A Creed for the Third Millennium (23 page)

'Important,' said Harold Magnus,
listening but still chewing over what Dr Carriol had said about Senator Hillier.
Clever, clever woman, Carriol! That had been exactly the right thing to say to
an existing President about the fundamental nature of a potential
rival.

'We agreed five years ago that we have to
do more for our people than we are, yet we have to find a way of doing it that
isn't going to cost us untold millions we just don't have. We're too committed
to Project Phoebus to split off money it can't spare. So why not offer the
people someone they can believe in, not as a god, not as a political axe
grinding away, but simply as a good, kind, wise man! A man who
loves
them! They have lost so much of what they once had to love, from plenty of
children to comfortable permanent homes to long summers and short winters. Gone!
Yet is this the Sodom and Gomorrah retribution for generations of sin, as so
many churchmen would have the people believe? That kind of explanation doesn't
go down any more. Most people are not convinced they're wicked and won't be
convinced they're wicked. They live largely decent lives, and they've come to
expect credit for that. They don't want to believe that they must pay for
generations of sin simply because they happen to be around at the beginning of
the new millennium. They don't want to believe in a God Who they are told has
sent an ice age to
punish
them! Organized churches are
human
institutions, and the best evidence for that is the fact that each and every
one of them claims to be the only true church, the only God-guided church. But
the people for whom they exist these days are sceptical, and if they accept a
church at all, it tends to be on their terms rather than the
church's.'

'I take it, Dr Carriol, that you are not
a churchgoer,' said the President dryly.

She stopped at once, her heart
accelerating as she did a lightning calculation as to whether she had said too
much, too little, or simply the wrong thing. Then she drew a deep breath. 'No,
Mr President, I am not a churchgoer,' she said.

'Fair enough,' was all he
answered.

She read that as a signal to change
course, and did so.

'I
guess what I'm trying to say is
that no one seems to tell the people they are loved any more, even the churches.
And a government can care, but by definition it can't love,' she said. 'Mr
President, give them a man who isn't out for personal power, or aggrandizement,
or financial gain!' She unclasped her hands, and straightened. 'That's all, I
guess.'

Tibor Reece sighed. 'Thank you, Dr
Carriol. I am going to go through the seven candidates you have offered me by
name, and I want you to give me your opinion about that man or woman in a very
few words. I now understand Operation Search a lot better than I did, and I'm
happy to admit it. But can I ask you one thing?'

She smiled at him gratefully. 'Of course,
sir.'

'Did you always understand the purpose of
Operation Search so well?'

She chewed her answer over before she
spoke it. 'I think so, Mr President. But since meeting Dr Christian, I maybe see
the overall pattern better.'

He stared at her. 'Yes.' Then he put on
his reading glasses and picked up the seven files. 'Maestro Benjamin
Steinfeld?'

'He's been the darling of the musical
intelligentsia too long for the good of his ego, sir.'

'Dr Schneider?'

'I
really think she's too tied to
NASA and Project Phoebus to cut the cord.'

'Dr Hastings?'

'I doubt whether we could divorce his
image sufficiently from the football field, sir, which is a pity, because the
man himself is worth a lot more than football.'

'Professor Charnowski?'

'In some ways he's a very liberal person,
but I think he's still too committed to the old form of Roman Catholicism to be
able to give the way our man must.'

'Dr Christian?'

'For my money, he's the only one, Mr
President'

'Senator Hillier?'

'A power freak.'

'And Mayor d'Este?'

'He's a good man, a most unselfish man.
But his attitude is just too parochial.'

'Thank you, Dr Carriol.' The President
turned to his Secretary for the Environment. Harold, have you any comment other
than that you favour Senator Hillier?'

'Only that I don't like the way religion
has crept into the picture, Mr President. It's a hot potato, none hotter. We may
be biting off more than we can chew.'

'Thank you.' The President nodded to both
of them, a signal that the meeting was over. 'I'll get back to you with my
decision in a week or so.'

Outside the White House Dr Carriol
discovered the extent of the Secretary's ire. He had always known she did not favour Senator Hillier, but
he had not expected her to be so vigorously outspoken to the President, and of
course he had no idea that a Dr Joshua Christian was going to upset his
applecart. He and Dr Carriol had travelled over from Environment in the
Secretary's comfortable Cadillac, during which short journey he had thoroughly
briefed Dr Carriol on procedure.

Now he demonstrated the extent of his ire
by climbing into the car and waving his driver to shut the door in Dr Carriol's
face. She stood on the sidewalk and watched the vehicle purr away down to
Pennsylvania Avenue, turn the corner eastward, disappear. Oh, well! Easy come,
easy go. It was back to Environment on foot, then.

The President's decision came through
only four days later, and its overture was a command that the Secretary of the
Environment and Dr Judith Carriol should present themselves at the White House
to see Mr Reece at two in the afternoon precisely.

This time Dr Carriol walked over as well,
for no message came down from the Secretary inviting her to share his car, and
she was not about to go cap in hand, asking. Luckily it was warm and sunny; how
lovely to see an early spring! But how depressing to consider May an early
spring in this part of the country. Cherry blossom time was just over, but the
dogwoods were still two weeks off flowering; however, the grass was smothered by
daffodils, and enough small trees were in bloom to make the walk a
joy.

She arrived at the White House at the
same moment as her chief, so they entered together, not speaking. She had smiled
at him very cheerfully as he got out of his car, but his only response was a
grumph. Interesting. He obviously thought he was going to lose. Of course he
knew Tibor Reece far better than she did; until last week her only meeting
with the President had been on that momentous day early in February of 2027,
when he had been in office for three years and was looking forward to being
reelected in November of 2028. Five years!

