The mention of chickens reminded Hector that he hadn’t chowed down in a while. He was thinking that maybe it was about time to head for the shelter when the night air rippled. Then there was a loud whooshing sound, followed by a thunderclap.
“Shee-it!” the Homeless Lobbyist exclaimed.
“What the hell?” the Homeless Philosopher asked. For a moment, Hector had wondered if the rippling air and the whooshing noise were only symptoms of some weirdassed case of the d.t.s, but the Lobbyist and the Philosopher had apparently seen and heard the same thing.
Then the bright lights across the way went out, and the White House disappeared.
“Shee-it!” the Homeless Lobbyist shouted again. He dropped his brown paper bag and the bottle inside shattered.
Hector sat there, too surprised to move. After a few moments, the low rumble to Hector’s right grew into a roar. A convoy of tanks rolled past the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and stopped in front of the park. A couple of soldiers climbed down from one of the tanks, while other members of the armed services fanned out across the park.
“Come on,” the taller of the soldiers said as he approached. To Hector’s left, the Lobbyist and the Philosopher were being dragged away by several other soldiers.
“What the hell’s going on?” Hector asked. “Where’d the White House go?”
“Didn’t go anywhere.” The soldiers grabbed him by the arms.
“It disappeared, for Chrissake.” He twisted in their grip. “Was sittin’ right here, and it fuckin’ disappeared!”
“Not exactly,” the shorter soldier replied.
* * * *
The Secretary of Commerce was with the Senator and the Congressman in a relatively comfy secure and undisclosed location. The Secret Service had brought in some snacks, plates of little puffed pastries with shrimp and crabmeat, diminutive tarts, and tiny cocktail wieners impaled on toothpicks. The Secretary could have used a cocktail himself, but the only beverages in evidence were coffee, tea, bottled water, and assorted soft drinks.
He sat back with a cup of coffee, figuring he’d need the caffeine to stay awake throughout the State of the Union address. The President was not only long-winded, but also had a voice that had become noticeably whinier and more high-pitched since his inauguration a year ago. If he had sounded like that during the campaign, thought the Secretary, he would never have made it past the first primary. Then again, the President had a lot on his mind, enough to give anyone a whiny voice and rapidly graying hair. His predecessor had left him with cesspools on all fronts.
“Did he get Joey to polish the speech this time?” the Senator asked. She was an imposing woman from Connecticut who belonged to the other party.
“I dunno,” the Secretary replied; he wasn’t exactly in the inner circle and didn’t even know who among the President’s speechwriters had sketched out the first draft.
“Sure hope he did,” the Congressman muttered; he was a barrel-chested man of the Secretary’s own party from Illinois. “Or else we’re in for a long fuckin’ night.”
On the large plasma screen, tuned to C-SPAN to spare the Secretary any media gasbagging from the major networks, the President was still gladhanding his way toward the dais, shaking hands and clutching shoulders. The Secretary had finished his coffee and was munching on a tiny cocktail frank by the time the President was handing copies of his address to the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House.
The screen abruptly went blank.
“Fuckin’ C-SPAN,” the Congressman said. “If you ask me, they got too many damn glitches lately.” The Secretary reached for the remote on the coffee table and switched to CNN.
“…just disappeared.” A blond news babe was on the screen. She looked a bit green around the gills, but not because of any issues with the screen’s color contrast controls. “And now a report’s coming in from our White House correspondent. The White House is gone, too.”
“Holy shit,” the Congressman said.
In the corner of the room, two of the Secret Service agents were cupping their ears, clearly intent on whatever was coming in through their earpieces. The Secretary switched to Fox.
“…reports from all over the city,” the voice of a male correspondent intoned. The dark and murky image on the screen showed tanks rolling past Lafayette Park. The Secretary was seized by a powerful surge of emotion compounded of both ecstasy and terror. He, the Senator, and the Congressman, those chosen this time to be tucked away in the customary secure and undisclosed location while the rest of Washington’s potentates were at the Capitol, might be all that was left of the government.
He tried for NBC but found himself back at C-SPAN. The President was still at the podium, with no words coming out of his mouth, while the look on his face was that of a man about to be arrested. A big bruiser wearing an earpiece was passing a piece of paper to him.
“I don’t get it,” the Congressman said.
Three of the Secret Service agents stepped in front of the screen, blocking the Secretary’s view. “What’s going on?” he asked.
The agent tapped his earpiece. “You’re not going to believe this, Mr. Secretary,” he began.
* * * *
The Secret Service officer had performed some odd actions in the course of his duties. He had ridden in the freight elevators of hotels where the President was staying, the only elevators that could be truly secured, with him and his fellow agents packed as tightly around their charge as passengers on a low-fare flight. He had rerouted traffic during rush hours to allow for the Presidential motorcade, closely observed annoyed chefs in restaurant kitchens, had forced the cancellation of long-held reservations at resorts where Air Force One was headed, and generally made an unholy nuisance of himself in the course of protecting the Commander-in-Chief. But looking out for the big guy during the State of the Union address was, generally speaking, a piece of cake, because security was so tight throughout the Capitol and in D.C. at that time.
