The Last President

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. MANBROOKSTAT. 6:15 PM EASTERN TIME. MONDAY, MAY 11, 2026.}

Back before, Jamayu Rollings thought, when this place was Brooklyn, we were all worried about how the police come late if they come at all, or however that old song my dad used to like went, and holding marches to try to get some decent protection, and I was so glad to move out to the other end of Long Island and know the cops would come if I needed them.

Well, welcome to Manbrookstat, where the police come about a day too soon.

He looked up to see that Deanna was looking at him, not moving. Shouts from downstairs at the front door were rising up toward them. He thought, Stop reminiscing, old fart, and save your family’s ass.

“By the drill,” Rollings said. He unclipped the antenna wire from where it connected to an inconspicuous bolt in the wall that happened to go through to a west-facing wire loop on the back of an old billboard. He detached the ground wire clip from the old radiator. He dropped both connector wires onto the radio, and removed the C-clamp that held it to the coffee service table. Then he lifted out the removable section of the old heating duct, creating a two-foot across hole, into which he dropped the whole radio. He put the section back, set an account book on the table where the radio had been, and opened it to yesterday’s entries.

When he glanced sideways, Deanna had the correspondence and the one-time pads in a single heap, and was lifting the rug to expose the slot in the floor. She slid the papers into it and let the rug fall back into place; the papers were now between two plaster walls on the floor below.

The Special Assistants coming up the stairs might have heard the radio falling into the bend of the duct in the cellar, of course, though they had long ago stuffed it with old rags to muffle the impact. Perhaps if they found the slot in the floor, they might get ambitious enough to tear the wall apart. For the moment, though, the incriminating evidence was gone.

Just outside the door, a Special Assistant was telling Rollings’s clerk that they didn’t give a damn for the company rules. They must be trying to keep it a quiet arrest.

Rollings risked striking a match, reaching out the window, and lighting the fuse that ran up an old rainspout and through a length of pipe to a firepot on the roof peak. The firepot was visible from Ferengi, currently moored in the harbor, and from the family home—if the fuse burned all the way to it, if it ignited, if anyone was looking. But it was nice to have one more thing to do. He dropped the match, pushed the window closed, rested his finger on an entry about a roll of chicken wire—the knob turned.

Rollings loudly said, “I told you no interruptions ever—”

“We are not your clerk!” the Special Assistant said, entering.

He turned around. “I can see that.” Oh, spirits of Lando and Sisko be with me.

The Special Assistant lunged forward and struck him in the face; Rollings glared at the man with all the dignity he could muster. “If you are taking me to the Commandant, I am sure you were supposed to deliver me unharmed.”

“They didn’t say,” the man said. The four Special Assistants bound Rollings and Deanna, and shoved them roughly through the door. They didn’t go out of their way to push or trip them down the stairs but they didn’t seem to be worrying that that might happen, either.

Four guys, Jamayu thought. Well, crap, I hope you’re smart enough not to try anything, Geordie. Wish I hadn’t sent the distress signal at all. His older son was impulsive and brave to exactly the kind of fault Rollings was afraid he might be about to exhibit.

As they turned onto a broader street, Rollings saw that it was worse than he had thought; dozens of prominent citizens and their families were being marched through the town, and the Commandant’s supporters and hangers-on had brought the city crowd out onto the sidewalks to jeer and point. I thought the secret police had come for us, but this is feeling more like we’re going to the guillotine. Well, probably they won’t be looking for the radio or the code pads, then; this looks like a roundup of people that don’t like the Commandant, not like me getting caught spying.

Deanna pressed against him, and at first he thought she was huddling in fear, but though her wrists were tied behind her, she managed to elbow-bump him in Morse:

He bumped back:

As they walked and more prominent citizens joined the group, the Special Assistants prodded the prisoners much closer together, and it was easier for Rollings and his daughter to signal each other. The Special Assistants and their militia backup seemed to be herding them together mostly to open up a separating space between them and the yelling, cheering crowd on the sidewalk.

Other prisoners were shouted at and sometimes struck if they tried to speak, so Rollings and Deanna kept communication discreet, brief, and necessary.

After a while, glancing back, he noticed that the crowds from the sidewalk were following them, and bump-signaled Deanna. She replied,

but then neither of them had any more to say.

The Special Assistants marched their prisoners over the Brooklyn Bridge; in places where the pavement was crumbling there were sometimes frightening holes through which they could see water far below, but no one seemed to be trying to push them in. From there, they walked south toward the area near the former Battery Park where the Commandant had established his headquarters.

In all, it was only about two miles, but many of the prisoners were elderly and people don’t walk fast with their hands tied behind their backs. It was almost dark as they were herded, with the rest of Manbrookstat’s elite, into an open-air pen in front of the gas-lit rostrum. All around them, the city mob was restless, happy one moment and angry the next, apparently unsure whether they had been summoned to a purge or a festival.

