Twilight's Last Gleaming

by John Michael Greer

  Her husband was staring at her as she put the phone back down. “Baby, what is it? You look like somebody just clobbered you over the head.”

  “More or less.” She blinked, turned to face him. “That or I'm dreaming. That was Pete Bridgeport. He's just asked me to be his vice president.”

  His mouth fell open. After a moment, he shut it. “You're—no, clearly you're not kidding. Baby.” He crossed the room to her, threw his arms around her and gave her a kiss. “Baby, I'm so proud of you!”

  She beamed. “Ready to be Second Hubby?”

  “Any day of the week.”

  Her expression twisted, then. “For as long as it lasts. You know, it just about figures that the first person from the District to get this would be the last vice president this country is ever going to have.”

  “You don't think Bridgeport can pull things together.”

  “Hundred to one against it.”

  “Maybe so,” Robert said, “but you're still my favorite vice president.”

  She kissed him back. “Sweetie.” Then: “Who knows, maybe I can still make some kind of a difference.”

  17 October 2030: The White House, Washington DC

  “If we can pull this off,” said Joe Egmont, “it's going to be the biggest political upset since Truman trashed Dewey.”

  He and Bridgeport were in the Roosevelt Room. On the table in front of them were printouts of the latest polls and projections from across the country. In state after state—not all of them, but enough that the exceptions didn't matter—voters were leaning toward pro-dissolution candidates for the state ratifying conventions, and the elections for delegates were only weeks away.

  “How are we doing for money?”

  “Fair to middling. Some of the big corporate donors are coming through; I'm pretty sure they're also handing cash to the other side, so their bread is buttered whoever wins. Still, they're donating. We're getting a good response from the patriotic groups—American Legion, DAR, that sort of thing, and there's enough old money there that it matters. We should be able to run a decent national campaign.”

  “And the PAC?” Political action committees were the bread and butter of American political fundraising, and getting one established to help fund the anti-dissolution campaign was a necessity.

  “Up and running. You should see the first United PAC ad buys hitting the internet tomorrow or the next day.”

  Bridgeport nodded.

  “How much do you want to know about the other end of the campaign?”

  “No more than I have to.” Election fraud had been a normal part of American elections since George Washington's time, Bridgeport knew; everyone did it, and the only reward you got for keeping your hands clean was a string of lost elections.

  “What you need to know,” Egmont told him, “is that we're in trouble on that front. Usually the state and local party organizations handle the payoffs, and most of those aren't interested in helping us out on this—they're on the other side if they're taking any position at all. And—” He glanced up at Bridgeport. “There's big money on the other side. Really big money.”

  “Whose?”

  “That's the frustrating thing—nobody seems to know. Some of it's not too hard to trace. There are some Silicon Valley millionaires who are funding the California pro-dissolution campaign, and some serious Texas oil money going into the same thing all over the southwest. That sort of thing only accounts for a fraction of it, though.”

  “I'm wondering whether it might be foreign money,” Bridgeport said.

  “Very possible. The United States has a lot of enemies, and this would be a helluva good investment for any spare cash they've got.” Egmont shrugged. “But there's no proof.”

  Bridgeport looked at the polls again. More than once, as he'd tried to figure out what was happening in a United States that might not be united much longer, he'd felt as though he was grappling with an opponent he could almost but never quite see—as though there was a mind and a focused will behind the rising spiral of crises that was overwhelming the country. The problem was that the intuition never went any further, never gave him anything he could use.

  “There's one bit of good news,” Egmont said then. “Your personal approval ratings are way up there. People like you personally.”

  “For whatever that's worth,” said Bridgeport.

  “It's a handle,” Egmont said. “It might get a few people to vote the right way.”

  19 October 2030: Silver Spring, Maryland

  Melanie Bridgeport stood there looking at the telephone for a long moment. On the other side of the room, her laptop screen had just switched over to the screen saver, hiding an article from the local newspaper. Tommy McGaffney was off chasing an interview with one of the leaders of the pro-dissolution movement in New England; the lights of Silver Spring sparkled in the autumn night. She was alone with the decision she knew she had to make.

  No point in delaying, she told herself, and picked up the phone and dialed.

  Three rings, and then a familiar voice: Joe Egmont, her father's chief of staff and sometime campaign manager. “Hey, Mel! What can I do for you?”

  “I—I need your professional advice,” she told him.

  “Shoot.”

  “I want to run for a seat in the Maryland ratifying convention. I don't know anything about how to do that, but—I want to do it.”

  Egmont was silent for a few moments. “Okay,” he said then. “That ought to be doable. You'll need somebody experienced to run your campaign—I can think of a couple of people who are mostly retired, but might be game for a local campaign like that. Do you know the cutoff date for registering as a candidate?”

  “The 23rd,” she said. “I just read it in the paper.”

  “Gotcha. Does your dad know about this?”

  “No. I haven't had a chance to talk to him.”

