Joe Haldeman - The Coming

A pretty young woman approached, tailored suit, smile. “Pardon me, ma’am, could you—”

“No! Leave me alone!” She whacked him hard on the shoulder with her heavy purse, aiming for his head.

Like a message from the gods, a little voice in his ear said, “Switching to network in five.”

“Twelve pounds of C-9 is enough to demolish a good-sized house,” a man in army fatigues was saying, the smoldering ruins in the background. “That was probably in case he got stopped at the door.”

“Pauling might have used a little less explosive,” Marya muttered sotto voce, “if he’d known he was going to give us Davis on a platter.”

“Who’s next in line if Davis dies?” Rory asked. “He looks like he’d blow over in a strong wind.”

“Cabinet members, I think. It’s not my beat. Maybe the president of the Senate, R. L. Osbourne. She’s better than most.”

As they found out in a few minutes, though, Senator Osbourne had been in the meeting room and was among the dead. So were the chief of staff, the attorney general, and the UN ambassador, as well as the administrators of Defense, Energy, the CIA, FEMA, and NASA. LaSalle liked to have all her cabinet together when she made her pronouncements, watching them for shifts of allegiance.

There would be a fundamental realignment of power in Washington, as soon as everyone came back. Marya had been right about the exodus, politicos prudently putting some distance between themselves and ground zero. Of course, the explanation was that they wanted to be with their families in this time of tragedy, and their families happened to be out of town, or at least were able to catch up with them there.

The vice-president didn’t live through the hour. They watched the chief justice swear in Cool Moon Davis, inside a fast helicopter headed for Camp David. Then they saw a few minutes’ coverage of the traditional riot in Washington, confined to a few blocks downtown, the looting and arson quickly discouraged by armored shock troops from the D.C. Police department and an air-mobile civil disturbance unit from the National Guard. No soldiers or police were hurt.

“I’m going to watch the rest of this at home,” Rory said. “I feel like people are looking at me. You’re welcome to come along.”

“Thanks,” Marya said. “I wouldn’t mind getting away, either. Of course they’ll call as soon as I get my shoes off.”

They stopped by Pepe’s table on their way out. “Don’t bother coming in tomorrow,” she said. “It’ll just be chaos. I’ll call if anything comes up.”

“Thanks, Rory.” They nodded at each other for a moment, not able to say anything, and she left with the newsie.

“Will you come stay with me tonight?” Lisa Marie said hoarsely. “I just can’t…”

“Sure.” He was holding her hand, and briefly clasped it with his other. “Nobody should be alone now.”

“I never even liked her,” she said. “Did anybody you know?” Pepe shook his head. “But this is too horrible.”

“It’s not like America,” Pepe said. “I guess it is now, but it’s the sort of thing that happens in little dictatorships. Despot of the month.”

“I wonder whether that old man will be able to hold things together.” Davis was standing in a press room now, his hand to his ear, relaying his staff’s answers to questions.

“He won’t have to do much. I don’t suppose he’s made an unassisted decision in the past decade. If we make it through the next few hours, things will get sorted out.”

“You think the Islamic Jihad might…”

“If I were him, I’d be more worried about the Democrats than the Muslims. They probably have a competency challenge all worked out. If I were them, I’d wait a decent interval, and give him a chance to do some really unforgivable things. Then start the impeachment process, more in sorrow than in anger.”

She tilted her head at him. “You really know a lot about American politics.”

“More than I do about Cuban. I had to study it for the blue card, and got kind of fascinated.” He made a mental note to watch his step, not reveal too much sophistication. Lisa Marie was no danger, but there would be a lot of press and government around soon.

“Your aliens.” She pointed at the cube.

Davis peered intently. “Would you repeat the question?” A reporter asked whether he intended to follow LaSalle’s aggressive strategy toward the Coming.

He looked at her with robotic blankness for a long moment, an expression that was already familiar. “I don’t want to say anything specific about that. Anything at all.”

“Anything at all. My people are looking into it.” It was curious to hear Davis’s voice coining out of her office. She thought she’d locked it. Rory had dropped by with Marya to see whether Norm might be there, not wanting to bike home through the rain. Inside, there were two strangers watching the new president on the wall cube.

“Hello? Can I do something for you?”

The short one clicked a remote and the president disappeared. They were in identical government-gray suits. The short one was bland, normal looking, but the other was over seven feet tall, his white hair trimmed to within a millimeter of his skull. She had seen him around, the past month.

They both produced identification. “I’m Special Agent Jerry Harp of the CIA,” the giant said. The other identified himself as Howard Irving, FBI.

“You didn’t just fly down,” Marya said. “You’ve been here awhile. You were both at the—”

“We have no business with you, Ms. Washington,” the FBI man said. “We would like to speak with Dr. Bell alone.”

“I don’t think so,” Rory said. “This is my office, and I say who stays or goes. Unless I’m under arrest.”

“We’re only concerned about national security,” the tall man said in low, measured tones. “Some of what we have to ask you about cannot be made public. Not yet, at least.”

“I’ll be down in the lounge,” Marya said to Rory. “You’ve got my number.”

“This won’t take long,” the FBI man said.

Marya said, “Sure,” and he closed the door behind her.

“You talked with the president and Grayson Pauling this morning,” the tall man said.

“Along with the governor, the chancellor, and the dean of science. I’m the small fish in the pond. Why aren’t you talking to them?”

“In due course,” the FBI man said. “This is like interviewing witnesses to an accident, or a crime scene. Best to get their separate impressions, before they talk to each other.”

“Why don’t you just play back the crystal? Surely they keep records.”

The FBI man shook his head. “It was profoundly encrypted, scrambled. If you made a copy, you’ll find it’s just white noise.”

“Unless you made an audio recording, independent of the VR projector/receiver,” the CIA man said. “You didn’t do that, did you?”

“In fact, it didn’t occur to me. I’m really more of an astronomer than a spy.” She sat down behind her desk and looked up at him. “How could they do that, though?”

“You question the president’s right to—” the FBI man started.

“No, no—I mean physically. The signal had to be decrypted on this end. Why couldn’t we make a crystal of it then?”