by Greg Keyes
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I did not mean to begin this, not now. Not when I’m so glad to have you here. You must understand, however, I know my business. The people love you. You and your brother are like princes to them. They will want you to have a substantial rank. They will require it, and one day, when it is your time to succeed me—it will be important then, too.”
“But surely this is a democracy,” Dikembe said.
“Democracy, like art, is not something we can afford at this time. One day, we can hope—but not now. Then, if there is by some chance a vote, they will vote for you.”
We’ll see about that, Dikembe thought, because if there was one thing he was certain of, it was that he would never be the ruler of this or any other “republic.”
4
JUNE
1997
David Levinson paused to stare as the guards at the gate checked his credentials.
“He’s okay, boys,” Connie said. “He’s with me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of them said. He studied David. “Hey,” he said. “You’re that guy.”
“Yes,” David said. “Absolutely. I’m that guy.” Turning, he crooked a forefinger at the ongoing construction ahead of him. “Honey, am I… Are they making it bigger?”
Connie squeezed his arm. “A little bigger,” she said.
“How much bigger?” he asked.
She looked down and pushed a stray lock of hair from her face.
“You know—about twice—ah, as big.”
“Right,” David said. “Of course. A bigger target, that’s what we need. That’s our national priority.”
“David, be nice,” Connie said.
“You two can go on up now,” the guard said.
“Thanks,” David said. He took Connie’s hand, felt the ring there, and smiled a little. It had taken saving the world to get her back, but it had been worth it.
“It’s just… unreal,” he said. David had seen a lot of strange things in the past few years—the guts of an alien mother ship, for one—but this was right up there.
The fence they had just passed through and the structure coming together in front of him stood in the middle of an ash field around eight miles in diameter. Here and there, the slumped, melted forms that had once been buildings and monuments thrust up from the dust. Weeds had begun to repopulate the wasteland, but the predominant color was still gray.
Except right here, where a carefully manicured lawn grew. And beyond the lawn, the scaffolded, half-formed building.
“White House 2.0,” David said.
An aide and a secret service agent met them at the door. He remembered when he had last been here, frantically trying to find Connie, to convince her to leave.
Well, no, not here. That White House had been vaporized.
The only part of the new building that seemed to be completely in the dry was the West Wing, and that’s where they led him, into a room very much like the Oval Office he had been in before but—bigger.
“David. Welcome.”
“Mr. President,” David said. “Nice to see you again.”
Whitmore looked a little older, a little less boyish, which was to be expected. Even in good times presidents seemed to age faster than most people, and the last year or so of his administration hadn’t generally been what could be considered “good times.” But if he had lost a bit of youthful appeal, he had become a much more decisive, confident, proactive leader. He was a man with a mission, and he didn’t mind saying so.
That mission was nothing less than the unification of humanity. In the past, David had disliked the man for both political and personal reasons, but he had come to truly admire him since the events of the Fourth.
General Grey was also present, along with several other people he didn’t know but assumed to be freshly minted cabinet members or advisors—and Stephen Bell, the vice-president.
He did a round of handshaking, then sat in the chair Whitmore indicated. There was a little chitchat, someone brought coffee, and then the president got down to business.
“So, David,” Whitmore said. “What have you got for us? What do you need?”
“Well, uh—let me see,” he said. “Money, and a good deal of it.”
There were a few chuckles, and then silence.
“That’s it?” Whitmore finally said. “I read the last budget Area 51 submitted. I expect Congress to approve it.”
“Sure,” David said, frowning slightly. “Maybe I started in the wrong place. Area 51 was created for a rather limited purpose—to study, basically, one ship and three bodies. I know there was some other stuff, but, you know—that would be quibbling. The amount of material we’re in possession of now is astronomical, to say the least. A lot of it is literally sitting on top of us.
“We need more than one facility—we need dozens, and more than that, we need a coordinated approach to eliminate redundancy and waste. We need a centralized method to the study—and maybe more to the point to the application—of alien technology. When I say a centralized, I mean an international agency of some sort.” He paused, but no one seemed ready to fill the silence.
“I think this is urgent,” he added.
“You think more of these ships are on the way,” Bell said. He was a pleasant-looking fellow with wispy auburn hair and a round face. He seemed terribly young for the job he now inhabited.
“Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t,” David said. “We can’t take chances. I’ve been studying their last transmissions. There was a burst toward the end. I can’t be sure what it was, but if I had to guess—given the timing and the energy involved—I would venture to say that it was a distress call.”
“Yes,” Whitmore said. “I read your memo.”
“Well, then…”
Whitmore smiled. He appeared genuinely amused.
“You didn’t think you were going to get an argument from me, did you, David?”
David blinked.
“Well,” he said, “it’s just that I know money is tight, right now, and when I see how some of it has been allocated…” His eyes darted around the reconstructed Oval Office.
“David,” Connie said under her breath.
