by Joe Haldeman
"Ooh-woo." Leroy sipped the neat liquor. "My ears are burning."
"It's a hell of a thing," the short man said. "No matter who gets it. It's not American."
"Is now," Connie said. She looked back at the cube as it switched back to the Walter Reed hospital room.
"Bobón" Mitchell
The cube room at the prison was crowded and silent, both rare. The warden had given permission to open the cells so that everyone could get to the news. Bobón and three other guards covered the doors, armed with tanglers, but nobody was going anywhere.
Bobón was still sorting out the murder he'd witnessed this morning. Not the first one, but Ybor was just a nice kid who hadn't hurt anyone. Why'd the warden have to drag him in there to watch? And now this damned thing.
Maybe it was all just a long nightmare. Maybe he would wake up and it would just be another morning. But he'd felt that way before, and it never worked. Just in stories.
Why did so many people feel so bad about the president? Well, she's pretty and smart and powerful, and maybe people who like one don't like the other.
At least she never could of felt anything. That boy this morning went through all kinds of hell before he died. He couldn't get it out of his head.
The inmates knew. The way they looked at him, it's like they thought he did it. Not this time. Towelheads, watch out, though.
Davis had shut up and they switched to a local reporter.
Daniel Jordon
"—here at the International Plaza, we'd like to get the reaction from some of the students here, pardon me?"
The young man turned around and revealed a diamond-shaped scar on his cheek, a member of the Spoog gang. "I ain't no student fugoff," he mumbled in passing.
Great assignment. "Young man, could you give me your reaction to the tragedy in Washington?"
He was small and frail and red-eyed. "I really don't know anything. Was he crazy? He must have been crazy?"
"Some people have said he never got over his experience in the Gulf," Daniel prompted.
"I had an uncle there, and an aunt, and there's nothing wrong with them," he said, looking intently at the ground, and wandered away.
A pretty young woman approached, tailored suit, smile. "Pardon me, ma'am, could you—"
"No! Leave me alone!" She whacked him hard on the shoulder with her heavy purse, aiming for his head.
Like a message from the gods, a little voice in his ear said, "Switching to network in five."
Aurora
"Twelve pounds of C-9 is enough to demolish a good-sized house," a man in army fatigues was saying, the smoldering ruins in the background. "That was probably in case he got stopped at the door."
"Pauling might have used a little less explosive," Marya muttered sotto voce, "if he'd known he was going to give us Davis on a platter."
"Who's next in line if Davis dies?" Rory asked. "He looks like he'd blow over in a strong wind."
"Cabinet members, I think. It's not my beat. Maybe the president of the Senate, R. L. Osbourne. She's better than most."
As they found out in a few minutes, though, Senator Osbourne had been in the meeting room and was among the dead. So were the chief of staff, the attorney general, and the UN ambassador, as well as the administrators of Defense, Energy, the CIA, FEMA, and NASA. LaSalle liked to have all her cabinet together when she made her pronouncements, watching them for shifts of allegiance.
There would be a fundamental realignment of power in Washington, as soon as everyone came back. Marya had been right about the exodus, politicos prudently putting some distance between themselves and ground zero. Of course, the explanation was that they wanted to be with their families in this time of tragedy, and their families happened to be out of town, or at least were able to catch up with them there.
The vice-president didn't live through the hour. They watched the chief justice swear in Cool Moon Davis, inside a fast helicopter headed for Camp David. Then they saw a few minutes' coverage of the traditional riot in Washington, confined to a few blocks downtown, the looting and arson quickly discouraged by armored shock troops from the D.C. Police department and an air-mobile civil disturbance unit from the National Guard. No soldiers or police were hurt.
"I'm going to watch the rest of this at home," Rory said. "I feel like people are looking at me. You're welcome to come along."
"Thanks," Marya said. "I wouldn't mind getting away, either. Of course they'll call as soon as I get my shoes off."
They stopped by Pepe's table on their way out. "Don't bother coming in tomorrow," she said. "It'll just be chaos. I'll call if anything comes up."
Pepe
"Thanks, Rory." They nodded at each other for a moment, not able to say anything, and she left with the newsie.
"Will you come stay with me tonight?" Lisa Marie said hoarsely. "I just can't…"
"Sure." He was holding her hand, and briefly clasped it with his other. "Nobody should be alone now."
"I never even liked her," she said. "Did anybody you know?" Pepe shook his head. "But this is too horrible."
"It's not like America," Pepe said. "I guess it is now, but it's the sort of thing that happens in little dictatorships. Despot of the month."
"I wonder whether that old man will be able to hold things together." Davis was standing in a press room now, his hand to his ear, relaying his staff's answers to questions.
"He won't have to do much. I don't suppose he's made an unassisted decision in the past decade. If we make it through the next few hours, things will get sorted out."
"You think the Islamic Jihad might…"
"If I were him, I'd be more worried about the Democrats than the Muslims. They probably have a competency challenge all worked out. If I were them, I'd wait a decent interval, and give him a chance to do some really unforgivable things. Then start the impeachment process, more in sorrow than in anger."