  “Hey, that could be a great media handle—president's daughter enters race, doesn't tell him about it.” He considered it for a moment. “If I wasn't too busy I'd do it myself. Ought to be a fun campaign. No worries, though; I'll get you set up with somebody who knows what to do. Get yourself registered first thing tomorrow if you've got the time, and we'll get it rolling. Good enough?”

  “Yes. Thanks, Joe.”

  “Any time. You take it easy, Mel.”

  She finished the call, put the phone down, went back to the laptop and looked up the details. I can do this, she told herself. I have to do this if I'm going to live with myself.

  4 November 2030: The Capitol, Washington DC

  President Bridgeport got out of the limousine and walked up the steps to the Capitol, Secret Service agents in tow. Camera crews from the media lined his route, taking pictures and video footage: business as usual, but there was even more of a point to it than before.

  The weeks since Gurney's attempted coup and the Congressional countercoup had gone past in a blur of meetings, phone calls with world leaders, speeches to the media, and late night planning sessions trying to figure out how to bring stability to a nation on the brink of collapse. A major policy speech to both Houses of Congress, though it was one of the normal rituals of presidential power, had to be postponed until immediate necessities had been dealt with, and it so happened that the nearest date that fit Congress's crowded schedule was the day after the 2030 midterm elections.

  “Those are crucial,” Joe Egmont had said, in one of those late night planning sessions two weeks earlier. “It's not a matter of who wins—it's a matter of how many people vote. If we get anything like a decent turnout, that's a sign that we're starting to turn things around.”

  So much for that, Bridgeport thought sourly as he entered the Capitol. The people have spoken: 22 percent by voting, the other 78 percent by staying home.

  Party leaders from both Houses were waiting for him, and the obligatory greetings and handshakes followed, with more cameras flashing. Bridgeport could see the worry behind the practiced smiles, though. They knew, just as he d
id, that things weren't going well.

  The worst of it was that by most measurements, the economic crisis had already passed its crest and was receding. The plunge in the dollar's value, devastating though it had been, had made American goods and services more affordable than those of foreign competitors for the first time in most of a century. Exports were up, job creation was up, and small businesses were springing up all over the country, cashing in on rock-bottom rental costs. He would be talking about all those things in a few minutes, but the media had been talking about them for most of a month now, and it hadn't made a noticeable difference in the country's mood.

  He threaded his way through the familiar corridors, nodded greetings to familiar faces, got up onto the podium behind the Great Seal—familiar, too, though he was still getting used to being on the other side of it. Senators and Representatives, reporters and camera crews faced him, waiting—and that was when it struck him, hard as a physical blow, that in a few months all of it might be over and done with forever.

  He kept the realization off his face, got ready to begin his speech.

  9 November 2030: Spokane, Washington

  Harriet Elkerson looked troubled. “I don't want this to turn violent,” she said. “That's the last thing that anybody needs right now.”

  “I know,” said one of the young men sitting across the table from her. “But you may not get to choose. If the Feds send troops—”

  “I don't think Bridgeport would do that.”

  “I hope you're right, Mrs. Elkerson.” The possibility hung there in the air between them.

  In the weeks since the convention, more by accident than by plan, Harriet Elkerson had become one of the leaders of the dissolution movement in the rural eastern half of Washington state. The storefront office she'd opened to run for a delegate's seat stayed open, though the banners had changed, and the volunteers who gathered there and then went doorbelling through Spokane neighborhoods were chasing votes for pro-dissolution candidates for the state ratifying convention in January. In private moments now and then, Elkerson felt twinges of uneasiness about the whole business, but she felt sure that it was still the best option the country had.

  But if it came to civil war…

  “I'm willing to support civil disobedience, if it comes to that,” she said firmly. “I've already talked about that, you know, and if the federal government sends troops, I'll be right out there confronting them. But I'm not going to give any encouragement to violence.”

  The young man nodded. “I can get behind that. My question is, what are you going to need if it comes to civil disobedience?”

  Elkerson thought about that for a moment. “That's an excellent question,” she said. “It shouldn't be too hard to find out what's worked in the past. One way or another, though, it's going to take a certain amount of money.”

  “That's not a problem,” the young man said. Elkerson gave him a quizzical look, and he leaned forward. “There are some Seattle tech millionaires backing dissolution,” he said in a low voice. “Names you've heard of. I know people who have connections. If you can let me know what you're going to need, I'll see what I can do.”

  “I'll have my people get to work on it,” Elkerson said. “If we can get some funding in place now, get the things we need in place before anything happens, it might be possible to head off any trouble before it happens. I'd prefer that, you know.”

  11 November 2030: Lumberton, Mississippi

  “That wasn't half bad,” said Jim Owen. “There's a lot y'all still need to learn, but we're getting there.”

  There were almost 150 of them, young men in hunting gear, shouldering a motley collection of rifles. They were bedraggled and muddy from a long day training in the Mississippi woods, and looked nothing like an army—not any army the South had seen since 1865, at any rate—but Owen remembered the Venezuelan irregulars who'd made life so hellish for his unit, and nodded. If it came to fighting, these boys would do right well.

  “We'll call it good for today,” he told them. “Y'all be here tomorrow, oh nine hundred sharp, and we're gonna do it again. Got it?”

