by Greg Bear
The air in the chief of staff’s office was thick with gloom.
Irwin Schwartz, face long and forehead pale, startling in contrast to his florid cheeks, sat on the edge of his desk with one leg drawn up as far as his paunch would allow, raised cuff exposing a long black sock and a few square inches of hairy white calf. A small flat-screen television perched on his desk like a family portrait, sound turned down. Again and again, the screen replayed the single videotaped record of the explosion of the Australian robot emissaries. Schwartz finally leaned over and poked the screen off with a thick finger.
Around him, David Rotterjack and Arthur Gordon stood, Arthur with hands in pockets, Rotterjack rubbing his chin.
“Secretary Lehrman and Mr. McClennan are with the President now,” Schwartz said. “There’s nothing I can say anymore. I don’t think I have his confidence.”
“Nor I,” Rotterjack said.
“What about Hicks?” Arthur asked.
Schwartz shrugged. “The President moved him out to a hotel a week ago and won’t see him. Sarah called a few minutes ago. She spoke with Hicks this morning, and she’s working on getting an appointment for him. Everything’s tight now. Kermit and I have had it out several times.” Kermit Ferman was the President’s appointments secretary.
“And Ormandy?”
“Sees the President every day, for at least an hour. Off the calendar.”
Arthur couldn’t get Marty out of his wandering thoughts. The boy’s grinning face was detailed and sharp in memory, though static. Heir apparent. He could not conjure an overall picture of Francine’s face, just individual features, and that bothered him.
“Carl’s got one last chance,” Rotterjack said.
“You think he’s giving him the good old ‘presidential’ speech?” Schwartz asked.
Rotterjack nodded.
Arthur glanced between them, puzzled.
“He’s going to talk to the President about what it means to be presidential,” Schwartz explained. “Taking coals to Newcastle, if you ask me. The Man knows everything there is to know about presidentiality.”
“The election’s day after tomorrow. Time to remind him,” Rotterjack said.
“You and I both know he’s got this election sewed up, as much as any election can be. You don’t understand what’s going on in his head,” Schwartz said.
“You’re supposed to be his cushion, his buffer, goddammit,” Rotterjack shouted, one arm shooting out suddenly and almost hitting Arthur. Arthur backed away a few inches but did not react otherwise. “You’re supposed to keep the crazy idiots away from him.”
“We’ve done everything we can to save him from himself,” Schwartz said. “McClennan tried ignoring his suggestions about national preparation. I pushed the meetings with the governors back in the schedule, lost the timetable the President drew up, changed the subject in Cabinet meetings. The President just smiled and tolerated us and kept hammering on the subject. At least everybody’s agreed to hold off until after the election and the inauguration. But between now, and whenever, we have to put up with Ormandy.”
“I’d like to talk with him,” Arthur said.
“So would we all. Crockerman doesn’t specifically forbid it…but Ormandy never lingers long enough for any of us to confront him. The man’s a goddamn shadow in the White House.”
Rotterjack shook his head and grinned. “You’d think Ormandy was one of them.”
“Who?” Schwartz asked.
“The invaders.”
Schwartz frowned. “See what’s going to happen if the President goes public? We’re even beginning to think like gullible idiots.”
“Have you thought what could be happening?” Rotterjack persisted. “If they ‘manufactured’ the Guest, couldn’t they make robots that look human, human enough to pass?”
“I’m more frightened about what that idea can do to us than I am about it’s being true,” Arthur said.
“Yeah, well, there it is,” Rotterjack said. “Take it for what it’s worth. Somebody out there is going to think of it.”
“It’ll tear us apart,” Schwartz said. “Just what they might want. Christ, now I’m talking like that.”
“Maybe it’s just as well we bring it out in the open,” Arthur said. “We haven’t accomplished anything keeping it quiet.”
“Not the way he’d release it,” Rotterjack said. “What’ll you do if McClennan fails to get his point across — again?” he asked Schwartz.
