Wargames Read online

  Ten missiles would rocket out of their silos, punching through the blizzard outside, trailing hellfire tails, arcing through the stratosphere carrying their nuclear payloads. Over half would get shot out of the sky, but the rest would probably find their strategic targets, exploding over Russia, throwing up their familiar mushroom clouds.

  “Number six enabled.”

  Jerry could suddenly almost see the flesh being ripped from bone by the blasts.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I want to get this straight with somebody on the goddamned phone.” He pulled up the receiver. A loud wail ripped into his ears. Jesus, that’s what they said would happen if...

  He slammed the phone back into its cradle.

  “All missiles are enabled,” Ulmer reported.

  “Get me wing command post on your phone,” Hallorhan ordered, desperation creeping into his voice.

  As though grabbing for hope himself, Ulmer picked up his phone. The wail was like a banshee’s scream. Ulmer turned to Hallorhan, a hopeless questioning in his eyes.

  Hallorhan grasped for another way out. “SAC! Try SAC headquarters on the HF.”

  “But Captain, this isn’t the procedure.”

  “Screw the procedure,” Hallorhan almost yelled. “I want to get somebody on the goddamned phone before I kill twenty million people!”

  In his head he could hear Sheila talking again: Have you ever seen radiation burns, Jerry? Have you seen what fallout will do to people?

  Ulmer desperately snatched up a headset, stuck one earpiece to his head. He stepped to a military transmitter and twisted at the channel selector, listening intently.

  He sighed. “Nothing.” A haunted look invaded his eyes. “They’ve probably been... vaporized.”

  Hallorhan sucked in a breath, let it go quickly. Gladys was out there. And his kids. “All right. On my mark. Rotate launch keys to launch.”

  You’re a good man, Captain Hallorhan, they had said. You’ve got what, ten years to go till voluntary retirement? Fine record. Yes, we think you fit the bill. We hope you realize this sort of duty is the highest honor bestowed upon an officer... but it’s also a grave responsibility.

  Ulmer said, “Roger. Ready to go to launch.”

  You’re going to have the future of the U.S. of A. at your fingertips, Captain Hallorhan, they had said. Your country is counting on you...

  “T-thirteen, T-twelve.”

  The automatic countdown began through the speaker Hallorhan joined in.

  “T-eleven, T-ten... T-ten.”

  Sheila’s words flooded his mind again: But Jerry, you’re not a machine, you’re a human being. That’s why I care for you! Don’t let those bastards brainwash you!

  The words wouidn’t come out of Hallorhan’s mouth. They seemed stuck in his throat.

  Ulmer turned to his commander, a look of alarm on his face. “... Sir! We have orders!”

  Hallorhan did not respond. He looked at the lieutenant. Ulmer whipped out his .38 automatic and pointed it at his superior.

  “Put... put your hand on the key, sir,” Ulmer demanded, a note of apology in his voice.

  “... T-six, T-five, T-four,” the loudspeaker announced.

  Looking away, Hallorhan shook his head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The countdown appeared in letters on the monitor

  “... T-three, T-two, T-one, launch,” said the voice.

  Sheila’s voice seemed more distant now, but still clear. Make an ethical, no, a moral decision for once in your life, Jerry Hallorhan. Do something that matters!

  Ulmer was desperate. His voice was thin and shrill. “Sir... we are at launch! Turn the key!”

  Jerry sat, suddenly calm and accepting, a vivid peace sweeping through him.

  He turned to Lieutenant Ulmer and said, “I can’t.”

  An earsplitting shriek filled the tiny capsule as Missile Commander Jerry Hallorhan waited silently for whatever came next.

  Chapter One

  The world ended not with a bang, nor even with a whimper, but in total silence.

  Mushroom clouds sprouted from the green and brown surface of the planet Earth. Cracks began to zigzag through North and South America. Smoke issued forth in ragged plumes.

  David Lightman said, “What the hell?”

