by John Barnes
The real numbers show deaths running to 270 million worldwide by September.
More than a quarter of a billion people.
There is nothing the United States, or the United Nations, can do to save most of them. The USA does not have the economic weight and muscle anymore to lead the world… hasn’t had it in a long time, but that’s something Hardshaw learned early that you never say in front of a voter. For twelve years since the Flash, when the government and at least threequarters of all the financial records in the country ceased to be, she has been struggling to put American power back together again, first as American Ambassador to the UN, then as Attorney General, and finally as President.
She’s fought to preserve what is left of American national sovereignty, to get any momentary advantage that can keep the Republic from being pulled down into a tight orbit around the UN. She has preserved big enough armed forces to act unilaterally, allied herself with any and all powers willing to take on the Secretary General, squeezed every bit of wriggling room from the UN—at the same time that, after the terrorist nuking of Washington, the Federal government was running a third of its budget on UN loans.
Once again, Harris Diem has been her right hand in this. He put the operation together like a pro. Even the developing leak between Carla and Louie Tynan is happening days later than he thought it would, and not affecting their plans at all.
And now, finally, she has in her hand real information—real information that she knows the UN does not have and needs badly.
Let the UN get it wrong, and it will go down. The Global Riot showed that clearly enough, and this is much bigger than any mere public scandal. She can do a lot more than just regain American sovereignty—she can collapse the “world government that dare not speak its name,” as she and her circle have called it for many years.
For fifteen years she has worked to put the United States back where it belongs, beyond the command of any foreign power.
All she need do is put together the secret team that will be ready for the real situation. They will still lose New Orleans, Tampa, Miami, Corpus Christi, but they’ll get through it. And the rest of the world will go to hell. Unless the UN figures out the truth and acts on that.
And if the UN does get it together… there goes the American bid for supremacy, probably forever.
The NSA tells her that they can’t predict what the UN will do if she gives them the accurate report. In any case, in a few months, when it’s probably too late, they’ll know they’ve been had, and perhaps as they go down they can pin the blame on her. That will be all right; if it comes to that she’ll walk right into the General Assembly and let them shoot her with a short pistol, put the whole blame on her—as long as the UN goes down and America comes back up.
But probably, NSA says, if the UN gets things together—they can hold deaths down to 100 million people worldwide. So if Brittany Lynn Hardshaw chooses to do what she had been planning to do—170 million unnecessary dead.
It will certainly put her in the history books. She’ll beat Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined.
And if she hands the UN the truth—that involves telling NOAA the real numbers and probably admitting what the original plan had been, with impeachment likely to follow if Congress wants to save the shreds of American autonomy. More than that, it throws away the very last shot at full American independence.
She looks up at the portraits hanging on the walls; she picked them carefully—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, because they founded American independence; Lincoln, who saved the Republic; Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, who armed it to the teeth. In fairness, perhaps, she should have included Franklin Roosevelt for the same reason—but he founded the UN.
“So what would you all do?” she asks them, and jumps at the sound of her own voice. She hadn’t meant to speak aloud.
The two reports lie side by side on the desk, and she looks at their all-but-identical covers for a long time, trying to see any other choice.
After the awkward way things started, Klieg would never have bet that this first date with Glinda Gray could go so well. She was exactly right—Derry seems to be delighted to have him interested in her mother, and the “luncheon at a little café where the crab is real and the atmosphere phony,” as he described it to them, was a big success. Now he and Glinda, having decided to just sit and watch Derry go by on a horse every so often, are out on the “parents’ patio” and having a drink together; mostly they’ve been talking about growing up in the middle of America, and about how few people anymore seem to have any real ambition or drive for wealth.
They’ve also been flirting a lot, and in one bold moment—grinning to make it a joke, but doing it anyway—she slid her high-heeled pump up his trouser leg. He grinned back to show he got the joke, but at just that moment he might have done anything for her.
There are flies all around—this close to horses it’s inevitable—and the two of them are constantly swinging and slapping at them. He doesn’t know what it makes him look like, but it makes Glinda’s blonde hair flip around in interesting ways—which he doesn’t get much of a chance to observe since he’s pretty busy swinging at flies himself. His best guess, from the way she smiles every so often, is that he looks pretty awkward doing it.
They talk on about all sorts of things. The last serious girlfriend that Klieg had, years ago, used to complain that all he talked about was “business, food, and the best brand of everything.” There was a certain amount of justice in it, he had to admit, but the great thing is that that seems to be what Glinda talks about as well. They talk about what kind of cars they’re going to get next year—they’re both eager readers of Consumer Reports—and where to get good cheap Mexican food that doesn’t put you at any risk of spoiled ingredients, and the relative merits of Denny’s versus Shoney’s when eating out of town. They talk about new carpeting, which both of them have gotten within the last couple of years, and about whether or not the newer editions of The Joy of Cooking are as good as the “classic” version.
They make a number of dumb jokes about all the flies, and they both laugh more than the jokes are worth.
He can’t remember when he’s had this much fun, or felt so comfortable with a woman. When Derry finally heads in to the stable—they have a shower in there, so the kid can freshen up before she comes out to meet them at the car—Klieg and Glinda stand up and just naturally take each other’s hands.
