficult to refute. He drew it out to great length. The spectators listened respectfully.
It was Betty who broke the spell. Before Black realized it, she had moved from his side, drunk, yet at the same time rigidly controlled.
“It is hopeless,” she said, staring at the two men. “You are both romantics caught up in your fantasy world of logic and reason and that is why it is so damned hopeless. Because man himself has become obsolete. He is like the dodo and the dinosaur but for the opposite reason. His damned brain has gotten us into this mess because of its sophistication and we cannot get out of it because of his pride. Man has calculated himself into so specialized a braininess that he has gone beyond reality. And he cannot tap the truth of his viscera because that, for a specialist, is the ultimate sin.”
Black had not heard her speak with such overcontrol for years. Her words fell like a pall on the group. Even Groteschele was at a loss for the right thing to say. He went through a ritual of taking a Philippine cigar from a small leather cigar case in his pocket. Since the Bay of Pigs episode he had stopped smoking Cuban cigars.
“You think I’ve overdone it?” As Betty spoke a new quality seemed to come over her. Black looked at her with increasing concern. An inner intensity was flow big from her, almost visibly. It acted like a powerful magnet on everyone present, drawing their eyes to her, holding their rapt attention.
“The world,” Betty continued, her voice now edged with despair, “is no longer man’s theater. Man has been made into a helpless spectator. The two evil forces he has created-science and the state-have combined into one monstrous body. We’re at the mercy of our monster and the Russians are at the mercy of theirs. They toy with us as the Olympian gods toyed with the Greeks. And like the gods of Greek tragedy, they have a tragic flaw. They know only how to destroy, not how to save. That’s what we’re now watching in our cold war: a Greek tragedy in modern form with our godlike monsters playing out the last act of their cataclysmic tragedy.”
She stopped and looked at Black quickly, as if seeking help. But before he could speak or move toward her she was speaking again.
“We all know that the big explosion is going to happen. Your concern, the two of you, is to make sure that you die intellectually correct. But my problem is more primitive. I only want to make sure that when it comes and my boys are dying that I am there to ease their last pain with morphine.”
She finished in a flat voice entirely without self-pity. Her last statement seemed to give Groteschele a new assurance, a place to get back into the conversation and guide it into safe channels. His words came on gently and kindly.
“Betty,” he said, “those of us who know anything about the situation feel almost exactly the same things that you have expressed. But what should we do? All go out and buy morphine? You see, Betty, I’m trying to save your two boys, not narcotize their death. That’s
the whole point of everything I’ve written. In spite of all our efforts, thermonuclear war may come. We must face that possibility rather than, ostrichlike, dose our minds to it. And I’m trying to see that if war comes, men, our kind of men, have the maximum possible chance of surviving it.”
Betty looked composed now but her fingers were digging into Black’s arm.
“General Black, what do you think?” asked Senator Hartmann.
Black looked up slowly from Betty. He fixed his eyes on Foster and thought for a minute.
“I think that Betty is mostly correct,” he said slowly. “Once one knows where he wants to go he can summon a magnificent array of logic and fact to support his argument. I have the awful feeling that. we are reconciled, both we and the Soviets, to mutual destruction. We are now rallying our different logics to support our identical conclusions. We will probably both get the results that we want. In that case, morphine is more. important than a bomb shelter.” He stopped and for a moment he felt an excitement. It was wild and irrational: he understood the Dream. He was in a game in which the things that held him together were being stripped away. Then, quite suddenly, be could go no further.
Betty’s comments had just about done it for the party. Everyone drank and chatted politely for a few minutes. Then there was the Intricate ballet of social disengagement. Black knew that their host would not forget his heretical position. The Senator was a methodical man.