  He put down his joystick, leaned over, and thumbed the volume of the ancient Sylvania nineteen-inch color TV. This produced higher static hum, background noise, but nothing else. On the screen the image of Earth crumbled, and bright crimson letters proclaimed:

  FINIS

  David Lightman leaned back in his chair and slapped his forehead. “The subroutine for the final explosion!”

  He’d completely forgotten the stupid thing! He laughed. Everything else he’d worked out for his program Planet Wreckers had been perfect! It was almost as good as Atari’s Star Raiders cartridge. It had better graphics, better sound.

  The seventeen-year-old boy turned off the switch of his battered Altair terminal, then clicked off his operating disc drive, which ground to a halt. Sheesh, he could use some new drives. But he wouldn’t trade in the Altair for anything. Along with the extra memory-storage units and peripheral devices he’d rigged together, this stuff was state-of-the-art mad hacker material, stuck together with chewing guns and more than a little ingenuity.

  Of course, if some IBM equipment fell into his lap, he wouldn’t throw it away. But what he had suited his purposes just fine right now, thank you. True, it looked like an electronics graveyard set up in his bedroom, but it was his.

  David sighed. He turned on the secondhand disk drive, waited for the busy light to fade, then switched on the Altair.

  READY, the screen said presently.

  David scratched his stomach through his Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt and considered. Everything else about the program was apparently fine. The cross hairs for the marauding aliens was great, the defending Earth ships were sheer dynamite, and the final cataclysm of Earth’s destruction, signaling victory for the player, was truly gonzo. He wouldn’t have to type out the whole thing.

  Okay, now.

  He typed in DOS—disk operating system. There was only a short pause, after which he was rewarded with a readout containing all the sections of the Planet Wreckers program.

  There it was. He’d forgotten the name he had assigned it.

  KERSMASH

  It took up 005 sectors on the old Elephant disk. Hmmm. If he could link that up with the graphics in just the right way...

  He called up Basic again, then ordered: LIST “D: KERSMASH.”

  Almost immediately the lines of the program section appeared on his screen, neatly numbered. He knew some machine language, but found that Basic was just as good for this particular program.

  He turned on the IBM I machine beside him that he had to use as a printer, and typed: PRINT.

  The typewriter began doing just that, with painful slowness. If only he had a decent printer.. even a dot matrix would do. But his mother’s old IBM had to suffice, what with the nickel-and-dime life David Lightman led with his paltry allowance and the occasional off job.

  “David!” called his father from downstairs. The old man never bothered to come up and knock on the door. He just yelled from the bottom of the steps. “David! Dinner’s ready!”

  David sighed and went to the door. “Gimme a minute, okay?”

  “You eat it now, or you don’t eat.”

  “Sheesh!” When Mom fixed dinner, his father could give a damn when he showed up. But when Mom was out doing real estate and the old man whipped up chow, attendance was mandatory, even though Harold Lightman knew about as much about cooking as he did about quantum mechanics.

  “I’ll be right down. I gotta wash my hands!”

  David went back to the printer.

  Chunka-chunka-chunk said the IBM, its little ball plopping the letters and numbers neatly onto the back of a real estate flyer from a pack his mom had given him.

  “Shake a leg, huh?” he said, im
patiently tapping on the machine’s green housing, gazing absently around his bedroom. Cripes, what a mess. Clothes were strewn on the floor and the bed. If Mom ever got a look at the place, she’d have a fit. Good thing he kept his room locked. It was fine with his father, too, who seemed to consider the room a dungeon where the slavering brain-damaged genetic monster of the family was chained away from the sight of respectable folk.

  “David! I’m getting very angry!”

  “Okay, okay!”

  The element typed out the last of the program section. David grabbed a thick notebook, a Bic pen, yanked the paper from the platen, and virtually galloped down the stairs.

  He sat at the dining room table, placing his stuff to one side of his plate. His father, who reminded him of a younger version of Tom Bosley in Happy Days, stood at the stove. When he turned around, David saw that he was wearing an apron. Sheesh, how typical!

  “Doing your homework?” Harold Lightman asked.

  “Did it already,” David answered, spreading his stuff out beside the neatly set table.

  “I want to see some better grades this semester, David!”

