The other girl suddenly clutched at Hunter, her hips locked in a tight freeze around Mannclift’s leg. “Oh! Oh, God!” she cried.
Hunter turned his head, gathering her in with one arm, and covered her mouth with his. The other arm pulled Mannclift hard against him and the three threshed into the adjacent pile in muscular cohesion. Hunter knew his organ was buried in somebody; he didn’t know who, and he didn’t care. He gave himself up to the madness of the moment, and left the Constitution of the United States to shift for itself.
8: EPILOGUE TO DECEMBER
The closing weeks of December were given over to fiery oratory and rambling rhetoric in the halls of Congress, to impassioned speeches and deadleg debates on street comers, in meeting halls, and from the pulpits across the land, and to cracks, jokes, caustic comments and an occasional fistfight in all the gathering places of America.
There were surprisingly few demonstrations, and no rioting whatever. Newspapers editorialized, columnists made predictions, and television commentators wondered about bloodless coups, usurpation of democracy, and hinted of Congressional investigations and possible Justice Department actions.
But then the Christmas season took over. Congressmen stopped orating and decamped to the home fires, student marches became an exodus via train, plane and bus to the eternal bosom of family, and the nation withdrew into itself to sing hymns, to shower itself with tokens of material abundance, and to kneel in cathedrals, temples, and tabernacles to pray for peace.
This December saw the most commercially successful Christmas season and the most orgiastic New Year’s Eve in modern history. And when the month ended, the final note of December could but echo the words of Brian Donaldson to Richard Hunter some two weeks earlier: “It’s done.”
BOOK III
JANUARY
1: THE INGRESS
On January 6, the president pro tempore of the Senate, presiding over a joint session of Congress, officially declared Brian Donaldson the President-elect of the United States. The election of Richard Hunter to the post of Vice-President was ruled invalid, and on January 7 the Senate named Walter Bogardee, a 42-year-old Congressman from Indiana, to that honor, in a carefully planned and smoothly executed roll-call vote.
The inaugural ceremonies of January 20 were somber, and almost mournful, as though all participants were aware that Brian Donaldson was being sworn in as the last President of the United States.
Immediately following the ceremony, Donaldson released a statement to the effect that he was naming Richard Hunter as his Secretary of State. The Senate majority leader issued an immediate counter-statement to the effect that the nomination would never receive confirmation by the Senate. The new President merely smiled and said, “We shall see.”
Vice-President Walter Bogardee dropped dead of a heart attack precisely one hour into his term of office, setting off a new buzz of speculation and prognostication by the media and in various official circles.
Richard Hunter, flanked by Brian and Winfried when this news was received, was treated to a knowing look by Winfried and a hand-squeeze by Brian.
The new President took up residence in the White House that same day, as did the bulk of his staff from Jackass Crags. The 132-room mansion was filled as never before; the Olympians had moved to Washington.
2: THE ORDER
Brian Donaldson placed a sheaf of papers in Hunter’s hands, saying, “Your first official task, Hunter, is to attend to these resignations. You know most of these people, or you should at least be acquainted with them. Make it clear that I want them to stay.”
Hunter was leafing through the stack. “The White House staff,” he grunted.
“Yes. The resignations are a formality, I understand. Tell them to stay put. I have no plans for replacing them.”
Hunter nodded. “They’re all good people. I suspect that a few will go just the same; personal friends of Jenkins, you know. Uh...”
“What’s on your mind, Hunter?”
“It’s the girls. I found three of them in mini-ginches this morning, surrounded by Secret Service men. Something’s going to have to be done about that.”
Brian smiled. “Habits of a lifetime are hard to break overnight. I’ll speak to them again.”
“We don’t want to start your administration with a morals scandal, do we?”
“Of course not,” Brian agreed .“Don’t worry; I’ll take care of it. Something else bothering you?”
“Well...you’ve brought your own staff to Washington with you, yet you want to hang onto Jenkins’ people. What are we going to do with them all?”
“Isn’t there room enough?” Brian asked.
“Oh, yeah, there’s room enough. I don’t know if there’s personality enough, though. Uh...I was thinking of overlapping functions, competition, that sort of thing.”
“My staff from Olympia will not be concerned with affairs of state, Hunter,” Brian told him, smiling. “There’ll be no overlap. Please remember that I have a financial empire to maintain also.”
Hunter frowned. “Uh, yeah. There’s the rub. Surely you understand the conflict-of-interest angle. There’s liable to be some howls.”
“That’s one of the problems my staff is working on right now,” Brian assured him.
“Okay.” Hunter grinned. “I’ll go deliver your other message to the hometown regulars.”
“Stay a moment,” Brian said quickly. “As we discussed earlier, I’m leaving the Cabinet intact, except for the Defense and State Departments. Now, I’ve been in contact personally with the heads of all the departments. The Secretary of State, I suspect, has already cleared out of Washington, and he seemed damn happy about it. Your name has officially gone to the Senate to fill that vacancy. As for—”
“They won’t accept it, Brian, you know that. Why don’t you just—”
“They have to go through the motions of rejection. You will serve in the meantime. If they reject you, I’ll appoint you again, and I’ll go on appointing you as long as necessary.”
