Aftermath

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. 7 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.

After ten minutes he halted. The entourage came to a stop with him. “Captain. Dr. Liebchen. When I asked to see the weapons stored here, I meant active, usable weapons. This seems more like a museum.” He gestured around him. “I know the Indian Head facility contained modern weapons, but everything here is very old. Those torpedoes . . .”

Dr. Liebchen said in a brittle voice, “Every one of the weapons you are looking at is in perfect working order. If you would care for a demonstration—”

“Allow me, Madeleine. I know you never take credit.” Captain Kennecott stepped in front of her. “Mr. President, when this base was hit by the gamma pulse we lost all external communications. For the first seventy-two hours I did not know if we were dealing with a natural phenomenon or the first stage of an external attack. It seemed safer to assume the latter. Dr. Liebchen’s discovery that many of our weapons were useless seemed to reinforce the notion of a coming assault by external agencies. Without direct orders, Dr. Liebchen embarked at once on an all-out night-and-day effort to divide the weapons stored here into two classes: working and nonworking. At first it seemed that the division was chronological. Old weapons worked, newer ones did not. As the effort proceeded, Dr. Liebchen determined that the problem was in fact electronic in nature. A wide class of electronic devices no longer functioned at all. New weapons are more dependent on such devices. The age correlation was an effect, not a cause.” Kennecott swept his arm around to cover the whole building. “Everything here may look old — and be old — but it works. If Indian Head were called upon for combat support, today, thanks to Dr. Liebchen’s tireless efforts we would be able to provide it.”

“My congratulations to everyone here.” Saul turned back to Madeleine Liebchen. “Particularly to you, Doctor. And the other weapons, the new ones that don’t work?”

“They are separately warehoused, pending a decision as to their disposal.” The bright blue eyes were no longer cold. They were sparkling. Saul was not naive enough to take credit. It wasn’t his praise, or anything else he had done. It was pure passion for her work. Madeleine Liebchen had done a superior job, and took pleasure in that.

She went on, “The nature of the malfunctions soon made it clear that the problem lay in the microchips. They cannot be repaired. They must be replaced. I could do that work, in many cases — if there were a source of replacements. But recent contact with other defense facilities suggests no such possibility in the immediate future.”

“Have you been able to do an assessment of your overall war-fighting support potential, compared with that before the gamma pulse?” Saul had picked up a good deal of military jargon from General Grace Mackay.

“It is between seventy and one hundred and forty percent.” Dr. Liebchen answered without hesitation.

“One hundred and forty! You mean you might be more able to provide support now?”

“No. I mean that the answer to your question depends upon the nature of the assumed threat. The seventy percent number measures our support capability compared with its level before the gamma pulse, against an adversary whose fighting potential is unaffected by the pulse. That is not at all a reasonable scenario. Therefore, I estimated the effects of the pulse in diminishing adversarial war-fighting capability. To do so, I made use of previous estimates of the technological basis for foreign weapons. It turns out that our most likely and formidable potential foes — the Golden Ring compact — rely on chip-based weaponry even more than we do. We are, in that sense, better off — one hundred and forty percent better off — than before. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly clear.” Saul wanted to add, Dr. Liebchen, I think you are absolutely wonderful. How about a job in Washington?

He had enough sense not to say any of that (although the offer of a Washington position would indeed come, via Grace Mackay). What was Madeleine Liebchen doing here, in the middle of nowhere? Maybe she was a wind-and-water fanatic, as her ruined complexion suggested. Saul, whose idea of wide-open spaces was the atrium of a big hotel, was not going to find out. He went on, “I am terrifically impressed by the speed with which you have reacted to a unique problem.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Captain Kennecott said gruffly. “We just think of it as standard operations, Navy style. I’m sure other naval facilities have done no less. Shall we continue the tour of inspection?”

“Certainly.” Saul had learned something enormously important in the tour of Indian Head. He couldn’t yet say quite what it was. Everything had to ferment for an hour or a day in the murky wort of his subconscious, then he would know.

They moved on, wandering through the married housing with its children’s playground, past the deserted gymnasium, into the dusty library. Lots of old books there, and in the aisles between the stacks the forlorn and useless terminals. Beside the buildings, heaps of snow had a shrunken, defeated look. Clouds of gnats burst from the shade of towering magnolias, heading for sweaty faces and every square inch of exposed skin. The tall privet hedge on the road to the dead weapons warehouse, confused by weather that made no sense, had blossomed in a wild, perfumed, over-the-top-boys-it’s-now-or-never riot of white.

Saul was having the same spring-is-busting-out feelings. Indian Head had been a stimulant and a restorative — even the cathartic session with Yasmin felt full of future promise. He looked fondly on everything, including Dr. Liebchen, and did not mind when she frowned back at him.

At the entrance to another anonymous warehouse, he paused. Magnolias and munitions were all very well, but it was reality time. Washington waited.

“Captain Kennecott, this has been so interesting, I’ve lost track of everything. What time is it?”

“Ten minutes before noon, Mr. President.” The captain apparently had access to the Great Chronometer of the Universe, or at least a wholly nondigital watch.

“So late? I had no idea. I’m afraid I must be leaving. I must be back at the White House this afternoon.”

He had expected at least a token expression of regret. Kennecott said only, “Yes, Mr. President,” but Saul was trained in nuances. He heard unexpected satisfaction in the captain’s voice, and he caught the rapid eye contact with Dr. Liebchen.

It could be simple relief at getting rid of him, but Saul didn’t believe it. The pair of them were up to something. He would have suspected a formal salute and maybe the presentation of a memento of Indian Head, except that it was such a mismatch with his mental picture of Madeleine Liebchen. She would recoil at the notion of lapel pins and ceremonial farewells.

He was right, and he was wrong.

Saul and his band of followers and security staff walked back toward the river. The memento was waiting behind Mix House. A gigantic gray machine stood on a level concrete pad forty yards from the water, its forty-foot rotors drooping.

“All yours,” Captain Kennecott said. “Of course, you might say that as Commander in Chief it was yours already. And it is rather old. But we can guarantee this machine is perfectly airworthy. We’d be honored if you would take it for your use in Washington, maybe station it at Andrews AFB along with Air Force One.”

“What model is this?” Saul didn’t want to mention that he couldn’t identify most modern fighters, still less an ancient helicopter.

“A Sikorsky CH-53A — a Sea Stallion. It went out of use more than thirty years ago, but I’ll still take it over most modern choppers.” Kennecott patted the side of the monster affectionately. “Carries eight tons, travels five hundred miles at up to a hundred and seventy knots. You and your whole party can be landing on the White House lawn in twenty minutes.”

Twenty minutes. No leisurely return trip, then, but Saul didn’t regret that. He shook hands all around and his thanks to Captain Kennecott were totally sincere. From the moment when he saw the Sea Stallion, he had known what needed to be done when he arrived back at the White House.

As Saul climbed into the helicopter’s great hollow interior, big enough to take a fair-sized truck, another thought hit him.

Washington waited. Tricia also waited. In six hours, he would be face-to-face with her for the first time in over two years.