The Last President (18 page)

“Bernstein, keep an eye on him. Nathanson, find me the rudest guy with balls you've got that you'd like to get rid of.”

“I got twenty of those at least. Ever since you freed the slaves. What d'you need a guy to do, chief?”

“Give me someone to go insult the Daybreak leaders to their ugly faces. If they kill him I can be all aggrieved and give them shit and demand more from them, and if they take shit from him, it means they're weak and I'll have a list of more shit for him to demand. Either way we get as much as we can and they get shit.”

“I have the perfect man in mind.” Nathanson grinned.

“Is it Calhoun?”

“Yeah. I warn you, though, Lord Robert, he'll be twice as impossible if he comes back alive.”

Robert shrugged. “If we can't fix the impossible, we can always fix the alive.”

Nathanson nodded and was gone. Robert turned back to where Bernstein was attending to the little man spasming on the ground.

“He's really fighting it now, chief. We can send in a couple people to carry him to bed and have the usual people do the deprogramming.”

“That's what I was thinking. Make that happen.”

As they left the inner courtyard, Bernstein added, “Well, this is your day for not doing things I expect, Lord Robert. You want to share what's on your mind?”

Robert nodded. “Remember right after Lord Karl died, when you threw in with me and helped make me the Lord?”

“Of course.”

“Well, so do I. Little Mister Scared will be loyal to whoever stops him being afraid. Calhoun will be loyal to the man who gives him a chance to get killed doing something impossible. Loyal people generally work out for me, one way or another.” He patted Bernstein's shoulder. “Beer time yet?”

“With you, Lord Robert, always.”

12 DAYS LATER. LUNA PIER, NEW STATE OF SUPERIOR (FORMERLY MICHIGAN). 5:30 AM EASTERN TIME. TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2026.

The moon was a thin crescent like a bow bent toward the not-yet-risen sun. It back-lit more than a hundred low rafts coming in to the sand beaches south of the pier. Lookouts lit the fires and rang the bells.

Outnumbered twenty to one, the town militia still mustered behind the crude breastwork, just a row of sawhorses with corrugated iron sheets nailed to them, arranged in a line on each side of their single rocket launcher.

The old people, children, and others unable to fight picked up what they could carry in backpacks and wheelbarrows and set off north toward Allen Cove; there was little question the Daybreakers could chase them down if they wanted to, but perhaps they would choose to do something else. As the rafts neared, they could hear the singing and the drums, then the splashes of the oars, and finally the grunting of the rowers.

“Canoe with a truce flag!” one of the lookouts shouted, and a moment later, another cried, “They're shipping oars.”

Still out of rocket range, the tribal armada paused in the water; a lone canoe, with a single passenger holding up a white flag, moved swiftly toward the beach.

On the sand still spattered with ice and snow, the mayor of Luna Pier confronted the Daybreaker representative. The mayor looked like what she was, a civic-minded grandmother, dressed in baggy pants and multiple sweaters, her helmet under her arm. The tribal representative wore a buffalo-horn hat that must have been stolen from some fraternal lodge; it was festooned with feathers, bits of metal, jewelry, and—the mayor saw to her disgust—a dried human hand. Below that he wore an old minister's or professor's gown, the three stripes of the doctorate still attached. He crossed his arms inside the big sleeves, mandarin-style, and bowed low.

“I shall begin by asking you to concede one obvious fact: if we storm your town and take it by force, we will get everything that doesn't burn, we can kill all of you, and you not only won't be able to stop us, you won't even be able to hurt us much,” the Daybreaker said. “Therefore, by contrast, my offer is going to be generous.”

“I came here to hear it,” she pointed out, holding her voice level though she felt her bowels wanting to slither out of her and down into the ground.

Buffalo Hat turned and pointedly stared out into the lake, at the long column of rafts crowded with Daybreaker spearmen, stretching clear to the horizon along the red road the just-rising sun made on the smooth water. “Normally,” he said, “of course we would burn your plaztatic little town and end your brutal seizure of resources from Mother Gaia. Normally we would remove the filthy curse of your presence from the face of the Earth, and take away your children to be raised in harmony with the Earth. Normally we would do all those things. But.” He drew another breath, let it escape, turned back, and smiled slightly. “We're in a hurry. I will send five hundred of our people into your city to carry out all the food, clothes, and blankets they can carry. Your people will open any door they are told to. If one shot is fired, if one hand is raised against us, if anyone even mutters one word of protest, we will butcher all of you like pigs, burn every building, knock down every wall, and pile your corpses right here where you and I stand. But if you stand quietly by while we take everything we want, we will march on and leave you alive and unharmed, with whatever is left.

