Earthbound

7

The landing at Novosibirsk was delayed for an hour while they waited for the afternoon sun to melt the ice off the runway. When we got off the plane finally, there was a small crowd waiting, dozens of people and seven Martians. It wasn’t too cold, about noon, bright sun in a deep blue sky. We hurried inside anyhow.

Two of the Martians, the ones in blue, wanted to hustle Snowbird away and start working on her injury. She made them wait while she said good-bye and thanked us individually.

“When I first saw you,” she said to me, “you were also injured, stranded on an alien planet. I hope I do as well as you.” She gestured at one of the blue ones. “We even have the same doctor.”

The blue one nodded at me. “I fixed your ankle sixty-four years ago.”

“Don’t do everything he says,” I said to Snowbird. “He’s pretty old.” She favored me with a thumping laugh and was gone.

The Russians couldn’t let us go without eating. Namir answered their questions about what we knew about the rest of the world while they feasted us on thin pancakes rolled around sour cream and pungent caviar, washed down with icy vodka. The last such meal we would ever have, I assumed. When the power went back off, we would be stranded somewhere, presumably far from caviar.

We got back on the plane, and Paul tried to raise Camp David. A signal was coming through, but it was unintelligible. We charted a course over the Arctic and took off, slithering a bit on the slush that was forming on the runway.

While we flew south, Dustin took over a little study carrel in the rear of the plane and tried to find out what had happened to Fruit Farm, the Oregon commune where he’d grown up.

It was still there physically, if it had survived the Martian abdication. Maybe it was better off than most places, being totally independent of the power and communications grid.

More than a decade before the Martian free power (the year that Dustin’s family left the commune) they had declared total independence, and shut themselves off from the outside world. They had low-voltage solar power and two wind machines, and an environment that allowed year-round subsistence agriculture.

Recent satellite photos showed a tall stockade enclosing about eighty acres of orderly plats around a village of about a hundred people. Outside the stockade were fruit orchards and fields of grain.

One day a year, the vernal equinox, Fruit Farm was open to the public. They sold organic produce and gave tours of their utopian compound. At sundown, they closed the doors for another year. They did maintain an organic produce stand outside the stockade.

It wasn’t a totally hermetic existence. Individuals and families were allowed to join the commune if they had useful skills, and there always was a waiting list. Dustin’s family had spent eight years there, and he looked forward to visiting. If the place still existed, after the past week’s troubles.

The twelve passenger seats unfolded into lumpy beds, angled like chevrons. Some of us rested or napped. Paul took a pill. The plane was on autopilot, but if the Others turned off the power we’d be on a glider looking for a flat place to land.

We were over Hudson Bay, after about six hours, when we made contact with the president’s people. I couldn’t hear what was going on, but I presumed they were livid. They gave us a plane and we hijacked it to Russia. Paul was grinning broadly as he gave them monosyllabic replies.

The Northeast was greener than I’d expected. Big cities and crowded exurbs, but a lot of forest, too. Broad superhighways with almost no traffic. Occasional knots of pileups, dozens or even hundreds of abandoned cars.

When we were a couple of hundred miles from Camp David, we were joined by a pair of military jets that moved in close enough to make eye contact. Paul waved and one of them waved back, and they banked off and sped away.

Namir noted that the day’s travel had reduced our fuel supply from 0.97 to 0.95. We could go around the world fifty times if we wanted to.

“Let’s hope this thing is productive,” I said, without high hopes. The president must have been the genius who had authorized the rocket launch through the meteor storm, which had so pissed off the Others. But he presumably was the best person to organize a nationwide response to prepare for the coming dark age.

We landed without incident, and Paul followed directions, taxiing us to a reviewing stand. A lot of people in suits, squinting into the morning sun. No brass band.

Spatters of applause as we stepped down in random order. Alba grinned broadly when the applause faltered. Who the hell was she?

We were seated on folding chairs, and a couple of soldiers armed with boxed lunches came out. Room-temperature tuna-salad sandwiches. Not caviar, but I was hungry.