But now, looking around at the assembled dignitaries in the House chamber, he could see that pretty much all of them suspected that something was up. One of his fellow agents had discreetly passed a note to the President just before he was to begin his opening remarks, and so far the President was doing a decent job of huddling with the Vice-President and the Speaker as if he just had a few last-minute items to iron out, but the Supreme Court Justices were definitely looking restless, while the Joint Chiefs of Staff looked like they had bigger than usual ramrods up their asses. Camera crews from the networks were still going about their business, and he wondered what the TV audience, that small percentage that even bothered to watch the State of the Union, was seeing.
“C-SPAN’s just about to cut off its cameras,” a voice said in his earpiece, answering his question, “and all the networks have gone to their anchors for special reports. We’ve got the Capitol and the White House surrounded, so nothing’s going to get through.” There was a pause. “Okay, guys, time to tell you just exactly what’s going on, but brace yourselves.”
Terrorists, the officer thought. They’d finally done it, struck at a time when the whole country, or at least that segment of it that wasn’t in the middle of watching ESPN, HBO, or rented DVDs, would be transfixed with terror, glued to their screens the way they’d been during those dark days in September at the turn of the century. All of the Secret Service agents inside the chamber—those by the doorways, at the end of the aisles, in the balcony with the First Lady and honored guests, and standing near the President—stood at attention while continuing to scan the room, heads turning from side to side.
“It’s like this,” the voice in his ear continued. “The Capitol, like, suddenly got real small, and so did the White House. What happened was this weird rippling in the air kind of deal, and then suddenly stuff shrank. I’m talking about the White House, the Capitol, the House and Senate Office Buildings, and pre
tty much everything on either side of Pennsylvania Avenue. Basically, the White House is now about the size of Malibu Barbie’s beach house, and the Capitol dome isn’t much bigger than a goddamn teacup.”
The Secret Service officer pondered this statement. If the Capitol was so tiny, how could all of them still be inside it? The answer came to him just before the voice provided further illumination.
“And it looks like all of you…us…shrank right along with everything else.”
* * * *
Pennsylvania Avenue was still the same size, despite the shrunken size of the bordering real estate. Rows of troops, along with police called in from surrounding counties of Maryland and Virginia, had been stationed around the Capitol and were lined up on Constitution and Independence Avenues, ready to protect the Lilliputians trapped inside the Capitol Building from any Brobdignagian constituents seeking redress for real or imagined grievances. There was a rumor that some residents of Anacostia were preparing to converge on the Capitol.
They could stamp us all flat, the First Lady thought. She stared at her hands, which seemed the same size they had always been, but if everything here had shrunk proportionately, then everything should still look the same. If she went outside, she would notice the difference. Any eagle soaring overhead would probably look like an Airbus.
She sat in an office just outside the House chamber, along with the President, the Vice-President, the Vice-President’s wife, the National Security Advisor, the Domestic Policy Advisor, and several Secret Service agents, her jaws aching from the smile she had struggled to keep in place even after she had been led out of the chamber and ushered to this temporary sanctuary. Her husband, as usual when things got really heavy, had a bewildered expression on his face, as if hoping that, real soon now, somebody would tell him exactly what to do.
“So what the hell happens now?” the Vice-President asked, looking even more morose than usual. “Can’t park our asses here forever.”
“True enough,” the Domestic Policy Advisor muttered as he rubbed his bald pate, “but we’re safer staying here for the moment. Easier to protect us.”
The First Lady shuddered, then thought of all the time she had spent refurbishing the White House, rescuing it from the tacky excesses of her predecessor and restoring the residence to its former glory, only to have it all taken from her, reduced to the size of a dollhouse. But perhaps all of her efforts weren’t necessarily wasted.
“Couldn’t we all just go back to the White House?” she asked. Her husband gazed at her as if clutching a life preserver; the Vice-President glowered at her as though wanting to push her overboard. “I mean, it’s teeny now, but so are we, apparently, and I’m sure we could be just as well protected there.” The staff had to be as tiny as they were, at least those who were still there attending to their nighttime duties, so life could go on, even if on a somewhat smaller scale.
“That’s all well and good for you,” the Vice-President’s wife murmured, “but where are we supposed to live? If we set foot inside our house, it’s a toss-up which of our cats gobbles us up first.” The Vice-Presidential residence had apparently escaped shrinkage, along with most of Washington, but that was small consolation to the First Lady. The Rayburn, Longworth, and Cannon House Office Buildings, along with the Russell, Dirksen, and Hart Senate Office Buildings, were the size of a set of children’s blocks, while the Supreme Court Building could now rest easily on scales held by any good-sized statue of Justice. She should be grateful that the F.B.I. Building hadn’t shrunk during the daytime, when many more people there would have been in their offices, and that the Pentagon and the C.I.A. remained untouched, even though nobody there had been able to prevent what seemed a massive breach of national security.
