Charles and Barbara Hill dutifully returned the marchers' final salute. No matter how thick the crowds, the space around Charles and his beloved was always open. Good manners accounted for most of that. Two platoons of heavily armed honor guards, drawn from every branch of the Popular Army, accounted for the rest. If, this year, Charles and Barbara had been joined by a single MinuteGirl, the MinuteGirl stood quietly well to the rear of the open area, exactly as Charles had asked her to. With the cowl of her Phoenix cape forward, no one could even tell who she was.
Ever since their other identities had been revealed, Charles and Barbara had watched the Concord Parade on Patriot's Day. Every schoolchild knew why Charles stood with his back to the Baptiste Memorial. He had been obliged to watch the boy die, more years ago than most people cared to count. The sight of the flames still brought bile to the throats of the surviving witnesses. All those years ago, the people who had detained Charles and made him watch the execution had had no idea that he was Captain Zero, the secret leader of the Popular Army. They were trying to make a point with average Americans, and thought they had succeeded. They certainly had made a point, but not the one they had intended.
The Color Guard for the modern Old Glory and its 137 stars, maple leaves, single- and double-headed eagles, dragons, and fleur-de-lis was First Barnstable MinuteBoys. The Flag's smart fabric, managing to flap in exact time to the band, looked perfectly natural to the young people, if not to Charles or Barbara. To the Scout flag, aged battle ribbons waving gaily in the breeze, Charles always saluted first.
Sandra knew the history behind the Barnstable Flag. She still wondered what the French submarine captain had thought he was doing all those years ago. In the early Summer pre-dawn hours Captain deClerk had lost his commandos, lost his submarine, lost most of his crew, and earned a battle ribbon for the First Barnstable Scouts, not to mention farm plots for thirty MinuteBoys. On the day he'd landed, most Americans thought the Incursion had ended, guns silenced though there was no peace accord yet. Perhaps Captain deClerk had believed that the coastal beach was still a game preserve, so men could land unseen and unopposed. Why had his men landed, then? A wildlife refuge did not appear to be a critical military target worth risking a modern thermonuclear submarine. DeClerk's computer files had been erased. The survivors of his mission had known nothing or stood mute.
Sandra reminded herself that deClerk was not a complete fool. He had managed to bring his submarine close to the American shore, undetected by the Atlantic sonar curtain. Unfortunately for deClerk, his men landed in the face of ten times their number of MinuteBoys, all with night scopes and the expectation that they were about to engage holographic targets with live ammunition, as units did on Cape Cod beaches every night of the year.
The medal went to the troop leader who realized that: The men on the shore were shooting back with real FEU ammunition, the shadow on the water was a real FEU submarine, and surfaced submarines can be targeted by antitank rockets. A half-dozen direct hits on the submarine led to catastrophic flooding of the sub's upper deck, quenching the boat's fusactor. The submarine promptly turned turtle in shallow water. At dawn's early light, the surviving MinuteBoys discovered that they had captured a real submarine, not an unusually well-made simulator.
For the younger marchers, the privilege of marching at Concord was a reward for excellence in their studies. For the Concord Minutemen, it was the privilege of marching in their own town's parade. The final foot units were always MinuteGirls in spring camouflage colors, marching under full kit, ready for battle if you ignored the mint-new red and gold Phoenix shawls across their shoulders and backs. As they passed Charles, they saluted, freshly-bandaged left hands making half-closed fists. Charles responded in kind, left hand high, fingers open. Their scars would soon yield to micronites. Sandra knew that the shadows on Charles' hand, the final reminder he had been given all those years ago, would remain. Morbius had once opined to Sandra that voluntarily grasping a branding iron, just to show your solidarity with a boy a century and a third dead, and with the witnesses who had been branded by FEU Peace Police, just to remind them of what they had seen, was more patriotism than he had ever felt, even if someone gave him a pretty handkerchief, a dose of anti-shock micronites, and life membership in the Phoenix Guards afterward. Sandra allowed that her initiation had made more sense when she was a bit younger.
