*
Slam! A taxicab trying to drive along the sidewalk crashed into a delivery truck doing the same thing. David, pedaling furiously, weaved in and out of the thick traffic. Everywhere around him, the streets were in total gridlock. Even when he got onto the bridge, the people crossing on foot were making much better time than the cars.
Fifteen minutes later, he coasted up to a row of tidy brownstone houses in Brooklyn. He swerved at the last second, narrowly avoiding a mattress being tossed out a second-story window. All up and down the street, residents were packing up whatever they could, preparing to evacuate.
He banged and banged on his father’s front door until suddenly it flew open and David found himself nose to nose with a pump-action shotgun. “Whoa! Pops, it’s me.”
Julius lowered the gun, peering both ways down the street and dragging his son through the doorway. “Vultures. They said on the TV they’ve already started with the looting. I swear before God, if they try breaking in here, I’ll shoot.”
“Pop, listen, you still got the Valiant?”
Julius arched an eyebrow, suspicious. “Yeah, I still got it. What do you care? You don’t even have a driver’s license.”
“I don’t need a license.” He looked the old man in the eyes. “You’re driving.”
*
Steve stood by the bed, repacking the weekend clothes he hadn’t had a chance to wear. Wearing his officer’s uniform and a cocky grin, his movements took on a disciplined intensity and athletic grace that showed how anxious he was to get back to El Toro and, if need be, teach the uninvited guests a lesson. Jasmine leaned against a wall chewing on a fingernail, visibly upset.
“You could say you didn’t hear the announcement,” she told him.
He just chuckled and kept on packing. “Baby, you know how it is. They’re calling us in, and I’ve got to report.”
“Just because they call… I bet half those guys don’t even show up.”
“Whoa.” He stopped her. “Jazzy, why are you getting like this?” She looked like she was about to start crying, and Steve moved to comfort her. He reached to put his arms around her, but she slapped them away, accidentally knocking one of her dolphin figurines off the nightstand.
“I’ll tell you why I’m getting this way,” she shouted, tearing the curtains back to show him the sky, “because that thing scares the hell out of me!” She slumped against the closet door and let herself slide to the floor.
“Listen to me.” Steve squatted down to face her and picked up the glass dolphin, which was still intact. “I don’t think they flew ninety billion light years across the universe just to come down here and start a fight. This is a totally amazing moment in history.”
It was a corny thing to say, but Steve meant it. He feared nothing. Not in a tough-guy-with-a-death-wish way; he just didn’t understand letting yourself get frightened. He knew lots of people who let themselves be crippled by a thousand small fears, who let fear become a habit. They were so afraid of failure or humiliation or physical pain they stopped taking risks, stopped living large. What he had always admired most about Jasmine was her bravery. Like everyone else, she lived with uncertainty, but never seemed to sweat the little things that kept other people in straight jackets: money, schedules, what other people thought of her.
He reached for her hands again, and this time she let them be held. While they were looking into one another’s eyes, the big question suddenly appeared again. The same one they’d been doing their best to ignore for the past couple months: what they meant to one another and whether their relationship had a serious future. Steve gulped. He had a small box in his pocket that he wanted to take out and show her, something he’d had custom made several weeks ago. His lips tried unsuccessfully to form the words that would let him broach the subject. He wanted to ask her a question, the question. But the consequences of asking would be devastating to his career. So, unable to choose between the two things he cherished most, he executed an evasive maneuver.
“C’mon, walk me out to the car.”
Jasmine was brave, but she wasn’t fearless. She’d been abandoned too many times and lost too much to meet this situation with Steve’s breezy confidence. She felt like she had finally put her life in order, that for the first time everything was working out for her, and now, with the arrival of the ship, it all threatened to come unraveled at once. Intellectually, she knew Steve was under orders to return to the base, and it didn’t mean he was abandoning her. But at the same time, this was a crisis, and Steve’s first move was to pack his bags.
“Can I take this?” He held up the little glass dolphin. “I’ll bring it back, I promise.”
She smiled and nodded. She had no choice but to try and believe him.
*
He’d left his Mustang’s top down all night, and when he came outside, Steve found Dylan behind the steering wheel. After lifting the boy out of the car, he reached into the backseat for a bag he’d left there.
“I’ve got something for you, kiddo. Remember I promised to bring you some fireworks?” Steve turned over custody of the package, adding, “But you’ve got to be real careful with them.”
Dylan tore back the wrapping to reveal a bundle of brightly colored paper tubes with sticks attached. They looked like overgrown bottle rockets and the name FyreStix was printed on each one.
“Wow, fireworks!” the boy said in awe, holding the sacred objects out for his mother’s inspection. “Cool big ones.”
Jasmine shot Steve a look: Oh, thanks a lot!
“I was gonna set ’em off myself in the park tonight, but… You’re supposed to plant ’em in the grass, and they shoot off a bunch of pretty colors straight up about twenty feet.”
Jasmine was half listening, distracted by the sight of the huge ship, which had parked itself over downtown LA’s tallest building. Soon after it had ceased to move forward, it started rotating very slowly and the rumbling disappeared.
