Candle in a Cosmic Wind

Candle in a Cosmic Wind

By Joseph Manzione

When the war began, she had been in an American wing command bunker in the missile fields northwest of Omaha. She was a major in the R.V.S.N, the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces, and her own rocket regimental complex, a group of RS-21 launchers outside of Novosibirsk, already had been dismantled under the detailed provisions of U.N. Resolution 242. The Ministry of Defense could think of no better qualifications nor more sensitive postings for professional orphans like Avdotya, so she and thousands of others – R.V.S.N. technicians, P.V.O. – Strany officers, political commissars, boom-boom submariners and more – were sent to the United States to observe comparable American disarmament under the 242 plan. The American officers at Omaha had tolerated her, just as she had politely ignored Stockwell and Belinda Nhu the ear before. The Americans deactivated systems according to a meticulously negotiated schedule, while Avdotya and four comrades, and a very serious team of U.N. observers from Senegal, simply watched, day after day.

Until Ben Kimball had slammed down the blue phone on his desk in the operations center, pointed a pistol in Avdotya`s face, and given a launch-sequence order to the remaining Peackeeper II missile crews on line. In the ensuing shouting and confusion, the reporter from Izvestia – a KGB operative – garroted a young American guard and grabbed her automatic weapon. The Senegalese died quickly, as did the reporter and three American technicians, but Avdotya and her two remaining comrades managed to break out through a light cordon of bewildered guards. Not knowing what to do, they ran through endless corridors pursued by the Americans, and Avdotya lost the P.V.O. Strany Pilot first, and later the boy from the embassy. She had taken to the airducts then, and eventually found herself outside the main generator bunker and the underground fuels and stockpiles depot. She killed three guards and managed to barricade herself in that section before they found her, but by then the short war was almost over, and circumstances had changed. The generation of power in a protected environment was paramount, and she controlled supplies, machines, and computers. Despite the desperate efforts of the surviving Americans in the weeks that followed, they were not able to flush her out.

Candle in a Cosmic Wind. Picture by Elena.

Above ground, the world appeared to die very quickly. Avodtya resigned herself to a life spent in a safe cage; there was enough of everything to sustain her body, but her emotional suffering was unavoidable. By the third years, however, the permafrost reached far below the bunker and the huge fuel tanks embedded in the earth around it. Inside the tanks the heating elements could no longer cope with the extreme temperatures, and the fuel slowly congealed into a molasses-like gel that could not be pumped. She foresaw these consequences, and though she could do nothing about them, she took steps to make a temporary escape. She selected a huge all-terrain diesel tractor, building in heating systems, generators and charging circuits, insulated armor and meshed treads. She stowed food and water in the trunk, and a vast amount of fuel in electrically-heated tanks. Two weeks before she was ready, the main generator shut down, and she fought the encroaching frost with portable burners. She barely managed it, but she was already dead.

The days of her life were counted by the fuel gauges on the trucks instrument panels.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Fifth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martin’s Press, 1988.)