“Eventually, after the election, I could resign,” Schwartz said, his tone flat, neutral. “He might want to put together a wartime Cabinet anyway.”
“Will you?”
Schwartz stared down at the sky-blue carpet. Arthur, following his gaze, thought of the myriad of privileges suggested by that luxurious color, so difficult to keep clean. A myriad of attractions to keep men like Schwartz and Rotterjack working.
“No,” Schwartz said. “I’m just too goddamn loyal. If he does this to me — to us, to all of us — I’ll resent him like hell. But he’ll still be the President.”
“There are quite a few congressmen and senators who’ll work to change that, if he does go public,” Rotterjack said.
“Don’t I know,”
“They’d be the real patriots, you know, not you and I.”
Schwartz’s face filled with pained resentment and frank acknowledgment. He half nodded, half shook his head and stood up from the desk. “All right, David. But we’ve got to keep the White House together somehow. What else is there? Who’ll take his place? The Veep?”
Rotterjack chuckled ironically.
“Right,” Schwartz said. “Arthur, if I make an appointment — if I ram it down the President’s throat — can you get Feinman out here, and can you and Hicks and he do your best to…you know? Do what we can’t?”
“If it can be in the next day or so, and if there are no delays.”
“Feinman’s that sick?” Rotterjack asked.
“He’s in treatment. It’s difficult.”
“Why couldn’t you have found…never mind,” Rotterjack said.
“Feinman’s the best,” Arthur replied to the half-stated query.
Rotterjack nodded glumly.
“We’ll give it a try,” Arthur said.
Arthur walked through the afternoon crowds at Dulles, suit hanging on him, hands in pockets. He knew all too well that he resembled a scarecrow. He had lost ten pounds in the last two weeks, and could ill afford it, but he was seldom hungry now.
Glancing at the American Airlines screen of arrivals and departures, he saw he had half an hour until Harry’s plane landed. He had a choice between forcing down a sandwich or calling Francine and Marty.
Arthur was still trying to remember his wife’s face. He could picture nose, eyes, lips, forehead, the shape of her hands, breasts, genitals, smooth warm white stomach and breasts the color of late morning fog, the texture of her thick black hair. He could recall her smell, warm and rich and breadlike, and the sound of her voice. But not her face.
That made her seem so far away, and him so isolated. He had spent ages, it seemed, in offices and in meetings. There was no reality in an office, no reality among a group of men talking about the fate of the Earth. Certainly no reality surrounding the President.
Reality was back by the river, back in the bedroom and the kitchen of their house, but most especially under the trees with the smooth hiss of wind and the rushing music of water. There he would always be in touch with them, could be isolated and yet not alone, out of sight of wife and son yet able to get back to them. If death should come, would Arthur be away from them, still performing his separate duties…?
The airport, as always, was crowded. A large tight knot of Japanese passed by. He felt a special kinship with Japanese, more so than with foreigners of his own race. Japanese were so intensely interested, and desirous of smooth relations, one-on-one. He walked around the knot, passed a German family, husband and wife and two daughters trying to riddle their b
oarding passes.
He could not remember Harry’s face.
The open phone booth, with its ineffective plastic half bubble, accepted his credit card and thanked him in a warm middle-aged female voice, teacherlike and yet less stern, impersonally interested. Synthetic.
The phone rang six times before he remembered: Francine had told him the night before that Marty would have a dentist’s appointment in the morning.
He hung up and crossed a central courtyard to a snack shop, ordering a turkey-pastrami sandwich and Coke. Twenty-five minutes. Sitting on a tall stool by a diminutive table, he forced himself to eat the entire sandwich.
Bread. Mayonnaise. Bird taste of turkey beneath an overlay of pastrami. Solid but not convincing. He made a face and took the last meatless dry double wedge of bread into his mouth.