The marchers were followed by tanks and power infantry in full armor. Charles glanced at his love. A shrug of her shadow proposed agreement. She nodded and whispered at the air, her voice carrying electronically to Sandra. Barbara quietly assured Sandra that she had heard the Governor's annual re-election speech an adequate number of times, down to the Governor's ritual denunciations of FEU terrorists, metricizers, pedophiles, and globalists. One more time would not be needed. She'd already planted on the NewsNet a cover story for leaving: she had another event to attend.
For a moment, Sandra waxed thoughtful. Given the current attitude towards consensual sex, precisely what would the Governor denounce when he mentioned pedophiles? There had of course been the two fools with baseball bats in that Connecticut quarry last year. They had planned to prey on a pair of thirteen-year-old MinuteBoys. The fools had apparently failed to note that it was a coed swimming group, at least until the three MinuteGirls in the party had emerged from the brush in swimming dress and given object lessons in combat applications of the MinuteGirl knife, all eleven inches of it. The lessons had been short but extremely thorough.
Rape, probably, was the Governor's theme. Sandra's history courses emphasized that the Pacification Police had been fond of that. They had been rather less fond of the aftermath. As President Wilson had once said, apropos of a slightly different European threat, America had an adequate supply of lampposts, of rope, and of patriots to pull on the other end of the rope. Why the Governor felt obliged to denounce the metric system, whose supporters were badly outnumbered by advocates of pedophilia, was less clear. Perhaps it gave the man something to do. Sandra forced herself not to look over her shoulder at cadence being counted. Someone's formation had been diverted to shoo people off the landing site. Someone's formation had expected to meet parents, not get called on to do useful work, but it was work that they were doing.
The final tanks -- a platoon of M214 Powell lights, laser armor shining mirror-bright -- rattled by. That was the end of the parade. A gust of wind across her back told Sandra that her aircar had landed. Charles took his dear wife by the hand and braced his smile in place. The gawking crowd parted like the waters before Moses. There was a long passage through the crowds, lined at a respectful distance by MinuteGirls.
"Honor Guard! Ten-Hut! Present...Arms!" The bellow was as stentorious as a fourteen-year-old girl could muster, but the collar tabs said Troop Leader, and color-suppressed merit badges on her sash explained why. Two hundred backs came ram-rod stiff. Sandra slammed fist to chest. Charles and Barbara saluted gravely. Charles would always flash a grin and thumb's up afterwards; Barbara would always complain that he shouldn't.
Doors whisked open. Sandra produced from her cape the pair of small boxes, black with gold-inlay seals, each containing a single pin. 'I suppose we must,' Charles whispered. Charles fastened the skull to his wife's collar. His wife returned the favor with the open circle. The ceremony complete, they boarded the aircar. Sandra still wondered what was going on. Her messages to them said only 'Your urgent attendance is most humbly requested on a matter of the highest national importance--Schuykill' and 'He's right--Morbius'. The dataslip contents remained encrypted until Charles and Barbara accepted the invitation. She could not imagine an appropriate contingency response if Charles and Barbara had declined to come with her.
"Captain Zero? Captain Mors?" Sandra gestured at the rear of the car, which held a quarter of seats and a small table. "I'll get you there as soon as possible." The car lifted on automatic, Sandra's hands hovering over the controls, not quite intervening to override the servile, barely feeling the shuttle's ac
celeration through the contragrav fields. The initial climb was gentle, but within a minute the stern port showed they were climbing almost straight up. Sandra slipped from the control seat and moved to the rear cabin.
"What is the issue?" asked Barbara, her attention tightly focused on Sandra.
"No one told me anything useful, ma'am" she answered. Barbara scowled. Sandra's face reddened. Barbara could be as fearsome as her reputation. "Yes, Ma'am! Yes, I remember perfectly well the Security Suppression Act. That's why there's a hurry. President Schuykill wants advice before he reaches the statutory revelation deadline. But all the Professor gave me is on the dataslips, and that's very little."
