by John Barnes
After an enthusiastic round of handshaking, the tribals went on their way.
Bernstein said, “Well, someone skunked someone, there, but I’ll be damned if I know who.”
“That’s ’cause we haven’t made sure that we are the skunkers and not the skunkees,” Robert said, cheerfully. “But we will. I know in my bones we will. Did Nathanson show you those fun toys he found?”
They each took one turn firing a Model 1, which was fun. After that, they sent for a tribal who had rudely refused True Daybreak and talked back to Nathanson. They made him practice fire the SMG a few more times, to see what Grayson’s letter to Duquesne had meant by “blow up.” It burned his face badly and tore off two fingers. Lord Robert and his advisors all had a good laugh.
THE NEXT DAY. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 10:30 AM EASTERN TIME. FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2026.
Jenny Whilmire Grayson had been slumped, not moving, in the front cockpit of the Stearman, for the last hour or more of the flight. Well, if she can sleep in that situation, it’s not like any of us ever gets enough sleep, Bambi reflected. She remembered that the first time Quattro had taken her up in this thing, it had been exhilarating, joyful, fascinating—and about fifteen minutes, and for fun. The three hours from Richmond to Athens, on a breakfast of two cups of lukewarm coffee, had been long and tiring for Bambi, and she was just as glad her passenger was probably dozing through most of them.
As they crossed the vast ruin of Atlanta, something in the changed rhythm of the plane must have awakened Jenny, who stirred, leaned back, and shouted, “Can we circle over Athens before we land? So we can see what’s up?”
“Sure!” Bambi shouted back. “Good idea! Will there be anyone there if I signal your house?”
“Should be!”
“General Grayson always had us do that! Then they know to bring the carriage!”
Jenny gave her a fairly jaunty thumbs-up, for the circumstances.
In Athens, seen from the air, this morning, the crowds surged through the streets like jellyfish in some absurdist maze, blocked occasionally by lines of troops or cops. At the corner of Baxter and Milledge, there appeared to be a mass brawl going on; downed picket signs and banners along Baxter suggested that one side had been marching on the TNG capital, the old U of Georgia campus, and the other side had ambushed them. Mounted troopers were riding down Milledge and a police line had been set up across Baxter.
They swung south and east to make a low pass over the Grayson house; Bambi was relieved that it was still standing in apparent good shape. She just hoped it wasn’t triggering too much for Jenny. Call me a heartless coward, but she’s been through a lot, and I might understand her better than other people, but she’s not exactly my BFF, and I’d rather not be the only person there when she starts to cry.
Bambi banked and descended northeast again, toward the airfield, but as they approached, she saw that there were people—lots of people, big swarms and herds of people, actually—on the runway, running back and forth, and . . . oh, man. Throwing rocks. Slugging each other. It’s pretty much a battle down there. And since that Airfield Master probably radioed that we were coming, I am guessing this is about us.
Many faces were turning up toward them, and there was a puff of smoke that had to be from a handgun; the shooter was immediately mobbed, but Bambi decided this was no time for taking chances, and circled higher. In a few minutes, a cavalry detachment showed up and went down the runway at a slow trot, shoving the crowds aside; infantry appeared and set up police lines, which took another fifteen minutes.
“Is that about us?” Bambi shouted.
“It’s about me. I can pick out some Christian symbols on the signs and the other side is waving the old fifty-star flag. One mob that wants me here, one that doesn’t!” Jenny turned to watch them more closely; with nothing to do but circle, with stick and rudder locked for the moment, Bambi had a free hand to squeeze Jenny’s arm. Jenny covered it with her other hand and twisted in the cockpit to hunch over toward Bambi.
Well, damn, I guess someone has to be the comforter.
At last the police lines seemed to be holding, the cross-and-eagle and fish-sign wielders were driven from the field, and the American flags began to cluster around the entrance to the terminal. A heliograph winked from the tower, indicating permission to land.
Not sure how long this relative safety was going to last, Bambi came in as swiftly as safety permitted. When she rolled to a stop in front of the terminal crowd, two uniforms with a lot of braid, one of them a woman, came striding up and delivered a very ostentatious salute.
Helping Jenny down from the plane, Bambi asked, “Are you going to be okay?”
“Probably not, but I’m going to do the right things, I hope,” Jenny said, under her breath.
The two uniforms came nearer; the man, a tall African-American with a shaved head, said, “Mrs. Grayson, I don’t know if you remember me—”
“Of course I do, Colonel Steen, and it’s good to have you here. I’m guessing you’re on my side?”
“Yours, the late General’s, the Constitution’s, and America’s, ma’am. This is Colonel Jardin, once upon a time she was a public affairs specialist.”
Jardin said, “I’m afraid we need you to give a speech that will result in some calm focus on our side; we have about equal problems with people wanting to go home and give up, and wanting to throw bricks. You don’t happen to know Monroe Motivated Sequence by any—”
“Speech competitions all through high school, speech minor in college, I’m your girl. Feed me the steps and I’ll make it happen.” Jenny’s smile was genuine, but Bambi wondered if anyone else noticed how tired she looked dragging herself upright.
