The Last President

^{4 DAYS LATER. NEAR THE FORMER MARKLAND, INDIANA. 5:30 PM EASTERN TIME. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2026.}

Jeff’s voice was flat and expressionless, but his hand held Jenny’s arm as if he were afraid she would run. “It smells like that because they were planning to die before summer, so they didn’t see much point in camp sanitation. Besides, all that uncovered crap and piles of corpses will keep pathogen counts high in the Ohio and the lower Mississippi for another year, poisoning more of us wicked Gaia-rapers. We can’t stay a month to cover and burn it all, so we’re just piling the corpses and building an earthen dike around them for now.”

The heap of bodies in front of them was a congeries of gray faces with livid lips and white staring eyes, reaching hands like driftwood branches, swaths of wadded hair, rag-wrapped feet black with mud and blood; the pile came about up to his chest. From the other side, lines of men were passing corpses in a grim bucket-brigade, flinging them along hand to hand onto a taller mound in the center. “Most of them probably didn’t join Daybreak till they’d been enslaved, and we just killed them all for having a contagious mental illness.”

“Are you going to do anything—”

“We put down a layer of brush and scrapwood, and some coal from rail cars, under that pile. When the dike is finished the engineers will try to light it, but good luck with that in all this mud and snow. Probably be next year before anyone can come back here to do something about it.” He squeezed her arm tighter. “We’ll have to keep doing this about once a week, well into summer.” She could feel the tremor in his grip.

Jenny closed her notebook, put it into her pack, and took Grayson’s hands. “Let’s get you away from all this for a little while. You have good officers and they’ll take it from here.”

“I just keep thinking how we’d have them surrounded, and be chopping into the crowd with poleaxes, and then I’d see so many of them just drop their weapons and stare around them, like they wanted to ask, ‘Where am I? How did I get here?’ And then they’d go into seizures. They couldn’t have surrendered to us even if we had been taking prisoners.”

“This way, dinner, bed.” She clamped her hand on his wrist and turned at the waist, tugging him away from that pile studded with faces, feet, and hands. “Dinner, bed, I’m gonna take care of you.”

He stumbled, found his balance, and trailed along, holding her right hand in his left, constantly returning salutes, nodding when people said things to him. She wasn’t sure whether he saw or heard anything; as soon as she got him to bed she’d write down everything important she could remember.

The sun was setting as they reached their tent. Towers said, “I’ll tell the cook to bring around your meal.”

“Thank you. Get some rest and food yourself.”

“My relief should be here any minute,” the guard said. “And your father and his people don’t have access tonight.”

“You’re the best, Mister Towers.”

“Just remember that when you’re calculating my next raise, ma’am. Take care of the general.”

“Count on it.”

Jeff sat motionless on their folding bed, by the woodstove. She pulled off his boots, made him put on slippers, and had him sitting at the table when an orderly brought dense, warming pot pies and a thick soup with rice.

They ate silently until he seemed to wake up abruptly, halfway through the meal, began to wolf it down in great messy slurps, and finally caught himself, looking up from his plate, dabbing at his face with his napkin. He took another bite of pot pie, sipped at his water, and looked straight into her eyes. “Massacre is so different from battle. And it sounds stupid, but I wish this had been a battle.”

^{3 HOURS LATER. OLYMPIA. 6:30 PM PACIFIC TIME. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2026.}

“How often do you think about back before?” Allie asked Graham, as they sat by the warm fire in the New White House.

“Are you asking your husband, your old professor, or the President of the United States?”

“I’m not sure. How about you identify which one you are when you give the answer?”

He stretched, hands over his head, twisting with surprising vigor.

Right now it’s hard to believe he remembers Vietnam and the moon landings, but catch him in another hour and it’ll be hard to believe he’s still alive. He comes and goes so unpredictably.

“You’re staring at me that funny way again,” he said. “The main thing I think about ‘back before’ is that the words are revealing. For almost a year after Daybreak there was no one standard way to say, ‘In the time before Daybreak.’ Now everyone says, ‘back before’—”

“Very professorial and not what I meant. I was thinking how, if we’d caught Daybreak and stopped it, right now you’d be working on figuring out your post-Washington life.”

“If this new era is anything, Allie, it’s post-Washington.”

She froze. “My whole family disappeared with Washington.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Shit, shit, sorry, I was enjoying just getting some time together and then I had to go and snap at you. Forgive?” She grasped his arm as if he might bolt.