I scanned the faces of the dignitaries and was a little disappointed not to see President Gold. Then someone introduced President Boyer. A gaunt man in his fifties approached the microphone.

“He was vice president,” Alba whispered. “Something must have happened to Gold.”

The new president greeted us and bloviated for a few minutes about the importance of our “mission.”

It was two-pronged: try to repair some of the damage done by the power outage and meanwhile try to tool up for a nineteenth-century life style. Either one clearly impossible in a week. But we had to do something.

Factories that could be converted were already cranking out carts and bicycles and hand plows and cargo wagons—a pity horses and oxen couldn’t be mass-produced. This brave new world would be largely powered by human muscle—from humans who had been free from the necessity of physical labor for generations.

A lot of time and effort were being spent, perhaps wasted, trying to figure out how to preserve a central government without modern communication. It seemed obvious that you couldn’t, given the size of the country and the time lag between decision and response. You weren’t going to have Ben Franklin closing up his print shop and taking off for the Continental Congress on foot. Or mule or whatever.

We followed the president and the seven others who had been on stage with him up a gravel path to a large rustic lodge, old log walls and a slate roof. There were other buildings around that looked equally old and homespun.

“This is the main lodge,” the president said as he went up the timber stairs to the porch. “It goes back almost two hundred years. Franklin Roosevelt in World War II.”

Pretty old for a wooden building, I thought, but there was probably a lot of technology embedded in its reassuring simplicity.

“Let’s go down to the planning room. You space travelers, I want to talk to you first. You have a unique point of view. President Gold, before he died, told me to take full advantage of that.” We followed them down a spiral staircase into a well-lit room that was twenty-second-century neo-Baroque.

The room was dominated by a heavy ornate round table of some gorgeous rare wood. There were about twenty overstuffed swivel chairs with twenty different colors of paisley upholstery. The latest thing, I supposed.

There were five of us “space travelers” and our two hangers-on, facing seven people who were presumably politicians.

An impressive back-lit Mercator projection of the world filled one wall. Namir gestured at it as we sat down. “Please bring us up to date… next week, that whole map is going to be of only academic interest. What are we doing to make people adjust to thinking and acting on a small scale? Local government and industry?”

“Right now we’re still dealing with panic. Rioting and wholesale looting.” That was Dali Spendor, who had been President Gold’s press secretary. “That requires local response, but it’s military and police work.”

“National Guard?” Paul said. Some of the others looked bewildered.

“There’s no such thing anymore,” General Ballard said. “It seemed obsolete, and was absorbed by the regular military before I was ever a soldier.”

“Regionalism in general has been on the wane.” A white-bearded man who introduced himself as Julian Remnick, president of Harvard University. “That’s been true for centuries. But facing a common enemy as terrifying as the Others, who represent the same danger to everyone from Nome to Key West, from London to Beijing, has unified the world more effectively than millennia of idealism.” He was obviously quoting himself. “That has its bad side now.”

“People will naturally expect a top-down response,” Spendor said. “Here, that would be Washington stepping in to deal with the problem. But as Namir says, that stops on Wednesday.”

“Or sooner,” I said. “There’s no reason to trust the Others’ word on anything.”

“Nothing we can do about that,” the president huffed. Except try to be flexible, I thought, which probably wasn’t his strong suit.

“We’ve started to make a little progress,” a tall plain woman said. “I’m Lorena Monel, governor of Maryland. Or former governor. As you say, units as large as a state will probably have little meaning.

“My committee on localization has gotten in touch with regional leaders in both major parties, and two other groups that represent significant numbers. Through them, we’ve made contact with thousands of community leaders and put them together in an information net—useless after the power goes off, but meanwhile they’re talking with people who will be within walking distance. Leaders with the same regional resources and problems.”

“In Wyoming,” a slender tanned fellow drawled, “ain’t nobody in walking distance of nobody else. Except in the cities, and they’re pretty well lost.”

“There won’t be anyone in Wyoming by the end of the week,” the president said. “No one but hermits. You going back?”