“I have an idea,” the Foreign Policy Advisor said. “Couldn’t we just, well, like, go about our usual business?” She cast a wide-eyed glance around the room. “I mean, apparently the broadcast wasn’t affected, at least not until the cameramen were told to shut it down, so wouldn’t we still look the same on TV?”
“That won’t do us any good the next time we hold a summit,” the Vice-President growled.
“Or a state dinner, for that matter,” the First Lady said.
The Vice-President frowned even more. “Some superpower we’d look like.”
A door opened and a man wearing the dark suit and earpiece of a Secret Service agent lunged into the room and slammed the door behind him. “Got some news,” he said.
“Hope it’s good news,” the President said, looking a little less lost.
The Vice-President scowled. “In this context, about the only thing that might count as good news is getting low bids from Mattel and Toys ’R Us for future government services.”
“Better news than that,” the agent replied.
* * * *
The House Sergeant-at-Arms made the discovery. He was standing in a doorway at the East Front of the Capitol because, after all the strangeness of the evening, he needed a smoke. Luckily, his cigarettes had shrunk along with him, while the few inches of snow that had been predicted for that evening had failed to materialize; he would not have wanted to confront a glacial mass in order to enjoy a cigarette.
He stood above the stairway, puffing away, until someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to find that the Mayor of Washington, D.C. had also stepped out for a smoke. The two men smoked together in silence, gazing out at the mountainous dark forms of tanks and forests of trousered legs that surrounded the Capitol. Finally the Sergeant-at-Arms said, “Think I’ll take a walk.”
“Man, maybe that ain’t such a good idea,” the Mayor said, “you bein’ sized so small as you are.”
“I advise against it,” a member of the Honor Guard said behind them. “You wouldn’t want to get gooshed.” Another serviceman nodded his head.
“Nobody’s going to goosh me with all those tanks around, and my doc keeps telling me I need more exercise, what with my cholesterol and all,” the Sergeant-at-Arms said.
“If you’re worried about your cholesterol,” another young military man muttered, “then you ought to quit smoking.”
“Watch out for pigeons,” the Mayor added.
The Sergeant-at-Arms descended the steps, breathing in the cold night air between drags, and wondered how that was possible; maybe the molecules of air around him had shrunk along with the Capitol. He dropped his butt, ground it out with his foot, and tried to recall what one of his high school science teachers had said about a square cube law or whatever it was. If people were the size of grasshoppers, they’d be able to hop around like grasshoppers.
He was envisioning tiny members of Congress leaping high in the air from the Capitol steps, flapping their arms to ward off flies that would be nearly half their size, when the air seemed to ripple around him. For a moment, as his body vibrated, he felt a not unpleasant electrical sensation as the ground shifted under his feet.
Three uniformed policeman ran toward him, followed by a man in a long tweed coat, and then the Sergeant-at-Arms saw that the tanks, although still imposing, were now their normal size. The men coming toward him were of normal size, too; in fact, two of them were considerably shorter than he was.
“What the hell did you just do?” the man in the tweed coat asked.
“Came outside for a smoke and took a walk,” the Sergeant-at-Arms replied.
“What you did,” one of the cops said, “was just pop up out of nowhere. Maybe we better take you in for questioning.” The policeman gestured toward the barricades and at the tiny Capitol dome inside them, which glowed under its small floodlights, its tiny flags on its east and west sides still proudly flying.
“I’m the House Sergeant-at-Arms, I can show you my ID.” He was about to reach inside his jacket pocket before realizing that this might not be such a good idea with armed cops standing around.
“Wait a minute.” The twe
ed-coated man scratched his head. “Maybe we’d better try an experiment.” The man clapped a hand on the Sergeant-at-Arms’s shoulder and shoved him toward the miniature Capitol. He felt the vibrations and then the prickly electrical sensations again as the Capitol abruptly loomed up before him in all of its majesty.
“So that’s how it works,” the man in tweed said softly.
The two tiny men turned around in unison to face six legs as big as sequoias. Far above them, a voice as loud as God’s exclaimed: “Jesus H. Christ!”
They moved toward the policemen. This time, the Sergeant-at-Arms felt himself suddenly shooting up like Jack’s beanstalk, or maybe Alice in Wonderland after eating that weird cookie in that Disney flick that was a favorite of his daughter’s. He was again looking down at two cops who were shorter than he was.
“What now?” the Sergeant-at-Arms asked.
“Evacuate the Capitol,” the man in the tweed coat said.
* * * *
It had taken a couple of weeks, but everything was almost back to normal, or at least as normal as anything could be under the circumstances. The President’s Chief of Staff stood at his office window, gazing below at the cordon of tanks and soldiers around the tiny White House. He’d had to move himself and the rest of the staff over to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which had caused a fair amount of hard feeling. Those who had lost their cherished offices in the West Wing were not happy about their relocation to the E.E.O.B., while those who had earlier been exiled to that Siberia resented having to move their operations to the New Executive Office Building, the State Department, and the campus of George Washington University, where some basement offices had been turned over to them.
Puss in D.C. and Other Stories Page 16