Aftermath (37 page)

"Believe me, we don't propose to go anywhere. We are hungry and exhausted. Something to eat, then we'll collapse into bed."

"We will be on guard outside, to make sure that no one tries to leave. Your food will be brought in." The woman looked all around the room as though searching for some invisible escape route, nodded, and motioned to the other woman. They left in silence.

Celine looked at Jenny. "Are we going to let them dictate who sleeps where?"

Jenny shook her head. "I don't see why. It's our business, not theirs."

She moved her pack to the bedroom with Reza. Celine brought Wilmer's things in with her. Then she sat down on the bed and stared at him thoughtfully.

"You know, sometimes I wonder about you. All that stuff about visions and foreordained disaster."

"I told the exact truth," Wilmer said placidly. "When a supernova occurs, the initial burst of radiation must be accompanied by particle emission. Those ions travel more slowly, at a small fraction of light speed.
Foreordained
describes very well the nature of physical laws, and the inevitable future arrival of a particle storm from Supernova Alpha. Thousands of scientists on Earth could have told Pearl Lazenby that. And if she'd asked me, I could have suggested a possible way of avoiding the disaster. But she didn't. I guess scientists don't have much clout in this place."

"But what about
her
visions? That's all mystical gobbledygook."

"We think so. But she believes what she sees, and so do her followers. That gives her visions a reality that we have to accept, even when they sound vague enough to apply to a lot of natural disasters." Wilmer motioned toward the door. "Those guns are real. The willingness of her followers to do anything that Pearl Lazenby commands is real. Based on the evidence, I can make a case that she has a better handle on reality than the rest of the world. After all, she was the one who predicted and prepared for disaster. We had no idea it was coming."

"I agree with Wilmer." Reza had been standing in the doorway, a rapt expression on his face. He came forward. "She
knew,
many years ago. No one else did. There are more ways to truth than science admits. I think that Pearl Lazenby is an amazing woman."

"Or at least a lucky one," Jenny said. She came across and sat on the bed next to Celine. Her eyes were red from fatigue and loss of sleep. "Don't glare at me like that, Reza, pure luck would do it. Pearl Lazenby decided, for whatever reason, that she disliked smart machines that made use of microchips. So she predicted that they would fail, and after that she and her followers avoided them. Did you notice the railcar we rode here on, and those guns and bullets? They were
old.
No chips in them."

"Maybe. But they are more useful than anything that
does
use chips." Reza seemed ready for more argument. "So who was the smart one, tell me that. Pearl Lazenby, or the rest of us? Hate the Legion of Argos as much as you like, you can't deny that her prophecies came true."

"By dumb luck." Jenny stared up at Reza, who shook his head. Celine sensed a new tension between them. "Pearl Lazenby and her followers are one-eyed prophets," Jenny went on, "in the country of the blind. She knows she has a temporary advantage, and she intends to do something with it. My question is, what? How many followers does she have? A thousand, or a million? Where are they? And what are they going to do?"

"She made her intention clear enough." Celine was watching the other three closely. "You heard her, humanity has to be cleansed of sin, even if it means 'scraping to the bone.' I don't know what that means, but I don't like the sound of it. We have to find out what they propose to do—and we have to find a way to warn other people, so the Legion of Argos can be stopped."

"I do not think that they can be stopped." Reza stared at Celine defiantly. "Not by anyone or anything. The Eye of God has seen the future."

"Stopping them certainly won't be easy." Celine changed her mind about what she was going to say next, as the door opened and two women entered carrying trays of food. She took the offered bowl of thick lentil soup, and went on, "We don't have enough information. We don't know what's been happening in the world since the supernova. We don't even know where we are, within a couple of hundred kilometers. One thing's for sure. In the next few days we must all become the most loyal, devoted, and dedicated members that the Legion of Argos has ever had. And I suspect that Wilmer will be our star performer."

25

The thaw at the Maryland Point Syncope Facility was not a local event. It extended from the hidden Virginia valley, where the
Clark
orbiter had made its emergency landing, all the way north across the Appalachians to the Pennsylvania/New York border.