“That is our offer. Make your people take it if you can.”

“I will.” Some impulse made her stick out her hand to shake on the deal.

The man in the buffalo horned hat looked at her hand as if she were holding out a piece of spoiled meat. “This is not an agreement. We will do one thing if you cooperate and another if you resist. That is all. Go talk to your people.”

6 DAYS LATER. MAÓ, MENORCA, BALEARIC ISLANDS (FORMERLY PART OF SPAIN). 11:00 AM CENTRAL EUROPEAN TIME. MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2026.

“Mister Rollings, Mister Reshetnyk, before you go, I'd like a word with you both in my cabin,” Halleck said. “Don't worry, the boat won't leave without you.”

Considering we're half of the propulsion system,
Whorf footnoted mentally. He glanced at Ihor, whose shoulder twitched in an all but invisible shrug. They followed the captain inside.

Halleck shut the door and turned to face them. “You are the first scholar-sailors to go ashore, and I think you should know why. One, I know you've got each other's backs and you're capable of staying focused on the mission. Two, in related news”—he winced at his habitual back-before reference—“you're the only sailor-scholars I haven't had to bail out of jail, rescue from a mob, or sober up after a shore leave. We're a long way from home and something doesn't feel right about this whole setup. Three—and mainly—you both look much younger and dumber than you really are, which may help them get careless about whatever they don't want you to see.”

Whorf said, “Yes, sir. Is there anything we should be looking for?”

“Whatever they're hiding. If I already knew, this wouldn't be the conversation we're having. Maybe I'm just bitter about the fact that this place looks so unscathed; I'm from Maine myself, and all my people and everything I remember are pretty well lost forever. I might just feel like nobody's entitled to be that lucky, so there must be corruption or evil at the bottom of it.”

“What's their story, sir?” Ihor asked.

“Well, according to the harbormaster, Mister Quintana, for more than a week after the North Sea superbomb, the east wind held enough to keep the Dead-Zone level fallout over mainland Spain, but not strong enough to pull much in from the stream that flowed through Provence down to Sicily, so although they had quite a bit of radiation poisoning later and many deaths, it didn't disrupt or destroy much infrastructure. Now, that part, I believe; it's consistent with the radiosodium and tritium that the reconnaissance planes picked up, when we had them. Then he says the town government decided not to set up a radio transmitter until their defenses were in better shape, so they were still in listen-only mode when the EMP-bombs came down, and they didn't get hit with any up close; the nearest one to them was that one over Ireland in the spring.

“And then there's the one that sounds really hokey. He says they were lucky that almost all the tourists and retirees found passage on sailboats back to the mainland, so they didn't have too many mouths to feed.”

“That don't—doesn't seem lucky to me,” Ihor said. “Look at Christiansted, they were very lucky to get off-islanders like Henry or retirees like Captain Highbotham trapped there.”

“Yeah,” Halleck had said. “Something is not right with their definition of ‘lucky.' I want to know what. Also, Quintana said it would be fine if I just gave leave to the whole ship's company and let them go exploring for a couple of days. Very casually, as if it were a matter of course that we would want to and they wouldn't mind having us.”

“Maybe we all have honest faces, Captain,” Whorf said.

Halleck laughed. “Well, that's part of why I'm sending you two. Hide behind your honest faces, find the story we haven't heard, and bring it back. And yourselves. Especially, and yourselves. Have as good a time as you can, but come back knowing what they're hiding. Good luck.”

Rowing to shore was a matter of a few minutes; a local militia officer waved them through without bothering to do more than look closely at them once.

Maó was quintessentially a Mediterranean seaside town. Whorf guessed that he'd seen these sun-washed and stuccoed buildings, probably during his Euromovie phase, behind couples holding hands and babbling, or pouting girls walking away from flailing guys, below the barrel-tiled roofs and just above the subtitles. Despite the captain's premonitions, he was delighted to spend a fine warm spring day walking along the crumbling asphalt streets between the blocky white and tan stores and houses, occasionally interrupted by older columned, gingerbreadish villas. Maó was warm, clean, sunny, and
inhabited
in a world that had become cold, filthy, dark, and hideously empty.

