The Devil’s Day: The Complete Duology by James Blish

Author:James Blish [Blish, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

Confused and aching, Baines peered past his uninvited and unimpressive Virgil. At first he could see nothing but the streaked steam on the inside of the glass, with a spume of fat snowflakes slurrying beyond it. Then he saw that the night was in fact not wholly dark. Somehow he could sense the undersides of turbulent clouds. Below, the window, like the one in Ware’s office, looked down the side of the cliff and out over the sea, which was largely invisible in the snowwhorls; so should the town have been, but it was in fact faintly luminous. Overhead, from frame to frame of the window, the clouds were overstitched with continuous streaks of dim fire, like phosphorescent contrails, long-lasting and taking no part in the weather.

“Well?” Baines said.

“You don’t see anything?”

“I see the meteor-tracks or whatever they are. And the light is odd. Sheet lightning, I suppose, and maybe a fire somewhere in town.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all,” Baines said, irritated. “What are you trying to do, panic me into waking Dr. Ware and calling it all quits? Nothing doing. We’ll wait it out.”

“All right,” Fr. Domenico said, resuming his vigil. Baines stumped back to his corner and picked up the radio. It said:

“—now established that the supposed Chinese fusion test was actually a missile warhead explosion of at least thirty megatons, centered on Taiwan. Western capitals, already in an uproar because of the napalm murder of the U.S. president’s widow in a jammed New York discotheque, are moving quickly to a full war footing, and we expect a series of security blackouts on the news at any moment. Until that happens we will keep you informed of whatever important events come through. We pause for station identification. Owoo. Eeg. Oh, piggly baby, I caught you—cheatin’ on me—owoo—”

Baines twisted the dial savagely, but the howling only became more bestial. Down the wall to his right, Hess twisted his long body on the table and suddenly sat upright, swinging his stockinged feet to the floor.

“Jesus Christ,” he said huskily. “Did I hear what I thought I heard?”

“Dead right you did,” Baines said quietly, and not without joy; but he too was worried. “Slide over here and sit down. Something’s coming to a head, and it’s nothing like we’d expected—or Ware either.”

“Hadn’t we better call a halt, then?”

“No, Sit down, goddamn it. I don’t think we can call a halt—and even if we could, I don’t want to give our clerical friend over there the satisfaction.”

“You’d rather have World War Three?” Hess said, sitting down obediently.

“I don’t know that that’s what’s going to happen. We contracted for this; let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. Either Ware’s in control, or he should be. Let’s wait and see.”

“All right,” Hess said. He began to knead his fingers together. Baines tried the radio once more, but nothing was coming through but a mixture of the Messiah, Mahler and The Supremes.

Jack Ginsberg whined in his pseudosleep. After a while, Hess said neutrally:

“Baines?”

“What is it?”

“What kind of a thing do you think this is?”

“Well, it’s either World War Three or it isn’t.

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