The Indian Head naval base lay well within that region. Saul had gone to bed—alone, and far later than he cared to recall—in a starless night of crackling frost and sudden wind. He awoke to clear, bright morning and the steady trickle of snowmelt from a slate roof. He frowned up at the yellowed ceiling, and realized that he had been roused by a brisk rat-a-tat-tat on the thick oak of the bedroom door.

A head peeked discreetly into the room. "Good morning, Mr. President." A huge tray loaded with covered dishes went onto the cherrywood table by the door. The head—it was attached to a young woman in an old but well-laundered white uniform—nodded. She withdrew before Saul had time to notice her rank, or wonder what the woman would have done if she had walked in on a naked President. The stock diplomatic answer—"Sorry, madam"—wouldn't work in this case.

He walked over to the window. It faced west, across the three-mile-wide Potomac. In all that broad expanse he could count just seven vessels. Four were Navy ships, moving away from Indian Head. Saul guessed that they were part of last night's flurry of activity when word spread along the river of his trip by water to Indian Head. Only one ship now lay at the jetty where he had landed. It was smaller than the frigate that had brought him, and it had the lines of a small tugboat.

The other three were fishing boats, all heading downstream to the bay. The river was a flat calm, and the lines of their wakes lay ruler-straight on the surface.

Good. If Yasmin had any trouble traveling to the Q-5 facility by road, she would certainly be able to get there by water. Which led to one other thought. He walked back to the bed, picked up the unit on the bedside table, and stared at it dubiously. It lacked control panel, display, antenna, and keypad. As he held the truncated black cone to his ear, a voice said, "Yes, Mr. President?"

"What year was this telephonic unit made?"

"I don't know, sir."

Ask a stupid question. Saul suppressed the urge to inquire if the man at the other end had been sitting up all night, awaiting a possible presidential call. The odd thing was the chatter of children's voices in the background.

"One of my aides, Ms. Yasmin Silvers, will be visiting the Q-5 Syncope Facility today. In view of last night's activity downriver, I would like her to have a military escort."

"Very good, sir. It will be arranged."

Which ought to be enough—except for a possible excess of zeal. "Not a big escort, please. No more than a dozen."

A moment's hesitation, enough to make Saul think his added command was justified. "Yes, sir. Sir, I have two hundred and seventy-three messages for you here, forwarded from Washington."

"Hold them for me."
A quiet morning, by presidential standards.
"It is not necessary for me to meet with Ms. Silvers before she leaves. And if convenient to Captain Kennecott, I will be ready for a review of the base in thirty minutes."

"Do you wish to speak with him, sir? He is right here."

And probably has been, poor devil, since before dawn.
"Yes, put him on, if you please. Captain Kennecott? Good morning to you. Yes, it looks as though we have a much better day for a tour than yesterday. No, as a matter of fact I haven't tried it yet. But I'm sure the food will be fine."

Saul hung up, reflecting that in many ways it was better to be asked about a meal before you tasted it. A relay of cooks had probably been working on
that
since before dawn, too.

They had taken no chances. A dozen different dishes sat on the tray. Saul drank hot tea with lemon, ate a piece of brown bread onto which he slathered several ounces of grape jelly, and resisted the urge to explore a large, light blue egg.

Salmonella tested? Not in this universe. The standard household test kit undoubtedly contained at least one chip.

Captain Kennecott was waiting in full dress uniform. He was not alone. Saul accepted a bouquet of thornless red roses from a shy three-year-old toddler whose finger went up her nose as soon as she had delivered her gift.

He smiled and thanked her with grave politeness.
I am President of
all
the people.
You had to work on that at first, but after two years it became automatic. It was even true. She would remember this seventy years from now.

"Is there anything you would particularly like to see?"

Captain Kennecott's question was a natural one, but Saul couldn't answer it. He had come here on inexplicable impulse. Impulse would have to guide him still.

"I would like to see the weapons storage."

"We had anticipated that." Kennecott turned and nodded to a woman in civilian dress, who left at once. Saul noticed the captain's left hand, its skin smoother and whiter than the right. It was a grown prosthesis, a combination of Voorhees-McCall nerve cell regeneration with tissue engineering. The technique was still experimental, no more than five years old. But Kennecott was well over seventy. In which war had he lost it?

