"Couldn't be helped," said Young, waving his goblet airily. "Anyway, a good third of 'em were Mormons.
Who'd believe White House Deseret could possibly be involved?"
"Must've been a tough decision for you, of all people."
"Shhhhit," said Blanton Young, and glanced at the younger man with a half-smile. "Not with true inspiration to guide. Mills, in the true Zion there won't be any room for a bunch of old farts wrangling over interp'tations of the word of God. Came to me in a meeting of the Council of Apostles one day. A rev'lation like a thunderclap; I was bein' tested."
Somehow, Mills decided, a tiny ice cube had entered his bloodstream. "You mean — Divine examination?"
Nod. "A dozen old men, balkin' me at every turn. It came to me that the President of Streamlined America can't be wrong every time; that if Blanton Young was put in this office by a higher power, then a solid wall of opposition can only mean that wall is bound together by the devil's flaxen cord." The zealot eyes burned past slitted lids. "You follow me, Mills?" The President's face was choleric with remembered frustrations, his last words a rasp on old tin cans.
Until the past half-minute, Boren Mills had cherished the assumption that Young, whatever his failings, was bound to his Church; that ultimately he would be constrained by its tenets of fellowship and grace.
Mills's ice cube was now a frozen stalactite against his spine. "I couldn't help noticing some, ah, changes in your, um, lifestyle. Are you saying you've decided to leave your Church?"
"I am the Church!" Mills realized with a start that he'd seen the same look on Eve's face when he asked for her amulet. "The Council of Apostates," said Young, relishing his heresy, "is a test. I see that now.
And I have passed that test."
Through his consternation, Mills saw that he was privy to a development so new that it had not yet become surrounded by rumor. With utterly no idea of what to say, he fell back on the hoary goad of interviewers and shrinks: "I see."
"I wonder if you do. I have passed through a purifying fire of the spirit, and I can depend on insp'ration.
When I'm inspired I can't be wrong.
It's a tr'mendous sense of respons'bility but," the President unleashed a beatified smile, "somehow it makes me feel free."
No doubt, thought Mills. That same sense of guidance and inspiration must have given the same freedom to Alexander; to Rasputin; to der fuehrer. But to ride the coattails of Young was to ride a barmy tiger.
Should he dismount now? But how the hell could he? And how long before this loony generated an open break with what was, unofficially, a state religion?
Suddenly Boren Mills knew why LockLever was paying cash homage to the rebels. They knew of Young's instability; were straddling the ideological fence. Yet the CEO of LockLever hadn't helped organize Young's S & R hit team as he, Mills, had done. Mills and IEE could expect no quarter from Jim Street. Unless — unless Mills made himself absolutely vital to the survival of Streamlined America no matter who won the political battles. Choosing his words with utmost caution: "Mr. President, how did the Council of Apostles respond to your revelation?"
Young lurched up from his chair, circled the wet bar as if analyzing an opponent, chose a glass of seltzer before answering. "I'm not an idiot. Mills. I won't feed a man things he can't swallow. What I can do, is replace Council members with my own people. A matter of seein' that some of my folks are standin' in the right places. Pity you're not LDS yourself."
"I can do more as a fellow traveler," Mills said quickly. "How long before, um, normal attrition in the Council," he said, knowing that some members would die by means that were not normal, "gives you the power you need?"
Innocence personified: "How would I know? Could take a year or so."
"If I might suggest it, Sir, you might take care not to let your new lifestyle show in the meantime."
"Council isn't as down on plural marriage as you might think," Young chuckled, "but I get your drift, son.
It has been revealed to me that even the head of the Church must make haste slowly." Horsewink.
Mills exhaled with undisguised relief. Whether mad as Parisian hatters or merely posturing in his cups, Young still understood caution. Mills: "Depend on IEE to move with you. But I'll have to know what you need."
"You can start by talking with those Israelis about a media countermeasure. Streamlined America must break free from foreign pressures." A rolling rippling belch paced the President's train of thought. "And not just media gadgetry. Mex oil, Canadian platinum, African cobalt — stuff this country must have."
At that moment, inspiration struck Mills. Some crucial raw materials were present, in minute quantities, in sea water. "We're already doing our part with shale, but IEE hasn't been idle in the rare metals field either," he said slyly.
"I'm talking metric tons."
A hundred kilos a day of lighter elements from a synthesizer, perhaps ten a day — he'd have to check with Chabrier — of heavy rare metals like cobalt. It would mean a different production schedule of synthesizers, but a few could be on-line in less than a year. A hundred synthesizers could yield a ton of heavy elements every day.
"So am I," said Mills. "Pure stuff. It's, uh, an extraction process we've kept pretty secret. In a few months IEE can be shipping a ton of cobalt a day from Eureka."
"Not enough for the New Denver and Cleveland mills by a long shot. We use seven thousand tons of Zaire cobalt a year."
"In two years we can match that," Mills promised. He hadn't said the process was ocean extraction, but the implication was clear enough.
"Domestic?"
Time to enrich the implied lie: "Domestic as sea water."
"At compet'ive price?"
"No. Sir." Pause for effect. "Cheaper."
The President sat down slowly, then raised his goblet in salute. "The Lord has provided," he murmured.
"I knew I was right about you; inspiration," he said smugly and then added, "but you better come through."
Mills tallied new necessities in his head. He'd have to maintain utmost security on shipments of elemental metals from the Utah desert to the Port of Eureka. And set up some kind of barge facility off the coast as a blind. But once those shipments became mainstays of reconstruction in Streamlined America, Mills could write his own ticket with any administration.
"To Zion," said Mills, and raised his own goblet.
Ten meters away on the other side of the wall, the raven-haired hotsy felt her lip curl.
CHAPTER 28
As the pudgy, chain-smoking Sean Lasser began Sanger's briefing, she surmised that old age was creeping up on him. He'd never shown this much courtesy to any rover. "… Had to be one of the undercover rebels that we disappeared two weeks ago, you see."
Sanger, quickly: "You mean because it had to be a rover who helped him escape? If the man told the Canadians all you say, I suppose so." Finger-snap: "Unless some rebel posed as one of us and—"
Lasser's headshake, slow and commiserating, stopped her. "No one but a rover could've faked that mission," he said gently. "All we needed was the escapee's name, and our man in Calgary couldn't get that. He did manage three minutes alone in the room where the man had been debriefed, and tape-lifted prints off the chair arms. We identified one this morning. Ever hear of a Dandridge Laird?"
Negative shrug. Marbrye Sanger had no doubt she'd learn plenty about him from the file that lay at Lasser's elbow. She'd never had to go into Canada to disappear a man before, but the prospect disturbed her no more than any other killing might. "Will I be on a team or singleton?"