With his free hand he brushed her hair to the side and looked into her eyes. “I could tell that demonstration this afternoon was getting on your nerves.”

“Yeah. ‘This is America—no genocide!’ This is why there should be an IQ test and a current events quiz before people are allowed to have demonstrations. Don’t look at me that way, Graham, I’m kidding, but still, I mean, come on, what the Khmer Rouge did to my people was genocide. What we’re doing is necessary. I don’t want to commit genocide. I just don’t want there to be any more tribals.”

“‘Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious—’”

“I read the Solicitor General’s report too,” she said. Whereas you just skimmed the executive summary and then fell asleep with your head on it. “Even if you call that made-up shit a culture—and I sure as hell don’t, I call it a mishmash of heavy metal, comic books, and New Age—it can’t be a heritage, they haven’t had time for anybody to inherit it since they made it up,” Allie pointed out. “Anyway, what they are is, is…”

“People.”

“All right. People. So regrettably, killing them is murder. But not genocide, Graham.”

He drew a breath as if to shout, then let it flow back out. When he spoke his voice was soft and even. “We’re both products of the old Washington; we worry too much about what to call things. Allie, it just looks to me like this is your revenge on Daybreak for having infected you, and it’s like this passion for revenge is taking over your personality—”

“Not like Daybreak did. Don’t you dare say that.”

“I wasn’t going to.” He sounded angry for the first time. “I just meant, I put a lot of work into getting you back, and, hell, I love you—you okay?” He was staring at her strangely.

She reached up and touched her own cheek; it was wet with tears. “Aw, shit.”

“You hardly ever cry.”

“Yeah.” She wiped her face, hard. “Graham, you just might be the first guy who acted like he loved me, not just valued me as an asset or a trophy. The whole time I was recovering from the Daybreak infection, I never once heard anything about you needing me to be your secretary of state, or your chief of staff, or the way things were falling apart in the White House without me—”

“Oh, boy, were they, though. I just didn’t want to worry you about it.”

“See? That’s what I mean.” She took a handkerchief and dried her face. “Love can sure do weird shit to a person. Anyway, I guess I brought all this up and then bit your head off for talking about it because I wanted to know if you were pining for back before—”

“Back before I didn’t have you? Never.”

They sat and watched the fire until time for bed. Allie stayed pressed close against him, relishing how far away she felt from everything.

^{8 DAYS LATER. JEFFERSONVILLE, INDIANA. 3:25 PM EASTERN TIME. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2026.}

Even across the Ohio, the burned smell from the ruins of Louisville filled Jenny’s mouth and nostrils and squeezed her throat. Louisville had burned even before the giant bombs, one of the first big fires after Daybreak. Nanospawn had turned off the electricity to pump water. Biotes had eaten the hoses, tires, and fuel for the fire department. When a fire had broken out in the industrial area around Camp Ground Road, there had been nothing to stop its upward climb till it spewed burning debris on the helpless remainder of the city. The eastward flow of blowtorch-hot flames had blasted across the city to the Ohio in less than an hour, killing tens of thousands.

Two cold wet winters had washed away soot and toppled building frames, leaving heaps of rust on a plain of vitrified soil, but the smell lingered anyway.

Here, on the Jeffersonville side, residents and refugees had saved the town with four days of nonstop bucket chains and shovel work, only to be overrun by the Shine Forth Gaia People last May. The Louisville side looked like Hiroshima; the Jeffersonville side, like Beirut.

Although scouts had turned up relatively few tribals in their path, Jeff had chosen to follow the river road on the Indiana side, hoping to tempt the Daybreakers to break their discipline and come out and fight in smaller, less organized, more numerous groups. “If we can make those big hordes melt away before we reach them, so much the better.”

“But we haven’t had a quiet night since we crossed,” she pointed out. “I’d like to sleep through a night without waking up to screaming and shooting.”

“Well, yeah, a night human wave attack by a hundred of them is scary. It’s meant to be, and that’s why they do it.” He gazed across the bridge at the ruins of Louisville. “But so far, scary is all they’ve been able to be. We can rotate troops through night guard duty so nobody has to cope with it for more than one night at a time, and our guys have the discipline to stay safe in their positions, keep shooting quickly and accurately, and break the wave before it gets to our lines. It’s ugly but we get through it fine. And this way we capture a lot more of the other side alive for the wizards at Pueblo. Call me squeamish, but I prefer converts to corpses. Besides, there—”

A rider galloped up to them, saluted, and handed over a note. Jeff looked, read, and pulled out his order pad, scribbling with quick accuracy. “Messenger!”

