The Last President

by John Barnes

  Darcage heard footsteps. The door opened, sudden bright light hurting his eyes. Guards unbound him from his bunk, dragged him from the train, shoved him along the broken pavement of the platform. Big hands grabbed his arms and dragged him onto his back in the bed of a wagon.

  As he rode through the streets, he pressed his bound hands awkwardly against his face to block the sunlight, sobbing to recover his breath, until his eyes adjusted; as soon as he could bear it he stared into the deep blue sky and let himself feel sun on his face, sucking in the freezing air. It had been so long.

  When the wagon halted, they flung him headlong off the tailgate, catching him with his face barely off the pavement, laughing at his wince.

  He was pushed up a flight of stairs and through a building door. Inside, they yanked him by the arms up three more flights of stairs and through several doors till, without pity or apology, they dropped him onto the floor near the rostrum of a college lecture hall.

  She was there.

  Beautiful and elegant as ever, Allie Sok Banh wore a handmade linen suit that must have taken someone two weeks to sew. “Take the gag off. Turn him to face the room.”

  The people chained to the seats were leaders, counselors, and shamans among the tribes of the Hells Canyon area. Darcage had met most of them when he carried messages to them from the Guardian on the Moon. If anyone had been going to rescue him, it would have been ordered by one of these—

  “I am so glad you are all here,” Allie said from the podium. “I only wish the rest of your tribes were, as well.” She barked a forced laugh through bared teeth. “When I invited you to negotiate, I was lying. We do lie to terrorists, criminals, and traitors, but here’s the truth: you are here to witness that the United States does not negotiate with criminals or terrorists, regardless of what silly stories you make up about yourselves. The United States and the Constitution are real. Mother Gaia and the tribes are made up. We’re here to show you that.”

  “Now, Mister Darcage here, as you know, was my controller during the time when Daybreak invaded my mind. I am paying him back for that, personally—when someone attempts to seize my personality, that is personal.”

  She held out her hand. A guard put a pistol into it. She walked to Darcage and held it a handsbreadth from his head, pointed directly into his left eye. “Darcage, you will say, ‘Daybreak is a lie,’ before I count down from five. Five.” She paused, drew a breath, and with curious gentleness, brushed the muzzle of the gun against his eyelids, making him blink, before pulling it back a bare inch. “Three-one!” The hammer slapped closed.

  The inside of his head rang with a high-pitched whistle, drowning out every other sound. Everything in his vision had a bright blinding rainbow-hued halo. His mouth opened so far it hurt his jaw, and his vocal cords were in dry agony as he forced all his air back and forth through them with all his strength. The world rolled madly.

  He woke with his face chafed and sore from weeping, thinking, She fast counted, then dry-fired.

  He had probably only been out for a minute or two. Allison Sok Banh was explaining, “—no use to us; he does not exhibit the brief lucid post-seizure period that less thoroughly indoctrinated Daybreakers do, so we cannot free him from Daybreak. We will try to induce a Daybreak seizure in all of you. If you emerge like Darcage here, without enough of your old self for our doctors to work with, we will hold a short, fair trial and hang you. We’ll do the same if you successfully resist going into a seizure. But if you emerge able to communicate, we will attempt rehabilitation.”

  Somewhere out in the seats, someone asked, “And our proposals—”

  “You may take this as our answer.”

  Darcage’s mind retreated toward the gentle, cool press of linoleum against his face, crossing over into the schoolroom smell of remembered childhood, and down into deep unconsciousness.

  THE NEXT DAY. CASTLE LARSEN (NEAR THE FORMER JENNER, CALIFORNIA). 3:30 PM PACIFIC TIME. SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 2026.

  Five days before their coronation as Duke and Duchess of California—a consolidation of fiefs and titles for their hypothetical future children to inherit—the Countess of the South Coast and the Earl of the Russian River were walking together on the rammed-earth fortress wall of Castle Larsen, laying some awe and majesty on the locals, as Quattro called it. “What I don’t get is the way they act like they like it,” he said. “Before Daybreak I’d ride my bicycle down to Sandy’s place for a hamburger and ice cream, and she’d be, like, ‘What’ll it be, Quattro?’ all friendly but nothing special. Now she yells at her help to set up the private room for the Earl, and you can tell she’s getting off on how grand that is, and once they Duke me, she’ll probably roll out a literal red carpet with a bunch of guys in tights blowing horns.” He stopped to watch a Newberry Dieselplane taxi down the runway, turn around, and taxi back; his technicians were testing ND-3, the third one built. “Nowadays I can’t even test-fly my own new airplanes.”

