"Important enough to die for," Gus said, frowning.
"Die?" Tanya asked in a quiet voice, suddenly scared. She removed her hand from his chest and straightened up.
"Ivan Petrovich is dead," Gus said. "I don't know the details, but he died rather than reveal anything about where you three were going or why. Now, since he can't talk and you don't know, the only one left who can enlighten us is Viktor Braginsky. Viktor is at the North Pole, so that's where we're going."
CHAPTER 7
The Making Of A God
IT HAD been the first time in memory that the mayor of New York City had asked for airborne noise pollution. Alexander Armstrong Day in New York City started out with a bang. Two bangs, in fact—sonic bangs from the golden nose and wingtips of Bucephalus, bringing General Alexander Armstrong back to Earth. Having been designed to fly through the almost vacuum of the Martian atmosphere and land unaided at any point on the rocky surface of that planet, Bucephalus had more than enough lift and power to allow Major Thomas to land it at LaGuardia Airport. After a tour of the world, Bucephalus would find a permanent home in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
Alexander was met by Mayor Diane "Di" Perkins, the "Bronx Bombshell". A tall, striking, blond-haired, fashionably dressed woman with steel-gray eyes like Alexander's, she was single and used her dating opportunities to political advantage. Always on the go, she strode out to Bucephalus with her three-man police escort and met Alexander at the exit lock instead of waiting for him back in the terminal buildings. A chartered helicopter took them into the city to the start of the parade. Di had brought along three newspapers.
"This is the Times," said Di, holding up the front page, hail the conquering hero, said the headline.
"The Daily Mirror is a little more dramatic," she went on, holding up, planet buster back.
"While the Fax/Facts electronic newsheet ..."
alexander the greatest, it said.
She leaned forward to hand them to him.
"I agree. You are the greatest," she said breathlessly.
Alexander, interested only in what the papers had to say about him, glanced briefly through the columns, noticing the photographs. There was an especially good one in the New York Times that showed him in his battle suit, the helmet under his arm. The gold color came out well.
Di was sitting in the small helicopter passenger seat facing him. She undid her seat belt and slipped forward until her knees were between his. She took his free hand.
"After the parade," she said, "there will be a reception and dinner at my mansion. I'd be very willing to put you up for the night." She squeezed his hand slowly and with feeling.
"Well ... Di," Alexander said, dragging his attention from the newspaper clippings and squeezing her hand in return to play for time. "I would really like to do that, especially if we could get some time alone together. But ... Major Betsy Thomas and I are already booked into the top floor suite at the Hilton Kilometer." He paused, then added brightly, "Perhaps I can spend a night in the mayor's mansion the next time I m in New York."
"Or the White House, if you happen to be in D.C. next year," Di said with a wink. "I don't intend to be mayor of this little burg forever."
"May I quote you on that?" a rough-sounding voice said from up front. The copilot turned in his seat and shoved a microphone between them. He took off his huge pair of sunglasses and pushed his too-large borrowed hat to the back of his head, revealing a coarse, friendly face topped by curly sandy-red hair with prominent white streaks along the sides. The most noticeable feature of the face, however, was a bulbous, red-veined, five-martini nose. The smell of vodka saturated every word he breathed.
"Maury Pickford!" Di shouted furiously. "You drunken, brown-nosing, prying asshole! What the fuck are you doing flying my helicopter!"
Maury feigned shock at the reply, then looked down at his recorder. "My goodness, Di, I do believe you have burned a hole in my nanodisk."
He looked up from the recorder and answered her seriously. "The copilot owed me one for saving his life in the Baltic fiasco."
He turned to Alexander and his face broadened with an ingratiating grin that made him look like an aging, dissipated leprechaun. Alexander was forced to like him.
"In case you missed Di's introduction, I'm Maury Pickford—my father's idol was shortstop Maury Wills. I work for the Daily Mirror—the one with tits on the third page ... Tell me, General, what's it like to be a worldwide hero, with all the girls, even mayor-type girls, throwing themselves into your lap?"
MAURY stuck close by them as they landed at the starting point for the parade. Alexander lost sight of him as the video cameras crowded in, but somehow Maury ended up sitting between the driver and the security guard in the front seat of the limousine that took Alexander and Di through the streets of New York City. From there Maury got the famous shot of Alexander and Di that for once made the front page of the Daily Mirror more titillating than the third page.
The picture showed the pair twisted around and looking back over the trunk of the limousine at some commotion that had taken place as the limousine had passed by. The wind had blown Di's skirt up and Alexander's left hand was on her stockinged thigh.
Alexander had a difficult time explaining that one to Betsy when he showed up back at the hotel suite that evening after the reception. Shortly afterward, he traded in his kilometer-high view of the city for a midnight taxi ride to the mayor's mansion.
LATE THE next day, after a short plane hop down the coast, Alexander found himself back in Washington, D.C., at the center of U.S. military power—the Pentagon.
