Hopefully in the process we’ll be able to locate and attract some surviving engineers and scientists from the many pre-Daybreak Rocky Mountain defense and scientific facilities.
We’ll go halves with you on project cost and equipment; we’re assembling a team of half a dozen scientists and engineers who will take the train overland to Pueblo as soon as we know you’re coming as well. We’ll be glad to have Dr. Arnold Yang as project leader; I trust his integrity completely.
Naturally we understand that you believe that the experiment will turn up evidence indicating that the device producing EMPs is wholly robotic. Obviously, we think something different will be the result. It seems to me that would be all the more reason to run the experiment.
A target date of June 30 for starting up the attraction device would give everyone time to install as much anti-EMP protection as we reasonably can and to alert the Castles and the independent cities.
We actually already have constructed a few crude recording-radar sets (ones that make a paper record) very similar to what Dr. Yang proposes, and we will dedicate as many of them as we can spare to this project. I sincerely hope we will be able to cooperate on this issue, and on many other issues in the future.
“We know it has to be a trick,” Allie said, glancing at Graham, “so the question is what kind of trick. It looks to me like they’re turning it into military intelligence gathering, which means implicitly we’re agreeing to get involved in their war against the Unfindable Enemy. I don’t know how we’ll back out of this—”
Arnie said, “This is exactly what we wanted, and I don’t see why we don’t just accept it.”
The room felt freezing cold, despite the big fire built against the February damp.
Softly, Heather said, “Graham, you said you didn’t want to be the one who said no.”
“And I don’t,” he said. “And I won’t be. Make it happen. Arnie, you’re the project leader—you’ll be in the field; you’ll report to Heather, since she was already going to set up the reconstruction research offices in Pueblo. Allie, this is one where I’m not taking your advice. General McIntyre, find a smart intelligence officer to send along so that whatever they learn by working with us, we know that they learned it. Don’t stop them and for god’s sake don’t sabotage the project, but I want to know what they’re getting out of this.” He looked around the room with the face of a man who not only can’t please everyone, but can’t please anyone. “That’s a decision, people; make it happen or show me why it’s wrong.”
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.
THE NEXT DAY. OLYMPIA. NEW DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. (OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON.) ABOUT 8:00 P.M. PST. WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY 5.
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.