The Last President d-3

by John Barnes

  “Nice work.”

  Glad Ocean opened her eyes and nodded enthusiastically. The slim, older woman was a senior shaman. Her eight-foot spirit stick was encrusted with so many decorations that she had a slave carry it for her most of the time. She was supposed to be Robert’s liaison to the Daybreaker leadership, to the tribes who had come with him, and to the moon gun, which she insisted on calling the Guardian on the Moon and referring to as “he.” “Absolutely right,” she said. “We can’t let the plaztatic world have places to grow back. I’m so glad you’re being thorough here, Lord Robert.”

  He nodded slightly, just a slight dip of the head, which, as usual, she took for agreement. Even though Glad Ocean was old and scrawny, nothing like the hot chick that Daybreak had sent him to play with before, he thought about that one every time Glad Ocean favored him with her smug little tight-ass morally-correct smile. You have something in common with Pale Bluff, he thought at her. You are completely in my power. The only difference is, Pale Bluff has already found out what that means. But I’m still looking forward to you finding out.

  He turned back to Nathanson and Bernstein and said, “Don’t call anyone away from the party right now. I know they’re still finding stuff and still finding dumbshits who are trying to hide or sneak away, and they’ll want to have time to play with all the new toys and pull out all the good parts before they burn it all. But around sundown, we’re having a little bit of… oh, I guess you’d call it a bonfire here tonight.” He pointed down at the corpse at his feet. “Tar the general here the way we did Ecco’s body last year, and nail it to a nice tall post. We’ll start with a little ceremony raising it up. You realized this was the last guy that really might have been the president? They are so fucked.”

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO. 2:15 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. MONDAY, MAY 11, 2026.

  “Wish we’d had a Federal judge living here, at least,” Heather said. “But James assures me that Calvin Coolidge took the oath from a Vermont notary public, and it counted. Let’s get this done.”

  Michelle Trevor had been a Colorado Court of Appeals judge back before; her term had not expired, but the court hadn’t met since Daybreak day. Nowadays she worked in the general labor pool (usually cooking in the town mess hall), moonlighted as a waitress at Dell’s Brew, and taught history in the night school. Patrick had managed to locate her within fifteen minutes of James’s thinking of her, and she’d come over to the Old Pueblo Courthouse as soon as she had finished cubing a large elk steak and washed her hands. She seemed to be mildly amused. “Are you sure you don’t want me to make you the Pope, crown you queen of France, and marry you to somebody, as long as I already came over here?”

  “Oh, I guess President is enough for one day,” Heather said. “You’re the history teacher. What do we need to make this legal?”

  “Three witnesses is a good number,” she said. “It’s better if they’re public officials. That’s covered with James, Leslie, and Dr. Odawa. There’s no rule against a witness being a minor, so Patrick and Ntale, you count too, and Leo might, though he’d have a heck of a time giving testimony. Wonder, I’m afraid this country does not extend full civil rights to dogs yet.”

  Wonder wagged his tail slightly. “He’s not big on irony,” Leslie said.

  “Oh, well. Anyway, the text of the oath is prescribed in the Constitution, which I have here. The Bible is traditional, not required, but I think it’s a good idea given the politics of the southeastern part of the country. As for my authority, as you said, I’m at least a couple jumps up from a notary public. Coolidge retook the oath from the Chief Justice, on the sly, when he got back to Washington, just in case there was any question, but there never was. I guess you could do the same if you’re ever around a Federal judge. And that, my friends, should cover all the issues. Shall we get back to swearing in the President?”

  “Sure.”

  Heather followed the instructions and said the words. Afterward, she said, “You know, that’s probably the first all-hugging inauguration.”

  “I shook your hand,” James pointed out.

  “History is always open to revision,” Judge Michelle said. “Give him a good hug before we go, Heather. And I do have to go; I have an afternoon shift at Dell’s and papers to grade.”

