by John Barnes
Shaunsen looked around the room with a satisfied smile. “Now,” he said, “first of all, let’s establish that the President of the United States is dead. Dr. Brunner?”
The woman who stepped forward was small and square-built, with white hair and deep lines on her face. She shrugged as she read a statement out loud that she had examined the body, determined that it was Roger Pendano, and determined that he was indeed dead, the cause of death being a gunshot wound through the lower abdomen which had, among other things, torn the abdominal aorta, leading to an uncontrollable hemorrhage and death from loss of blood.
“Good,” Shaunsen said, “Now according to Amendment Twenty-five, U.S. Constitution, as well as Article II, and the Succession Act of 1947—”
“Everybody down.”
Graham knew instantly by the authority in the voice. Handcuffed, all he could do was fall over on his side. He caught a glimpse of a man leaping over him. The White House echoed with gunfire and low whumps and thuds that Weisbrod assumed must be some other weapon; from Weisbrod’s perspective, the Oval Office filled up with the boots and camo pant legs of a swarm of soldiers.
Whatever was going on in the rest of the White House, it sounded like it was happening pretty fast. The National Unity Guard were mostly street-kid activists and Democratic Party organizers deputized and given guns, probably their most seasoned fighters were some old gangbangers. It took more than a hundred of them to overrun about twenty Secret Service, Weisbrod calculated, and they had surprise and the Acting President on their side. They’re no match for these professionals—wonder where we got them?
“Your attention please,” a voice said. Everyone turned and stared at Speaker Kowalski, who stood in the doorway with Will Norcross. As Kowalski and Norcross came in, Heather O’Grainne popped out to flank them on one side and Cameron Nguyen-Peters on the other.
“As of 3:38 P.M. today,” Kowalski said, “Acting President Peter Shaunsen is under impeachment by a unanimous vote of the House of Representatives. I have a copy of the bill of impeachment with me to present to Chief Justice Lopez. And since both law and the Constitution prohibit anyone under impeachment from succeeding to the office of the President, he is not and cannot be the President.”
Will Norcross looked more like a confused junior clerk than ever; his voice was soft but firm. “Furthermore, as of 4:12 P.M. this afternoon, I have been elected President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and at the request and direction of the NCCC, acting under Directive 51 to locate and emplace the succeeding president of the United States—”
“If I have to,” Shaunsen said, “I will tie the whole government in knots for the next hundred years. I was not under impeachment at the time of the President’s death, I was still Acting President and had not resigned my position as Senate President Pro Tempore—”
Lopez cleared her throat. Her expression was surprisingly gentle but left no room for questioning, like a mother saying absolutely not to a recalcitrant child. “If I have anything to do with it, every case you bring will be dismissed out of hand and at once. As for grounds, you may refer to such doctrines as paramount national survival and the phrases ‘If the President is suspected’ to be found in Madison’s notes on impeachment. Less officially, the game is over.”
In ten minutes, Norcross was sworn in, and Heather had had the distinct pleasure of being the arresting officer for a former president (or acting president, at least). Shaunsen, demanding to speak to “the unbiased national media,” was taken to an FBI holding area; they uncuffed Graham and found him a chair, a cup of hot coffee, and a sandwich in a kitchen alcove. “Never mind feeding me,” he said to Heather and Cameron. “I can’t eat right now anyway. That was a photo finish. Where’d you get the troops from, and how’d you get them here so fast?”
“It’s the Old Guard,” Cameron said. “First Battalion, Third Infantry Regiment. The same outfit President Washington would have called for if he’d had a riot or a coup attempt to cope with. The battalion has a company at Fort McNair and the rest at Fort Myer. As soon as you and Heather started for the White House—since nowadays that’s a two-hour trip—I had our signalers sending to the semaphore station on top of the Pentagon, and they relayed to both McNair and Myer. Just a precaution at that point, because I thought we might need them, and it takes a while to start four companies of infantry moving, and even longer for them to walk as far as they did today.
