John Barnes - The Last President

Rollings loudly said, “I told you no interruptions ever—”

“We are not your clerk!” the Special Assistant said, entering.

He turned around. “I can see that.” Oh, spirits of Lando and Sisko be with me.

The Special Assistant lunged forward and struck him in the face; Rollings glared at the man with all the dignity he could muster. “If you are taking me to the Commandant, I am sure you were supposed to deliver me unharmed.”

“They didn’t say,” the man said. The four Special Assistants bound Rollings and Deanna, and shoved them roughly through the door. They didn’t go out of their way to push or trip them down the stairs but they didn’t seem to be worrying that that might happen, either.

Four guys, Jamayu thought. Well, crap, I hope you’re smart enough not to try anything, Geordie. Wish I hadn’t sent the distress signal at all. His older son was impulsive and brave to exactly the kind of fault Rollings was afraid he might be about to exhibit.

As they turned onto a broader street, Rollings saw that it was worse than he had thought; dozens of prominent citizens and their families were being marched through the town, and the Commandant’s supporters and hangers-on had brought the city crowd out onto the sidewalks to jeer and point. I thought the secret police had come for us, but this is feeling more like we’re going to the guillotine. Well, probably they won’t be looking for the radio or the code pads, then; this looks like a roundup of people that don’t like the Commandant, not like me getting caught spying.

Deanna pressed against him, and at first he thought she was huddling in fear, but though her wrists were tied behind her, she managed to elbow-bump him in Morse:

G WAVED 2D FLR WNDW HE IS LOOSE

He bumped back:

STAY LOOSE UR SELF

As they walked and more prominent citizens joined the group, the Special Assistants prodded the prisoners much closer together, and it was easier for Rollings and his daughter to signal each other. The Special Assistants and their militia backup seemed to be herding them together mostly to open up a separating space between them and the yelling, cheering crowd on the sidewalk.

Other prisoners were shouted at and sometimes struck if they tried to speak, so Rollings and Deanna kept communication discreet, brief, and necessary.

After a while, glancing back, he noticed that the crowds from the sidewalk were following them, and bump-signaled Deanna. She replied,

WE R PART OF EVENT I GUESS

but then neither of them had any more to say.

The Special Assistants marched their prisoners over the Brooklyn Bridge; in places where the pavement was crumbling there were sometimes frightening holes through which they could see water far below, but no one seemed to be trying to push them in. From there, they walked south toward the area near the former Battery Park where the Commandant had established his headquarters.

In all, it was only about two miles, but many of the prisoners were elderly and people don’t walk fast with their hands tied behind their backs. It was almost dark as they were herded, with the rest of Manbrookstat’s elite, into an open-air pen in front of the gas-lit rostrum. All around them, the city mob was restless, happy one moment and angry the next, apparently unsure whether they had been summoned to a purge or a festival.

Finally the Commandant stepped into the pool of warm gaslight on the rostrum. “My friends,” he said, “my dear friends, let me first make an announcement that will sadden some of you. Just a few days ago, the Army of the Wabash was defeated at Tippecanoe, in what used to be the state of Indiana, and beaten so badly that they were unable to come to the defense of Pale Bluff, that charming little town some of you may have read about in foreign newspapers. On Sunday, Pale Bluff itself was lost, and my agents tell me the fires are still burning there. The former United States no longer has a viable transcontinental connection, and Lord Robert’s Domain has become a secure nation with defensible frontiers.” There were so many lies in that single sentence that Rollings felt as if he might explode; dozens of routes remained open and the Domain was no bigger than it had been. But, he realized, most of these guys don’t know that.

“I have therefore come to a painful decision, one I had been forming for some time. The United States of America is not united anymore, many of its states have ceased to exist and are being replaced by other states and nations, and all that is left is an American continent in which we must carve out our own destiny. I am therefore proclaiming that the Commandancy of Manbrookstat is now and will remain a sovereign nation, with its northern boundary at the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, its southern boundary at the James, Greenbrier, New, Kanawha, and Ohio Rivers, details to be worked out with the Christian States of America which is now forming.

“Our western border will be fixed in negotiations with the Domain, which we have the honor to be the first nation to recognize and to accept in trade negotiations.

“The Commandancy of Manbrookstat intends to join the Atlantic League as a founding member; at this moment it appears that other founders will be the Galway Republic, the Grand Duchy of Halifax, the Kingdom of the Azores, Trinidad/Tobago, Dominica, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and a number of states now being organized around port cities in the former Brazil, Iceland, Norway, Morocco, Portugal, and Ireland.

“Finally, I realize that many of you had hoped there would someday be a United States again. I myself, as a cadet, took an oath to uphold and defend it. But however bereaved we may be, however deep our grief, however much we wish it were not so, the fact is that there is no United States anymore, and the dreams of reviving it are idle fantasies, and can only be dangerous delusional dreams in years to come.

“Now, I have every faith that the common people understand this. The common people, after all, are born practical, and besides, they are well aware that the old arrangements were not really in their favor; many of them can look forward to prospering much more in our newer, fairer world than they ever did under the old United States regime. And since the common people understand it, and gain by it, it is only a victory for democracy that we listen to them and pursue the independent and free Commandancy of Manbrookstat according to their wishes.”

Rollings tried to keep his face impassive as the mob surrounding their pen cheered and whooped. Apparently some of the people nearer the barriers were less good at hiding their feelings, for the crowd was jeering and throwing things at some of them, and the militia slowly, reluctantly, halfheartedly was trying to make them stop.

When the uproar had quieted, the Commandant went on. “Now, my friends and fellow citizens, you also see before you the business, educational, and political leadership of our Commandancy. These are of course people who did very well, back before.

“And then they continued to do well as the world moved, at first, toward re-establishing the old regime, and putting the United States of America back together.

“But as we have noted, there is no possibility now of a Restored Republic. Any hope for a Restored Republic, now, would be an aggressive plot to preserve wealth and privilege, or to gain more of it unfairly.

“So we can very fairly look at these citizens and ask, ‘Can we trust them? Will they work toward the new, democratic Commandancy, and for the common good?’ And, to be blunt, I am sure some of them won’t, but fellow citizens and good friends, let me point out to you that I have worked with many of these people, and know them, and like them, and that I am equally sure that most of them will make a full commitment to the success of the new Commandancy, and it would be the very height of injustice to treat them with suspicion or to vent anger from any bygone unfairness on these hardworking, upstanding people who have made our city a much better place to live.