The man stared back at him. “Good a place to die as any.”

“Let’s get back on track,” the Maryland governor said. “We have this network for five days. How can we best use it?”

“Turn it into a cell system,” the Harvard president said. “Have each community establish a line of communication with every adjacent one, through Lorena’s committee. Have each of them figure out a way to stay in contact with their immediate neighbors without high technology.”

“Smoke signals,” the Wyoming man said.

“Possibly. Signal fires, anyhow. The ancient Greeks did that.”

“Horses and riders?” I said. “Are there enough people who still do that?”

“Wouldn’t work if they did,” a short black man said. “Jerry Fenene, deputy secretary of commerce. In a couple of weeks, a horse isn’t going to be transportation. It’s going to be a million calories on the hoof. You don’t want to ride it anywhere near a hungry person with a gun.”

“Bicycles are a near equivalent,” the president said (giving me a vision of someone eating a bicycle), “and we’re churning them out. Twenty-four-hour production in, I don’t know, a couple of hundred factories.”

“A hundred eighty-two registered,” Fenene said. “Some of them very small. They might turn out a hundred thousand bikes before the power goes.” He shook his head. “It’s not of much practical significance. There must be a hundred million bikes out there already.” He looked vaguely in our direction.

I wondered what they expected us to do, to help. We were public figures in a way, but most of the public associated us with getting into this disaster, not getting out.

We did have more experience with the Others, but in terms of actual contact, that was a matter of minutes, not much of it constructive. Lab rats probably knew more about humans than we knew about the Others. And had more in common with their captors.

“No matter what we do,” the president said, “it’s just a drop in a mighty big bucket. They give us a week, now less than six days.” He looked at me. “If that. Once we have your cell system, Lorena, what do we do with it?”

“I guess the next step would be to organize groups of cells. Into regions. How big would a region be?”

“Smaller than Wyoming,” I said, “if you want meetings.”

“You can bike across Wyoming,” the thin man said, “but you wouldn’t want to.”

“I don’t like this assumption that everybody’s going to cooperate,” Namir said. “Line up and form into counties and states. With no central authority, I’d put my money behind mob rule. Gangs, with the biggest bully at the top.”

“You’re always such a crazy optimist,” Paul said.

“So what would you bet on?”

He scratched his head. “Same.”

“So I should be the biggest bully?” the president said. “I probably have the biggest gang.”

“The only one with nukes and hellbombs,” Wyoming said, and some people laughed nervously. “You could just wait it out,” he continued. “Let the rest of the world go to hell first, and then come out when the smoke clears.”

“Give up on America?” the president said. “There’s no way I could do that.”

“That’s not America out there anymore.” Wyoming made a sweeping gesture. “When the power goes off again, it’s gonna be one big nut house, with the inmates armed and desperate—and in charge. Let them take care of each other.”

Namir spoke quietly into the silence: “How many troops do you have? I mean here at Camp David.”

The president looked at General Ballard. “The Secret Service right here, that might be sixty-some agents?” Ballard said. “The First Brigade of the 101st is attached to them, but I don’t think there were a hundred on duty in and around the White House when we… evacuated. My adjunct, Brigadier Akers, would have the exact number. Under two hundred total.”

“So we’re spread out pretty thin,” Namir said, “if a group of any size decides to attack us.”

The general laughed, a hoarse syllable. “We’re armed to the teeth, and those troops are the cream. No bunch of civilian rabble is going to breach our perimeter.”

“Armed to the teeth with modern weapons.” Namir shook his head. “You even have combat aircraft and tanks. Which all will be useless scrap after Wednesday. And we’ll have a ring of a hundred-some soldiers with rifle-clubs and knives. If they do have knives. Excuse me if I want to be someplace less conspicuous.”

“This is what it boils down to,” Wyoming said. “Eight billion people had enough to eat last week, but about seven billion need agribusiness and large-scale aquaculture to stay alive. Nothing you do is going to change those seven billion into small-scale farmers and fishers. Even if you could, the Earth wouldn’t support them. Long before winter comes, there won’t be any food on the shelves. No grain in the silos.”