He sent off the three riders who had been sitting quietly by, his always-ready communication system, then apologetically said to the rider who had brought the dispatch, “Sorry to make you and your mount work so hard but this needs to go to the TexICs commander, Colonel Prewitt, right now. They’re on wide patrol north and west of us—”

“I’ll find them, sir.”

“Good.”

The messenger rode off at a pace that made Jenny fear for his horse. “He’s the only one that knows what his message is about, and he’s riding like a maniac,” she ventured.

“Very observant and absolutely right.” Jeff nodded grimly, and set off at a trot. “Ride with me back to HQ. Scouts from the Alabama Mounted found the enemy breaking camp and retreating north. We’ve got to catch up with them and close them off now. I had four messengers available and I needed six, so I prioritized, and we are the fifth message, to HQ—”

“Jeff, we can gallop—I ride at least as well as you.”

He picked up the pace but kept to a trot; Jenny decided not to argue. “Are there more messengers at HQ?”

“Yes if I’m lucky, but it’s being a busy day.”

“Where were you going to send the sixth message?”

He glanced at her, thought for an instant, and said, “Okay, you can do it. I’m nearly certain you’ll be riding away from the enemy anyway.” He reined in and grabbed his order pad. “You’ll be as safe as you’d be at HQ and this is important.”

“You’re not going to tell me I can’t—”

“There’s no time to argue,” he said, lettering fast and hard into the pad. “And you’d win the argument. Now listen up, because you have to understand this as you carry the message—things could change fast and the officers will need to know what I was thinking, not just my orders, if they have to improvise.

“Right now we’re laid out kind of like a scorpion making a right turn—two wings of cavalry out front like claws, big mass of infantry in the middle, and then a long string of mixed units that went out on side missions all day, and are catching up now, with a little cavalry force at the end as a rearguard. Or a stinger.

“The four messengers I sent went to the units that form the claws; they need to swing in to harass the tribals’ retreat, slow them down and keep them from opening up the distance.

“But that cavalry is not enough to block their retreat and besides, the first place we can get ahead of them is just about the last place we can stop them at all. What will make them stop moving is pushing some infantry up against them to make them stand and fight. I’ll be taking charge of that from HQ.

“Your job is to make our long tail whip around to come in behind the tribals, once they stop moving. I want them to secure the Grant Line Road south of St. Joseph, all the way down to the junction with Chapel Lane if possible. These orders tell each commander to use his or her own judgment and head for the junction by the quickest route they can figure out, and then the senior officer present will allocate forces along the road as they arrive, till I can get there.

“They are on no account to allow any tribal forces to escape northward if it’s in their power to prevent it. I’ll be coming up to join them as quick as I can but the key thing is to grab that road, close it to the enemy, and secure the flanks. Show this message to the colonel of every regiment and the major of every free-standing battalion in the column. Make sure he knows he’s going to Grant Line Road between St. Joseph and Chapel Lane. Then take that same message to the next one.” He thought for a moment and added one more note. “I’m adding, ‘Maintain contact with friendly forces on your left flank if possible, but do not delay under any circumstances.’” He glanced up at her. “Repeat the part of it that’s orders; the scorpion was just to help you remember.”

She stammered and felt flustered and foolish, but she managed it.

He nodded. “Excellent. Don’t let any officious wiener take the message copy from you, and if the CO isn’t available right away, tell it to the highest-ranking person and move on. No delays. Good luck. And come back safe.” He mounted and rode off with a wave.

Jenny zipped the message into the pocket of her leather jacket and rode off to the northeast on Market Street. She leaned forward and told Buttermilk, “Well, for once, we’ve got something to fight besides boredom.”

^{AN HOUR LATER. JEFFERSONVILLE, INDIANA. 5:45 PM EASTERN TIME. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2026.}

As the most distinctive-looking person traveling with the Army, Jenny encountered no questions or arguments. Maybe it’s even better than having a regular messenger on this job; I’ll have to mention that to Jeff. Every colonel and major on the way had immediately issued a flurry of orders to the officers around him or her. (Of course, how would I know if they were the right orders? she thought.)

