Orson Card - Empire

Eventually they all came. And came back. Along with other friends of Reuben’s from the military. And she began to get visits from military wives that she’d known on various assignments.

But Cole didn’t come.

At first she wondered why—was a little hurt, even.

Then she realized that Cole might have fought with these guys, but he didn’t really feel like part of the group. He had been added in.

And then she remembered telling him she wanted to talk to him, and then changing her mind. Maybe he interpreted that as my having changed my mind about wanting to see him.

Or maybe he’s busy.

I’ll call him.

But she knew that he was different from the other guys. Because he had been with Reuben those last three days. When the President died. In New York. And in the Pentagon, when DeeNee shot Reuben down. If he came over, she would tell him. Even though she couldn’t prove anything. She’d tell him because she had to tell somebody.

But not yet.

She watched the news assiduously, as she always had.

All the movements to recognize the Progressive Restoration died with the arrest of Aldo Verus. Vermont’s legislature didn’t bother rescinding their resolution because, as their attorney general assured everybody, it had no binding legal force anyway.

America watched with Cecily and her children as the Progressive Restoration forces in New York surrendered peacefully after two days of dithering—and after the city council voted unanimously to declare them to be traitors and request them to leave their territory.

And more and more evidence came out, exposing Aldo Verus’s network of influence and financial control. Many organizations dissolved themselves; others repudiated the financing they had received from Verus and pretended they hadn’t known where it came from and that it certainly shouldn’t be taken as any link between them and Verus’s abortive revolt.

Verus himself waited in a special prison as his hand underwent repeated reconstructive surgeries and he was kept on continuous suicide watch.

The children lost interest. The war was over.

But Cecily kept watching, with special interest in Averell Torrent.

She wasn’t all that unusual. Torrent was enormously popular. Almost movie-star popular. And he was handling it all so brilliantly. There had been talk right from the start about giving the Republican presidential nomination to Torrent, though there were also grumblings about how nobody even knew where he stood on abortion, on marriage, on taxes, on immigration, on anything except defense.

But whenever reporters asked him if he was seeking the Republican nomination, he’d answer, “I’m not a member of any party. I’m not seeking any nomination.” And then he’d walk away.

Then, in an interview on Fox News, O’Reilly said, “All right, Mr. Vice President, I’m going to ask you point-blank. Remember, this is the no-spin zone.”

“I never forget that, Mr. O’Reilly.”

“If the Republicans nominate you, will you accept the nomination and run for President?”

“No spin,” said Torrent.

“And no evasions, please.”

“Here’s the thing. I believe in democracy. Hard-fought elections. But right now—this country’s been on the brink of war. No, we were over the brink. Shooting had begun. And what was it about? The same divisive, vicious, hate-filled rhetoric that has dominated our elections for the past—what, fifteen, twenty years? I’m sick of it. I don’t want to be part of it.”

“I hear that, Mr. Vice President. But you still haven’t answered my question. Am I being spun, sir?”

“I’m being as clear as I know how,” said Torrent. “The only way I’d run for President is if I were nominated by both parties.”

O’Reilly laughed. “So the only way you’ll run is if you run against yourself?”

“I know I wouldn’t smear my opponent and he wouldn’t smear me,” said Torrent.

“So are you asking the Democrats to nominate you, too?” asked O’Reilly.

“I’m asking people to leave me out of all the hatred and bitterness, all the lies and all the spin. I accepted the office I hold now in order to end the impasse in Congress and help return this country to some kind of normality. I expect to step down when my successor is sworn in in January. After that, I’ll see if some university will take me onto the faculty.”

O’Reilly smiled and said, “The gauntlet is down, Democrats. It happened before, back in 1952, when nobody was sure whether Eisenhower was a Democrat or a Republican. Both parties wanted to nominate him. He picked one of them. But Vice President Torrent refuses to choose between them. The Democrats have the first convention. Will they stay with their current front-runner, who just happens to have the highest negatives of any candidate who ran this year? Divisiveness? Or healing? But I give you the last word, Mr. Vice President.”

Torrent smiled gravely. “I miss the classroom. I look forward to teaching again.”

“In other words, you think there’s no chance you’ll be nominated.”

Torrent only laughed and shook his head, as if the idea was ridiculous.

But he didn’t say no.

And despite the front-runner’s most desperate efforts, she couldn’t block Averell Torrent’s name from being presented at the Democratic convention. Too many delegates were announcing that they would switch to him on the first ballot, regardless of what they had pledged back in the primaries.

As one of the delegates said on camera, “A lot has happened since the primaries. If we didn’t have a responsibility to think for ourselves, there’d be no reason to have living delegates come to a convention, they could just tally the primary votes and make the announcement.”

Leading Republicans fell all over themselves to announce that if the Democrats nominated Torrent, they’d nominate him, too.

It’s really going to happen, thought Cecily.

And… I have to talk to somebody or I’ll go crazy.

So she went to look for Cole’s number, and realized: She didn’t know it. She had only the numbers of cellphones that he had long since discarded. And of course his office number at the Pentagon, where his assignment had evaporated when Reuben was killed.

Finally she called Sandy in the White House.

“If you want your job back,” said Sandy, “the answer is hell yes what took you so long.”

“I don’t,” said Cecily, “but it’s nice to know I’ve been missed.”

“I don’t miss you, I just have jobs for you to do,” said Sandy. “So what do you want? Because I’m so busy I don’t have time to scratch my butt.”

“Bartholomew Coleman’s phone number.”

“You call me to get a phone number?”

“Captain Coleman,” said Cecily. “The soldier who was with Reuben when… ”

“I know who he is, I see him every day,” said Sandy. “Home phone? Cell? Office?”

“You see him every day?”

“He’s assigned to the Vice President as his top aide on military affairs. He’s at all the briefings.”

“I didn’t know.” Cecily was dismayed. Had Cole climbed into bed with Torrent? Then she couldn’t talk to him.

“So don’t you want the numbers now?”

“Sure, of course,” she said. “I just didn’t know—yes, all the numbers.”

She could write them down. She just wouldn’t use them.

And she didn’t.

But that night, he showed up at her door at nine o’clock.

“Cole—Captain Coleman. I didn’t know—I didn’t expect—”

“Sandy said you called,” said Cole. “And then when you found out I worked with Torrent, you suddenly didn’t want to talk to ne.”

Sandy was way too observant.

“But I’ve kind of been waiting for you to call,” said Cole. “When you sort of backed off from talking to me a few weeks ago, I figured you wanted to wait. Or something. But… you know I really liked your kids. I don’t want to lose contact with you. I only knew Rube—Major Malich—for a few days, but…” He took a deep breath. Look, I was hoping there’d be cookies.”