“There’s no way around it,” Namir said, “if the Others pull the plug on agribusiness. So most of those seven billion have to die.”

“Some’ll be food themselves,” Wyoming said. “One adult has what, forty or fifty pounds of meat on him? Keep you goin’ for a month and a half.”

“If you had refrigeration,” Paul said.

“Or know how to make jerky,” Wyoming said, giving Paul a measuring stare. Probably two months’ worth.

“But it’s not like a lifeboat situation,” I said, “where you draw straws, or the strong eat the weak. At least in America, there’s plenty of room to hole up and wait.”

“We can impose order for a certain length of time,” the president said. “In most cities, food warehouses and supermarkets are under armed guard.”

“Unless the mobs have overpowered them,” Lorena said. “I know that it hasn’t worked in Baltimore, where my office is. The guard evaporated everywhere, and every crumb of food was gone by noon yesterday. When the power came back on, some people were ready. They used trucks to smash into stores and loot them wholesale. In a couple of cases, military units themselves did the looting, or at least joined the looters.”

“We should assume the worst,” Namir said, “and plan in terms of rebuilding from whatever ruins are left. Some countries have more experience in that than others.” There was always the echo of Gehenna in his voice, in his accent. All his family dead in minutes. Cities paved with instant corpses. Israel had rebuilt, after a fashion, but never recovered.

“A basic question,” Paul said to the president. “Are there federal reserves of food? Something that will still be there after the smoke clears?”

“In fact, there is.” He pursed his lips and paused, and then continued. “Not too far from here, in a natural limestone cave in West Virginia. The Congress is holed up there, along with I don’t know how many tons of cheese and freeze-dried milk and fruit and meat. Bought up in secret from individual states’ surpluses, back in the Marlowe administration. The soldiers who are guarding it don’t know what’s there; they think it’s a secret missile site. It can feed tens of thousands of people for decades—or could. With trucks to move it out.”

“That’s where you’ll go after Camp David dries up?” Namir asked. The president reddened and looked away.

“Won’t do much for the country in general,” Paul said, “or the world.”

“We’re still six months away from winter,” Namir said. Most of those billions will be dead by then. Unless they all move to Wyoming and start eating each other.

“The ones who survive the winter will provide the core for rebuilding the countries in the northern hemisphere. We should be working on what to do then. How to keep civilization going with those millions.”

“Civilization is what got us here,” Dustin said. “Maybe we should try something else.”

“This isn’t a philosophy problem, Professor.”

“Except that everything is. In the long run, we might find that civilization is incompatible with survival.”

“In the long run, that’ll take care of itself,” Wyoming said.

“It will not,” Dustin pressed on. “Look, I grew up in a small, isolated, agrarian community that was founded in opposition to commercialism. I do know what I’m talking about; I was perfectly happy, absent most of civilization’s overrated virtues.

“But it didn’t just happen, and it certainly can’t happen in the barbaric chaos you’re all accepting as inevitable.”

“You can’t beat the math, boy. Nobody’s gonna lay down and die so you and your pals can get naked and grow vegetables.”

“I know that. That’s why the organization initially has to come from here. We have some idea of where the food is and where the people are. For a few days, we can put that knowledge to use and maximize the number of people who live.”

“Tell everybody where the food is,” Namir said, “so they can loot more efficiently.”

“It’s a choice between triage and random survival,” Paul said. “Only a billion are going to survive, and all you’re really saying is that we might have some choice as to which billion.”

“No, I’m just saying we can maximize the number,” the president said. “There will be something like natural selection going on, but it won’t be a matter of brute force. Quite the opposite, I think. People who cooperate with one another.”

“People who obey the government.” Wyoming said gummint. “Sometimes I think you boys made this whole thing up, Boyer. Mr. President.”

The phone in front of General Ballard buzzed and he snatched it up. “Ballard, go.”

