Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

As he was walking away, Garner called after him, "You have forty-eight hours, bright boy. And after you fail, I will have your career."

WHY IS the light out?"

From out of the absolute darkness, Alli Carson felt the air against her face and she shrank away, certain that he was going to hit her. In the days she'd been here, he'd never struck her, but the threat of violence was always in the air, keeping her immersed in a sea of terror. She was too frightened not to sit in it.

"What have I told you?" Kray's voice seemed disembodied, the heart of the darkness itself. "No talking except at mealtimes."

She kept her head up. He didn't want to hurt her, merely to teach her a lesson not yet learned; she knew this now.

"You need to focus your mind, Alli."

She could tell by the placement of his voice that he had sat down in front of her. She felt a little thrill of accomplishment at her newfound ability to discern the nuances of movement in sounds. This was Ronnie Kray, the same man Emma had met, whom Emma wanted to know more about. Now it was her turn. She had to keep that thought in the forefront of her mind. Emma had taught her how to be tough, how to go her own way. Emma was also fearless, a trait Alli had never been able to grasp. Perhaps now was her chance. Be brave , she told herself. Fate has put you in the same hands as Emma. You have the chance to finish what she started. You have a chance to understand this enigmatic man .

"You have a keen mind," Kray continued, "but it's been dulled by your sheltered life. You've been taught to believe that you live a pampered life, but that's a lie. The truth is you live the life of a prisoner. You're forbidden to go where you want, you're forbidden to say what you want. You can't even make friends without your father's knowledge, so that their private lives can be invaded by the Secret Service, just as yours is. You don't own yourself, Alli. You're a puppet, dancing to your father's tune."

A chair creaked, and Alli knew that he had sat back. A whisper of cloth told her that he'd crossed one leg over the other. I can see , she thought, without seeing . She was grateful to him for having kept the light off, grateful for the opportunity he'd given her to sharpen her senses. For the first time since she'd known Emma McClure, she had stepped outside herself-the self, as Kray had so accurately said, that had been created for her.

As if divining her thoughts, Kray said, "You exist at the pleasure of your father. The Alli Carson the country-the world-knows is a confection, a Hershey bar: an all-American girl, with all-American values, all-American ideals. When have you ever been allowed to say what's really on your mind? When have you been allowed to voice your own opinion? Your lot in life has been to further your father's political career."

She heard his voice, and only his voice.

"Isn't that right, Alli?"

The darkness made it grow in power, until she could see it glowing like a jewel in her mind.

"You have your own opinions, don't you?"

For a long moment she said nothing, though she felt the answer fizzing in her throat, clamoring to be exposed, to have its own life at last. Still, she bit it back, afraid. She realized just how familiar this fear was, how she had been afraid for years to say what was really on her mind, as opposed to what her father's handlers had insisted she say publicly. Only Emma had known her real mind, only Emma could have taught her how to be fearless, but Emma was dead. She lowered her head and felt a great sob welling up in her breast, and hot tears leaked out of her eyes, ran down her cheeks, dropped onto the backs of her hands. It was so cruel, so unfair that her one true friend had been taken from her…

"Focus, Alli," Kray said in the manner of a professor to an inordinately bright student with ADD. "It's important that you focus your mind, that you shake off the dullness of the old automaton Alli Carson, that you hone your mind to a diamond edge. Now, tell me, do you have your own opinions?"

"I do," Alli said, her throat unclogging as the words she'd been wanting to say flew out. She felt herself transported back to campus, walking with Emma, who had more or less asked her the same question: Do you have your father's opinions, or are they your own?

He sighed, it seemed to her with pleasure.

"Then perhaps there's a chance I can reach the real Alli Carson. There's a chance I can undo what's been done to you."

The creak of the chair. "You wish to speak."

How did he know that? she wondered. What marvelous power he possesed!

"You have my permission."

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Because I have to."

He said it in a way that shook her. She didn't know why yet, she was too stunned by her own reaction, but she was beginning to have faith now that she would come to understand what was happening to her, and why.

She felt him lean in to her, felt the aura of his warmth as if she held his beating heart in her hands.

"I want to share something with you, Alli. I have absolute faith in what I'm doing. Beyond that, I'm a patriot. This country has lost its way. There's a shadow over democracy, Alli, and its name is god-the Christian god in whose name so many ethnic people have been attacked, decimated, or destroyed: the Aztecs, the Inca, the Jews of Spain, the caliphs of Constantinople and Trebizond, the Chinese, blacks, our own American Indians. Sinners all, right?"

She could hear his breathing, like the bellows fanning a fire, expelling a hard emotion with each word. This emotion was familiar to her; she understood it without being able to define it. And she felt Emma close beside her, whispering in the nighttime dorm room in Langley Fields, so far away now, so very far. She began to weep again, silently-for Emma, absolutely, but also for her own fractured self, for the life she had been forced to live, for everything she had missed: friends, laughter, goofing around, being silly. Being herself, whatever that might be. That thought brought yet more tears and a weight in her chest she could scarcely bear.

Through it all, Kray remained silent, holding her hands in the dark, keeping contact. She was unspeakably grateful for the silence, the human contact.

"For more than a decade," he said when her tears had at last subsided and her breathing returned to normal, "there has been a conspiracy to hijack democracy. It's only in the last eight years that it's crawled into the light. Under the guise of knowing what's best for America, a cabal of right-wing fanatics has made a pact with religious fundamentalists whose fervent wish is for a pure and Christian America. This alliance is a new twist on what Eisenhower ominously called the military-industrial complex. He feared it would take over the running of the country, and those fears were realized. Big Oil runs America, Big Oil determines our foreign policy. If the Middle East wasn't filled with oil, we wouldn't care one bit about who kills who there. We wouldn't even know what a Sunni is, let alone why he wants to kill his Shiite neighbor.

"But now the religious right has forced itself into the mix, now we have a president who believes he's doing the work of god. But I and millions like me all over the world don't believe god exists. Then whose work is the president doing?"

Alli listened to him with all her senses. She felt taut as a drumhead, taken out of herself, given the privilege to emerge from her own body, to hover like a ghost above the human proceedings below. And with this sensation came a feeling of energy, and of power.

"You and me, Alli, we're being trampled by this religious stampede masquerading as a democratic government. How many times does this president have to say that he doesn't care what the people or the Congress think, he knows what's best for us, he knows what's right? He means his god knows, but his god doesn't exist. His morality is a delusion invented by the so-called righteous to bolster their claim that every decision they make is right, that all criticism directed at them comes from a radical left-wing element. They've tried to make an unswerving belief in god synonymous with patriotism, a healthy skepticism in god synonymous with treason. We have to fight this false morality; we have to stop it before its infection goes too far."