America may be getting too old for its own good, Alexander thought as he made his way around a construction area inside the Pentagon. The five-sided building was approaching one hundred years old. It should have been torn down and replaced, but it was now an "historical monument". Instead of getting a new building, the armed forces were reduced to demolishing the inside portions of the Pentagon one-fifth at a time and rebuilding the inside to modern standards while keeping the outside looking the same.
This was the one building in the country where the brass on his visor and the two stars on his shoulder brought few glances from passersby, although one kid in the shopping concourse had recognized him, while he was getting a shoeshine, and tried to bother him for an autograph until he shooed the little pest away.
Alexander made his way through the rings and corridors to the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General William Macpherson. He took special note of the layout of the office as he entered and saw some things that he would do differently once it was his.
It wouldn't be long now. "Billy" Macpherson had specifically asked him to stop off before he gave his invited speech to the joint session of Congress the next day. The only reason for the invitation would be to make permanent the four stars that Alexander had worn as commander of the UN Invasion Fleet and to tell him of his nomination to the General Staff of the U.S. Space Force.
The secretary sent him right in. General Macpherson was in the white uniform worn by the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The four gold stars on his shoulders glistened nicely on their white-worsted epaulets. General Macpherson did not come out from behind the desk to shake Alexander's hand, but sat back in his chair and looked at him from a distance.
"Good afternoon, Alex," he said. "New York City certainly gave you an outstanding welcome yesterday."
"That's only the beginning," Alexander bragged. "After the speech to Congress tomorrow, I will be off on a tour of the major cities of the United States. Then I'll have to visit the capitals of our allies that supplied troops to give a UN flavor to the invasion." He shook his head and shrugged. "I'm afraid it will be some weeks before I am free enough to take up my General Staff duties here at the Pentagon."
A frown crossed General Macpherson's face. "I'm afraid your next duties for the Space Force are not going to be at the Pentagon."
"What do you mean?" Alexander asked, puz
zled.
"A two-star general is usually assigned to a base," General Macpherson said.
"You mean," Alexander said, getting angry, "that after leading one of the most successful campaigns in history and winning back a whole planet—a whole solar system—you're not going to promote me?" He lunged forward over the desk and grabbed a white lapel. General Macpherson stared impassively as Alexander yelled in his face, "You can't do this to me!" Suddenly realizing what he was doing, Alexander let go of the lapel and stood back in shocked silence.
"I didn't do anything to you, Alex," the general said. "You did it to yourself when you spaced Petrovich. Although everything you did was technically correct and the Board of Inquiry whitewashed the incident and cleared you, as far as the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I are concerned, it was murder. Besides being murder, it was stupid. Both military intelligence and the CIA wanted to get their hands on Petrovich."
The general slowly and deliberately reached up to straighten his lapel, then continued. "Until you learn to control yourself better, you don't belong on the Space Force General Staff."
Alexander could feel his anger returning. His face stiffened. He stood at attention. "Very good, sir," he said, turned on his heel, and walked out.
Macpherson will pay for this, he promised himself as he left.
THE WARM welcome he received at the joint session of Congress partially made up for the previous day. The news that he had not been promoted had rapidly leaked around Washington. Most who heard about it thought he had been unfairly treated, and one senator had already started a call for an investigation.
The announcement of his name as he entered the House chambers was buried under an avalanche of applause that went on and on for twenty minutes. The video cameras followed his every move as he shook hands with the president and his cabinet in the front row, pointedly walked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also in the front row, then shook some more hands. Taking his time, he strode to the podium, waved to the video cameras, and waited, nodding his acknowledgment to the crowd, his face periodically crinkling up into the now-famous smile with the space-weathered crow's-feet arrows pointing at his deep-set eyes, then relaxing as he leaned over to listen to someone trying to talk to him from below.
After the tumult had died down, there were the ceremonies. The Speaker of the House and the vice-president gave welcoming speeches. The president, knowing this was not his day, gave a brief speech as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, thanking Alexander for a successful campaign with minimum casualties.
Then came the awards. The first was a special gold medal authorized and presented by the grateful members of the Reformed United Nations. The medal had a picture of Mars on one side and the arrowlike shape of the Yorktown class of spacecraft in full acceleration on the other. Next was a certificate containing a joint declaration of the two houses commending him as commander of the UN Invasion Fleet and leader of the U.S. forces.
Finally, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the only one awarded in the Mars campaign, for—as the Speaker of the House intoned in his stentorian voice—"... his personal bravery and risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, while personally engaged in hand-to-hand combat with only a pistol against enemy forces armed with missiles and rifles ..."
The applause started again as the medal was put around his neck and went on another fifteen minutes, Alexander nodding his thanks and waving occasionally to the video audience as he waited for the chambers to quiet down. They finally did, and he began to speak.
"I want to thank you, Mr. Speaker, all the members of this Congress, and all the people of the great city of Washington, D.C., and the rest of the United States and the world, for the warm welcome and the great honors you have bestowed on me. I also want to thank all of you assembled and the president for your help prior to the Mars campaign by giving me a blank checkbook for the soldiers and equipment that I needed to oust the planet-grabbing Neocommunist occupiers from their illegal bases on Mars." He paused, then his voice took on a serious tone.