The president set down his knife and fork and looked at Ballard. They both seemed to have gone a little pale. It wouldn’t be a routine call—“How’s supper with the prez?”

Ballard said, “I’m coming,” and stood up. “Sir, there is, um, a disturbance on the east slope.” He tossed his napkin down.

“What kind of ‘disturbance’?”

“I don’t know. Gunfire, on the other side of the fence. A sniper, at least one, silent. If you’ll excuse me.” Two other military guys followed him.

The woman with the sergeant’s stripes and apron came out, armed with a wooden spoon. “Mr. President, shall I show people down to the basement?”

“Yes, thank you. Um… military people stay up here, of course, and you space folks?”

“Sure,” Paul said. “Half of us are some sort of military anyhow.”

“I’ll stay, too,” Card said to me. “You’ll need an innocent bystander.”

The cook-sergeant told the civilians to bring their plates and wineglasses if they wanted; they’d be hiding in the wine cellar. They were nervous but animated, a little jovial, as they filed out.

The president nodded and steepled his fingers under his chin. “There is a large safe room underneath the basement. Don’t think we need it yet. Jorge, go where the general’s going and send us a cube.” One of the waiters flung the folded napkin off his arm and hustled toward the door. A pistol appeared in his hand as he was leaving the room. “Uncle Charlie, stand by the dome?” The other waiter nodded and left.

“We’re pretty well protected here,” he said to the dinner table. “If we turn on the pressor dome, a fly couldn’t get in. Nor any missile. But we’d lose communication with outside, and probably fry everyone’s personal electronics.”

“And it would stop working on Wednesday,” Namir said.

“I assume so. I’m not a scientist.” I’m not either, but it did sound like a safe bet. Even if the pressor field wasn’t itself electronic—I didn’t know anything about it, but remembered that it was something like the “weak action force,” as basic as gravity. But it must have some parts that plug into the wall.

“Without the pressor field,” Namir said, “we’d still be safe downstairs?”

He nodded. “It goes back at least to the twenty-first. There was probably a shelter down there in Eisenhower’s day. They had nukes back then, too.”

“A wonder we’ve lasted this long,” Elza said. The president nodded, immune to sarcasm. Or maybe he knew something we didn’t. Some presidential secret, whispered down from one to the next for three-hundred-some years. Except for the assassinations.

“Maybe we ought to go down there,” I said.

“I don’t know.” The president used his napkin to wipe sweat from his forehead. “I’m afraid there are electronic locks on the exits. We couldn’t hide indefinitely.”

“Trapped in the darkness,” Dustin said. “Airless. No, thanks.”

A section of a book-lined wall rotated to reveal a large cube, about six feet square by two feet deep. The picture was bouncing; evidently Jorge was trying to image the scene as he ran toward it. Helmet cam, probably.

The image was pale green, with white flares when a couple of soldiers fired rifles.

“I wonder who they are,” I said. “The people attacking.”

“If they’re the ones we were expecting, it’s a bunch led by the Liberty Bell underground. They were trying to organize something down in Frederick, Maryland. We had a woman planted in their leadership, but we stopped hearing from her yesterday morning.”

“How many?” Namir said.

“Three hundred, maybe four.”

“Why don’t they wait till after Wednesday?” I asked. “Wouldn’t they know that most of the soldiers have electric guns?”

“Most of them do, too. Civilian hunting rifles. They’re probably holding their gunpowder weapons in reserve until after the power goes off.” There was the thunk-thunk sound of a heavy machine gun, and the cube showed it was on our side. “We should, too.”

“This probably isn’t the real attack,” Namir said thoughtfully. “May just be a probe, to test your reaction.”

“That’s what you’d do?”

“I wouldn’t attack a fortified position in any case, unless it had something I really wanted. Like the president.”

He laughed. “Fat lot of good I’ll be after the communications go out.”

“They want you before that.”

“Suppose so. Though I’m not sure what they’d do with me. Trade me for food?”