Finally the Commandant stepped into the pool of warm gaslight on the rostrum. “My friends,” he said, “my dear friends, let me first make an announcement that will sadden some of you. Just a few days ago, the Army of the Wabash was defeated at Tippecanoe, in what used to be the state of Indiana, and beaten so badly that they were unable to come to the defense of Pale Bluff, that charming little town some of you may have read about in foreign newspapers. On Sunday, Pale Bluff itself was lost, and my agents tell me the fires are still burning there. The former United States no longer has a viable transcontinental connection, and Lord Robert’s Domain has become a secure nation with defensible frontiers.” There were so many lies in that single sentence that Rollings felt as if he might explode; dozens of routes remained open and the Domain was no bigger than it had been. But, he realized, most of these guys don’t know that.

“I have therefore come to a painful decision, one I had been forming for some time. The United States of America is not united anymore, many of its states have ceased to exist and are being replaced by other states and nations, and all that is left is an American continent in which we must carve out our own destiny. I am therefore proclaiming that the Commandancy of Manbrookstat is now and will remain a sovereign nation, with its northern boundary at the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, its southern boundary at the James, Greenbrier, New, Kanawha, and Ohio Rivers, details to be worked out with the Christian States of America which is now forming.

“Our western border will be fixed in negotiations with the Domain, which we have the honor to be the first nation to recognize and to accept in trade negotiations.

“The Commandancy of Manbrookstat intends to join the Atlantic League as a founding member; at this moment it appears that other founders will be the Galway Republic, the Grand Duchy of Halifax, the Kingdom of the Azores, Trinidad/Tobago, Dominica, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and a number of states now being organized around port cities in the former Brazil, Iceland, Norway, Morocco, Portugal, and Ireland.

“Finally, I realize that many of you had hoped there would someday be a United States again. I myself, as a cadet, took an oath to uphold and defend it. But however bereaved we may be, however deep our grief, however much we wish it were not so, the fact is that there is no United States anymore, and the dreams of reviving it are idle fantasies, and can only be dangerous delusional dreams in years to come.

“Now, I have every faith that the common people understand this. The common people, after all, are born practical, and besides, they are well aware that the old arrangements were not really in their favor; many of them can look forward to prospering much more in our newer, fairer world than they ever did under the old United States regime. And since the common people understand it, and gain by it, it is only a victory for democracy that we listen to them and pursue the independent and free Commandancy of Manbrookstat according to their wishes.”

Rollings tried to keep his face impassive as the mob surrounding their pen cheered and whooped. Apparently some of the people nearer the barriers were less good at hiding their feelings, for the crowd was jeering and throwing things at some of them, and the militia slowly, reluctantly, halfheartedly was trying to make them stop.

When the uproar had quieted, the Commandant went on. “Now, my friends and fellow citizens, you also see before you the business, educational, and political leadership of our Commandancy. These are of course people who did very well, back before.

“And then they continued to do well as the world moved, at first, toward re-establishing the old regime, and putting the United States of America back together.

“But as we have noted, there is no possibility now of a Restored Republic. Any hope for a Restored Republic, now, would be an aggressive plot to preserve wealth and privilege, or to gain more of it unfairly.

“So we can very fairly look at these citizens and ask, ‘Can we trust them? Will they work toward the new, democratic Commandancy, and for the common good?’ And, to be blunt, I am sure some of them won’t, but fellow citizens and good friends, let me point out to you that I have worked with many of these people, and know them, and like them, and that I am equally sure that most of them will make a full commitment to the success of the new Commandancy, and it would be the very height of injustice to treat them with suspicion or to vent anger from any bygone unfairness on these hardworking, upstanding people who have made our city a much better place to live.

“Therefore, we’re going to do the following, and I really do think it is all we will ever need to do. We’re going to ask each family, or as many of its members as were in the city this evening, to come forward, onto the rostrum here, and swear an oath of allegiance to Manbrookstat, to the Commandancy, to the citizens of the Commandancy, and of course to me personally as well since I am serving you as your Commandant. Then once they have given their oaths, our militia or our Special Assistants will escort them peaceably back to their homes, and they will peaceably go about their normal business tomorrow, under the fair and democratic laws of the Commandancy, just as they did under the laws of the old United States. We have a number of them to get through tonight, so I’ll ask you to hold your applause till the end.”

The first family pulled out of the crowded pen and pushed into the light, not roughly but firmly, were the Theards; Rollings knew them slightly, as the owners and operators of a large fish market. Henri Theard seemed very relieved to see his wife, three daughters, and elderly mother, and they all repeated their new oath of allegiance with calm acceptance.

After a smattering of clapping, the Commandant reminded everyone to hold applause till the end. The Theards were escorted from the stage and out into the night.

That set the pattern until the Commandant called up the Steigers. Joseph Steiger had several adult grandchildren and ran the city’s compost industry, which was rapidly turning large parts of Staten Island into truck gardens. In the business community, he was an outspoken public critic of the Commandant, and fifty-star flags flew from every building in his operation. It was clear that the family was being pushed more than helped onto the platform, and that it wasn’t easy to find places for all of them to stand.

“And now the Steiger family will take the oath. Please repeat after—”

Old Joe Steiger bellowed, “Like hell we will. This bullshit is treason, blatant treason, and—”

Doubtless, the Commandant had planned it.

