by Alan Gold
She smiled and said gently, “I couldn’t think of anything lovelier. Let’s do it.”
Four hours later, full from the gourmet fast food, she felt close enough to ask him, “Wanna come back to my place for a cup of coffee?”
“Don’t you have to work this afternoon?”
“I phoned the president’s PA while you were in the john and told her that I wouldn’t be in because I needed some ‘me’ time. I didn’t lie and fib because I don’t have to. But her reaction surprised me. Instead of being condescending and censorious, she burst out laughing. She just laughed. I asked her why, and she said that she and the president had been having little daily side bets of a chocolate biscuit about which day I’d break and take some personal time off. The president has been telling me to take time off for weeks now, but I just didn’t think I could in this emergency. Both she and the president have been worried about the stresses I’ve been under, and they were hoping that you and I would become . . . well, she said ‘friendly.’”
Debra stole a glance at Brett, saw him grinning, and continued, “And then she laughed and told me that she was really pleased that the president had won and that she’d ask his butler to put a chocolate biscuit on the president’s coffee tray. You don’t think the president thinks . . . you and me? He couldn’t . . . right?”
Brett shrugged. “There’ve been lots of comments from my colleagues about how lucky I am to have you to guard. People say I have the best assignment because you’re such a beautiful woman. My boss, Ted Marmoullian, and the president are very close . . . who knows what they talk about?”
She sat back in her seat, stunned. Not at the thought that her private life was being discussed in the Oval Office, but nobody, especially not a man, had called her beautiful in years. Only her mother had said that her beauty was wasted in test tubes and viruses—that she should get out more, meet more people.
Without warning, her cell phone buzzed telling her that she’d just received a text message. She looked at it and burst out laughing. She read out the words on the screen to Brett, who continued driving toward her apartment.
“As President of the United States, I order you and Agent Anderson to chill out this afternoon. It is normally a federal offense to interfere with a Secret Service officer, but I have just signed a Presidential waiver. Enjoy . . . you deserve some ‘me’ time.”
15
The first time was, for her at least, less than satisfying. When he touched her, kissed her, fondled her, and massaged her in places she’d forgotten existed, her body, like a kraken, woke from a deep slumber, and began to respond to his urgings.
But unlike when she was a graduate student, the last time she’d enjoyed a profound and satisfying relationship, she climaxed far too quickly, surprising Brett and forcing her to apologize.
He laughed and told her that he was delighted. They shared a cup of coffee and within an hour were again in bed, kissing and fondling and touching until this time, both he and she, came in long, satisfying, and unfathomable measure.
They lay in each other’s arms in bed and watched through the window as the day turned slowly into dusk. When night fell, she made him some supper, and they ate it in bed together.
And it was then that Brett Anderson said something that, innocuous as it was, light and airy and trivial and phatic as it was meant to be, changed the course of American history. Just a simple phrase, just a thoughtless wish. But enough to make Debra’s scientific mind begin to reel and vault and cogitate and examine. And think.
“Y’know,” he said munching on a piece of cheese as he sipped a Cabernet Sauvignon, “I’m going to be assigned somewhere else tomorrow or the day after, now that you’re no longer . . . well, you know.”
She nodded.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could make this moment last forever? If we could just carve out a bit of America all for ourselves and live there in peace and harmony, just you and me. Nobody else. Just us, alone in our own little universe. No outside world to interfere with us, nobody to tell us what to do, no danger, no maniacs trying to interfere with us. Just us.”
He smiled and continued to drink his wine. And Debra laid her head on his chest and played with the hairs as her body rose and fell with his breathing. But then, slowly at first but with increasing intensity, her body became rigid. Attuned to a sudden onset of danger and alert to the slightest alteration in attitude, Brett reacted to the unexpected stiffening of her body. He noted that her fingers had slowly stopped playing with his hair and become still, as though she was aware of danger, of something lurking in the room. But he glanced quickly and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered.
“Nothing.”
“Debra, what’s wrong?”
“Just something you said . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing. Let me think.”
“Have I upset you?”
She laughed. “No, silly. But you said something and I need to think it through.”
“What did I say?”
“Brett, shut up, this is important. Let me think.”
And, to Agent Anderson’s increasing irritation, Debra continued to lay there stiff as a board, thinking. She was still thinking deeply as she got out of bed and into the shower without saying a word to her lover; she thought as she got dressed, as she sat at her desk making notes while he showered and dressed. She was thinking when she called Daniel Todd and told him to meet her urgently at the White House; she was still thinking as she and Brett pulled into the underground parking garage and silently walked through security, Daniel knowing not to interrupt her when she was in one of these moods, something he called her “deeply cogitative states.”