  30 MINUTES LATER. AUSTIN, TEXAS. 4:15 PM CENTRAL TIME. MONDAY, MAY 11, 2026.

  Big cumulus clouds piled across the deep blue Texas sky, and Governor Faaj Tong-George read faster than he would have liked, afraid that there might be rain before the end of the ceremony. When he read fast, he could sound too much Kennedy School, where he had been a professor, and not enough Brownsville, where he had grown up, and that could be very bad for re-election.

  Yet though his words were coming out softer and faster than he intended, the crowd was still cheering wildly at each point. When he began his paragraph about the pride every Texan felt in the TexICs and pain of their irreparable loss, the cheering became so heated that he had to start that part again. Without microphones or loudspeakers to quiet the crowd, he finally had to ask them to keep it down so he could finish. At last, he went on:

  …yet the loss of so many of our most valued citizens of the Texas Independent Cavalry might have been a sacrifice we would willingly have made for the larger nation, and even now we must remember and honor that they died in the hope of saving the United States of America. But remembrance and honor are a debt to the past, and the graver and more serious debt is the one we owe to our children. We cannot ignore that the states, agencies, and powers seeking a Restored Republic, however noble their cause, however unrelenting and brave their efforts, have suffered a series of grievous defeats from which they cannot be expected to recover.

  We cannot now, or in any reasonably near future, responsibly place our trust in a power so broken and so defective, when our country and our children’s lives depend upon it. Having therefore concluded that our security is best entrusted to our own hands, with affection for our former brethren of the United States, with renewed effort against our shared enemies, but without reservation, condition, or any offer, explicit or implicit, of reconciliation, we hereby declare that the Union between the State of Texas and the United States of America is dissolved, and of a right ought to be, and we resume our full and equal place among the nations of mankind.

  He still wasn’t sure how much the crowd heard, or cared whether they heard, over the rising roar of their own cheering.

  At the visible end of the speech, they gave up all restraint and cheered madly for what the words did, whether or not they knew what they said.

  He put his speech text carefully into its leatherbound folder. His aides were to take it to a frame shop immediately, and within a few days it would hang next to the first Texas Declaration of Independence, in the Capitol building behind him. Funny. Weird. Hunh. There’ll never be a recording of this; kids in school won’t complain that they can’t understand my old- fashioned accent or make fun of my weird olden-days clothing.

  Governor Faaj nodded at the honor guard, which hauled down the Temper Cross and Eagle and the Provi nineteen-star double-circle Stars and Stripes from the two flanking poles where they had been flying. As soon as they were down, the Lone Star flags went up, and the cheering became deafening.

  Faaj felt an ocean of sadness surge within him when he nodded again, and the crew pulled down the old fifty-star flag from the high center pole. Not quite 250 years. Missed by less than two months.

  Something of that feeling must have been there in the crowd. There had been cries of “Shame!” from some demonstrators, and another bunch had been singing “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead” and still another group was bellowing a Carlene Redbone hit from a few years ago, “Don’t Let That Door Hit Your Ass,” and here and there people were trying to start up “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “The Eyes of Texas” but being drowned out by their neighbors. One very old man in the front row, tears streaming down his face, was trying to sing “You’re a Grand Old Flag” but couldn
’t seem to recall it past the first couple of lines, and kept starting over and over.

  In different parts of the crowd, people were enthusiastically waving the Stars and Bars, the rattlesnake, the pine tree, and one lone Jolly Roger.

  But when the old flag had descended a couple of feet, the crowd plunged into a hush, like the moment when a casket is lowered into the grave, and you could hear the creaking of the pulleys as it came down. In the rising wind of the coming storm, it snapped and rippled as if it were trying, one more time, to get back into another fight.

  The honor guard of US Army Rangers at the base of the pole were openly weeping as they folded the flag. This flag would be framed and displayed in the Texas Capitol, between the two Declarations.

