Puss in D.C. and Other Stories

by Pamela Sargent

  The President pursed his lips and screwed up his eyes even more, looking extremely perplexed.

  “Look at it this way,” the Vice President said. “Think of that other guy who looks like you as an imposter. What he’s doing is taking up space that’s actually yours, and you can’t have two people in the same place at the same time. So you’re going to have to take him out.”

  “Didn’t count on anything like that.” The President stared at his weapon. “Couldn’t we just send ’em back here? We’d be gone, and they could have our spots.”

  The Vice President shook his head. “Too complicated. Might not even work. There’s no way to guarantee they’d even end up here.”

  “Yeah, but who cares?” The President’s voice rose to a whine that could have shattered glass. “At least we wouldn’t have to kill them, and they’d still be alive.”

  That didn’t sound like the guy who had refused to pardon any of those inmates on death row while he was still Governor. On the other hand, it did sound like the guy who had made sure he had landed a cushy berth in the Air National Guard during wartime. “Too complicated,” the Vice President said. “We’d have to convince them to go, maybe force them to leave. Tie up the loose ends—shoot’m and be done with it.”

  “I dunno.”

  The Vice President struggled to contain his exasperation. If the President got cold feet now, well, he wasn’t about to wait around here and get impeached and removed from office, even if he did have to get rotated by himself. And if the President started blathering about the Rotator to those Fox News gasbags and all the other sycophants he had been inviting to the White House more frequently these days, they’d just assume that he had finally cracked under all the pressure.

  “You’re up to it,” the Deputy Chief of Staff piped up. “You’ve got the balls for it.” His eyes roved around the room, then peered at the President through his thick glasses. “Look at it this way—that look-alike’ll be taking up a space that’s rightfully yours. You’ll need to take his place if you’re going to go after all those goddamn liberals and lefties. You’re the decider, not him.”

  “Besides,” the Vice President added, glad of the help as he picked up the conversational ball that the Deputy Chief of Staff had thrown his way, “you won’t be able to go after the terrorists here if you’re impeached. But once you’re rotated, you can go after them there.”

  The President’s face brightened. His eyes took on a glow. “Then I guess we better get goin’.”

  * * * *

  The Vice President had been somewhat apprehensive about being rotated, even though he had been assured that his pacemaker would remain unaffected. To his relief, the rippling of the air and the sudden feeling of disorientation passed quickly, leaving him feeling only slightly nauseated afterwards. It helped to be inside a tank, and he didn’t bother to ask about looking through the periscopes to see what was going on outside.

  “We’re rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, sir,” the officer sitting in front of him at the commander’s station announced. “We should be passing the Old Executive Office Building in about five minutes or so.”

  “Any sign of trouble?” the Vice President asked.

  “Folks are just watching us pass,” the officer at the gunner’s station replied, “like we’re some kind of parade.”

  Good, the Vice President thought. He had been wondering if they might encounter some of the groups that had been gathering outside the White House in recent days, knots of people who looked mean and angry and carried signs with obnoxious slogans like IMPEACH THE COMMANDER-IN-THIEF and REGIME CHANGE BEGINS AT HOME and MY TOYOTA GOT BOMBED BECAUSE IT’S SMALL FOREIGN AND FULL OF OIL and other phrases that dared to compare him and the President to Nazis and criminals. Apparently they’d arrived in a variant where the citizenry was more docile and less likely to cause them any trouble, which would make it easier to do what they had to do now.

  At last the tank rolled to a halt. Two officers climbed out ahead of him, while another was just behind him, ready to help heave him out of the vehicle if necessary. He was panting by the time he clambered over the side. The driver was already standing below him, and held out an arm to help the Vice President down to the ground.

  The sky was cloudless and blue, the morning air crisp and cool without a hint of global warming. By now, his wife would have taken care of her counterpart and, with the help of the trusted aides and Secret Service officers with her, secured the Vice Presidential residence. Other officers and aides were climbing out of tanks and sprinting across the White House gardens, knowing that they would not be challenged; after all, the Vice President was with them.

  He looked around and finally spotted the President; it was important that they head for the Oval Office together. He waited as the President trotted up to his side. “All set?” the Vice President growled.

  “Yeah.” The President had taken on his steely-eyed look, the expression he occasionally wore whenever that old bag who was still hanging on in the White House press corps shot off one of her more impertinent questions at a press conference.

  The Vice President slipped a hand inside his pocket, feeling his weapon; too bad all those jokers who insisted on making wisecracks about all of his draft deferments would never know that he could be one hell of a brave warrior when it counted. “Then let’s go,” he muttered.

  * * * *

  He and the President were the last ones to enter the White House. They made it all the way through the hallways without seeing anything more disturbing than a glimpse of the Deputy Chief of Staff standing over his dead counterpart before the door to his office closed. It would have been a lot easier if the bodies could just fade away and disappear, the way they had done in a sci-fi TV series he used to watch, but the Rotator didn’t work that way; the DARPA researchers had told him that they would have to dispose of the bodies themselves.

