John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

As if he had somehow perceived Allie’s last thought, Darcage said, “These are the positions that the United Tribes intend to press, which I will be advocating here in every forum. You reject them now, but since they are matters of simple justice, eventually someone, sitting in that chair, will say ‘Of course.’ In the vicissitudes of politics, it may even be you.” He turned to the other tribals and said, “As we discussed, I should like to confer privately with Ms. Sok Banh—”

“My last name is Banh,” Allie said, evenly, “and I won’t be saying anything privately that I wouldn’t say publicly.”

“Matters have been tense, I believe, and a short private chat to establish a cordial relationship—”

“Won’t have any effect at all,” Allie said. “If I want to consult with the tribes as such”— or, say, get the ski report from hell —“I know where to find you.”

As the delegation filed out, Darcage stopped at the door and closed it, remaining inside with her.

She yanked the cord under her desk to bring in a guard.

Darcage said, “I am in a position to mobilize appropriate activities by the tribes to influence the 2026 special election, and frankly, you and President Weisbrod cannot afford to pass up any possible source of help. The election will very likely turn on the question of whether Provis or Tempers look like the people who can run a good reconstruction, and reconstruction will be impossible without our—”

The door opened and a muscular young sergeant of the President’s Own Rangers pushed in and pinned Darcage to the wall. “Mister Darcage,” she said, “I told you to leave.”

After Darcage was removed, Allie canceled her next two appointments, pleading a headache. She stood at the window. More than usually, Olympia’s mall looked like a dank, dirty miniature of lost and cratered Washington.

The thing is, Darcage’s right. Everything about the 2026 election will be a squeaker, and we need all the help we can get, including his, if he has any to give. Of course, there’s no reason to believe he can deliver, but then, I won’t know unless we talk, will I?

Graham would make a hopeless mess of this; President Hubby was sometimes such a big Goody Two-Shoes, and this was a matter for a subtle mind that didn’t shock easily. Such as mine.

Heather set down the pile of papers, reports on tribal activities in the Lost Quarter, the Rio Grande Valley, the Columbia Basin, and the many smaller tribal areas. All right, she thought, Larry Mensche wins the argument. We can’t treat the tribes as a minor problem anymore.

She spent about twenty minutes changing things around on the chart. Many of her previous bosses might have thought this was busywork; to Heather, it was a way of thinking hard about an issue, because to decide how to represent it, she had to decide what it really was. The more she thought about the tribes, the more she realized that she didn’t know, and needed to know—and that they were important.

Her next area was no more comforting: the peculiar tangle of politics in the Temporary National Government, especially the balance of power after Collum Duquesne’s death. You could defeat the tribals; you had to win over the TNG, and one of the best voices in the RRC’s chorus was now suddenly, terribly still.

Poor Cam must feel so alone, she thought. Her old friend had had no gift for making friends even when he hadn’t been squarely in the way of so many powerful people.

She found a new report just in from Red Dog, brought in by Quattro and Chris on the Gooney earlier that day, and plunged into it to see if she could form a picture, in her mind, of what was happening in Athens; she was sure that she’d be moving some cards and strings, because she’s always had to for every Red Dog report before. Fighting her drowsiness—she was off coffee until Leo or Riley was born—she bent to her best-placed agent’s report.

Cameron Nguyen-Peters hadn’t cared one way or another at first when the mixture of colonels and ex-business execs who were the Board of the Temporary National Government had asked to begin every meeting with an “inclusive non-denominational” prayer. A third-generation Washington bureaucrat, it hadn’t occurred to him that down here “inclusive non-denominational” meant “equal time for nuts and total nuts.”

He’d learned to nod without hearing. The Board met in a small amphitheater where presidents of the University of Georgia once panhandled groups of wealthy alums; it had a long heritage of talk with no attention. Reflecting through droning had become Cam’s soothing review time before the acrimonious politics.

Not today.

Reverend Abner Peet, head of the Post Raptural Church, had been kept out of the praying rotation for three months by the votes of General Grayson, who was Cam’s Deputy Commander in Chief; the colonels who headed up Defense, Intelligence, and Security; and Collum Duquesne, the freeholder of Castle Newberry and Cam’s advisor on economic development. Their five votes tied the Board at 5-5, with Cam casting the deciding vote.

But Collum Duquesne, a wily old bastard who had managed to cobble together the manufacturing complex in Newberry, South Carolina, that was supplying black-powder weapons to the Army, rehabbing tons of museum technology, and supplying parts for half of the TNG’s tech projects… Collum, with his big laugh, warm hug, and sheer charm… had flown in for Board meetings, showing off his exclusive use of his rebuilt Piper Cub. On his way home from the last meeting, he had slammed into a mountain in a summer thunderstorm just outside Newberry.

Five Post Raptural Christians on the Board outvoted four military officers. Cam would not be allowed to appoint another advisor on economic development, because “if that’s something the private sector should take care of, then let’s let them take care of it,” as Reverend Whilmire put it.

I could just dissolve the Board. I created it and recruited it under the rules laid down in Directive 51; surely if it had been his to create, it could be his to alter or abolish? Cam was the Natcon, the only person in the room whose authority derived directly from the vanished Federal government—

Reverend Peet’s cadences were rising and building; he was soaring to the end of the prayer with metaphorical drums banging, cymbals clanging, and horns blazing away. “—guide the Christian men in this room, and bring Christ to the men who are Christian in name only, to see the clear hand of God in the Rapture of so many missing millions, to recognize the Tribulation now under way, and to make the declaration, here and now, to move toward the God-ordained Christian States of America, and to cease the persecution of those of us who try to do Your Will. Hear us for we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, who taught us praying to say, ‘Our Father,’…”

Everyone except Cam and the colonels leapt into the Lord’s Prayer; the rest jumped in later, Cam latest of all, and then he screwed up again by forgetting that it was “sins” and not “trespasses” that were supposed to be forgiven.

At the end, the five Post Rapturals on the Board rose and applauded before rushing down to congratulate Peet at the podium.

When that clown sprang the Lord’s Prayer on me, Grayson was right on it. I’m not sure whether I’m more worried that he was listening, or that I was caught not listening. Next Sunday Peet’s going to be trumpeting why-won’t-the-Natcon-say-the-Lord’s-Prayer, and the Athens Weekly Insight will be pushing to make me say it in public.