Joe Steele

XXV

Only a couple of months after atomic fire seared Sendai and Nagano, Mao ran Chiang off the Chinese mainland. Chiang and his Nationalists Dunkirked across the Formosa Strait to the island of the same name (though most maps also called it Taiwan). Without any navy to speak of, Mao’s Reds couldn’t follow them. Chiang declared that the Nationalists still were the legitimate government of all of China, and that one fine day they’d go back to the mainland for another few rounds with Mao.

Joe Steele recognized Chiang as rightful President of China. Some of America’s allies did, too, but not all of them. Charlie wasn’t particularly surprised. Joe Steele hadn’t recognized Trotsky as ruler in Russia till they ended up on the same side in the war against Hitler.

He did remark to Stas Mikoian, “I wondered if the boss was going to use some more A-bombs in China to give Chiang a helping hand.” Not by word or by inflection did he let on about how much the idea scared him. Showing that anything the boss might do scared you was an invitation to the Jeebies to come pick you up. The only way you could mention such things was with a neutrality more scrupulous than Switzerland’s.

Mikoian nodded. “There was some discussion of it,” he answered, also as coolly as if he were talking about how much vermouth to put in a Martini. He was smoother with that tone than Charlie was. As far as Charlie could tell, Mikoian was smoother with it than anybody. He might have been lightly amused as he continued, “Remember when Gromyko visited last month?”

“Sure,” Charlie said. The Russian ambassador always looked as if he had a poker shoved up his behind. The Great Stone Face was his Washington nickname. He made Vince Scriabin seem jolly by comparison, and that wasn’t easy. “Why? What did he say?”

“He said that if we dropped anything on Shanghai or Peiping, for instance, he couldn’t answer for what might happen to Paris or Rome.”

“Oh,” Charlie said. After that, there didn’t seem to be much more to say. A moment later, Charlie did find one more question: “He persuaded the boss he meant it or Trotsky meant it or however you want to put that?”

“He must have, or the bombers would have flown,” Mikoian answered. “Myself, I thought they were going to. But the world can probably live through one atomic bomb from each side. Once you start throwing them around for every little thing, pretty soon there’s not much left to throw them at. Chances are there’s not much left of you, either.”

“Is that you talking, or are you quoting Joe Steele?”

“I’m quoting what I told him. General Marshall said the same thing,” Mikoian replied. “He thought it over, and he decided we were right.”

“I see,” Charlie said, in place of the Thank heaven! he felt like shouting. He added, “You know, there are times it doesn’t break my heart that I’m not a big enough wheel to sit in when you guys talk about stuff like that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The glint in Mikoian’s eye gave his sardonic words the lie. With a wry chuckle, he said, “I didn’t expect I’d need to worry about blowing up the world when I came to Washington with Joe Steele right at the end of the First World War. All you can do is roll with the punches the best way you know how.”

“Hey, I didn’t think I’d wind up here, either. I figured I’d write stories for the Associated Press the rest of my life, or maybe get good enough at what I did so a paper like the Boston Globe or the New York Times or the Washington Post would pick me up,” Charlie said. “But here I am.”

“It hasn’t worked out too badly,” Mikoian said.

Charlie couldn’t even tell him he was wrong. He’d done well for himself here. But the quote from Matthew that Esther hadn’t quite been able to remember kept coming back to mind. He hoped he hadn’t lost his soul. He thought things were better here with him than they would have been without him. He hadn’t exactly stood up to Joe Steele, though. He’d gone along with some things he wished he hadn’t.

It was cold and rainy and getting close to Christmas when GBI men swooped down on half a dozen scholars of Chinese history, literature, and culture and dragged them off their campuses (in one case, straight out of a lecture hall) and into prison. The charge was aiding and abetting the fall of mainland China to the Reds.

“We know who lost China for Chiang Kai-shek!” Andy Wyszynski boomed at a press conference. “Yes, we know, and those people will pay the price for their disloyalty!”

“Haven’t we heard this song before?” Esther asked.

“We aren’t just hearing it-we’re watching it,” Charlie said. And they were. The television set seemed an awful lot of cabinet-and an awful lot of money-for not much screen, but there was the Attorney General, bellowing away right in their living room.

“Those treacherous fools deserve the long prison terms we will impose on them!” Wyszynski shouted, pumping the air with his clenched fist.

When he said that, Esther raised an eyebrow. “What? He’s not going for the death penalty? Is Joe Steele getting soft?”

