Jamie stared at her, the slight tilt of her chin barely qualifying as a nod. President Tomlinson raised her pudgy hands and chuckled.
"All right, I see you see where I'm going. Okay, simple question: Are you planning to stay here?"
"I'm not sure I have any choice about that. But yes, even if I had a choice, as long as my daughter's here..."
"Another perhaps not-so-simple question: What do you plan to do here? Go back to teaching?"
President Tomlinson's smile curled with contempt on her last question, as if nothing could be so ridiculous. It wasn't something Jamie had given much thought to, and considering it now just added to her discomfort.
"I don't know." Jamie remembered crushing coals into diamonds. "There are so many things I could do besides that. Things I imagine people would be willing to hire me to do."
"Oh, it doesn't take much of an imagination to see the possibilities," the President agreed with a short laugh. "A highway contractor hiring you to remove tons of dirt in seconds. Moving an entire subdivision to a new, better location for a real estate developer. Relocating a river for a hydroelectric project. Opening up a new gold mine. You could undoubtedly make a fortune in short order."
Jamie gave her a queasy smile. "You sound like you've been thinking about this more than I have."
"Thinking about things that could affect the security of our nation is in my job description. For instance, what happens when you reveal your unique qualifications to the world and start fielding job offers?"
Jamie's smile fell away. In an instant she glimpsed the legions of businesses, reporters, scientists, and government officials clamoring for her attention. She would never again have a private life. They would harass Kylee and Dennis, too.
"Are you seeing the possibilities, Jamie?" President Tomlinson asked with a knowing smile.
"If I reveal who I am, everyone would want me to do something for them," Jamie replied in a low voice that was nearly a groan. "Me – and probably my family – would have no peace."
"Exactly correct, I'm afraid. Fortunately, there's an excellent alternative: working for us. We'd protect your identity while providing you with a salary and benefits second to none."
"Doing what?"
"Doing what you did on your original world. Fighting terrorists and criminals. Defending your country against enemies both foreign and domestic." President Tomlinson's narrowed blue eyes glittered.
"How, exactly, would that work?"
"We'd create a separate department or agency suitable to your talents." The President shrugged. "We haven't ironed out the details. But one thing I can promise you now is that you would have the full support and power of the United States Government behind you, and that you would be very, very well-compensated for fulfilling your patriotic duties. You could have the life you always dreamed of having."
"I think I already had that, President Tomlinson – before my daughter and husband died."
"But they're not dead here, are they?"
Jamie shook her head. "Can you promise me that I wouldn't be asked to do something unjust? To harm someone – particularly an American citizen – without just cause?"
"Is that what you think I'm about?"
"I think it's unjust to force people to implant devices in their bodies. To me, that's what a futuristic dictator might do."
The President regarded her with narrowed eyes and pinched lips. Jamie braced herself for a blast of presidential anger, but instead the Commander-in-Chief released a voluminous sigh.
"You may not know it now, but I was a liberal," she said. "A progressive. I grew up in a family of liberal progressives. I was baptized on idealism. As a young senator, I firmly believed that with the right people, the Democratic party could save the world. I was going to clean up Washington, trim back the surveillance state, stop our military adventures abroad, rein in Wall Street and all the special interests. It was going to be a revolution."
"What happened?"
"Doomsday happened." She stared over Jamie's shoulder with sudden intensity, scowling, as if the past had materialized before her. "That flushed all my soft, politically correct ideals down the toilet. I saw in the flash that marked the detonation of a nuclear missile over our country – an atomic flash replayed over and over by the major news channels – that our enemies don't have liberal ideals, that they don't play by our rules. Our weakness, our lack of a cohesive national will, was an engraved invitation to our enemies. That was my Road to Damascus. I saw the path to a place of strength where this country would never be victimized again."
"Doesn't the U.S. already have a big lead in weapons technology? None of the other nations have starships or MAMEs, do they?"
"Not as far as we know. But several countries possess relatively advanced spacecraft. The European Space Agency, China, India, and Russia all have bases on the moon and Mars. The Russians even have a base on Enceladus. None of them possess either antimatter or superluminal capabilities, true. Again, as far as we know. But then as far as they know, we don't, either. However, we know that they – especially the Russians and Chinese – strongly suspect we have antimatter and space-warping technologies."
"We're so much stronger than them," said Jamie. "What do we have to fear? Why do you need to put our whole country basically on lockdown, with TSA agents and drones everywhere?"
President Tomlinson placed her fingers together, her gaze still distant. She made Jamie think of a female Buddha with her rotund figure filling the chair and her round, pale face absorbed in thought.
"Have you ever played Risk?" she asked. "The board game."
"I know. It was a family favorite growing up."
"What happens when one person gets too powerful? When they start amassing more territory than the others?"
"Usually people will team up against them. At least for a while, until there's no point."
"That's exactly what's happening now, in real life. China, Russia, and much of the Middle-East are allied against us. They want to knock us off the top of the totem pole. They don't dare attempt that directly, given our publicly superior military and their suspicions we possess even greater advantages. So they come at us covertly. Try to hack our information grid. Plant sleeper agents. They fight proxy wars with us abroad. That's what Doomsday was about."
