Worlds

46. What Happened Behind Their Backs (3)

Almost every nation on Earth denounced the United States for its cruel assault on the helpless Worlds. Every country in Common Europe withdrew its diplomats (though most of them were on their way home already), and even the Alexandrian Dominion asked for a formal explanation of the action.

The Supreme Socialist Union announced that a state of war existed between their countries and the United States, until such time as the legitimate revolutionary government was installed. Systems were unlocked and thumbs hovered over buttons.

More than a century before, the combined weapons systems of the United States and the Soviet Union (now one-third of the SSU) had grown to the point where they could completely exterminate a planet of eight billion souls. Since no planet in the Solar System had anything like that number of people, they did the logical thing. They signed papers agreeing to limit the rate of growth of their weapons systems. A few misguided idealists on both sides suggested that it might be wiser to stop the growth of the systems, or even dismantle a few weapons. But more practical men prevailed, citing the lessons of history, or at least current events. The “balance of terror” worked, first in the short run; then in the long run.

When South America blasted itself back to the nineteenth century in a nuclear round robin, the major powers made sage and pious remarks and quietly congratulated each other on their mutual sanity. When the Soviet Union was bloodily preoccupied with its Cultural Consolidation, the United States did not take advantage; neither did the resulting SSU attack the United States during the year of vulnerability that followed its Second Revolution.

For one and a half centuries after the primitive pyres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the systems and counter-systems grew in complexity and magnitude. More and more agreements were signed. Peace was guaranteed so long as the systems worked.

The systems broke down on the American side on 16 March 2085. The same madman who had tried to kill the Worlds sat at a console under a mountain in Colorado. He turned forty keys and played a magnificent arpeggio on the buttons beneath them.