Charlie gave one of those let-me-check-the-children looks. Then he said, “I don’t think he’s getting soft. I think he’s getting old. He really is slowing down some now that he’s passed seventy.”

“About time, wouldn’t you say?” Esther made sure she kept her voice down.

A commercial came on: a smiling blond girl who wore a costume that covered her torso with a rectangular cigarette pack pranced around in fishnet stockings while a background chorus sang about how wonderful the brand was. Charlie clucked sadly. “Boy, I didn’t think anything could be dumber than radio advertising, but this TV stuff shows me I was wrong.”

“It’s pretty bad, all right.” Esther didn’t return to talking about Joe Steele. Charlie wasn’t sorry. Talking about the President had been dangerous at any time during his long, long administration. It seemed all the more so now that he was visibly starting to fail. He might lash out to show that his sand wasn’t really running out after all.

Or he might live, and stay President, another ten years. Just because he was slowing down, that didn’t mean he had to stop soon. If he had any reason to live on, wasn’t it to spite John Nance Garner?

* * *

Every few weeks, a technical sergeant with a Geiger counter drove a jeep along the southern edge of the demilitarized zone, checking radiation levels from the bomb that had fallen on Nagano-and also, Mike supposed, from the one that had fallen on Sendai. The United States and Russia had both added to Honshu’s postwar misery.

“How does it look?” Mike asked the guy, whose name was Gary Cunningham. “I mean, besides cold?”

“I’m from Phoenix, Arizona. Not the weather I grew up with-that’s for goddamn sure.” Cunningham waved at the snow on the ground. “Didn’t have to worry about crap like this. But the radiation? It’s going down-seems to be dropping pretty much the way the slide-rule boys figured.”

“Is it dangerous?” Mike asked.

“I don’t think so, not where it’s at now. I mean, the smart guys don’t think so,” Cunningham answered. “All I do is, I get the numbers they want, and then I listen to them going on about what the shit means.”

Mike suspected he was sandbagging. Plainly, he was nobody’s dope, even if he wasn’t a scientist himself. He would have seen enough and heard enough to make some pretty good guesses of his own. “I was in Yamashita when we dropped the one on Sendai,” Mike said. “What’s that going to do to me over time?”

“So you were as close as anybody American,” Cunningham said. It wasn’t a question: he was putting a card in his mental filing cabinet. He went on, “You didn’t come down with radiation sickness, right? Your hair didn’t fall out? You didn’t start puking?”

“No, nothing like that,” Mike said.

Cunningham nodded. “Haven’t heard that any of us there came down with it. Some Americans who were too close to Nagano did.”

“Some Americans who were in fucking Nagano, there’s nothing left of them now. Nothing left of a big old pile of Japs, either,” Mike said.

“Well, you’ve got that right. I don’t know how many Russians we toasted in Sendai, either,” Gary Cunningham said. “But getting back to you. . The short answer is, nobody knows what the radiation dose you picked up will do to you ten, twenty, thirty years down the line. You’re a guinea pig. If you die of cancer, maybe you can blame it on being too close to the bomb. Or maybe it would have happened anyway. I can’t tell you. Right now, I don’t think anyone can. The docs’ll be studying you and the other soldiers and the Japs who were in the neighborhood, and when your son’s as old as you are maybe they’ll know what’s what.”

“I don’t have any kids. My wife deep-sixed me when I was in an encampment,” Mike growled. “Suppose I meet somebody now. Do I need to worry about what the bomb did to my nuts?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, either. I can’t even begin to guess, so I won’t try, okay?” Cunningham said. He cocked his head to one side and studied Mike. “So you were a scalp, too, huh?”

“Damn straight. Sullivan, Michael, NY24601. I was up in Montana, chopping down trees. How about you?”

“Cunningham, Gary, AZ1797. I dug irrigation ditches in New Mexico and Colorado.” Cunningham took off the gloves shielding his hands from the cold. His palms were all over calluses, even after what had to be a good length of time away from forced labor. “They turned me loose in ’44, and I got drafted right afterwards. I liked the Army better than anything I could do on Civvy Street, so I stayed in. What’s your story?”

“I volunteered in ’42 to get out of the encampment,” Mike replied.

“Wait. .” Cunningham eyed him again, in a different way this time. “Guys who did that went straight into a punishment brigade.”

“Uh-huh,” Mike said dryly.

“But. . Fuck, they told me what the odds were if I went into an outfit like that. I stayed in till my stretch ended on account of it. How many other guys who started out with you are still here?”

