*
“We got this by express,” said Nelda. She had a strange, expectant smile on her face. “I think you’ll like it,” she said. Jessica put her cup of coffee on its desk, took the air envelope from her secretary, hefted the envelope. It was surprisingly heavy and obviously had a lot of paper in it. Jessica sighed— she’d just had her eye repaired that morning and wanted to avoid too much reading— and then she slid out the contents.
A magazine slipped through her fingers and dropped into her lap. Her own face scowled back at her from under the brim of her helmet. “Oh, my God,” Jessica said.
It was a special edition of Newsweek dealing with the quakes and their aftermath. A particularly determined-looking photo of Jessica was on the cover, glaring at the camera through her black eye. The photo seemed to have been taken at the ceremony and press conference at Poinsett Island.
general j.c. frazetta, it said on the magazine cover, america’s river warrior.
“Oh, my God,” Jessica repeated.
“That nice Mr. Sutter wrote it.” Nelda beamed.
Jessica stared at the picture of herself in shock. I need to lose ten pounds fast, she thought.
“Which one was Sutter?” she asked.
“He was here for several days, remember? He talked to all of us about you.”
“Was he the one with the hair?”
“The hair. The face. The body. You know.”
Apparently Jessica didn’t know. She was surprised at herself. She’d been so busy she hadn’t even had the chance to ogle a good-looking guy.
She’d probably seen only the press pass, and then did her best to politely ignore him.
She opened the magazine and scanned at random. “Frazetta’s lucid briefings,” it said, “did much to clarify the situation in the Delta during the days following the first May quake.”
So that’s what they did, Jessica thought in surprise. She’d had the impression she’d been talking to a roomful of deranged, bloodthirsty, invincibly ignorant maniacs who insisted on interpreting her every word in the most sensational, dangerous, provocative way possible. An opinion that seemed borne out by the next part of the article that fell beneath Jessica’s eye.
“Sources report that Frazetta, inspired by her vision of turning Poinsett Landing into an island, ran over all opposition at one of her daily council briefings and successfully commandeered the resources to carry out her project.” Untrue! she thought. No one had objected to the project at all, at least not to her. And the project had been Larry Hallock’s idea, not hers.
She briefly meditated a letter to Newsweek on this matter.
While gratified by your otherwise flattering portrait, I beg to state…
“Such steamroller tactics,” the article continued, “were unlikely to work with the President, whose defenses were put to the test when Frazetta personally phoned him to insist on the controversial evacuation of the Lower Mississippi...”
“Hey, babe,” said Pat as he came into Jessica’s tent. “I heard you got a present.”
“It has a nice picture of you,” Jessica said, presenting her husband his picture, which showed him with the banjo he’d brought to the camp.
His eyes narrowed critically. “Do I really look that old? I look like a geezer.”
“In my eyes you’re forever young,” Jessica said, and glanced down again at the article to read the summary of her “most controversial” decision: the intervention at Rails Bluff. There was a sidebar concerning the reactions of unnamed but highly miffed Justice Department officials, who claimed that the situation in Rails Bluff clearly called for Justice Department expertise, that the use of the military in a situation of this sort was a dangerous precedent.
Oh yeah, Jessica thought. Like the Justice Department could even get their people to Rails Bluff. We’d have to carry them in our helicopters, she thought, and hold their hands all the way to the camp. And even then they’d bungle it.
Still, she would have to bear the Justice Department in mind. Her superiors had warned her that the Civil Rights division was looking into her handling of the matter, in case she’d violated peoples’ rights while in the process of freeing them from gun-toting lunatics, but she’d been too busy to worry much about it. Maybe she should talk to someone high up in the Judge-Advocate General’s office and make sure her ass was sufficiently covered.
“Hey,” Pat said, “no fair skipping around. Let’s start at the beginning.”
They read the article from beginning to end. Jessica decided she was pleased with it on the whole.
“Though it makes me seem like such a pushy broad,” she said.
“You are a pushy broad,” Pat said chivalrously.
“Yeah, thanks.” Jessica reached for her cup of coffee.
“You’d better call your mom,” Pat said, “and tell her to go to the news dealer and reserve her twenty copies.”
