
?ONE
THE CHOPPER looked like a boxcar with wings, only larger. It squatted in the middle of the pasture
like a pregnant sow. Its twin rotors stropped the air in great slow whirls. I could see the tall grass
flattening even from here.
I turned away from the window and said to Duke, "Where the hell did that come from?"
Duke didn't even look up from his terminal. He just grinned and said, "Pakistan." He didn't even stop
typing.
"Right," I said. There wasn't any Pakistan any more, hadn't been a Pakistan for over ten years. I turned
back to the window. The huge machine was a demonic presence. It glowered with malevolence. And I'd
thought the worms were nasty to look at. This machine had jet engines large enough to park a car in. Its
stubby wings looked like a wrestler's shoulders.
"You mean it was built for the Pakistan conflict?" I asked.
"Nope. It was built last year," corrected Duke. "But it was designed after Pakistan. Wait one minute-" He
finished what he was doing at the terminal, hit the last key with a flourish, and looked up at me.
"Remember the treaty?"
"Sure. We couldn't build any new weapons."
"Right," he said. He stood up and slid his chair in. He turned around and began picking up pages as they
slid quietly, one after the other, out of the printer. He added, "We couldn't even replace old weapons.
But the treaty didn't say anything about research or development, did it?"
He picked up the last page, evened the stack of papers on a desk top, and joined me at the window.
"Yep. That is one beautiful warship," he said.
"Impressive," I admitted.
"Here-initial these," he said, handing me the pages.
I sat down at a desk and began working my way through them. Duke watched over my shoulder,
occasionally pointing to a place I missed. I said, "Yeah, but-where did it come from? Somebody still had
to build it."
Duke said, "Are your clothes custom made?"
"Sure," I said, still initialing. "Aren't everybody's?"
"Uh huh. You take it for granted now. A computer looks at you, measures you by sight, and
appropriately proportions the patterns. Another computer controls a laser and cuts the cloth, and then a
half-dozen robots sew the pieces together. If the plant is on the premises, you can have a new suit in
three hours maximum."
"So?" I signed the last page and handed the stack back to him. He put the papers in an envelope, sealed
it, signed it, and handed it back to me to sign.
"So," he said, "if we can do it with a suit of clothes, why can't we do it with a car or a house-or a
chopper? That's what we got out of Pakistan. We were forced to redesign our production technology."
He nodded toward the window. "The factory that built that Huey was turning out buses before the
plagues. And I'll bet you the designs and the implementation plans and the retooling procedures were
kept in the same state of readiness as our Nuclear Deterrent Brigade for all those years-just in case they
might someday be needed."
I signed the envelope and handed it back.
"Lieutenant," Duke grinned at me, "you should sit down and write a thank-you note to our friends in the
Fourth World Alliance. Their so-called `Victory of Righteousness' ten years ago made it possible for the
United States to be the best-prepared nation on this planet for responding to the Chtorran infestation."
"I'm not sure they'd see it that way," I remarked.
"Probably not," he agreed. "There's a tendency toward paranoia in the Fourth World." He tossed the
envelope into the safe and shut the door.
"All right-' he said, suddenly serious. "The paperwork is done." He glanced at his watch. "We've got ten
minutes. Sit down and clear." He pulled two chairs into position, facing each other. I took one and he