"Although the Russians no longer control Mars, they still threaten us all along the Baltic front. They also still threaten us from above with their military bases in orbit and on the Moon. What I won on Mars was not a war. It was only one battle of our still-continuing war against worldwide domination by the atheistic rulers of Neocommunist Russia, aided by their socialist sympathizers and their cowardly Neocommunist propaganda dupes."
Alexander stopped smiling and turned grimly serious. "And those people that are duped by Neocommunist propaganda not only exist in foreign nations, they have come to exist here in this country. I know they even exist at the highest levels of our unified military command—right now!"
There was a gasp from the audience, and General Macpherson and the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff started to frown.
"I call on you to listen to me!" Alexander said over the crowd noise. "In my great victory on Mars, I have shown that it is possible to attack the Neocommunists directly, drive them away from the stolen lands they illegally occupy, and send them crying back home to 'Mother' Russia, without the cowardly Neocommunist government doing a thing in return. If I could get the Neocommunists off Mars—" He paused and his forefinger swept accusingly over the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "—why can't these so-called leaders of the armed forces get them out of the Baltic ... and orbital space ... and off the Moon?" His finger came to rest on General Macpherson.
"Because that man and the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are Neocommunist dupes that have bought the Neocommunist propaganda line that the Russian armed forces are invincible. They are cowards who are afraid to fight!" A murmur started in the audience and the commander of the U.S. Space Forces started to rise, but General Macpherson placed a hand on his shoulder and restrained him.
"I was proud to serve my country and the world against the atheistic evil of neocommunism!" Alexander continued, shouting against the rising voices. He raised one hand after the other to his shoulders and pulled the loosened double-star bars off his uniform epaulets. "But I can no longer serve under leaders who are cowards! I resign!" He flipped his stars to the floor, where they slid to the feet of General Macpherson. He then turned to grasp the podium and stared fiercely at the audience while the video cameras closed in on the steel-gray eyes.
The chamber quieted to a deadly silence as he continued in a low voice. "But unlike another brave but battered general who once stood at this podium, I will not fade away ..."
He rose up on his toes and stood straighter, arms stiff on the podium. "Instead," he said, "I shall return ... to drive away the evil forces of atheistic neocommunism that threaten the peace. I will bring everlasting freedom to the United States, to the world, and to the solar system!"
He strode off the podium and made his way unescorted out the doors of the chambers to loud but scattered applause that switched to a puzzled buzz as soon as he cleared the door.
THE SPACE force limousine was waiting for him at the bottom of the Capitol steps. The driver raised his eyes questioningly as he noticed the missing stars on the general's shoulders, but said nothing as he opened the door, then went around to the driver's seat.
"Take me back to the Crystal City Pyramids," Alexander said to the driver. As the driver started toward the Fourteenth Street bridge, Alexander started to think about what he would do next. This would be the last time he would be able to call on the space force for a limousine.
He wasn't too worried about money; the Scott Meredith Literary Agency in New York City had sold world rights to his life story for one hundred million dollars to Ballantine, Interplanetary, half the money up front, and had found somebody to write it for him. The immediate problem was staff to take care of all the piddling details in order to free his brain for the important decisions.
Perhaps he should take his brother's advice and run for president. But no one in his right mind would want that bean-counting, hand-shaking, baby-kissing job. The president had a lot of powe
r, but what the office of the president needed was a good adjutant—a prime minister or something—to take over all the drag work. Unfortunately, the U.S. Constitution didn't allow for that and made it so the president had to do everything. Then again, if he did get himself elected president, the first thing he would be able to do would be to kick Macpherson off the Joint Chiefs of Staff and send him into obscurity ...
As they crossed the bridge, the Pyramids loomed ahead. The largest hotel complex in the Washington area, it took up four blocks in the Crystal City area and consisted of five pyramids—a tall central one, and four slightly smaller pyramids around it. Inside each was a pyramidal atrium.
Alexander had asked for the top floor suite of the central pyramid. His original request had been rudely rejected—the top floor suite was permanently unavailable. But shortly thereafter an apologetic manager had called back to say there had been a terrible mistake and he could have the room after all.
The suite was magnificent, with solid-gold doorknobs and plumbing, a separate office with twenty-four-hour rotating secretary service, complete computer and communications capability, and a full personal staff, including a butler, a chef, and a buxom maid in a skimpy French outfit who giggled instead of slapped when he copped a feel. Best of all, the hotel told him some admirer of his was picking up the tab. They declined to tell him who.
The space force limousine dropped him at the special outside elevator. The doorman held the door and sent him on his way up the forty-five-degree incline to the top of the pyramid. As he rose to the higher levels, he could see into the five-sided central court of the Pentagon a few kilometers off. He wished that he had a nuclear tipped miniseeker in his hand instead of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
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