The captain had seen his look, and flexed his hand. "Good as new, sir. Feels like a natural arm. I suppose in a way it is. My own DNA, even if I didn't grow it myself. No chips in it—thank God."

Saul changed his mind about the captain. Last night he had noticed the big Adam's apple, tired eyes, and deep-lined cheeks. Kennecott had seemed old and frail, a man out to pasture. Today he was someone who noticed everything, alert and in command, a man who had adapted rapidly to deal with the unexpected factor of a presidential arrival.

Saul tried a guess based on age and casualty rates. "Vietnam?"

Kennecott laughed. "No, sir. I was there, all right, Navy aviator, but I came through without a scratch. Then I was fool enough to do this to myself on a peacetime run. Flying an F-24 modification in '05."

"You weren't invalided out?"

"They tried. I pulled every string in the Disabilities Act."

They had been walking as they talked, down the slight slope that led away from the Officers' Mess and the river beyond. The group of well-groomed children had disappeared. The military escort remained a careful ten paces to the rear. The air was so warm and the sun so bright that Saul imagined he could see the snow on either side of the path melting away before his eyes.

Kennecott made a right before they reached the building labeled prominently as Bachelor Enlisted Quarters, and led them on through an open gate. Saul read the sign on the high wire fence: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT, NO FOREIGN. The flower beds and neat shrubs emerging from the snow on either side of the gate seemed incongruously at odds with the brusque sign. The brick building beyond was square, huge, and windowless.

The civilian to whom Kennecott had signaled earlier was waiting at the open double doors. Saul had his first chance for a good look at her. Thin, late forties, maybe five-three, she stood between white-painted shell cases taller than she was. Blond, straight hair. Probably in first-rate physical condition except for the fair skin whose rugged look suggested too much direct sunlight. Why didn't she replace it with a cultivated mask of her own face, cheap and easy to grow?

"Mr. President," Kennecott said. "This is Dr. Madeleine Liebchen. She is the person best qualified to answer any technical questions you may have."

Liebchen. Little love.
Saul did the translation instinctively as he shook her hand.
I think not.
Eyes of a wonderful sapphire blue gazed coldly into his.

That look of unconcealed contempt gave Saul another reason why Captain Kennecott was likely to accompany them everywhere.
I am President of
all
the people
—if they will allow it. Many people disliked politicians. A rather smaller number hated them. A few went past that, and tried to kill them. Saul possessed various built-in protections, painfully installed after nomination night. His blood seethed with morphing antibodies, supposedly able to handle any natural or manufactured virus or bacterium (including the interlocking plasmid composite that got President Johannsen, in '18; it was the top-secret pictures of Johannsen's corpse, bloated so that the nose was no more than a dimple in the swollen head and the testicles were the size of grapefruit, that had persuaded Saul to take the treatment).

The implant in the roof of his mouth offered different protection. It would supposedly detect a million different poisons alone or in lethal combination, and trigger an involuntary regurgitation reflex. Except that the damned thing surely wouldn't work at all now, since all the chips had gone belly-up.

Saul took a second look at the scowling Dr. Liebchen. No virus, and perhaps no poisons, but that still left bullets, bombs, teeth, wild animals, knives, nooses, and nuclear weapons.

Dr. Liebchen was probably just a woman who regarded politics and politicians as beneath her. That did not make her dangerous. Kennecott must know her well. He did not judge her a threat. But how well had Johannsen's sister known Eileen Wilmore Bretherton, when she brought her to that fatal dinner?

Unlike one of his less illustrious predecessors, Saul could chew gum and walk (oral history suggested a more basic body function) at the same time. He could in fact do much more. While his internal thoughts reviewed the fate and frailties of past Presidents, he offered polite conversation to Kennecott and Liebchen. And at the same time he examined a variety of proximity fuses, artillery and artillery shells, rockets and rocket launchers, mines, torpedoes, and depth charges, all massed in tight phalanxes along the building's concrete floor.