William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

A stillness enveloped them, the engine roar unheard, the rush of the wind a mere whisper over Halupalai’s escape hatch. The whispering sound seemed to whisk ghosts out of the emptiness: the pale, splotched face of the young air controller from the Bronx— melech hamafis; the moxie in the last haunted words from Polar Three Three — get those mutha-fuckahs for us; Klickitat and Elsie, who chose a bleak and different duty; Tyler’s tortured soul and lost son; Radnor’s blissfully sad decision to join his wife. And Halupalai…

“Did we do anything right, Kazakhs?” Moreau asked mournfully.

“We did what we had to do, Moreau,” he said, not answering.

“Damn you, did we do anything right?”

“You never know, Moreau,” he said slowly. “Not even when it’s all over.”

They sat silently for several minutes. Then Kazakhs stiffened. “You gonna be okay?” he asked sternly. “Can we get on with it now? Or do I have to do this all myself?”

Moreau turned and looked at him. She smiled, sadly at first, then less so. “You have a couple of holes in your magic carpet, Captain Shazam,” she said. “Where do you think that tattered cape will take us?”

Kazakhs grinned from ear to ear, every tooth showing, although a close study would have shown that the eyes were not shining with quite the toothsome gleam. But he covered, as he always did. “Rarotonga!” he exulted. “Bora Bora! Hiva Oa! Papeete for the lady!” He turned quickly away, as if to check the port engines. He would not let her see the gleam turn to a glisten. But Moreau didn’t need to look at him to know the cover was fraudulent.

“God, I’m going to miss him,” Moreau said.

“Yeah, me too,” Kazakhs said quietly.

For a moment the silence returned, the roar and the whir of the wind pounding only at their memories. Then Moreau sucked in a deep breath, resigned to the knowledge that Halupalai had taken his route just as they had taken theirs.

“What kind of chance do we have, Kazakhs?”

“Fiji. Maybe.”

“It’s as far as San Francisco and a lot harder to find.”

He turned and grinned at her again, the teeth telling one story, the eyes another. “There’s plenty of palm trees out there, Moreau. We’ll find a sandy beach somewhere. If not, it’s two in a canoe, kid. A rubber canoe.” He reached over and slapped her on the thigh. Half-slap, half-pat, really, making certain it carried some nicely indefinable touch just between the two.

The President grumbled contentiously under his breath. The advance work was abominable tonight, the protocol inexcusably sloppy. Where the hell was the Marine Band? Band always played “Hail to the Chief” when he left Andrews. No excuse for this. None. But Sedgwick’s here. Good man, Sedgwick. Had to get to know him better. Give him a little presidential nudge over at the Pentagon. Never hurt, helping a young officer. Navy’s in fine form tonight. Marines are wading knee-deep in trouble. Commandant would find his ass in a sling for this one. God, he was tired. Stairs to Air Force One looked like the side of the pyramids. He groaned, then tried to suppress the sound. Smile, buster. Part of the job. Screw the smiling. Screw the job. Sometimes this job isn’t worth sour owl crap. He grunted. Then he reared himself up to full strength for the walk, Presidentially, up the aircraft stairs.

“Gimme a hand, Sedgwick,” he mumbled. He could confide in Sedgwick. “Feel like I’m walking the last mile.”

Sedgwick’s hand landed lightly on the President’s chest, gently pushing him back into his bed. “Take it easy, Mr. President,” the aide said. “We’re not walking anywhere tonight.” Another, cooler hand caressed his forehead. He felt dizzy.

“President always walks,” he protested. “Tradition. Tradition’s goin’ to hell around here tonight, Sedgwick.”

God, he was tired. Where the devil were they going? Slipped his mind. Be careful of that. Nice to be here in Detroit. Except it’s Denver. Damned bad politics. Time to turn and wave. Tradition. He raised an arm and arched it slowly across his hospital bed. He heard a soft feminine voice reassuring him. His wife? His wife… “Connie…?” He sagged back in his bed and lay still for a moment. “What time is it, Sedgwick?” he asked, perfectly lucid.

“Eighteen-twenty-five Zulu, sir,” Sedgwick replied from his own bed. “Twenty-five minutes after one.”

“In the afternoon? Jesus Christ. Where are we?”

“In the FEMA bunker at Olney.”

“Who’s with us?”

Sedgwick’s eyes moved around the room, passing the two nurses and landing on the civil-defense director to whom he had just talked and who now stood at rigid attention a few feet away. The military aide lingered a second, then answered, “Two charming and wise nurses, a radio operator, and a half-dozen technicians—and the Northeast regional director of FEMA.”

“That’s it?” the President asked incredulously.

“That’s it, sir.”

“Jesus Christ.” All the king’s horses and all the king’s men… He felt dizzy again. “What’s the matter with me?”

“You’re blind, sir. Your legs are broken.”

“Fuck that, Sedgwick. I know that.” He thought of the nurses. “Pardon the language, ladies. I can’t see you so you’re not there. What have you got me on? My mind’s dancing all over the place.”

“Morphine, Mr. President,” a female voice answered. “Sorry. We thought it was best. Mr. Sedgwick convinced us otherwise.” The nurse looked at Sedgwick and blushed. “Just keep talking, sir, and it’ll clear up. You sound pretty clearheaded now.”

The President grumped. “Time to be clearheaded was when I came into this godforsaken job.” He paused. “So how come we’re not all dead, Sedgwick? What the hell’s going on out there?”

“I’m afraid we don’t have a very good fix on it, sir. Communications are shot to hell. Some of it’s coming back very slowly. But nobody’s been talking to anyone else, as far as we can tell. We’re in a helluva mess.”

“Our preliminary data show it could have been much worse,” the director cut in too eagerly. “Most of the targets were military. Collateral damage to civilian populations, of course. A few cities were hit intentionally. But I’d say our fatalities are only about thirty million, surely no more than forty million.”

The President tried to pull himself up in bed. He felt a sharp pang of pain in his legs but continued to grope blindly toward the strange voice. “Who the hell is that?”

“Bascomb, Mr. President,” the man replied. “Director, Northeast region. FEMA. Retired Army. General officer.” He reluctantly added: “Brigadier.”

The President slumped back in his bed, his mind spinning. “No more than forty million…” He struggled to look back in the direction of the civil-defense director. “I’d say you lost a couple of divisions, Mr. Director,” the President whispered.

“My point, sir—”

Sedgwick waved the man off. “It’s horrible, Mr. President. It’s also much more complicated, much more dangerous… and probably much worse than the estimated casualty figures.”

“Do we have it turned off?” the President asked hauntedly.

“I don’t know, sir. No one down here knows. But it certainly doesn’t sound like it. We’ve got a couple of command planes up. We haven’t been able to get through to either of them. We can hear one of them. The Looking Glass plane.”

The President felt his mind wandering again. “So Alice is running the war…”

“Snap out of it, sir!” Sedgwick commanded, surprising himself. “I doubt anyone is running the war. If they can’t talk, they can’t run it. My guess is SIOP’s still running the war. And that’s bad. Very bad.”