  David chuckled to himself as he glanced at the printout. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I can promise you that.”

  “Good.” Stirring something in a pot, Mr Lightman walked to the table. He set the pot down on a hot pad.

  David stared at the steaming contents incredulously. “Beans and franks? I had to come running for beans and franks?”

  Mr. Lightman adjusted his rimless glasses, a hurt expression crossing his rounded features. “My special concoction. There are braised onions and peppers in there, a dash of spice, Worcestershire sauce, bacon... And I found some lettuce and tomato....” He gestured at the bowl of torn vegetables to one side of the table. “Well, you know, your mother’s very busy these days.”

  “Yeah.” David spooned a pile of the dun-colored glop onto his plate.

  Mr. Lightman sat down and began eating, frowning all the while.

  Let me see, David thought. Did I leave myself enough numbers here. If I use a GOTO subroutine right here, I could....

  “You know, it would be very pleasant to have a decent conversation with you for once at the dinner table, David, instead of having you pore over that gobbledygook computer stuff of yours, or reading a science fiction book or doing something else obnoxious.”

  “Dad, this is important to me,” David said wearily.

  “Oh.” His father poured some Thousand Island dressing on his salad. “What are you working on today?”

  “Finishing up a program for a game.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I can sell it, make some money.”

  “Well, then there are practical uses. What kind of game?”

  “Top secret, Dad. Maybe I’ll show it to you when I’m finished.”

  “Why not now?”

  “You don’t understand. It’s not perfect yet. And then I gotta copyright it.”

  “If you get some money, you might think of buying a new suit, David. And come to think of it, you might want to wear that suit more often to church. Pastor Clinton has been asking about you.”

  “Worried about the state of my soul, huh?”

  “He likes you, David.”

  “Dad, he just wants to chalk me up in his Converted Heathen tally, so he’ll get Brownie points from Jesus. It’s all a game to him.”

  “Doesn’t sound much different than you.”

  “Huh?”

  “You play games... these computer games... all the time.”

  “Everything’s a game, Dad.”

  “And you have to learn how to win, eh?”

  “Uh uh. You have to learn how to make the games.”

  His father shook his head wearily, giving up. David went back to the program. His pop wasn’t a bad sort, really, but his head was out in the ozone. Faulty programming. Yeah. David could imagine it.

  10 REM HAROLD LIGHTMAN

  20 PRINT “THE LIFE OF MR. NOBODY”

  30 IF GOOD THEN GOTO HEAVEN

  40 IF BAD THEN GOTO HELL

  After scribbling down a few key “sound” lines for the program, he set aside the notebook and began to hurry through his meal so he could hop upstairs and try them out.

  Harold Lightman patted his lips with a paper napkin and set it down. “David, the church youth fellowship meets tonight. I thought, since your mother’s not here, you and I might go.”

  “No thanks, Dad.”

  With an exasperated shake of the head, his father left the table, carrying his plate with him. A clatter of plate in the sink issued from the kitchen. Harold Lightman barreled out, face red, flustered. “You’d go out if I was taking you to your stupid video arcades, or to see an R-rated film, or to watch a punk rock band, wouldn’t you!”

  “Dad, please! It’s called New Wave now.”

  “I don’t care what it’s called, David. I call it garbage.”

  David flinched. It was so sad; they didn’t understand. He held up his fork, holding a mound of sliced franks and beans. “Hey, you know, this is pretty good, Dad.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Cool off, Dad. I don’t want to go to church fellowship, and I don’t want to go to any of the other things either, because I have to finish my program, okay?”

  “Cripes, you know, I think you like that computer of yours better than you like girls. And your mother was worried about the women in your life. There’s nothing to worry about. You haven’t got any.”

  David shrugged and swigged some milk. “Dad, just leave me alone, huh? Get off my case.”

  “Just what is it that’s so fascinating about computers, David? Just what is the magic of those machines that you can spend hours, days, up there, glued to that keyboard and TV set, pumping in numbers and orders, or destroying Space Invaders or whatever it is you do?”