“Mashed potatoes,” she says. “That’s something it’s hard to get made right anymore. Restaurants don’t want to put in enough butter and milk.”
“You’re right about that,” Klieg says. “Took me forever to train my cook on that—even with the non-digestible fat versions, the cook tended to get upset and think that I was developing bad dietary habits. Kept ratting on me to Public Health till I restricted its modem access and made it strictly obedient. And I swear to god, it never cooked as well afterward, as if it were sulking. I don’t suppose you have servants—”
“Just an occasional live one,” she says, “but when you’ve had a few cleaning women you understand about how hard it is to get the help to do what you want it to do. Makes you appreciate how poor old NASA felt when the replicators were going to eat Moonbase.”
Derry sees them holding hands and her freckled face breaks down into a broad grin; she runs toward them, strawberry blonde braids flying. She looks like one of the paintings Klieg got because he liked it, by some classic American painter—Norman Podhoretz? Something like that.
With a great scuffing and crunching of gravel, she comes to a stop in front of them. “That was fun! What are we going to do now?”
“Oh, well, your mom and I have just had a hardworking afternoon drinking on the patio, so maybe some dinner for the appetite we’ve worked up,” Klieg says. “After that, who knows?”
He knows Glinda’s humoring him, but Derry seems to like that they end up going to his favorite Shoney’s. And Fawn, the waitress—an older lady who looks
quite a bit like the President—makes a big fuss over her, which seems to be fun for everyone. They have burgers, fries, and apple pie, and as they lean back, Glinda says, “I’ve got a dreadful confession to make, John. I’ve thought about something connected with business, and I think I have an idea.”
He mimes switching hats. “In that case, call me ‘boss.’” Derry giggles at the silliness; Klieg can tell he’s getting along great with the kid, as well as her mother. Definitely he should have thought of this years ago.
“Maybe I’ll wait for that until we get into the car,” Glinda says. “You eat here all the time and it’s always possible someone would bug Shoney’s.” She turns to Derry and adds, “Honey, you know enough to keep quiet about what Mr. Klieg and I talk about—”
“Is there a big corporate raider trying to take over GateTech or something?” Derry asks. Klieg sees what Glinda means about the kid o.d.’ing on television and XV.
“Why sure,” he explains. “Her name is Cruella DeVille, she’s a kidnapper, a datavandal, a spy, and a Leftie, and she’s this incredibly tall thin brunette babe who always dresses in long black slinky things—”
Derry is raising an eyebrow at him—she’s got a quizzical expression that’s so funny that he cracks up, just as Glinda does. “What’s so funny?” Derry demands. “Is Cruella DeVille a real person?”
That’s even funnier, but he can tell that Derry’s feelings will be hurt if someone doesn’t explain soon. “No, she’s a character in a movie. Your mother and I would have seen it back when we were young.”
“Mom still is young,” Derry points out loyally.
At least it settles what they’re doing next; there’s a little screening-room place across the road where they can see 101 Dalmatians on the big screen, and it happens that the place also has Junior Mints, which is Klieg’s favorite candy. This has really been a day for indulgence—he’s going to need to put some time in on the track.
While they wait for the movie to be downloaded from the central bank, he asks Glinda, “So—it’s not likely we’re bugged here. What’s this great idea you’ve got?”
She pops a Junior Mint in her mouth, savors it a moment, and then says, “Well, it was just the thought that if we’re going into launch services that can’t be interrupted, chances are it’s better to be close to the pole—the hurricanes won’t get up there, right?”
“I don’t know, we’ll pay some meteorologist to tell us that.”
“Well, anyway, so we need to build a major space-launch facility without drawing too much attention to what we’re really up to. Now, who would want that done? Who that’s close to the pole?”
He beams at her. “Siberia! Yeah. And since the Prez is backing anyone who bucks the UN, we’ll get plenty of support for doing it from our home nation. Not bad, kiddo, not bad at all.”
“Thought you might like it. Do I get a kiss or are you still getting up your nerve?”
Truth is, he hadn’t even been thinking that far ahead, but now that she mentions it, it’s not a bad idea. He kisses Glinda; halfway through the kiss, he sees her open her eyes, look over at Derry, and cover Derry’s eyes with her hand. They’re all still laughing like idiots when the movie starts to run, and sure enough, it’s as good as they remembered, and the kid loves it.
Even if he weren’t about to take a trillion-dollar plunge into a new business, with a real chance to end up as Earth’s richest man, this would still be the best day of the decade, as far as Klieg is concerned. After they return to Glinda’s place, and Derry is steered off to bed, they get back to kissing, and it’s nice to find out how much they both still remember about it.
Everyone always says when couples break up that everyone else should still stay friends, and this is a chance to find out if anyone ever means it. Besides, Jesse wants to know if Little Miss Values can be made jealous.
Unfortunately, she hasn’t shown up at this party.
