Authors: John Barnes
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 11 AM MST. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025.
Heather set down the pile of papers, reports on tribal activities in the Lost Quarter, the Rio Grande Valley, the Columbia Basin, and the many smaller tribal areas.
All right,
she thought,
Larry Mensche wins the argument. We can’t treat the tribes as a minor problem anymore.
She spent about twenty minutes changing things around on the chart. Many of her previous bosses might have thought this was busywork; to Heather, it was a way of thinking hard about an issue, because to decide how to represent it, she had to decide what it really was. The more she thought about the tribes, the more she realized that she didn’t know, and needed to know—and that they were important.
Her next area was no more comforting: the peculiar tangle of politics in the Temporary National Government, especially the balance of power after Collum Duquesne’s death. You could defeat the tribals; you had to win over the TNG, and one of the best voices in the RRC’s chorus was now suddenly, terribly still.
Poor Cam must feel so alone,
she thought. Her old friend had had no gift for making friends even when he hadn’t been squarely in the way of so many powerful people.
She found a new report just in from Red Dog, brought in by Quattro and Chris on the Gooney earlier that day, and plunged into it to see if she could form a picture, in her mind, of what was happening in Athens; she was sure that she’d be moving some cards and strings, because she’s always had to for every Red Dog report before. Fighting her drowsiness—she was off coffee until Leo or Riley was born—she bent to her best-placed agent’s report.
TWO:
GOG AND MAGOG ATE PORK
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ATHENS,TEMPORARY NATIONAL GOVERNMENT (TNG) DISTRICT (FORMERLY IN GEORGIA). 2 PM EST. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025.
Cameron Nguyen-Peters hadn’t cared one way or another at first when the mixture of colonels and ex-business execs who were the Board of the Temporary National Government had asked to begin every meeting with an “inclusive non-denominational” prayer. A third-generation Washington bureaucrat, it hadn’t occurred to him that down here “inclusive non-denominational” meant “equal time for nuts and total nuts.”
He’d learned to nod without hearing. The Board met in a small amphitheater where presidents of the University of Georgia once panhandled groups of wealthy alums; it had a long heritage of talk with no attention. Reflecting through droning had become Cam’s soothing review time before the acrimonious politics.
Not today.
Reverend Abner Peet, head of the Post Raptural Church, had been kept out of the praying rotation for three months by the votes of General Grayson, who was Cam’s Deputy Commander in Chief; the colonels who headed up Defense, Intelligence, and Security; and Collum Duquesne, the freeholder of Castle Newberry and Cam’s advisor on economic development. Their five votes tied the Board at 5-5, with Cam casting the deciding vote.
But Collum Duquesne, a wily old bastard who had managed to cobble together the manufacturing complex in Newberry, South Carolina, that was supplying black-powder weapons to the Army, rehabbing tons of museum technology, and supplying parts for half of the TNG’s tech projects . . . Collum, with his big laugh, warm hug, and sheer charm . . . had flown in for Board meetings, showing off his exclusive use of his rebuilt Piper Cub. On his way home from the last meeting, he had slammed into a mountain in a summer thunderstorm just outside Newberry.
Five Post Raptural Christians on the Board outvoted four military officers. Cam would not be allowed to appoint another advisor on economic development, because “if that’s something the private sector should take care of, then let’s let them take care of it,” as Reverend Whilmire put it.
I could just dissolve the Board. I created it and recruited it under the rules laid down in Directive 51;
surely if it had been his to create, it could be his to alter or abolish? Cam was the Natcon, the only person in the room whose authority derived directly from the vanished Federal government—
Reverend Peet’s cadences were rising and building; he was soaring to the end of the prayer with metaphorical drums banging, cymbals clanging, and horns blazing away. “—guide the Christian men in this room, and bring Christ to the men who are Christian in name only, to see the clear hand of God in the Rapture of so many missing millions, to recognize the Tribulation now under way, and to make the declaration, here and now, to move toward the God-ordained Christian States of America, and to cease the persecution of those of us who try to do Your Will. Hear us for we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, who taught us praying to say, ‘Our Father,’ . . .”
Everyone except Cam and the colonels leapt into the Lord’s Prayer; the rest jumped in later, Cam latest of all, and then he screwed up again by forgetting that it was “sins” and not “trespasses” that were supposed to be forgiven.
At the end, the five Post Rapturals on the Board rose and applauded before rushing down to congratulate Peet at the podium.
When that clown sprang the Lord’s Prayer on me, Grayson was right on it. I’m not sure whether I’m more worried that he was listening, or that I was caught not listening. Next Sunday Peet’s going to be trumpeting why-won’t-the-Natcon-say-the-Lord’s-Prayer, and the
Athens Weekly Insight
will be pushing to make me say it in public.