“Maybe they just want Camp David,” he said. “Easy to defend without electricity, and all that meadowland would be good for planting. A fortified farm like Dustin’s bunch.”

“My ‘bunch’ doesn’t have much winter,” Dustin pointed out. “This place probably gets a lot of snow.”

The president nodded. “Gold used to come up on weekends for cross-country skiing. That was a circus.”

There were three loud, evenly spaced impacts on the log wall, like heavy sledgehammer blows.

“What was that?” Namir said.

The president shrugged and looked at one of the guards. “Sir,” he said, “it sounds like a large-caliber air rifle, a sniper gun. No report because the ball goes slower than sound. I’d stay away from the windows, sirs.”

We all moved toward the wall in between the two west windows. This was where the Indians would start shooting flaming arrows. Ride in looping orbits until the inferno forced us out.

“Shit,” Paul said, “we shouldn’t have left the guns on the plane.”

“Some downstairs,” the president said. He strode over to a door in the corner and thumbed the lock open. “Backup weapons for the army, I guess. On a rifle rack in the hall.”

Namir jerked his head in that direction, and all five of us crept over, staying close to the wall. I didn’t care for the idea of joining the president’s army, but being an unarmed target was ridiculous.

As we clattered down the metal stairs, I felt panic rising, and a kind of helpless anger. A week ago, Earth was a beautiful blue marble floating in space, full of promise. The surface, it was nothing but fear and panic.

We used to joke about that. Most of my adult life has been in and on Mars, and her two moons were named fear and panic, Phobos and Diemos. When they rose or set together, we’d sometimes gather in the dome and watch. Drinking bad sweet Martian wine or worse brandy. It was a good place to live, toasting fear and panic. I hoped it still was. I had grandchildren there, old enough to vote.

I stood on the concrete floor numb, while Namir and Paul and Dustin smashed open the glass case and shouted about which weapons to take. It all seemed in slow motion. Great-grandchildren? My children, my twins, were born in ’84. They’d be fifty-four Earth years old by now, twenty-eight Martian ares. They could have married at ten, and yes, their children might have children. I hadn’t thought to ask.

Paul thrust a lightweight laser weapon into my arms, rather than a mewling infant, so my career as a great-grandmother was over after a second and a half.

I followed him up the stairs, almost tripping, because I was looking at the weapon rather than my feet. The safety was an on/off switch just above where your right thumb rested when your finger was on the trigger. A line of light on the top of the shoulder stock showed how much charge was left. Mine was halfway up, amber in color. Enough to fry an egg? A person?

Paul whispered, “I’ll go check the plane,” and slipped out the back door, before I could say anything. He had his rifle and two bandoliers of ammunition, but not even a hat against the rain.

The two guards were kneeling by both the windows. I sat down next to one of them, and we exchanged nods. “Anything?”

He shook his head no and squinted outside for a moment, then jerked back. Of course you wouldn’t want to stay silhouetted long enough for that sniper to aim at you.

Alba crouched next to the soldier. “Are you in contact with the ones outside?”

He tapped his ear. “Yeah, but radio silence,” he whispered. “They’re out past the wire.”

Alba’s weapon was the same as mine. She pushed a button on the end of the stock and a long silver fuel cell came out. She licked her thumb and rubbed both the terminals, and slid it back into place with a quiet click.

The president was sitting on a worn leather couch in the corner farthest away from doors and windows. Hiding inside a bulky bulletproof vest and a heavy military helmet, he looked kind of ridiculous, like a boy playing soldier. He was punching buttons on what looked like an oversized phone, perhaps dictating the fate of the Free World. Such of it as remained.

After a long time, I looked at the clock on the wall behind me. It was 1:45; maybe ten minutes had passed. How long were we going to sit here listening to the rain?

I remembered Namir’s refrain, “I will not quit my post until properly relieved.” Would soldiers wait patiently through old age and into dust while their leaders forgot about them? Not a sound from outside except the oscillating swish of rain being pushed by wind.

