Vaughn nodded again. “That’s very wise.”
Benes set down her mirror and looked at Vaughn for a moment. “You’re clever. You can create history. But you need to give me most of the credit.”
“Not a problem,” Vaughn said. “I don’t have any interest in having my name in the history books.”
Benes gave him a playful smile. “I’ve noticed that. Otherwise you’d have been president already. But you still ought to say something to me when you want to make history, so I’m able to speak to Congress and the press.”
“That’s what I’m going to tell you now.”
“I’m listening,” Benes said with another smile, setting down her tweezers and mirror and commencing to paint her nails.
“The world will enter a period of brutal struggle for control. A redivision of land and resources. There’s no returning to the adults’ model of the world. The children’s world will operate on an entirely new concept, a new model that no one can foresee. But one thing is certain: If America wants to command the same position it did in the Common Era, or even if it wishes to survive at all, it must awaken its slumbering might!”
“That’s right. Strength is ours!” Benes said, shaking a fist.
“So, Madam President, do you know the source of America’s strength?”
“You mean it’s not aircraft carriers and spaceships?”
“No—” Here Vaughn shook his head meaningfully. “Those things are extraneous. Our strength took shape earlier, during the opening up of the West.”
“Oh, yeah! Those cowboys were so handsome!”
“They lived lives far less romantic than in the movies. In the Wild West they faced a constant threat of hunger and disease, and their lives were always in danger from attacking wildfires, wolf packs, and Native Americans. With just a horse and a revolver, they rode off smiling into a cruel world to forge the American miracle, pen the American epic, their strength drawn from a desire for hegemony over the new world.
“Those knights of the West were the true Americans; theirs was the true American spirit. That is where our strength derives. But where are those riders now? Before the supernova, our fathers and mothers hid themselves inside the hard shells of skyscrapers, under the impression that they had the world in their pocket. Ever since the purchase of Alaska and Hawaii, they no longer expanded into new territory, no longer dreamed of new conquests, but turned slow and lazy, and the fat on their bellies and necks grew thick. They turned numb, became fragile and sentimental, trembled uncontrollably at the slightest casualty in war, and wailed and agitated disgracefully outside the White House. Later, when a new generation saw the world as nothing more than a scrap of toilet paper, hippies and punks became the new symbols of America. Now in the new era, children have lost their way and anesthetize themselves through violent games in the streets.”
Benes asked soberly, “But how can America’s strength be awakened?”
“We need a new game.”
“What kind of game?”
Vaughn then uttered a sentence Benes had never heard him say before: “I don’t know.”
“No!” the girl president exclaimed. “You do know. You know everything! You’ve got to tell me!”
“I’ll think of it, but I need time. Right now I’m only certain of one thing: The new game will be, and can only be, the most imaginative and dangerous game in history, so I hope that you won’t be overly surprised when you hear what it is.”
“I won’t. Come on, think up something soon!”
“Leave me alone here for a while, and don’t let anyone come in. Including you,” Vaughn said, and waved her away.
The president made a silent exit. She headed straight for the basement, to the White House security control center crammed with monitors of all sizes, one of which had a direct view of the Oval Office. No president liked being under surveillance, so the system was only operable in special circumstances with the president’s express permission. The old equipment hadn’t been used in years, and it took the young special agents on duty in the basement quite a while to bring an image up on the screen. Vaughn was standing motionless in front of the huge world map in the office, lost in thought. In the cramped basement room, under the curious gaze of the other children, President Benes stared unblinking at the screen, like a child waiting long into the night on Christmas Eve for Santa to arrive with a sack of toys. One hour passed, then another… all through the afternoon, Vaughn stood there like a statue. Finally losing her patience, Benes turned to the kids on duty and ordered them to notify her immediately if Vaughn made any movements.
“Is he dangerous?” asked an agent with a big-bore revolver at his backside.
“Not to America.”
She had spent the previous day busy with various presidential duties and had not slept a wink the previous night. Now an acute drowsiness hit her, and without knowing it she slept the entire afternoon, waking up only after it was dark. She snatched up the phone and inquired about Vaughn’s status, but the kids on duty in the basement informed her that he had spent the entire day motionless in front of the map; during the entire time he had only murmured one thing to himself: “God, would that I had Wegener’s inspiration!”
Benes hurriedly called in a few advisors to study that statement. One advisor told her that Wegener was a geologist from the Common Era, a German. On one occasion, on his sickbed, bored out of his mind and staring at a map of the world, he suddenly realized that several continental borders matched, giving him an idea: Long ago the surface of the Earth might have had just one continent. It had subsequently been broken up by some unknown force, and the various pieces of the crust had drifted apart, forming the world of the present day. This was the beginning of Wegener’s epochal continental drift theory. There was, Benes realized, no mystery to Vaughn’s words; he was only aching to come up with a continental drift theory of international politics. And so she sent the advisors away and went back to sleep on the sofa.
When she next awoke it was after 1:00 A.M. She grabbed the phone and called the basement, and learned that the weird kid in the Oval Office was still standing motionless. “We wonder if maybe he died on his feet,” one of the special agents said. Benes had them transfer the feed to her room. A shaft of light from the Rose Nebula fell through the window and directly onto Vaughn, who appeared wraithlike with the indistinct map beyond him. She sighed, switched off the monitor, and went back to sleep.
She slept till it was light and she was awakened by the ringing of her phone.
“Madam President, the guy in the office wants to see you.”
Benes flew out the door, still in her pajamas, and raced to the door of the Oval Office, where Vaughn’s ghastly gaze was waiting for her.
“We have a new game, Madam President,” Vaughn said gravely.
“We do? Tell me!”
Vaughn held out his hands, each of which held an oddly shaped piece of paper. She snatched them eagerly to take a look, and then raised her head in confusion. They were two fragments that Vaughn had cut out of a world map: one was America, the other was China.
A VISIT
In a small motorcade heading toward Capital Airport, Huahua sat in the lead vehicle with a bespectacled interpreter next to him. The minister of foreign affairs was in the car behind them, and the third held the US ambassador, an eleven-year-old boy named George Friedman who was the son of a former military attaché. A truck at the rear of the motorcade held an army band, and several of the band members were practicing on their instruments, squawking audibly even at this distance.