Steve reached into his jacket pocket and fingered the small box inside. It was hard for him to see Jasmine feeling scared. “I was thinking,” he began thoughtfully, “why don’t you and Dylan pack up some things and, you know,” he looked up and down the street, “come stay with me on the base tonight?” The invitation took Jasmine by surprise. He’d never invited her anywhere near the base and she’d never asked to come. She knew he had good reason for not wanting to be seen with her. Suddenly she was concerned for him. “You sure that’s okay? You don’t mind?”
“Well,” he moaned, “I will have to call all my other girlfriends and put the freaky-deaky on hold till later, but no, I don’t mind.”
She punched him in the arm. “There you go again, thinking you’re all that. Let me tell you something, Captain, you’re not as charming as you think you are.”
“Yes, I am.” He grinned, hopping into the car.
“Dumbo ears.”
“Chicken legs,” he shot back, firing up the engine. Then, after a final kiss, he drove off, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll see you tonight.” Watching them wave goodbye in his rearview mirror, he wondered if he’d done the right thing, inviting Jasmine to El Toro. It was only a compromise solution.
For her part, Jasmine felt elated and terrified at the same time. She and Dylan stood in the street waving until the red convertible disappeared behind the crest of the hill, then looked once more at the slowly twirling cancerous daisy blotting out the sky. She picked up her son and carried him toward the house, snatching the package of FyreStix from his hands. “I’ll take those, thank you.”
“Mom, come on!”
*
Julius’s ’68 Plymouth Valiant was in mint condition. He kept it under a tarp inside his garage and most of the miles he put on the car were his once-weekly drives to the grocery. His top speed on the highway was usually a maddeningly slow forty-five miles per hour, even during out-of-town drives, which helped explain why David had never applied for a driver’s license. But, because this was an emergency situation
, the old man tore down the highway at the blistering pace of fifty-five. The highbeams of faster cars bore down on them like the eyes of mechanical wolves. Many of these cars were stuffed to the windows with people and suitcases and boxes of food. Some had mattresses lashed non-aerodynamically to their roofs and when they zoomed past, the passengers would all turn and stare at the two men in the midnight blue classic who were tooling along like they were out enjoying a Sunday drive. The faces behind the windows were hardened into masks of fear by the first twelve hours of the invasion.
“Slow down, you ding-a-ling!” Julius waved a fist and shouted as a van whizzed past at double the Valiant’s speed.
“Fifty-five, Dad, please,” David said, calling the old man’s attention once more to the speedometer. “You’re dipping.”
“I’m dipping?”
“Dipping below fifty-five. Keep your speed up.” David would have liked to be passing every car on the road, but he knew his father’s limits, and fifty-five was one of them. Any faster, Julius felt, and the car would self-destruct beneath them. David bit his tongue and tried to relax. There was still time. Besides, he couldn’t push too hard after the way Julius had accepted the mission.
David had expected him to put up a fight, to rant and rave for at least half an hour about what a ludicrous idea it all was. But as soon as he’d explained why he had to get there in one breathless tumble of words, Julius had leaned close and stared into his child’s eyes for a long moment as if searching for something in particular. Something he saw convinced him. “Fix me a sandwich,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll get my coat.”
Thirty minutes later, they were out of town, thanks in large part to David’s incredible prowess at navigation. Having spent a good deal of his life in the back of a taxicab, he knew every short cut there was. Once they were out on the highway and pointed for D.C., David broke out his laptop to learn more about the signal, still surprised that his plan had met with so little resistance from his usually resistant father.
“It’s the White House, for crying out loud,” Julius suddenly erupted, as David stared at the numbers on his computer, “you can’t just walk up and ring the doorbell. ‘Good evening, hey, let me talk to the president for a minute.’ You think they don’t know what you know? Believe me, they know. They know everything.”
“This they don’t know, trust me,” David said, trying to concentrate.
“If you’re so damn smart, explain me something. How come you went ten years to MIT, graduated with honors, and won all those awards just so you could become a cable repairman?” The question, like many Julius asked, hit below the belt.
“Please don’t start in on me about that,” David muttered in a way he hoped would close the subject. It was one of his sorest spots, what everyone else referred to as his lack of ambition. He was grossly overqualified for his position at Compact and had been headhunted by research labs all over the nation. He still got occasional letters asking if he’d be interested in working for scientific projects as diverse as the super collider in Texas or the Biosphere in Arizona. He could have pretty much written his own ticket in jobs like those, but he preferred to stay where he was. He loved his city, his job, his father and, until she left to work for Senator Whitmore, his wife.
Stung by the question, David pretended to work at the computer. He couldn’t have cared less what other people thought of him, but his father’s disappointment was a thorn in his side. “Seven years,” David grumbled.
“Seven years? What are you saying?”
“I was only at MIT for seven years, and I’m not a cable repairman, I’m the chief consulting systems engineer.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Bigshot,” Julius said derisively, leaning close to the steering wheel. “All I’m saying is: they’ve got people to handle this kind of thing. If they want HBO, they’ll call you.”
Another low blow. David bit his lip and checked the speedometer again. “You’re dipping.”
