John Barnes - Directive 51

When he left, a couple of minutes later, he was talking intently with McIntyre; Allie was on his arm, working it pretty hard, Heather thought. Meow, she reminded herself. But I’m glad to see her lose one, and if I’m a cat, she’s still a bitch.

She felt something flutter as she stood, and instinctively reached down to touch her belly.

“Kick?” Arnie asked.

“Big one.”

“He’s trying to tell us,” Arnie said, “to get things in order before he gets here.”

She gave Arnie the raspberry, and the two of them went to a gossipy lunch; at least he seemed to be recovering from the whole Allie mess nowadays, and a year or two down in Texas playing with the physicists would probably mend whatever was left of the crack in his heart.

But walking home, trying to get her mind on the little bit of packing she needed to do, she couldn’t help thinking that Arnie had a point about putting things in order. The little kicker gave her another feathery touch, and she thought, Kid, Mommy had better move you someplace before I get too big and off-balance for the running, jumping, and fighting end of things. Hang on tight; I think this ride might get a little wild.

Graham Weisbrod looked tired and old in the flaring light of the oil lamp; a Renaissance painter might have loved the way the gold-yellow light flickered and played on his face, but Heather was saddened by every wrinkle and sag. This job is eating him alive.

Graham smiled as if it took an effort, but he seemed to mean it. “Heather. God, thanks for coming. I need someone to tell me I’m full of shit.”

“At least some things haven’t changed.”

“Like a beer?”

“Um, I know I’m not showing yet, but—”

“Not showing and not European, either,” he said. “How about pineapple juice in a can?”

“Oh, that’s better anyway.”

“I know—I’m hoarding it—that’s why I offered you beer first!” He grinned, handed her a can from a cooler beside him, and poured himself a glass of beer.

Maybe he’s his old self again. Maybe he called me here to talk about getting his act together.

The pineapple juice was wonderful; she hadn’t tasted any in months and really hadn’t expected to taste any ever again. Graham looked pretty blissed at the taste of cold beer, as well. Finally, he said, “All right, I’m being a coward here, Heather. I have something difficult and painful to discuss, and I seem to have acquired several roomfuls of sycophants, not least the First-Lady-To-Be.”

“You’re marrying her?”

His nod was curt and challenging.

“Congratulations.” It seemed the best thing to say. “You’ve been alone way too long.”

He relaxed and extended his beer glass; she clinked it with the canned juice, and they toasted something or other: friendship, or his marriage, or her avoiding the fight. Graham said, “Somehow I never internalized the plain old truth that it really is lonely at the top.” He half smiled. “I need a real friend to help me think straight about this thing in front of me.”

Heather savored the last sip of pineapple juice, a cover to buy time to think. Maybe Graham was coming to the realization that he’d succumbed to the temptations of pomp and power. She felt the baby kick. Hey, kid, don’t be cynical, leave that to people who’ve been born.

Weisbrod ran his hand over the top of his head, making all the little white wisps stand up, in exactly the way the media handlers used to take him to task about when he had first come to DoF. “Well, it won’t get any easier. Look, I’m getting very worried about Arnie Yang. He came up with this experiment idea, which was fine as far as it went, and I thought it might put some pressure on Athens, so of course I said to look into it. Then they came back with a way to put some pressure on me, fair enough, but it makes me wonder about Arnie—is he really… loyal?”

“Well, yes, he is.”

“I just think, as we go into this next year and a half, we’ve got to be very careful not to give too much to the other side—”

Heather said, sharply, “And you think they’re the other side.”

“Well, we don’t exactly agree on who’s the government—”

“Yes we do—or we will if you and Cam both keep your stupid eyes on the prize. You’re both caretakers. Your job is to keep things together till the real government arrives. And the real government of the United States isn’t going to be elected till twenty months from now, or take power until three months after that. You and the other caretaker are having coordination problems. It’s not a civil war unless the two of you decide to have one—and if you do, now that is disloyalty.” She surprised herself with her tone; maybe I just don’t like the idea that I can be bought for a couple reminiscences about college and a can of pineapple juice.

“Have you changed your mind? Have you decided that Directive 51 trumps the Constitution, too?”

He isn’t pulling off the et-tu-Brute/must you betray me with a kiss act nearly as well as he thinks he is. Crap, now he’s little old lost King Lear asking me to prove I love him the most.

She forced her voice to stay low and even. “Graham, we threw Shaunsen out for suppressing a journalist. Now you’ve done it—the same one that Cam jailed—and you’ve all had the excellent reason that the country needed to be secure, so the leader needed to be secure, and after all this was just going to be temporary, and all that. I’m still in the intel loop. I know you’re slowly moving troops forward, a station at a time, along the transcontinental rail lines, and Cam’s doing the same thing from the other side; you’re both deliberately running the risk of having American troops killing other American troops to establish who gets control of Jesus Junction, South Dakota. We’ve already had a skirmish between the Army and the Marines. Cam is turning the Southeast into one big Army base—”

“And I’ve sent letters of protest—”

“And you’re turning the Northwest into one big social services bureau or maybe high school. You’re both trying to nail down your pet things before the new government can make any decisions, sending every signal that they’ll have to abide by the decisions you’ve pre-made for them. But they’ll be elected , unlike either of you, and they should make the decisions. That’s how it works. The people are going to pick them to do what the people think should be done—not to carry out either of your sets of expert professional plans . That is, if you and Cam even permit the elections, and I’m seriously doubting either of you will.”

Graham looked like he’d been shoved backward against the wall and was trying to breathe. Well, good. Maybe I can hang out with Chris Manckiewicz in his cell.

After a moment, Weisbrod took off his glasses and cleaned them with a little glass atomizer and flannel rag from his desktop. “I suppose that I can see how it can look that way to you. From where I sit—”

“You’re sitting in the most comfortable—not to mention ego-stroking—job you’ve ever sat in. That gives you a great number of things, but perspective won’t be one of them.”

He set his freshly cleaned glasses down, blinking at her; it was one of his old manipulate-the-student tricks, and she wondered if he’d forgotten that he’d admitted to her that, since he wore bifocals, when he did that he did not see the other person more clearly but only as a blur. Finally, softly, he said, “Suppose that I were to try—fallible as I am, and subject to my own opinion and judgment—but suppose I were to just try to achieve a regularly elected, fully empowered government twenty-three months from now. Imagining that is my goal, what do you think I should do about Arnie Yang’s constant backdoor communication with the… with the other caretaker’s part of the government? What do you think I should do about the polarization and sense of struggle that is building daily?