The soldier touched his throat. “Sitrep?” he whispered. “Tony?” He cupped a hand over his ear, and then shrugged at Alba. I guess I didn’t look military enough to shrug at.

The green picture on the cube shifted, sliding around about 180 degrees; Jorge looking back at us. The old lodge was a faint outline against the trees, our dark windows showing as light squares in the storm’s gloom. From heat, I suppose. Cold as it was in here.

There was some machine-gun fire, farther away, answered by the crackling of laser fire as it popped rain. “Maybe some of them are falling back,” the soldier said. “Or maybe it’s just a bluff, a diversion,” he stage-whispered to the other soldier. “What do you think, Boog?”

“I’m a sergeant,” he said. “They don’t pay me to think.”

“Give it a try.”

“I guess they figured to pop a few rounds to keep us awake all night. Then they go rest and come hit us when we’re tired.”

“That sounds right,” Namir said, sitting next to the soldier who had spoken. “That’s their big tactical advantage. Even if we outgun them, they control when and where we fight.”

“Unless we take it to them,” the first one said. “Maybe that’s what they’re doing now, chasing them.”

“Leaving us alone here? I don’t think so.”

Not alone, of course. We also have a relatively useless president and a handful of intrepid interstellar space explorers. What are a few hundred people with guns against six who’ve faced the Others and lived to tell the tale? And a seventh who was able to walk through darkness undetected? Plus a zombie brother who had lost two of his three lives. Who could blame the rabble for running?

“A lot depends on how many of their weapons are electrical,” Namir said. “They must know that the military have powder weapons.”

“They might also know that our powder ammunition would be used up after a few minutes of heavy fighting. They might’ve been stockpiling reloads for years.”

“What is a reload?” I asked.

“It’s a do-it-yourself recycling thing,” the other soldier said. “You save your empty cartridges and refill them with lead and powder. Tax on ammo is really high.” He looked at Namir. “Was there a lot of ammo down there?”

He shook his head slowly and bit his lip, thinking. “We emptied a green metal box that had, what, ten bandoliers, maybe twelve. There were three other boxes.” Like Paul, he had two bandoliers slung over his shoulders, across his chest, looking like a dangerous Mexican bandito.

“Bandolier’s got 240 rounds,” the soldier said, “twenty cartons. Hope there’s more.”

The back door swung open, and Paul clumped in, dripping. “Plane looks okay,” he said, pressing water from his hair. He cut a glance toward the kitchen door. “Coffee.”

I followed him into the kitchen; Namir and Elza followed me. Paul grabbed a tea towel to wipe off his rifle.

“Look, this is bad. The plane’s okay right now because you have to cross so much exposed ground to get to it. But once they flank this building, they can hit it with gunfire. One lucky shot would disable it.”

“So let’s get the hell out of here,” Namir said, “while the plane still works. They’re gonna rest up tomorrow, and then on Wednesday it’ll be Custer surrounded by the Sioux.” I didn’t quite know what that meant, but was sure it was nothing good.

“We should go right now,” Elza said. “Every minute we stay here—”

“Take me with you.” The president had slipped quietly into the kitchen behind us.

Paul looked at him. “Rather take two of the soldiers.”

“What?” He seemed surprised. “But I can be… I’m the president.”

“What did you do to Professor Gold?”

“Gold was an old man. The shock of the last few days, the Others… it was more than his heart could take.”

“Bullshit. I talked with him the day before he died. He was fine.”

“But old.”

“He swam a half mile a day to relax. He didn’t have a heart attack.”

“He did, though. I was there.”

Paul looked at him for a long moment. “Go tell the soldiers we’re going to take you to safety. Ask them to cover us. Then we’ll make a break for it.”

He shook his head. “What if…”

“I’ll go get the others,” I said, and walked by the president. His sweat was acrid. Was that the smell of fear? Or of lying.

Maybe he wasn’t lying when he said he was there, when Gold died. I wondered if anybody else was.

I went into the room and started toward Card, to whisper for him to get into the kitchen, but there was no need for secrecy. When everybody disappeared, the soldiers would figure it out, even if the president hadn’t told them.