His predecessor had not been wrong in
putting his immense personal clout behind Tibor Reece as his successor in the
White House. Given the times, he was a sensible and stable choice. A caring man
and an ethical one. But he was no Augustus Rome, for he was too reserved and
austere to be the kind of President who inspired love in his people.
Lincolnesque was the adjective usually applied to him by a mostly favourable
press, and he clearly liked the comparison, felt at home with it, though in
actual fact there was little resemblance either in personality or in policy. Not
surprising. The Americas each man headed were not merely poles apart, but moons
apart. For between Lincoln and Reece a whole ethos had perished: an ideal and
dream and way of life and bright incandescent hope.

The President was on the phone when they
were ushered in, looked up to gesture them to chairs, but went on talking. A
compliment to her, certainly, if not to Harold Magnus. He was talking about the
Russians. Nothing earth-shaking. The earth didn't shake much internationally
since the Delhi Treaty. It was too busy coping with internal troubles to have
the time, the energy (literally and metaphorically) or the money to fight
expensive, useless wars.

The telephone conversation was about
wheat. Only three nations in the world still exported significant quantities of
grain: the United States of America, Argentina and Australia. People might come
and go in the heartlands, but wheat went on forever. Canada's growing season had
shortened too much, but the United States still managed to produce big crops,
and the hybrid boys worked incessantly to develop strains able to survive colder springs and
summers. The real crunch had become the length of time the ground remained
unfrozen, but in future years it was likely to become the amount of rain. At the
moment rainfall was sufficient, but it had been over twenty years since there
had been an annual precipitation higher than the old average; mostly it was at
least slightly lower than the old average, so the average in its turn was
dropping. The two southern hemisphere nations were in better case, but how long
that would last, no one was prepared to hazard a guess.

The President finished his conversation
and bent his attention upon Environment.

'You know, Harold, yours is the most
important agency in the country,' said Tibor Reece. 'I won't say you've got
all
the problems, but you've got the biggest and the most. Relocation,
regulation of the birthrate, and conservation of our dwindling resources. You
receive a full half of the federal budget money. And maybe because you don't
deal with hawkish matters, you're no real trouble to a President.' He grinned.
'I don't lose much sleep over Environment, anyway! In fact, you're very
dedicated people, you believe in yourselves, and you run a tight ship. You've
got the best computer setup in the world bar none, and you've come up with some
brilliant ideas. So, I've done a lot of thinking about Operation Search. Mostly
whether it's really necessary to implement its findings.'

Dr Carriol's heart sank; Harold Magnus's
rose. Neither said a word; they just sat looking at the President.

'The trouble with any senior executive is
that he tends to be cut off from the mainstream of popular thought and feeling
by the demands — and the size! — of his job. It's like trying to make a Manhattanite born and bred understand the life cycle and mentality of people on
the land. Or like trying to make a rich man born and bred understand what actual
poverty is really about. Minds are admirable
things. But sometimes I wish feelings were more admired, less derided. If there
is any reason above all others why I still love and respect Augustus Rome, it's
because that man
never
lost sight of the common people. He wasn't a
demagogue, he didn't need to be. He was simply one of them.'

Harold Magnus was nodding his head
vigorously at these last remarks; Dr Carriol concealed a smile, knowing full
well what his genuine opinion of old Gus Rome was. You bloated old
toady!

'However, during the last four days I
found myself in the position of a shameless eavesdropper. I wandered into the
kitchens on any excuse, I walked into rooms while they were being cleaned, I
yarned with gardeners and secretaries and maids. Yet in the end it was my own
wife who gave me the most help.' He drew his lips back from his teeth and let
his breath hiss between them, a tortured act perhaps, but not a contemptuous
one. 'I am not going to discuss my relationship with my wife. But — she's an
unhappy woman, due to the times we live in. I had a talk with her, just about
things like what she thinks about when she's alone, how she deals with the
reality of our daughter when I'm not there to see them together, what kind of
life she wants when we have to move out of here…'

He paused, carefully controlling his
face. It had been a painful interview for both of them, the more so because they
did not communicate much in the normal course of their days. Her behaviour was
scandalous, yet he had never tried to reproach her for it, confining his
activities to keeping her doings out of the press and keeping a tight security
clamp on her. How could he reproach her when he had personally ensured she would
never have a second child? Their rare quarrels were about her indifference to
her daughter, moving into her teens without sufficient intelligence to know she was the
antithesis of what a President's daughter ought to be. Tibor Reece loved his
daughter dearly, but the amount of time he could give her was minuscule compared
with the amount of time she needed, and her mother was no help.

'Anyway, I won't keep you in suspense any
longer,' he said to Harold Magnus and Dr Judith Carriol. 'I decided that we must
implement Operation Search, and that Dr Carriol's ideas about the nature of the
man who gets the job are right. So Operation Search will move into its third
phase, and I have to agree again with Dr Carriol that there is really only one
likely candidate. Dr Joshua Christian.'

Of course Harold Magnus couldn't protest,
but his lips went thin and pursed, which gave to his round several-chinned face
a different character, ruthless and egocentric, but also peevish and spoiled. Dr
Carriol kept her face impassive.

'Naturally,' Tibor Reece went on, 'the
logistics are Environment's responsibility, and I am not going to inquire into
them. But I will require frequent reports on progress, and I hope I'll soon see
the results for myself. I've not yet approved a budget for phase three, but
tentatively you can assume you've got all the money you're likely to need. There
is just one further thing I would like to know now.' He looked at Dr Carriol.
'Dr Carriol, how do you intend to deal with Dr Christian? I mean, is he to know
about Operation Search? Have you given this area any thought?'