It was clear that General Hummel already regretted not coming with us, but pride wouldn't allow him to change his decision. He was apparently waiting for me to persuade him, giving him a chance to save face and then agree. But I didn't do that—especially since what had happened played into my hands.

  To be honest, while coming back up after the first meeting, I had been thinking that if we did decide to stay, whether we could leave the Atlas unguarded. Now, with Hummel appointing himself to the role of guard without me even having to ask, I was satisfied. But one had to be careful with him—any surprise could be expected. So before leaving, I went up into the cabin and removed the electronic flight control module—a small chip-key without which engine startup was impossible. Slipping it into my pocket, I quickly caught up with Sara and General Cartwright, and together we descended back into the bunker.

  This time, besides Council member Liu and operator Captain Cheng, two more strangers were sitting in the former command post hall. Both were in camouflage without insignia, and with them was a young woman with short, bright pink hair. But as soon as we entered, she silently rose and left, not even glancing at us.

  "Please, join us at our table," Captain Cheng stood up and, gallantly pulling out a chair for Sara, examined her with undisguised curiosity. "Professor, are all your women so... beautiful?"

  "Only the ones who survived," I chuckled in response.

  "Then I no longer doubt that your population will recover faster than ours," he laughed at his own joke, but his laughter sounded overly strained.

  I introduced General Cartwright and Sara to our hosts, and we sat down. I ended up next to Liu.

  "We've been consulting," after a while, the first to speak was the military man who, judging by his posture and demeanor, was the senior one here. His voice was even, almost indifferent, but his gaze was sharp as a needle. "While you rest, we would like to request the use of your flying machine. To conduct, so to speak, a flyover of neighboring regions and assess the extent of the destruction."

  "Allow me to introduce you," Captain Cheng touched his shoulder. "General Xi. Commandant of this sector."

  I wouldn't trust the Atlas to my own people in a similar situation, let alone here and to these people. That was out of the question. But the idea of a flyover with their guides sounded tempting to me.

  "General, I'm afraid that's impossible," I pretended to regret. "Transfer of control is blocked by security protocols. I couldn't transfer control even to our own command without my personal presence. Those are the rules."

  Council member Liu, understanding the tactlessness of this request, cast a disapproving glance toward General Xi. But he wasn't about to give up.

  "Astronaut Zhang Wei informed us that during your flyover of our territory, you discovered a fully functional space shuttle of our manufacture," General Xi persisted. "A Shenzhou-14 model."

  They want a deal: the Atlas in exchange for their shuttle, essentially taking us hostage, a sudden realization pierced me.

  How fortunate that Hummel stayed up there, and I have the key.

  "I suggested to Zhang that he try to launch your shuttle," I looked at the astronaut. "But he said its life support systems need serious repair. And we have neither the time nor spare parts."

  Zhang Wei silently nodded—apparently, he had already given this same version to his command. Something resembling gratitude flickered in his eyes.

  After such an opening, there could be no further talk of rest and continued stay in this place. I decided to get straight to the point.

  "I have a proposal," I said, leaning back in my chair and surveying those present. "There are critically few of us survivors left on the planet. By various estimates, at most ten to fifteen percent of the former population."

  "That probably amounts to even fewer people than in our country before the catastrophe," Captain Cheng joked grimly, but no one smiled.

  "The surviving US government proposes developing a joint survival program. And in the future—to consider the unification of all countries. Into a single humanity. Because alone, we will not survive."

  "And, of course, this 'single humanity' must accept your... liberal values as canon?" General Xi sneered caustically. "Democracy, American-style? The free market where only the chosen few trade, and the freedom of speech you never really had?"

  "That will be decided by equal delegations from all surviving countries and peoples," General Cartwright intervened firmly. His deep voice suddenly sounded unexpectedly weighty. "No one will impose anything on anyone. We don't have the strength for that."

  "And I believe that in the new world," Sara unexpectedly interjected, and all eyes turned to her, "there should be no monstrous injustice where wealth and power are inherited, not earned through ability and knowledge. Where children are born doomed to poverty simply because their parents are poor."

  "That goes without saying," Council member Liu smiled at her with unexpected warmth. "The future of children should be ensured not by capital, but by education, upbringing, instilling diligence and compassion. We always strived for this, although, I admit, we didn't always succeed."

  "I completely agree with you," Sara touched her temples in a habitual gesture, as if remembering something. "I visited your country before the catastrophe. And I noticed that you lived... quite efficiently in many respects. But the gap between the top and bottom was simply monstrous. Entire neighborhoods lived in poverty in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other cities. I saw it with my own eyes. We didn't have that. Of course, there was general poverty, there were problems, but there wasn't that kind of humiliation, that abyss between the elite and ordinary people."

  Well done, Sara, I thought. Hits the very core, but without unnecessary aggression.