“Good. I think we can stall them five more minutes but then we’ll have to put you up on the rostrum, ready or not.”
Sudden yelling from the crowd, apparently about nothing, seemed to confirm that.
Jenny turned back to Bambi. “I know you have places to be, and I’m guessing Colonel Steen can make the arrangements for you to get fuel and so on?”
Steen nodded. “Happy to. I don’t think I’ve seen you since I performed your wedding.”
“That was a happier time,” Bambi agreed, “but maybe just as busy. Yeah, I should try to be in Paducah tonight, and I’ve got a couple hours’ work to do on the ground here.”
“We’ll get you squared away,” Steen said confidently.
Bambi gave Jenny a last firm hug. “You need asylum, ever, you know Pueblo and all of California will open their doors, lady.”
As she followed the ground crew, which was using a mule to tow the Stearman backwards into a hangar, she could hear Jenny’s unamplified but powerful voice beginning to speak over the crowd, and the hush-and-shush of a crowd trying to make each other listen. Bambi was a little surprised at how affectionately she thought, Good luck, sister.
• • •
Jenny felt like when she turned her back on Bambi, she had truly lost her last friend, but she didn’t look back, squared her shoulders, and marched forward. Just like when Mama dropped me off at preschool and when Daddy dropped me off at Sarah Lawrence. Keep moving forward, try to play well with others.
Beside her, Jardin was murmuring, “The whole city is crazy, ma’am, that’s not an exaggeration, it’s just the way things are. Your carriage is coming, but it was delayed a few minutes so we could provide it with a cavalry escort. When it takes you back to your house you’ll have more of an escort, because the carriage with you in it is a much better target. Your house has been under guard since early April; I don’t know if the general ever told you.”
“He just muttered something about damn silliness. Is all this really necessary?”
“Oh, it’s necessary. Pay attention to your guards, ma’am. They’ll ask you to stay away from windows, not answer doors, and if you hear something moving and you don’t know what it is
, head for the nearest guard, don’t go look yourself. And I’m afraid they’re right. Sorry to say there’s some fire damage to your garden, one whole row of rosebushes got burned when a firebomb bounced off your house.”
“I can see them being mad at me, but what did the roses ever do to them?” She did her best to make her smile genuine; it must have worked because Jardin looked relieved. She was probably wondering how I’d take all this.
Jardin added, “Also you’ve got a couple windows boarded up where someone shot them out, and we’re sending someone by the post office to pick up your mail and bring it in, because your mailbox has been set on fire a few times. Basically most of the attacks have been cowardly vandalism. But with you home, that house will attract worse things than cowardly vandals.”
“I will listen to my guards. Remember my husband was murdered while I was in the bathroom just three days ago.”
Colonel Jardin winced; Jenny sourly thought, Older military women sure are surprised when younger civilian women fail to be shrieking little mice, I guess. Well, I hope she’s suitably impressed, and she’ll start being blunt with me. I never had much patience for kindly ambiguity, and now I have none.
Jardin seemed to catch on. “All right. I’ll just lay it out straight. We’re trying to turn rioting in the city into a real revolution that will make the National Constitutional Continuity Board abdicate and ideally leave the city. The Army could probably do it ourselves but some of us would fight on their side, and we don’t want to fight each other, and besides once you start letting the military take power in coups, you never get them out of the business. So we need a popular uprising, after which we restore order, recognize the Provi government, and get things back on track for beating the tribes and electing a real government under the real Constitution in November.”
“I’ve been around the Army enough, even in not much more than a year, to understand that oath is serious,” Jenny said. “So you’re the PR person officially and I’m guessing unofficially you’re the minister for propaganda? Tell me what you need me to do and I’ll do it as well as I can.”
Jardin’s smile had broadened. “This is pleasantly easy, now that I know I can just tell you. You need to play the grieving widow card pretty big—”
“For sympathy, or more waving the bloody shirt?”
“Sympathy, for the moment. General Grayson was the closest thing the Army had to an actual hero, and the major thing we need you to tell them is that if he could only be here to lead them, he’d back the rebels and oppose the reverends.”
“He would. All right, I’m badly stressed out but I’ll manage, and if I cry on the rostrum I guess it’ll just enhance the effect. So, since you wanted a Monroe Motivated speech, that’s the Attention Step, then the Need Step is—”
“The rebels have been saying they just want their country back, they want to be Americans again, so I thought—”
“Great. I can run with that, and Jeff would’ve been all for it. No shading of the truth necessary. So then, Satisfaction Step, we’re going to take it back, Vision Step, taking it back is what America’s all about, so Action Step, so let’s take it back.”
“Perfect, ma’am. The one little side note is there’s a faction in the mobs that I think of as anarchic looters, and some people that are sorta Reds and just troublemakers, and we don’t want to give them too much encouragement, but we also don’t want to discourage them because frankly they’re better fighters and more determined than a lot of the middle of the road types. So you need to signal that we’re behind the radicals enough to keep them fighting, but we want to hand power over to the moderates.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Well, I was thinking some work-ins about the Constitution, maybe something that implies that Daybreak was foreign or unAmerican, remind them how many end-of-the-world fundamentalists were in the original Daybreak movement back before. Stress that the minute the government surrenders we want real law and order, that we’re not taking over to create mob rule, we want order under the Constitution.”
