Charles Sheffield - Aftermath

“So what’s your advice, Doctor?”

“Normally, I would recommend that a man in your situation should make opportunity follow desire. By this I mean that when next you feel strong sexual arousal, you should seek to act on it immediately. However, your position as President makes that course of action rather difficult.”

Saul stared at him. Forrest Singer didn’t joke, and he wasn’t joking now. When next you feel strong sexual arousal, you should seek to act on it immediately. That certainly had the potential to enliven a White House dinner party.

“As it is,” Singer went on, “I recommend that you do nothing, and continue to live as normally as possible. Eat more. Drink less alcohol. And try not to worry about your condition, which can only make it worse.”

“I’ve certainly got plenty of other things to worry about.” Saul turned to stare out of the window. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“It is, as always, an honor to serve the President.”

“And ask the lady waiting outside to come in, would you.”

Saul was being a little petty, and he knew it. He didn’t want Auden Travis ushering Yasmin Silvers into the Oval Office and standing there until he was told to go away. Yasmin was newer to the White House than Auden, and he surely resented her frequent meetings with the President.

Saul was still facing the window. It was dusk, and the emergency lighting system of the White House did not include the grounds and outside streets. Washington was darker than it had been in a century and a half. The glass of the window was like a mirror. Saul saw his own reflection and recognized a resemblance. He was an inch shorter than Grace Mackay, and he had a scholar’s stoop where she was all straight-backed military, but they shared the gaunt, spectral look of people too preoccupied to think much about food.

Tonight, he would eat everything that came regardless of appetite. And, in spite of Forrest Singer, he would drink whatever he felt like.

In the glass he saw Yasmin Silvers silently entering the room. She was of medium height, with a smooth and controlled walk that reminded him of a prowling cat. A cat may look at a king. Could a cat stalk a President?

He turned, to admire the skin that he had seen only faintly in the reflection. Her mixed Asian and Hispanic descent had given her a flawless ivory complexion, with a hint of darker color. The hands that held a brown folder were long-fingered and delicate, their trimmed nails painted a startling silver. She gave him her usual knockout smile.

“Good evening, Mr. President.”

“Hello, Yasmin. Sit down and make yourself comfortable.” He went across and opened the long credenza. “I took the liberty of ordering dinner for both of us, so we can talk while we eat. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had nothing since eleven this morning.”

“Thank you, sir.” Maybe she took his remark as a criticism, because she sat down and at once opened the folder. “I would not trouble you so late, but a new item has come up for rapid decision and action. It involves Internal Affairs.” She shook her head as he held an empty glass toward her. “Not for me, sir. Not until we are finished with business.”

If she was hinting that he ought to do the same, then she had too much damned cheek. Saul mixed a strong brandy and soda with no ice and walked back to sit at the other side of the coffee table.

“I’ve read briefing documents today until my eyes are dropping out. I’ll look at what you have later, but can’t you tell me about it?”

“Yes, sir. I can state the problem very simply. What are we going to do about judicial sleep?”

“I wasn’t planning to do anything. With our infrastructure down and nearly out, judicial sleep isn’t high on my list. Let’s get food and power and water and communications and transportation back, then we’ll worry about the criminals.”

Saul had been elected as a Centrist Party candidate, in favor of severe punishment for criminals but opposed to capital punishment. It was a highly popular part of his platform. Yasmin Silvers surely knew that.

And she was nodding vigorously, a tress of sleek hair falling over one eye. “I’m not referring to the late Secretary of Internal Affairs’s revised rules for sentencing, sir. Those can certainly wait. But we have nine hundred and thirty thousand people in judicial sleep.”

“Do you have a list of sentences?”

But Saul was stalling while he thought through the options. He knew all he needed to know about the criminals; they were iced down for anything from five years to one thousand.

“Not with me, sir. I can get it for you if you need it.”

Saul nodded. The perfect solution: JS, judicial sleep. No one was put to death, so it avoided all the old arguments about capital punishment. If new evidence came along to prove you innocent, you could be awakened. If you died while in the coma, well, tough, but it would be of natural causes.

And there was another factor, maybe the most important one of all. JS was cheap. No need for guards. No need, in fact, for any supervisory staff. Although one or two supervisory staff could be found at every JS facility, they were there only to provide the right public image of a caring and careful government. The smart monitoring and servicers took care of everything — drugs, nutrition, medical tests, and treatments — without ever finding it necessary to awaken their charges.

Storage space was minimal. A two-by-two-by-eight darkened cubicle per prisoner, and who needed more? Certainly not the iced-down occupants, whether dreaming or dreamless. Certainly not the public, paying for the upkeep and begrudging the expense, though it was only a hundredth of the cost per inmate of an old-fashioned prison. Not even those sentenced were likely to complain. If they didn’t know it before they were caught, they soon learned the degree of public intolerance of criminals. Icing down was pleasant compared with some of the citizen proposals.

Judicial sleep was the perfect solution. And like all perfect answers, it was fine until you ran into the snags.

“Do you have the JS prison sites?”

“Right here, sir.”

Rather than offering a written list, she had taken the trouble to mark the locations on a map of the country. Saul took it and spent a few minutes in silent study.

“Is it all right, sir?” she said at last. “I had to do it in rather a hurry.”

The eagerness for approval. Maybe that was the best part of being President, everyone around you sought to please. It was also the most dangerous part. When people constantly tried to guess what you would like to hear, necessary bad news might never reach you.

“It’s perfectly all right, very good in fact,” Saul said, and watched her glow. “The map is invaluable. It also tells us what we have to do.”

“Sir?”

“I’m afraid so. The JS support systems are sure to be packed with microcircuits, so they won’t be working. That suggests we ought to wake everyone at the prisons, otherwise they may die. But once awake, they will need food and shelter. Remember that a big percentage of those placed in judicial sleep are there because they were violent criminals. Whatever they needed, they took. JS doesn’t change someone’s personality. It’s all our police and military can do to keep things reasonably quiet as it is. And most of the sites are within fifty miles of major population centers. Do you want to be remembered as the person who unleashed a million desperate criminals on an innocent and unprepared citizenry?”

“No, sir. Of course not.”

“Well, neither do I. Think politics for a moment. If we do nothing, I can say that all our resources had to be devoted to improving the situation for law-abiding citizens during a very difficult time. That is a safe statement, and it happens to be true. On the other hand, if I revive those in judicial sleep, and even one of them commits a crime of violence, I will be blamed as much as if I did it myself.”