“The ones who went all the way through everything and didn’t get maimed early on? My company CO did it. I know of two, three others. They weren’t people I was tight with or anything.”

“Damn!” Cunningham said. “Now I feel like I’ve seen the Great White Whale. My hat’s off to you, man.” He doffed it. It was a fur cap with earflaps, the kind the guards in Montana would have drooled over. Mike didn’t think it was Army issue; he wondered if Cunningham had scavenged it from a dead North Japanese soldier or a Russian.

“Yeah, well, that and a couple of yen’ll buy me some sake. Want to go into Wakamatsu and buy some sake?” Mike said. “You go through weather like this, you understand why the Japs drink it hot.”

“That’s a fact,” Cunningham said. “I’ll buy you a couple. I’m honored to. You don’t run into many guys who went through everything you did and came out in one piece.”

“Well, almost.” Mike rubbed the bottom of his left earlobe, which was most of an inch higher than the bottom of his right ear. “But thanks-I’ll take you up on that.” After so much terror and pain, serving in that punishment brigade had finally paid off-a couple of shots of sake’s worth, anyhow. What the hell? You took what you could get.

* * *

After Esther discouraged him from drowning his sorrows whenever he got the urge, Charlie didn’t go to the tavern near the White House anywhere near so often as he had before. He felt better for staying away, too. . most of the time. Every once in a while, often on days when he’d had more of Vince Scriabin than he could take, he needed a Band-Aid for his brain. Bourbon did the trick better than anything else he knew.

When he did go in there, he commonly found John Nance Garner perched on his usual barstool. Joe Steele ran the country. Joe Steele, in fact, ran most of the world that wasn’t Red. The USA was the only big power that hadn’t had its economy ravaged by war. The American economy had boomed louder than American guns. Anyone who wanted help had to keep the President happy.

John Nance Garner presided over this tavern and the United States Senate. Comparing the time he spent in the Cabinet to the time he spent here, Charlie knew which part of his little domain mattered more to him. Well, with things as they were in Washington during Joe Steele’s fifth term, the bartender here held more power than the Senate did.

When Charlie walked in on a mild spring afternoon, Garner greeted him with, “Hey, if it ain’t Charlie Sullivan! How are things out in the real world, Sullivan?” A cigarette in his hand sent up a thin strand of smoke. The full ashtray in front of him said he’d been here a while. So did the empty glasses.

“The real world? What’s that? I work in the White House,” Charlie said, and then, to the bartender, “Wild Turkey over ice, please.”

“Comin’ right up, suh,” the Negro replied. Charlie slid a half-dollar and a dime tip across the bar. Prices had climbed after the war; not even Joe Steele could keep them down, any more than King Canute had been able to hold back the tide.

Garner puffed, chuckled, and puffed again. “Hell, I wouldn’t know. Damned if I remember the last time I went inside there. Joe Steele don’t want me around. I’m a poor relation. I embarrass him.”

“If you embarrassed him, he wouldn’t put you on the ticket every four years,” Charlie said. He didn’t think that was the problem at all. The need to have a Vice President reminded a President of his mortality. These days, Joe Steele’s own body was giving him reminders like that. He didn’t need John Nance Garner around to rub them in.

“Sonny, the only reason I stay on there is ’cause he knows I don’t make waves,” Garner said. It had to be one reason; Charlie didn’t think it was the only one. The Veep went on, “If he put me out to pasture back in Uvalde, wouldn’t break my heart, not one bit.”

“Oh, come on. I don’t believe that,” Charlie said. “You’d been in Washington a long time before you started running with Joe Steele. You have to like it here, or at least be used to it.”

“I’m used to it, all right.” Garner screwed up his face. “That don’t got to mean I like it, though.”

“Okay. Sure.” Charlie wasn’t going to argue with him. If he said anything about protesting too much, Garner would just get mad. He finished his drink and held up a forefinger to show he wanted another.

Garner had another one, too. After so many, what was one more? After the Vice President died, if he ever did, they really needed to take out his liver and donate it to the Smithsonian. It was a national treasure, if not a national monument.

“Another term,” Garner said with a maudlin sigh. “And then another term after that, and maybe another term after that.” By the way he used the word, he might have been talking about stretches in a labor encampment, not the country’s second highest elected office.

But the difference between highest and second highest was even starker in politics than it was in sports. Charlie was pretty sure he could rattle off every World Series winner from 1903 to this past October. He was much hazier on the teams that had lost. Who wasn’t?