Now, after an hour of walking the winding streets of Maó, they had seen most of the city, physically, but not talked to anyone. Whorf asked, “Do you suppose the real secret is that the place is even duller than it looks?”

Ihor said, “It's just a town, you know? We were spoiled rotten by Christiansted and Gib, I think. Do we want to climb this hill for the view of the whole port? Such as it is, of course.”

“Something to do, anyway. But I was just about to ask if your knack for languages would be up to bartering for a fish sandwich.” Whorf nodded toward the only open booth on the street, whose sign offered

SANDWICH DES POISSONS—PAIN—CONFITURE
BOCADILLO DE LOS PESCADOS—PAN—MERMELADA
FISH SANDWICH—BREAD—JAM
SANDWICH DEI PESCI—PANE—OSTRUZIONE

Noticing their gaze, the lady behind the cart waved and smiled shyly, the first real greeting they'd had since getting off
Discovery
. She was late-middle-aged, with brownish skin and black eyes; her cheerful wariness reminded Whorf, slightly, of his mother.

“It looks like there will be language we communicate in,” Ihor said, “but I would like to start in Catalan.”

Ihor always said that part of his supposed linguistic gift was just that he was fearless about mispronouncing things and accosting strangers. He stepped up to the booth with a confidence Whorf could only envy and said,
“
Bona tarda. Meu amic i jo volem comprar dues entrepans. Acceptaria una moneda de plata d'Amèrica?”

The woman's smile was quick and welcoming; she spoke quickly and eagerly. After a moment, Ihor translated. “The bread is fresh from the oven this morning, the cheese she bought at a farm on her way to town, the fish she got off the boat an hour ago, and her grill is ready to go. And, get this, with fresh mayo she made this morning. She says they invented it here, it's the only real mayonnaise in the world.”

“Now, that's a sales pitch.”

“She says she loves silver, takes it all the time, but she'll want to weigh ours; her prices are in grams.”

Ihor and the woman negotiated as they played around with an old postal scale, vociferously but both obviously having fun, before settling on three ship's dimes.

Trying to invent money that was spendable anywhere, the planners at Athens had coined silver into the traditional American denominations from 10 cents up to 10 dollars; they each were issued 2 dollars in silver for a day's shore leave. “You didn't push her too hard?” Whorf asked.

“He is very fair,” she said, in perfect, lightly accented English. “But if you want to tip, you could add one more dime.”

Ihor shook his head sadly. “And that means we're back to the original price. Whorf, I love you like a brother but I am going to have to gag you every time I'm talking money.”

The woman grinned. “Bring him along anytime. I am Ruth. Let me show you that the sandwiches are up to the price.”

They were: the bread was fine-grained, dark, and chewy; the fish, onions, and peppers fresh; the thick slabs of tomato firm but juicy; the cheese soft and sticky but pleasantly sharp; the mayonnaise thick, creamy, and indisputably real.

“That was the best first-thing-off-the-ship food I've ever had,” Whorf declared, shaking her hand.

“It will even be good when you've been here a month.” Ruth smiled warmly; Whorf decided not to point out that this was a one-week-at-most visit.

They started up the road toward the tall hill west of town. As they ascended, the vivid hundred-shades-of-blue of Fornelis Bay, and the deep green of the trees around it, drew the eye away from everything man-made, so that the modern town and the medieval and Roman ruins near it all faded together. But the top of the hill revealed only what they had already known: Maó was unsacked, unburned, and apparently content to have life go on. In the surrounding countryside there were brown, blue, and gray streams of woodsmoke from some chimneys. Between the stone walls, crops grew in neat rows and plots, and sheep, goats, and horses stood in fields; in the sea beyond, dozens of fishing boats were out working. “Like someone asked for a painting in the style of Mediterranean Dull,” Whorf said. “Well, whatever the big secret that Captain Halleck wants us to find might be, apparently we can't see it from this hill. Let's go back down and see if we can get into more conversations.”

“Thanks to the tip we gave Ruth,” Ihor said, “I betcha many, many people will want to talk to us.”

The descent, facing the harbor, was also pretty in a conventional way, but they hurried. “I really want to know, too, what the secret of this place is,” Ihor said. “Maybe because I really want to be the one that finds it out for Captain Halleck. Funny how a request from him makes me try harder than my uncle yelling at me. I don't want to come back not knowing nothing.”