"I thought that was just North Korea and Iran."
"As fronts for China and Russia. It was a proxy attack. They were happy to sacrifice North Korea and Iran if we got bogged down in an expensive and drawn-out war while our economic system collapsed at home. With America weakened and struggling, China could invade Taiwan and assert its authority in the China Sea. Russia could resolve the Ukraine situation. Fortunately, none of these things happened. There were severe financial consequences, of course, but we overcame them fairly quickly, thanks in part to decisive action by the federal government and our citizens' acceptance of new security measures. The war itself was a rout – a forceful demonstration to our enemies that no transgressions would be tolerated. And it worked. Unfortunately, to achieve that rout we used some of our covert technology, which may have tipped our hand to our enemies a bit. On the other hand, that might've helped avert World War Three."
Jamie's head was spinning a little. It was a different kind of secret conspiracy than what her dad believed, but it made more sense. This wasn't her dads' globalist cabal or a US government conspiracy to enslave its own people. This was the familiar "old school" Us against Them foreign conflict and intrigue. She liked that model a lot better.
"How did you tip your hand?"
"Sorry, dear, that's need to know." The President shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Except that whatever advantages our enemies suspect we possess only motivates them more to undermine us."
Jamie nodded without a great deal of conviction. It made sense, but it felt too simple, like the Communist scare – the "big, bad Russian bear" – her grandfather used to talk about being all the rage when he was a kid.
"Which brings us back to
you," said President Tomlinson. "You mentioned how in Risk eventually the other players stop fighting when it's obvious there's no point. That's the position I want our country to have."
"Resistance is futile?"
"Well, at least attacking us is. That's where you come in. You could be our secret weapon, Jamie."
Jamie swallowed. "How?"
"As I mentioned, we haven't worked out the details yet, but consider this possibility: if we'd been able to eliminate Kim Jong-un and/or the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani covertly in the months before the Doomsday strike, we might've avoided the loss of millions of lives. Think of the conflicts we could avoid in the future if we had the ability to eliminate leaders and officials plotting against America."
"You want me to be an assassin?" Jamie rose from the corner of her bed and took a step back. "Doesn't the CIA or some other agency handle that kind of thing?"
"It can. But it's not always easy to get close to a foreign leader, and while we may be able to terminate them through more obvert means, those risk causing an international scandal. With your abilities, you could be anywhere in the world in minutes. You could strike and they wouldn't know what hit them. Alternatively, a simple demonstration might suffice to deter an enemy."
Jamie wanted to be out of this room, this sterile underground purgatory. More than anything, she wanted this evening to end, and for the august person sitting across from her to be back in her Oval Office. She wanted President Tomlinson to take back her offer, to have their final contact be that shake of the hand before Jamie left the stage – her last words to be "have a nice life." She wanted to be home.
But aside from the difficulties and possible risks of turning down the President, there were other problems. First, she didn't have a home. Her former property now belonged to Dennis and his daughter. Perhaps it could be hers again – Dennis' relationship with his fiancé was looking pretty shaky – or perhaps not. A further complication was that she had no means of support. The President was obviously right about the consequences of revealing her superpowers in a world where she was the only augmented person. She'd be an overnight celebrity. How would she protect Kylee from that? There was a reason fictional superheroes wore masks and maintained dual identities.
"It's a lot to consider, I realize," the President broke into her thoughts. "Why don't you think it over, and we'll talk about it again." She pushed her stout body out of the chair with a partly stifled groan. "Thank you again for your service to this country. And Jamie, please know that your country still needs you."
Chapter 12
"BABY!" JAMIE CRIED, WRAPPING her arms with torturous restraint around her squirming, laughing daughter, while Dennis stood by awkwardly smiling. This is my home, she thought. Not a piece of property, but one precious person. Looking up into her husband's eyes, she added: Possibly two.
She hugged Dennis after her daughter, with equal restraint, though she thought she felt a desperate strength in his arms – nearly enough to make a physical impression on her. They sat out on the front porch, the mid-June sun flowing in under the roof, warming their legs, making Dennis and Kylee squint, drinking cold lemonade.
"All your dad said was that you were okay," Dennis remarked, a muted complaint in his voice. "That everything was okay."
"Tell us what happened, Mom!" Kylee was bouncing in her rocking chair, the lemonade tilting dangerously in her glass. "Tell us everything!"
Jamie glanced at Dennis, who nodded. She gave them the Reader's Digest condensed version, focusing on the highlights – the interior of the alien ship, her conversation with Mikenruah, the blazing finale after she detonated the MAME – leaving out what she'd done to wake up in the virtual heaven and the particulars of her conversation with President Tomlinson. Kylee interrupted her constantly, demanding more details, stretching Jamie's tale over most of an afternoon and through dinner until Dennis sent her off to feed their chickens and three horses.
"So she offered you a job," said Dennis as they watched the young girl skip off toward the nearby barn. "I assume she said more than it's about 'catching bad guys.'"