  "It's not about the rich and poor!" General Xi waved dismissively, but irritated notes crept into his voice. "It's about the system! You had no mechanisms to control those who held power! Your government did whatever it wanted, hiding behind elections that decided nothing!" He swept us with a triumphant gaze. "Democracy limited by strict censorship turns into dictatorship, and the media into a tool for imposing one's opinion on the masses. And that kills your vaunted freedom, giving rise to the tyranny of a limited segment of the population. Their opinion became the common opinion, with cruel suppression of any dissent!"

  The general spoke with such confidence and pathos, as if reciting a well-memorized political education textbook. It was evident that these words had been repeated to him for many years, and as an exemplary military man accustomed to following orders, he didn't even think about their true meaning.

  "You're right there, General; our system of governance has flaws," My words of agreement caused them mild shock. They seemed to expect me to fiercely defend everything American at any cost.

  "There were indeed many flaws. I encountered them myself many times. But your country was, in essence, ruled by a party oligarchy. Your Chairman, without the Politburo's approval, couldn't even make a decision to save the planet... and ran to get their consent when every second counted. Which ultimately led to us sitting in this bunker now, with the planet practically destroyed."

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  "That's not the point!" he interrupted, but his voice no longer held its former confidence. "The point is the institutions! Laws don't work without a system of checks and balances, if one group of people can arrogate to itself the right to decide for everyone!"

  "And many of that Chairman's decisions were blocked?" I asked softly.

  "Yes, there were precedents!" the general downed his tea in one gulp and immediately poured more. "But no one will convince me that your system served the people! Your corporations ruled the world, not your presidents!"

  "I think there is no leader on Earth now who could impose their ideology on people trying to survive," I barely restrained myself from telling him everything I knew about their former system from the classified reports regularly delivered to our base before the catastrophe. That would be inappropriate now and only fan the flames of a new conflict.

  "You're right," Council member Liu offered us fruit, and at that moment the pink-haired woman returned with a tray laden with fresh, incredibly appetizing-looking fruit—clearly from the local hydroponic greenhouses. "Thank you, Mei, you've been a great help. Join us."

  "But you won't deny that a monopoly on power kills the economy?" General Xi wouldn't let up, seeing that his comrades didn't support his aggressive tone, which angered him greatly. He was clearly accustomed to unquestioning obedience and didn't understand why, here within these walls, his words no longer met with immediate approval.

  "Let's postpone ideological disputes for official negotiations," Liu suggested conciliatorily. He placed on Sara's plate a piece of bird baked in sauce, resembling chicken but the size of a large pigeon. "Have you ever tried our 'jiao ya'? We prepare it from young quail, which we raise right here in special incubators. A special recipe preserved from imperial times."

  "I don't remember," Sara removed the skin and cautiously sniffed—apparently still distrustful of the bunker's hosts and fearing poisoning. But after a moment's hesitation, she took a small bite and nodded approvingly.

  Pausing the arguments about politics and ideology for a while, everyone except Captain Cheng began to eat. He, however, kept refilling his small cup of fortified rice wine, one after another, but didn't appear drunk—only his speech became slightly slower and his eyes sadder.

  "Back at the academy," he said, examining the light through his cup, "we studied solar activity cycles and the Solar System's passage through galactic dust clouds. The professors told us: every time we cross dense arms, the probability of bombardment by asteroids from the Oort Cloud increases. And that's not theory at all, but pure statistics. When we were first creating our strategic defense system, our astronomers insisted on reserving some military capabilities specifically for repelling space threats. But they were ridiculed for it. They said: 'You want to spend billions on defending against something that may never happen, instead of concentrating efforts on the real threat?'"

  And the real threat… in their opinion, was us, a guess flashed through my mind.

  "And rightly so!" General Xi chewed his meat and set down his fork. "If all their theories were correct, Earth would have been a lifeless desert long ago! We simply wouldn't exist!"

  "The link between mass extinctions and asteroid impacts has long been proven!" Cheng countered with annoyance, and slightly drunken but sincere notes sounded in his voice. "The dinosaurs, the Cretaceous extinction, the Chicxulub crater—all coincide with the appearance of giant impact craters and anomalous iridium layers in geological deposits! That's not theory, it's real, tangible facts!"

  And then I remembered our old academic debates, where philosophical musings increasingly took the place of evidence: that humanity is merely a fleeting flash in an endless series of cosmic catastrophes, and all our history, all our wars and achievements, are meaningless in the face of the universe.

  "Well, I don't believe all these theories!" General Xi cut him off. "Especially fantasists like Professor Han, who dates some rocks as billions of years old based on some dubious methods! Where's the proof those methods work?"

  "But accumulations of fossils in a single layer are direct proof of an instantaneous catastrophe!" Cheng persisted. "Entire ecosystems buried in a single day! That can't be a coincidence!"