“You don’t approve?” Whitmore said.
“I… no, I didn’t say that,” David said. “Why wouldn’t I approve? It’s—you know—so big.”
Whitmore chuckled. “I’m not sure I approve myself,” he admitted. “To even deign to call what we have right now an economy is laughable, but here’s the thing. New York, L.A., Houston—those cities won’t be rebuilt. Eventually, maybe, but we’ve lost so many people—it’s easier to build a new life—or continue an old one—where there is working infrastructure. This place, however—this place is different. The White House wasn’t just a building, it was a symbol. So was the Capitol building, and we’ll soon get to work on that. This is the one place in this country that must be rebuilt. We need people to understand that we didn’t just not lose—we won. That we’ll carry on.”
“Okay,” David said. He wasn’t sure he bought it, but he hadn’t come here to argue. Or actually, he had, but things seemed to be going well, and by the way Connie was digging her nails into his arm he realized he had set them off on an entirely unnecessary and probably counterproductive tangent.
“Okay,” he said. “About the center…”
“The other side of the equation,” Whitmore said, “is that people need to feel safe. You’re not the only one who worries about the next invasion. We have to show them we’re working on that, learning how to turn their own technology against them.”
“Yes,” David said. “Exactly. And there are other, non-military applications for the technology that can make all of our lives better too. For instance—”
Vice-President Bell interrupted.
“That may be,” he said, “but I think that sort of thing is for the private sector to deal with. Every dime the government spends on this should be on military applications, period, full stop. Becaus
e if more of them do come, and we aren’t ready, no one is going to care if they have a zero-gravity coffee maker or what have you.”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking about coffee makers, specifically,” David said cautiously, “but—”
“I’ll cut to the chase, David,” Whitmore said. “You’re going to get your center for alien technology. You’re going to get your funding. I’ve run a similar suggestion past the Speaker, the Senate majority leader, and other key members of Congress. I’ve never seen such a unified government in my lifetime. Congress is ready to write a bill. We just need you to tell us what should be in it.”
“Well, that’s—that’s great,” David said. “May I start with the big one? We need a base on the moon, and soon as possible.”
“Why is that?” General Grey asked.
“Well, you know better than I that commanding the high ground is important. I think in a few years we can build—or grow, actually—energy cannons based on alien technology. On the moon—in the lower gravity—we can make them big, really big, and we won’t have to fire them through our own atmosphere.”
“But the cost—” Whitmore began. “The Apollo missions cost twenty-six billion, if I remember correctly.”
“Twenty-five point four,” David said. “Yes, but the technology we’re now working with—we’re within a decade of having spacecraft based on their technology. Anti-gravity. Fusion drives. Once we make that initial investment in the technology, space travel is going to be cheap, and there’s no reason we have to foot the whole bill. Like I said, I think this should be an international effort.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Grey said.
“Russia, China—everybody is working on this right now,” David continued. “That’s what I meant by reducing redundancy. The better we task this out, the faster it gets done.”
“I agree,” Whitmore said. “I’ve been in talks with the leaders of some of those countries, about something I’m calling the Earth Space Defense initiative. I won’t go into a lot of detail, but it will involve consolidating our own military organizations and working across the globe with others. Research and development, of course, will be a big part of that. You lay out everything you want, in writing. Let me worry about international negotiations.”
David absorbed all of that for a moment.
“Well,” he said, finally, “now that you mention it, there’s one negotiation that really can’t wait.”
“And what’s that, David?”
“This guy in Africa, Umbutu. Reports are that he’s got a nearly intact ship. We’ve got to get in there.”
“Mr. President, if I may?”
The speaker was a dark-skinned woman with short, curly hair, probably a couple of years south of forty.
The president nodded. “David, this is Francine Pinckney, my advisor on foreign intelligence.”
“Ms. Pinckney,” David said.
“The region you’re talking about wasn’t exactly stable when the aliens showed up,” she said. “Now it’s much less so. Umbutu was a provincial authority, but now he can probably be better characterized as a warlord. In fact, he’s renamed his province the Republique Nationale d’Umbutu. They have a flag and everything.”
“Classy,” David said. “Humble guy.”
“Because the ship was intact, many more aliens survived there than elsewhere. Because of that, and because Umbutu wouldn’t accept any outside help—not even air support—the ground war there has dragged on almost a year. We’ve heard almost nothing from the regime. One thing is clear, however. Umbutu refuses to let anyone representing any foreign power or agency into his ‘country’ for any reason. He’s made it clear he considers the alien ship to be property of the state. Short of a military invasion, there’s no way to get to it.”
“There will be no invasion,” Whitmore said. “We’re trying to bring the world together, not pull it apart. And before anyone suggests it, covert action is also out of the question. In the present environment, diplomacy is our most powerful tool. There must be something this guy wants. We’ll find it. Besides, you have nearly three dozen other wrecks to work with.”