For a moment, and no more, he felt himself slide into a spiritual ditch, a little quiet gutter of despair. To simply give up, give in, open his arms to the darkness, shed all responsibility to country, to wife and son, to himself. To end the game — that was all it was, no? Take his piece from the board, watch the board swept clean, a new game set up. Rest. Oddly, coming out of that gutter, he took encouragement and strength from the thought that if indeed they were going to be swept from the board, he could then rest, and there would be an end. Funny how the mind works.
At fifteen minutes after two, he stood at the gate, to one side of a crowd of waiting friends and families. The open double doors brought forth business men and women in trim suits gray and brown and that strange shade of iridescent blue that was so much in fashion, peacock’s eyes Francine called it; three young children holding hands and followed by a woman in knee-length black skirt and austere white blouse, and then Harry, clutching a leather valise and looking thinner, older, tired.
“All right,” Harry said after they hugged and shook hands. “You have me for forty-eight hours, max, and then the doctor wants me back to blunt more needles. Jesus. You look as bad as I do.”
In the small government car, winding through the maze of a bare concrete parking garage, Arthur explained the circumstances of their meeting with the President. “Schwartz is putting aside half an hour in Crockerman’s schedule. It’s getting very” tight. He’s supposed to be in New Hampshire this evening for a final campaign rally. Hicks, you and I will be in the Oval Office with him, undisturbed, for that half hour. We’ll do what we can to convince him he’s wrong.”
“And if we don’t?” Harry asked. Had his eyes lightened in color? They seemed less brown than tan now, almost bleached.
Arthur could only shrug. “How are you feeling?”
“Not as bad as I look.”
“That’s good,” Arthur said, trying to relax that anonymous something in his throat. He smiled thinly at Harry.
“Thanks,” Harry said. “I have an excuse, at least. Is everybody else around here going to look like extras in a vampire movie?”
“What do you weigh now?” Arthur asked. The car moved out into watery sunlight. Snow threatened.
“I’m back to fighting trim. I weigh what I weighed in high school. Graduation day.”
“What’s the prognosis?”
Harry crossed his arms. “Still fighting.”
Arthur glanced at him, did a frank double take, and asked, “Is that a wig?”
“You guessed it,” Harry said. “Enough of that shit. Tell me about Ormandy.”
The wide double doors to the Oval Office opened and three men stepped out. Schwartz nodded at them. Arthur recognized the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Secretary of the Treasury.
“An emergency meeting,” Schwartz murmured after they had passed. Hicks raised his eyebrow in query. “They’re thinking of implementing Section 4 of the Emergency Banking Act, and Section 19a of the Securities and Exchange Act.”
“What are those?” he asked.
“Temporarily close the banks and the stock exchanges,” Schwartz said. “If the President makes his speech.”
The President’s secretary, Nancy Congdon, came to the doors and smiled at the four of them. “Just a few minutes, Irwin,” she said, silently easing them shut.
“Do you need a chair?” Schwartz asked Harry. Harry shook his head calmly. He was already used to people being solicitous. He takes it with something beyond dignity — with aplomb.
The secretary opened the doors and invited them in.
Mrs. Hampton had redecorated the President’s office, hanging the three windows behind the President’s large, ornately decorated desk with white curtains and ordering a new oval green rug with the presidential seal. The room seemed filled with light, verdant and springlike despite the gray winter skies outside. Through the windows, Arthur caught a glimpse of the snow-patched Rose Garden. He had last been in the Oval Office a year and a half before.
Crockerman sat behind the Victorian-era desk, looking over a stack of briefs tucked into brown folders. Some of the folders, Arthur noticed, were marked DIRNSA — Director, National Security Agency. Others were from the offices of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. He’s not going off half cocked. He’s preparing, and he deeply believes in what he’s doing. He hasn’t stopped being presidential.
“Hello, Irwin, Arthur…” Crockerman stood and reached across the desk to shake their hands. “Trevor, Harry.” He pointed to the four leather-bottomed, cane-backed chairs arranged before the desk. Addressing Hicks in particular, he said, “Sarah mentioned I might be meeting with you.”
