John Barnes - The Last President

“Who’s the most excellent boy in the whole stinking world?” Heather asked Leo, who was making noises that indicated he knew. She hugged him close and thought, And I do mean stinking. Well, at least Dad’ll get to know his grandson, and there are worse places to live than San Diego, and… man, we are so beaten.

The knock at the door was soft. “Ms. O’Grainne? Got an emergency message from Incoming Crypto.”

She opened the door to find Ntale standing there. “Patrick sent me ’cause it was further to Mister Hendrix’s house. And Melissa at Crypto told us both to run, run, run, she said it just like that, three times, she said you’d want this news right away.”

Heather handed Ntale a pile of meal coupons and said, “Hang around till I read it, just in case I need to send a message with you.”

She set Leo down with a final little tap of her finger on his nose, which made his eyes cross in a way that always made her laugh. She grinned at the silly boy, then got the letter opener from her desk, slipped it under the envelope flap, and drew a deep breath against the coming bad news. The horde was already on its way down the Ohio, perhaps an advance party had already attacked Paducah? The Army of the Wabash ambushed and cut off again? Another declaration of independence somewhere? The tribes that had been moving around in the Tennessee Valley and the Ouachitas had broken out again?

Whatever it is, we’ll get through it, she thought. Strange that I’m still the President, this morning, so I guess getting through whatever it is, is my job.

Then she opened it, and saw that it was from Carol May, who was alive and transmitting from a barn fifteen miles northwest of Pale Bluff, and expected to make it into Wayne City late today. She teared up; Carol May, alive!

She had to wipe her eyes before she read the even better news. When she did, she handed Ntale a fistful of meal tickets, and said, “If James hasn’t started cooking breakfast, make him start. If he needs groceries, get his order and take it to the commissary, put it on the RRC tab. And then you and Patrick go get Leslie, and the Duchess from wherever she’s staying, and Jason and Beth, and Izzy Underhill, okay? We need to meet, which means you and Patrick get us all into James’s house, quick as you can.”

Ntale grinned. “Let me show you how quick that is. I’ve been getting my growth this year and Patrick’s not the only fast one in the family anymore.”

“Well, the attendants are saying he only started to move about an hour ago. He’s had time to pee and they gave him a little breakfast, and they’re saying he’s kind of drifting around, which is pretty usual the morning after a severe seizure.” James looked up and down the conference table. “So we’re agreed on the basic strategy, right? Shock him with the news and see what happens. Maybe we can get him loose enough from Daybreak to clue us in to something else. Now, any other thoughts?”

There were none. When they filed into the little room, Arnie barely looked up from where he sat on the bed, leaning forward, arms folded as if he were a small boy with a stomachache.

James said, “The horde led by Lord Robert of Castle Earthstone has converted, en masse, to the version of Daybreak that he calls True Daybreak, which preaches that the clean, natural Earth is here for human beings to enjoy, and instead of driving forward in a great raid against the plaztatic world, they are going home to plant crops, raise children, and repopulate the Earth.”

“Liar.”

“All true. Every word of it. Daybreak is betrayed. The Lost Quarter is in the hand of heretics, or whatever your stupid bush-hippie movement calls them.”

Arnie shuddered and wiped his eyes. “I can’t feel Daybreak,” he said. “It’s not reacting. It’s just me, left here, now that it’s done with me.”

“Then why won’t you believe me?”

“I don’t know.” He wiped his eyes again.

“Do you remember what we talked about yesterday? Do you remember telling me how Daybreak tricked us into playing its game, and losing the war?”

“Like it was a hundred years ago.” He rocked back and forth. “Daybreak… it’s in trouble. Or not, maybe it’s just finished what it came for. This True Daybreak, is, is, is, not yet, no, no seizure this time. True Daybreak or not, it doesn’t matter. This plaztatic world will rise no higher, this world will not… your species, this species, my species, doesn’t matter, the world will be wild and safe, no danger to anyone.” He looked up at them with a vacant stare. “James? What have I been talking about?”

“Nice fake, Arnie.”

“I can’t remember what we’re talking about.”

“Do you remember that True Daybreak is taking over the Lost Quarter, and Lord Robert has betrayed you?”

“No, I… maybe, you just told me, didn’t you?”

“Can you feel Daybreak inside you? It almost gave you a seizure. You said you couldn’t feel it.”

“It lies a lot. I lie a lot. I’m sorry. Can I sleep now?”

Back in the Facility 1 conference room, James said, “Well. I think that Daybreak definitely wants us to believe that Lord Robert’s heresy is not something Daybreak approves of and it’s not the next move in Daybreak’s development. We’re being set up to believe that it’s his own particular invention, and what he has re-invented is barbarian tyranny. That’s pretty awful if you consider all his subjects were ordinary Americans or Canadians, regular people with regular jobs, two years ago. But if you consider that he’s just a plain old barbarian conqueror, not too different from Attila or Chaka Zulu or one of the Khans, and civilization has five thousand years of practice in how to deal with those, well, yeah. We couldn’t live with the tribes, but we can live with the Domain. They’ll come to us to trade, maybe not this week or this year, but soon, and they’ll want all those nice toys and a warm house in the winter and out of season food, and in a hundred years they’ll be absorbed. That’s the story it’s telling us.”

“But you don’t believe it’s true?” Bambi asked.

“Not really. It looks like classic Daybreak, the lies are just wrappers for more lies.”

Jason nodded. “That’s the way I see it too, James. Yeah, I buy that civilization can absorb some of Daybreak, but that doesn’t mean the end of Daybreak; it means Daybreak is going to be all through civilization. Everywhere, all the time, as the new world grows up, Daybreak will be there whispering that machines are wicked, knowledge is poison, and people were meant to be big hairless monkeys huddling in the bushes and dying before they’re forty. That was around before, but look at Castle Earthstone. Me and the other scouts didn’t see a city that’s going to grow and advance and change. It was a hunting cabin, a place for guys to play out their big man in the woods fantasies. If it turns into a real castle, it’s still going to be a backward, primitive, progress-and-people-hating kind of place. Kids that grow up there are gonna grow up with the idea that dirty, smelly, overworked, and sick is virtuous, and that enjoying life and comfort and having the tools and leisure to explore a long way is degenerate and wicked. Lord Robert hasn’t defeated it; he’s just driven it underground, and it’ll trickle up all around his Domain, and keep it stuck in the mud forever.”

“But he’s not burning down the civilized world,” James pointed out.

“True.”

Beth said, “I have the strangest idea.”