Walter Williams - The Rift

Manon’s chin began to tremble. She clutched at his hand. “Oh, Nick,” she said. “Oh, Nick, you’ve got to stop them.”

“Yes,” he patted her hand. “Yes, I’ll stop them. I’ll stop them for you.”

*

“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!”