That had been Jamie's sole explanation, designed not to tweak her daughter's innocent ears. "She claims it's about dealing with foreign enemies. Her goal is to make the U.S. an unchallengeable power and therefore immune to threats from terrorists or other nations."
"She needs you to do that? Having complete dominance in space – possessing weapons that make nuclear weapons look like firecrackers – isn't enough? She needs to have her own personal superhero, too?"
"That’s more or less what I said." Jamie watched her daughter leading the chickens to the chicken coup, her merry, half-scolding voice carrying to them. "But she believes there are threats that I'm uniquely able to handle."
"That may be true. Still, I think the bottom line is that she sees an opportunity to gain more power and she's going for it. Doesn't matter if it's needed or not."
"You're probably right. But she did raise the valid point that if I try to use my powers openly that most of the civilized – not to mention uncivilized – world would be knocking at my door. What kind of a life could I – or we – lead, then?"
"Is there a 'we'? Besides you and Kylee, I mean?"
His face and body had the look of someone who'd just emerged from a dunk in an ice-cold lake – something Dennis had actually done to show off when they'd been dating. He appeared pale and stiff and on the verge of shivering. His eyes shone with fearful longing.
"Do you want there to be?" Jamie asked.
"Do you?"
"I asked you first." She cracked a small smile. "Okay, yes. Yes, I do. It's just..."
"What?"
"It's not really fair to you, Dennis. The normal things men and women do...they're, well, difficult with me. Dangerous, even. One wrong move, one instant of losing concentration, and I could badly injure you or worse. And you've felt my skin, my body. It's not normal, either. You said I feel like stone, remember?"
Try as she might, she couldn't remove the hurt from her voice. Everyone wanted to be accepted for what they were, to be loved unconditionally, Jamie thought, but it was ridiculous to think things like looks or personality or even basic hygiene didn't matter. Not to mention the possibility of sneezing and blowing your lover's eyeballs out.
"I'm sorry I said that," said Dennis. "I was kind of in shock at the beginning. But since then I've seen that you are my Jamie..." He cleared his throat with obvious effort. "In all the important ways."
"What about Haley?"
"Since you came back...arrived...things haven't been the same between us. I kept comparing what I'd felt for you to what I felt for her. Even before, it sometimes seemed like I was acting out a role. She's a sweet lady and I do care about her, but it just wasn't the same."
He stood with his head bowed. Jamie reached over and covered his hand on the patio table. She gave it the lightest of squeezes.
"So to answer your question," he said, "what I want more than anything is to be a family again. I know that's what Kylee wants, too." His Adam's apple bobbed and his eyes inched up to meet hers. "I want to be with the woman I love who through some miracle of fate has come back to me."
Jamie bowed her own head. All her great strength had deserted her. She felt weak as a newborn infant. Which sort of made sense because in that moment she felt as if she was being reborn.
Kylee came trotting up, a giant grin on her face as she noted them holding hands. Jamie swiped her eyes with her free hand and smiled at her daughter, whose own smile now held a note of self-satisfaction, as if things were going just as she'd planned. Jamie wondered if she'd been working on her father to get back together with her.
They carried in the dishes. Jamie caught Dennis glancing at her surreptitiously as they rinsed and racked them up in the dishwasher. He looked away, but not before she spotted a familiar glint in his eyes – the glint he got when he anticipated getting "frisky." She felt a small shiver of anticipation herself, mixed with a dose of dread.
Would Kylee ever forgive her if she harmed her father? Would she ever forgive herself? Maybe it would prove unpleasant or even impossible? Were they moving too fast?
Jamie managed to tamp down her anxieties for most of the evening, which passed as an enjoyable flashback to her former family life: watching a movie over popcorn, wrapped in the warm glow of the television – this time with the added joy of having a Kylee old enough to offer funny commentary and not to fall asleep, as had often been the case with the younger version of her that Jamie had known.
Inevitably, however, the evening wore down and Kylee was shuffled off to bed, leaving Jamie and Dennis to face what was to come. It's crazy, Jamie thought, as she washed up in the bathroom and saw the fear in her eyes. I just dragged an antimatter bomb aboard an alien ship and argued ethics with the President, and I'm more nervous now than I was then!
She stepped out of the bathroom and peered into the bedroom. What had once been their bedroom. Dennis was fidgeting with his work shirt, which he'd half-unbuttoned.
"Hey," said Jamie.
"Hi," he said. "Uh, well..."
"Need some help with that?"
Jamie always had been the more forward one in the bedroom, which wasn't saying much, she thought. Now he stood as still and stiff as a virgin groom on his wedding night while she carefully unbuttoned his shirt. She wanted to rake her fingernails down his stomach, but was afraid of eviscerating him. She touched him lightly on the chest instead, feeling his muscles tremble beneath her fingertips.
Jamie backed off, offering him what she hoped was a seductive smile as she stripped off her blouse and then her bra. Might as well keep going. She slid down her jeans and kicked them away. They thumped against the wall hard enough to rattle the framed photographs hanging there.
"See," she said, spreading her arms. "I still look about the same, don't I?"
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