Without Naomi on his arm, towing him around and clarifying things for people, he is getting to talk to a lot of them, and there are a few things he’s noticing. One is the number of guys who seem to be very sincere but don’t exactly believe in anything. Another is the number of people who seem too ineffectual to have gotten out of bed in the morning; most people know the United Left is more a lifestyle than a position anymore, but when he thinks that these people, or others like them, were ever accused of having engineered the Flash… well, it’s just silly.
The most interesting thing to him is that he seems to be getting along really well with the women. He hadn’t realized how much he’d absorbed from Naomi—he can follow most of the political discussion pretty well, and by just staying a little noncommittal, he can get amazing amounts of attention from young women who want to bring him around to their point of view.
He’s not sure, all of a sudden, that dumping him wasn’t the biggest favor Naomi ever did him.
Not that these are exactly what he would have thought of as real honeys, back in his unenlightened high school days. They all look like sort of living fossils, cast up from the middle of the twentieth century; in a sosh class once the prof explained that when a movement becomes fixated on impossible causes or on issues that the great majority of society finds completely irrelevant, it takes on more of the aspect of a cult or religious community, including a distinctive style of dress and speech. He remembers a couple of young women with long loose hair, baggy skirts, sandals, and a lot of beads got up and walked out at that.
What he’s noticing now is that, all right, nobody’s even wearing makeup, but thanks to Naomi he’s used to that, and he’s also used to figuring out body shapes even under all the tenting. Many of these women have fabulous little bodies—and an acute interest in getting him to come to meetings and have things explained to him. He suspects he’s not the only person who would like to see Naomi consumed with jealousy.
And in a subculture where there’s not supposed to be any flirting, they all end up being much more overt than the girls Jesse grew up with. They stand close, they pose, they smile and stare into his eyes. A guy could get used to it.
He has a lot more trouble talking to the guys, even though everyone’s being polite enough. They don’t follow sports, they don’t do outdoors stuff directly (and Jesse’s never gotten used to XV wilderness experiences—too much like being on a hike with five college professors who talk too much). Besides, most of them are so careful not to dominate their female friends that they won’t exactly say what they think about anything in the presence of a woman. There are a few safe subjects—everyone agrees that technology is responsible for ARTS because it allowed people to survive AIDS, and for SPM because it was the evolutionary pressure of antibiotics that forced syphilis into developing its symptom-suppressing behavior. Everyone agrees that Doug Llewellyn and Passionet are responsible for degrading mass consciousness beyond redemption. Everyone agrees that because nobody cares about the race, the United Left really does have a shot at the presidency this year, even if they don’t settle on a candidate by November.
He’s a little startled at how much attention he’s getting from Gwendy, but not so startled that he can’t figure out what to do about it. After a while they are talking together in a corner, and she’s sitting closer and closer. He finds that by talking about Tapachula and the TechsMex job, he seems to get even more attention.
It ends up being a very late night for him; it turns out that Naomi tends to tell her friends everything, and moreover Naomi is the conscience Gwendy wishes she had. So she’s severely torn between what Naomi told her about sex in the desert at night, and the fact that Naomi still doesn’t approve of the Lectrajeep. In that sense it’s not any easier than getting Naomi to fuck; but when, finally, at two A.M., Gwendy is naked in the Lectrajeep in the desert, Jesse gets a chance to rediscover two things he had all but forgotten—laughter and enthusiasm.
It’s too bad he had to impress her with the Tapachula thing; now he’ll have to go do it, right when she was making the idea of Tuc
son so much more appealing.
Carla Tynan has been up for much too long, and she’s getting strung out. MyBoat is pounding along, using up her antimatter charge faster than intended—though it would still take her clear around the world, if it came to that. The hull is vibrating noticeably with the extra speed she’s crowded on. But the autopilot can do all that; the only time Carla’s skills are called for is when she’s coming into a port, and since she’s still six hundred miles northwest of Nauru, that’s going to be a long while.
She’s feeling a little ashamed of having dropped and run when she realized the magnitude of effect that was happening; a real scientist, she chides herself, would have headed a little north and way east, over into the hurricane formation zone off of southern Mexico, to get a better look. But all the same, she’s a pleasure craft, not a research vessel, and no doubt the big powers are getting some serious gear into that area already. Most likely if she’d decided to head there, she’d have been intercepted by the American or the Mexican navy and interned.
Anyway, what she’s finding here is bad enough. Correct for the true atmospheric mix, and you get something between fifty and a hundred big hurricanes and god knows what else. She has the equivalent of six old-time Crays in her little ship (she can remember back when you had to rent time on such things, and nowadays some rich people use microsupers to run their houses), but that’s not nearly enough to run the full model at any reasonable speed.
Thus she’s forced to do what they never have to do at NOAA (or at NSA, which she doesn’t know about). She has to set up the parts of the model that she can do by graphics and instinct, plug in values from that, and then run the parts for which she doesn’t have a gut feel. It’s woefully imprecise, and if her gut feelings are wrong at any point she’s going to get nonsense, but it’s what’s available if she wants the answer before the storm hits.
Thus she sets up the screen to show her the new isotherms in the Pacific. An isotherm is an imaginary line along which the temperature is constant; most people have seen them on TV weather maps, usually as bands of color on “high today” or “low today” maps.