The Special Assistant behind Joseph Steiger whipped out a heavy, short piece of pipe and brought it down on Steiger’s head in one savage motion. Steiger fell to his knees, moaning, and the Special Assistant struck again, knocking him to his face, kicked him in the ribs, and brought the pipe down on his head so hard that the thud was audible where Rollings stood.

The crowd was silent for a moment, and then someone laughed, and then many of them did. Maybe that first guy that laughed was a plant, Rollings thought. But everyone that laughed after him, they weren’t all plants. The mob’s with the Commandant.

The Commandant said, “Now we will continue with the oath. Mrs. Sharon Steiger, if you will lead—”

Joe Steiger’s wife (or was she already his widow?) screamed a few words of denunciation before the same Special Assistant, with the same pipe, knocked her down. The way she twitched on the little stage looked more like a spasm than a struggle. The mob was still laughing, but with a nervous, hysteric edge.

The Commandant sighed with just a hint of impatience. “Since the oldest members of the family won’t lead, let’s try a younger one. Tory Steiger, please step forward.”

The girl was tiny, maybe ten years old and small for her age, and trembling. The Special Assistant stood behind her, not even concealing the length of pipe, and the Commandant said, very gently, “Sweetie, you just need to say the words.”

Tory’s mother said, “Do what the Commandant says, honey, it will be all right.”

“Yes, exactly,” the Commandant said. “And the rest of your family will speak along with you.”

They did, mumbling, and it was conspicuous that when the Steiger family left the stage (except for the oldest generation, who were carried down the steps and dumped into a cart), there were numerous armed men around them, and they went into the dark in a different direction.

It was easier than he thought it would be; he said it loudly, clearly, and firmly, just as, when drug addicts had robbed his dental practice, he had always spoken politely and clearly so that they would have no cause to harm him. It was over in no time and he didn’t even feel like he had to shower or brush his teeth afterward. I suppose if you truly understand that an oath given under duress is meaningless, then it just doesn’t matter much. Thanks for Ethics 202, Professor Blaine.

Their two militia guards (it looked like the Commandant was using militia for the more cooperative, less suspect people) had walked them back over the Brooklyn Bridge, and they were a few blocks from the house, when a voice said, “Is that the Rollings family?”

“Yeah.”

The man who stepped out of the shadow and into the lantern light wore a long coat and a black scarf around his face, and held up a Special Assistant’s badge. “The Commandant wants this asshole’s sloop searched tonight, and we want him and his family there while we do it, so they can help—and so we can remind them they want to help. Sounds like there’s a lot of stuff on there that has never been recorded for tax purposes, a lot of small valuable pocket stuff.”

The militia men, probably thinking there would be a chance to fill their pockets, were immediately, happily willing to comply. So was Rollings, but he made sure it didn’t show. Deanna bumped against him.

He bumped back

and contrived to rub against Matilda, who bumped

Rollings was nervous and scared that his son’s deception might be exposed, but soon he reflected that had Geordie been a completely different person, he might have been good at Special Assisting. Within two blocks, by dint of overbearing nitpicking, Geordie had the militiamen discouraged and trudging along aimlessly as they made their way to the Brooklyn wharfs. As he pretended to rough up his family, he cut his father’s bonds and slipped a knife into his hands; after another block he quietly said, “Now,” and they heard a startled, soft cry of pain behind them. Rollings sprang forward and slid the knife into their front guard’s throat, two quick stabs that silenced him and left him dying on the sidewalk. Two years ago I’d’ve puked; but between pirates, muggers, wreckers, and that guy I think was probably an assassin, it’s kind of a technical business, like taking out a badly fractured wisdom tooth.

When Rollings looked back, the one that Geordie had knifed was lying still. “All right,” Geordie said. “Let me douse that lantern out, Pops, and you all stick close to me. Should be enough moonlight to make it to Ferengi without needing to show a light.”

As they climbed the gangplank, Rollings muttered, “I would’ve thought they’d have had a guard on this ship.”

“They did, Pops. Where’d’ya think I got the outfit and the badge?”

Ferengi had been deliberately kept fully stocked for a long voyage, and the Commandant’s men hadn’t disturbed anything. The land breeze and the tide were in their favor, and Geordie knew the harbor well; when the moon rose, just before midnight, they were well clear.

“Man, one thing I won’t miss, it’s that broken Statue of Liberty,” Matilda said. “Broke my heart every time I came over to Manhattan. Did you hear that Commandant’s got convicts out there in chains every day, cutting up the fallen-off arm-and-torch, so he can sell it for scrap? Besides being crass, and a fascist dictator, he has no sense of irony.” She drew a deep breath. “Love the smell of the air, and I don’t mean just the salt water. What time is it?”

Rollings said, “Moonrise was going to be just before midnight, and there’s not even a glow on the horizon yet. So it’s not late. I don’t think we should chance a light till we’re further out to sea and we’re running before a good stiff breeze.”

“Well, we’re all safe for the moment. Sorry we lost the business, Jamayu, but that’s the world nowadays.”