“Meanwhile, like every really paranoid or crazed president we’ve had since World War II, Shaunsen had the White House bugged everywhere, as much as he could with the nanoswarm and biotes eating the bugs. Lenny had brought in some talent to hack the White House listening system, so we knew when you went in to see Pendano, and we heard Scott’s call to the Secret Service, and this guy Block, the National Unity Goon in Chief, yelling ‘Plan J now!’”
“What’s Plan J?” Heather asked.
“The National Unity Guard code message for ‘kill or capture all the Secret Service you see, and then go upstairs and kill President Pendano.’”
Heather shuddered. “That’s why the Secret Service got clobbered—they walked out into the halls to secure them and probably most of their deaths were in the first half minute, and by then they were down to a few guys trapped in rooms.”
“Surprise wins a lot of things,” Cameron said. “It did for us too. The National Unity Guard didn’t set much of a watch. I think they were all busy figuring out which ones of them would be getting which patronage plums for having been such good little thugs. We pretty much just walked openly to our assembly point on the GWU campus, put the intel we had together, sent a runner over to Congress, and we were ready to go as soon as Kowalski and Norcross were ready. All standard Army doctrine: pre-position overwhelming force and grab the whole show all at once.”
“So we have a functioning president again. Is it bone stupid or what that Kowalski couldn’t have been the president all along?”
Cam shrugged. “The Constitution was intended to be hard to change—and we’ve still done things as stupid as Prohibition. When it only rains every hundred years, it’s a miracle that any hole in the roof ever gets fixed. There’s at least twenty little bombs waiting to go off buried in our Constitution, and if I ran Congress, I’d appoint the equivalent of a bylaws committee, put through a Cleanup Amendment, and stump the states for it like a madman. But that’s my weird perspective; it’s my job to worry about all those little Constitutional bombs, and it’s the nature of things that they hardly ever go off. But since you asked, that’s what I’d do if it were up to me.”
“If anything more goes wrong,” Weisbrod pointed out, “it might be up to you.”
Cameron grimaced. “Don’t even speak of it. The NCCC office has just been as important as it ever needs to be, and Directive 51 is now safely back in the attic of history. They can dust it off sometime after 2200, if they’re too stupid to fix the Constitution before then.”
Graham nodded. “This is like watching the magician show you the trick bottom and saw slot in the box. I take it there was no problem explaining the matter to Kowalski.”
“In that briefcase he was actually carrying two sets of papers—one for if Pendano was alive and the other for if Pendano was dead. We had a runner ready to go back to the Senate; they were sitting there waiting to vote for cloture, and then convict Shaunsen without debate. We had him. It looked scary but nobody was getting sawed in half.”
Graham Weisbrod cupped his hands around his coffee and savored the warmth, the smell, and the last wonderful sips. “Nobody vital, you mean. You’d have gotten Norcross in and Shaunsen out, somehow, pretty soon. But speaking as the guy in the box… well, I still think that was a little close.”
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. THE CAPITOL STREET BRIDGE. WASHINGTON. DC. 6:30 P.M. EST. WEDNESDAY. NOVEMBER 6.
Alpha Company was walking back to McNair that evening, which would be most of the way back to St. Elizabeth’s, so Heather, Graham, and Cameron traveled with them. At the Capitol Street bridge,
five men volunteered to escort them the rest of the way.
On the bridge, looking out into the dark city with just a few flaring lights here and there, and the many campfires in the distance, Heather asked, “Graham, did you really think they’d kill you? I mean, I know they killed Roger Pendano, but that was a stray round—”
“Well. Um, well. Uh, for the last few days I’ve been thinking a lot about early Imperial Rome. Isn’t that just like an old prof? But I have been. Just consider this: If you figure Roger Pendano was effectively President again as soon as he signed that note for you to take to Kowalski, then so far, today, we’ve had four presidents—Shaunsen, Pendano, Shaunsen again, and now Norcross.”