Hunter was frowning again. “I wish you’d just bow to the inevitable and appoint somebody the Senate will accept. I feel like the largest fool in the world, anyway, even being mentioned for the job. I know nothing about—”
“Nonsense!” Brian snapped. “The Secretary of State is, quite simply a policy man. The damn department runs itself quite admirably. Let the pro’s do their jobs, and you do your job, right here at my side.”
“You can appoint me to an advisory position,” Hunter persisted. “That way I’ll be at your side, and there won’t be all this static from the sidelines.”
“Hunter, you must understand this! An advisor is not in the line of Presidential succession. The Secretary of State is. Now let’s not hear any more about—”
“Are you planning another disaster or something?” Hunter broke in despairingly. “The Secretary of State’s the number four man in line!”
“And one is down already,” Brian reminded him.
“Well...hell! Are you planning on dying?”
“Everyone dies, Hunter,” Brian said soberly.
“Not all at once,” Hunter retorted.
“Oft times they do,” Brian countered, his voice softening incredibly. “You are in the cycle, Hunter. We recognized it the moment Mannclift complained about your interference with her detail, back in November. You shall serve as Secretary of State, and that is that.”
“Well, for crying out loud,” Hunter said. “Are you telling me that you’re persisting in this nuttiness? What’re you going to do, run the nation with astrological charts?”
“Precisely!” Brian assured him.
Hunter’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. He spun about and made his way blindly out of the Executive Office.
3: THE UNDERSTANDING
It had been a wearying day, and Hunter was exhausted. He lay in the big bedroom of the third-floor apartment at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, eyes closed, contemplating the probable goosebumps on his naked skin
and comparing the environmental-control capabilities of the White House with those of Olympia.
“It isn’t all that cold,” Mannclift told him. “At least nothing we can’t take care of between the two of us.” She draped her leg across his abdomen and added, “If this doesn’t help, I have something warmer.”
“I’ll bet,” Hunter mumbled. He rose on one elbow and stared at her briefly, then said, “Listen: You Olympians have just got to get something through your heads. This is the White House the home of the Presidents since John Adams. It’s a hallowed place. It is also a guarded camp, and the guards are not Olympians.” He pointed dramatically toward the closed door. “Right out there in that hallway are half a dozen Secret Service men. You can’t keep on running up and down those halls naked, for Christ’s sake!”
“I just came in to say goodnight,” Mannclift pouted. She patted his flaccid penis with a solicitous hand. “And the poor baby has already gone to sleep. Drugged; knocked out, probably, by this hallowed atmosphere.” She showed him a winsome smile. “I don’t like it here, Hunter. I wish we were home.” She manipulated the object of her interest between thumb and forefinger and made a little face. “Drugged,” she repeated mournfully.
Hunter sighed and pulled her into his arms. She lay atop him, astraddle his hips, arms crossed on his chest. They kissed, and then she raised her head to gaze into his eyes. “I think I desire to make babies,” she said soberly.
“Ungh?” Hunter responded, wondering if he’d heard right.
“I believe...I am coming into the understanding.”
“What understanding?”
“Love,” she said simply. She lowered her head and nibbled briefly on his chin, then placed her nose in the hollow of his cheek. “I’m in love,” she whispered.
Hunter lay very still, his arms lightly enfolding her, aware of her soft breath on his ear. “In, uh...in the language of Olympia...this means exactly what?” he asked presently.
“It means that I want a bungalow, and you, and a baby.”
“Well...” He didn’t know what to say. “You were just talking about wanting to return to Olympia. Now you’re saying you want to give up...Olympia...its comforts and its wonders, your work and...position to...to huddle in a stone shack beneath the crag for a long, long, time, Mannclift. That’s what you’re saying, you know.”
She wriggled against him. “I know.”
Hunter was pondering the enigma. Presently he said, “It seems to me that Olympia makes marriage highly undesirable. Why does Brian make it so tough to get married?”
“He doesn’t make it tough,” she whispered. “He makes it holy.”
Hunter pondered that for a moment. “You know, I can almost understand that,” he said.
“We don’t need to marry for sex, you see. We don’t need to marry for companionship, nor for security, nor for position—not for any of the reasons most outlanders marry for. We marry simply because we can’t bear the thought of not marrying. It is an understanding, Hunter; a deep understanding. I’ve been taught for many years that one day this understanding might come to me. I’ve known friends who found it, and I always wondered what it could be like. As you say, there’s an entire world standing between Olympia and the bungalows. I...I learned my lesson; I knew that the understanding was a rare and wonderful thing... but I know also that I have forever had the secret belief that this understanding was not for me. I couldn’t imagine giving up Olympia for a bungalow. But now...now, Hunter, I want that bungalow.”
“I, uh...I don’t know what to say. There’s...so much to be done here in Washington; the crushing new responsibilities, the—”
She had risen slightly, and now she placed a hand over his lips, silencing him. “I don’t speak for now,” she advised him. “It’s enough that you’re aware of my understanding. Now, if the stars will it, you’ll come into yours...at some time.” She smiled, wrinkling her nose playfully. “Anyway, we won’t be in Washington long.”