“We’re gonna get out while the jet can still fly,” I said in a loud voice.

“That’s intelligent,” one of the soldiers said laconically. “Leave us some ammo, please.”

“You could bring the boxes up from downstairs,” the other said.

“Got it.” Dustin gestured for Card to follow him down.

“I should… I should stay and fight,” Alba said.

The older soldier studied her black uniform. “You’re just a cop, man. Save your skin.” He smiled. “Thanks anyhow. And you’re taking the vice president?”

“That’s the idea.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. I would’ve liked to have read his thoughts. “Boog, you hold down the fort here while I cover the escapees?”

“Gotcha. Try not to hit your commander in chief.”

“No promises.” He got up just as Boyer came through the door.

“Men,” he started, “we’ve decided—”

“The Mars girl told us, sir,” Duke said. “Gonna fly out of the rain.” He looked at me. “Know where you’re headed?”

“California, I think. A farm up in the north, where one of us grew up.”

“Good luck. Finding anyplace safe.”

“Good luck to you, too. Maybe if they know the president, the vice president, isn’t here?”

“Acting president,” Boyer said. “If only I were a better actor.”

“We’ll let them know,” the other said. “No reason for them to believe us, though. And they’d still want Camp David and all the stuff here.” A good reason to conspicuously leave, I thought. That would probably occur to them.

Would that constitute quitting one’s post before being properly relieved? Does the principle still apply if your commander in chief deserts first?

The boys brought up the metal boxes and left them under the windows. We said good-bye to the soldiers and went out into the rain, following Paul and the president.

On the other side of the tarmac runway, there was a small control shack with radar and satellite dishes. Two men in blue flight suits stood on the porch, watching. The pilots of the two jets, probably. They waved casually, and I waved back. Would they fly after us? Probably not.

Or maybe they didn’t want to hang around Camp David, either.

As we approached the NASA jet, a strip of fuselage swung down, becoming a staircase. No wide Martians to worry about.

The others hurried up the steps. Paul put a hand on Boyer’s shoulder. “Wait.”

“What for?”

“Just wait.” I stepped slowly past them as the president shook loose. “You can’t—”

“I think I can. This is my plane, and you’re not getting on it.”

“Don’t you dare. I can have you shot down.”

Paul looked at the assault rifle in his hands, and smiled. “Shall I pretend you didn’t say that?” He gestured for me to go up the steps and then he followed me, backwards, keeping his eye on Boyer.

“You think they won’t obey me.”

“Pretty sure they won’t. Go back and ask them.”

He looked around, back up to the lodge, then the control shack. The two pilots stared back.

Then he started walking. “I’m going to stand right behind your exhaust. If you start the jet, you’ll be a murderer.”

Paul stepped inside and slapped a red button by the door, and turned to look down on the president. “You do what you will,” he said as the stairs rose off the ground. “This thing doesn’t have a rear view mirror.”

I sat down and buckled up. “Is that true?”

He sat in the pilot seat and the harness clamped itself around him. “Well, sure. Where would you put a mirror?” A flatscreen blinked on and showed the black tarmac behind him.

The president stepped into view and planted his feet wide apart, standing with his hands on his hips.

“All this and stupid, too.” He tapped a sequence of keys.

“You’re going to—”

“Relax. The nozzle’s more than a meter above his head. I could roast him if I goosed it, but I’ll just bleed in a little fuel and creep away.” He put on a headset. “Control, this is NASA 1.” He paused. “Roger. We had to leave one behind for weight limitations. Taking off due north, into the wind? When we’re over the clouds I’ll take a heading of about 250°, destination Northern California.” He nodded. “Roger, thanks. Same to you guys. Over and out.”

The engine started with a loud pop, and I saw Boyer take off running. With a low whine, the plane inched forward.

“Everybody stay buckled in till I finish turning left above the weather. Then the flight attendant will come around with drinks.” He laughed. “Oh, hell. We left him behind.”