  Two Secret Service men, two that the Vice President could trust completely, were moving down the corridor ahead of him and the President. Among other things, the pair had made sure that the Veep wasn’t left holding the bag when that clumsy pal of his got in the way during their hunting excursion and ended up with a face full of buckshot. A couple of Secret Service officers were outside the northwest door to the Oval Office, and maybe it was just his imagination, but they both looked just a little bit heavier than their two rapidly approaching counterparts.

  “Mr. President?” one of them said, looking puzzled. “Nobody alerted us.” He tapped at his earpiece. “Thought you were still inside,” and then his eyes widened as he stared at his own twin.

  The President cackled. “Thought I’d slip out into the Rose Garden and catch some of that nice weather we’re havin’. Decided to take the long way around and come back inside this way.” He struck his chest. “Stayin’ in shape. Every little bit helps.”

  Even as the Commander-in-Chief was yacking, the four Secret Service men were reaching for their weapons, but the two who had been rotated, knowing what was coming, had drawn theirs just a second or two faster. They aimed and fired, one round each, right at the heads of their alternate selves, and two men lay dead on the floor. The Vice President reflexively clutched at his chest, hoping his pacemaker would hold up under the strain; this was where things could have really gone wrong, and they weren’t exactly out of the woods yet. The President had a sickly look on his face, as if he was about to toss his cookies.

  They passed through the door into the Oval Office. A quick look around the large round space revealed that the same volumes of history the President had lately been browsing through were still on the bookshelves, the same paintings of Western scenes still hung on the walls, the same slightly uncomfortable sofas faced each other, and the same brightly colored rug with the Presidential seal lay on the floor. He stared past the sofas and the rug with the seal and saw the two men right where he had expected them to be. The President’s count
erpart was behind his desk and his own dopplegänger sat in one of the armchairs near a window.

  The sight of his double unnerved him for a moment. He hadn’t realized how bald he was getting, and how jowly his face was, but those cold glittering eyes behind his spectacles looked reassuringly familiar.

  “What the fuck?” his double muttered.

  The President’s double stood up behind the desk. The Vice President was reaching inside his pocket for his gun when, next to him, the President shouted, “Nobody else gets to be me!”

  “What’re you talkin’ about?” the President’s double said.

  “I’m the President, and you’re takin’ up my space!” The President whipped out his gun and fired. “I’m the President!” he shouted as his double fell across the desk, nearly drowning out the staccato sound of the Vice President’s gun as he shot his own twin.

  The balding man fell. A red stain was spreading across his chest. “Fuck you,” his dopplegänger said with his last dying breath.

  “Fuck you,” the Vice President replied, aiming carefully, and shot him again.

  “Holy shit,” the President whispered. They sat down on the sofas, facing each other, and waited for the clean-up crew who had been rotated with them to arrive.

  * * * *

  It was taking the President a while to recover. The two bodies, their heads covered by black hoods before they’d been stuffed into body bags, had been taken away. The laptop the Vice President had requested had been brought to him, and still the President was sitting at his desk, staring up at the Presidential seal on the ceiling, perhaps seeking some heavenly guidance. He looked like he could use a stiff drink, and the Vice President could have used one himself, but that would have to wait until he was back at his own place. He and his wife could toast themselves with some of that single-malt he kept in one of his underground vaults.

  An hour of Googling various news sites and blogs had already told him what he needed to know. In this variant, they’d held on to a majority in the Senate and had a two-seat edge in the House—slim margins, but enough so that they wouldn’t have to worry about hearings or oversight, let alone any impeachment proceedings. There would be no challenges to claims of executive privilege or declarations of extraordinary powers. They had landed in a place where their people were worthy of their efforts, where they’d be free to secure the world’s resources and their own interests and cement their status as the world’s one and only superpower. He thought of what the DARPA scientists had told him about the possibility of events being mirrored across the continua. That might mean that if they succeeded here, then they’d be increasing the odds of America’s dominating all of the other variants as well. Maybe well out to infinity.

  Master of the multiverse, he thought. The title had a kind of appealing ring to it.

  The President coughed. “This is weirding me out,” he said from behind his desk.

  “What’s weirding you out?”

  “Can’t figure out if I’m the President or an assassin.”

  The Vice President was about to reply when he heard the door behind him open. He turned to face himself, a gun in his hand, with the President standing right behind him. “What the fuck?” he muttered, and then a hammer struck him in the chest.

  He fell forward, then rolled to one side. Somebody was shouting; he recognized the President’s voice. “I’m the decider,” he was shouting, “and nobody else gets to be me!”

  The Vice President looked up and saw a dark form bending over him. “Fuck you,” he managed to say, wondering how many times this was going to happen.

  “Fuck you,” his double responded before everything went black.