  “Quattro, they’d rather bet their families’ lives on the Earl of the Russian River, or better yet the Duke of California, than on that rich surfer dude up the road, you know?”

  “Yeah, I do know. I just hate having to be the most responsible man in California when there are airplanes to fly and adventures to have.”

  “Me too. But Heather needs a loyal Duck and a trustworthy Doochess to get the country glued back together, and like it or not, that’s us. Now keep laying on the awe.”

  She guided him away from the side of the parapet that faced the airfield; no sense rubbing his nose in his frustrations. From the sea side, they watched the Russian River pour down between the snow-covered, deep green banks. The chilly wet long winter had been good for grass, but the extra rain had brought down huge loads of mud.

  Quattro looked out over the new land forming in the sea. “With the grass and brush to secure all this silt, Goat Rock Beach will end up as a lea, but there’ll be another beach beyond it, and people will love that too. This is going to be a good place.”

  “As far as I’m concerned it already is.”

  “Yeah.” He pulled his cloak closer around him. “Bambi, it’s so beautiful here, and I’m so proud of what we’ve been able to do.” His arm extended toward the fields of snow-spattered deep green, then swung out to encompass the docks along the river, the many smoking chimneys in Jenner, and back to the awe-inspiring ocean and coast. “If anything happens to me—”

  Against the spitting wind, Bambi shielded her face on his chest. “Morbid morbid morbid.”

  A big slow wave curled in, breaking over the new sandbars. Sea lions hurried out of the way.

  He sighed, and folded his arm back over Bambi. “You’re right, I’m being morbid. And I’ve got no reason to. Just, right this second, I’m not feeling lucky.”

  15 HOURS LATER. SAVANNAH, GEORGIA. 11:15 AM EASTERN TIME. MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 2026.

  “Back before, I hated to admit I knew what a sailboat was. Ferengi was like Pop incarnate—a Hudson River schooner, much too authentic of a replica,” Whorf said, “every bit as much heavy physical labor as the original. It was what you’d expect from a super-achieving overcompensating Nerd of Color. I mean, good god, he named his kids Deanna, Geordie, Whorf, and Uhura, even if Mom made him compromise about how he spelled a couple of them so it wouldn’t be so obvious.”

  Whorf was splitting a fish-and-okra pizza, the only thing on the menu, with Ihor Reshetnyk, the other scholar-sailor who had joined the ship in Manbrookstat. Not to be outpaced, Whorf took a large piece and took another couple of bites before continuing. “It embarrassed the shit out of a five-A like me, the most humiliating—”

  “Whoa up, homie.” Ihor was working on his American slang. “What is a five-A?”

  “From a TV series a few years ago. Affluent artistic achiever African-American. Snobby black teenager who pretends not to know pop culture, talks a lot about being authentic, into jazz and the H
arlem Renaissance and Spike Lee and all that. Looking back it was strictly a pose to piss off Pop.” He took another bite of the hot, chewy pizza. “I’m horrified at how good this is.”

  “And we don’t have to wash dishes!” Ihor tore off another slice. “Sailing wasn’t no hobby with my whole family, we all followed the sea. That’s how you say it, like Conrad?”

  “‘Followed the sea’ is right, but that should be something like ‘wasn’t just’ or ‘wasn’t merely.’”

  “Sailing wasn’t merely a hobby to my family. I like ‘merely.’ We all followed the sea. We followed it right out of Odessa—you live in Odessa, you figure out real young, out is the direction you want to go. And now I’m away from my family. That Captain Halleck, he’s strict, right?”

  “‘Strict’ is the word.”

  “But he don’t—doesn’t—hit and he says what it’s about. How I know I’m not with my family, eh? I was surprised my old man, he said, go with my blessing. Like he liked me.”

