"John, don't ... not now!" she whispered and turned away to start rattling around with the plates and the eggs and bacon.
We sat near the window over our coffee and cigarettes, looking out at the blue sky and scudding white clouds. The wind had dissipated the water vapor so that no wisp of fog was left. The little waves in the bay tumbled and sparkled in the light and a small tug burst through them importantly, steaming along like a short fat woman heading for the bargain counter.
"It's so beautiful, so peaceful out there," Pat murmured. "I can't believe we're in the middle of the greatest war in history."
"Well, if the number of casualties is any indication, it makes even atomic warfare look mild by comparison."
We had heard the news as we ate. The situation in Asia was rapidly approaching the catastrophic. In fact it was probably beyond redemption already in China, since the normal news channels had collapsed. All India was in a state of panic with hordes of people fleeing in any direction that seemed to promise escape. Southeast Asia was in an uproar, with riots and revolutions as reports of the inexorable advance of the measlepox filtered down to the people. In Africa, Egypt was already in the grip of the fatal disease. It was, as Pat said, not at all surprising, since Soviet technicians and supplies had been the mainstay of the country ever since the United Arab Republic was formed. The great desert barriers of Soudan and French Africa were holding temporarily, but it was merely a question of time before some poor devil, his fevered brain seeking escape, blundered to the forests of the Congo or the Cameroons, to the high country of Ethiopia and Kenya, and set fire to the rest of the continent. Only South America and Australasia were still normal, if one could call normal the state of total mobilization and preparedness that was being ordered in practically every land which had sea or air contacts with the rest of the world.
In North America there was no measlepox. All the major cities of the east were reporting hundreds of thousands of cases of flu and it was rapidly spreading to the southern and inland areas.
"They must have had agents on the East Coast too!" Pat said as she listened to the announcer enumerating the cities and the estimated numbers of sick.
"I imagine so ... a lot of them," I said. "Some of the spread must be due to natural infection too. There wouldn't be enough agents, and they couldn't carry enough virus to do all this."
"How do you think they got started over there?" Pat said. "They don't have the handy excuse of a fishing fleet, do they?"