“That’s pretty Roman,” Cam agreed.
“Well,” Weisbrod said, “what used to happen to the people close to the emperors, during the power struggles?”
Cameron said, “Hunh. Yes, I see your point. And look right here and now. In the capital city that supposedly governs the continent, three of the key powers behind the throne—who just put the fourth leader of the day on the throne, I like that touch, Graham—can’t walk home at night without an escort of armed men.”
“Interesting,” Graham said. “I had that Roman thought, the first time I can remember having it, right here on this bridge. And look around you. Doesn’t it look like the Dark Ages?”
The wind picked up, and the handful of little flames in the darkness all danced and bobbed. They were glad to get off the bridge, and back to St. Elizabeth’s, but all of them lay awake that night.
THE NEXT DAY. WASHINGTON. DC. (DRET/ST. ELIZABETH’S.) 11:00 A.M. EST. THURSDAY. NOVEMBER 7.
Norcross had set the meeting for 11:00 A.M. and specifically ordered them all not to schedule anything before it. He’d said he’d make sure civilization didn’t fall apart while they caught up on sleep. It seemed like a very unfortunate phrasing.
Norcross arrived at St. Elizabeth’s in a well-scrubbed biohazard Hummer, not a limo, and in a suit without a tie, “like a guy who is here to work,” Heather commented to Lenny.
The room was buzzing; when he smiled at them and said, “Thank you all for being here,” people applauded reflexively.
“Here’s my first news for you all. I’ve spent a couple of hours reviewing this operation. Plainly you’re the key to everything we’re doing. I know I said some ambiguous things about the Department of the Future on the campaign trail, but honestly, I can’t see any reason to break up a winning team at this point. By the same token, Homeland Security’s task force here has done exceptional work, and the many liaisons from other Federal departments have as well. So first off, good job, and I want you to keep doing what you’re doing.
“But there’s one big change I do have to make. I have become uncomfortably aware that there is a real possibility of a new and different kind of nuclear weapon, one we probably could not have detected even before Daybreak, which we are completely powerless to detect now, and which might be pre-emplaced anywhere the enemy could reach—the pure fusion bomb. Of course, if they do have pure fusion bombs, Washington would be Daybreak’s first and foremost likely target, and I can only guess why they have not yet hit us with it.
“Therefore, I am scattering all critical Federal operations away from Washington, to secure areas where it is less likely that there are pre-emplaced nuclear weapons, and where there are enough local resources to support the relocated Federal offices. All of that is bureaucratese for everybody’s going to military bases in the boondocks.
“I’m ordering you to move immediately—and by immediately, I mean the people who’ve been bunking here or can gather up their families fast enough will move this afternoon—to Fort Benning, Georgia. For those of you who don’t know, because the people at Benning were on their toes and worked ceaselessly, they’ve managed to keep a few transport planes running. Right now ground crews are burning scrapwood on the runways at Reagan National, and following up with caustic soda, and a boiling-water rinse; hopefully it will be as biote-free as they can make it just at the time the planes land, turn around, pick all of you up, and take off again—that fast, if we can do it, to minimize exposure time on the ground.
“I want all of you in a place that is unlikely to be destroyed; we can’t lose one of our most useful nerve centers. And the odds of our enemy—if there is one—having sneaked a weapon onto the home base of several of our elite units is much smaller than their chances of having concealed one in an open civilian city like Washington.”
He waited out the chaotic upsurge of chatter.
“Make sure you take every scrap of paper with anything important on it, and all your paper books and maps and so on. Those communication gadgets you’ve jury-rigged too, of course.
“Priority for personnel is this: First regular Federal personnel without families in the area. Then the volunteer assistants, who’ve been doing such great work here, the ones without local family first. Then families of Federal personnel from the area; then families of assistants from the area. Everyone boards at Reagan National in five hours, at four thirty. We expect most of you to walk so that the biohazard-capable vehicles can be used to move books and papers.”