She tilted her head at him. "You really know a lot about American politics."
"More than I do about Cuban. I had to study it for the blue card, and got kind of fascinated." He made a mental note to watch his step, not reveal too much sophistication. Lisa Marie was no danger, but there would be a lot of press and government around soon.
"Your aliens." She pointed at the cube.
Davis peered intently. "Would you repeat the question?" A reporter asked whether he intended to follow LaSalle's aggressive strategy toward the Coming.
He looked at her with robotic blankness for a long moment, an expression that was already familiar. "I don't want to say anything specific about that. Anything at all."
Aurora
"Anything at all. My people are looking into it." It was curious to hear Davis's voice coining out of her office. She thought she'd locked it. Rory had dropped by with Marya to see whether Norm might be there, not wanting to bike home through the rain. Inside, there were two strangers watching the new president on the wall cube.
"Hello? Can I do something for you?"
The short one clicked a remote and the president disappeared. They were in identical government-gray suits. The short one was bland, normal looking, but the other was over seven feet tall, his white hair trimmed to within a millimeter of his skull. She had seen him around, the past month.
They both produced identification. "I'm Special Agent Jerry Harp of the CIA," the giant said. The other identified himself as Howard Irving, FBI.
"You didn't just fly down," Marya said. "You've been here awhile. You were both at the—"
"We have no business with you, Ms. Washington," the FBI man said. "We would like to speak with Dr. Bell alone."
"I don't think so," Rory said. "This is my office, and I say who stays or goes. Unless I'm under arrest."
"We're only concerned about national security," the tall man said in low, measured tones. "Some of what we have to ask you about cannot be made public. Not yet, at least."
"I'll be down in the lounge," Marya said to Rory. "You've got my number."
; "This won't take long," the FBI man said.
Marya said, "Sure," and he closed the door behind her.
"You talked with the president and Grayson Pauling this morning," the tall man said.
"Along with the governor, the chancellor, and the dean of science. I'm the small fish in the pond. Why aren't you talking to them?"
"In due course," the FBI man said. "This is like interviewing witnesses to an accident, or a crime scene. Best to get their separate impressions, before they talk to each other."
"Why don't you just play back the crystal? Surely they keep records."
The FBI man shook his head. "It was profoundly encrypted, scrambled. If you made a copy, you'll find it's just white noise."
"Unless you made an audio recording, independent of the VR projector/receiver," the CIA man said. "You didn't do that, did you?"
"In fact, it didn't occur to me. I'm really more of an astronomer than a spy." She sat down behind her desk and looked up at him. "How could they do that, though?"
"You question the president's right to—" the FBI man started.
"No, no—I mean physically. The signal had to be decrypted on this end. Why couldn't we make a crystal of it then?"
The tall one stared at her for a moment before answering. "That was from my shop. Before you spoke to the president the first time, we modified the equipment in your room. I don't understand the electronics, but if the signal from the White House is scrambled, you only see a transient virtual image. The signal that gets to the copy head is still scrambled.
"Of course the sound waves do exist. So an audio recorder that wasn't plugged into the system would have picked it up. A videocam would've gotten the sound, too, though the only image would be of you three actually in the room." He grimaced. "If we were as sneaky as people think we are, we could have bugged the room when we installed the rescrambler."
"But you didn't think we were that important."
"We didn't know the president's science adviser was a lunatic," the FBI man said. "We might have kept closer tabs on him."
"I'm not sure who the lunatic was," Rory said. "I'll leave that up to the history books."
"You don't mean you condone this mass assassination."
"Howard," the CIA man said, "let's not—"
"I don't condone it, but I can appreciate why the president's behavior drove Pauling to desperate measures."
"So you would have done it, too?" The FBI man was reddening. "If you could have killed the president, you would have done it, too?"
"That's a ridiculous question."
"Howard…"
"No, it's not! If you could have killed the president, would you?"
Rory considered refusing to answer. "It honestly wouldn't have crossed my mind. I would have liked to sit with her and talk, woman to woman. She was dangerously wrong."
"Dangerous enough to die?"
"Pauling thought so." She looked up at the CIA man. "So what do you want from me? It's been a long day already, and I want to go home."
"Just a description of what passed between the president and Grayson Pauling. There weren't any other administration people there, were there?"
"Not in view. Unless you count the governor of Florida. He was a better team player than Pauling. She used that term when she got exasperated at him: 'You used to be a team player' or something."
"They argued in front of you?" the CIA man said. "Please start at the beginning."
Rory went back to the original bombshell, LaSalle essentially saying that the secretary of defense had come up with this great idea. The conversation, or argument, had only lasted a few minutes, and she was pretty sure she remembered it accurately.
"So if you were to sum up Pauling's attitude, his mood?"
"He was quiet and patient. Quietly exasperated, like a teacher or a parent. Which drove LaSalle to the outburst of temper that ended the conversation."
"Quietly insane," the FBI man said.
"Why don't you go talk to the governor?" Rory snapped. "He'll agree with you, and then we can all go home." She turned back to the tall man. "I've heard that people often become remarkably calm once they've made up their mind to commit suicide. He must have known about the noon meeting; I suppose he may have already decided he had to die."