“Twenty?” Jessica mused. “No— for Ma, more like fifty.”
It was then that Nelda came through the tent flap again. Once again she had a pleased, I’ve-got-a-secret look. “General?” she said. “There’s a call for you on the radio. Secured line. From the President.”
As she rushed to the communications tent, Jessica found herself brushing at her clothes as if for an inspection. She picked up the handset, said, “Sir? Mr. President?”
There was a moment of silence as words passed back and forth between satellite relays. “Jessica?” he said. “How do you do?”
“I’m fine, sir. And you?”
“I am fit as a fiddle and strong as a bull. I dominate the world as a colossus. I rival the sun as a source of radiance, and I am a nexus of power acknowledged by all the world.”
Jessica blinked, uncertain quite how to respond. “I’m pleased to hear it, sir,” she said finally.
“The only cloud on the horizon, Jessica,” the President said. “The only fly in the ointment, the only blot on my escutcheon, in fact the only taint on my total omnipotence, is the fact that someone has usurped my rightful place on the cover of Newsweek.”
Jessica’s heart gave a lurch. “In fact—” The President’s voice rose in volume, “In fact, I shall have to devote much of my attention to making that person’s life a complete and utter hell on earth.”
“Um,” said Jessica, paralyzed. “Well.”
The President barked a laugh. “Congratulations, Jessica. Well done. I really had you going there for a moment, didn’t I?”
Jessica felt sweat trickle down her nose. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, you did.”
“My staff insisted that I take a few days off and relax at Camp David. That’s where I’m calling from. It’s so dull here that I have no choice but to amuse myself by making prank phone calls to my subordinates.”
“I hope it’s not that dull, sir.”
“Well, no, not entirely, not with Chinese missile tests and the menace of the Gamsakhurdians. I just wanted to congratulate you on your celebrity. And besides, I got the cover of US News and World Report. Unfortunately those swine at Time decided to devote their cover to some little pasty-faced urchin being rescued from the roof of his momma’s car by one of your helicopters.”
“Better luck next time, sir,” Jessica said.
The President laughed. “Yes!” he said. His voice was manic. “Better luck next time! Exactly!”
Jessica’s head swam. This was decidedly strange. The President seemed to be calling her from well beyond the ozone layer.
“I wanted to give you a little friendly advice in view of your current celebrity,” the President said. “You’re going to start hearing from people now— people in my line of work, you understand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’re going to want to talk to you about running for office. Maybe even for my job.”
Jessica answered quickly. “Mr. President, I have never even for a moment considered—”
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Jessica,” the President said. “I don’t give a hang if you run or don’t. What I wanted to say is this— they won’t be approaching you because they admire your brilliant political thinking. They’ll be approaching you not because you’re the best candidate, but because you’re a viable candidate. Because of that Newsweek cover and because you’ve got a very prominent job where you can score a lot of points with the public. And it won’t be about you— it will be about them, you understand? It’s their job to find people like you and groom them for office. It’s their job to approach people and awaken ambitions that people never knew they had, and the more ambition they can find in you, the more they can generate business for themselves. That’s how these people work.”
Jessica’s head swam. “I understand, Mr. President.”
“Now if you’ve always wanted to run for office, that’s fine. I can even introduce you to some people— people who work for my party, you understand. But if you have never thought of a career in public service, then I urge you to think long and hard before you give any kind of answer at all to these people.”
“The only career in public service I’ve ever wanted,” Jessica said, in all truth, “was in the military.”
The President cackled. “That’s a good one, Jessica!” he said. “That’s exactly what you tell those bastards! That’s my little politician!”
Jessica blinked. “Thank you, sir,” she said.
The President cleared his throat. “Now, if you don’t mind one last piece of advice ...”
“By all means, sir.”
“If you value your career, Jessica, try not to shoot up any more churches. Because then even I won’t be able to save your ass, okay?”
Jessica hesitated, trying to read the tone of the President’s voice in order to determine whether he was joking again or not. She decided she might as well reply with the truth, pedantic though it might be.
“Well, Mr. President,” she said, “it wasn’t actually a church. It was a radio station.”
