John Barnes - The Last President

“Going to be any minute. You’ll never believe it, but Jenny Whilmire Grayson is the biggest asset the Army has in trying to stop it. But she’s not enough, and it’s too late. They will formally declare the CSA within two weeks, according to our source. Anyway, maybe Manbrookstat, the CSA, or whatever the Provis organize will be able to reconquer the Lost Quarter, if the tribes pay too high a price this summer or stay out on the plains too long and get caught in the winter too far from home. But the dream of the Restored Republic is finished.”

“I’ve decided to resign as soon as I’m at Castle Castro,” Heather said. “And there’s no line of succession left after me. In a couple of days, I will have officially been the last President, of the United States that is no more.”

Arnie howled like a coyote with its balls in a trap, arched his back farther than any of them might have imagined possible, and tried to backflip toward the bench. Jason lunged forward, knocked him sideways, and tackled him to the floor. Beth and Ysabel joined in holding him down.

The seizure ran “longer than most, and more violent than anything we’ve seen this year,” as Beth noted.

When it was over, Arnie Yang seemed more unfocused and blurry too. They thought they would just put him onto his bench with his blankets and go, but then he spoke very softly. “That was a bad one. I think that was because Daybreak is giving up on me, trying to scramble my messages as it goes, I’m no longer useful it doesn’t want to leave me around as a record of what it did.” He was crying. “I think it will try to get me confused enough to have an accident or get me someplace where I just die. James, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s all right, Arnie, but tell me what you are sorry for. I’ll forgive you.”

Normally a seizure didn’t come this quickly after a previous seizure, but this one tried; Arnie again arched and kicked, but subsided very quickly. “The whole thing. The whole thing. Daybreak gets gets gets stronger from people fighting it, and we got you to fight a whole war… .”

James seemed to sit back as if he’d been kicked.

Arnie babbled a little longer, then fell asleep. They covered him and left.

In the conference room, James said, “I know what he meant.”

Heather nodded. “Does it matter anymore?”

“We should all know, if only for the history books. Look, the big camps along the Ohio were on the brink of starvation if they didn’t start moving; we went in and attacked them and created our big scary army to motivate them. What if we’d just built up defenses for a rapid response, then sat down and traded with them? Kidnapped shamans, recruited defectors, sent over agents to sow doubt and confusion, let the camps collapse? Arnie steered us toward making it a war in the first place—one where Grayson would have to win eleven battles back-to-back.

“So then they retreated. We could have just said, the danger’s over for the summer, because it was. They couldn’t have come back to mount a raid across the whole territory. What they could do, though, was rally all the tribes against an invading army—and we sent them one. Not only that, they put themselves under Lord Robert’s command; now he’s surrounded by an army of loyal Daybreakers, who might reconvert him or his followers.

“And then… well, this one wasn’t through Arnie, but isn’t it interesting how Quattro suddenly pushed us all into defending Pale Bluff, which couldn’t be done, instead of evacuating it, which could? Where do you suppose a guy who had been fighting Daybreak for a couple years got that idea?” He looked down at the table, and then looked up again. “You see it? I absolutely blew it. I am the biggest idiot in the world. Daybreak knew that we would give it a war, and the war would be how it would unify the Lost Quarter around a plan that has now totally defeated us. Heather, I know the RRC probably won’t last another two weeks, but I would like it on the record that I resigned on grounds of manifest incompetence.”

“Only if we agree that I did too,” she said quietly. “It’s been a terrible day full of terrible news. I want us to all gather at James’s house, for one of those quiet evenings of food and being together, and then maybe tomorrow we will tackle Arnie again. But I’m very afraid you’re right, James. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Daybreak has only finally let us realize just to make its triumph more complete.”

“And to demoralize us,” Leslie said, very quietly. “I was just thinking how much I feel like giving up, and then I realized Daybreak wants me to think that. So we are going to hang on for a day longer, and if that doesn’t make a difference, maybe another. Meanwhile, tonight, there’s food at James’s, if he’ll cook.”

He sighed and spread his hands. “I’m not going to give up the only thing in the world that feels right. All right, let’s all give it one more day, after the best meal I can make you.”

Back before, Jamayu Rollings thought, when this place was Brooklyn, we were all worried about how the police come late if they come at all, or however that old song my dad used to like went, and holding marches to try to get some decent protection, and I was so glad to move out to the other end of Long Island and know the cops would come if I needed them.

Well, welcome to Manbrookstat, where the police come about a day too soon.

He looked up to see that Deanna was looking at him, not moving. Shouts from downstairs at the front door were rising up toward them. He thought, Stop reminiscing, old fart, and save your family’s ass.

“By the drill,” Rollings said. He unclipped the antenna wire from where it connected to an inconspicuous bolt in the wall that happened to go through to a west-facing wire loop on the back of an old billboard. He detached the ground wire clip from the old radiator. He dropped both connector wires onto the radio, and removed the C-clamp that held it to the coffee service table. Then he lifted out the removable section of the old heating duct, creating a two-foot across hole, into which he dropped the whole radio. He put the section back, set an account book on the table where the radio had been, and opened it to yesterday’s entries.

When he glanced sideways, Deanna had the correspondence and the one-time pads in a single heap, and was lifting the rug to expose the slot in the floor. She slid the papers into it and let the rug fall back into place; the papers were now between two plaster walls on the floor below.

The Special Assistants coming up the stairs might have heard the radio falling into the bend of the duct in the cellar, of course, though they had long ago stuffed it with old rags to muffle the impact. Perhaps if they found the slot in the floor, they might get ambitious enough to tear the wall apart. For the moment, though, the incriminating evidence was gone.

Just outside the door, a Special Assistant was telling Rollings’s clerk that they didn’t give a damn for the company rules. They must be trying to keep it a quiet arrest.

Rollings risked striking a match, reaching out the window, and lighting the fuse that ran up an old rainspout and through a length of pipe to a firepot on the roof peak. The firepot was visible from Ferengi , currently moored in the harbor, and from the family home—if the fuse burned all the way to it, if it ignited, if anyone was looking. But it was nice to have one more thing to do. He dropped the match, pushed the window closed, rested his finger on an entry about a roll of chicken wire—the knob turned.