“I think we’ve all joined forces, Mr. President,” Schwartz said.
“Are you feeling up to this, Harry?” Crockerman asked, politely solicitous.
“Yes, Mr. President,” Harry replied smoothly. “I’m not needed back with the mice and monkeys until the day after tomorrow.”
“We need you here, Harry,” the President said earnestly. “We can’t afford to lose you now.”
“That’s not what I’ve been hearing, Mr. President,” Harry said. Crockerman showed some puzzlement. “You haven’t been listening to anybody I trust around here, much less myself.”
“Gentlemen,” Crockerman said, raising his eyebrows. “Time to speak openly. And I apologize for being inaccessible recently. Time has been precious.”
Schwartz leaned forward on his chair, clasping his hands. As he spoke, he raised his eyes slowly from his feet to Crockerman’s face. “Mr. President, we’re not here to mince words. I’ve told Harry, and Trevor, and Arthur, that it’s going to take some powerful persuasion to move you back onto a rational course. They’ve come loaded for bear.”
Crockerman nodded and rested his hands lightly on the edge of the desk, as if he might push away at any moment. His expression remained pleasant, alert.
“Mr. President, the First Lady did indeed speak to me,” Hicks said.
“She’s not speaking to me, you know,” Crockerman said levelly. “Or not often, at any rate. She doesn’t share our convictions.”
“Yes,” Hicks said. “Or rather, no…Mr. President, my colleagues — “ He cast a pleading look at Arthur.
“We assume you’re still planning to tell the public about the Death Valley bogey,” Arthur said, “and about the Guest.”
“The story will break soon one way or the other,” Crockerman said. “It must be kept quiet past the election and the inauguration, but after that…” He lifted three fingers from their grip on the edge of the desk and shrugged slightly.
“We’re not at all sure about your emphasis, sir…” Arthur paused. “Surrender will not sit well with the country.”
Crockerman hardly blinked. “Surrender. Accommodation. Nasty words, aren’t they? But what choice have we against superhuman forces?”
“We do not know they are superhuman, sir,” Harry said.
“It would take us thousands, perhaps millions of years to rival their technology — if indeed we can even call it technology. Think of the power to destroy an entire moon, and push its fragment
s into collisions with other worlds…”
“We don’t know that these events are connected,” Arthur said. “But I think we could equal them with a couple of hundred years of progress.”
“What does it matter, two centuries or two millennia? They can still destroy our world.”
“We don’t know that,” Schwartz said.
“We don’t even know of whom we speak when we say ‘they,’” Hicks said.
“Angels, powers, aliens. Whatever they might be.”
“Mr. President,” Hicks said, “we are not facing God’s wrath.”
“It seems we face something equivalent in force, whatever the ultimate source,” Crockerman said. “Can something so catastrophic happen to the Earth without God’s approval? We are His children. His punishments are not random, not when they’re on such a huge scale.”
Hicks noted that the President’s pronoun for God had assumed traditional gender now. Was that Ormandy’s doing?
“We have no evidence the Earth can be destroyed,” Harry said. “What we need . .’. we need a smoking gun, something that proves that the power they claim to have does indeed belong to them. We don’t have a smoking gun.”
“They reveal their intentions clearly enough,” Crockerman said. “The self-destruction of the Australian robots shows them to be bringers of false testimony. When their lies are discovered, and pointed out to them, they vanish. Their message of hope is a deception. I believe I knew that, sensed it, before the news from Australia arrived. Ormandy certainly did.”
“None of us puts any faith in Mr. Ormandy,” Schwartz said.
Crockerman was obviously irritated by this, but kept his calm. “Ormandy does not expect the accolade of scientists. He — and I — believe affairs have passed out of the control of our particular witch doctors. Not to show disrespect for your hard work and expertise. He and I realized there was a job to do here, and that we are the only ones capable of doing it.”