“Sir?” Graham Weisbrod asked.
“Dr. Weisbrod. I don’t know if I told you officially that I de-fired you this morning, but if you’re asking, then, yes, I want you to go on this.”
“That wasn’t my question, sir. I was just going to ask why we’re not relocating the whole Federal government to secure bases. I can understand why you might send us in the first wave, but it doesn’t sound like you’re going to move yourself.”
“Excellent question.” Norcross sat down on the desk behind him and looked around. “This is an issue on which I’ve overridden many of my advisors. Here’s why I’m staying put, and so is Congress, at least for the foreseeable future.
“One, we need to have plenty of people near one of our most precious resources—the paper archive of the Library of Congress. We’ve got no way to move it before next spring at the earliest, it’s essential that we not lose all that knowledge, and it’s essential that we don’t just preserve it but use it. You realize that somewhere in there, on paper, is how to make pretty much every gadget and chemical that civilization needs? Including the ones that can be biote-resistant and nanoswarm-resistant? I’ve already got a dozen guys on their way here from JPL who will be sifting through early rocketry material, because we’ll need to be able to get things into orbit again sometime in the next few years; my science advisor tells me that it will be a lot easier to harden tube electronics against nanoswarm, and there are literally miles of shelves about tube electronics in there.
“Aside from that, you realize we could potentially have thousands of books about all of the useful arts that we can reprint and distribute? How to navigate by the stars, how they used to survey for rail lines and canals before lasers and computers, all sorts of skills we’ll need for the next century, because, ladies and gentlemen, if nobody’s told you yet or you haven’t figured it out, undoing Daybreak will be a work of generations. Knowledge is power, and that power is here, and while it is, we need to be here.
“Then there’s the psychological side. Much as I’ve always criticized relying on Washington to solve our problems, the fact is, when things get really bad, we do. It should not look like the Federal government is running away.
“And the risks may be smaller than they appear. Pure fusion bombs require fast computers and high-powered lasers. Maybe the reason no bombs went off in Washington is that the nanoswarm ate them.
“For all those reasons, I’m willing to take the chance, and take my stand right here. You might say I’m betting my life on it.
“And no, you are not going to argue with me about this one today. You can argue with me sometime next spring, when I will visit Fort Benning. Meanwhile, I have nine other stops to make today, and you need to get packing.” He nodded and smiled as they applauded, and was out the door before anyone could raise any furthe
r dissent.
“Well,” Lenny said, “at least we get one more airplane ride before the end of the world.”
ABOUT FIVE HOURS LATER. WASHINGTON. DC. 4:30 P.M. EST. THURSDAY. NOVEMBER 7.
Chris Manckiewicz saw the plane taking off from Reagan National late in the afternoon and trotted over to the White House. In Norcross’s open administration, all he had to do was ask: DRET had gone to Fort Benning.
That night, at dinner, after people read their stories aloud and everyone voted and argued about what should go in at what length, just at the dessert course when people tended to miss Rusty the most, he said, “All right, new business—big new business. Let me lay this out for you. Our new president has sent one Cabinet Secretary, the NCCC, and his most-consulted, most-used, working-on-the-most-important-stuff group of advisors to one of the best-functioning surviving military bases. Does anyone besides me see what this probably implies?”
“Favors for his strong constituency down South,” George Parwin said, in his usual tone of dismissal.
“Not the way I read it, George. Will Norcross is not purely venal and he’s smart enough to know he can’t afford to be perceived that way. So I don’t believe he’d severely inconvenience himself by moving his key advisors out of easy range just to rake in graft or pick up votes in elections that might never be held. I think what he’s doing is sending a continuity team outside the city.”
“You mean he thinks he might lose Washington?”
“Put it together. He’s sending one guy in the line of presidential succession, the guy whose job would be to make sure that the succession goes in an orderly way, and the team of advisors behind our present policy—to one of the best-defended sites on the continent.”