She was riding fast and hard, promising Buttermilk they could just walk after this last one, picking along the debris-choked Utica Pike toward the rearguard company of the rearguard battalion. Definitely, this beat hell out sitting next to her father while he prayed for victory, being steered around by polite young men from the invalid list, or watching in a lady-like manner from a distant hilltop.

Delta Company, Third Battalion, Fourth Iowa Provisional Volunteers, was the rear-of-the-rearguard. Captain Shirley Mendoza listened to the orders from battalion and nodded. “Makes sense. We’ll take Port Road, it’s close and goes the way we’re going. And tell the general he’s in our prayers, and I’m voting for him for president.”

“Let’s win the war first,” Jenny said. That’ll make for a good little story for them to hear up in Provi country.

She considered traveling along with Mendoza’s company, but after all they were moving toward battle to the north and west; if she stayed on the south side of the scorpion’s tail swinging north, she would probably be closer to obeying Jeff’s order to stay safe, and besides, Buttermilk was tiring.

She had ridden only about a hundred yards back toward the main body of the rearguard when a man jumped out from behind a burned-out SUV and threw an ax at her. She ducked sideways and the ax flew past; Buttermilk went light to the front, preparing to rear, but Jenny leaned forward, put her arms around the horse’s neck, and pressed with her legs, urging Buttermilk forward.

She drew her pistol from her sash. The man had followed his ax in, and was two steps away with his drawn knife when she shot him, putting a hole where his nose had been and scattering bloody meat on the road behind him.

Buttermilk had heard gunfire before, and smelled blood, but had not been trained to it; she started to rear again, and Jenny leaned far forward, pressing down on the neck, letting the reins go slack and urging, “Come on, baby, come on, chill out now.” Buttermilk took a tentative step forward, but Jenny could feel the mare’s terror.

When she spared a moment to look up, more tribals were swarming out from between the row of old apartment buildings. She turned Buttermilk and galloped back toward Delta Company; rifles roared around her as she reached them. Mendoza ran up to her. “Look at that,” she said. “They’re coming out of hiding all along the road. And the army is scattered all over the town, with all that behind it.”

Jenny nodded. “Right now our side’s in a big arc to the northwest. I’ll try to ride along it and let everyone know what’s happening, follow it all the way back to HQ if I have to. Thanks for the backup. I gotta run.”

If there was anything Buttermilk was happy to do now, it was run. That was good, because Jenny found that all along the tail, there had been harassing attacks from the north and east. From officer to officer, unit to unit, Jenny rode as fast as she dared in the swiftly failing light. Luckily most of the units had managed to stay in touch with their flanks, and knew approximately where the next unit in the arc was.

Shortly, she had evolved a single long, fast, clear sentence that summed up where the tribal counterattacks were coming in. It was growing darker, but not full dark yet, and while she could keep up this pace, she wanted to cover as much ground as she could.

Once, a tribal arrow flew past Jenny, but she didn’t see where it came from, and just rode on faster. By an old junkyard, a man stepped out from behind a fence with a spear, and she shot him before she even knew she had drawn her pistol; a few times she saw tribals in the distance. It was clear that they were “ambushed, surrounded, and infiltrated,” as she said to Jeff, who had come out of his improvised headquarters in an old Burger King to see what the shouting was about.

He looked like he’d received an electric shock, but he managed to say, “Well, thank God you’re safe. Sergeant, have Mrs. Grayson’s horse seen to. Jenny, come on in here and let’s get everything you can remember onto the map as quick as we can. We have a lot of figuring out to do. Meanwhile, messenger!” He was scrawling but looked up in amusement as Jenny had begun to open her mouth and step forward. “Not you, Jenny, the only recent source of intel I have is in your invaluable head, and anyway Buttermilk doesn’t have any reserve left. I’m through trying to keep you out of things, and you’ve more than proved you can be useful, but I get to decide where and when you’re most useful. It’s one of those general-privileges.”

With his hand on her shoulder, he guided her to the chart table; realizing he was right, Jenny complied, answering his rapid-fire questions as clearly and quickly as she could.

At least this part of Jeff’s memoirs is going to be vivid. She gratefully accepted a sandwich and a mug of Sherpa tea. When Jeff seemed satisfied with what he’d extracted and was quickly sketching out his plan to his officers, she did not look for a way to leave, but hung around in the shadows and watched the swarm of scouts and messengers flowing in and out as Jeff re-established his grip on his army and moved forces up to hold the junction, and struck back at the many small harassing attacks.

