The somber chords of a Rachmaninov concerto tumbled through a the rooms and out through the open windows into the gardens of a large house nestled in a fold among the hills overlooking the town. In the distance, the peaks of the Caucasus mountains shone white in the early summer sun. But the mind of the player, Leon Ivanovitch Borakov, brooded on things that were far from the music. The wars the south and east that had followed America's latest bid to control the oil regions were spreading. Some saw a deeper motive and interpreted the moves as furthering a strategic encirclement in preparation for an inevitable clash with China.
The tragedy was that there was no need for any of it. Borakov and a few others like him who knew but were unable to make themselves heard, could give the world all the energy it needed—indefinitely. The potential was there, in catalyzed nuclear reactions that he had analyzed and seen demonstrated repeatedly. Fusion and all that it promised, without the brute force approach that had been failing for half a century. But oil-focused global financial interests and academic politics had caused the research to be ridiculed or suppressed. Greed, paranoia, suspicion, and the disastrous combination of mediocrity in possession of authority were in control everywhere. Humanity had the knowledge, the ability, and the resources to solve its problems at a fraction of the cost it would expend fighting over them, which would solve nothing. But all efforts to stop the madness were in vain against the ignorance and ambitions of deluded egos leading compliant masses who delivered families to their nightly electronic brainwashing just as surely as their ancestors of earlier centuries had marched theirs to be harangued from pulpits. "Fanatics are the cause of every evil," a British member of the House of Lords had once observed to Borakov. "They should be ruthlessly hunted down and exterminated."
The phone rang on a side table. Borakov stopped his playing and reached to take the call. He would not have been disturbed without some good reason. His secretary spoke from the office downstairs in the house. "Greganin is asking to talk to you. He says it is urgent." Josef Greganin was a presidential aide in Moscow.
"Put him through," Borakov said.
"Leon?"
"Yes. Hello, Josef."
"Have you heard the news?"
"What?" There was a hollowness in Borakov's voice. A premonition told him it was something he had been expecting but refused to acknowledge consciously.
"The Chinese are landing on Taiwan." The situation had been escalating two weeks. They had threatened to dismantle the new missile installation there themselves if their demands for removal were not met.
"The talks?" Borakov said. Negotiations had been going on behind the scenes that the public in saw.
"It sounds as if they've given up," Greganin told him. "The word is that the Chinese were rebuffed. The Americans were never not serious. They went through the motions for the historical record. But China won't let itself be seen as being cowed in the eyes of the world."
Borakov was horrified. "But this is exactly what the Americans want, Josef! We both know that those missiles were only put there as a provocation."
"But the West doesn't know. Their media are already shouting about naked aggression. President Rafton was on fifteen minutes ago, spouting the usual claptrap about defending freedom and values. The naval battle group that they've got in the area is moving in. There are unconfirmed reports of aircraft engagements already."
Borakov felt his mouth going dry. "This is it, then?"
"It looks like it. I would advise you to get out, my friend. The first place it will spread is across into central Asia from the Gulf. You'll be in a prime war zone there. It could be in a matter of days."
Borakov and his family evacuated their home when American bombers begin attacking local targets. The town below was pummeled in the fighting that followed when the southern battle lines drew nearer, and the house was reduced to rubble by artillery fire. Later, when a counter-attack came, the pocket that the ruin stood in was inundated by an emptying lake when a cruise missile carrying a tactical nuclear warhead destroyed the dam in the valley above.