  Whorf thought, If I don’t change the subject away from family I’m going to be homesick. He checked his pocket watch. “We should probably start walking. Some policeman might decide he doesn’t care about our uniforms, and decide to notice we don’t have a Chapel Pass.”

  “Right.” Ihor rose and gazed at the scattered crumbs that were all that was left of the pizza. “The tide’ll turn in three hours, and I don’t think the Captain will want to bail us out of the slutter.”

  “The slut—oh, the slammer. I can sure tell where your mind is, dude. You wish they’d throw us in the slutter.” That was the only area of endeavor valued by young men in which Whorf felt superior to Ihor.

  Ihor laughed. “If they were going to do that, they should’ve did it—should have done it first thing this week so we’d have time to enjoy it. Anyhow, I don’t know English, but I do know tides, and it’s time to go, eh?”

  The white ship gleamed at the far end of the street like the future itself. “With you all the way.”

  3 DAYS LATER. PUEBLO. 12:15 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2026.

  Back before, Johanna Schrenck had run a diner in downtown Pueblo for twenty years, sold it when her husband retired, and spent ten years working on a fresh-game cookbook by cooking all the things her husband caught or shot. But when the modern world had stopped working, so had Kurt Schrenck’s pacemaker.

  Johanna had come home from the funeral, hauled up the old hand tools from the basement, paid orphaned kids with food and worked harder than any of them, and in a few weeks had converted her big old house back to a wood-fired kitchen, gravity coal furnace, and candle sconces. Just after the first EMP had destroyed the tech center at Pittsburgh, she had opened Johanna’s What There Is.

  Since the Reconstruction Research Center had opened half a mile away, “this old frame house has hosted a lot of history,” Heather remarked as she sat down to dinner with James Hendrix and Lyndon Phat. “Today what there is, is elk stroganoff and trout cakes on polenta.”

  James beamed. “History and current events in one convenient lunch—”

  “Oh, god, you brought the critic,” Johanna said, stopping at their table; she generally waited the exclusive upstairs back room herself.

  James protested. “I’ve never said—”

  “You think loudly. When I finally give you what you deserve, your last thoughts will be ‘needs more coriander to balance the strychnine.’ First course today is raccoon bisque, coming up.” She hurried away.

  “Listen.” Phat held up a palm. Rumble and clatter in the distance. “They started knocking down old buildings for the wall this morning. In a few weeks, I’ll be able to go to bed knowing ten guys on horses can’t ride in, shoot the watch, and throw a bomb through my window.”

  “Except the Daybreakers don’t like horses or guns,” Heather said.

  “It’s not just Daybreakers. Grayson might send someone; he assassinated poor old Cam Nguyen-Peters. I certainly would not put it past Allie Sok Banh. And there are rich men here in Pueblo angry about where I put the wall.”

  “But they’re inside the wall—”

  “Once the wall is built, it’ll be obvious if it’s an inside job. And a rich man without a fall guy is a cowardly thing indeed, as Thucydides could tell you.”

  Heather laughed. “You and Graham Weisbrod would have understood each other. He wanted all us policy wonks to be able to debate the tax code by teasing out the wisdom in something Marcus Aurelius said to Socrates—”

  “Ouch,” James said.

  “What?”

  “Marcus Aurelius lived about as long after Socrates as we do after Columbus.”

  “Whatever. I’m still thinking about what you guys said about the ancient rhythm coming back. I liked it better when the past was history.”

  Phat seemed to be listening to a faint, far away voice, perhaps from the distant mountains. “Maybe the past still is history, but the great joke on all of us is that it is, maybe, not the history it was before.”

  4 DAYS LATER. CASTLE EARTHSTONE (NEAR THE FORMER TOWNS OF PALESTINE AND WARSAW, KOSCIUSKO COUNTY, INDIANA). 11:30 AM LOCAL SOLAR. MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 2026.

  Robert had to love it: this time, Daybreak had sent him a chick. The first Council of Daybreak herald, just before Christmas, had been a rude young guy with a bushy beard who came in giving orders like a highway cop ticketing your expired plate. The second herald, a couple weeks ago, had looked and dressed like Gandalf in the movies. And old Karl, who had founded this place, had looked like fuckin’ Santy Claus. Wonder why Daybreak hates razors?