  Afterword to “The Rotator”

  This is another story that lacks proper names, but for different reasons than “After I Stopped Screaming:” proper names seemed redundant. When the story first came out, most readers could probably easily discern that the Vice President of the United States who is the protagonist was modeled on Dick Cheney, probably the most reprehensible person ever to hold that office. Later on, it occurred to me that not tying the characters to particular individuals might make the story more likely to survive when the Bush and Cheney administration has long since been forgotten.

  Although given the damage done by that regime, it might be a while before such amnesia sets in; then again, we Americans have a marked talent for historical amnesia and moving on without learning any lessons from our experience. Only in alternative realities are some recent political miscreants ever likely to be called to account.

  THE FALLING

  written with George Zebrowski

  She was sinking, caught in a familiar dream of flight, falling endlessly toward the ground.

  Waking with a start, she stared at the ceiling and noticed again that one of the white ceiling tiles was curving at one corner, drooping ever so slightly toward the floor. That tile had always drooped, and she was still falling. Her stomach was pressing against her spine and the bed threatened to sink into the floor.

  Elaine sat up, carefully putting her feet on the carpet. The sensation was still there. The whole building was sinking. Shoddy construction, she thought; shifting sand. She padded sluggishly to the window and pulled the curtain aside.

  She was still five floors up; the green grass and parking lot below were exactly where they should have been. The fifth-floor windows of the condominium complex across the road still glittered with the morning sunlight, beaming the gleam at her window.

  Turning away, she made her way to the bathroom, washed up, and then struggled back to the bedroom to dress. Each foot seemed to sink as she set it down; she lifted her knees high, feeling as though she was walking through mud. Her skirt pulled at her hips and her jacket seemed oddly heavy for a garment made out of cotton. She took a deep breath. She had to get out and get some air.

  * * * *

  A larger crowd than usual was waiting by the elevator; a few people were still in bathrobes and pajamas. “Hey, Elaine,” one neighbor yelled.

  She raised one arm in greeting, then let it fall to her side. She did not want to take the elevator anyway; she could sink without it. She went down the stairs clinging to the railing, feeling as if she were on an escalator and wondering why she could not force herself to move more quickly.

  * * * *

  A crowd had gathered on the lawn; several pairs of anxious eyes surveyed the building. “It’s sinking,” someone said.

  “It isn’t.” Elaine waved a hand at the tiers of balconies and windows, which were still where they belonged.

  “Something is.”

  She turned toward the speaker and recognized Bill Weinstein. “You feel it, too?”

  “Everyone does.” Bill was rubbing his chin so hard that she thought he would remove his tennis-player’s tan. His wide shoulders slumped uncharacteristically. “I could barely get up.”

  Elaine suddenly had to sit down, and plopped onto the lawn. Others were already seated. Every building nearby had clusters of people gathering below on meager squares of grass, tennis courts, and at curbside. Few cars were passing—odd for that time of day. She looked down, feeling the ground sinking away beneath her. After staring at the grass for a long moment, she rose, brushing dirt from her skirt, wondering what the green and yellow blades were hiding.

  “I can’t do anything here,” she said. “I’d better get over to the Center.”

  Bill frowned. “You’re going to work?”

  “Might as well. I can’t afford to miss a day now, not with—” Elaine paused. The opportunity she had been waiting for all this time seemed to be sinking away, along with everything else.

  * * * *

  The sinking feeling traveled with Elaine across the causeway and to the Center’s parking lot. Her knees shook as she got out of the car; her stomach was queasy. The air seemed thick and heavy. She looked at her wat
ch; she had made the trip in twenty minutes, as usual, though it had seemed to take much longer.

  George Rolfe was sitting in her office. “We’re sinking,” Elaine said, and tried to laugh.

  George’s drooping eyelids made his brown eyes look mournful. “Down, down, down,” he said, and cackled. “We’re being flushed away.” Elaine imagined a whirlpool and the room seemed to spin, pulling her down.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. It seems to be happening everywhere. You explain it.”

  She sat down, falling into the chair behind her desk with a thump. “How the hell am I supposed to explain it?”

  “You’re the psychologist, Elaine. It’s a perceptual problem, a mass delusion. It has to be. There isn’t any indication on any objective measuring device that shows any difference. That means it’s in our minds.”

  “That means I won’t be able to go.” She was suddenly angry. “I’ve been waiting and waiting.” Gravity had won; it was pulling at her, as if to register its triumph. She would not leave Earth; she would not get the chance to study the behavior of those in the spacelab. She would be pulled back into the mental morass of this world.

  “How can you think about that now?” George’s mouth sagged as he frowned; he glanced at her as if trying to decide whether to say any more. “I talked to them this morning. They feel it, too. It isn’t just happening down here.”

  Elaine gripped the arms of the chair, seeing her chance. “Then it’s even more important for me to go. I can see how it’s affecting them.”

  “How can you think about that now?” George repeated. “Think of what you can do here. How is this going to affect people? Why do we all feel it? You have quite a fertile field for study.”