A Shade of Difference (5 page)

He paused and looked up and down the long table, and only the whirring of the television cameras and the sounds of pencils racing over paper in the press areas along the walls broke the silence. His gaze came back to that of the President, who looked at him with impassive curiosity from directly across the table. He gave a sudden cough and an impatient, angry shake of his head.

“Now, gentlemen,” he said, “these terms may at first glance seem harsh and difficult for you to accept. Be assured it is not the intention of the U.S.S.R. to be harsh but only to do what is obviously necessary to guarantee the peace of the world. Our sole interest lies in removing the causes of friction and of war. We have tried for many years without success to persuade the United States to abandon policies, which could lead only to war. The United States has persisted in these policies even though it has been obvious to the world that they could have only one conclusion, a conclusion which would be disastrous for all mankind.

“Now the time has come to change these false and wrongheaded policies. Soviet science has placed in our hands the means to do so. We would be betraying our responsibility to the human race if we did not exercise this new power to make the United States abandon its mad drive toward war and adopt policies desired by all the peace-loving peoples of the earth. That is our sole interest, gentlemen. We are here in the cause of peace. Do not, I beg of you, stand in the way of the world’s yearning for peace.”

He paused, and this time it was the President who coughed, a perfunctory and rather disinterested little sound which he emphasized by smiling politely and saying, “Excuse me,” in a friendly voice. The Chairman frowned but went on.

“You are asking yourselves, as the watching world may no doubt be asking, why should you yield to these Soviet cries for peace? Why should the great United States abandon its drive toward war and rejoin the community of the world’s peace-loving peoples? Are there not profits to be gained by continuing to pursue a policy of war? Is there not power to be gained by continuing to pursue a policy of war? Gentlemen, do not believe it! No, gentlemen, that day is vanished forever. To continue on such a course is to follow an empty dream, to get holes in your shoes chasing a swamp fog.

“Why, gentlemen, do you think”—and here a heavy sarcasm came into his voice—“do you think there are only radio transmitters in the Soviet expedition to the moon? Do you think that is all we sent up there? Do you think it is just a contest in radio broadcasts that exists between our two countries? No, gentlemen, we—(the translator hesitated and then produced)—tucked in—we tucked in a little something else along with the bread and cheese to keep us healthy when we reached the moon. We did not want to rob you of this contest in radio broadcasts, but we wanted to be sure that we had some other argument available when we asked you to come here and accept guarantees for peace.

“That argument is up there too, gentlemen. It needs only a signal from us and it will suddenly be down here on earth again, falling on Washington and New York and Chicago and St. Louis and Denver and San Francisco and all your other fine cities. That is our argument, gentlemen, and you must not stand in the way of it. And, gentlemen! We cannot necessarily be sure that these are the only cities it will hit if you force us to use it. It may also hit London and Paris and Rome and many other capitals in the former imperialist alliance ring of the United States. We should not like this to happen, but if you force us to use our argument, gentlemen, we might not be able to control it entirely. This would be a heavy responsibility for the United States to assume, gentlemen. The results would be very sad for the world.” He glanced at the watching cameras. “The world is right there now, gentlemen. What do you have to say to it, yes or no?”

And with a gesture that did indeed bring suddenly into the room the watching presence of humanity around the globe—Americans in their pleasant homes, Russians in their dark cities and mud-daubed huts, English in their clubs, Malays in Singapore, a white-robed Nigerian in Lagos, some Indians in New Delhi, little excited groups in the sunny alleys of Rome, a sheepherder in New Zealand, businessmen in Rio, tribal chieftains huddled around a squeaky receiver in Jebel-el-Druz, vividly dressed Malagasys in Tananarive, a frightened group of tourists in Tahiti, and many and many a million more on that bright spring day—he folded his arms abruptly and sat back with an intent and listening scowl. A silence again fell on the room, broken as before only by the busy whirring of cameras and a little stir here and there among the press, as history quieted down and prepared to attend the President of the United States.