Rollings laughed. “Heck, ’Tildie, if I start worrying about the past I’ll soon be sorry that I’ll probably never do another root canal. We got the fam, we got Ferengi, we got skills and our health.”

“Yeah, that’s a cargo of blessings, isn’t it? Well, then, has anybody thought about where we’re going, yet?”

“There’s nothing north, Europe’s too far away and a bigger mess than here, that leaves south,” Rollings said. “We could probably live okay in the Christian States, but we’ve got the range to go farther. If we can trust Whorf’s last letter, St. Croix sounds like a decent place to do a little trading, shipping, and salvaging. What do you all think?”

“I think whether we’re going to Savannah, St. Croix, or Rio, we sail exactly the same for the next week,” Geordie said, “and come dawn, I’m going to want someone to relieve me at the helm, which means somebody ought to get some sleep, right now, and we have a week to talk all this out.”

“Nothing to argue with there,” Rollings said.

“I’ll stay up for this watch with you,” Uhura said. “We can figure out rotation later. Pops, Mom, you’ve had a day and I think you ought to go sleep.”

In the skipper’s cabin, as they settled into their familiar, beloved bunk, Rollings asked his wife, “How come we’ve got such great kids?”

“Proper culling,” she said. “You just never heard the splashes when I’d toss the dumb, mean, ugly ones over the side.”

It was an old joke, shared as comfortably as the bunk itself, and with half a thought more about how lucky he was, he fell asleep.

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. RUINS OF PALE BLUFF. ABOUT 9:30 PM CENTRAL TIME. MONDAY, MAY 11, 2026.}

“Now, heave, heave, heave!” Nathanson shouted, and the old phone pole moved forward and under the trip bar. “Trip her!”

The other crew hauled on their lines, dragging the trip bar down and pushing the tall pole’s tip down into the hole.

“And heave!”

The pole seated in its hole, slid a little in and down, and rose as the main line hauled it upward. With a thump, it slid into place, and while the guy lines still held it, the crew dumped rocks and dirt around the base; in a minute or so, it was secure enough to stand for years.

Nathanson turned and waved to the men standing by the big bonfire, who hurled in shovels and buckets full of ripped-up books from the town library and school. The fire roared up in a great burst of blazing pages, wiping the stars from the sky and sending orange light dancing up the pole to where General Phat’s body was attached by many wrappings of old electric wire.

The drums boomed out a quick, infectious rhythm, and the crowd cheered and sang. Others ran forward to help throw all the paper into the bonfire, making it blaze higher and prettier still, and a huge circle of dancers wove around the immense fire until it burned down, and at the urging of the leaders, they sat down to listen to Lord Robert.

He stood on the high platform with the fire lighting him from the side, and began, “As you all know, True Daybreak and traditional Daybreak have joined forces, and we have made the country from the Wabash and the Ohio to the Lakes all ours. The enemy army is now only trying to find their way out, trying to run away while they still can. They are shattered. I proclaim that this is now the Domain of Lord Robert!”

When another long burst of drumming and dancing had subsided, and he was growing impatient, Robert continued, “Now, there was a condition attached to this. Traditional Daybreak has said to us, via Glad Ocean here”—he actually embraced the old bony bitch, and smelled her unwashed body as he did, to make his point, and she beamed up at him—“that it would send tens of thousands of fighters, and it has. It pledged to make this victory possible, and it has. And now… traditional Daybreak says, their price for their help has been, now throw it all away. Let us not have what we have fought for.”

The crowd moaned, some with the onset of Daybreak seizures, some old-school Daybreakers booing him, and many of his own True Daybreak people excited and getting ready.

His arm slipped from an embrace of the woman to a forearm wrapped around her throat, and he began to squeeze. “Glad Ocean here, Glad Ocean is the teacher of the Daybreak that does not work, the spoiled and ruined Daybreak that will rob you all—” Robert was squeezing her neck and she was beginning to struggle desperately. “And I say, that is a bargain we don’t need to keep. We needed this victory, and so did Daybreak, and now we are done with each other!”

The crowd was milling; fights were breaking out, some people were trying to flee, others suffering seizures.

“The old Daybreak of your old tribes demanded that if you came here to fight by our sides, I would then lead you on a huge fucking raid from here all the way across the plains, to break and shatter plaztatic civilization wherever we find it—and then die!

“You all know that Daybreak tells you to kill as many people as you can and then die yourself! They want us to clean out the plaztatic assholes, scrape them off the world, and then lie down and die on top of them and free the planet. Never have kids, never raise a family, live out your life as a slave or a soldier, die for Daybreak! Die for Mother Earth because… because it’s a lie!”

He nodded at Bernstein and Nathanson. Bernstein went to grab Glad Ocean’s master, super-duper extra powerful spirit stick from the slave carrying it; when the slave resisted, Nathanson felled him with a hatchet chop to the face. Bernstein wrenched the spirit stick away and hurled it high into the air like a javelin, so that it came down in the very center of the bonfire. “Daybreak is broken!” he shouted. “Long live True Daybreak!”

