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"Don't tell me you support the idea of staging a nuclear accident in order to shake the world to its senses?" said Boris. "That's lunacy! That's sheer madness, Alexei!"
"No Boris, that not lunacy. They refer to it as a calculated risk, a risk that they feel they must take in order to save the world," Alexei replied calmly. "You are as much a soldier as I am," he continued. "You know the rules of war. You know as I do that a military commander is expected to put his people at great risk if a vastly greater number of people are thereby protected. If you loose ten men to save a thousand, or even ten thousand, the result justifies the sacrifices. Zalygin talks about saving the life of not just a thousand, or a million, but five thousand million people."
Boris just shook his head.
Alexei turned to him again. "There are other factors involved, Boris, the scope of which is too big for a single person to grasp. They have teams working on the problem, think tanks, computer analysts, and scientists of every description. Just imagine the problem they face of having to cope with space weapons, chemical weapons, terrorism, cultural subversion, economic sabotage, not to mention the determination of the British to break up our country into tiny little pieces. They call us an empire. They stated publicly that they want to eradicate Russia from the face of the earth. Just try to correlate all this into one single, responsible policy. Then add to this mess the latest stealth technology. They got planes and missiles that radar can't see. On top of all that, NATO has now captured some of our previous allies. This enabled them to bring their missiles practically to the doorsteps of Moscow. Tell me, how would you defend the country against such a vast threat and the range of unforeseeable possibilities that goes with it, such as nuclear terrorism? Tell me, how would you deter a terrorist from using the bomb, or the religious fanatics who have shown to have no regard for human life? We have seen their own children being expended by the thousands to clear minefields in front of their advancing tanks? How do you formulate a rational policy in this chaos, and one that one can live with? The fact is, you can't! Nobody can! You've got to change the game in order to have any hope at all. You've got to change it into something reasonable, from the ground up. You need dramatic changes, dramatic actions. Believe me, Boris, Moscow is not alone in wanting this game stopped before it gets out of control. Yes, I want it too, and so do many others. We can't all be crazy, Boris. Hoping for an honest to goodness accident, something crude, something of the old tradition, and something that can be relied upon to be perfectly safe, that's a sane approach to the problem. An untargeted nuclear missile, like the ones we have at Lenin Base, would fit the bill just fine, provided that someone apart from the government sets it off."
Boris turned his face away, "Oh God, Alexei, what are you saying? What if it doesn't work? Who can dare take such great a risk?"
"No, no, Boris, you must ask yourself; can we afford not to take the risk? Can we afford to let even the faintest chance slip away in the face of infinitely greater risks that are mounting up with every passing day if the present situation is left unchallenged? Think about this."
Boris answered nothing.
"I know what you are thinking," Alexei replied. "You think the responsibility isn't ours. We are not responsible for the whole world. Humanity should have dealt with this issue. Humanity should have stopped the game long before now. Damn right, it should have. Except, most people are blind, or stupid, or too lazy, or have been made blind, stupid, and lazy, by those who intend to profit thereby. Most people simply don't care. We wouldn't be in this mess, Boris, if people did care. All too few people do, Boris. I think Zalygin does care. I think he cares very much, and he is scared. You should be scared, too, Boris, if for no one else than Tania."
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Stories about
Love
from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche
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