"What were you told that wasn't useful?" Charles asked. Sandra clenched her hands. They were going to tag team her. This, she told herself, is why you worked so hard to become a Morbius Intern, to get mental training to match the physical and leadership training the Phoenix Guards supplied. President Schuykill had a record of massive political ineptitude. Late release of records on negotiations with the Federal European Union would cost him badly at the polls.
“Professor Morbius was so secretive that I had to ask him twice who I was to find in Concord,” she answered.
Charles spread his hands. He stared out the starboard port, a 2x4-foot section of optical sapphire. They would be passing south of the Dakotas, the Bridge of Rainbows rising above their 50-mile altitude. The Bridge, besides being a suborbital insertion rail gun, was the second largest dynamic structure in the world. Streams of ceramic blocks hidden in vacuum pipes rose up its underside, traveling at miles per second, only to be forced by magnetic confinement structures to turn groundward, there to be recaptured and fed again into one of the rising streams. The force of the blocks on the confinement structures supported the Bridge in midair. Other blocks, counter-rotating, were used by the rail gun as a momentum sink, so that the momentum being transferred into a launching spaceship could be drawn from outside the Bridge superstructure. The entire system was enormously redundant, backed by designs permitting the bridge to fail gracefully, as had happened twice. `Newton's Arch' was the original name for the Bridge, but an inspired exterior coating coupled to the meteorological consequences of a 200 mile long ellipse that protruded beyond the Earth's atmosphere had given the bridge its popular name.
Sandra allowed that she preferred the more expensive, but in principle safer, contragravity shuttle. She had promised that she would die for her country, if need be. Dying accidentally first would make it more challenging to keep her promise to the Dark Lady.
She could tell that her guests were annoyed. Their annoyance had begun when she first mentioned President Schuykill. She had supported President Schuykill's election campaign herself. He seemed very reasonable. In office, he put `don't rock the boat, don't upset people, we know what's best' far ahead of any legitimate position. He had already barely dodged impeachment over accusations that he had attempted to raise--admittedly using lawfully appropriated funds--a standing army. Furious backpedaling and protestations of misunderstanding, followed by an extremely contrite apology, had barely saved his hold on the Round Office. If he now appeared to be in violation of the Security Suppression Act, for example by claiming that the government had a right to withhold information from the American people, his remaining tenure in office would be quite short. Allowing, that is, that he lived long enough for the legal processes to be completed. The historical precedent left this as an open question. President Markson had been summarily executed by his Minutegirl guards when he was caught trying to revive a Federal secret police. The woman who shot him, fifty rounds full auto at point blank range, even agreed that his last words “Don’t be naïve. The Recursion Acts are antiquated nonsense.” might have been better chosen. Schuykill was treading extremely close to a sensitive historical issue, an issue fresh in the minds of the oldest living Americans.
"So? What's the agenda, Sandra?" Barbara asked innocently.
“Secretary Cornelius. Buffet lunch. Report from the States of Lincoln Planetary Self Defense Force,” she answered. “However, there are only so many Suppression of Secrecy Act exclusions.” Her inquisitors both smiled. “Azores Truce Meetings – there haven’t been any in a week. Kidnappings with hostages…with that guest list? Not likely. Imminent attack? Not and stack so many important people in one place. Pentagon might have been an American patriot strike on the other side, but that lesson is understood both ways. Attack on Lincoln? They’d have seen rapidity ships incoming, several weeks ago. There’s no religious holiday today.” She paused, leaning chin on fingertips.
“If it makes you feel better, that’s how far I got,” Charles said.
“Me, also,” Barbara added.
“Oh,” Sandra suddenly added. “Alpha Centauri has a bunch of warp points. Seven, I think.”
Charles nodded. “Hadn’t thought of that. But there’s no sign the FEU has ever found a warp point close to any of our extrasolar systems. And they appear to be honest about their warp maps, so far as we know. However, a more practical and important matter arises. Cornelius lays out the most magnificent buffets in America. Do take advantage.”