“Only four damn years,” Hunter said. “Unless we get hung first.”
“No,” she replied firmly. “The stars don’t indicate four years.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We will have returned to Olympia for the vernal equinox.”
“What?”
“The equality of days. The beginning of spring.” She giggled. “You’re simply going to have to learn our language, Richard.”
“Uh...what do you mean, Mannclift? Paula. About returning to Olympia. You mean we’ll be back there to stay?”
She nodded. “That’s the indication. We’ll probably leave just behind Aquarius.”
Hunter was all attention now. “Mannclift...why is it so important that I be in the line of succession for the Presidency?”
“You’re the Archer of the Sagittarian era,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“I don’t understand that.”
“The period of strong Sagittarian influence has begun; America finds its fulfillment during this period.”
“And?”
She smiled. “And you are the instrument of fulfillment.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
“Of course I believe it. I know it.”
“You people always use this word know.”
“There is essential knowledge. We have it.”
“I see. All right, what’s going to happen to Brian?”
Her eyes saddened momentarily, then brightened. “He will fulfill his destiny and the destiny of the nation.”
“You people are expecting Brian to die in office, aren’t you? And you think I’ll take over the White House. Look: it can’t happen! Can’t you understand? By whatever route he gets there, a man must be at least thirty-five years of age to assume the Presidency. I’m seven years out of the running.”
“There are the beginnings of laws and there are the endings of laws,” Mannclift said simply.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk so mystical,” Hunter chafed.
“That’s the way of truth,” she replied. “It’s forever clothed in mystery, until one comes into the understanding. Like me. Like my understanding of love. Love was mystery to me until very recently. Now, Hunter... Now it’s truth.”
“I’m coming into a truth of my own,” Hunter said glumly.
“Yes,” she agreed, her hand creeping between their joined bellies. “The sleeper awakens.” She raised herself with her knees, hips twirling into an approach maneuver, showed Hunter her pink tongue and breathed, “Ahhh!” as she rocked back in a settling motion. “I knew you would,” she told him, eyes glistening. “Your arrow, Archer, is ever ready.”
“Even in the White House,” he muttered.
“You’re coming into your understanding,” she assured him.
“Is that what I’m coming into?” he asked, an edge of bitterness in his tone.
“Don’t fight the motions of the heavens,” she advised, her voice becoming a bit unsettled.
“It isn’t the motions of the heavens that bothers me at the moment,” he assured her.
She raised her hips and rocked them laterally, peering into his eyes for reaction, then grunted with satisfaction and settled down again, wriggling gently against him. “Lie still,” she commanded. “This one is all mine.”
“I’m getting that understanding,” he sighed. He encircled her lovely neck with both arms, closed his eyes and let her take it.
4: VEIL OF HORROR
It was the fourth day, and things were happening. Brian was locked in with his Olympian staff from just past dawn until shortly before noon, the privacy broken only by the hurried comings and goings of officious-looking men in conservative business suits. Hunter vaguely recognized two of them; one was a senior partner in one of the country’s top-ranking law firms, and the other was a well-known Wall Street broker. He assumed that corporate transactions were in the making, and he purposefully avoided the inner circle, studiously disinterested in such undertakings; besides, he had not been invited to pa
rticipate.
At twelve o’clock, Brian received the embarrassed head of the White House Secret Service detail to hear a complaint about the deportment of certain female members of the Donaldson staff. He had been forced to reassign several of his agents, the chief complained, because of scandalous behavior with the young ladies. Also, rumors were rampant in the detail to the effect that some of the ladies were in the habit of frolicking nude in the Presidential apartments. The President laughed off the assertions, but assured the Secret Service chief that the matter would be looked into.
At twelve-thirty, Brian served notice that Hunter would have to postpone a planned visit to the State Department offices. He had arranged a two o’clock conference with the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Hunter was to attend.
Hunter lunched with the President and the new Defense Secretary—none other than Joseph Libwitz, the industrialist in whose Connecticut mansion Hunter had begun his strange relationship with Mannclift and the Olympians. Libwitz proved to be charming and outgoing, and to Hunter’s utter amazement, adept in the mystery language of the Olympians. Hunter ate silently, casting occasional dark glances at his companions as they talked of signs and conjunctions, rising stars and planetary influences.
About midway through the luncheon, Brian noted Hunter’s discomfort. “I’m afraid I’m monopolizing the conversation,” he said. “Was there something you wanted to discuss, Hunter?”
“Just one thing,” Hunter replied, choking down a crust of bread. He stabbed his fork gently toward Libwitz. “Is he an Olympian?”
The two older men exchanged glances, then both laughed. “Of course,” Brian said. He regarded Hunter with some amusement, then added, “The three of us form the sides of the triangle.”
“What triangle?”
“The triangle on which rests the bird of fire— the Phoenix; the principle of regeneration. Libwitz is Scorpius.”
Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians) Page 42