“I hope you’re not surprised, Colonel, that I am totally down with that program.”
Jardin smiled. “I’m glad you’re here, ma’am.”
In its way it really wasn’t different from speech contests in high school and college; really, just like extemp except she didn’t get fifteen minutes alone in the quiet to make notes. Afterward, she only remembered the outline that she and Jardin had sketched, and a few phrases here and there, but every pause for breath drew wild cheers, and she couldn’t have been doing too bad a job since Jardin was grinning at her when she came down from the rostrum.
Then they guided her out through the old air terminal to the street, and Jardin helped her into her carriage between two guards, and sat down facing her. “If you can give me just a little more energy for a few more minutes, please stand up and wave, and try to look confident and happy; we’re going through mostly rebel neighborhoods and there’ll be a lot of people out to cheer for you. Mind you, we might need to pull you back into your seat if trouble starts, so please pardon that in advance.”
This wasn’t so different from having been part of the court for Miss Clarke County, really. Except that when she was third runner up, there were other girls waving, and soldiers were not randomly jumping into the crowd to push people to the sidewalk, chase people down, or tear crosses out of people’s hands.
“We’re getting kind of loose in how we interpret free speech and freedom of religion, aren’t we?” she asked Jardin.
“We’re leaving cardboard signs and cloth banners alone, mostly. But wooden crosses have been used as clubs. Cardboard-box crosses have been used to conceal knives and pistols, so that’s different. Mind you I don’t like the PR of having soldiers knock people down to tear their crosses apart, but we’re finding enough weapons in them that we have to keep doing it.”
“What do all the signs about ‘Don’t Just Appoint, Anoint’ mean?”
“The reverends are caught between the way most people read the Constitution and the way their crazy followers read Revelations, ma’am. Some of the real dedicated crazies over on their side want the reverends to anoint a king of America, like Saul or David was anointed the king of Israel. And start building ships and building up the army to go fight at Armageddon. And mass-execute a whole lot of gays and unmarried non-virgins and known atheists, and make Catholics and Jews swear an oath of allegiance to the Bible. And after that there’s the crazy stuff.”
Jenny shuddered. “Daddy used to struggle against those people.”
“Well, you know, we can tell he still doesn’t like them much, ma’am, but he can’t afford to throw them out, either.”
“Like our radicals?”
“Just like.” Jardin’s flat expression invited no more conversation.
At last they reached the house, and it wasn’t until Jardin was walking her up the front steps that she thought, Oh, god, it’s really Jeff’s house, not mine, and it’s crawling with his stuff in every closet and corner, how am I going to bear up in front of everyone?
She didn’t. Maelene and Luther were just inside the door, hugging her and saying how sorry they were and how worried they’d been. She just let go and cried.
As her cook and maid steered her upstairs, Jardin followed. “I’m an experienced mother and old enough to be yours. Make this easy on us, and just let us all take care of you. The next meeting of the Board, which you’re going to crash, isn’t till early tomorrow morning, and then you have a rally afterward. I’ll be by to prep you for that meeting, right after breakfast—”
“Over breakfast,” Luther said firmly. “Mrs. Grayson hates to eat alone and she’s fine after that first sip of coffee. We’ll set that up after we get Mrs. Grayson settled in.”
“Over breakfast, then. Meanwhile, rest, sleep, recover, find whatever strength you have left because we’re going to ask you
for all of it.”
After a short, blessedly hot bath, she curled up in the huge bed she used to share with Jeff, and just let the tears flow and the sobs come. There was still full daylight through the curtains when she fell asleep, and then she knew nothing till just before dawn, when Maelene woke her with coffee on a tray and the offer of another bath if she wanted it. She finished the pot of coffee in the tub, dried and dressed quickly, and was seated at the breakfast table when Jardin arrived. “How are you feeling this morning?” the colonel asked.
“A million years old, but ready for the next million. Let’s eat.”
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PADUCAH, KENTUCKY. 4:30 PM CENTRAL TIME. FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2026.
The heliograph and the flaggers directed Bambi to land on a long straight stretch of Park Avenue where they’d knocked down power poles and wires.
The city was filling up rapidly. Paducah was on what was left of two transcontinental rail routes, and troops from the Temper and Provi states and the semi-independent states between were converging. When she went in to report to General Phat, she found he was trying to sort out the most complicated organizational chart she’d ever seen. “We have two national armies, ten state militias that aren’t affiliated with either army, and troops from maybe a dozen government entities that didn’t exist back before, all piling in,” Phat said. “We have Unionist Texan companies and battalions that voted to leave the Texas Army and come here to fight for the USA, and Christian States of America separatists who just want to beat the tribals before they go home and start their own country, and a certain number of only slightly crazy hillbillies, rednecks, bikers, brawlers, bored teenagers, thugs, and goons who just want to get in on a fight against Daybreak because they like Daybreak even less than they like authority, and we’re in process of parceling them out to units that will take them and getting them something resembling minimal training.”
“I have a private letter, eyes only and no record, for you from Jenny Grayson.”