He rose from his chair, mechanically thanked Reverend Peet, and watched Peet’s exit, as stately as a king leaving the minor business to the lackeys and minions.
And what’s with the black robe and a doctoral stole? Up till now every preacher managed to pray in a black shirt with a funny collar.
When the Board finally took their seats for business, Cam hammered his way through announcements: For issuing new money, engravers were ready, paper wasn’t yet. The first Stearman copy with the new no-electric all-diesel engines would test-fly this week. Tribals had attacked a train outside Las Cruces, and Rangers were on their way to lead New Mexico Guard and allies from the California Castles for a punitive raid. Talks between the Springfield and Quincy governments in Illinois/Wabash were stymied. Foreign Relations had asked for military backup for Post Raptural missionaries in the Caribbean; Cam bluntly told them he was not going to use scarce military resources to rescue preachers who were trying to subvert friendly governments. The Post Rapturals used their new majority to record a protest and declare that the Board should have binding powers.
“I have the power to create and appoint a Board, which is then to be self-governing,” Cam reminded them. “And the Board is to serve at my pleasure. A Board that is hell-bound to overthrow the Establishment Clause—”
“A strong perspective on the Bible and the Constitution,” General Grayson said, “is well within the bounds of real American political thought.”
“This strong perspective seems to be that the way the Reverend Peet reads the Bible supersedes the way anyone with eyes reads the Constitution,” Cam said.
Ouch. Grayson brings that out in me.
“The context of the Constitution,” Grayson said smoothly, “is that the Framers were Christian—”
Colonel Chin, advisor for Security, asked, “Does this matter?”
Bless her heart.
“No, and I’m ruling it out of order. Under Directive 51, I am to hand over power only to a competent Constitutional authority. If we don’t follow the Constitution here—including the Establishment Clause—then it is we, not those hippie nuts in Olympia, who are outside the Constitution. I might find it necessary to rule that Graham Weisbrod is competent after all, and that you would owe your allegiance to the Olympia government.”
“This state has been a home of rebels before.” Albertson, the former Louisiana State Secretary of Education, was the staunchest Post Rapturalist on the Board.
“It has, and the answer to your proposal was delivered by General Sherman. This meeting is closed.”
On their way out, General Grayson tagged Cam’s elbow. “You know Reverend Peet is now urging Post Rapturals to pray for your death?”
“Does that make a difference?” Cam asked the general.
“It might.” Cam could never decide whether Grayson’s weird smirk was cynicism, contempt, or Grayson kidding God about making the world so silly. “God has been known to find human hands. We have to go over the incoming reports this afternoon, we can talk more then. Take a long lunch with a friend and decompress—it’s what I do. Later, my friend.”
“Later,” Cam said, trying not to visualize Grayson’s “long lunch” with Jenny.
Well, I guess it probably does decompress him. My problem is I can’t buy lunch at the prison. Guess getting lunch isn’t as important as seeing my only friend.
15 MINUTES LATER. ATHENS, TEMPORARY NATIONAL GOVERNMENT (TNG) DISTRICT (FORMERLY IN GEORGIA). 3:25 PM EST. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025.
General Lyndon Phat was sitting in the window seat he liked; the security forces kept people off the former golf course it overlooked. A squat, strongly built man with salt-and-pepper gray hair and a baggy face that looked much older than his body, with his reading glasses perched on his nose and his legs stretched across the seat, he looked like a professor reviewing before a lecture. “Don’t ask me how I am, Cam, the answer is always going to be ‘Just fine except they won’t let me go.’ ”
“Okay, I won’t ask that. What are you reading, Lyndon?”
“Reviewing the decisions before the Sicilian invasion.”
“General Patton?”
“General Alkibiades.” At Cam’s blank expression, Phat smiled. “See, this is what happened to ambitious kids like us. The Sicilian invasion in 415 BC was a great example of ignorance compounded by stupidity and turned to complete hell by overconfidence. But it wasn’t on the College Boards, so we never learned it.”
Cam sat down. “I want to tell you about a mess. Collum Duquesne is dead, and Castle Newberry passed to his son, who is Post Raptural. So we lost our majority on the Board, our alliance with the biggest Castle in the neighborhood, and all of Collum’s common sense and drive, all at once. And for that matter I am going to miss the hell out of the big goof and I have no time to mourn.”
Phat gestured for Cam to sit next to him, and put an arm around him. “Had you ever had a command job before President Pendano made you the Natcon?”
“I’d run plenty of staffs. It’s not the same thing.”
“No, it’s not.” Phat leaned back, but left a hand on Cameron’s shoulder. “You feel like every possible decision you can make is wrong and no matter what happens you’re bound to lose out, and there are a million important things you won’t even get to touch.”