She was still thinking along the corridors that were now so familiar to her and into one of the basement conference rooms. And as Brett Anderson, still theoretically on duty to guard her, watched her and Daniel Todd plotting and planning and scheming and laying out her ideas, he realized that she’d stopped thinking in theory and was in action mode as she assembled plans for presentation. It was then that he understood why she’d reacted so strangely to the words he’d spoken in bed after they’d made love. And it was then that she sent a text message to the president’s PA asking for a super-urgent meeting as soon as was humanly possible. A text came back almost immediately saying that the president could see her in two days’ time, but her subsequent text said, “No, sorry, absolute priority; must see POTUS immediately. I’ll take responsibility. Must be NOW.”
***
The following morning, she and Daniel met with the president of the United States over breakfast. He squeezed them into his feverish schedule because he knew that Debra never would have asked for urgent access unless it was extraordinarily important.
She was bursting to tell the president what she’d conceived, but he forced her to eat a meal before they discussed business. During the bacon, eggs, and hash browns, he ribbed her about her absence from her office the previous day, hoping that the work she’d been doing with Agent Anderson privately had been productive and satisfactory. He stopped making fun of her when she flushed red.
“Okay, you two, what’s so urgent that you have to take me away from my wife and children for breakfast?”
“We think we’ve come up with a way to minimize the danger of the diseases caused by bats and to reverse the problems by natural means,” she told him.
Daniel firmly intervened and said, “We? No, it was Debra who thought up the idea and it’s so brilliant and simple that I wish I could take credit. But I can’t.”
The president remained silent, waiting.
“Sir,” said Debra, “in many parts of the United States, vast areas of land have been set aside in order to bring buffalo and wolves and bears back into nature as part of the natural cycle. Your departments in charge of agriculture, fisheries, and forestry set aside land to protect species at risk of extinction, and as you know, the Department of the Interior US Fish a
nd Wildlife Service has an extensive Endangered Species Program that sets aside and protects habitats for animals and plants threatened with human activity. Well, we’re proposing that parts of the United States be set aside for the bats to enable them to recuperate.
“There are massive marine parks throughout the world where fish, crustacean, corals, and other organisms can live without being assaulted. Why shouldn’t we do the same thing for bats? I propose that we find huge areas of habitation where there are very few people, and we plant fruit trees for some species and encourage the growth of plants and flowers that will give rise to a multitude of insects for other bat species and, if necessary, build vast artificial cave structures with facilities for bats to colonize, and we make these areas into reserves where no human, industrial, or commercial activities are allowed. No building, agriculture, farming, factories, habitation. Nothing. Zip. Not even overflights of light aircraft. We leave the bats totally undisturbed for years without their interaction with human beings—so that in these areas, we live in harmony with bats and nature, and they will return to their natural state within a generation or two . . . or three. I don’t know how long precisely, but I doubt it’ll be a long time. We still need to do the research, but once this generation of bats dies out and we de-stress the next generation and the next, get the hell out of their lives, and allow them the grace of the natural lifestyle they’ve been living for the past fifty million years, they’ll quickly return to the types of mammals they always used to be. And this land is set aside in perpetuity because where there’s interaction between bats and humans and the bats become stressed, we can relocate the colony into safe areas and give them the environment they seek.
“Mr. President, I’m suggesting that we find stressed bat populations as well as colonies that are in decline, test them for their viral loads, and if they’re marginal, we relocate these particular bat populations to specific wilderness areas free of the modern pollutants and noises and clutter of humanity, and in a couple of years, a few generations of peace and tranquillity, the bats will have returned to their normal state. And that this is our recommendation to other nations where there’s a bat problem.”
She’d blurted out the entire plan in moments and didn’t hand over the written proposition to the president to read because his mind, trained in science, would be able to envisage the entire concept, and he’d pick through the problems without needing to get bogged down in the detail, something he could pass on to his people to check out later in the day.
President Nathaniel Jefferson Thomas continued to chew on his toast before answering. Daniel and Debra looked at him, waiting for a reaction. Any reaction. All he did was nod, chew some more, spread another piece of toast with butter, and chew again.
After he’d sipped his coffee, he said softly, “You’re suggesting recuperation rather than elimination. But how do you know it’ll work? How do you know that the new virus loads aren’t passed on to future generations in the bat’s genetic material? Where’s your evidence that it’ll be an effective way of lowering the viral load?”
Daniel was about to explain, but the president continued, “And how can we keep human beings out of such vast areas? Do we need to completely clear the environment so that it’s only bats and other wildlife? Can’t there be some human activity, supervised activity, so that the land we’re returning to its natural state can still be productive—not factories or building sites or commerce, I agree, but surely, if we’re sensitive to the needs of the bats, we human beings can still coexist with them? I agree we can’t cause them stresses or change their feeding habits, but surely in nature there’s room for two species to live and grow side by side. Respecting each other! And we’re not dealing with bison and bears and wolves, you know. We’re dealing with a flying mammal and we can’t control the areas over which they’re flying.”