The difference between President and Vice President, though, wasn’t the difference between winning and losing. It was the difference between winning and not getting to play. Joe Steele could order two-thirds of the world around. John Nance Garner could order. . another bourbon. And he had.

Shakespeare chimed in Charlie’s head, as Shakespeare had a way of doing.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.

He didn’t come out with the quotation, though he expected Garner would have known it if he had. Anyone who’d been educated in small-town Texas before the turn of the century would have been steeped in Shakespeare the way a tea bag was steeped in hot water.

Before Charlie could say anything at all, Garner went on, “I never reckoned I’d be in this slot so long, you know? When I said I’d run, I thought I’d have me a term or two, and that’d be it. Joe Steele would lose, or he wouldn’t run for a third term, or whatever the hell. Shows what I knew, don’t it? The things I’ve seen since. .” He shook his big head. “The things I’ve seen my whole life, I should say. I was born three and a half years after the States War ended. Ain’t many left who can say that.”

“No, there aren’t.” Charlie grinned at him. “Most of the ones who can would call it the Civil War.”

“Damnyankees, the lot of ’em,” Garner said without heat. “Weren’t any cars or planes or phones or radios or records or teevees or movies or lightbulbs or any o’ that crap when I was a boy. We had trains an’ the telegram an’ gaslamps, an’ we reckoned we were the most modern folks on the face of the earth. An’ you know what else? We were.”

“I guess so.” Charlie had grown up with most of the things Garner had seen coming in. But he remembered what a prodigy radio seemed like, and how the switch from silents to talkies changed film forever. Now, of course, television was changing the world all over again. That had only started. He could see as much, but he had no idea how it would turn out.

“Tell you somethin’ else, though,” John Nance Garner said after a pull at his latest bourbon. “I got goin’ on eighty-two years on me now, an’ in all my time on earth, I ain’t never seen nothin’ like Joe Steele. And Sullivan?”

“What?” Charlie said.

“You can take that to the fuckin’ bank.”

* * *

Mike walked into Wakamatsu. By now the castle, which had been bombed by the USA in World War II and shelled by both sides during the Japanese War, was looking pretty much like its old self again. The Japs worked hard at putting their shattered homeland back together again. At least they did here in South Japan, where American aid helped them repair what American firepower had smashed. Things on the other side of the demilitarized zone were tougher. Trotsky cared more about what he could get out of North Japan than he did about putting anything into it.

Because of that, Mike heard gunfire along the demilitarized zone every few days. Some North Japanese voted with their feet to show what they thought of their regime. Or they tried to, anyhow. Getting past the fortified border would have been tough even without the trigger-happy guards. With them, you literally risked your life. And, singly and in small groups, those Japs did.

The other interesting thing was that not all refugees from North Japan were welcome on this side of the line. Not everyone who came over the border was fleeing Red tyranny. Some of the people who crossed were spies and agitators doing North Japan’s business in South Japan. And figuring out who was who with so many records burned or blown up or otherwise lost wasn’t easy, either.

A woman walking up the street politely bowed to Mike as he came down it. He returned the bow, saying, “Konichiwa.”

She smiled, covered her mouth with her hand, and burst into a storm of giggles. He hadn’t said or done anything funny. As he’d seen before, that was what Japanese did when you caught them by surprise. After she got over it, she returned the good-day.

“Genki desu-ka?” he asked. He didn’t mind the chance to trot out more of his bits of Japanese with her. He thought she was in her mid- to late thirties, though it was often hard to be sure with Japanese women. However old she was, she wore it well. She had on a white cotton blouse and a black skirt: better in this hot, sticky summer weather than his uniform.

In reply to his how-are-you? (actually, it meant something like Are you bouncy? — genki was a tricky word), she spoke in pretty good English: “I am fine, thank you. And how are you?”

“Just great, thanks.” Mike almost giggled himself; she’d caught him off-guard. He asked, “Where did you learn to speak so well?”

“I am to teach English here in Wakamatsu. I studied it for years before the war. I am glad you think I speak well. For a long time, I did not use it much. You understand why?”

“Hai.” Mike nodded. During the war, anything that had to do with America was suspected because America was the enemy. Even baseball, which the Japanese had enthusiastically taken to, got sidelined for the duration.

Of course, the Japs hadn’t sent tens of thousands of Americans into labor encampments, the way Joe Steele had with Japanese in the States. Then again, the Japs hadn’t had the chance to do anything like that. Had they had it, chances were they would have taken it.

The English teacher smiled at him now as if he was a human being, not just a curiosity. “How much of my language do you know?” she asked.