ACHESON HALL
GREAT SQUARE OF THE REPUBLIC
NEW WASHINGTON, WYOMING
April 19, 2174, 12:00 Noon RMST
The buffet was indeed superb. Secretary Cornelius was wealthy, even by modern American standards. His leading contribution to President Schuykill's election theme 'Excellence in All Things' had been gastronomic revival. With 'American Food -- the Best in the Universe' he promised to set a public example. It was an esoteric campaign plank, but Secretary of State was a vestigial office having few serious responsibilities. How often was there a Federal election to report or a Constitutional Amendment to proclaim? Cornelius had found something to do. Indeed, Sandra wondered, why had Cornelius been rolled out to lead this meeting? Why not Secretary of War Pushkin? Did Schuykill think the topic was too hot a roasted chestnut for that plodder? For all his bon vivant congeniality, Cornelius was the sharpest member of Schuykill's cabinet. If he volunteered for a job, he surely saw opportunity or a looming crisis.
Sandra surveyed the room. Barbara stood close to the opposite wall. She always dressed stylishly. The military officers had had enough warning to break out their best, Navy in dark blue, Solar Navy in black, Coast Defense Artillery in white resplendent with gold trim. White and Gold always looked impractical to Sandra. However, if your primary mission was controlling Continental Defense Screens from underground headquarters, with no possible contact with weather or machinery, maintenance of the uniform ceased to be a constraint. Barbara's dear spouse wore an excellent copy of the clothing he had worn for their first Liberation Day march down Pennsylvania Avenue. Fortunately, everyone knew what he would wear.
Secretary Cornelius took the rostrum, pulled a watch from his vest pocket to check the time, and struck his wine glass twice with a gold-washed spoon. Reminded of the glass's contents, he paused to take an ostentatious sip of the umber liquid, a 27-year-old Washington State trockenbeerenauslese, beamed, chewed slowly on another sip, and waited for his guests to bring themselves to order. Sandra smiled to herself. Undoubtedly it was a superb vintage, but Cornelius was also a bit of a ham, enough to distract people from his sharp and thoughtful mind.
Charles stared longingly at the buffet. He had not, Sandra recalled, yet hit quite every dish on the table. His attentions had focused on the quail eggs stuffed with salmon caviar and sour cream, not to mention a delicate buffalo curry, but in a moment he gave his attention to his host. Barbara had positioned herself where she could watch Secretary Cornelius and his audience at the same time. Cornelius interrupted Sandra's thoughts:
"Fellow Americans! An urgent situation requiring your advice and counsel has arisen. Word has been received from distant Alpha Centauri. Warships of the European State Socialists appeared at an Alpha Centauri warp point, ‘Clarksburg’ to be precise. They opened fire on ships of the States of Lincoln Planetary Self D
efense Force. They were driven off by Grand Commodore Kalinin and his flotilla. We are now faced with the need for an American response.
“Mindful that the American response should be coherent and at the same time a sound example of Disunity of Command, President Schuykill has invoked his day delay under the Suppression of Secrecy Act. Never fear, he is hard at work on his speech to the nation, now set for 7 A.M. tomorrow, a good hour before the delay expires. In the nonce, he would appreciate all of your advices on what he should say, and which steps he should take. Interpretations of the technical aspects of the recordings are also welcome. The FEU appeared with new weapons, new radars, new drives, and entire new classes of ship. What are we seeing? Where did they hide them?
“I will show you the command deck recordings from our Ancestral-Victory class Armoured Cruiser Isandhlwana. There are far more extensive recordings on the datachips with which each of you are being provided. I remind you that release of information is embargoed under the Suppression of Secrecy Act, at least until 7 A.M. tomorrow, so that we may have a coherent disunified response. Note that the fact that there is an embargo has had to be made public, so bloggers, reporters, and hordes of giant locusts…the locusts being the most friendly… may be about to descend on you so soon as you leave the hall.”
“Finally, while I’ve told you the questions I care about, Disunity of Command guarantees that you should each make you own considerations about which questions to consider, how to search for answers, and what answers you can find in the admittedly less than unlimited information I can offer you.
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