  Then the Texas Rangers stepped forward and briskly ran up the Lone Star, and the applause was so much like thunder that many of the crowd didn’t realize that the storm was coming in, till gusts of silvery rain fell on them in sheets, and they fled through the gardens surrounding the Capitol.

  Faaj had already handed off the folder, and the aides were gathering up the folding chairs, suddenly emptied of dignitaries. No one was paying much attention to the governor, so he looked around once more before going in. The old man was still standing there, still trying to sing, and Faaj walked down the steps to stand next to him. He had learned “You’re a Grand Old Flag” for a President’s Day concert in eleventh grade, and he put his arm around the old guy, and sang it all the way through. That seemed to break the spell, and the old man went off sniveling, wiping his face uselessly in the rain.

  I was singing it for him, but I wonder if he was singing it for the Stars and Stripes or for the Lone Star? I guess in the long history of the universe that question probably won’t matter.

  “Governor Faaj, aren’t you going to come inside?”

  “Son, my people are Hmong and my first job was on a fishing boat. This ain’t rain, this is a sprinkle.” Lightning cracked nearby with a deafening boom. “Coming right along, though.”

  At the top of the steps he paused and looked. All the flags on all the staffs were now so soaked that you couldn’t really see what they were.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO. 3:45 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. MONDAY, MAY 11, 2026.

  They were at the airfield early because “Let’s face it, we want to know what’s going on,” Leslie said. “We’d’ve been no use anyway, sitting around at the office, right?”

  “Well, we could have pretended to work, but that’s probably your point,” James said.

  “I think Leo was just relieved to be dropped off at the sitter’s,” Heather said. “He’s sort of sensitive to my moods lately and I was making him nervous.” She touched her shoulder holster. “Also I think that I feel weird to him because I’m always extra careful whenever I’m carrying.”

  James said, “Why are you? We have guards around and no reason to think Bambi is dangerous.”

  “No, but Bambi thinks something is,” Heather said. “Why is she insisting on meeting at the airport? All I can think of is that either she’s got urgent information that she can’t trust to encryption, or she has reason to fear being attacked in town. Either way means something bad going on that we have no idea about.”

  “Is there any possibility that it’s us? That she’s decided we’re the enemy, somehow?”

  “James, based on what we know right now anything is possible. Bambi worked for me for three years back before, and I like to think there’s a lot of friendship and respect. But she just lost a husband and we don’t know the circumstances except it happened in battle, and something killed General Phat and all we know is that she’s apparently the only witness, and we’ve had traitors in the ranks before, as both of you would know. So I’m just thinking that till I know what’s going on, I’d rather have my gun close by and my baby far away. And besides—there she is.” They looked to where Heather pointed to the tiny buzzing dot in the sky.

  The Stearman made a slight whump on landing, the greased linen tires having deflated during the long flight from Hays, Kansas. The plane taxied around in a broad circle to stop about ten yards in front of them.

  Bambi shut the engine off, braked the prop, climbed out, and walked toward them. Leslie said, very softly, “Her hand is by her holster.”

  “I know,” Heather murmured. “I’m keeping my hand away from mine.”

  Bambi walked as if she had counted and measured the steps between her plane and her colleagues, and was putting each foot carefully on its mark, like an unconfident movie actor or as if she were crossing a river on not-quite remembered stepping-stones. She had not taken off her flying helmet, but her goggles were pushed up onto her forehead; despite the warm afternoon, she left her jacket zipped. And, as Leslie had noticed, her right hand was resting by the grip of the pistol strapped to her thigh, almost as if she expected a gunfight.

  Quietly, Heather said, “You can just tell us what happened, Bambi. We haven’t heard anything from anyone else.”

