Assurances Read online

  Each crystal sphere to overlap yet further crystal spheres.

  Through the thin glass window of his watch

  he sees the distillation of those many motions,

  fine white bars each moment hesitating

  going on again, the hidden jerk of circles

  turning other circles, echoed in

  the repetitious instant of each individual twitch.

  And as the sweep-hand hits its zero mark

  he pops the crown to stop all motion dead,

  listening close to the radio’s tones

  as he waits for the world to catch up.

  In theory, pre-attack, it’s done by phone. It’s political. They’re aware of any threat. They know of its seriousness. They’re monitoring. They’re marking off the stages as they pass. They’re tied into negotiations, trying to calm matters by talk, by diplomatic argy-bargy, by offers, by reasonable compromise. But always with the military hovering, looming, listening in.

  (as with a mess of cotton thread

  extracted from a sewing bag

  despite the interweaving loops

  the coils the undue complications

  at first it all seems manageable

  each knot has a visible structure

  a line leading in and a line leading out)

  In theory, when the enemy doesn’t back down, when into one telephone they say one thing and into another they’re all set to relay the order to launch, even though they won’t want to show their true intent, our lot have to read that intent, true or otherwise, our lot have to be ready to react the very same second, and the enemy needs to know that they’ll react, that they’re ready, that the intent is being heard, that what’s implied matches with what’s inferred.

  (and at a point in the unravelling where it’s clear

  the lines have tangled themselves beyond reason

  there’s still a hope that some of these new knots

  are not knots at all that they’re deceptions and

  that pulling them all yet tighter will show

  how suddenly with a soft snap each slips free

  how one sharp tug will make them disappear)

  In theory the command centre needs to be given the code by which they may access the codes in order to patch them, coded, to the already airborne Argosies, where they will be decoded, verified, confirmed, re-coded, and sent on to the bombers. And all this will be happening, all will be set in place, playing out. At least to a point. Each stage completed up to that final stage, the one from which it’s impossible to climb down.

  (even when at length the string has set

  into its undoable mess the knots so small

  and tight they seem like junctions as if

  the strands have fused together even then

  there’s still that clear thread running out

  the part untroubled untouched to be followed

  while the rest is cut off and discarded)

  In theory once the Vulcans have their orders they’re off. No turning away and no recall. They make themselves deaf to further commands. They have their line to follow. And they do. Their dip, their sudden lift, their drop, their looping back again.

  She is just stepping into the bath

  when the lights go out.

  The dark that’s left behind

  profoundly fixed.

  (And with that last long certainty

  pronounced, inbound, and counting down,

  can I be sure that really

  there is nothing to be lost?)

  She slides herself into the nowhere

  of water made thick with magnesium salts.

  The deformed remnants of a bath-bomb

  fizzing by her feet.

  (What was the state of play before

  the advent of the zero-hour?

  What was the accident

  that spilled existence into being?)

  Settling, stretching her limbs into unfeeling space.

  Her buoyancy, her body-heats, both matched.

  (What need for anything but stone?

  what need to cover stone with slime?

  what need for slime to learn to swim?

  to stand? what need to speak?)

  She can’t feel the bath-tub, can’t even be certain

  of the room the bath-tub sits within.

  The sides, the ceiling,

  the sense of herself — all gone.

  (If I’m no more than just another crumb

  of wayward space-coagulum

  what makes my fleshiness more special

  than some other higher state of energy?)

  The water keeps soundlessly rising, expanding

  and carrying her along with it.

  (What creatures might emerge

  from resolutions we’ve agreed? is our

  intelligence a blip in the momentousness

  of matter and its fitful composites?)

  The poundings of her heart grow soft.

  Her thoughts thin through the spreading warmth.

  Her muddled physicalities, now eased

  into a single deep dark pool.

  (Won’t we be glad at last to see the light?

  Will gladness prove to be more than

  an impulse? Is there glue enough

  to hold us to this path?)

  The lights stay off, the calm new-split

  by water-suck, by splashes, as

  she reaches out a hand and blindly

  drops another bomb into the bath.

  Their radar, our radar, prime targets, both. If the sweep of their sightlines can be taken out with your first prudent release, your one-time cursory lob, then what comes after is a free-for-all.

  (thirty black specks from the outside

  drawing in skimming over the enemy turf

  with their speck-shadows dipping and rising

  a hesitant shivery retinue small black flies

  never flagging always managing to keep up)

  The radio’s more than a messaging service. It acts as the end of an ever extendable rope on which one may tug, reassuringly. Then at least if bomber-command are still talking: we know that the world is still working.

  (thirty black specks all converging little

  clusters moving over the map of the land

  each one extinguished with a small white flash

  their inverse inkblots spreading out and merging

  till every square of the earth has been bleached)

  At each appointed change of frequencies: a pause before connection is confirmed. A few heavy seconds of space-filling static. A purr. And then a voice.