“Read my mind.”
“We had a lot of wars in the teens and early twenties, Cam. I went to all of them, in command at one level or another every time. I wasn’t kidding that I’m glad not to have your job, and I can’t tell you how to do it. But I always found if I could think of the one thing I could accomplish, put everything into that, and find the nerve to let the rest go to hell—”
“I can’t let the Post Rapturalists have the Board,” Cameron said. “If they control that, they’ll find a way to get rid of me, proclaim their Christian States of America, and have a war going with Olympia in three weeks flat.”
“Then take your Board back,” Phat said.
“I guess that’s what I needed to hear. I’m not sure how I’ll do it and it won’t be easy, but now that I’ve said it out loud, I can feel that it’s what I need to do.”
“Don’t rely on Grayson. There is always some other purpose running through that guy’s head,” Phat said, “and it’s never the mission. Way too much like Alkibiades, actually.”
“Well, at the moment his main focus is his new wife—Reverend Whilmire’s daughter with the freak-show rack.”
“Yeah, you said. And the rack comes with the reverend.” Phat glanced at the clock. “Speaking of which, you have a meeting with Grayson, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Cam rose. “But I needed to come by here first. You always help me feel more ready for the world. Hey, what finally happened to Alkibiades?”
“Best general of his time, but no one could trust him. Every brilliant success followed by a spectacular act of betrayal. Played for so many sides that we’ll probably never know who assassinated him.” Phat pulled his glasses back down onto his nose, pointedly looked at his book, and said, “You’ll be late.”
ABOUT AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 4:15 PM EST. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025.
Sometimes Jenny was so damned beautiful that it seemed to Jeffrey Grayson that she was physically impossible. He stepped into his living room, set down his briefcase, and she rose from the couch where she had been lounging in a perfect little tight white you-will-stare-at-my-body outfit, throwing herself into a flirty, froufy rush into his arms, so that it seemed as if she went from the perfect pose on the couch to the tongue deep in his mouth in a single gracious breath.
God, half my age, but fifty times my youth and energy.
Some clergy might object to the
sheer intensity of the sexual relationship
, a phrase he used in his diary at least twice a month—whenever he was even in the same room with Jenny, everybody picked up on it. People objected to all sorts of things that were not their business. But after all, they were married, by Jenny’s dad, in fact, and Reverend Whilmire hadn’t seemed to have a problem with a son-in-law his own age, and who the hell else’s business was it?
Jenny was exactly Grayson’s idea of beautiful, and if there had been snotty media people around no doubt they’d have picked on him for marrying a Nazi-pinup-girl fantasy: creamy, almost eggshell white skin, huge blue eyes, very full lips, and a Barbie-doll boobs-on-a-stick body. (
Another good thing about Daybreak,
he reflected.
Barbie dolls are extinct, all rotted away, so there’s not a convenient term for mocking the women I’m attracted to.
)
He didn’t know if it was nature, or Whilmire’s upbringing, but Jenny was one of those rare young women who act as if they like to please men for its own sake. And smart—when he explained things to her she always leapt forward to exactly his point.
And the values. She understood what his country, his Army, his everything were really all about.
Sometimes it seemed he’d brought her into the world, fully formed, just by having longed for her his whole life. “Now sit down with me, baby,” she said, “and you tell me everything everyone said at the meeting this morning, and then all about your meeting with that weird little man.”
That weird little man
was what she called Cam; sometimes it bothered Grayson, because it didn’t seem like any way to talk about the rightful leader of the free world.
But then, when a girl grows up with her father eternally at the right hand of God’s number one guy, I suppose she loses her reverence for titles and positions. Maybe that’s another one of her strengths.
“There’s one little favor I want you to do for me,” she said, and, memories of his long-ago first marriage grabbing him, he tensed. But a moment later he relaxed when she said, “I want you to look something over and see if I did it right. You just never have time to work on your articles about the Yough Valley campaign, baby, I know you don’t, but since you have all your notes in order, it’s not a problem for me to write from them, and I have nothing to do all day. So I’ve got the last installment done, and just like the others, I’d like to have you make sure I’m accurate, because—believe this or not, baby—being a minister’s daughter is not the best training in the world for being a military memoirist.”
Grayson leaned back and laughed. “No, but I guess being a general’s wife is. You realize this means the entire article series will be by you?”
“Baby, you did all the fighting and you beat the daylights out of the tribes. I’m just getting you the credit for it. Now read through it, correct the facts and don’t you dare inflict any modesty on it, and we’ll have it off to Chris at the
Post-Times
, and the rest of our time for ourselves. Which”—she had slipped a foot out of her pump, and was sliding it into his trouser leg—“we will need, because it’s time to celebrate our three-month anniversary.”