  She nodded. “Lyndon Phat decided that my plane and I should stay in Paducah because he needed us and wanted to keep us. He arrested me and locked me up. He didn’t let me fly to Pale Bluff, where my husband was fighting for his life, kept me locked up while bad news was pouring in over the radio and barely bothered to tell me about it afterward. Then ten minutes after the EMP, he ordered me to fly him to Pale Bluff for a reconnaissance. I saw Quattro’s burned body in the wreckage; all the ground crew died with him too. I think maybe they tried to fly out just as the EMP hit, or maybe they were shot down and the plane flipped. I don’t know. It was too badly burned. So… I walked back to my plane, and I pointed a gun at General Lyndon Phat, and made him get out of my airplane. I left him there on the runway with tribals starting to run up on him. I’m pretty sure he’s dead by now but I’m hoping Lord Robert got to take a personal interest and treated him like Steve Ecco.”

  The hideous silence stretched as if it might go on forever.

  James didn’t see any point in bringing up any arguments that she should not have done it; it was done, with nothing to change. He didn’t see a reason to blame her; either she would blame herself, or not. He didn’t fear the gun at her hip; she clearly had control of herself. He just wished someone would think of something to say.

  When it seemed painfully clear that no one else was going to break the silence, James said, “Is there any chance anyone survived, or there might be anybody holding out there?”

  Bambi shook her head, and now tears were flowing. “Not a chance. We circled. No fighting. Bodies everywhere. If anyone was still alive they were hiding in a cellar or something, and the tribals were lighting fires everywhere.”

  Leslie said, “I am so sorry about Quattro. He was special to all of us but he was your husband and you’d loved him a long time.”

  “Even before I knew I did,” Bambi said softly. Her hand moved decisively down away from her holster. “What now?”

  Heather asked, “Are we the only people who know? Because if we are, then I think we’re the only people who decide. There’s nobody I have to report it to, now, and there never will be.”

  Bambi’s shoulders began to shake, and Heather said, “I don’t want any accidents, so, is it okay if I come over there and hold you? You know, old friend to old friend, not—”

  Bambi raised her hands away from her weapon, and the two women embraced.

  Heather looked at James and Leslie over her friend’s shoulder. “Uh, guys.”

  Taking their cue, they went into the office.

  After a long time, Heather and Bambi joined them. Bambi sat quietly, looking at her boots. Heather said, “Well, to begin with, Bambi knows I’m now the President. So really, this is the President and her closest advisors dealing with a difficult situation. I guess… Bambi, can you tell them about how you feel about the Duchy of California? The same way you told me?”

  Bambi said, “I can try. It’s hard to say this. Look, my father… the whole time I was raised with his libertarian
Ayn Rand right-wing thing going on, and hating it, because, well, Daddy always thought somehow or other that everything that happened around all that money and all those people working, he thought he did it. Like, all by himself, you know? Ten years after Obama said ‘You didn’t build that’ he was still in hysterics about it because he couldn’t stand the idea that the people who drew a paycheck from him had anything to do with the work that got done.

  “So you know, you want to piss off your parents, or anyway at least I wanted to piss off mine. In eighth grade, I showed him a copy of ‘Questions from a Worker Who Reads’ and he tried to get my English teacher fired, and I went to the School Board meeting to testify against him. He had a whole career track laid out for me at Castro Enterprises and I never showed up to do anything he wanted me to, instead I went to a public university and volunteered for all kinds of unpaid do-gooding and ended up as a Federal agent. I don’t think you can imagine how angry that made him, that I was working for the tax-and-spenders and revenuers and gun-grabbers, even if I was carrying a gun myself.

  “But he was proud of me too, in his weird way. And he kept telling me to take care of things, make sure guys like Donald, his favorite chauffeur, were taken care of. And then later… Quattro was one of the few other people in the world who understood me, I think. You know he was raised all his life to figure that someday the government would be all gone, and it would just be crazy looters in the street and red barbarians in the Statehouse, and… but he’d loved me, forever, really, I guess, since we were kids, and since putting the United States back together was what mattered to me, and my oath, and being part of society, and being in it for something bigger than myself, and all that”—her hands sawed the air—“it’s important and I can’t seem to keep it all in order, but you get the idea. Since I wanted my United States put back together, Quattro wanted me to have that.