Sitting in the airport lounge, a woman weeping softly beside him, several men loudly arguing with each other and the television screen, Arthur Gordon could only think of Francine and Martin.
“All hell’s going to break loose,” a bulky middle-aged black man shouted as he stalked out of the lounge.
“We’d better not fly now,” a young man told the pregnant girl, hardly more than a teenager, sitting next to him. “They should ground all flights.”
Trying to stay calm, angry at how deeply the speech had affected him, Arthur made his way through the morning crowds to an airline counter to again check his reservations to Las Vegas.
McClennan had stopped his tirade of swearing and now stood by the blank television, fumbling at a cigarette and lighter. He still wore his raincoat. Hicks had not moved from the edge of the bed.
“I’m sorry,” McClennan said. “Christ, I haven’t smoked in five years. I’m a goddamned disgrace.”
“What will you do, now that you’ve resigned?” Hicks asked. What an amazing situation. Straight inside line on this story.
McClennan gave up on the cigarette in disgust. He flung it into the hotel ashtray, on top of an unused book of matches, and more gently lay his plastic lighter beside it. “I suppose the President will appoint replacements for David and myself. I imagine Schwartz will stay on. I imagine just about everybody will stay on.” McClennan looked at Hicks with suspicion. “And you’ll write about all of it, won’t you?”
“I suppose I might, in the long run.”
“Do you think he’s crazy?” McClennan asked, pointing at the blank screen.
Hicks considered the question. “No.”
“Do you think…” and here the rage returned, making McClennan’s hands tremble, “he’s violating his oath of office, to carry out the United States Constitution and promote the general welfare?”
“He’s calling them as he sees them,” Hicks said. “He thinks the end of the world is at hand.”
“Christ, even if it is…” McClennan pulled out the desk chair and sat down slowly. “He’s in trouble. He’s showing his weakness. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a move now to block the inauguration, or to impeach him.”
“On what grounds?” Hicks asked.
“Incompetence. Failure to promote the general welfare. Hell, I don’t know…”
“Has he done anything illegal?”
“We’ve never had a President go nuts in office. Not since Nixon, anyway. But then, you think he isn’t nuts.
Listen, he disagreed with you, even after he brought you into the inner circle…What is he trying to do?”
Hicks had already answered that question, after a fashion, and saw no reason to do it again.
“All right,” McClennan said. “What he’s doing, what it all comes down to, is he’s surrendering without a single shot being fired. We have no idea what these…bastards, these machines, these aliens, can do. We can’t even be sure they’re here to destroy the Earth. Is that even possible! Can you tear a world apart, or kill everything on its surface?”
“We ourselves can kill all life on Earth, if we so choose,” Hicks reminded him.
“Yes, but the Guest talked about leaving nothing but rubble behind. Is that possible?”
“I suppose it is. You’d have to unleash enough energy to place most of the Earth’s mass into orbit about itself, so to speak, or to give it escape velocity. That’s an awful lot of energy.”
“How much? Could we do it?”
“I don’t think so. Not with all the nuclear weapons we have now. We couldn’t even begin to.”
“How advanced would a…Jesus, a civilization have to be to do that?”
Hicks shrugged. “If we posit a straight line of development from where we are now, with the rate of major breakthroughs increasing, perhaps a century, perhaps two.”
“Could we fight them off? If they have that ability?”
Hicks shook his head, uncertain. McClennan took the answer for a negative. “So he calls them as he sees them. No way out. What if they aren’t here to destroy the Earth, just to confuse us, set us back, keep us from competing…You know, like we might have done to the Japanese, if we’d known what they’d put us through, in the twentieth century…?”
“The aliens are doing a good job of that, certainly.”
“Right.” McClennan stood again.
“What are you going to do?”
The ex-national security advisor stared blankly at the window. His look reminded Hicks of the expression on Mrs. Crockerman’s face. Bleak, close to despair, beyond tears.
“I’ll work in the background to save his ass,” McClennan said. “So will Rotterjack. Damn us all, we’re dedicated to that man.” He raised his fist. “By the time we’re done, that son of a bitch Ormandy won’t know what happened. He is going to be one dead albatross.”
With three hours until his flight to Las Vegas, Arthur decided there would be time to take a taxi to Harry’s house in the Cheviot Hills.
The cab took him up the San Diego Freeway and through a brightly decorated but impoverished Los Angeles barrio.
“D’ya hear what the President said, man?” the driver asked, glancing over the seat at Arthur.
“Yes,” Arthur said.
“Isn’t that something, what he said? Scared the piss out of me. Wonder how much of it is true, or whether, you know, he’s gone off his nut.”
“I don’t know,” Arthur replied. He felt strangely exhilarated. Everything was coming into focus now. He could actually see the problem laid out before him as if on a road map. His weariness and resignation had vanished. Now he was enriched by a deep, convicted fury, his distance and objectivity scorched away. The air through the cab window was sweet and intoxicating.
Lieutenant Colonel Albert Rogers finished listening to the recording of the broadcast and sat in the back of the trailer for several minutes, numb. He felt betrayed. What the President had said could not possibly be true. The men at the Furnace had not yet heard the speech, but there was no way he was going to keep it from them. How could he soften it for them?
“The bastard’s surrendered,” he murmured. “He’s just left us here.”
Rogers stood in the rear door of the trailer and looked at the cinder cone, dark and nondescript in the full morning light. “I can take a nuke right up inside that son of a bitch,” he said quietly. “I can carry it in and stand over it until it goes off.”
Not without the President’s authority.
Actually, that wasn’t entirely true.
But the President wouldn’t actually stop them from making an attempt to defend themselves…would he? He hadn’t said as much. He had simply stated that he thought it unlikely…what were his words? Rogers returned to the TV monitor and ran the tape back. “…The time has come for us all to pray fervently for salvation, in whatever form it might come, whether we can expect it or not…”
What did that mean?
And who would give Rogers his orders, the proper orders, now?
“He’s feeling weak today. The trip to Washington didn’t help him any,” Ithaca said, leading Arthur to the bedroom. Harry lay back on thick white pillows, eyes closed. He looked worse than when they had parted a week ago. His facial flesh was sallow and blotchy. His breathing was regular, but when he opened his eyes, they seemed washed out, unenthusiastic. He smiled at Arthur and grasped his hand firmly.
“I’m going to resign,” Harry said.
Arthur started to protest, but Harry waved it off. “Not because of that speech. I’m not going to be much use. I’m still fighting, but…It’s getting worse very fast. I’m on a short rope. I can’t leave town anymore, and I’m going to be in a hospital all the time by next week. You don’t need that kind of grief now.”