John Barnes - Mother of Storms

They all look startled to see the President of the United States, bowl of convenience-store chili in one hand and immense cup of coffee in the other, laugh out loud. She doesn’t tell them what it’s about. It doesn’t matter. They respond to the motion, not to the direction, and are comforted.

By nightfall, two hours later, desks are piled with papers and a steady stream of orders is flowing out through the net to Federal officials everywhere. Right now, they’re mostly just counting the dead and the lost, and they don’t even know for sure where the Mississippi is entering the Gulf of Mexico—or where the Gulf of Mexico has bulged in to—but they’re on their way. The Federal Reserve is the chairman plus eight volunteers from the UWV Business School and forty computers; DoD has fewer generals than President Monroe got through the War of 1812 with; State, Interior, and Commerce are departments trying to find their subject matters—but it’s all there. It hasn’t fallen.

And at one small corner of a hotel, near the freeways on the edge of town, the Charleston office of the FBI is now officially the FBI. There are four agents, only one of whom was in Washington before the storm, arguing about what they can usefully do in the next few days, when suddenly their one computer beeps.

They turn to look at the screen, and they see what is being downloaded into memory: A REPORT ON THE LOCATION OF KEY WITNESSES AND EVIDENCE IN THE ASSASSINATIONS OF HARRIS DIEM, DIOGENES CALLARE, AND CARLA TYNAN, DEPOSITION BY CARLA TYNAN.

One of them is on the phone to the Attorney General immediately, only to find that she already has it. Whatever Louie and Carla are now, neither of them has any more patience with procedures and chains of command than they ever did.

The quietest patch of sky in the Northern Hemisphere is the one right above Novokuznetsk; there’s not even cloud cover. John Klieg and Glinda Gray are sitting outside now, in the early summer sunlight. “So it’s not ours anymore? Don’t they have to pay us anything?” She doesn’t really seem as bewildered as her question; he realizes she’s just checking.

“I’m afraid not. The U.S. Constitution—if there’s still a U.S.—wouldn’t let them take property without compensation, but we sure aren’t in the U.S. anymore. Always the danger in doing business overseas—getting nationalized.”

“Are they going to let us leave?”

“Probably, but if you check the news I’d just as soon stay put a while. Right now everyone’s still giving us credit; with a little luck we can wait till the storm blows over, then get back to the States.” He reaches out and takes her hand. “You might figure that what we’re going to do is take a long vacation—or a honeymoon, if we can find someone to marry us. Maybe one of these Siberian guys with the horns on his hat will shake a rattle over us or something.”

She glances sideways at him, letting her hair fall onto her face, and it gets to him like it always does. “Is that a proposal, boss? Are you aware of the sexual harassment laws?”

“We’re outside the United States, remember?”

“Well, damn, then I guess I’ll have to accept. So we stick around here and let the restaurants and hotels give us credit because they all figure we’re rich—”

“And because the American government is hiring us to get space launches flying, so we will have a paycheck. And before our welcome is entirely worn out, we’ll skip town and leave our debts behind us.”

“Why, Mr. Klieg, how appalling.”

“You bet. Back to the States, I think. They’re going to be doing a lot of rebuilding—which means lumber and concrete and steel, all that stuff, is going to be flowing around the economy. All I have to do is borrow some money here and there—and god knows there are enough bankers with faith in me—and get control of some of that stuff, and we’re on our way again. I would bet that owning all the cement plants, or all the railroad yards, in an area where they’re trying to rebuild, is going to be worth a pile. Hell, they’ll want a domestic space launch facility soon enough, and I’m experienced at building an uninterruptible launch service.”

She leans against him and he lets his arm slide around her. It’s a funny thing, he knows that many people have suffered a lot these last few months, and he’s lost a trillion bucks himself—has to be the first private businessman in history to do that—but somehow or other he doesn’t mind a bit. It’s the building up, not the having, that matters to him.

“You just don’t despair, do you, John?”

“Not a damn bit. As long as there are two people out there who can do things for each other, there’s a way for me to get between them and get a piece of it. Things are going to be moving around in the USA again—they’ve got new frontiers in all directions—and if you read your history, it’s the guys like me who got rich off it. If you know where you got your money, you always know where you can get more.” He kisses her tenderly. “Might be a lot of fun, to tell the truth; things had gotten a little dull this last decade, after we got too big to have to scramble. And one thing this last year has taught me is to love things that are real and tangible—like you, and Derry, and spending time with each other—instead of putting all my attention on silly abstractions like patents. I don’t think I’ll bother with technology again—it was all right in its way, but they can take it away from you so easily. When a man wants know-how, he can always just take it, use it, and not pay you; when you’ve got the only rail line, or the only steel mill or electric power plant or antimatter generator, anywhere near him, he’ll pay you and be damned glad to do it.”

Glinda snuggles closer. “Why, boss, you’re making speeches. And besides, until yesterday you had the only working space launch facility on Earth—”

“But in Siberia. That’s why we’re going back to the States, sweetheart. It’s not the kind of place where they’d ever take your railroad or your steel mill away from you.”

They sit for a long time, and talk mostly about how they’ll get things together enough for the trip back to the United States. Already he’s gotten enough off the net to know that Las Vegas is making it through just fine—and west of there, right now, there’s almost nothing reporting. He’s found the frontier—all he has to do is get there and get his toll gates up and his imprint on things people need. There might be a couple of tight years, but Derry—and maybe a brother or sister or two—will never have to work a day in her life, and isn’t that what life is all about? Building a secure future?

Above them, the blue skies of August roll on, occasional fluffy white clouds never blotting out the sun, and they stick around, like a couple of kids, to watch the first test shot, a morning satellite launch, rise on a pillar of flame and leave a white contrail streaking across the deep blue.

They’re getting near the top, and Mary Ann and Jesse are holding hands and talking as they walk. “Can you feel them inside you right now?” Jesse asks.

“Carla comes and goes. She’s very nice, really—quite courteous about the whole thing. Louie is a little abrupt but I like him.” She pushes stray hair away from her face. With no makeup and her dirty jeans and T-shirt plastered to her by the rain and sweat, Mary Ann still has a cartoonish body, but she looks oddly human, as if with just a bit more effort she might blend right back into the human race she was dragged out of. Jesse likes that.

“Have they told you anything about what’s going to happen?”

“Not really. I can make a couple of guesses. Louie and Carla now have control of all the XV feed on the planet. And according to the President they’ve also got the physical resources and control of information to do anything else they want. I think the new order for the planet is going to announce itself here, using us, taking advantage of all those cheap XV sets that were dropped to stop the Global Riot.