  “Yessir!” they shouted back, and Owen thought of the boys who'd marched off from Lumberton in 1861, the last time dissolution was in the air. That was a sobering thought; how many of those boys ended up in the clay at Antietam, Gettysburg, or all those other places on the long road from Manassas to Appomattox? He pushed the question aside, said, “Get out of here.”

  They laughed and started back to their cars, parked all anyhow on the side of the road a hundred yards away. Owen turned and went the same direction. He'd gotten most of the way there before he noticed an unfamiliar car, with someone in it. Some of the others had noticed it, too, and were hanging back, watching.

  Owen was maybe five yards from the car when the driver's side door opened and a familiar figure got out: Ray Muldoon, the county sheriff.

  “Afternoon, Ray,” Owen called out. “How's life treatin’ you?”

  “Fine as frog hair. You and the boys been havin’ a good day out here?”

  “You bet.”

  “Glad to hear it. You got a minute to talk?”

  “Sure thing,” said Owen.

  They walked across the road and a short distance into the pine woods on the other side. “I just got a call from the governor's office,” Muldoon said. “They want to know about militia groups getting organized in the state—like this one you've got going.”

  “I bet,” said Owen, grimly.

  “No, not like that. They want to know what you need.”

  Owen stopped and stared at him.

  “Jim,” the sheriff said, “dissolution's gonna happen. You know what the polls are running right now? Better than 70 percent in favor, and down here in Dixie, it's more than that. Word is the state government's planning on it—and if the Feds send troops…”

  “Yeah.” With a sideways look: “Last I heard, the state government don't have enough spare change to buy buttwipe.”

  “There's money for this,” Muldoon told him. “There're supposed to be some old-money families backing dissolution, names you've heard of. I know some people with connections. You let me know what you need, I'll get it.”

  Owen considered that. “A few mortars and machine guns. Some Stingers and antitank rockets, and ammo—plenty of that. As long as we're fighting on our own ground, that's what we'll need.”

  “No problem,” said Muldoon. He lowered his voice. “Aside from whatever I can get now, when Mississippi votes for dissolution, or the Feds do something—whichever comes first—as county sheriff, I'll be taking charge of the National Guard armory in town. You won't get everything—you know Billy Briscoe, don't you?”

  “Billy? Sure.”

  “He's drilling a bunch of boys up north of town, and they'll get a share. But you'll have everything you need.”

  “I'll give him a call,” Owen said. “We'll get things sorted out.”

  17 November 2030: Silver Spring, Maryland

  “Permit me,” said President Bridgeport, “to congratulate the successful candidate.”

  Melanie blushed, and then threw her arms around him. Everyone else in the room whooped and clapped. The little storefront space Melanie had rented as headquarters for her campaign had already been crowded before the president made his unannounced visit; now, with a couple of Secret Service agents hanging back dutifully near the door and a flurry of reporters who'd been tipped off, the room felt as though it was about to burst and spill everyone onto the wet street outside.

  It had been a wild ride. The state legislatures had scheduled their ratifying conventions with scant regard for the realities of American politics—or, perhaps, with all too clear a sense of what would likely happen if the political establishment had time to respond—and so she'd had only a little more than three weeks to make her case to the voters of the Silver Spring area. A capable campaign manager had been one huge advantage, but Joe Egmont had been right. Once the media started going on abou
t the president's daughter, Air Force officer and former POW, running all on her own for a delegate's seat, she'd had all the publicity she needed.

  She let go of her father, turned to face the reporters. “I want to thank everyone who helped make this happen. Gretchen Hayes, my campaign manager.” A plump white-haired woman, who looked like everyone's favorite grandmother and had the instincts of a shark, stood up and smiled and sat back down. “All my volunteers, and especially the voters of this district, who listened, who encouraged me, and who chose the right answer and not the easy one.”

  Two weeks earlier, when it was anyone's guess who would win the election, she'd put some time into writing out what she'd say if the voters chose her. How did it go? “This coming January,” she said, “I'll be meeting in Annapolis with the other delegates to decide whether Maryland is going to ratify the 28th Amendment. You know how I'm going to vote—but this is going to take more than voting.

  “I want to ask each of you to remember what this country is supposed to stand for. I want you to talk to your friends and neighbors, and remind then what this country is about. We don't have to fall for the easy answer of dissolution. We can make the United States work again, if we work together at it. Thank you.”

  The others in the room were clapping and cheering again. Melanie looked at her father, though, and saw right past the smile. He knows we won't work together now, she realized. He knows we're going to lose.

  19 November 2030: Falls Church, Maryland

  Emil Pohjola considered the list of names on the screen. All things considered, it had taken him far too long to find time to read the leaked documents that detailed Gurney's failed takeover. The new administration had made a clean sweep of special-projects staff and the other less-than-legal dimensions of the White House machinery; that was business as usual—most new administrations did the same, and Pohjola knew he would have no difficulty at all finding new employment if he needed it—but the delay had kept him from discovering a vulnerability, and that touched his professional pride.