*
The first lady had the swank hotel lounge to herself. Her retinue of assistants and Secret Service agents had backed off to give her some privacy while she telephoned her husband. Whenever the door opened, she could see the herd of reporters waiting for her out in the main lobby. A handful of LAPD cops had corralled them behind velvet ropes while they waited for her to emerge and hold the press conference they’d been promised.
“Mare?”
“Tom, hello. How are you holding up?” she asked.
“Considering the circumstances,” Whitmore answered, “pretty well.” It was 11 P.M. his time, and his voice sounded weary.
“Where are you?”
“In the bedroom. I thought I should try and lay down for a while.”
“Good idea. What’s the mood like back there?”
“Listen,” he changed the subject, “I’m arranging to send a helicopter to the Biltmore. There’s a helipad on the top of the building. I want you out of Los Angeles as soon as possible. If these things decide to get ugly on us…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
Marilyn smiled. “I thought you’d say that, but I just saw Connie’s press conference. Tom, I’m proud of you for staying in the White House. I think it’s the right thing to do. But the statement you’re trying to make isn’t going to be very convincing if they watch me hightail it out of here.”
“You’re directly below that thing, aren’t you?” Indeed, her hotel, the historic and luxurious Biltmore, was only two blocks from the old First Interstate Building. The center of the slowly spinning craft was directly overhead. Downtown LA, usually crowded on a Friday night with an incongruous mix of stretch limousines and promenading Centroamericanos, was nearly empty, a ghost town.
“Yes, it’s still up there,” she allowed, “but I’ve got a dozen news crews waiting in the lobby. Johanna’s out there setting up a news conference and then a few interviews. I’ll leave as soon as they’re finished. I promise.”
“No way. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but we have no idea what these ships have planned. I’m going to—”
“Tom, listen to me.” She cut him off sternly. “I know you’re worried. But I have a responsibility here, too. People will listen to me.”
He couldn’t argue with that. In one public opinion poll after another, Marilyn Whitmore had proven to be the single most popular figure in all of Washington. What Jacqueline Kennedy had done with glamour, Mrs. Whitmore had done with her down-to-earth style. She had won the heart of the nation by being the First Lady to wander the halls of the White House in blue jeans and bare feet. She had the simple, heroic beauty of a pioneer woman and a no-nonsense manner of speaking to the public that inspired trust. The political establishment disliked her, but for ordinary Americans, she was a symbol of hope; their representative-at-large in the corridors of power. As her husband’s presidency had floundered over the previous several months, she had become the administration’s most potent political weapon. She felt it was her duty to get on the airwaves and try to keep the evacuation of the cities as orderly as possible.
There was a long pause on the phone line. “Oh, all right,” her husband relented, his tone making it clear how little he liked the idea. “But I want you on the roof in ninety minutes. I’ll have a helicopter waiting to fly you to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.”
“Make it two hours and you’ve got yourself a deal.” Then, switching gears, she asked about their daughter. “How’s the munchkin?”
“Good. She’ll be airlifted out of here and meet you at Peterson. We had a little jail break this afternoon. She got away from the nanny and ran into the Oval Office just as the ship was coming in over the city.”
“Oh God,” the girl’s mother moaned, “how did she react?”
“Like the rest of us. It scared her half to death. She’s conked out right next to me. Want me to wake her up?”
“No, let her sleep. But I’m worried about her making that trip by herself. Will you make sure there’s a phone on board so I can talk to her?”
>
“Of course. But she won’t be alone. In exchange for staying on at the White House, I’m letting the staff evacuate all their kids to Peterson. I think I’d have a mutiny on my hands if I didn’t.” A soft knock came at the president’s bedroom door. “Just a second,” he called across the room before returning to his conversation. “I’ve got to go. I’ll probably see you at NORAD in the morning.” Neither one of them wanted to get off the phone, but both felt the tug of their responsibilities. “And, honey…”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too. Very much. And I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“Bye.”
Whitmore, still wearing his slacks and dress shirt, walked across the room and opened the door. Standing in the dim hallway were General Grey and Chief Nimziki.
“We have the report you asked for, sir,” Grey said, handing over a fax. “There are still only thirty-six of the ships. We haven’t spotted any more entering our atmosphere for several hours now.”
“And these are the affected cities?” Whitmore asked, studying the report.
“Yes, sir.”
Whitmore took his time studying the data. He could see that Nimziki was edgy and seething, chomping at the bit to say something. When the president finally handed the sheet back to Grey, the defense secretary could contain himself no longer.
“Excuse me for saying so, but this is insane,” he said between clenched teeth, “absolutely suicidal. By sitting on our hands like this, we’re giving away our first strike capability. We’ve come here to urge you to take action, to initiate nuclear attack.”
The word “we” took Whitmore by surprise. He looked at Grey and asked for his opinion. “General?”
“As you know, Mr. President, I’ll support whatever course of action you choose. This is a tough call, whether to fire first or sit tight. But I’m inclined to agree with A1 on this one. Perhaps we should strike first.” It was a surprising answer coming from Grey. There was no love lost between him and Nimziki, but they’d joined forces to present this plan to their leader.
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 9