Alternities

Alternities by Michael P. Kube-McDowell Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: Alternities by Michael P. Kube-McDowell Read Free Book Online
Authors: Michael P. Kube-McDowell
Tags: Science-Fiction
disturb you—”
    “That’s all right,” Robinson said graciously. “What’s happening this morning. Bill?”
    “There’s been another submarine contact off New York harbor. I thought you’d want to know.”
    “When?”
    “Within the half-hour, just after dawn. The ship involved is the freighter Castle Point , American registry.”
    Robinson folded his hands, elbows resting on the table. “Any details?”
    “She was outbound in the Ambrose Channel. The captain reports a Soviet submarine surfaced a hundred meters to port and ran with them for five minutes. They counted five tubes, which sounds like a Horizon—class boat. We won’t know for sure until the Coast Guard retrieves the film one of the crewman shot. A copter is on the way to pick it up now.”
    “Was that the only shooting?”
    “Yes, thank Heaven.”
    “And the Castle Point . Was she inside or outside the line?” Robinson asked lightly.
    “Inside. No question about it.”
    Robinson nodded, retrieved his fork, and speared another bite of scrapple. “Thank you. Bill. I’ll be down in a little while,” he said, and engulfed the meat with a quick bite.
    “Anything you want me to do?”
    Signalling for patience with his fork, Robinson waited until he had swallowed to answer. “O’Neill already knows about it, I presume. Still no answer on the last protest we filed?”
    “No.”
    “Then there’s no sense drafting another one. Just add it to the gripe file. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
    Rodman nodded and removed himself.
    Nothing we can do about it . The admission ate at Robinson all through the rest of his breakfast. Nothing we can do about a Russian submarine playing tag with the shipping coming out of our most important port—
    He stopped eating and stared out the window at the trees, remembering a letter he had received in the first year of his first term.
    The letter was from a Michael Gaston, a worker in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. He had taken his family on a three-day summer expedition to Wildwood, New Jersey. The last day, while they were sunning and playing on the sand, a Soviet submarine had surfaced out past the breakers and cruised briefly along the shore.
    “My boy was so excited,” the man wrote, “to see a warship out where it belonged, in the sea. He said it looked like a great big gray shark and kept asking, ‘Did you work on that sub. Daddy?’ I couldn’t bear to tell him it wasn’t one of ours.
    “Why does this have to be, Mr. President? Why should my son and the thousand other kids that were there that day have to suffer the humiliation of watching a Russian submarine cruising unmolested off an American beach? Maybe we can’t rid the ocean of Soviet sharks. But I’m sick at heart to think that we can’t even drive the monsters back to deep water where they belong. Something has to be done.”
    Slowly, almost mechanically, Robinson finished off his breakfast, collecting the last of the syrup with the last of the French toast. He glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty. Rodman would be waiting for him in the Roosevelt Room.
    Nothing we can do about it, Mr. Gaston—still , he thought as he rose from the table. But something is being done. Because it doesn’t have to be that way. And I swear that when I leave this drafty old mansion, it won’t be that way any longer.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 75-05
Supplemental to EO 68-09, NSC 68-31, EO 72-14
February 16, 1975
    TO: Albert Tackett, Director
National Resource Center
    The NRC is directed to make a priority mission of the following:
To investigate known alternities for potential use by Alpha list personnel as an alternative to the Boyne Mountain shelter in the event of a national crisis
To evaluate known alternities for potential use by Alpha list personnel as a permanent relocation site in the event of a nuclear exchange.
To develop and carry out operations both domestically and in the appropriate alternities to facilitate the availability of the above

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