John Barnes - Directive 51

“We’ve never done it before,” Cameron admitted. “But I had to promise it to Shaunsen so he’d come down here and go on the air.”

“Shit.”

“Unofficially, that’s my opinion too. But we’ve had an oath ready for decades, in case there was a need for swearing in. It’s the Presidential oath except that there’s a bit about handing the job back when he’s told to, and it has ‘temporary’ and ‘acting’ all through it. And it’s not all downside; sure, it’s stroking Shaunsen’s oversized ego, and that’s probably just going to make a bad situation worse, but the PR consultants do seem to think that it will help reassure Americans, now that they’ve been completely freaked by not hearing from their president all night.”

“I never thought I’d say this,” Heather said, “but this almost makes me wish Norcross was in office.”

Cam smirked, just a little. “After today, who knows? He might be. But this isn’t the way I wanted it to happen.”

“No—”

Chief Justice Lopez came in, her motorcycle helmet still under her arm, with her two “wingmen,” the Secret Service who rode with her. They discreetly steered her to Cam, who handed her a copy of the Acting President’s Oath of Office. She pulled out a pen and began marking changes.

“That was vetted by the Attorney General,” Cam said.

“Unhhunh. He knows the law. I decide if he’s right. There’s three spots in here that Shaunsen could use to stay in power when he ought to go, and I’m fixing those. Plus two misspellings and I guess they just don’t teach them how to use semicolons in law school anymore. We’ll have it ready before I have to swear in His Nibs, and you know as well as I do that he won’t look at it first—that would involve work.” She bent to her task, unzipping her leather jacket and shrugging it off. “And don’t sweat the clothes, I’ve got a spare robe from my saddlebag—one of your interns is pressing it right now. Another lost skill. Thank god you have some back-country girls working here.”

As they drifted away from Lopez, Heather said, “There’s never been any idea of putting the Chief Justice in the line of succession, has there?”

“No, not really. And it would have been a mixed bag. Taft had been president, Earl Warren or John Marshall would have been fine, Roger Taney would’ve been a disaster. Besides, it sort of violates the separation of powers.”

“Doesn’t bringing a president over from Congress do that?”

“Shh. One of a lot of problems with the ’47 Act. In a better situation, I might have asked Lopez for a ruling about it. But I think we’ve got to have a President, any president, inside the next hour, so… let’s hope he grows.”

Graham Weisbrod brought in Secretary of State Randolph, who looked very tired and old—he’d already been planning to go back to Oxford, Mississippi, as soon as Pendano was re-elected. Weisbrod got him coffee and squatted to chat with him in a friendly way.

“Your old teacher and boss is definitely a people person,” Cam observed.

“Yeah. Hey, am I keeping you from anything you should be doing?”

“Getting everyone to this room is what I should be doing as NCCC, and that’s obviously something I delegate. Other than that, there’s just not that much left of either of my jobs. Most of the emergency operations upstairs are closing down; the disaster relief for stuff like the truck pileups and plane crashes is over at FEMA, catching Daybreakers is up to the FBI domestically, and the military are gearing up to go get as much of il’Alb as they can find, which won’t be much—it never has been. The temp team upstairs has been great, but it’s time for most of them to go back to their regular jobs. I’m going to shut most of it down and send as many of you home as I can. I might even sleep some tonight if I’m lucky.”

Dwight Ferein, Cam’s boss ( and a prize stuffed shirt if ever there was one, Heather thought), brought in the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General, settling them into chairs next to Randolph.

Peter Shaunsen came in. Cameron hurried over to meet him. Shaunsen looked around, and said, “What do we need to do?”

“You’ll probably want a briefing on the emergency, and you might want a quick meeting with the Cabinet; we’d like you to go on the air with a stock speech we have to reassure the public; and of course we need to do your swearing-in.”

Shaunsen said, “I’ll meet the Cabinet right now, but just to say hello. I don’t need to know details about the emergency, time enough for that tomorrow. Then let’s look at the speech you want me to give. Then swear me in, and I’ll give the speech and go home. Let’s get it done.”

In the small conference room, Shaunsen’s voice quavered. “Only five Cabinet secretaries, and one of them is from Department of the Future?”

“The rest are on their way, sir,” Cameron Nguyen-Peters said, his voice carefully neutral. “I’m sure more will arrive while we—”

“Let’s see that speech.” Silently, Cam handed him the text.

Shaunsen read. “Okay, after the third sentence, add, ‘And I can promise that there will be many opportunities for our many different American communities as the situation develops.’ And then… ‘I’ll be reporting on those in a public address, and submitting a proposal to Congress, just as soon as our experts work out the details.’ Then we need to find a way to tell them that if they vote for Pendano, since it’s too late to think about changing the ballots, we’ll get them a good Democrat to take the job by the time the Electoral College meets.”

Weisbrod glanced at the Secretaries of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, and at the Attorney General. None of them met his gaze, so he said, “Uh, Mr. Acting President—”

“It’s ‘Mr. President,’ according to the protocol,” Shaunsen said, firmly. “I looked up the protocol on my way over here.”

“Mr. President, then, sorry. Mr. President, I think in a national-security emergency like this—we’ve been attacked, massively, by at least two different enemies in coordination, and the country is in the grip of a disaster, and there’s no guarantee that more and worse isn’t coming… um, I think campaign rhetoric would be out of place.”

“Will Fucking Norcross didn’t think so, did that little Jesus-weasel? Telling everyone he was going to be above politics. Can’t get more election-hustling than that, can you?”

“You have a point, Mr. President,” Weisbrod said. “But you know much better than I do, when someone high-roads you, pre-emptively, that way, the only way to beat it is to go even higher road. If he campaigned above politics, all you can do is campaign even further above politics.”

Shaunsen peered at Weisbrod with a keen expression that gave Cam a feeling, for the first time since his arrival, that the man was all the way here. “I suggest that when you leave your department, you think pretty seriously about running for county commissioner or maybe state senator someplace. You’ve got the instinct. All right, just the changes I made then; put them in the TelePrompTer, and let’s go.”

The Secretary of Transportation and the Secretary of Peace arrived during set-up, and the Secretary of the Treasury rushed in just as Shaunsen was in final read-through. Shaunsen looked over his eight Cabinet secretaries with a sour expression that made Weisbrod think, When I was an assistant prof one year out of grad school, if a dean had looked me over like that, I’d’ve quit on the spot; good jobs make cowards of us all.

At last Shaunsen said, “I guess it’ll be okay if you bunch them close together and keep the camera in tight focus. Secretary Randolph, make sure you stand in close, and you too, Secretary Karathuri.”