Those solder soldiers that he had brought along slid back and forth over the map as he tracked where he had closed some escapes, where he needed to move to close the others, and where the parts of the trap closed around the tribals.

As the crescent moon was setting, well before midnight, the diversionary attackers had been pinned down, and were being captured or wiped out, or had fled back toward the main tribal force, adding to the chaos there. With too many choices and too much disparate information flooding in from all sides, the tribal system of cooperative, cellular organization was collapsing into paralytic thrashing. The confused mass of several thousand tribals stalled south of the junction was now encircled, but in the deeper darkness it was difficult to tighten up lines enough to keep them from exfiltrating. Desperate little squad-sized struggles were happening everywhere by starlight; between them, Daybreakers crept away quietly, and the haul in the trap was decreasing by the hour.

Grayson stood up from the table, nodding, and rubbing his neck. “Most of our officers have watches and clocks, correct?”

“All of them, sir, as far as we know. Might have been some breakage—”

“This doesn’t have to be perfect. All right, tell everyone we want fires, but controlled fires, for visibility, all along the line, everywhere around the pocket. Bonfires in cleared areas, isolated buildings, I don’t care what, we want light everywhere. It’s not like the enemy doesn’t know where we are.”

“Sir, we can’t light enough fires to light up the whole pocket, it’s at least two miles across—”

“No, but we can make more of them afraid to try. In fact…” He smiled. “Tell them that as much as possible, without taking men out of combat, they’re to cook something that smells good on those fires. Conceal nothing as they prepare for a big assault at dawn, but make sure it looks like everyone’s getting a good meal first.”

“Sir, everyone is exhausted and—”

“I know that. I’m thinking that the Daybreakers are in even worse shape, and we need to help them see that. Less than forty-eight hours ago, they were in their nice safe dirtbag encampment, with the comforting smell of their shit and body odor, and at least they had something to eat, anyway. Now they’re out there trying to sneak around in the dark and find somewhere to lie up till day, and they’ve run all day, with only what they could carry. Let’s see if a night staying awake, cold and hungry and surrounded, makes a difference.” He nodded, liking his own idea. “Let’s set up surrender poles where they can turn themselves in and get some soup, a safe place to lie down, and some handcuffs. At least the less-willing slaves will come in to us that way. But the most important thing is, make it look like our forces are just waiting for dawn.”

“Won’t more of them get away?”

“All the ones that really want to and have some initiative, sure. I could be wrong but I’m betting that’s a small fraction. I think this might be our first chance to capture most of a Daybreaker horde alive.” He smiled. “I don’t like the idea of being the general who wouldn’t take that chance. Anyway, meanwhile, I’m going to get some rest, and everyone who can is to do the same.”

Back in their tent, gulping some boiled corn and unidentified meat, they fell onto the bed together; Jenny looked sideways at Jeff, and caught him looking back. Without a word, they grabbed each other, shoving bodies together, frantic to put him inside her, and went at each other maniacally for a few minutes, nails scratching both their skin, biting hard enough to bruise, clutching and slapping each other until they fell back on the bed next to each other, holding hands.

Now what in Jesus’s sweet name was that all about? Jenny thought, before realizing, Hunh. I killed two men. Apparently Jeff isn’t the only one that gets horny from that. She thought perhaps she should pray, but Well, Lord, you already saw everything, so as they teach the young soldiers to say, “No excuse, sir!” She plunged into such a deep sleep that it seemed only a moment before Towers awoke them with more boiled corn and mugs of chicory and milk, and they staggered back to headquarters in the freezing, sullen gray pre-dawn.

^{THE NEXT DAY. FACILITY 1, PUEBLO. 10 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2026.}

James had brought Jason this time because seizures tended to be particularly violent when Daybreak was losing. Since the seizures also provided windows of clarity, periods of a few minutes when Daybreak’s control of 162 was imperfect, James wanted 162 to have the seizure; he just didn’t want to be hit or kicked.

He sprang the news of the victory at Jeffersonville on 162 very suddenly, just walking into the room and announcing it. A moment later they were both tackling the man, who bumped his head a couple of times on the concrete table harder than James would have wanted him to. Whether the blows to the head helped him fall asleep without talking, or he was too deep into Daybreak, he had nothing to say. “Frustrating session,” he said to Jason.

“Can’t always be a breakthrough. It’s funny, I was in Daybreak a lot longer, and voluntarily, and I was never anywhere near as resistant as this guy.”