  "Oh, of course, he definitely knows it was an asteroid impact! He was there himself!" Xi sneered, and his companions laughed awkwardly.

  "Yes, exactly that!" Cheng suddenly slammed his palm on the table so hard the plates jumped. "Half the animals and plants died then. The second wave—sixty-five million years ago. And now... the third." He drained his cup and said more quietly, almost in a whisper: "Do you still doubt that the culprit wasn't America at all, but a comet swarm? Is it really easier for you to believe in a conspiracy than to admit it was a tragic accident?"

  "Yes, I doubt it!" General Xi stood up angrily, pushing back his chair. I immediately understood why Cheng's words infuriated him so much: he didn't want the surviving people to know that the catastrophe occurred because of their own mistake, not because of our aggression. People like him had been taught all their lives that they were right about everything, that their system was infallible, and the enemy was always external. Admitting that they themselves, with their own hands, with their bureaucracy and distrust of everyone, had destroyed the world—meant demolishing everything he believed in.

  Throughout our entire argument, only one person at the table had not yet spoken a single word. He was a short, stocky man in military uniform without insignia, with thick gray hair and lively, intelligent dark eyes. He sat at the corner of the table, arms crossed over his chest, and only listened attentively, shifting his gaze from one speaker to another. But when General Xi, considering the argument over, started to move toward the exit, he said quietly but distinctly:

  "Sit down, General."

  It was as if he'd been electrocuted. He spun around sharply and, without a word, sat back down, lowering his eyes. A tense silence hung in the room.

  "You were afraid of being poisoned for nothing," he addressed Sara, his voice soft, almost fatherly. "Mei, the girl who served us—is my daughter. She is incapable of treachery. And no one here is capable. We are all in the same boat, which is about to sink if we don't find a solution."

  From the way everyone respectfully fell silent at his words, lowering their heads, and General Xi even hunched his shoulders, I understood: this was the real member of the military council, the real master of this bunker, not Liu and not Xi. Liu was apparently more of a political commissar, and Xi a simple executor; the real power belonged to this gray-haired man with the quiet voice.

  "Convey to President Dixon," he said clearly, looking me straight in the eye, "that we agree to negotiations and any joint program for our common survival. The war is over. We have all lost."

  Then he slowly swept his gaze over those present and added:

  "Furthermore, we agree to a discussion about a future single humanity. And anyone in that single future who suddenly tries to create new weapons of mass destruction," his voice turned icy, "shall be immediately executed without trial under martial law. No appeals. No 'buts.' This must be an iron rule."

  "We understand, Comrade Wei. It has been stated exhaustively," Liu replied, and relief sounded in his voice.

  "If we've already discussed the urgent issues and moreover reached an agreement, perhaps you could tell us where you intend to go next?" he asked me, and genuine interest was evident in his gaze.

  Without hiding anything, I straightforwardly explained our next route—we planned to fly over other surviving enclaves in Europe and Asia to gather as much information as possible and attempt to establish contacts.

  "Do you mind if our astronaut Comrade Zhang Wei stays with you?" he asked when I finished. "He will be your liaison and assistant. And, honestly, it's better for him to be with you now than here. There are too many bitter memories here."

  "No, we don't mind," General Cartwright answered for me, and his serious face softened slightly for the first time that evening. "It will even be useful for us. He knows this region and its culture better than we do. And, by all appearances, he's a reliable young man."

  There was nothing more for us to do in the bunker. We said our goodbyes.

  "Convey to President Dixon: that an agreement is possible only on the principles of humanism and the common good," Comrade Wei said as we parted, shaking our hands. His handshake was firm, warm, alive. "Only on this path can we save what remains of our civilization. We have no other way."

  I wanted to say much more to him—and ask about many things. About how to live on with the knowledge of what we had done to the planet, about whether future generations would forgive us for this, if there were any at all. But mutual accusations were simply pointless now. We could not be stopped in our mad rush toward the abyss. We didn't think about the consequences. And only now, standing amidst the ruins of civilization, do we suddenly speak of humanism, I thought as I climbed the stairs, and these thoughts burned more than any shame.

  On the landing, I glanced back once more at the stairs leading to the bunker's massive doors. Everything I had seen and heard inside seemed strange, almost surreal. This argument about ideologies while the world slowly died around us. Promises of eternal peace and calls for humanism from those who had themselves unleashed this last war for humanity?

  General Hummel silently met us at the Atlas's threshold. He stood with arms crossed, looking as if we'd returned from a light stroll rather than from difficult, historic negotiations. We just as silently took our places. I inserted the chip-key into the control panel and started the engines. In a few minutes, we were airborne, setting a new course—toward new ruins, new survivors, and new attempts to negotiate how not to kill each other off completely.