"And destroy the government." The CIA man shook his head. "You may be right. In another hundred years, maybe less, people will see this as an act of supreme sacrifice."
"Maybe one month," Rory said. "When the aliens don't destroy us out of hand."
"Which they may still do." He checked his watch. "Almost time for Whittier, Howard."
"What, with her you made an appointment?"
He nodded. "We don't have a key to her office," the FBI man said.
She followed them down the hall and turned into the lounge, where Marya was watching the cube, by herself, snacking on cheese and crackers from the machine.
Marya
"That didn't take long." She offered Rory some cheese and crackers.
Rory shook her head—"No appetite"—and got a ball of juice from the wall dispenser and poured it into a plastic cup. "Not much to tell them. That conference this morning didn't go five minutes, and that's what they were interested in—evidently the White House scrambling is pretty sophisticated; the CIA didn't have a clue what went on, and they're the ones who installed the descrambler here."
"You told them the truth, of course."
Rory eased back onto a worn couch. "Yeah, that our late great president was a demented fruitcake, which seems to have been news to the FBI man."
"They ask you about Pauling? That's what CNN's obsessing on now."
"A little. The CIA guy even admitted that someday he might be seen as a hero, a martyr."
"That's not what they're saying here. They've dug up men and women who were in the service with him, going on about how fanatical and unpredictable he was."
"That's probably why LaSalle picked him. Like unto like." She took a sip of juice and frowned at it. "Warm. He didn't come on that way, though. He was the reasonable one, trying to keep dear Carly from courting votes by destroying the human race."
Marya looked at her watch. "They want me to do a five-minute spot sometime today. It won't be live; we can wait awhile."
Rory dumped the cup in the recycler next to the couch. "Crew downstairs?"
"Better be."
"Let's just do it and go put our feet up at my place. Turn on the cube and watch Washington get nuked."
"Is there anything you don't want me to ask you?"
"No." Rory stood and stretched. "God, no. I have a feeling truth, is going to be in short supply for a while. Anything we can do to keep Davis from launching those weapons, we ought to do."
"They didn't tell you not to talk about this morning?"
"I don't really give a shit. What can they do to me?" She pushed open the door. "Rhetorical question. They can pull off my toenails and make me eat them. But I don't think they will."
They took the elevator down to the first floor, where two cameramen were watching CNN on a small portable cube. "Let's gear up, guys. Five-minute spot."
She looked at the large flatscreen that provided the interview backdrop. It had the logo of the Committee on the Coming, two concentric Cs with a question mark inside. "Don't want this one, Deeb. You got one of the White House ruins?"
"Just take a minute. I'll run back and snatch one from CNN. You want to thumbprint it?"
"Sure." When the picture appeared, Marya put her thumb in a box in the lower right corner. A list of options appeared and she touched the first one, one-time reproduction rights. It chimed and the list and box disappeared.
Rory was already seated at one of two black leather chairs that faced one another across a low table in front of a blue screen. Marya whistled at the cameras. "Position A, all three." She stepped aside while one of the small cameras rolled onto its mark. The man who wasn't Deeb set down glasses of ice water.
She dropped into the other chair
and looked at herself in the screen, patting her hair reflexively. She could be a frazzled mess and the editor would automatically fix the image. "No pressure, but let's try for one take and bust outta here. Deeb, when I look at you, maybe four minutes thirty, we want the logo back, and then segue into the deep space shot."
"Got it," he said. "Editor on line now."
"Good." She took a page of scribbled notes out of a breast pocket and smoothed it on the table. She looked at the wall clock behind Rory. "Eight seconds." She shook her head. "No, wait. Cameras off. We're two minutes from the hour. Rory, if I can clear it, do you mind if we go live?"
"I'm a teacher. I usually go live."
She smiled and pushed a button on her phone. "Fez, this is Marya. Scramble." She pushed another button. "Loud and clear. Look, you got the feds there? Figures. Look, I've got a White House angle that we don't want reviewed; they'd gut it or even cancel it." She nodded. "Dr. Bell down here talked with LaSalle and Pauling this morning. Can you give me five live ninety seconds after the hour?" She laughed. "Owe you one, babe." She set the phone down and looked at the cameraman. "You didn't hear that, right?"
"Hear what?" Deeb said.
"Yeah, well, go take a leak for about a minute. Be back by two." They hustled out. "Rory, the broadcasts are going through a White House censor with a five-second delay. What they can do in New York is accidentally push the wrong buttons and leave the room. So this interview, scheduled for seven, comes in live instead, on a circuit that's not controlled by the White House remote.
"I don't know how long we'll have before they're able to cut us off. So I'll ask the most important questions first."
"We might not even get on," Rory said. "This room is probably bugged by the CIA."
"Hmm. They probably wouldn't have anybody live listening in, though. We'll find out." The two men came back in and she whistled the cameras to start. She looked at the main camera. "We're going to take five minutes, commencing fourteen-oh-one-thirty."
Rory twisted around to look at the clock and then settled into an interviewee posture.