“Well, he had three of the things known to strengthen the effect—sustained study of Daybreak for its own sake. Professional training at being open-minded. And, don’t take this wrong, but being an intellectual.”

Jason grinned at him. “So I wasn’t smart enough to catch Daybreak as deeply as, um, 162 did?”

“There’s a difference between being smart and being intellectual. An intellectual thinks ideas, in and of themselves, are the most important thing in the world. And Daybreak, despite all its other scary properties, really is an idea. The difference is, if something is going on with the ideas, 162 has to put his whole mind on it. Whereas a poet like you can be distracted by real things that seem more important than ideas—like having a great marriage and a kid on the way—how is Beth?”

“Awesome as ever. Also healthy, and Doctor MaryBeth is telling us it looks great for the baby. Thanks for asking.”

The two men shook hands and went about their day, each bothered somewhat differently by the picture of a man screaming and fainting when told about a military operation a thousand miles away.

^{THAT AFTERNOON. CHRISTIANSTED. 2:30 PM ATLANTIC TIME. SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2026.}

“Here it comes—” Although the roaring seaplane was at least fifty feet above them, Whorf, Ihor, and the other sailor-scholars ducked instinctively as it passed over, before rowing frantically toward where it descended into a towering white spray.

“Wow, smells like a fire at McDonald’s,” Whorf said.

Pulling hard on his oar, Ihor said, “Our kids will say, ‘Smells like an airplane,’ the first time they have French fries.”

“Put your backs into it,” Jorge shouted from the tiller. The sailor-scholars stopped jabbering and bent to the job. Rowing was always hard work, but dragging a long cable was much more so.

The pilot brought the seaplane about and killed the prop; the plane settled onto the gentle waves just within Christiansted harbor. Whorf, Ihor, Polly, Felicia, Sendhar, and Pablo couldn’t see behind themselves while rowing, but Jorge, at the tiller, announced, “it says NSP-8 on the side.”

After interminably more rowing, Jorge brought them alongside, and the pilot climbed out on the short lower wing, picking his way between the struts and wires. “Hey, chief, what do you call this contraption?” Polly asked, passing him the tow rope from Jorge.

The pilot glanced back from where he was securing the cable to the thwart that ran just under and behind the prop, between the pontoons. “Technically, it’s a sesqui-seaplane. High tech if this was 1910. The NSP stands for Newberry Scratch Plane—it’s the eighth plane we’ve built from scratch at Castle Newberry, where I’m the freeholder.” He was a muscular, young sandy blond with what, back before, had been called movie-star looks. “And who are the hecklers whose acquaintance I am making?”

Jorge, as the senior, introduced them all, explaining, “We’re sailor-scholars on Discovery. That means sailors with homework. The plain old sailors decided it would develop our character if we were put in charge of rowing the line out to you. Captain Highbotham sends her compliments from the observatory. She said she’ll work out a regular landing area and anchorage for you ASAP, but she only found out you were coming yesterday, so we had you land out here where there’s nothing to run into. You’ll ride with us in the boat back to Discovery, they’ll winch the plane in close and tow you into the harbor for the night, and Highbotham’ll get everything figured out while you eat and sleep.”

“I like Captain Highbotham already,” the man said. “Do I ask for permission to come aboard the boat?”

“Well, how about you tell us your name?”

“Whoops. Sorry. Bret Duquesne. Pilot, Federal Aviation Service—”

“Or maybe Earl of the Broad River,” Polly said. Daughter of a high-ranking reverend, she had come down from Athens to join Discovery at Savannah, and knew the TNG’s higher social circles well.

Climbing down to join Jorge, Duquesne made a face. “Stupid title. When my dad was alive he made fun of that. We’re not California. I’m the freeholder of Castle Newberry and that’s a big enough job and title for anybody. Would any of the ladies like me to take your oar?”

“Not a chance,” Polly said. “I had to fight my way through five colonels, ten bureaucrats, twenty reverends, and a hundred Bible verses to get it.”

No longer dragging the heavy tow rope, they were back on Discovery soon enough to be sent to the capstan to help winch the seaplane in.

When NSP-8 was in close enough for towing, and Discovery was headed back into the harbor, Captain Halleck came around to thank the interns for the extra work. “Pair up, and we’ll roll dice for an extra shore leave. First one’s tonight, if the pair that draws it isn’t too tired.”

