Heinlein, Robert A For Us The Living

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"That was all. And all of your labor troubles, and poverty, and physical suffering were as unnecessary as
they were tragic."
"That seems preposterous. If it was as simple as that it could have been fixed. I could work out some
scheme to fix it myself, half a dozen schemes. Why in the navy we wouldn't have put up with any such
damn nonsense. Why didn't somebody see it?"
"Some people did, C.H. Douglas, Goulds Gainesborough, Bronson Cutting and a few others, but it was
almost as difficult to convince people of the fact as it had been to convince an earlier generation that the
world was round. In each case the fact was true and the fact was simple but the sturdy common sense of
the man who had been brought up to believe in a flat earth or a 'favorable trade balance', rejected the
truth. The socialists understood this truth of course, but they insisted that there was only one solution.
There were many good solutions for so simple a problem. We believe nowadays that we have a solution
more suited to the United States than socialism. But come, we are getting a long way off from South
America.
"From 1970 to the turn of the century a partial solution was found. Our excess wealth was poured into
our sister continent and it was developed as a new frontier. Gold mined from the Chilean Andes helped
for a while to preserve the fiction of a favorable trade balance. After that and in addition to it, almost any
sort of wildcat financing was acceptable that would keep up the flow of goods to the south. The private
bankers turned to this rich field of exploitation and convinced the public that the new El Dorado lay under
the Southern Cross. The whole shaky business piled up until practically the entire continent was
mortgaged to the skies in return for goods that we couldn't use ourselves and would have poisoned us if
we had kept them. But the Latin temperament had a simple solution. I sometimes wonder whether it was
planned or was the inevitable result of the circumstances. But when the due day came each government
folded up and a new government calmly repudiated the commitments of its predecessor.
"The first incident of the A.-B.-C. War occurred in 2002 April. The Argentine government had refused
to recognize its debts to us both public and private, and several stiff notes had been exchanged. Our
South American squadron was ordered to Buenos Aires. Chile and Brazil each informed the United
States that any display of force in Argentina would be regarded as an unfriendly act.
"Nevertheless the squadron was not recalled. It steamed into the harbor and had no more than
anchored, two old aircraft carriers and an odd dozen of minor craft, when it was attacked from the air
and sunk to the last man, before a plane could rise. We don't know yet who did it, but we do know that
both the Chilean and Brazilian navies and air fleets had made a rendezvous some two hundred kilometers
off Buenos Aires."
"How did the war work out? I found the record account a bit sketchy for my professional taste."
"Why, Perry, you aren't really interested inkilling, are you?" Diana was perturbed and incredulous.
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He patted her hand. "No Dian', not at all. But the matters of the strategy and the tactics involved and the
weapons used are of intellectual interest to me, just as you might be interested in the ceremonial dances
that accompanied the Aztecs' Blood sacrifices.
The wrinkles smoothed out from her brow. "Yes, I suppose so. But it does seem barbaric."
"I imagine the weapons would have been largely familiar to you, Perry. The United States had not been
at war for many years and it is a matter of history that few weapons are developed in peacetime. The
military mind clings tenaciously to its accustomed ways if you will pardon me. The strategic principle of
exterior lines determined the war. Neither side was equipped to deal any telling blow on the other. They
were too far apart and there was too much terrain involved. There was no commerce to raid as
practically all the shipping had been between the United States and South America. Each side was able
to raid the cities of the other, but armies of occupation would have necessitated extended lines of
communication to protect at a serious strategic disadvantage. The most startling single incident in the war
was the raid on Manhattan."
"Tell me about that."
"One would think that Manhattan would have been evacuated early in the war, but it was extremely
inconvenient to do so and the public had been assured that no enemy force could possibly get that far
north. As a matter of fact, practically all the fighting had been below the equator. Except for two raids in
the Gulf and one on Palm Beach, none of which did much damage, the United States was untouched. But
in 2003 December two aircraft carriers, theSanta Maria and theReina Borealis raided Manhattan. They
had proceeded to New York by a route that took them far east in the Atlantic and by luck and partly by
foresight they reached the North Atlantic without discovery. They were aided by the weather for the last
thousand kilometers had to be made in a thick fog. They attacked at noon, dropping out of a cloudy sky
with a ceiling of less than two hundred meters and in some places lower. The attack must have been
worked out with great precision, for each ship seemed to know exactly where to go. The bridges were
destroyed first, and the landing platforms. It must have been a terrifying sight to see those great
helicopters settling out of the clouds and proceeding leisurely to destroy their objectives while the more
agile fighting planes that escorted them buzzed around like hornets. The tubes under the rivers were
bombed also. A helicopter would settle at the last station, its crew would gas the bystanders while a
working party commandeered a train and loaded aboard the explosives. Then with controls and time
bomb on board the train would make its last run."
"How much damage was done?"
"The damage was practically complete. The water works were destroyed along with the power stations.
The skyscrapers were almost completely wrecked. Incendiary fires were started throughout the city. It
was remarkably efficient, for warfare, as explosives were not thrown around at random but carefully
placed to do maximum damage. It is believed that the helicopters made two or three trips. The weather
made the whole thing possible, of course, particularly the gas attack that completed the job."
"How was that?"
"After the attackers had apparently exhausted their supplies of high explosives, they systematically
patrolled the island, remaining always in the clouds and dropped gas containers. They must have returned
to their floating bases time and again for they kept this up for thirty-six hours."
"You speak as if they had no opposition."
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"There was opposition, surely, but consider You are a pilot. How would you attack an enemy ship in a
cloudbank. "
"I couldn't." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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