“Anything. Yeah, Halleck's got that same make-you-want-to trick my Pops does. I think they issue it to some old guys on their fortieth birthday or something.”

Back in town, they realized that an hour and a half of going up and forty minutes of coming down had left them hungry again. “I suppose we could go looking for other food,” Whorf said, “but let's see if Ruth's still open. I could definitely see another one of those sandwiches.”

“Adding ‘definitely see' for ‘am in favor of' to my English idioms,” Ihor said, “and right with you.”

They had come down a different road from the one they had climbed. In the tangle of narrow streets it took a little time for them to find Ruth's booth again. Three large, muscular men were talking to her.

Their hair was long, worn in loose ponytails, and their beards were full but trimmed. Their baggy pirate pantaloons, tied with twine at the mid-calf cuffs, and their loose, long-sleeved canvas T-shirts were adorned, on every side they could see, with a sewn-on yellow circle-and-eight-wavy-rays sun. Their boots were heavy leather soles attached to long knit socks that continued up under their pantaloons.

“Like very clean tribals,” Ihor muttered.

“What I was thinking,” Whorf murmured. They stepped a little wide of each other, to free up space in case of trouble but keep close in case of real trouble, and approached slowly; the large men right in front of Ruth blocked her view of them.

As they drew near, one of the men shouted,
“Lliurar tots els diners i menjar, o li tallaré els pits vells fastigosos.”

Ihor sped up into a fast, silent trot, and Whorf kept pace. Ihor prison-muttered, “He said ‘Give us all your food and money, or we'll cut off your something.' Sounds like a robbery.”

Whorf was about to urge caution—maybe the guy was just quoting some old book or something—when the three big men turned around as one, and fanned out slightly. At a scuffing sound behind him, Whorf glanced back.

Four men in the same clothes were closing in behind them. Ihor's eyes met his. Whorf said, “Go right, get our backs to that wall.”

They did; Whorf drew the short flail from between his shoulders and Ihor slid the knives from his sleeve-sheaths. Whorf popped his trouble-whistle into his mouth and blew three-blasts-of-three as loud as he could.

The seven men facing them appeared not to know what to do for an instant, and then one of them clapped the smallest one on the back.
“
Digues-los que necessitem arquers.”
The small man raced away.

“‘Tell them we need “arquers,”' which I would bet means ‘archers,'” Ihor translated, softly, looking down for a moment. “Whistle again, my friend, just to be sure, and then I say that the two to our left look weak and scared; I'll go that way, you keep the rest off me with your stick, and when I say
run
you follow me.”

“Got it.” Whorf blew hard, three-of-three again, and was hard on Ihor's heels as they drove to the left. Whether or not Ihor had spotted their weak side, the first man stepped back; the second was reaching for something at his side when Ihor struck with both knives, slashing upward across the man's right shoulder and stabbing straight at his groin, then pivoted into the cat stance, trapping the man's thigh between blade edges.

Whorf grasped both rods of his flail at the open end, driving the chain end up under the retreating man's jaw, and drove forward, sweeping a foot to fling the man over backwards. As he turned, his peripheral vision noted that Ihor's knives continued their slash deep into his opponent's thigh, then rose, crossed, to gash his throat and thrust him back; the man dropped onto the pavement, bleeding in a great gush. Finishing his turn, Whorf backhanded a figure-8 at head height, catching an onrushing man across the mouth and then on the temple, continuing the motion in a great circle to smash the flail into the side of his knee.

“Run!”

Whorf whirled and chased after Ihor; the remaining men, though they were big, didn't seem very fast or eager. The two young men piled down the cobblestone street toward the harbor.

Whorf heard church bells ringing, other crew blowing three-of-three, and the welcome rumble of the ship's drums beating “To Quarters,” so help was—

Turning a corner, they looked down a steep alley staircase; at the bottom of it, Jorge and Polly were surrounded by more of the men with the sun insignia. Jorge's arm hung funny and he didn't seem to have a weapon. Polly was swinging a baseball bat back and forth, looking for the first one to come within reach, but though they moved slowly and cautiously, the men were closing in.

Since Whorf was on the right, he moved the flail to his right hand and ran down the steps. His first stroke took a man in the back of the head, and his recovery stroke smashed a second man across the right trapezius and collarbone when he had barely begun to turn.