  Above the cloud level

  a broad-shouldered Victor.

  Its fuel-line stiffly extended

  trailing in the hard backdraught.

  An untrimmed umbilicus.

  A heron’s dangled legs.

  Beyond its open end a Vulcan

  closing the gap by inches.

  The cup for the fuel-line wavering near

  to the tip of the Vulcan’s nose.

  On the edge of the stratosphere

  an enemy spy-plane.

  Its underside freckled

  with several small peep-holes.

  Enemy agents lying on cushions

  watch through telescopic lenses.

  They scribble into notepads.

  They focus on the ever-narrowing gap

  between nozzle and cup.

  A slow-motion creep.

  Cloud-wisps whip back round the Vulcan

  to the high whine of concordant engines.

  Wind-rush splitting over intakes.

  Far off the spy-plane is silent.

  It observes silently.

  A distant spectacle played through

  without accompaniment.

  The end of the fuel-line quivers, settles.

  The stout probe on the nose of the Vulcan

  sniffs at the connection point,

  moves a little closer,

  kisses th
e rim of the aperture.

  Metal touching metal.

  The spies demist their eye-pieces.

  They look again.

  They zoom in.

  The Vulcan pushes forward.

  The cup for the fuel-line

  presenting itself, allowing

  the acorn-ended nozzle

  to ease still deeper in.

  The two large aircraft coupling with

  a small soft suck. An unheard click.

  The spies scribble fervidly.

  The scratch of pen-nibs mixed up

  with the sound of heavy breathing.

  The Victor and the Vulcan tied

  by a single thin black line.

  Unseen fluids are pumped

  from one to the other.

  The two machines submitting

  to a matched velocity.

  The spies hold their breath.

  They hold gold watches, round

  and heavy, veined ornately,

  twitching in their palms, marked off

  when fresh air is glimpsed

  at the far end of the fuel-line.

  As the Vulcan timidly withdraws.

  As the hose is retracted,

  wound again thickly

  into the Victor’s belly.

  And the spies close their notepads.

  They sit back, they sigh,

  avoiding eye-contact.

  The viewing-holes covered over.

  Drinks poured tentatively out.

  A record slid with care

  onto a spindle.

  A needle lowered

  into a fine spiral groove.

  The bomb itself is no fancy rocket. Can’t be simply pointed and let loose. It will not follow a scent of its own accord. It is sightless and flightless and witless and fat. Must have its hand held all the way and only let go for those few final seconds. The one sure thing it knows how to do is fall.

  (the last land-hugging stretch

  near supersonic through the thicker airs

  sweeping a wake over forest-tops

  like fingers trailed through water

  rattling the church-spire’s copper cross

  spinning the farm’s weathervane

  a pregnant approach

  the speed of the carrier

  being the speed of the bomb

  floated soft and belly-held and effortless)

  And when those bombs are trolleyed out. When with pride they’re presented, polished, lined up, ready for loading. When each seems spotless, each externally identical. Then which to select? Which should be inserted dumbly into the hollow embrace of each aircraft’s warm and welcoming insides?

  (a sudden stiff climb the start

  of a perfectly drawn parabola where

  at the steepest point the bomb is released

  an easy underarm toss a graceful

  weightlessness as it completes the upper arc

  of the curve on which it’s been set

  as its envoy rolls off the top of the throw

  and peels away homewards standing by

  for the blast-wave to give it a boost)

  There’s only chance enough for a single deployment. They carry no spare. They’ve no alternative. The first shall be the last. A neat no-nonsense detonation: that is all that’s required. Not to be fumbled and dropped premature in the ocean. Not to let that overbearing bulk clog up the hatch. Not to fizzle out on impact, leaving no more than a dent.

  He has opened his watch beneath the narrow cone

  of yellow light from a lamp tilted low to the table.

  He has unscrewed the back-plate, relieving the slippery

  black rubber o-ring squashed against the finely threaded rim.

  He has laid bare all the inner convolutions.

  Their unseen secrets tarnished by his look.

  Overlapping interlocking wafers of metallic viscera.

  A wishbone heart, see-sawing its forward intent.

  Fixed amid these jagged palpitations, a delicate

  ruby-mounted lever. Adjusted for loss or for gain.

  Nudge it one way: the watch’s world spins faster.

  Nudge it the other: it flags.

  A toothpick, lowered through this sensitive interior.

  Its dull wooden tip soft-pressed to the tip of the lever.

  So small an adjustment he does not see it move.

  Nor does he feel it. Nor can he be certain if it has.

  A shift the width of an atom. No more than a touch.

  The merest suggestion of motion. A willing. A want.

  The toothpick withdrawn, the rear plate screwed on,

  he waits for change through slow agglomeration.