Robert was screaming his message over the uproar, not worrying because his own side knew it and was shouting something similar as they fought back and forth with their tribal allies. “True Daybreak says—live in the beautiful world you have made! True Daybreak says—fish in those streams when they run clean again! True Daybreak says—sit by a warm fire and enjoy your freedom! No slaves! Keep your babies and raise them! Clean Earth and real freedom!”

Glad Ocean had been a small woman before, and though she’d probably toned her muscles in the last year, much of it had been a year of slow starvation and struggle to stay warm and not die of flu or a cold. He had worked his forearm down into the crease of her neck, with his wrist biting into her carotid, and now he lifted her up onto her tiptoes and shook her like an old towel, letting her have just enough air not to pass out yet.

“That is what True Daybreak says. I say, I want True Daybreak! True Daybreak and I want peace! No more war! No more deaths! No slaves, everyone equal! Families to raise and corn to grow, living the good life on the good clean planet, because we fought for it and it is ours and we deserve it! I want you to join True Daybreak, join me, join us tomorrow when we return to Castle Earthstone. All you tribes who have fought and bled beside us: come and live with us too. The Domain is big and wide and open, it’s the best hunting ground, the best place to raise corn and make whiskey, the best place to make babies and raise kids, to fight and fuck and love and dance and live the life a natural man was meant to live—”

There had been a swelling noise in the huge crowd; Robert had been waiting for it. For weeks, ever since the tribal forces had come together at Castle Earthstone, his True Daybreak believers had been moving among the tribes, befriending where they could, not so much arguing as just presenting the idea over and over, pointing to the beauty of the Earth and asking, “Now that it is ours, why do you want to leave it so soon?”

His followers had been trained in the techniques for caring for people after a seizure, and for helping the victim to break free of Daybreak after a seizure. Slowly, a seizure at a time, the Castle Earthstone people had been pushing their newfound tribal friends through the process. Bernstein had guessed that they had about sixty percent of the tribal allies ready to convert; Robert figured that Bernstein had never quite recovered from being an accountant back before, and he figured that sixty percent was a SWAG for “more than half,” but good enough.

“Stand up and declare for True Daybreak!” he shouted. “Come with us! You can marry, have children, a family! You can grow the good food and work in the good Earth! You don’t have to die a dirty death out on the plains just because a few fucked up people made a mess of the Earth back before! The plaztatic world is dead, blessings be to Daybreak, and long live the Domain!”

Thousands of his True Daybreak people from Castle Earthstone, and tens of thousands of recent converts, leapt to their feet and shouted that real Daybreak was at hand. The remaining traditional Daybreakers shrieked, assaulted people near them, reached for weapons, but the preparations had been thorough; most of the True Daybreakers had brought a knife, a club, or a garotte, and most of the old tribals were unarmed, as they usually were for celebrations and ceremonies. Besides, another large part of the traditional Daybreak followers had been partly converted or were conflicted, and many thousands who might have fought for Daybreak instead fell into seizures. At Robert’s orders, his forces left the seizure cases alone for the moment; many would emerge ready to convert, and at the moment they were no more than a minor hazard underfoot.

In less than an hour, an army of 30,000 mixed tribals and Castle Earthstone True Daybreakers had become an army of 24,000 Castle Earthstone True Daybreakers. The bodies from the fighting lay in the streets, but since what was left of the town would burn tomorrow, they could just lie there, with the soldiers and the townspeople, something else to remind plaztatic America never to insult free people and despoil free Gaia again.

When the crowd had re-gathered at the fire, Robert had been amusing himself by tormenting Glad Ocean with his knife, and when he told her she was a sacrifice and ordered her to walk into the fire, to all appearances she did it willingly. A shout of joy went up as she fell forward into the coals.

“More fuel, do you think?” Bernstein asked, as it burned lower around the charred corpse.

“Naw. Let’s hope they get some sleep before they start walking back. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day, and then we’ve got a good month of walking to do, without the river doing most of the work this time. Meanwhile, though, life’s pretty sweet.”

He rose and stretched. “I think they were going to fix a special supper for us, and have some nice clean girls waiting, back at our main tent. Speaking of rewards we’ve earned, let’s go get ours.”

^{3 HOURS LATER. A MOWER SHED, IN THE ORCHARDS OUTSIDE THE FORMER PALE BLUFF. 12:30 AM CENTRAL TIME. TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2026.}

Pauline Kloster slipped into the corrugated iron shed without making a sound; only the brief dark moments as her body blocked the moonlight through the crevices revealed she was there. Then Carol May Kloster felt the warmth of her niece’s shoulder next to her own, and a soft exhalation into her ear. “Aunt Carol May, they’re gonna party all night, sleep it off, and then start walking home. They’re going back to Castle Earthstone and taking all these tribals with them. How are the little guys doing?”

“So far nobody that wakes up yelling, thank the lord. How’s it look like the party is going?”

“Right now? Just getting started. They’ve still got some prisoners they’re gonna do stuff to. I kinda hurried to get back so I wouldn’t have to see none-a-that. Aunt Carol May, I want to help them but I don’t see how I can.”

