John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

“Make what up? I don’t think—”

“Make up whatever needs making up, right away, make the people to do it, make it happen. Like how you caught Arnie.”

“Debbie was the one who caught—”

“Debbie tackled . You caught. Without your work I’d have had no idea what to do except arrest you both. You had all the evidence, you just didn’t have any reason to think I’d believe you. Besides, you can’t mean I should hire Debbie. Should I put her behind a desk and start parachuting you into the boondocks?”

James leaned back, looking at the ceiling. “All right. I have to admit I’m already starting to think about how to make it all work. I just want to state for the record that you’re hiring me with no experience—”

She leaned forward and pinned James with her gaze into his eyes. “James, my other possible candidates don’t have nearly the relevant skills you do, and have never done it at all. Whereas you do have the skills and have done it right once.”

“Yeah, but then you’ll expect me to do it right again.”

“Unh-hunh. And over and over. And hold you accountable each time.”

James shrugged. “It’s the kind of deal I’ve been looking for all my life. Okay. I’m in.” He nodded at the handwritten blackboard. “Do you have time for dessert?”

“For raspberry fool? Absolutely!”

“Good, because I’m feeling very much like a fool, myself.”

Cameron Nguyen-Peters walked to the Council meeting with a light step for the first time he could remember. So odd, I even liked Arnie Yang, and I’m sorry for what happened to him. And he did so many good things for me, before Daybreak and after. But he never did a better thing for me than he just did by getting caught.

Whilmire led the prayer, thanking God for making the United States a Christian nation, veering close to thanking him for Daybreak. Hmm. The Board demanded that I start jailing people for false preaching. Wonder how they’d react if I started by arresting Whilmire?

Cam looked around the room after the prayer. He had no expression as he said, “Late yesterday, Doctor Arnold Yang, the former chief director of research at the RRC, was executed for treason in Pueblo; he had been taken over by Daybreak. His Daybreak contact or controller, code-named Aaron, who planned and carried out several of the most damaging attacks on Daybreak day, was killed in the process of capturing Yang. Heather O’Grainne, the director of the RRC, has presented me with convincing evidence that they have completely rolled up the espionage network in Pueblo. Incidentally, Leslie Antonowicz, who was initially arrested, has been exonerated. I thought you might like to know that particularly because several of us worked with Ms. Antonowicz during the recent, aborted summit in Pueblo. Also, James Hendrix has been appointed to take Doctor Yang’s place.”

“‘ ’Scuze me while I kiss the sky,’” the oldest reverend said. This was the first time the old man had spoken and he was making no sense. “James Hendrix,” he said. “Jimi… oh, never mind.”

Grayson, who had been pre-informed, nodded approval. “Good job at Pueblo. Pity they didn’t catch him sooner.”

Cam made himself smile; it didn’t come naturally, though he felt like singing. “Luckily it was soon enough. You will all recall that talks with Olympia in preparation for the restart election broke off just a few weeks ago when it was discovered that Daybreak had penetrated the Pueblo staff. That impediment is now removed. We’ve lost a month, but there’s no reason we can’t make it back in the next thirteen months. Gentlemen, we’re going to put our nation back together under the Constitution.” He waited a moment to see that the reporter from the Weekly Insight was scrawling frantically and looking up with light dawning in his eyes. Now was the moment. “I am therefore contacting Olympia immediately to determine the earliest possible date at which we can meet to resume the process, and I have already received the following message from Ms. O’Grainne in Pueblo, and I quote, ‘For peace and the Constitution, our door is always open. Tell everyone they can have their old room back.’ End quote. I therefore ask the Board to endorse the resumption of this effort to restore our nation, and gentlemen, I’d appreciate it even more if you can make it unanimous.”

It was the least enthusiastic chorus of aye that Cam had ever heard, and at least a third of them did not participate. But the dead silence when he called for the nays allowed him to declare the vote closed and unanimous. When he asked Whilmire, “Reverend, could you lead us in a closing prayer now, so I can send our reply as soon as possible?” he had a clear, confident undertone of threat.

He and Grayson, as usual, were the last ones out. “General, thank you for making this possible.”

“You appealed to my oath. It’s hard to resist that.”

“Of course.” They walked to the end of the corridor in silence, and Cam added, “You’re entitled to be along for the historic moment. Please come along while I do the radio conference. How are the plans going for an expedition against Castle Earthstone?”

“I think we’ve settled on the route north of Terre Haute. The forces will be adequate for the job, and if I have anything to do with it, we’ll be ready as soon as we have dry ground in the spring.”

Cam smiled slightly. “Are you a history buff, at all, General?”

“Most career officers tend to be.”

“Yes. I was just wondering… you know, winning the first battle fought along the Tippecanoe made someone president.”

Grayson laughed. “I assure you, that’s not any part of the reason for the plan, but now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ll always suspect myself. Well, I’ll supply a victory on the Tippecanoe—you supply an election—and perhaps we’ll see. You wouldn’t know any politicians named Tyler, would you?”

Cam laughed as much as he could manage, given that he almost never did, and the two men walked in what was almost companionable silence. Now I’ve got you, he thought, and if that didn’t feed your ego, God alone knows what will.

“When I was little,” Chris said, “I remember there was some show in reruns, where a midget would yell, ‘The plane! The plane!’ at the beginning of every episode. I just thought the midget was interesting, when I was a kid, but now I realize how interesting a plane is. Especially compared to waiting for fish.” The airplane engine, and the glimpses of a biplane moving in the sky to the south, had just given them an excuse to fold up for the afternoon and head for the airport.

Jason lifted out a stringer holding two decent-sized walleyes, a steel-head, and four perch. “Jeez, I hope Doctor Rhodes doesn’t turn out to be right. The fishing’s so good, I hate to think of all this turning into green goop and then a swamp.”

“Yeah. You know, we thought Daybreakers were environmentalists.”

Jason shrugged. “ We thought we were. We worked hard at not being human-centric, but it was just another way of acting out the basic Daybreak idea: humans suck and ought to die. We just wanted to kill people, for being mean and inconsiderate, for being too numerous, mostly for just existing at all.” A cold breeze blew into their faces; Jason’s gaze shifted to the gray sky over the trees, not watching the plane anymore. “If destroying the Great Lakes meant killing more people, Daybreak would do it. Daybreak isn’t right or left, or Green or racist, or anything. It’s just Daybreak—people suck and ought to die.”