“Yes we can, sir. That’s the brilliant thing about what Debra is suggesting,” said Daniel urgently. “We’re going to set up some sort of ultrasonic devices from the entrance to the caves or the trees where the bats are roosting, to the feeding areas. It’ll be very wide . . . say two or three miles or so . . . along the flight path, so that if the bats stray into the umbra of the devices, it’ll interfere with their radar and they’ll regroup and fly along the straight and narrow. They’ll quickly learn to adapt. Naturally, the area will have to be patrolled by the National Guard or whatever is the local state militia body to ensure that the devices aren’t interfered with by vandals, but it’ll ensure that the bats sleep, eat, mate, and roost in peace and harmony. My conservative opinion is that the overwhelmed viral loads will disappear in a generation, two at the most. After that, we’ll have to see what we can do.”
President Thomas nodded. “Okay, but how are we going to determine which bats are deadly to humanity? And when we’ve determined that, how are we going to gather millions and millions of them and relocate them simply and efficiently without increasing their stress levels so that they present a greater danger than they would if they were in their natural habitat?
“And then there’s the problem of the deadly viruses the bats carry. At least for a generation or two, droplets of the bats’ urine or nasal drips will be falling onto the ground. Sure, sunlight and fluorescent light and dry conditions can render a virus effectively dead, but in some cases, as I’m sure you both know, a virus stays inert until it enters a host. If a feral pig or deer or horse eats it, then the animal becomes potentially deadly to humanity, so we’re going to have to solve that issue, as well. What do we do? Close off the land to all humanity as being too dangerous? And how do we keep the ground animals enclosed so that they don’t wander into farmland that is adjacent to the protected area? There are many issues which we need to carefully consider, guys, before we launch into this scheme . . . and we still haven’t solved the problem of global warming.”
Daniel was about to answer, when the president continued, “And I’m going to face all hell in congress, because what you’re proposing is vastly more expensive than the alternative of killing a diseased bat colony, which is a quicker and more certain method of ensuring that the problem goes away. I can just hear some congressional representative or senator saying that he’s not going to give over vast swathes of his state’s land for the benefit of diseased bats that don’t vote.”
“But think about the benefits you’ll gain from animal lovers, Mr. President,” Debra insisted. “You’ll undermine the eco-nuts, join hand in hand with starlets from Hollywood who’ll call you the god of animal lovers and every man and woman who owns a dog, cat, or bird will vote for you at the next election.”
The president looked at her in surprise. She shrugged in apology and continued, “I know this isn’t about votes, but with your popularity, now is the best time in your presidency to do something bold and brave and imaginative and fantastic. Look, sir, a short while ago, when all hell was breaking loose from the eco-nuts because it seemed that we’d have to kill diseased colonies, you stormed into the White House pressroom and turned the tables brilliantly on the animal protection groups and made them look like insane fanatics who were determined to put wildlife above the interests of human beings. That swung public sentiment behind you really strongly.
“But if you support this concept of ours, you’ll make anybody who still insists on killing bat colonies seem like a mass murderer. You’ll be seen as the first US president who is thinking of nature as a holistic environment for every creature to live cooperatively. It’s the leadership that we in the scientific community have been looking for. Turning humanity back from progress at any price, to progress in harmony with our responsibilities to the world, to the earth, to nature. It’ll bring religions, environmentalists, community groups, eco-conscious people, and other groups who are concerned about our pollution of the planet, of our use of precious resources, on board with us. This could be the turning point for humanity, Mr. President, because we’re already at the tipping point. The earth is in trouble from the effects o
f humanity. Something is needed to make us stop and think. Somebody is needed to show the way. This could be just what we’re looking for. It’ll be a new way of our living in this world, a new way of living with nature . . . a new beginning . . .”
Both Daniel and the president looked at her in surprise. They’d never heard her sound more evangelical.
The president turned to Daniel and whispered, “Slip outside a moment, will you, Daniel, and tell my staff to build a giant cross. With this scheme of yours, I’m going to be crucified by congress, but according to Debra, I’ll rise up to heaven after three days and sit on the right hand of the Almighty.”
Debra smiled and she was going to apologize for her manner when the president said softly, “I’m going to go with half of your scheme, Debra. And I know that as a pragmatist, you’ll understand my reasoning. You’ve devised a clever and imaginative idea and once you’ve proven the science, it’s one that I’ll implement but not in its entirety. I just can’t take the risk.
“Look, we’ve seen beautiful little American and British children and kids from other parts of the world die from some of the most evil and virulent viruses we’ve ever experienced. Whole communities have been wiped out more efficiently than by some terrorist device of mass murder. Similar viruses could erupt at any time in any bat population, for all the reasons we’ve been researching these past weeks.
“As president of the United States, sworn to protect the people, I cannot and will not allow creatures that carry these deadly bugs to endanger the population. So my order will be to find and eradicate any bat colony in the United States that is found to harbor a virus deadly to human beings.
“However,” he said, looking at Daniel and Debra, whose faces had fallen in disappointment, “I will instruct those departments responsible for our agriculture, fisheries, and forests to identify whatever wilderness areas are suitable for your scheme. Then, when a colony of bats is found to be in distress, and where the viral load is still below the threshold limit, we’ll relocate them.
