John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

He rose from his chair, mechanically thanked Reverend Peet, and watched Peet’s exit, as stately as a king leaving the minor business to the lackeys and minions. And what’s with the black robe and a doctoral stole? Up till now every preacher managed to pray in a black shirt with a funny collar.

When the Board finally took their seats for business, Cam hammered his way through announcements: For issuing new money, engravers were ready, paper wasn’t yet. The first Stearman copy with the new no-electric all-diesel engines would test-fly this week. Tribals had attacked a train outside Las Cruces, and Rangers were on their way to lead New Mexico Guard and allies from the California Castles for a punitive raid. Talks between the Springfield and Quincy governments in Illinois/Wabash were stymied. Foreign Relations had asked for military backup for Post Raptural missionaries in the Caribbean; Cam bluntly told them he was not going to use scarce military resources to rescue preachers who were trying to subvert friendly governments. The Post Rapturals used their new majority to record a protest and declare that the Board should have binding powers.

“I have the power to create and appoint a Board, which is then to be self-governing,” Cam reminded them. “And the Board is to serve at my pleasure. A Board that is hell-bound to overthrow the Establishment Clause—”

“A strong perspective on the Bible and the Constitution,” General Grayson said, “is well within the bounds of real American political thought.”

“This strong perspective seems to be that the way the Reverend Peet reads the Bible supersedes the way anyone with eyes reads the Constitution,” Cam said. Ouch. Grayson brings that out in me.

“The context of the Constitution,” Grayson said smoothly, “is that the Framers were Christian—”

Colonel Chin, advisor for Security, asked, “Does this matter?”

Bless her heart. “No, and I’m ruling it out of order. Under Directive 51, I am to hand over power only to a competent Constitutional authority. If we don’t follow the Constitution here—including the Establishment Clause—then it is we, not those hippie nuts in Olympia, who are outside the Constitution. I might find it necessary to rule that Graham Weisbrod is competent after all, and that you would owe your allegiance to the Olympia government.”

“This state has been a home of rebels before.” Albertson, the former Louisiana State Secretary of Education, was the staunchest Post Rapturalist on the Board.

“It has, and the answer to your proposal was delivered by General Sherman. This meeting is closed.”

On their way out, General Grayson tagged Cam’s elbow. “You know Reverend Peet is now urging Post Rapturals to pray for your death?”

“Does that make a difference?” Cam asked the general.

“It might.” Cam could never decide whether Grayson’s weird smirk was cynicism, contempt, or Grayson kidding God about making the world so silly. “God has been known to find human hands. We have to go over the incoming reports this afternoon, we can talk more then. Take a long lunch with a friend and decompress—it’s what I do. Later, my friend.”

“Later,” Cam said, trying not to visualize Grayson’s “long lunch” with Jenny. Well, I guess it probably does decompress him. My problem is I can’t buy lunch at the prison. Guess getting lunch isn’t as important as seeing my only friend.

General Lyndon Phat was sitting in the window seat he liked; the security forces kept people off the former golf course it overlooked. A squat, strongly built man with salt-and-pepper gray hair and a baggy face that looked much older than his body, with his reading glasses perched on his nose and his legs stretched across the seat, he looked like a professor reviewing before a lecture. “Don’t ask me how I am, Cam, the answer is always going to be ‘Just fine except they won’t let me go.’”

“Okay, I won’t ask that. What are you reading, Lyndon?”

“Reviewing the decisions before the Sicilian invasion.”

“General Patton?”

“General Alkibiades.” At Cam’s blank expression, Phat smiled. “See, this is what happened to ambitious kids like us. The Sicilian invasion in 415 BC was a great example of ignorance compounded by stupidity and turned to complete hell by overconfidence. But it wasn’t on the College Boards, so we never learned it.”

Cam sat down. “I want to tell you about a mess. Collum Duquesne is dead, and Castle Newberry passed to his son, who is Post Raptural. So we lost our majority on the Board, our alliance with the biggest Castle in the neighborhood, and all of Collum’s common sense and drive, all at once. And for that matter I am going to miss the hell out of the big goof and I have no time to mourn.”

Phat gestured for Cam to sit next to him, and put an arm around him. “Had you ever had a command job before President Pendano made you the Natcon?”

“I’d run plenty of staffs. It’s not the same thing.”

“No, it’s not.” Phat leaned back, but left a hand on Cameron’s shoulder. “You feel like every possible decision you can make is wrong and no matter what happens you’re bound to lose out, and there are a million important things you won’t even get to touch.”

“Read my mind.”

“We had a lot of wars in the teens and early twenties, Cam. I went to all of them, in command at one level or another every time. I wasn’t kidding that I’m glad not to have your job, and I can’t tell you how to do it. But I always found if I could think of the one thing I could accomplish, put everything into that, and find the nerve to let the rest go to hell—”

“I can’t let the Post Rapturalists have the Board,” Cameron said. “If they control that, they’ll find a way to get rid of me, proclaim their Christian States of America, and have a war going with Olympia in three weeks flat.”

“Then take your Board back,” Phat said.

“I guess that’s what I needed to hear. I’m not sure how I’ll do it and it won’t be easy, but now that I’ve said it out loud, I can feel that it’s what I need to do.”

“Don’t rely on Grayson. There is always some other purpose running through that guy’s head,” Phat said, “and it’s never the mission. Way too much like Alkibiades, actually.”

“Well, at the moment his main focus is his new wife—Reverend Whilmire’s daughter with the freak-show rack.”

“Yeah, you said. And the rack comes with the reverend.” Phat glanced at the clock. “Speaking of which, you have a meeting with Grayson, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Cam rose. “But I needed to come by here first. You always help me feel more ready for the world. Hey, what finally happened to Alkibiades?”

“Best general of his time, but no one could trust him. Every brilliant success followed by a spectacular act of betrayal. Played for so many sides that we’ll probably never know who assassinated him.” Phat pulled his glasses back down onto his nose, pointedly looked at his book, and said, “You’ll be late.”

Sometimes Jenny was so damned beautiful that it seemed to Jeffrey Grayson that she was physically impossible. He stepped into his living room, set down his briefcase, and she rose from the couch where she had been lounging in a perfect little tight white you-will-stare-at-my-body outfit, throwing herself into a flirty, froufy rush into his arms, so that it seemed as if she went from the perfect pose on the couch to the tongue deep in his mouth in a single gracious breath.