Christopher Buckley - Boomsday

For a few seconds, Randy looked as though he might take off his leg and start smashing furniture. Then the air went out of him. His muscles untensed. Suddenly he looked like a schoolboy who’d run out of excuses. Cass was almost moved to comfort him.

“I guess I have made a bit of a pig’s breakfast of it,” Randy said, chewing on a fingernail.

“There,” Cass said. “See? Telling the truth is like riding a bicycle. No matter how out of practice you are, it’ll come back to you.”

“I don’t suppose you two would help me clean up the breakfast?”

Cass and Terry looked at each other.

Randy added, “On a professional basis, of course.”

“Oh,” Terry snorted, “definitely.”

Randy said, “I can’t do this without you.”

“What about that crack ninja Senate staff of yours?”

“I don’t like them. I don’t trust them. They scare me.”

Cass said, “I work for Terry. It’s up to him.”

“In that case,” Randy said, “I’m done for.”

Terry said, “Are you capable of following instructions?”

“Within reason,” Randy said, reverting to aristocratic mode.

It was Cass, not Terry, who issued Randy his first instruction: to call Bucky Trumble and tell him that if Gideon Payne was going to be on the presidential commission, then so was Cassandra Devine. When she got Bucky on the phone, he resisted, but Randy, with Cass hovering over him, informed the president’s chief counselor that he didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

The ring tone of Gideon Payne’s cell phone was programmed to the sound of church bells tolling “Hallelujah.” All day long it had sounded like Easter Sunday.

A number of his callers were incredulous that he had accepted a job on a commission appointed to study the feasibility of legalizing mass suicide. Many of these were big SPERM donors. Gideon patiently explained that he was now in a position to influence-or as he put it, “determine”-the outcome. He did not reveal the precise terms of his deal with the president. But he hinted heavily that before long they would be hearing a message of support from the White House about SPERM’s long cherished memorial on the Mall to the 43 million unborn. To this reassurance, he added, with a coy little chortle, that with him on the commission, Transitioning now stood as much chance of becoming national policy as a snowball in the infernal region.

Gideon did not have much chance to wallow in his new position. The next day, a sheepish-sounding Bucky Trumble called him to say that, uh, well, it seems that Cassandra Devine is also going to be on the commission.

“This is monstrous!” Gideon exploded. “She’s the architect of this fiendish scheme! It’s like putting Adolf Hitler on the board of B’nai B’rith!”

Bucky equivocated to the overheated reverend that, much as he wanted to, he was unable to remove the dreadful woman from the commission. In soothing tones, he said that he and the president had “full confidence” in Gideon’s ability to “decisively influence” the commission.

“The president is counting on you,” Bucky said. “You’re our man on the commission.”

“What about my memorial?” Gideon demanded sulkily.

“Gideon. If we don’t get the president reelected, there won’t be a memorial. If Jepperson and that terrible woman prevail…well, I shudder.”

“I still want a statement for the record of the president’s support.”

“The announcement is being drafted even as we speak.”

Late the next Friday afternoon, when even an announcement that the United States was preemptively launching a nuclear war might be overlooked by the media, the White House issued a statement saying that it had “no objection in principle” to a “life memorial in a suitable locale within the nation’s capital.”

Gideon telephoned the White House to express his displeasure at this tepid declaration of support. Bucky assured him that the president would make his memorial “a priority” in the second term. On hanging up, Bucky Trumble wondered if he had done the right thing by inviting Gideon into his tent. His days were full enough without being on the receiving end of half a dozen daily hysterical phone calls from a steam-driven man o’ god. Gideon’s high-pitched voice was far from dulcet, even on an otherwise calm day.

Gideon and Monsignor Montefeltro met for a glass of 1997 Brunello di Montalcino to discuss strategy. The monsignor kept a superb cellar beneath his Georgetown home. Bottles from this happy catacomb had lubricated the pen hands of many a wealthy Catholic widow as they signed away vast tranches of their substance to Mother Church. How well the Lord would be pleased with them. Don’t forget to sign here, too. And initial here.

Gideon shared with the monsignor every jot and tittle of his deal with the White House. Montefeltro was himself a man thoroughly versed in hierarchies, a denizen of one of the world’s most ancient bureaucracies. Gideon craved his advice.

“Bucky Trumble, he sounds a very clever fellow,” he said, pouring Gideon a second glass. “But since he is a clever fellow, you must be vigilant, Geedeon.”

“Oh, to be sure,” Gideon said sipping the wine, “to be sure.”

“Do you believe Bucky Trumble when he tells you the president will make the memorial a priority in his next term of office? After he is reelected, he won’t need quite so much from his old friends and supporters.”

“Massimo,” Gideon said, “no more, thank you, it’s delicious, just delicious, but I’ll be three sheets to the wind. Of course they’re lying to me. How they do lie. But don’t suppose for one second that they’re going to play me for the fool. Gideon Payne did not fall off the back of a sweet potato truck. No, no, no. At the appropriate time, between the national political convention in August and the start of the general election on Labor Day, I will insist that they make the memorial a campaign issue. I will insist on a written declaration.” Gideon pursed his wine-moist lips.

“There is a matter I must share with you,” the monsignor said. “There was a meeting at the Vatican some days ago. On the subject of the American Transitioning bill. There is a group of some cardinals. Very orthodox, very doctrinal, very severe. The chief of them is Cardinal Restempopo-Bandolini. He is very important in the Vatican. Really, he is the semipope. Very powerful. What I will tell you now must sound very old-fashioned, but these cardinals, they see in this Transitioning an opportunity. At this meeting-this is very secret, Geedeon-they urged the holy father to issue a bull.”

“A…what, Massimo?”

“A bull of excommunication, against any American Catholic who supports such a bill. Or who even votes for any politician who supports such a bill.”

“Excommunication. You mean, you get tossed out of the church?”

“Yes. Forbidden from sacraments. Like I say, it’s very old-fashioned. To me, honestly, Geedeon, I think it’s too much. But they are very powerful, these cardinals. And I fear the holy father will listen to them. What will be the reaction of America in such an event?”

Gideon drew a deep breath. It was exhilarating to hear this news, and from the lips of someone intimately familiar with the innermost thinking of Rome, but-great God…a papal bull ? Didn’t that go out with the Borgia popes?

“Massimo,” he said gravely, “I’m most grateful and honored that you have shared this confidence with me. But I must tell you, I am not certain that that is the way to proceed here. I’m sure you know your flock better than I do, but Americans don’t cotton to the idea of-”

“Cotton?”

“Sorry. Southern expression. Americans don’t like being told what to do by a-you’ll forgive me-foreigner.”