  How swiftly the world may now run on without him.

  To what degree he is able to hold himself back.

  Of course the enemy always makes its move at night. They’re crafty like that. It may not be the decent thing but it does at least make sense. Ramping up the tensions while we’re sleeping. Putting our officials into a dither. So that the phones are all buzzing. The whole air ringing. Lines and crossed-lines. Everything in a tangle, already taut, yet getting still gradually tighter.

  (out of the dark the call comes

  wailing sirens pushing through and into

  semi-wakefulness all dream-hazed

  each man tumbled out of bed

  straight into flight-suits heavy boots

  sleep-running in the blue-lit spin

  of night’s unbounded void then bundled

  up into the stuffy fuel-aired paunch

  of the waiting machines their thin skins

  trembled by the slow-grown warmth

  of ground-power’s ready hum)

  A two-hour notification. So it’s pretty serious. Emergent, yes, though not yet imminent. And no one any closer to knowing just how it may turn out. Those already up and circling are in the same stretched state of ignorance as those still stuck on the tarmac. Sharpening their ears to any radio crackle that might somehow resolve itself into an order, a go-command, or else, after hours of rigid inconclusive watchfulness, for the eventual call to climb down.

  (a steady loosening of stand-by strings

  the crowded blacks of night give way

  to growing light blue-grey blue-white

  the nervous buzz of power

  cut replaced on exit by the noise

  of many birds their piercing lines

  crisscrossing in the new-stirred air

  the dark green tracks scuffed into grass

  each path retraced each mattress sag

  each hot-socked boot slipped off)

  Whether false alarm or exercise or diplomatic ruse, it all turns out the same. For those on shift to do the work they’re kept in place to do. Every call’s a real call. Every action: reaction. All they’ve been accustomed to withhold. How with just a word they might release it. And at the point of sleep: that same uncomfortable reflection on whatever the night may bring. Of what may flare up with the dawn. A prickle, a flush, a fine heat beneath the skin. Sensed just at the moment of drifting off.

  She hears of the warning one moment before

  she burrows into bed. As such

  she chooses not to heed it. Folding instead

  the quilt yet tighter in around her.

  Making a cool nest of pillows for her cheek.

  (In light of inescapable destruction

  what use is contemplating anything

  when all I may consider will be swept out

  as effectively

  as all that goes ignored?)

  One eye open, peeking from a twitch of sheets,

  she sees in the sodium glow those night-shapes

  made out of the pieces of her room. Less detailed

  than their daytime counterparts, but real enough:

  her apprehensiveness, her dread made manifest.

  (If all I know exists within myself,

  if everything external can be reappraised

  as any si
mple wonder

  I might draw inside a dream,

  then isn’t it about time I woke up?)

  A muffle of argument from the rooms below.

  Not argument but rushed cooperation.

  Not cooperation but confusion. A panic, brief

  then suddenly halted. Now a flustering of feet.

  Now the unceremonious soft slam of a door.

  (If what I am is made of memory,

  my stacked experiences, personal or pinched,

  and if I’ll never get to pass each grain of data on,

  and since I won’t be there to know them gone,

  what should I care that I’ll be going too?)

  And all her guarded murmurations

  echo undiminished in her heart’s deep cavities.

  And of a neckline’s dark indent. And of the scents

  and softnesses once stolen from the dip and roll

  of a shoulder. Every captured aspect, similarly stored.

  (To wait, to watch, to move, it makes no odds.

  Each state no more occurrent than the next.

  Unless to be here is about the same

  as being there. Can being nowhere

  really make a difference in the end?)

  Dampened by the wall beside her bed

  the sound of sobbing, like the whining

  of a wounded animal, broken by soft hiccups of despair.

  It pauses in uncertainty. It tests the new silence

  with sniffles. It goes on again.

  (And what if I admitted giving up?

  how long ago I’d ceased all worrying

  of what I will or what I won’t become.

  And in the utter calm that followed — I

  had found a way to cope, to carry on.)

  A fine rain beaten sideways by the wind

  sticks its beading to her window with the gentle sound

  of rice poured hesitatingly into a pan.

  Each freshly stippled pane of glass

  disrupting the light coming in.

  (And if I wished myself beneath the earth,

  if that proved safer in the end;

  if I was separated out and scattered, living then

  as dust, in hope someone might breathe me in;

  who’d choose to gather every little piece?)

  The purpose is reactive: to hold in place: to deter. But even when in place, if deterrence alone proves ineffectual (and matters may indeed sometimes get fraught), if the information concerning the enemy’s intention is persuasive, the evidence overwhelming, then it’s also possible to jump the gun, to get in first. To win the war before there is a war.

  (There’s no incentive to go looking for a reason.

  Though such action may at least be reasonable.

  And good reason shouldn’t have to be excused.)