Carol May put her arms around Pauline and whispered, “No, you can’t, honey. Most of us would love to be more help, but sometimes we just can’t. We’ve got five little kids to try to sneak out with, and they’re gonna wake up scared and hungry and mad at us, ’specially when we have to say they can’t see Mama right now, and we can’t go find their teddy. It was just dumb luck we found them at the airport; probably Quattro was supposed to fly them but no one told him.”

“I was so upset when I saw him already taking off, I mean he didn’t know we were coming but we tried so hard to get there and missed him by just that much. Then… right when I thought how can we be so close and still miss it… that was terrible, wasn’t it?”

Carol May hugged her niece closer. “Yes, it was, try not to think about it, relax.”

“It looked like the whole inside just filled up, all at once, with white-hot fire. Why’d his plane blow up?”

“EMP, I’m pretty sure. Poor guy, I really liked him, and his wife is such a sweetheart, and they were only married less than a year ago. At least he couldn’t have suffered much.”

They sat in the dark and listened to the whooping, the shrieking, the occasional cries of pain and hoots of laughter, and the never-stopping drums. No one seemed to be coming back into the orchards, probably because there was no loot here, most of the trees were already burned, and nobody felt any need for privacy while copulating.

The noise went on while Carol May observed the moon moving a handsbreadth-at-arm’s-length across the sky, crossing one crack and then another; she watched that one more time, then spoke as softly as she could. “Pauline, honey, you still awake?”

“Yeah. Can’t sleep. I keep hoping they’ve killed the people they were playing with, but then I hear another scream.”

Carol May shuddered. “How’s the leg?”

“Not bad. Tired, and it gets sore when it’s tired, but it’s got some miles in it. Were you thinking of going now?”

“It’s going to take these tribals most of the night to fall down and go to sleep, I’m afraid, and then all day tomorrow before they’re even halfway started walking back to Castle Earthstone. So if we wait till tomorrow, and let it get light, we’ll have to stay under cover for most of the day and keep our little friends quiet. It was bad enough doing that all day today, and we had the help of all the noise from town, and the fires in the burning orchards, to help hide us. Tomorrow anyone who’s half curious or hears a funny sound is going to be able to walk right up to the shed and in through the door, and we won’t be able to fool them into thinking the place is already torched by burning a little junk right by the door.”

“Makes sense. Packs are still loaded, right?”

“Yep. I grabbed a pilot emergency radio kit at the airport, and that’s in my pack—”

“One of those radio in a jar things?”

“Yeah.”

“Man, Aunt Carol May, all I thought to bring was that applesauce and apple butter we’ve been eating,” Pauline said. “I didn’t even think where there might be anything useful.”

“Pauline, sweetheart, you can’t get more useful than food. Especially the kind where kids’ll eat it, and you got enough to get us a couple days down the road. And I’m glad it’s all applesauce and apple butter, because, honey, you know it’s the last thing that’s going to taste like home, ever. Aw, don’t cry on me, Pauline, please don’t cry or I’ll start. Come on, we need to wake these kids up quietly and be on our way.”

^{4 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO. 8:30 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2026.}

“Who’s the most excellent boy in the whole stinking world?” Heather asked Leo, who was making noises that indicated he knew. She hugged him close and thought, And I do mean stinking. Well, at least Dad’ll get to know his grandson, and there are worse places to live than San Diego, and… man, we are so beaten.

The knock at the door was soft. “Ms. O’Grainne? Got an emergency message from Incoming Crypto.”

She opened the door to find Ntale standing there. “Patrick sent me ’cause it was further to Mister Hendrix’s house. And Melissa at Crypto told us both to run, run, run, she said it just like that, three times, she said you’d want this news right away.”

Heather handed Ntale a pile of meal coupons and said, “Hang around till I read it, just in case I need to send a message with you.”

She set Leo down with a final little tap of her finger on his nose, which made his eyes cross in a way that always made her laugh. She grinned at the silly boy, then got the letter opener from her desk, slipped it under the envelope flap, and drew a deep breath against the coming bad news. The horde was already on its way down the Ohio, perhaps an advance party had already attacked Paducah? The Army of the Wabash ambushed and cut off again? Another declaration of independence somewhere? The tribes that had been moving around in the Tennessee Valley and the Ouachitas had broken out again?

Whatever it is, we’ll get through it, she thought. Strange that I’m still the President, this morning, so I guess getting through whatever it is, is my job.

Then she opened it, and saw that it was from Carol May, who was alive and transmitting from a barn fifteen miles northwest of Pale Bluff, and expected to make it into Wayne City late today. She teared up; Carol May, alive!

She had to wipe her eyes before she read the even better news. When she did, she handed Ntale a fistful of meal tickets, and said, “If James hasn’t started cooking breakfast, make him start. If he needs groceries, get his order and take it to the commissary, put it on the RRC tab. And then you and Patrick go get Leslie, and the Duchess from wherever she’s staying, and Jason and Beth, and Izzy Underhill, okay? We need to meet, which means you and Patrick get us all into James’s house, quick as you can.”