  David got up, collected his stuff, and tucked it under his arm.

  “Because it’s fun, Dad.”

  “You didn’t eat all your dinner, David.”

  “Give it to Ralph. He’s outside, I think, checking the garbage can.”

  With a helpless laugh Harold Lightman looked upward as though toward heaven. “You know, in the good old days, fathers used to be able to punish their sons by grounding them in their rooms. Doing that to you would be like throwing Brer Rabbit in the briar patch.”

  “Yeah, Dad. See ya later “

  In his room, David quickly slid the floppy disk back in the drive, revved up his machines, and got down to serious business. It took him only an hour to figure out the exactly correct sounds and program them into the game. He then saved the subroutine on the master game disk, and made a backup disk, just in case something went kafluey.

  Then he played Planet Wreckers.

  As the colors flashed, and the spaceships exploded, David Lightman’s mind wandered vaguely away from the game. The old man just didn’t understand—didn’t really try to understand. Nobody really cared.... They were too busy, too wrapped up in their own frozen attitudes, their own games that just kept looping like a faulty program....

  He finished off the last Earth cruiser with a strong volley of shots. The graphics representing the planet Earth hove into view, lined up in David Lightman’s sights.

  “You’re all I need,” he said to his computer system.

  He pressed the red button by the joystick. Energy bolts slammed into Earth. Nuclear missiles trailing fire hissed their way toward their targets.

  David turned up the volume.

  This time, the world ended not only with a bang but with screams and whistles and throbbing explosions and, finally, a mock funeral dirge.

  A pounding came on the door. “David! What the heck was that? Are you okay?”

  David Lightman turned off his computer and smiled.

  Chapter Two

  When the wake-up call came, Patricia Healy saw that John McKittrick was already up and dressed. He stood by the hotel room window, gazing ou
t at the Rocky Mountains, smoking a cigarette.

  “I’ve already ordered room service,” he said as Pat put the phone down and struggled to wake up. Not much sleep last night. “Continental all right for you?”

  “Uhmmmmm,” she said, groping for her robe on a nearby chair. “That’s fine, John.” She went to the bathroom. When she came out, John McKittrick was working on a fresh cigarette. She kissed him.

  “Thanks,” he said, relaxing a bit in her embrace. “I needed that.”

  “You needed the whole evening,” she said. “That’s why we’re in the Colorado Springs Sheraton. Loosen up, you’re making me feel like a poor assistant.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, turning and nuzzling her neck, his moustache tickling her. “I do need you. I do feel better. Dammit, Pat, I’m afraid I’m even in love with you.”

  “Yes, well, whatever you are, you’re as wired as a piano.” She pulled away to go looking for her clothes. “It’s not as though you haven’t made this move before, John. The President knows exactly where you stand.”

  “I think there’s a chance now,” McKittrick said, stubbing his cigarette out emphatically in an ashtray. “More than a chance. It’s inevitable. Just like I told Falken... our work would come to this one day!”

  “And what did you tell you wife your marriage would come to?”

  “Elinor?” McKittrick shook his head sadly. “She thinks I’m working late down in the Crystal Palace, then bunking there, like dozens of times before.”

  “Only you spent the night in the arms of your mistress... the only woman who understands what’s going on in that brilliant, scheming mind of yours.”

  “You don’t understand either, do you?” McKittrick said.

  “I know computers, John,” she said, finding a stocking. “I know NORAD, I know the defense system. I know my duty and I follow orders as best I can. But it’s a job, John. It’s not an obsession.”

  McKittrick shook his head. “You didn’t know Falken. You’re not really appreciative of what he started and what I’ve improved on... and could well finish. And it’s the best system, that’s just it. Darling we’re still in the 1950s as far as our defense system goes. Don’t you see, that’s part of the danger. Look, I didn’t create war and I didn’t create nuclear warheads and ICBM missiles or nuclear subs... and I didn’t make Russia or China communist. All Falken and I saw was a terminal situation... and we acted—or rather I acted—to make the North American defense capability the finest possible. And the final stage of our work is within grasp... today!”