“Harris, I’m not letting you out of my sight until you leave Washington. That is a promise.”
Suddenly traveling with Smart did not seem so bad.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Do you know your way around Washington, DC?” Nester Smart asked. The way I pressed my face against the window to see every last detail should have answered his question.
The capital of the Unified Authority lay spread under a clear afternoon sky. With its rows of gleaming white marble buildings, the city simply looked perfect. This was the city I saw in the news and read about in books. “I’ve never been here before.”
Our transport began its approach, flying low over a row of skyscrapers. I saw people standing on balconies.
Off in the distance, I saw the Capitol, an immense marble building with a three-hundred-foot dome of white marble. Two miles wide and nearly three miles deep, the Capitol was the largest building on the face of the Earth. It rose twenty stories into the air, and I had no idea how deep its basements ran.
“The Capitol,” I said.
“Good, Harris. You know your landmarks,” Smart said, with a smirk.
The architect who designed the Capitol had had an eye for symbolism. If you stretched its corridors into one long line, that line would have been twenty-four thousand miles long, the circumference of the Earth. The building had 192 entrances—one for each of the Earth nations that became part of the Unified Authority. The building had 768 elevators, one for every signer of the original U.A. constitution. There were dozens of subtle touches like that. When I was growing up, every schoolboy learned the Capitol’s numerology.
I also saw the White House, a historic museum that once housed the presidents of the United States. The scholars who framed the Unified Authority replaced the executive branch with the Linear Committee. If the rumors were true, the Linear Committee sometimes conducted business in an oval-shaped office inside the White House.
A highly manicured mall with gleaming walkways and marble fountains stretched between the White House and the Capitol. Thousands of people—tourists, bureaucrats, and politicians—walked that mall. From our transport, they looked like dust mites swirling in a shaft of light.
“I can barely wait to get out and explore the city,” I said, both anxious to see the capital of the known universe and to get away from Nester Smart.
“You are going to spend a quiet evening locked away in Navy housing,” Smart said. “We cannot afford for you to show up tomorrow with a hangover.”
Our transport began its vertical descent to a landing pad. Smart slipped out of his chair and pulled his jacket off a hanger. He smoothed it with a sharp tug on the lapels. Reaching for the inside breast pocket of the coat, he pulled a business card out and wrote a note on the back of it. After giving it a quick read, he handed it to me.
“There is a driver waiting outside. He will take you to the Navy base. Show this card to the guard at the gate. Also, your promotion is now official. Befitting your war-hero status, you are now a lieutenant in the Unified Authority Marines.
“You will find your new wardrobe in the apartment. I suppose congratulations are in order, Lieutenant Harris.”
The White House had guest rooms, but I was not invited to stay in those hallowed halls. Those rooms were reserved for visiting politicians and power brokers, the kinds of people who made their living by sending clones to war. Spending the night in the barracks suited me fine.
The guards outside the Navy base were not clones. The one who inspected my identification had blond hair and green eyes. He looked over my ID, then read Smart’s note. “You’re one of the Little Man 7, right?” he asked. “I hear that you’re speaking in the House of Representatives tomorrow. Congress doesn’t usually send visitors out here.”
“Yeah, lucky me.”
“Officers’ country is straight ahead,” the guard said. “You can’t miss it.
“Captain Baxter, our base commander, left a message for you. He wants to meet with you. You’ll want to shower and change your uniform before presenting yourself. Baxter’s a stickler on uniforms.”
My driver dropped me at the barracks door. Carrying my rucksack over my shoulder, I found my room. The lock was programmed to recognize my ID card. I swiped my card through a slot, and the door slid open. It was the first time I had ever stayed in a room with a locking door. I considered that for a moment.
I had spent my life sharing barracks with dozens of other men. I heard them snore, and they heard me. We dressed in front of each other, showered together, stowed our belongings in lockers.
With the exception of my two weeks of leave in Hawaii, the “squad bay” life was the only life I knew. Now I stepped into a room with a single bed. The room had a closet, a dresser, and a bathroom. Smiling and feeling slightly ashamed, I placed my ruck down, walked around the room turning on a lamp here, dragging my finger across the desk there, and allowing water to run from a faucet. I took a shower and shaved. Nine days of travel had left my blouse badly wrinkled; but it was an enlisted man’s blouse. In the closet, I found a uniform with the small gold bar of a second lieutenant on the shoulder. I dressed as an officer and left to meet the base commander.
“May I help you?” a civilian secretary asked.
I told her that I was a guest.
“Lieutenant Harris, of course,” she said. “Please wait here.” Watching me as she stepped away from her desk, she almost tripped over one of the legs of her chair. She turned and sped into a small doorway, emerging a moment later with several officers. That kind of reception would have made me nervous except that the officers seemed so happy to meet me.
“Lieutenant Harris?” a captain in dress whites asked.
“Sir,” I said, saluting.
The entire company broke into huge, toothy smiles. “A pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant,” the captain said, saluting first, then reaching across the counter and shaking my hand. “I’m Geoffrey Baxter.” The other officers also reached across and shook my hand.
“Do you have a moment? Are you meeting with anyone this evening?”
“No,” I said.
“What?” gasped another captain. “No reception? They’re not putting you up in a stateroom? Outrageous! These politicians treat the military like dogs.”
Baxter led me into a large office, and we sat in a row of chairs. As the receptionist brought us drinks, the officers crowded around me, and more officers strayed into the room. “I’m not sure that I understand. Were you expecting me?”
“Expecting you? We’ve been waiting for you,” Baxter said. “Harris, you’re famous around here.” He looked to the other officers, who all nodded in agreement. “Your photograph is all over the mediaLink.”
“My photograph?” I asked. “How about my men?”
“They’re clones, aren’t they? Everybody knows what they look like,” an officer with a thick red mustache commented.
“Have you had dinner yet?” Baxter asked.
“I was going to ask for directions to the officers’ mess,” I said.
“No mess hall food for you. Not tonight,” another officer said. “Not for you.”
“I know you’ve just arrived, but are you up to a night out?” Baxter asked.
I smiled.
“I know a good sports bar,” the officer with the mustache said. The idea of a place with loads of booze and marginal food appealed to all of us.
Fourteen of us piled into three cars and headed toward the heart of DC.
The Capitol, an imposing sight during the day, was even more impressive at night. Bright lights illuminated its massive white walls, casting long and dramatic shadows onto its towering dome. Just behind the Capitol, the white cube of the Pentagon glowed. The Pentagon, which had been rebuilt into a perfect cube, retained its traditional name in a nod to history. Seeing the buildings from the freeway, I could not appreciate their grand size.