Joe Haldeman - Future Weapons of War

“Sir, I’m very sorry to bother you, but I don’t know what to do,” the Marine said, his voice quavering. “I haven’t been paid in over a month, and my wife and kid, well, we’re running out of money. They keep on saying it’s a computer problem and that it’ll straighten out, and well… I thought maybe if you knew, well… I’m sorry sir, I guess I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, not at all,” he said, standing next to the young Marine, again feeling that little bit of acid guilt at the back of his throat. This man and his friends, they would go places, they could die because of a decision he did or didn’t make. Those were the kind of decisions he didn’t have back in Albany.

Politics was politics, and whether it was scratching backs or calling in favors for a highway bill for a state or a nation wasn’t that much different.

But this boy here… that was in another universe of difference, and it was those kinds of things that kept him awake nights. Nothing else. Not the fights with Congress or the media or his own people in the party. That was normal. But this… thee thought of all those young men and women, ready to risk everything, just because of something he thought was the right thing to do, or something his staff thought was the right thing to do, it really did haunt him.

Especially now.

“I’m sorry, son,” the President said. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll get ahold of one of my assistants and straighten this right out.”

The Marine grinned and nodded. “Thank you, sir, thank you very much. And… Mister President?”

He had his hand on the French doors leading back into the White House. “Yes?”

“The Nimitz, sir,” the Marine said. “You did what you had to do. Just so you know.”

Nimitz. Sprat. Boss Key. He felt dizzy, shook his head. “Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate that. By the way, do you know anything about computers? I’ve got a problem with the terminal in my office.”

The Marine grinned, no longer so scared of speaking to the POTUS, it seemed like. “No, sir,” he said. “Could never figure those suckers out. And with the kids… never could really afford one.”

The President nodded and went back into the cool interior of the White House, again hearing the faint sound of gunfire. Nimitz. Sprat. Something was missing. He tried to think of it and he saw in his mind a series of meetings, and something General Corcoran had said, holding up a piece of cable. A glass war. Fiber optics. Sprat. And no, it wasn’t Sprat, that wasn’t the whole thing, it was…

Boss key.

He stood in the empty corridor. Where was everybody? And his stomach grumbled and he started walking again. It was almost lunch and he was damned if he was going to go back to his empty Oval Office and stare at the blank screen and wait for someone to bring him something to eat. If people were in training or out sick or taking the damn day off, he’d have to fend for himself, and he walked along, making sure that he would tell his worthless chief of staff that this was unacceptable and that if it ever happened again, that this damn White House ground to a halt again, then he would be out on his ass, scrambling for another job on Wall Street.

A Marine guard! Complaining to him about not being paid!

He went down a series of stairs to the service areas, where the real behind-the-scenes people worked. He had read that some of his predecessors could only find their way from the living quarters to the Oval Office and the Rose Garden and back to the living quarters, but he prided himself on knowing the ins and outs of everything around here. The mail room in the Executive Office Building, which handled the tens of thousands of letters he received each week, and the switchboard, where the staff there could literally connect him to everywhere in the world. Like the Majority Leader, or the President of Russia, or even the First Lady, out on one of her tours of…

Maria. He felt a warm flush of shame crawl up his back. He hadn’t thought about her all morning. She was out in San Diego doing some military hospital tour, and he knew he would have to try to reach her today, if the damn phones ever started working again. He smiled as he walked, remembering how Maria had stuck with him, through everything, and how she had helped him unwind after a brutal series of meetings or fundraisers. One of the many hazards of politics was the lovely and young talent that got tossed your way, and if you didn’t keep your pants buttoned, your career could collapse faster than you could say Gary Hart or Bill Clinton. But Maria had always managed to take the edge off, and he had a particularly fond memory of election night three years ago, when she had taken him to the hotel suite and delighted him with something particularly erotic involving silk scarves and strawberries, and she had nuzzled him later and said, “Get used to it, bud. That’s the very first of your Presidential balls.” And they had laughed for long, delicious minutes.

Even though the switchboard was having a bad day, he’d still have to try to call her somehow later, and then he went through a series of doors, still marveling at the emptiness of the place. Through an empty and dark dining area, he went through another series of double doors and heard voices, and saw two men inside one of the three White House kitchens. They were talking and packing boxes and if he didn’t know better, it looked like they were taking food supplies away from the kitchen. There was an older and a younger man, and the older man seemed in charge. Both were dressed in jeans and gray sweatshirts, and both hadn’t noticed when he came into the kitchen.

“So make sure when we get back that your mom’s got everything packed, cause we got a long drive ahead of us,” the older man said. “There won’t be time to waste, and I won’t relax until we get to the camp. Then we’ll lock all the doors and load up the shotguns and wait this out, ’til somebody—”

The President cleared his throat, and both men stared up at him. The older man looked shocked while his son merely glared at him. He looked at them both, standing behind a wooden counter, cardboard boxes about them, with canned goods and boxes of spices and other foods. The older man had a White House pass around his neck, while his son didn’t. The kitchen seemed to go on forever—stoves, walk-in refrigerators, pots and pans of every size hanging from overhead—and once he had come here just before a State dinner and was amazed at the organized chaos of the cooks and serving staff moving around in a jumble.

Now it was mostly dark, with only the three of them here. “Sir?” the older man finally said.

“You’re on the staff here, aren’t you?” he asked.

“One of the chefs,” he said, still holding a cardboard box full of canned goods, which he slowly put down.

“Well,” the President said. “I was wondering if I could have some lunch.”

“Lunch?” he said, surprised. “You want some lunch?”

“Well, it’s almost noon, isn’t it?”

The man smiled. “I guess it is, sir. Lunch coming right up.”

“Dad!” the young man protested. “We don’t have time!”

His father started moving around the kitchen with graceful moves, opening a refrigerator door and taking some covered dishes out, and then getting some utensils. “Sure we do, son. We have time to make lunch for the President. Trust me, we do. How does a turkey sandwich sound?”

“That would be fine,” he said, and he sat down on a kitchen stool. The older man went to work and the son just stared in anger over the counter at him, making him feel nervous, and the son spoke to his father. “Dad, how can you do this? Cousin Charlie, he was in that task force. How can you sit here and make him lunch?”