“Yes,” David said, “but this one isn’t a wreck.”
“Does that make such a big difference?” the president asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” David said. “It might. We can’t know until we check it out.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Whitmore said. “So, for now, let us know what you want, and we’ll get what we can.”
“Well, it’s not just what I want,” David said. “I’m just the messenger. I drew the short straw. I’ll talk to Isaacs and the new guys and we’ll have a proposal in—I don’t know, a matter of days. One thing I think we can do immediately is improve SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, fine-tune it to be more sensitive to their signals.”
“Good,” Whitmore said. “Just—write it down.”
“Okay,” David said.
“One more thing,” Whitmore said. “The Earth Space Defense will largely be a military organization, but I think it needs a civilian director. I want you to be that director. I want you to run it.”
“Yeah, right,” David said, grinning.
But none of them smiled.
“Oh,” he said. “You weren’t kidding. Ah—run it? Not so fast. Look, that’s not—that’s not me. Let someone else do that and let me, you know, do my thing. I’ve got ten projects going right now. I’m not—clearly not—the leader type. Evil counselor, I can do, you know, the guy plotting in the shadows, Cardinal Richelieu and so forth—”
“David,” Whitmore said. “You’re a hero, and like this building, you’re a symbol. You beat them. People will feel more confident if they know you’re in charge.”
“Because they don’t know me,” David replied. “I just—I’m sorry, no. I’m happy to help build this thing, make it work, pass it along. Give me a fancy title. Just don’t put me in charge. I’m the guy who tells the guy in charge what’s wrong with what he’s doing. I can’t do that if—well, you get the picture.”
Whitmore studied him for a moment, then sighed.
“I wish you would reconsider,” he said, “but I can’t make you do it.”
“I’m honored,” David said. “Really.”
* * *
Patricia watched as David Levinson shook hands and left with his wife. Mr. Bell seemed to want to talk about something, but her dad sent everyone out of the room. Then his shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
“Is something wrong with your dad?” Dylan asked.
The two of them were hiding up on the unfinished second floor. They had begun the day when Dylan’s mom dropped him off so she could go to nursing school. It was their summer routine. Then it was playing on the lawn, pretending to be explorers in an ancient ruin. The new favorite game was giving the secret service woman who was supposed to be watching them the slip, so they could slide down the newly finished banisters, pretending to be fighter pilots, blowing aliens out of the sky.
And sometimes eavesdropping on Dad.
“He’s just tired,” she said. “He works all the time.”
“Mom says everybody needs a good night’s sleep,” Dylan said. “Of course, she’s up late studying, too.” He scratched his head. “So what now?”
“I feel like ice cream,” Patricia said.
They snuck back downstairs to the kitchen. There were a couple of people doing the dishes from breakfast, and Chef Cortez was in a huddle with his staff, probably talking about lunch. Dylan kept watch and she stole into the walk-in cooler and emerged with a container of rocky road. Then the two of them retired to the garden with a pair of spoons.
“That’s good,” Dylan said.
“Yeah,” Patricia replied.
“I like hanging out here,” he said. “I’m glad my dad moved us to D.C.”
“Me too,” Patricia replied. She took another bite, kept it in her mouth while it melted.
“What?”
“My dad. You asked if there was something wrong with him.”
“Oh.”
“I still have nightmares about all that stuff too,” Dylan said.
She nodded. “He misses Mommy,” she said, “and he’s tired a lot. He says it will get better.”
“Well, that’s good,” Dylan said.
“Yeah,” Patricia said.
5
Bakari stopped short of the top of the hill.
“You feel them?” he whispered.
“Yes,” Dikembe said.
If he had to explain it to someone who didn’t understand, he would probably describe the sensation as similar to hearing a swarm of bees or the pins-and-needles feeling when his foot went to sleep. Yet it was neither a sound nor a feeling, but a thing inside of his head.
It had started small, but as the months of the war dragged out—as the aliens hunted them with their minds, like bats used sonar to find insects—a sort of feedback loop was beginning to develop. Their human minds were somehow adapting to the alien mental probes and attacks. It was becoming easier to know where they would be, sense a trap, know when they were at your back. Some were more sensitive than others. Dikembe, as it turned out, dealt with them better than anyone.
“It’s only a few of them,” he said. “On the other side of the hill.”
“Okay,” Bakari said. “Let’s do this then.” He signed for the flanks to move around, and began to move the middle up. At the top of the hill, Bakari pulled the pin from a grenade and hurled so it cleared the top and fell downslope on the other side.
An explosion, then Dikembe felt their anguish, their pain, if it could be called that. Green energy began spearing up from below, and five of them crested the ridge. They never had a chance, as thirty-four soldiers opened up on them, but as they died, Dikembe felt something… different.
“Merde,” he swore. “I think…” He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. The gunfire continued, as the rest of the alien force died.