To their delighted shock, Ihor and Whorf won the roll, which also carried with it the privilege of an on-deck shower, a change into clean clothes just returned from the laundry on shore, and a round-trip pass on a row-taxi.

“Life is pretty sweet,” Whorf said, as they walked into the streets of the little nineteenth-century town nestled in a tropical harbor.

“For once, I don’t need no—any—translation. Did you see the girls that smiled at us back there?”

“I’m not blind or dead.”

“I am thinking this place is almost perfect.”

“Almost? Unlike any place we’ve been recently, it’s not a totalitarian dictatorship. It’s not a few hundred desperate people hanging on in the middle of an ecological disaster. And it’s still in the States and they speak English. How is Christiansted only almost perfect?” Whorf asked.

Ihor snorted. “Well, the girls that smiled at us back there? A bar that was cheap and had girls like that in it, that would make it perfect.”

Whorf shook his head. “I’ve never seen a place like this before and I don’t want to try to see it drunk.”

“Ah, in Ukraine we would say, you have the soul of a poet. But not the thirst.”

“I’ll try Christiansted for reals first,” Whorf said. “I can blur it out later if it turns out to suck.”

“Sailors have changed since my day.” The voice from behind them was warm with amusement.

They turned and snapped to attention. “Captain Highbotham!” Whorf said.

She returned the salute but she was smiling. “I’m afraid I was eavesdropping, which was rude of me, and discovered young men who are in something resembling a real conversation, and was so startled I spoke out loud. I was about to ask, though, if you’d like to come up to the observatory? It should be a pretty slow night, the moon is setting before midnight, and we always have a late supper on evenings like this. I’m afraid you’ve already walked right through the closest thing we have to a vice district,” she said.

“You mean both bars are on this street?”

“And as your cohort was noting, they’re pricey; the local liquor industry will need a while longer to get properly going. I’m afraid they really are about all we offer in the way of fleshpots. Can I interest you in a pleasant evening chatting with mathematicians, followed by some pretty good island cooking?”

Whorf admired the way that it sounded like a pleasant invitation while clearly being a command. It wasn’t far out of line with what he preferred, either, and even better, it probably was out of line with what Ihor preferred.

Shortly, they were being shown the wonders of pen-and-paper launch monitoring, and of graphical computational methods on the backs of old posters. Despite themselves, they became interested, and really enjoyed eating with the observers, though Whorf thought the pirate attack stories were considerably more interesting than the discussion of trigonometric corrections.

Walking back to the harbor, where they would share a row-taxi taking them back to the ship, Ihor said, “Why do you think she did that?”

Whorf laughed. “Small-town life, Ihor. Same reason my folks moved out to a tiny village on Long Island and dragged me and my brother and sisters all around introducing us to everyone. How would you feel about being drunk and rowdy and stupid in front of Abby, or Peggy, or even Henry, now that you know each other?”

“I see.” He shook his head. “Good trick, and so much for my career as a pervert, eh?”

“You could just as easy say she made us feel at home. The thing is, there’s stuff you don’t do at home.”

“It was nicer than the way my uncle the first mate did that. He just told me if I ever done anything he didn’t like he hitten my head till it rang like a gong.”

“He would be hitting,” Whorf said.

“Be. Silly word. I don’t use it enough.”

“That’s okay, I’ll use your share for you.” They found one row-taxi right away, and the gentle rise and fall of the boat as it cut across the smooth harbor to their ship, the exceeding peace of a town where the only light was the single lamp of the watch, and the feeling of safety after a full day’s work and a long walk, had them half asleep before they were home.

Jorge had deck watch. “So how was shore leave?”

Whorf said, “Ihor met an older woman with a lot of interesting experience, and he spent the whole evening with her.”

Jorge sighed. “Oh, and me with the deck tonight.”

“Actually,” Ihor said, “Whorf and I shared the experience. And it was truly an experience I think you can only have in Christiansted.”

“Oh, you guys are killin’ me.”

“Well,” Ihor said, “you have leave tomorrow, right? When I’ve got deck and Whorf’s on the bridge? If you just get off the row-taxi and take a long slow walk up the main drag, you can have a very similar experience.”

“And it was… good?”

“Probably the best experience available locally,” Whorf said. “Pending further research.”

Below, in their berths, they were so tired that after only two fits of mutual giggles—one when Whorf said, “older woman,” and the other when Ihor said, “pending further research?”—they were sound asleep in their hammocks.