“So my thinking is this. You and I made a huge mistake. Me by not putting Graham in, and you by not kicking my ass out and putting Graham in. If we’d just stuck to our oaths, swallowed our doubts, and followed the rules, we’d have lived through our disagreements with Graham. He’s a smart, persuasible guy, and we’d have brought him around to our side on anything crucial that we were right about. So… we broke it. Can we fix it?”
Phat leaned back, swishing the Perrier in his mouth, and swallowed, relishing it. “I guess we owe it to the absent friends. I think you’ve got reach out via Pueblo; you surely don’t want Grayson and Whilmire to catch you talking to Olympia on a back channel, but they can’t object to your working more closely with the RRC. Do you have a channel for contacting Heather O’Grainne?”
“Not yet, but I’m expecting an opportunity soon. Or maybe I should say my opportunity is expecting soon.”
“Boo. We’ll talk again, Cameron, but if you don’t mind, since we can’t accomplish much else just now, let’s declare business concluded. I think we should just enjoy the food you’ve brought, especially since either of us might soon be strictly on jail food.”
THE NEXT DAY. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 12:15 PM MST. SATURDAY, JULY 26, 2025.
“Remember how much business in DC used to turn around getting somewhere in time for reservations?” Heather asked Arnie, cheerfully, as she dragged herself over to her main worktable. “Well, we have’em at Johanna’s, so we need to finish this quick. Wow, all those stairs are a climb in the heat.”
“Enjoy heat while you can—the weather forecasters are saying this couple of weeks might be our only real summer, and what’s coming is going to be like a volcano winter, cold, wet, and early. All the soot.”
“Yeah, I know, and I intend to bitch about that when that happens, too. Right here—this is eyes-only stuff for me and my top analyst, and no matter how secure Johanna tries to keep her upper room, it can’t be secure enough for this conversation.”
Intrigued, Arnie joined her at the worktable. She laid out three single sheets of paper from a black folder. “Critical facts. Agents in TNG territory confirm that Cam handed weekend passes out like candy to base and fort commanders, and sent General Grayson out of town, just after dissolving the Board. Looks like he was afraid of a coup. Two, Cam communicated a request to Graham Weisbrod to discuss an earlier merger of the two governments, last night. So it looks like Cam is moving toward resolving the two-government problem by dissolving his own, and it also looks like he’s scared that he won’t be able to.”
Arnie felt strangely numb and confused, as if he’d been told that nothing he was doing mattered, but he made himself say the expected thing: “That might be good news if he pulls it off.”
“It might. But this morning, our highest placed agent in Athens—Red Dog—reported that the Post Raptural Church is gearing up for massive protests, and Red Dog thinks Cam might be in danger of being overthrown by a religious revolution, at least as much as he might be by a coup. Red Dog’s super-deep source”—as close as I will ever get to breathing the fact that Shorty Phat is reporting his conversations with Cam to us through Red Dog—“and Red Dog himself recommend we move strongly to support Cameron. What’s your take, Arnie?”
Arnie Yang froze in thought; there was nothing unusual about that, and given how complex the problem was, Heather preferred that he take his time. But when he finally spoke he said, “I guess you have to pay attention to Athens but I’m still really worried about the tribes, and I want to keep focusing on investigating Daybreak.”
“Lobby me all through lunch about that and I’ll not only listen, I might be persuaded, Arnie. But I really want your take on this. Should Red Dog approach Cam, try to set up a back channel alliance? There’s a lot to gain, but if Red Dog is blown, the whole network could be rolled up. Come on, you are the best analyst I’ve got and my right hand. Analyze.”
He looked down at the papers and said, “For some reason, I just can’t seem to form a conclusion.”
She gave him a full minute before she said, “Well, if that’s really your answer—”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
At lunch, he talked of absolutely nothing but Daybreak, the tribes, and the need for further, deeper research.
That evening, as Heather played with her big chart, she wanted to concentrate on the tribal pathway, as Arnie had so emphasized, but her eyes kept drifting back to the tangled knot of yellow and red labeled TNG PARTICIPATES IN RESTORATION. Eight lines crossed and knotted there, and at each report from Red Dog, the number of possible bad outcomes seemed to double and the number of her options seemed to halve. Could be worse, she thought. I could be where Cam is. But the Natcon had been a friend for many years before, and she couldn’t help thinking how much she’d rather have him here, safe, than there, in that bunched knot that looked to her, more and more, like a pit of snakes.
With a sigh, she moved and repinned the few things affected by her small amount of new information, looked at the rest, and could not think of anything to do but wait. It’s the other side’s move, hon, she remembered Dad saying, when he was teaching her checkers. That’s one thing you can never do anything about; they get a turn.
THE NEXT DAY. WAYNE CITY, WABASH (PCG) OR ILLINOIS (TNG). 10 AM CST. SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2025.
Steve Ecco hadn’t slept well on the train. He’d awakened every few minutes when something bumped or shuddered. After a quick breakfast of leftover Cold Fried Don’t Ask, he splurged on some hot water and soap for a shave and a sponge bath, and put on the clean clothes he’d been saving. I guess that’s about as spruced up as I’m getting. At least I combed my hair.
The platform at Wayne City was just a big slab of concrete with a frame and fabric roof, and Ecco was the only one who got off there. He didn’t quite have time to look around before a tall, thin man, maybe thirty years old, stepped up onto the platform. He was dressed in the mix of deerskin, camo, and denim that tended to be popular among serious wilderness scouts like Larry Mensche; unlike Larry, he wore a large coonskin cap and the seams of his deerskin shirt were fringed. His shoes were low moccasins rather than Larry’s heavy snake-highs. “Mister Ecco?” the man said, extending a hand that felt like rocks under rawhide.
“That’s me.”
“I’m Freddie Pranger. I’m s’pose to take you on over to Pale Bluff. It’s a nice day and there hasn’t been much bandit or tribal trouble lately, we’ll walk it in maybe three hours, but you might want to visit the plumbing first.”