Ntale grinned. “Let me show you how quick that is. I’ve been getting my growth this year and Patrick’s not the only fast one in the family anymore.”

^{2 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO. 10:30 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2026.}

“Well, the attendants are saying he only started to move about an hour ago. He’s had time to pee and they gave him a little breakfast, and they’re saying he’s kind of drifting around, which is pretty usual the morning after a severe seizure.” James looked up and down the conference table. “So we’re agreed on the basic strategy, right? Shock him with the news and see what happens. Maybe we can get him loose enough from Daybreak to clue us in to something else. Now, any other thoughts?”

There were none. When they filed into the little room, Arnie barely looked up from where he sat on the bed, leaning forward, arms folded as if he were a small boy with a stomachache.

James said, “The horde led by Lord Robert of Castle Earthstone has converted, en masse, to the version of Daybreak that he calls True Daybreak, which preaches that the clean, natural Earth is here for human beings to enjoy, and instead of driving forward in a great raid against the plaztatic world, they are going home to plant crops, raise children, and repopulate the Earth.”

“Liar.”

“All true. Every word of it. Daybreak is betrayed. The Lost Quarter is in the hand of heretics, or whatever your stupid bush-hippie movement calls them.”

Arnie shuddered and wiped his eyes. “I can’t feel Daybreak,” he said. “It’s not reacting. It’s just me, left here, now that it’s done with me.”

“Then why won’t you believe me?”

“I don’t know.” He wiped his eyes again.

“Do you remember what we talked about yesterday? Do you remember telling me how Daybreak tricked us into playing its game, and losing the war?”

“Like it was a hundred years ago.” He rocked back and forth. “Daybreak… it’s in trouble. Or not, maybe it’s just finished what it came for. This True Daybreak, is, is, is, not yet, no, no seizure this time. True Daybreak or not, it doesn’t matter. This plaztatic world will rise no higher, this world will not… your species, this species, my species, doesn’t matter, the world will be wild and safe, no danger to anyone.” He looked up at them with a vacant stare. “James? What have I been talking about?”

“Nice fake, Arnie.”

“I can’t remember what we’re talking about.”

“Do you remember that True Daybreak is taking over the Lost Quarter, and Lord Robert has betrayed you?”

“No, I… maybe, you just told me, didn’t you?”

“Can you feel Daybreak inside you? It almost gave you a seizure. You said you couldn’t feel it.”

“It lies a lot. I lie a lot. I’m sorry. Can I sleep now?”

Back in the Facility 1 conference room, James said, “Well. I think that Daybreak definitely wants us to believe that Lord Robert’s heresy is not something Daybreak approves of and it’s not the next move in Daybreak’s development. We’re being set up to believe that it’s his own particular invention, and what he has re-invented is barbarian tyranny. That’s pretty awful if you consider all his subjects were ordinary Americans or Canadians, regular people with regular jobs, two years ago. But if you consider that he’s just a plain old barbarian conqueror, not too different from Attila or Chaka Zulu or one of the Khans, and civilization has five thousand years of practice in how to deal with those, well, yeah. We couldn’t live with the tribes, but we can live with the Domain. They’ll come to us to trade, maybe not this week or this year, but soon, and they’ll want all those nice toys and a warm house in the winter and out of season food, and in a hundred years they’ll be absorbed. That’s the story it’s telling us.”

“But you don’t believe it’s true?” Bambi asked.

“Not really. It looks like classic Daybreak, the lies are just wrappers for more lies.”

Jason nodded. “That’s the way I see it too, James. Yeah, I buy that civilization can absorb some of Daybreak, but that doesn’t mean the end of Daybreak; it means Daybreak is going to be all through civilization. Everywhere, all the time, as the new world grows up, Daybreak will be there whispering that machines are wicked, knowledge is poison, and people were meant to be big hairless monkeys huddling in the bushes and dying before they’re forty. That was around before, but look at Castle Earthstone. Me and the other scouts didn’t see a city that’s going to grow and advance and change. It was a hunting cabin, a place for guys to play out their big man in the woods fantasies. If it turns into a real castle, it’s still going to be a backward, primitive, progress-and-people-hating kind of place. Kids that grow up there are gonna grow up with the idea that dirty, smelly, overworked, and sick is virtuous, and that enjoying life and comfort and having the tools and leisure to explore a long way is degenerate and wicked. Lord Robert hasn’t defeated it; he’s just driven it underground, and it’ll trickle up all around his Domain, and keep it stuck in the mud forever.”

“But he’s not burning down the civilized world,” James pointed out.

“True.”

Beth said, “I have the strangest idea.”

Heather smiled, trying to look as encouraging as she could, because Beth was often nervous around people who had a lot of schooling, big vocabularies, or impressive titles. “Well, share.”

The young woman looked down nervously. “So if Daybreak is trouble for, like, regular civilized people, and Lord Robert is trying to set up a regular civilized Domain, but it’s all made up of ex-Daybreakers or heretic Daybreakers or whatever they are… what if we gave him a shot of the original Daybreak to cope with? Something to keep him more backward, and focused on his own troubles?”

