Greg Bear - The Forge of God

Rotterjack nodded glumly.

“We’ll give it a try,” Arthur said.

Arthur walked through the afternoon crowds at Dulles, suit hanging on him, hands in pockets. He knew all too well that he resembled a scarecrow. He had lost ten pounds in the last two weeks, and could ill afford it, but he was seldom hungry now.

Glancing at the American Airlines screen of arrivals and departures, he saw he had half an hour until Harry’s plane landed. He had a choice between forcing down a sandwich or calling Francine and Marty.

Arthur was still trying to remember his wife’s face. He could picture nose, eyes, lips, forehead, the shape of her hands, breasts, genitals, smooth warm white stomach and breasts the color of late morning fog, the texture of her thick black hair. He could recall her smell, warm and rich and breadlike, and the sound of her voice. But not her face.

That made her seem so far away, and him so isolated. He had spent ages, it seemed, in offices and in meetings. There was no reality in an office, no reality among a group of men talking about the fate of the Earth. Certainly no reality surrounding the President.

Reality was back by the river, back in the bedroom and the kitchen of their house, but most especially under the trees with the smooth hiss of wind and the rushing music of water. There he would always be in touch with them, could be isolated and yet not alone, out of sight of wife and son yet able to get back to them. If death should come, would Arthur be away from them, still performing his separate duties…?

The airport, as always, was crowded. A large tight knot of Japanese passed by. He felt a special kinship with Japanese, more so than with foreigners of his own race. Japanese were so intensely interested, and desirous of smooth relations, one-on-one. He walked around the knot, passed a German family, husband and wife and two daughters trying to riddle their boarding passes.

He could not remember Harry’s face.

The open phone booth, with its ineffective plastic half bubble, accepted his credit card and thanked him in a warm middle-aged female voice, teacherlike and yet less stern, impersonally interested. Synthetic.

The phone rang six times before he remembered: Francine had told him the night before that Marty would have a dentist’s appointment in the morning.

He hung up and crossed a central courtyard to a snack shop, ordering a turkey-pastrami sandwich and Coke. Twenty-five minutes. Sitting on a tall stool by a diminutive table, he forced himself to eat the entire sandwich.

Bread. Mayonnaise. Bird taste of turkey beneath an overlay of pastrami. Solid but not convincing. He made a face and took the last meatless dry double wedge of bread into his mouth.

For a moment, and no more, he felt himself slide into a spiritual ditch, a little quiet gutter of despair. To simply give up, give in, open his arms to the darkness, shed all responsibility to country, to wife and son, to himself. To end the game — that was all it was, no? Take his piece from the board, watch the board swept clean, a new game set up. Rest. Oddly, coming out of that gutter, he took encouragement and strength from the thought that if indeed they were going to be swept from the board, he could then rest, and there would be an end. Funny how the mind works.

At fifteen minutes after two, he stood at the gate, to one side of a crowd of waiting friends and families. The open double doors brought forth business men and women in trim suits gray and brown and that strange shade of iridescent blue that was so much in fashion, peacock’s eyes Francine called it; three young children holding hands and followed by a woman in knee-length black skirt and austere white blouse, and then Harry, clutching a leather valise and looking thinner, older, tired.

“All right,” Harry said after they hugged and shook hands. “You have me for forty-eight hours, max, and then the doctor wants me back to blunt more needles. Jesus. You look as bad as I do.”

In the small government car, winding through the maze of a bare concrete parking garage, Arthur explained the circumstances of their meeting with the President. “Schwartz is putting aside half an hour in Crockerman’s schedule. It’s getting very” tight. He’s supposed to be in New Hampshire this evening for a final campaign rally. Hicks, you and I will be in the Oval Office with him, undisturbed, for that half hour. We’ll do what we can to convince him he’s wrong.”

“And if we don’t?” Harry asked. Had his eyes lightened in color? They seemed less brown than tan now, almost bleached.

Arthur could only shrug. “How are you feeling?”

“Not as bad as I look.”

“That’s good,” Arthur said, trying to relax that anonymous something in his throat. He smiled thinly at Harry.

“Thanks,” Harry said. “I have an excuse, at least. Is everybody else around here going to look like extras in a vampire movie?”

“What do you weigh now?” Arthur asked. The car moved out into watery sunlight. Snow threatened.

“I’m back to fighting trim. I weigh what I weighed in high school. Graduation day.”

“What’s the prognosis?”

Harry crossed his arms. “Still fighting.”

Arthur glanced at him, did a frank double take, and asked, “Is that a wig?”

“You guessed it,” Harry said. “Enough of that shit. Tell me about Ormandy.”

The wide double doors to the Oval Office opened and three men stepped out. Schwartz nodded at them. Arthur recognized the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Secretary of the Treasury.

“An emergency meeting,” Schwartz murmured after they had passed. Hicks raised his eyebrow in query. “They’re thinking of implementing Section 4 of the Emergency Banking Act, and Section 19a of the Securities and Exchange Act.”

“What are those?” he asked.

“Temporarily close the banks and the stock exchanges,” Schwartz said. “If the President makes his speech.”

The President’s secretary, Nancy Congdon, came to the doors and smiled at the four of them. “Just a few minutes, Irwin,” she said, silently easing them shut.

“Do you need a chair?” Schwartz asked Harry. Harry shook his head calmly. He was already used to people being solicitous. He takes it with something beyond dignity — with aplomb.

The secretary opened the doors and invited them in.

Mrs. Hampton had redecorated the President’s office, hanging the three windows behind the President’s large, ornately decorated desk with white curtains and ordering a new oval green rug with the presidential seal. The room seemed filled with light, verdant and springlike despite the gray winter skies outside. Through the windows, Arthur caught a glimpse of the snow-patched Rose Garden. He had last been in the Oval Office a year and a half before.

Crockerman sat behind the Victorian-era desk, looking over a stack of briefs tucked into brown folders. Some of the folders, Arthur noticed, were marked DIRNSA — Director, National Security Agency. Others were from the offices of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. He’s not going off half cocked. He’s preparing, and he deeply believes in what he’s doing. He hasn’t stopped being presidential.

“Hello, Irwin, Arthur…” Crockerman stood and reached across the desk to shake their hands. “Trevor, Harry.” He pointed to the four leather-bottomed, cane-backed chairs arranged before the desk. Addressing Hicks in particular, he said, “Sarah mentioned I might be meeting with you.”

“I think we’ve all joined forces, Mr. President,” Schwartz said.

“Are you feeling up to this, Harry?” Crockerman asked, politely solicitous.

“Yes, Mr. President,” Harry replied smoothly. “I’m not needed back with the mice and monkeys until the day after tomorrow.”