The conference line connecting Moscow, Khrushchev, the United Nations, and the White House was open, but there was very little conversation.
Buck no longer felt confusion or embarrassment. He merely felt that during the course of the last few hours he had been greatly toughened. The pressure and tension, so sudden and immense as to be incalculable, had first bewildered him, turned him soft with contradictory moods. But now he felt weathered and sure. Without looking ahead he knew that his life would be different after this day.
He found himself looking at the President and running over different ways of approaching the situation. If the situation had been reversed, if Soviet planes had accidentally been launched toward the United States, would the President have demanded the sacrifice of a Soviet city?
Probably, Buck thought to himself, although a part of the American tradition and political character would have allowed for time to see if the Soviet attack had been accidental. But how else could it be proved to be an accident? No way, he thought. The Soviet mentality, however, steeped in its own version of Marxist toughness, would not afford the time to wait, must always make its interpretation on the basis of utmost suspicion of its opponents.
“Mr. President, the activity here in Moscow seems quite ordinary, just like any other day,” the American Ambassador said.
Buck sensed that the Ambassador wanted to say something and was asking for permission. The President leaned forward, understanding in his eyes.
“A general alert would be useless, Jay,” the President said. “With the amount of time left it would only cause a mass hysteria and probably not save a single life.”
“That is correct, Mr. Ambassador,” Khrushchev said. His voice was quiet. “I have activated only those parts of our defense that have a chance of shooting down the Vindicators. Our ICBMs have already begun to stand down from the alert. I want no chance of some harebrained lieutenant getting excited and taking things into his own hands.”
It was the opening that the Ambassador wanted.
“What steps will you take to make sure that this most terrible of tragedies is not repeated, Premier Khrushchev?” the Ambassador asked.
“This is not the most terrible of tragedies,” Khrushchev said, but his voice was not belligerent. “In World War II we lost more people than we will lose if the two planes get through and Moscow dies. But what makes this intolerable is that so many will be killed so quickly and to no purpose”—he paused, took a breath, and then went on—“and by an accident. The last few hours have not been easy for me, Mr. Ambassador. They are not made easier by the fact that I am talking with you and Ambassador Lentov who will probably be dead in a few minutes. I have learned some things, but I do not have the time to tell them all to you. One thing I can say: at some point in the last ten years we went beyond rationality in politics. We became prisoners of our machines, our suspicions, and our belief in logic. I am willing to come to the United States and to agree to disarmament. Before I leave I will take steps that will make it impossible for our armed forces to repeat what has happened today.”
“Premier Khrushchev, I will welcome you and I shall also take the same steps that you have mentioned in regard to our armed forces,” the President said. “You have put your finger on something that has been gnawing at my mind during these last few moments.”
The President paused. A calm fell on the line.
“Premier Khrushchev?” There was a tentative note to the President’s voice.
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“This crisis of ours—this accident, as you say…. In one way it’s no man’s fault. No human being made any mistake, and there’s no point in trying to place the blame on anyone.” The President paused.
“I agree, Mr. President.”
Buck noticed the President nod, receiving the agreement as if both men were in the same room talking together. The President continued, in part thinking aloud: “This disappearance of human responsibility is one of the most disturbing aspects of the whole thing. It’s as if human beings had evaporated, and their places were taken by computers. And all day you and I have sat here, fighting, not each other, but rather this big rebellious computerized system, struggling to keep it from blowing up the world.”
“It is true, Mr. President. Today the whole world could have burned without any man being given a chance to have a say in it.”
“In one way,” continued the President, “we didn’t even make the decision to have the computerized systems in the first place. These automated systems became technologically possible, so we built them. Then it became possible to turn more and more control decisions over to them, so we did that. And before we knew it, we had gone so far that the systems were able to put us in the situation we are in today.”
“Yes, we both trusted these systems too much.” A new grim-ness crept into Khrushchev’s voice. “You can never trust any system, Mr. President, whether it is made of computers, or of people….” He seemed lost in his own thoughts and his voice faded.
“But we did trust them,” said the President. “We, and you too, trusted our beautiful Fail-Safe system, and that’s what made us both helpless when it broke down.”
Buck was translating quickly. The President’s thoughts came tumbling out, were arrested for a moment, then started again. He had been speaking as if long-pent-up worries were suddenly being released. A thought flashed through Buck’s mind. These two men seemed to understand each other now even before their words were translated. Out of the crisis shared they were developing an intuitive bond. Buck watched the President’s face as he was thinking, searching for his next words, and Buck realized a strange fact. There were some things, some profoundly important problems, that the President could communicate to only one other man in the world: Premier Khrushchev. Buck sensed that both men felt this and were grateful for the empty moments now available to them. It let them make a breach in the awful isolation of their positions.
The President was still talking. “Today what we had was a machine-made calamity. And I’m thinking that today you and I got a preview of the future. We damn well better learn carefully from it. More and more of our lives will be determined by these computerized systems.”
“It is true,” Khrushchev said simply. “I wonder what role will be left to man in the future. Maybe we must think of man differently: ‘The computer proposes; man disposes.’”
“Yes, that may be the best we can hope for, but we can’t even be sure of that today. Somehow these computerized systems have got to be brought under control. They represent a new kind of power—despotism even—and we’ve got to learn how to constitutionalize it.”
“Mr. President, that would be a kind of constitutionalism I could approve. But this is a problem for politicians, not for scientists.” He laughed. “Computers are too important to be left to the mathematicians.”
There was another silence, lasting no more than twenty seconds. The President stirred in his chair.
Then it happened very quickly.
“Mr. President, I can hear the sound of explosions coming from the northeast,” the American Ambassador said. “They seem to be air bursts. The sky is very bright, like a long row of very big skyrockets. It is almost beautiful, like a Fourth of July—”
And then his voice was cut off. It was drowned in a screech that had an animal-like quality to it. The screech rose sharply, lasted perhaps five seconds, and then was followed by an abrupt silence.
Buck’s ears could hear the silence broken by a strange sound. It was, he guessed, made by the throats of approximately fifty men who simultaneously remembered that they must breathe. Somewhere there was the sound, discrete and isolated and perfectly audible, of a single sob.
“Gentlemen, we can assume that Moscow has been destroyed,” the President said. He paused, looked at Buck, seemed to be waiting for a miracle, unable to talk. Then he spoke. “I will contact General Black, who is now orbiting over New York City.”