  But Daybreak-Enchantress-Chickie’s red-blonde hair, worn long and loose, looked clean and unratty. The soft white dress underneath her hooded cloak was clean and form-fitting. And my god, that’s a rack. Well, let’s get the talking part done and move on to the fun part.

  They stood facing her at the outer gate of Castle Earthstone, where the barbed wire came up to a spline-curve wooden arch festooned with skulls, capped with a sign:

  CASTLE EARTHSTONE

  BLESS DAYBREAK

  SAVE MOTHER GAIA

  Robert was flanked by Bernstein, his chief steward, and Nathanson, who commanded his soldiers; behind them was an honor guard of six soldiers.

  She nodded in a snotty who-are-you-anyway fashion that set his teeth on edge, even before she asked, “You are Robert Cheranko?”

  “I am Lord Robert of Castle Earthstone. You may call me Lord Robert. What is your name and what is your business?” His thoughts added, And why don’t you fuckin’ mind it?

  “The Council of Daybreak has charged me with a mission of grave import,” she said. “Word has reached even to the Guardian on the Moon that we have heard nothing from this Castle, Mister Cheranko—”

  “Lord Robert,” he said.

  There was a long pause. “Lord Robert, then.” She drew a breath and returned to her memorized text. “Two missions have been sent, and neither has returned. We on the Council of Daybreak have heard strange stories since the death of Lord Karl, and so I am sent to demand”—she saw him touch his belt knife—“uh, to ask, uh, Lord Robert to inform us—”

  “Walk into the Castle with me,” he said. Carefully not looking to see if she followed, he turned and walked. A moment later, flustered, pretending she hadn’t just run to catch up with him, she was walking beside him.

  He glanced sideways. Yeah, make’em bounce, baby. He wondered how Daybreak decided who to send out. First that bush-hippie cop, then that boogie-boogie wizard man, now this big-tits spirit girl. I guess they tried discipline, then spookiness, and now what? Sweet mama nature?

  He smiled, and saw her notice and relax slightly. Wait till you find out.

  When the bushy-bearded cop type had started right off giving orders, and Robert had told him to shut up, he’d raised his spirit stick and spoken some gibberish, and all of Robert’s men had had some kind of sp
az attack.

  But not Robert. He just threw a straight, hard punch, knocked the herald down, jumped on him, pulled his knife, and sliced the man’s carotid. By the time Robert’s deputies came out of their spaz attacks, he’d already picked out where to display the herald’s head.

  Not long after, one of his scouts had brought back a brochure by some Pueblo guy named James Hendrix, A procedure for the negation of Daybreak-originated deep suggestions, which apparently they were using in the Provi and Temper states.

  He made Bernstein, Nathanson, and the rest of his inner circle practice the resisting-Daybreak tricks daily. By the time old Gandalf came along, and launched into the religious-y spiritualisticalish intoning bullshit like he was going to fucking change Robert into a fucking frog, Robert just said, “Fuck Daybreak, it’s a load of shit.” The herald’s eyes opened in surprise, the two men escorting him reached for weapons, but Robert’s men had already been on them with knives and hatchets.

  He really wanted to see how this one would go.

  It went great. When Little Miss Shamaness saw the heads of the previous heralds on posts by Robert’s private drinking patio, she raised the spirit stick, but Robert plucked it from her hand and broke it over his knee. She came out of her seizure nearly mindless, the way the more severe Daybreakers tended to, and lay quietly weeping on the table while they cut her robe off.

  When everyone had finished, Robert told his officers, “Give her a blanket and some moccasins and put her out on the road.”

  Nathanson looked startled. “We gonna let her go?”

  “Yeah.” To the shamaness, Robert said, “Go back to the Council, and tell them what we did to you and what we did to the ones before you. Tell them Lord Robert rules at Castle Earthstone, and Daybreak don’t say he do or he don’t.” He grabbed her face and pointed it toward himself. “Repeat.”

  She did, voice low, eyes shut.

  At the gate, when she didn’t begin to walk right away, he hit her ass with his walking stick. That got her going; she ran up the mud-and-snow trail, blanket and hair streaming behind her pale nakedness, like a deer that feels the hounds’ breath on its flanks.