“Sukoshi.” He held his thumb and forefinger close together. In English, he went on, “I didn’t know any before I, uh, got here.” Before I jumped out of my landing craft and started killing people. That was what it came down to.

“You must have a good ear, then. Is that right? You say, a good ear?”

“Yes, that’s what we say. And thank you. Arigato.”

“You are welcome,” she said gravely.

“I haven’t seen you here before. Are you new in Wakamatsu?” he said. The place was big enough that she might not be, but he thought he would have noticed a nice-looking English teacher who’d lived here for a while.

She nodded, though. “Yes. I am new here. I come from Osaka. With the new law that every city must teach English to the children, I came here. Not so many in the north of the Constitutional Monarchy speak well enough to teach. There is a needage for more.”

She meant need, but he wasn’t about to turn editor. He saw the uses of the law. Hardly anyone outside Japan spoke Japanese, while English went all over the world. Learning English was also one more way to bind South Japan to the USA, of course. On the other side of the demilitarized zone, the North Japanese were probably having to come to terms with Russian.

“Do you mind if I ask what your name is?” Mike asked.

“No. I am Yanai Midori-Midori Yanai, you would say. We put family name first, personal name last. And you are. .?”

“I’m Mike Sullivan.” Mike smiled. This was as much talking as he’d done with a woman since the Jeebies jugged him. Other things, yeah, but not talk.

“I am happy to know you, Sergeant Sullivan.” She’d been around enough Americans to have no trouble reading chevrons. “Now please to excuse me. I am so sorry, but I must go.” She said that last with worry in her voice. If he didn’t feel like letting her leave, what could she do about it? Getting in trouble for abusing the natives wasn’t impossible, but it also wasn’t easy.

But all he said was, “May I ask you one more thing before you go?”

She nodded warily. “What is it?”

“Are you married?” He held up a hasty hand. “I’m not proposing. I’m just asking.”

She smiled at that-not very much, but she did. The smile didn’t last long, though. “No, I am not married. I am a widow, or I am sure I am. My husband was stationed in the Philippines. He did not come home. He was not one of those who laid down their arms in the surrenders after the Emperor died.” She cast down her eyes when she spoke of that.

Some Japanese units in the Philippines had held out till the fighting in the Home Islands ended. They were a sideshow; the Americans hadn’t pushed hard after driving them from the bigger towns. “I’m sorry,” Mike said, and then, “I was never in the Philippines.” He didn’t want her to think he could have had anything to do with her husband’s death.

“I understand,” Midori Yanai said. “I really do have to go now, so sorry. Please excuse me. Maybe we will see each other again. Good-bye.” She started away.

“Sayonara,” Mike called after her. She looked back over her shoulder to show she’d heard and wasn’t ignoring him. He stood there watching her till she disappeared around a corner. Then he kicked a pebble down the street. He felt like a sixteen-year-old kid trying to figure out how the whole business of women worked.

Well, no man would ever figure out the whole business of women, not if he lived as long as Methuselah. But godalmightydamn, wasn’t trying to unravel it the best game in the whole wide world?

* * *

Charlie walked out of Sears with a sour expression on his face. He kept not-quite-cussing under his breath. Esther set a hand on his arm. “It’s okay, honey,” she said.

“Like fun it is,” he said. “The TVs they’ve got in there have bigger screens and better pictures than the one we bought a little over a year ago-and they cost a hundred and fifty bucks less. We wuz robbed!”

“No, we weren’t. We just got one as soon as we could.” Esther was more reasonable than he was. She went on, “It worked the same way with radios and refrigerators, too, and cars when we were little kids. They all got cheaper and better in a hurry.”

“Maybe we should have waited, then.” He still felt like grumbling.

“Why? Okay, we paid more money. But we had the television, and we’ve been watching all the shows on it since we bought it. If we’d waited, yeah, we would have bought it cheaper, but so what? We could afford it, and we wouldn’t have got to see all that stuff.”

“Wait a minute,” Charlie said. “Remind me again which one of us is the Jew.”

She poked him in the ribs. For good measure, she added, “If you were a Jew, Buster, I would know it.”

Charlie’s ears heated. He wasn’t circumcised. Pat was, not only because he had a Jewish mother but also because these days they pretty much did it to a baby boy unless you told them not to. They said it was cleaner and healthier. Maybe they were right, but Charlie liked himself fine just the way he’d come out of the carton.

