'What do you mean? Out here? It is beautiful. You've taught me much with these morning rides, my friends,' the Russian answered, choosing his words carefully. 'The sky and the air, and the beautiful fields of grass and wheat. I have never appreciated how beautiful the world can be. I suppose that's because I grew up in Moscow.' Which had been a hideously filthy city, but they didn't know that.
'Yeah, well, it's not all this way.'
'I know that, John. In Russia-well, the State didn't care as you Americans do. They nearly killed all life in the Caspian Sea-where caviar comes from-from chemical poisoning. And there is a place just east of the Urals where our original atomic-bomb research created a wasteland. I haven't seen it, but I have heard of it. The highway signs there tell you to drive very fast to be through the zone of dangerous radiation as quickly as possible.'
'Yeah, well, if we're not careful, we might just kill the whole planet,' Maclean observed next.
'That would be a crime, like the Hitlerites,' Popov said next. 'It is nekulturny, the work of uncivilized barbarians. In my room, the tapes and the magazines make this clear.'
'What do you think of killing people, Dmitriy?' Killgore asked then.
'That depends on who they are. There are many people who deserve to die for one reason or another. But Western culture has this strange notion that taking life is almost always wrong-you Americans cannot even kill your criminals, murderers and such, without jumping through hoops, as you say here. I find that very curious.'
'What about crimes against Nature?' Killgore said, staring off into the distance.
'I do not understand.'
'Well, things that hurt the whole planet, killing off whole living species, polluting the land and the sea. What about that?'
'Kirk, that is also a barbaric act, and it should be punished severely. But how do you identify the criminals? Is it the industrialist who gives the order and makes the profit from it? Or is it the worker who takes his wages and does what he is told?'
'What did they say at Nuremberg?' Killgore said next.
'The war-crimes trial, you mean? It was decided that following orders is not a defense.' Not a concept he'd been taught to consider in the KGB Academy, where he'd learned that the State Was Always Right.
'Right,' the epidemiologist agreed. 'But you know. nobody ever went after Harry Truman for bombing Hiroshima.'
Because he won, you fool, Popov didn't reply. 'Do you ask if this was a crime? No, it was not, because he ended a greater evil, and the sacrifice of those people was necessary to restore the peace.'
'What about saving the planet?'
'I do not understand.'
'If the planet was dying, what would one have to do-what would be right to do, to save it?'
This discussion had all the ideological and philosophical purity of a classroom discussion of the Marxist dialectic at Moscow State University-and about as much relevance to the real world. Kill the whole planet? That was not possible. A full-blown nuclear war, yes, maybe that could have such an effect, but that was no longer possible. The world had changed, and America was the nation that had made it happen. Didn't these two druids see the wonder of that? More than once, the world had been close to loosing nuclear weapons, but today that was a thing of the past.
'I have never considered that question, my friends.'
'We have,' Maclean responded. 'Dmitriy, there are people and forces at work today that could easily kill off everything here. Somebody has to stop that from happening, but how do you do it?'
'You do not mean simply political action, do you?' the former KGB spook observed.
'No, it's too late for that, and not enough people would listen anyway.' Killgore turned his horse to the right and the others followed. 'I'm afraid you have to take more drastic measures.'
'What's that? Kill the whole world population?' Dmitriy Arkadeyevich asked, with hidden humor. But the reply to the rhetorical question was the same look in two sets of eyes. The look didn't make his blood go cold, but it did get his brain moving off in a new and unexpected direction. These were fascisti. Worse than that, fascisti with an ethos in which they believed. But were they willing to take action on their beliefs? Could anyone take action like that? Even the worst of the Stalinists-no, they'd never been madmen, just political romantics.
Just then an aircraft's noise disturbed the morning. It was one of Horizon's fleet of G's, lifting off from the complex's runway, climbing up and turning right, looping around to the east-for New York, probably, to bring more of the 'project' people in? Probably. The complex was about 80 percent full now, Popov reflected. The rate of arrivals had slowed, but people were still coming, most by private car. The cafeteria was almost full at lunch and dinnertime, and the lights burned late in the laboratory and other work buildings. But what were those people doing?
Horizon Corporation, Popov reminded himself, was a biotech company, specializing in medicines and medical treatments, Killgore was a physician, and Maclean an engineer specializing in environmental matters. Both were druids, both nature-worshipers, the new kind of paganism spawned in the West. John Brightling seemed to be one as well, judging by that conversation they'd had in New York. That, then, was the ethos of these people and their company. Dmitriy thought about the printed matter in his room. Humans were a parasitic species doing more harm than good to the earth, and these two had just talked about sentencing the harmful people to death-then made it clear that they thought of everyone as harmful. What were they going to do, kill everyone? What rubbish. The door leading to the answer had opened further. His brain was moving far more quickly than Buttermilk was, but still not fast enough.
They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then a shadow crossed the ground, and Popov looked up.
'What is that?'
'Red-tail hawk,' Maclean answered, after a look. 'Cruising for some breakfast.'
As they watched, the raptor climbed to five hundred feet or so, then spread his wings to ride the thermal air currents, his head down, examining the surface of the land for an unwary rodent through his impossibly sharp eyes. By unspoken consent the three men stopped their horses to watch. It took several minutes and then it was both beautiful and terrible to behold. The hawk folded its wings back and dropped rapidly, then flapped to accelerate like a feathered bullet, then spread its wings wide, nosing up, its yellow talons leading the descent now
'Yes!' Maclean hooted.
Like a child stomping on an anthill, the hawk used its talons to kill its prey, twisting and crushing, then, holding the limp tubular body in them, flapped laboriously into the sky, heading off to the north to its nest or home, or whatever you called it, Popov thought. The prairie dog it killed had enjoyed no chance, Dmitriy thought, but nature was like that, as were people. No soldier willingly gave his foe a fair chance on any battlefield. It was neither safe nor intelligent to do so. You struck with total fury and as little warning as possible, the better to take his life quickly and easily-and safely-and if he lacked the wit to protect himself properly, well, that was his problem, not yours. In the case of the hawk, it had swooped down from above and down-sun, not even its shadow warning the prairie dog sitting at the entrance to its home, and killed without pity. The hawk had to eat, he supposed. Perhaps it had young to feed, or maybe it was just hunting for its own needs. In either case, the prairie dog hung limp in its claws, like an empty brown sock, soon to be ripped apart and eaten by its killer.
'Damn, I love watching that,' Maclean said.
'It is cruel, but beautiful,' Popov said.
'Mother Nature is like that, pal. Cruel but beautiful.' Killgore watched the hawk vanish in the distance. 'That was something to see.'
'I have to capture one and train it,' Maclean announced. 'Train it to kill off my fist.'
'Are the prairie dogs endangered?'
'No, no way,' Killgore answered. 'Predators can control their numbers, but never entirely eliminate them. Nature maintains a balance.'
'How do men fit into that balance?' Popov asked.
'They don't,' Kirk Maclean answered. 'People just screw it up, 'cuz they're too dumb to see what works and what doesn't. And they don't care about the harm they do. That's the problem.'
'And what is the solution?' Dmitriy asked. Killgore turned to look him right in the eyes.
'Why, we are.'
'Ed, the cover name must be one he's used for a long time,' Clark argued. 'The IRA guys hadn't seen him in years, but that's the name they knew him by.'