The President paused for a moment, then barked out another laugh. “Oh, it was the media!” he said. “In that case, I’m sure they got everything they deserved!”
The conversation ended shortly thereafter. Jessica put down the handset and walked past expectant-looking techs to her tent.
Gamsakhurdians, she thought. The President had mentioned the menace of the Gamsakhurdians. She made a note to herself to find out who the Gamsakhurdians were, and what they were up to.
Once her present job was over, the President might need an officer who was on top of the Gamsakhurdian situation.
She passed Nelda at her desk, then entered her tent and sat behind her desk.
Pat looked at her. “What’d the man say, Jess?”
Jessica pitched her voice so that Nelda could hear. Give her a thrill, she thought.
“He said it was okay by him if I run for President,” she said.
*
The President returned the handset to an aide, then looked at Stan Burdett. “There we go,” he said.
“Do you think she’ll bite?” Stan asked.
“I think it’s more than possible. Give her a couple days to let it all sink in, then have Bill Marcus give her a call.”
“Bill’s the best in the business. If he can’t talk her into running, I don’t know who can.”
The President leaned back into the deep leather armchair and put his feet up on the coffee table. One thing you could say for the semirustic decor of the presidential retreat of Camp David, nobody cared if you got scuff marks on the furniture.
The President scratched his chin. A faint sadness penetrated his detachment. “Jessica’s a nice lady,” he said. “I should feel like a complete shit for doing this to her.”
But the Party needed a winner, and here was Jessica Frazetta piling up endless good-will points throughout the heart of the country. It was hard not to endear yourself to people by feeding starving families and plucking their children from floods. In the next election, three senatorial seats and a half-dozen governors’ positions would be up for grabs, all from the Mississippi Valley. Jessica had made herself a viable candidate for any one of them.
“The only question,” the President said, “is whether she decides she’s a member of the Party or not.”
“She’s always registered as an Independent,” Stan said. “A lot of those military types do.”
“Well,” the President said, “if she has the good sense to decide to come to the aid of the Party, I can help her out before she declares, pin a nice big medal on her— the Soldier’s Medal, maybe? And if she decides she’s a member of the opposition,” he sighed, “then we conclude she blew religious freedom to tiny pieces when she went into Rails Bluff, and the attorney general takes her down while our hands stay clean.”
He swung his legs down from the coffee table and rose to his feet. He looked at Stan. “It’s a no-brainer,” he said. “You want to go for a walk?”
Pine scent filled the air as the President strolled along the open paths. Wind floated through the trees with the sound of a mother hushing her child. It was pleasantly cool here in Catoctin Mountain Park, and a pleasant change from Washington, where summer heat and humidity was already smothering the city.
It was a beautiful, tranquil moment. But then all the President’s moments were tranquil these days. All moments were more or less like the next. It was an illustration of the Steady State theory of the President’s psyche.
The President let his eyes drift over the tree-lined crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hawks circled overhead, thermals lifting their outspread wings. “The Chinese fired three missiles,” he said. “They all landed more or less where they were intended to land. The U.S. Navy gallantly protected Taiwan by being nowhere in the vicinity. The Chinese government has announced that this round of tests is over, and it looks as if their military forces across the Straits have stood down.”
“The Seventh Fleet saves the day,” Stan said.
“But for how much longer?” the President asked. “We’re in no state to fight a war. The quakes have wrecked all that. Even if we have the capacity, the people won’t stand for it— we can’t fight any kind of conflict while millions of our own citizens are condemned to living in tents. We’re going to have to pull in our heads for ten years or more.” He looked at Stan. “You’re the expert on spin. How long can you spin that?”
Stan adjusted his spectacles. “Sooner or later, you think someone will call our bluff?”
The President watched clouds drifting beyond the Blue Ridge. He’d had an insight about clouds some days ago, he seemed to remember, but he could not bring it to mind.