When they got home, Pat was watching Tim Craddock-Space Cadet. He didn’t care that the TV set cost too much or that the picture was little. He’d grow up with television, and probably take it for granted in a way Charlie never did. He would have trouble remembering a time when it wasn’t around to give him something to do.

It was giving him something to do right now. Whether he’d done everything he was supposed to do. . “Have you finished your homework?” Charlie asked him. “Tomorrow’s Monday, remember.”

“Aw, Dad!” Pat said. “After the show, okay?”

“Okay-this once,” Charlie said after a moment’s thought. “But from now on, you get it done before you start goofing off, you hear? You had all weekend to take care of it. Instead, you’ll have to rush through it at the last minute, so it won’t be as good as it oughta be.”

He felt Esther’s eyes on him when he came out with that. He had trouble saying it with a straight face. As a reporter and as a speechwriter, he’d worked to the tightest of deadlines. Getting it done by 7:45 was more important than prettying it up. Well, if Do as I say, not as I do wasn’t a parent’s oldest rule, it ran a close second to Because I said so, that’s why!

Pat’s face lit up. He didn’t care about the lecture. He cared about Tim Craddock and the Martians with antennae pasted to their foreheads. “Thanks, Dad! You’re the greatest!”

Charlie wasn’t so sure about that. He feared he was an old softy. But hearing it did make him feel pretty good.

When Charlie walked into the White House the next morning, a plump doctor was coming out. Tadeusz Pietruszka was Joe Steele’s physician. Charlie hadn’t seen him for a couple of years-in spite of moving slower than he had, both mentally and physically, Joe Steele never even came down with a sniffle. So Charlie heard the surprise and worry in his own voice when he asked, “What’s up with the boss?”

“Nothing serious.” Dr. Pietruszka touched the brim of his fedora and went on his way.

He might be a good doctor. If he took care of the President, he’d better be a good doctor. But he would have flopped as a politician. He made a lousy liar.

Instead of going to his own office, then, Charlie headed for Vince Scriabin’s. He asked the Hammer the same thing he’d asked the doctor: “What’s up with the boss?”

Scriabin sent him an Et tu, Brute? look. “It isn’t anything much,” he said. Charlie stood there and folded his arms. For once, Scriabin wasn’t going to be able to wait him out. “All right!” The Hammer sounded impatient. “He came down with a headache in the middle of the night. He took some aspirins, but it wouldn’t go away. Betty talked him into calling the doctor.”

“Good thing somebody did! What did Pietruszka have to say?”

“That he had a headache. That his blood pressure could be lower, but he’s not a young man.” Scriabin bared his teeth in what looked nothing like a smile. “None of us here is a young man any more.”

Since Charlie had a bald spot on his crown and was graying at the temples, he could hardly call the Hammer a liar. He asked, “Did he do anything besides take his blood pressure?”

“He gave him a sleeping pill. And he told him to call if he didn’t feel better when he woke up.” Scriabin bared his teeth again. This time, he didn’t even try to smile. A cat that looked like that would have been about to bite. “Not a word about this to anyone. I shouldn’t have to tell you that, but I will anyhow.”

“You know I don’t bang my gums,” Charlie said. “Did I start telling the world about uranium?”

“Let people start worrying about whether the boss is well, and that will blow you up higher and faster than a pipsqueak thing like an atomic bomb.” Scriabin turned away to show the discussion was over.

Charlie slowly walked to his own office. He should have been working on a speech about how much the community farms were producing and how everybody who worked on them was part of one big, happy family. It was drivel, of course, but a familiar kind of political drivel. He couldn’t make himself care about it. His deadline was still two days away, and he had other things on his mind.

Sometimes a cigar was only a cigar. Sometimes a headache was only a headache, too. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes it meant you were having a stroke. Charlie’s uncle had complained of a headache just before he keeled over. Two days later, he was dead.

Joe Steele wasn’t dead. He came down late that afternoon. If he looked pale and puffy, well, he could still be feeling the pill. The pill could account for the way he groped after words, too. He still had his marbles-he asked Charlie how the speech was coming.

“It’ll be ready when you need it, Mr. President,” Charlie said.

“Of course it will.” Joe Steele blinked at the idea that Charlie could suggest anything else was possible. Stroke or not, sleeping pill or not, he was pretty much his old self, in other words.

By the time he had to deliver the speech, he was his old self. He’d never been an exciting speaker. He still wasn’t. But he’d always got the job done, and he did once more. Charlie let out a sigh of relief-in his office, with the door shut. One of these days, it wouldn’t be a false alarm. This time, it had been.