“Mr. Chairman,” he began slowly, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the arms of his chair and look with a candid appraisal at his opponent, “I would like to think that I am in the presence of a sane man instead of a maniac, for if I am in the presence of a maniac, then this world, so beautiful in the spring, does not have much longer to live.”

He paused, and there was an audible intake of breath around the room and, no doubt, around the earth. But he appeared not to notice and after a moment resumed in a curiously detached voice, as though he were addressing, not the Russians, but the world, as indeed he was.

“I came here with my delegation, composed of old friends of mine from the Senate of the United States, thinking we would find serious and sober proposals for easing the tensions that afflict our poor common humanity.” He stopped and his glance went slowly up and down the Russian side. “Instead,” he said, and a new vigor came into his voice, “we are confronted with utter frivolity. Yes, gentlemen, with utter and complete frivolity. With the most irresponsible playing with the destinies of mankind. With something so monstrous it would under other conditions be considered a joke, though an evil and despicable one.”

“Gospodin—”
the Chairman began angrily, but the President went on.

“Evil and despicable!” he said, with all the intensity of one coming from a small town in Michigan confronted suddenly with something dirty and unexpected in the middle of the living-room rug. “Evil and despicable!
How dare you,
Mr. Chairman?”

“Gospodin—”
the Chairman said softly, but again the President brushed him aside.

“We have heard here every dream of every Soviet leader since the end of World War II, boiled down to essence and presented with a straight face. Get out of this! Get out of that! Scrap your defenses! Abandon your friends! Give the world to Communism! Forget your responsibilities to humankind and surrender to us! All the dearest fantasies of the Kremlin have been rolled up in one and presented to us here complete with threats.
Gospodin,”
he said, giving the word an angry and sarcastic emphasis,
“you
attend
me
well, and I will give you the answer of the United States.

“We will never accept your ridiculous proposals. We will never abandon our duty to the world. We will never betray our friends. We will never shirk our destiny or our responsibility.” And he concluded slowly, with a softness to match the Chairman’s own, “Never. Never. Never.…

“And so what will you do now? Blow up the United States? Destroy the globe? Use upon humanity all those rockets, which, as your predecessor was so fond of telling us before you disposed of him, you ‘produce like sausage?’ Gentlemen, there are two sausage factories in this world. There are two bomb factories in this world. There are nuclear submarines with nuclear weapons beneath the seas of this world. There is everything in this world to destroy not only us but you as well.
Gospodin,
do you really think we will not use it? And do you think you will gain anything thereby?

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, and at last he spoke directly to the man who scowled upon him from across the table, “do you not see what you have done by this threat of terror, not only this threat but all the others you have flung upon the world over the years? You have made terror ridiculous. We have so much terror at our fingertips, you and I, that there is no more terror. It no longer makes sense. It is absurd.

“Blow us up, then! And we will blow you up, then! And let us together blow up the world, then! And that will be the end of humanity, then! And what will that accomplish, can you tell me?

“You are childish and unworthy to be trusted with your great responsibilities. And I and my delegation,” he concluded quietly, “have nothing more to say or do here. If you wish to meet us in the United Nations to conduct negotiations with a decent respect for our mutual needs and the needs of humanity, we shall be there as always. Right now,” he said in four words that were so simple they dignified the moment better than oratory could, “we are going home.”

And he rose slowly, and with a friendly nod to his countrymen, who also rose as in a daze and followed him, he walked with his sturdy, plodding gait down the long table past the cameras, past the guards, down the steps, into the limousine, and once again in screaming procession beside the blue lake in the warm wind along the Rue de Lausanne to the villa in the bright spring sun.

And the world did not collapse or the skies fall, Secretary Knox thought as he watched Tashikov come to the end of his indignant peroration and prepare to make way for a few words from Ghana prior to First Committee’s vote on the Panamanian resolution to have the General Assembly take up immediate independence for Terrible Terry’s Gorotoland. Yet for a little while it had seemed that they might and the globe had awaited with fearful trepidation what would happen next.

“My God, Harley!” Bob Munson had said when they were alone in the villa. “My God!”

“What else could I do?” the President asked simply. “Really, what else could I do?”

