“There’s got to be a solution.”
“That’s what Perry’s been telling his people for the past week and a half, and we still cleaned his clock. Perry has tried everything.”
“Yeah.”
“If there was a solution, Doner would have told it to Perry by now.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know it.”
“Oh, he knows it. He knows everything.”
Zeus pulled up the statistics panel, checking to see the average length of hostility — the amount of time Blue usually hung in before the game was lost by the computer. It was only three months.
China would defeat America in an Asian war in three months.
If it were World War II, America would be out of the war by March 1942. No reinforcements for the Soviets, no invasion of Africa, Italy, and then Normandy. No atom bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki — Hitler would have gotten the bomb and used it on London after taking Moscow and confining the tattered remains of the Russian army to eastern Siberia.
Maybe he wouldn’t bother using the bomb; he could just starve them out, assuming the U.S. abided by whatever terms the peace treaty with Japan provided. And if the U.S. didn’t, then he’d use it on New York and Washington, D.C., instead. Before turning it on the Japanese.
Correlating simulations to real life was a dangerous and fruitless exercise; the simulations were set up to test different theories and situations. Even if they were supposedly neutral, there was no way to accurately account for all of the variables in real life. Once the shooting started and the fog of war descended, even the best plans usually went out the window.
Still, if real life was even remotely this hopeless, America ought to sue for peace right now.
What would he do if this were real?
Try to get Red to attack the Russians.
“You coming to lunch?” said Rosen.
“Huh?”
“I just asked you twice:
“What we need is a proxy,” said Murphy. He jumped up and walked over to the table. “Someone weak at the beginning of the simulation whom we can build up secretly.”
“Then let Red use as a punching bag?”
“Something like that.”
“Let’s eat.”
“You go. I have to look at the rules.”
“Hell, you’re going to read the rules? I thought you wanted to win.”
9
There were no illusions left for his mind to fool itself with, either. Optimism was absurd. Survival itself might even be out of the question.
If he was going to survive, if he was going to make it through this, he had to act like a scientist. He had to be detached, unemotional, take each step carefully.
Josh alternately scolded and encouraged himself as he searched through the hamlet for things he could use. He told himself to act like a survivor, and a scientist. He went back to each hut, forcing himself to look more thoroughly inside. He didn’t find any more bodies, but he saw more evidence of shootings — blood clotted on the dirt floors, bullet holes. Things he’d missed or ignored earlier — like the broken furniture — were obvious to him now, and told a consistent tale: the hamlet had been attacked, probably massacred, and then hastily cleaned up.
Josh looked for weapons in the huts. He found a pair of hunting knives, and ammunition for a rifle, but not guns. He took the bullets, hoping he might find the gun, and continued his search. It was difficult to be as empirical as he wanted — his fingers trembled just clutching the box of loose shells. But he was calmer than before, more aware of his surroundings and himself.
At some point, he slipped his hand into his pocket and took out the camera that had been in his pants since the night before. He began videoing everything, beginning with the person in the darkness of the empty cottage. At first he narrated what he was doing, giving the date and the rough location. Then he just let the camera record.
After ten minutes, the memory was full. He turned the camera off and put it back into his pocket, continuing to look around the village and the nearby fields.
Maybe there hadn’t been a massacre here — maybe the villager had been killed by someone in the village. That might explain why everyone had fled.
He doubted it was true, but it was a plausible, or at least possible, explanation. Josh continued walking around the village and nearby fields, looking for more evidence.
It wasn’t until he had stared at the upper field for a few minutes that he realized part of it had been turned over, while the one below had not.
Who would work a field in February?
Josh sank slowly to his knees. There were footprints — boots. He traced one of the boot marks with his index finger. It was a man’s boot, about his size, perhaps one or two sizes smaller.
Evidence of what had happened.
He didn’t need it; he’d seen enough.
There was doubt, though. Just one body.
If this were a weather event, he would gather as much data as he possibly could. He would leave nothing to chance.
Josh put his hands into the earth. His heart began throbbing. He pulled the dirt toward him. It resisted. He dug deeper and pulled again.
After his fourth or fifth pull, the dirt came away easily. Sweat ran down the sides of his neck as he worked.
Five minutes after he started digging, Josh’s left hand pushed against something that felt like a stick. He pushed a little more, then scooped upward, removing the dirt but not revealing the object. He took as slow a breath as he could manage, and began to dig again, gently though steadily. He moved the dirt around the object like he thought an archaeologist would, bringing it slowly to the surface.
A thick tree branch.
An old shirt on a stone.
An arm, with fingers rolled into a ball.
Josh took out the camera and erased one of the files he had shot the night before, giving himself about a minute and a half more of video time. He panned the area, then closed in on the arm, focusing on the hand.
Done, he replaced the dirt with his foot, eyes closed, tamped it back down, and returned to the village.
