There Won't Be War

He found himself sliding down the steps on feet that somehow wouldn’t lift when he wanted them to. He stumbled through the open cellar door. Frightened faces dotted the room in an unrecognizable jumble.

“We all here?” he croaked.

“All here, poppa,” Saul said from his position near the aeration machinery. “Lester and Herbie are in the far room, by the other switch. Why is Josephine crying? Lester isn’t crying. I’m not crying, either.”

Plunkett nodded vaguely at the slim, sobbing girl and put his hand on the lever protruding from the concrete wall. He glanced at his watch again. Two minutes, ten seconds. Not bad.

“Mr. Plunkett!” Lester Dawkins sped in from the corridor. “Mr. Plunkett! Herbie ran out of the other door to get Rusty. I told him—”

Two minutes, twenty seconds, Plunkett realized as he leaped to the top of the steps. Herbie was running across the vegetable garden, snapping his fingers behind him to lure Rusty on. When he saw his father, his mouth stiffened with shock. He broke stride for a moment, and the dog charged joyously between his legs. Herbie fell.

Plunkett stepped forward. Two minutes, forty seconds. Herbie jerked himself to his feet, put his head down—and ran.

Was that dim thump a distant explosion? There—another one! Like a giant belching. Who had started it? And did it matter—now?

Three minutes. Rusty scampered down the cellar steps, his head back, his tail flickering from side to side. Herbie panted up. Plunkett grabbed him by the collar and jumped.

And as he jumped he saw—far to the south—the umbrellas opening their agony upon the land. Rows upon swirling rows of them ....

He tossed the boy ahead when he landed. Three minutes, five seconds. He threw the switch, and, without waiting for the door to close and seal, darted into the corridor. That took care of two doors; the other switch controlled the remaining entrances. He reached it. He pulled it. He looked at his watch. Three minutes, twenty seconds. “The bombs,” blubbered Josephine. “The bombs!”

Ann was scrabbling Herbie to her in the main room, feeling his arms, caressing his hair, pulling him in for a wild hug and crying out yet again. “Herbie! Herbie! Herbie!”

“I know you’re gonna lick me, pop. I—I just want you to know that I think you ought to.”

“I’m not going to lick you, son.”

“You’re not? But gee, I deserve a licking. I deserve the worst—”

“You may,” Plunkett said, gasping at the wall of clicking geigers. “You may deserve a beating,” he yelled, so loudly that they all whirled to face him, “but I won’t punish you, not only for now, but forever! And as I with you,” he screamed, “so you with yours! Understand?”

“Yes,” they replied in a weeping, ragged chorus. “We understand!”

“Swear! Swear that you and your children and your children’s children will never punish another human being—no matter what the provocation.”

“We swear!” they bawled at him. “We swear!”

Then they all sat down.

To wait.

The Rocky Python Christmas Video Show Frederik Pohl

On the screen of the television set the blank gray brightens to robin ‘s-egg blue. We see the spires of a fairytale castle, with fluffy little clouds behind them. They are growing as we zoom in. The scene looks very much like the opening of a Disneyland special, and to make it even more so a zitzy stream of glittering comet dust darts in from the RIGHT. It turns into a Peter Pan figure who looks a lot like Jane Fonda. She hovers like a hummingbird, waving a wand at us. We zoom in for a closeup,

JANE:

Hello. I’m not Peter Pan. I grew up. It was the world that didn’t.

Now that we get a better look at Jane, she isn‘t nearly as much like Peter Pan as she is like Barbarella. She’s wearing a Buck Rogers kind of spacesuit which leaves her head and face free.

JANE:

I’m what you’d call a forensic anthropologist now.