And that was it, of course: there was nothing else. But as they rode back to Cointrin Airport that evening they were not, despite the outward appearance of calm they managed to muster, at all sure what lay in wait for them or for the world. No further word of any kind had come from the Russians, and anything from kidnapping to an immediate nuclear holocaust could have greeted them. This time the crowds were small. No one cheered. There were little gestures and waves now and again, and it was not difficult to tell that they were again being wished well. But a terrible terror lay on the world. No one at all felt like demonstrations now.

Presently the plane was airborne and the lovely city faded in the night. Fog and clouds came on soon after they lifted off, and Europe, the Channel, and England were hidden from them. It was just as well, for they did not really think that any bonfires were burning for them now. What they were going home to they did not know, either: whether there would be cities or a country left, although the President had received no word of anything unusual from Washington, and so it seemed likely things were all right, at least for the moment.

Somewhere out from Ireland they broke above the clouds into a clear moonlit night. It was then that Tom August, peering up at earth’s companion floating serenely above, said suddenly, “Great God, what’s that?”

For a moment, somewhere far out between moon and earth, a tiny red rose blossomed in the endless depths of night—blossomed and grew infinitely brighter for a lovely, horrible minute filled with death and beauty and insane fear, and then began slowly to fade and fade, until at last it disappeared altogether. It was not repeated, and no one had ever been able to discover since whether it had been a shot that failed or simply a Soviet gesture for whatever propaganda value might accrue. It caused great headlines next day, but nobody knew. It was not repeated.

And now here they were in First Committee, Soviet pressure unrelenting but the direct ultimatum, at least for the time being, laid aside. The world had gulped, shifted, adjusted, changed: nobody could say quite how much, or quite in what direction, whether toward or away from the men of Moscow, toward or away from those of Washington. The event, however, had brought an even greater tension to affairs, given many lesser powers a bargaining position they had never known before. The middle nations, the so-called neutrals, the youthful governments of Africa and the uncommitted states, had become even more important now. The contest had reverted to diplomacy and the battle had become even more vicious, using every means at hand. Including, Orrin Knox thought uneasily as he watched Senator Lafe Smith of Iowa come in across the room with a wave and a cheerful grin, the M’Bulu of Mbuele, that glittering young man who now moved gracefully to the podium and prepared, with a respectful yet confident air, to address the chair.

Terrible Terry no doubt had some surprises up his sleeve for the West: all that education hadn’t been wasted on this particular product of the bush.

Nor was it entirely clear why he should suddenly wish to visit South Carolina.

“Trouble for both of us,” the British Ambassador had said. It might well prove true, though perhaps it could be kept within bounds if Washington would co-operate. If the President would make a gesture, if Cullee Hamilton would perform a possibly distasteful task, if Seab Cooley would not be too obstreperous and unmanageable, if— Ten thousand ifs: such was the unrelenting nature of his new life as Secretary of State.

He thought wistfully of the Senate, some two hundred miles to the south, and now at three minutes to noon preparing to convene, as the M’Bulu said politely, “Mr. Chairman,” and began.

3

A month later, after Terrible Terry has cut his swath through the United Nations, the United States, and the affairs of mankind; after Felix Labaiya and his wife and her family have advanced their various ambitions in their various ways; and after Cullee Hamilton and Harold Fry have, each in his own fashion, come to terms with the imperatives of personal need and the obligations of national integrity, the Majority Leader of the United States Senate will look back and wonder why he ever went along with Orrin’s idea in the first place.

He will be able to understand it as an intellectual proposition, but he still will not be entirely convinced of its wisdom: a tribute, he will suspect, to that universal state of confusion in which men everywhere, confronted by the necessity for making great decisions on great events, proceed along paths they cannot anticipate toward conclusions they cannot foresee. He will wonder then if the Secretary of State, impressed with the need for charting a careful diplomatic course in the wake of Geneva, may not have gone too far in his willingness to adapt himself to both the supposed attitudes of certain foreign states and the known prejudices of certain domestic critics, some of the latter more noted for their ability to raise hell than for their capacity to understand issues.