by John Scalzi
“Yes, that one,” Birnbaum said.
“You’ll note that the subject of the rally is the Colonial Union,” Smart said. “Which is to say, that single issue that you’re not branching out from.”
“It’s not what the Rally is about,” Birnbaum said. “It’s who is going to be there with me. I’ve got both the Senate majority leader and House minority leader up there on the stage with me. I’ve been cultivating my relationships with them for the last six weeks, Louisa. They’ve been feeding me all sorts of information, because we have midterms coming up. They want the House back and I’m going to be the one to get it for them. So after the Rally, we begin the shift away from the Colonial Union and back to matters closer to home. We’ll ride the Colonial Union thing as long as we can, of course. But this way, when that horse rides into the sunset I’m still in a position to influence the political course of the nation.”
“As long as you don’t mind being a political party’s cabana boy,” Smart said.
“I prefer ‘unofficial agenda setter’ myself,” Birnbaum said. “And if I deliver this election, then I think I’ll be able to call myself something else. It’s all upside.”
“Is this the part where I stand at your side as you roll into Rome in triumph, whispering ‘Remember thou art mortal’ into your ear?” Smart asked.
“I don’t entirely get the reference,” Birnbaum said. His world history knowledge was marginally worse than his United States history knowledge.
Smart rolled her eyes. “Of course not,” she said. “Remember it anyway, Al. It might come in handy one day.”
Birnbaum made a note to remember it but forgot because he was busy with his show, the Rally and everything that would follow after it. It came back to him briefly on the day of the Rally, when, after stirring fifteen-minute speeches from the House minority leader and the Senate majority leader, Birnbaum ascended the podium and stood at the lectern on the stage of the Rally, looking out at a sea of seventy thousand faces (fewer than the one hundred thousand faces they had been hoping for, but more than enough, and anyway they’d round up because it was all estimates in any event). The faces, mostly male, mostly middle-aged, looked up at him with admiration and fervor and the knowledge that they were part of something bigger, something that he, Albert Birnbaum, had started.
Remember thou art mortal, Birnbaum heard Louisa Smart say in his head. He smiled at it; Louisa wasn’t at the Rally because of a wedding. He’d rib her about it later. Birnbaum brought up his notes on the lectern monitor and opened his mouth to speak and then was deeply confused when he was facedown on the podium, gasping like a fish and feeling sticky from the blood spurting out of what remained of his shoulder. His ears registered a crack, as if distant thunder were finally catching up with lightning, then he heard screams and the sound of seventy thousand panicked people trying to run, and then blacked out.
Birnbaum looked up and saw Michael Washington looking down at him.
“How did you get in here?” Birnbaum asked, after he had taken a couple of minutes to remember who he was (Albert Birnbaum), where he was (Washington Sacred Heart Catholic Hospital), what time it was (2:47 a.m.) and why he was there (he’d been shot).
Washington pointed with a gloved hand to the badge on his chest, and Birnbaum realized Washington was in a police uniform. “That’s not real,” Birnbaum protested.
“Actually it is,” Washington said. “I usually work plain clothes, but this was useful for the moment.”
“I thought you were some sort of facilitator,” Birnbaum said. “You have clients.”
“I am and I do,” Washington said. “Some cops tend bar on the side. This is what I do.”
“You’re joking,” Birnbaum said.
“That’s entirely possible,” Washington said.
“Why are you here now?” Birnbaum asked.
“Because we had unfinished business,” Washington said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Birnbaum said. “You asked me to pimp a pro-Colonial Union story. I did that.”
“And you did a fine job with it,” Washington said. “Although at the end things were beginning to flag. You had fewer people at your rally than you had anticipated.”
“We had a hundred thousand,” Birnbaum said, weakly.
“No,” Washington said. “But I appreciate you making the effort there.”
Birnbaum’s mind began to wander, but he focused on Washington again. “So what unfinished business do we have?” he asked.
“You dying,” Washington said. “You were supposed to have been assassinated at the rally, but our marksman didn’t make the shot. He blamed it on a gust of wind between him and the target. So it fell to me.”
Birnbaum was confused. “Why do you want me dead? I did what you asked.”
“And again, you did a fine job,” Washington said. “But now the discussion needs to be brought to another level. Making you a martyr to the cause will do that. Nothing like a public assassination to embed the topic into the national consciousness.”
“I don’t understand,” Birnbaum said, increasingly confused.
“I know,” Washington said. “But you never understood, Mr. Birnbaum. You didn’t want to understand all that much, I think. You never even really cared who I worked for. All you were interested in was what I was dangling in front of you. You never took your eyes off that.”
“Who do you work for?” Birnbaum croaked.
“I work for the Colonial Union, of course,” Washington said. “They needed some way to change the conversation. Or, alternately, I work for Russians and the Brazilians, who are upset that the United States is taking the lead in the international discussions about the Colonial Union and wanted to disrupt its momentum. No, I work for the political party not in the White House, who was looking to change the election calculus. Actually, all of those were lies: I work for a cabal who wants to form a world government.”
Birnbaum bulged his eyes at him, disbelieving.
“The time to have demanded an answer was before you took the job, Mr. Birnbaum,” Washington said. “Now you’ll never know.” He held up a syringe. “You woke up because I injected you with this. It’s shutting down your nervous system as we speak. It’s intentionally obvious. We want it to be clear you were assassinated. There are enough clues planted in various places for a merry chase. You’ll be even more famous now. And with that fame will come influence. Not that you will be able to use it, of course. But others will, and that will be enough. Fame, power and an audience, Mr. Birnbaum. It’s what you were promised. It’s what you were given.”
Birnbaum said nothing to this; he’d died midmonologue. Washington smiled, planted the syringe in Birnbaum’s bed and walked out of the room.
“They have the assassin on video,” Jason from Canoga Park said, to Louisa Smart, who had taken over the show, temporarily, for the memorial broadcast. “They have him on video injecting him and talking to him before he died. That was when it happened. When he revealed the plot of the world government.”
“We can’t know that,” Smart said, and for the millionth time wondered how Birnbaum managed to talk to his listeners without wanting to crawl down the stream to strangle them. “The video is low resolution and has no audio. We’ll never know what they had to say to each other.”
“What else could it be?” Jason said. “Who else could have managed it?”
“It’s a compelling point, Jason,” Smart said, preparing to switch over to the next caller and whatever their cockamamie theory would be.
“I’m going to miss Al,” Jason said, before she could unplug him. “He called himself the Voice in the Wilderness. But if he was, we were all in the wilderness with him. Who will be that voice now? Who will call to us? And what will they say?”
Smart had no good answer to that. She just went to the next caller instead.
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John Scalzi
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