James clapped his hands. “I get it. Fighting Daybreak with Daybreak. And it gives us something to do with poor old Arnie. I’d been afraid that someday we’d have to decide he was too dangerous to keep, or all used up, and kill him. And since the research here is over… yeah, why not? Either we release him or we murder him, and the world has had enough murders.”

^{THE NEXT DAY. IN THE ADRIATIC SEA, ON BOARD DISCOVERY. 9:00 AM CENTRAL EUROPEAN TIME. WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2026.}

Captain Halleck thanked the watch that would still have been in their bunks, and said, “This is simplicity itself. I think we’ve all been staying up with the radio reports from home, and we know that things are in a very bad way indeed back there. Well, not surprisingly, the government in Athens, which created this mission and owns this ship, has sent us orders that we are to abandon our research and return to Savannah, there to be outfitted as a warship. They do not want us to bring back or report on our research; the ship’s company will be disbanded and members returned to their homes ‘as expeditiously as possible.’ I suspect but cannot prove that this precipitate decision is in reaction to some of our biologists having done some field studies, back in Florida, in which the word ‘evolution’ found its way into the titles.

“Now, there are two possible ways we can react to this. We can dutifully sail back to Savannah, protesting over the radio the whole way if we like, and when we get there, they’ll toss our research notes and samples into the bay and convert us to a warship. Or we can go somewhere else and place ourselves under their protection, and avoid going to ports in—now this is truly weird—the CSA. For one awful moment I thought someone had revived the Confederacy, but actually that’s the Christian States of America.

“Coincidentally, I happened to be talking by radio to Captain Highbotham in Christiansted, a place some of you may remember.”

Laughter and applause swept the deck.

“I thought we might take a vote.”

The vote was overwhelmingly for Christiansted. Only two very duty-conscious sailors, and two scholars who thought it would be more convenient to get off the ship in Savannah, voted the other way.

As Whorf returned to his station, Halleck stopped him and said, “I thought you might like to know that I have a relay, via James Hendrix at Pueblo and Captain Highbotham, addressed to you.” He handed him a sheet of paper, and said, “I assume this is some code I’m not familiar with.”

Whorf looked and grinned. “It’s my family code, sir, we all use it in the family business—which has just relocated to Christiansted. This is great!”

“You’re telling me,” Ihor said; he had been standing there quietly listening. “Now there’s someone I can bother for a job.”

^{9 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO. 9:00 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2026.}

“We’ve put enough food in your pack so that if you’re careful, you should be able to walk all the way to the Wabash from Wayne City, where the train will drop you off. If you cross any bridge along it, a patrol will challenge you. And then you cooperate, and they take you to Castle Earthstone, and you can decide what to do from there.”

Arnie Yang nodded. “Thank you. And if I ever come back out of the Lost Quarter, wanting to talk, what will you do?”

“Talk to you. Mostly about the Lost Quarter and what’s going on there,” Heather said. “We’re not exiling you for your ideas, Arnie—especially since they are not really your ideas and you don’t hold them voluntarily. It’s just that, while you’re infected with them, it’s better to have you keeping company with the other infected people, than out here.”

Arnie looked for a moment as if he might speak, then shrugged and hugged all of them before he boarded the train.

The next stop was Outgoing Crypto, where Heather told them, “All right, special request. Broadcast in clear.”

“You mean not coded, so anyone can read it?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. I know it’s not really crypto if it’s not enciphered, but you folks have the biggest and best radio in this part of the country, and I need to make sure everyone reads this.” It was a short note explaining her claim to be President of the United States, resigning the office without a successor, and therefore declaring the end of the United States.

“Really,” she said, as they rode in the carriage to the airfield, “it’s almost more of a relief. Now that I’m not the President, I’m not a target, or not much of one, anyway. And it will be nice, if Bambi really does make me a baroness—”

“I’m thinking at least a countess.”

“Well, whatever. I guess I should be happy it’s not waitress or stewardess. Anyway, running a feudal fief seems like a much more reasonable job in the new world. And it’ll be a decent place for Leo to grow up, if I have any say about it, and we can bring my father out to live with us, free babysitting with bonding on the side. Certainly better than the old job here.” She sighed. “Even though I’ll miss everyone.”

A few minutes later, James and Leslie watched the Stearman, carrying Heather and Leo in the front cockpit with Bambi behind, bound off the runway and head west.

“This place was home for both of us, back before,” James observed. “And there’s still some library work to do, getting those pamphlets and brochures out to people who need them but don’t have them already. So we’ll eat, eh?”

“If you cook, we’ll eat well.” She slipped her arm into his. “It’s funny, just when I start to see how big you grew in that job, you go and lose it. And I guess after you fail at restoring America, there’s not very many jobs that could ever have the same appeal.”

James sighed. “Just when I get a job that impresses you, I find I’m more into the job than into impressing you.”

“That’s perfectly okay. Can we take this very slowly? Long walks, complicated conversations, that kind of thing? There’s just so much we don’t know yet.”

“Actually we don’t even know what country we’re going to be in yet. Slow is fine.”