“‘ ’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.
THE NEXT DAY. PUT-IN-BAY, SOUTH BASS ISLAND, OHIO (OR NEW STATE OF SUPERIOR). 4:30 PM EST. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2025.
“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.”
They walked the mile of winding, crumbling road in dead silence. At the end of the runway, they found a short-winged little biplane, an Acro Sport, painted in red and yellow stripes, marred by the black and gray smears where the biofuel engine and its lye spray had stained it with burnt-soap exhaust.
Since they couldn’t open the package marked EYES ONLY till they were back in their rooms at the Edgewater Hotel, waiting for the wagon and riding back gave them time to catch up on gossip. Nancy Teirson, the pilot, mostly flew from Green Bay, the capital of the New State of Superior, alternating between the northern mail route to Olympia and a circuit of the Castles and walled towns in Michigan. “And out to here maybe once a month,” she said. “This time I had orders to swing further south and east, overfly the Lost Quarter more than usual.”
“Tell’em,” Larry said.
She lowered her voice, plainly not wanting to be overheard by the wagon driver. “Tribals on the march on the old roads. Bands of hundreds of them, maybe one band more than a thousand.”
Back at the hotel, the instant the door was closed, Larry ripped open the envelope. “Mail for all three of us.” He tossed Beth’s letter to Jason, who went into the other room to read in privacy.
Chris dove into the notes from Cassie and Abel, chuckling and tsking in the corner.
Larry read Heather’s orders—just a few sentences—several times, keeping his eyes on the page to look like he was concentrating intently, or like they were lengthy. He wanted Chris and Jason to have time with their mail before he shared the part he was supposed to share:
URGENT TO DO OVERLAND TRAVERSE, BUFFALO NY TO ALBANY & DOWN HUDSON; SHIPS AVAILABLE IN NYC HARBOR, RETURN VIA TNG TERRITORY. GO AT ONCE
When both of them had savored their mail, and asked what the orders were, he showed them.
“Overland in the Lost Quarter, with winter coming?” Chris asked. “Is she nuts or does she hate us?”
“Not mutually exclusive,” Larry pointed out. And if you knew what was in the message that was just for me, you’d be pretty sure the real answer is “Both.”
Chris rose and stretched. “Larry, if you could give me an hour or two to write something for Nancy to take back—”
“You have the night. I’ll need to arrange a ship, and I’m guessing we won’t be able to sail before tomorrow morning, maybe longer. You guys just write what you need to write, so it’s ready to go out, and it’s all right if you sleep all day after we’re on the boat, okay?”
Jason looked almost pathetically grateful. “Yeah, thanks.”
Larry shrugged. “If I just send Debbie a note that she’s a great human being, and to try to only kill people that deserve it, it’ll make both of us happier than we’ve been in years—and won’t take me five. Plan to be packed at dawn tomorrow, and I’ll fill you in sometime before I go to bed. I’d better get down to the docks before everyone buttons up for the night.” He was out the door almost instantly.