"Cleveland has between eight and twenty men and women in the U.S.S.R. and between five and ten in each of the European satellite countries. Not even I know how many he has in Red China." Starkey's mouth was trembling again. "When you see Cleveland this afternoon, all you need tell him is Rome falls. You won't forget?"
"No," Len said. His - lips felt curiously cold. "But do you really expect that they'll do it? Those men and women?"
"Our people got those vials one week ago. They believe they contain radioactive particles to be charted by our Sky-Cruise satellites. That's all they need to know, isn't it, Len?"
"Yes, Billy."
"And if things do go from bad to... to worse, no one will ever know. Project Blue was uninfiltrated to the very end, we're sure of that. A new virus, a mutation... our opposite numbers may suspect, but there won't be time enough. Share and share alike, Len."
"Yes."
Starkey was looking at the monitors again. "My daughter gave me a book of poems some years ago. By a man named Yeets. She said every military man should read Yeets. I think it was her idea of a joke. You ever heard of Yeets, Len?"
"I think so," Creighton said, considering and rejecting the idea of telling Starkey the man's name was pronounced Yates.
"I read every line," Starkey said, as he peered into the eternal silence of the cafeteria. "Mostly because she thought I wouldn't. It's a mistake to become too predictable. I didn't understand much of it - I believe the man must have been crazy - but I read it. Funny poetry. Didn't always rhyme. But there was one poem in that book that I've never been able to get out of my mind. It seemed as if that man was describing everything I dedicated my life to, its hopelessness, its damned nobility. He said that things fall apart. He said the center doesn't hold. I believe he meant that things get flaky, Len. That's what I believe he meant. Yeets knew that sooner or later things get goddam flaky around the edges even if he didn't know anything else."
"Yes, sir," Creighton said quietly.
"The end of it gave me goosebumps the first time I read it, and it still does. I've got that part by heart. 'What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'"
Creighton stood silent. He had nothing to say.
"The beast is on its way," Starkey said, turning around. He was weeping and grinning. "It's on its way, and it's a good deal rougher than that fellow Yeets ever could have imagined. Things are falling apart. The job is to hold as much as we can for as long as we can."
"Yes, sir," Creighton said, and for the first time he felt the sting of tears in his own eyes. "Yes, Billy."
Starkey put out his hand and Creighton took it in both of his own. Starkey's hand was old and cold, like the shed skin of a snake in which some small prairie animal has died, leaving its own fragile skeleton within the husk of the reptile. Tears overspilled the lower arcs of Starkey's eyes and ran down his meticulously shaved cheeks.
"I have business to attend to," Starkey said.
"Yes, sir."
Starkey slipped his West Point ring off his right hand and his wedding band off his left. "For Cindy," he said. "For my daughter. See that she gets them, Len."
"I will."
Starkey went to the door.
"Billy?" Len Creighton called after him.
Starkey turned.
Creighton stood ramrod straight, the tears still running down his own cheeks. He saluted.
Starkey returned it and then stepped out the door.
The elevator hummed efficiently, marking off the floors. An alarm began to hoot - mournfully, as if it somehow knew it was warning of a situation which had already become a lost cause - when he used his special key to open it at the top, so he could enter the motor-pool area. Starkey imagined Len Creighton watching him on a succession of monitors as he first picked out a jeep and then drove it across the desert floor of the sprawling test site and through a gate marked HIGH SECURITY ZONE NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT SPECIAL CLEARANCE. The checkpoints looked like turnpike tollbooths. They were still manned, but the soldiers behind the yellowish glass were dead and rapidly mummifying in the dry desert heat. The booths were bulletproof, but they hadn't been germproof. Their glazed and sunken eyes stared vacantly at Starkey as he motored past, the only moving thing along the tangle of dirt roads among the Quonset huts and low cinderblock buildings.
He stopped outside a squat blockhouse with a sign reading ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT A-1-A CLEARANCE on the door. He used one key to get in, and another to summon the elevator. A guard, dead as a doornail and stiff as a poker, stared at him from the glass-encased security station to the left of the elevator doors. When the elevator arrived and the doors opened, Starkey stepped in quickly. He seemed to feel the gaze of the dead guard on him, a small weight of eyes like two dusty stones.