“Some people have nothing left to lose,” the President said. “Others have everything to gain. There’s a worldwide recession in progress, and that will make people desperate. And there are so many flash-points now. Conflicts are almost all ethnic or religious these days, and those are the kinds of wars that are most difficult to stop once they get started. Once you start to kill your neighbors, you can’t stop, now, can you? Stopping just gives them the opportunity to kill you. And it’s worse when God starts telling you to kill. You can’t stop if it’s God doing the talking. The Ayatollah business is really prospering. Like that fellow in Arkansas that Jessica had to put down. How do you stop someone who wants the world to end? There’s no way to negotiate. There’s no common ground.”
“Sometimes, Mr. President,” Stan said, “you can’t negotiate. You just do what you’ve promised to do.”
The President looked at him. “Are you suggesting that a politician should keep his promises? How unlike you. I’m almost shocked.”
Stan frowned. “Only when your back’s to the wall, sir. And then when someone calls your bluff, I think that person, or his followers, should be swiftly and efficiently reduced to smoking debris. If you pick your target properly— if it’s someone you can reduce to smoking debris— it will make an impression on other like-minded individuals.”
A smile drifted across the President’s face. “I was just thinking how much I would welcome not having to be the head of the world’s only superpower. And now you want me to start blowing things up.”
Stan gave a tight little smile. “It should be a very controlled explosion, sir.”
“Ah. Battling on the symbolic plane, but with live ammunition. Always a delicate business.”
The President walked for a while in silence. Bluebirds flickered through the trees like bits of the sky fallen and blown about like snow.
“We shall have to try to strengthen our international institutions. NATO, the UN, the various regional alliances. I’ll have to send Darrell abroad to talk to them all. Tell them we can lead, but that they will have to follow with more willingness and more force than we’ve seen heretofore.” He shrugged. “Maybe it will work. I don’t have a lot of hope, since nations tend to be run either by cowards or psychopaths, and we’ve mostly got the cowards. But it seems the best we can do, and if anyone can wring commitments out of them, it will be Darrell the Happy Warrior.”
“He can be persuasive, Mr. President.”
“He has the advantage of actually believing what he is saying.” He stopped, frowned at the sight of hawks rising on the afternoon thermals. “And our national institutions could use some strengthening, as well. When I flew over the Mississippi Delta the other day, I saw nothing but islands. Everything that holds a people together was severed— communications, commerce, community. Boris Lipinsky tells me that large parts of the country will go for six to nine months without basic services— not even electricity. Not even telephones. And hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, will be living in refugee camps for much longer than that. You can’t expect them to be civil forever, not under that sort of pressure.
“How many will fall through the cracks?” the President wondered. “How many thousands can just disappear without anyone noticing they’re gone? That Arkansas pastor and his private refugee camp— that man had a radio station broadcasting across the whole Delta, and nobody noticed he was there. I wonder how many others are setting up in their eerie little tribal habitats without anyone seeing them? It was sort of like the Balkans, in a way. Except,” he conceded, “that the Balkans are mountains and this was a river, but it was the same, almost. Everyone cut off from everyone else. In the Balkans, they’ve been hating and fighting each other for thousands of years, as far back as history goes. And in the Mississippi Delta— well, who knows? They’re all on islands.”
He looked at Stan. “How are you going to spin your messages to them, Stan, when there’s no way to find your audience?”
Stan Burdett looked pensive. “There was a way once. People lived out there before there was electricity or radio, and they were still a part of the republic.”
“They had a ruling class. All those planters. The people did what the planters told them.” He smiled. “Like Judge Chivington’s family. They could deliver fifty thousand votes; they ran that part of Texas like they were little kings. But nobody can deliver those votes anymore, not consistently. It’s still corrupt there, but it’s nothing like it was.” He shrugged. “But now, who knows? Who knows what’s out there?”
The President gave a big smile, then laughed. “If you spin a message but there’s no one to hear it, is there a message? That’s what we should be considering.”
Stan seemed glum. “If you say so, sir.”
“I had a dream about bread yesterday. Did I mention my dream about bread?”
“No.”
“UFOs are made of bread. It’s a true fact.”
Stan just looked at him. The President clapped Stan on the shoulder. “Oh, never mind,” he said. “Let’s just walk along and enjoy the country.”
Islands, the President thought, the Balkans. He was finding equivalencies everywhere.
*