Book 24 an imperfect u.., p.7
Book 24 - An Imperfect Utopia, page 7
The furniture had been removed. The floor had been polished to a shine. The flags had been ironed and strategically draped. The Stars and Stripes were behind the dais, with other nations to one side. Indonesia and Wales were both more prominent than they might have been at other times, but I wasn’t going to argue. The Marines, including our two newest recruits, were outside, being run through their drill by Major Toussaint. The camera was already in place. Only one camera, with a fifteen-degree field of view, though we’d agreed that we would have people enter through the large glass doors so they would mill past the lens as they filled up the room. Elsewhere, where they’d be the backdrop for any photographs, were maps showing our settlements. Why? To show posterity that what we were creating was truly underway.
I felt like a groom at a wedding: almost entirely superfluous. I went to our office, changed into my best suit, and went outside to greet the guests.
One by one, they arrived, and early. Even my brother turned up a good thirty minutes before the event was due to begin.
“I’ve got something for you.” Sholto held out a small jewellery box. Inside was a pair of gold cufflinks, with pale blue gems.
“Very nice. Thank you,” I said, pleased though a little puzzled.
He grinned as he shook his head. “It’s as close a match as I could find to the pair I gave to Max just before the debate.”
“Oh, I remember that. When he got to that question on education reform, he slowly took them off and rolled up his sleeves. What was it he said, that now’s the time for America to roll up those sleeves and get to work.”
“And didn’t he look young and vigorous compared to his opponent?”
“His opponent looked constipated,” I said. “He was bobbing around and squinting for the rest of the debate.”
Sholto’s grin widened. “The pair I gave Max were designed to mirror the light. I’d set a spot lamp overhead, angled just so. I had to get the podiums in the right place of course, and Max had to place the cufflinks in the right spot, but once he put them down, bingo, bright lights in the eyes.”
“You blinded your opponent?”
“It was a simple accident,” Sholto said. “Max wore them to the inauguration. Anyway, since this is your first inauguration, the first of many, I figured I should continue the tradition.”
“Shouldn’t you be giving these to Janet?”
To that, he just laughed.
Annette came to give me the twenty-minute warning and to complain again about her dress. Apparently, blue is not her summer colour. I went inside and told our orchestra to begin. Cello, violin, drums, piano, and a clarinet, the very best musicians that North America can offer. As they played, people came in to take their places. Outside, the Marines readied themselves. When Annette and Tasha slipped through the side door and waved, I signalled the band. With a drumroll, they began the slow buildup.
The Marines marched in, taking up their positions on the dais. Perhaps, with them facing the crowd and the stage otherwise empty, it did look a bit like a firing squad. Well, no matter. Led by the clarinet, the orchestra began This Land Is Your Land, unofficially our new anthem and the signal for our dignitaries to enter. Hiram, our only surviving federal judge, came first, in his black robes. Janet was second, walking behind not beside him because law comes first in our new nation. Jonas and Martha, then Tom and Minnie, followed by Wendy and Joseph, our guests of honour. Kim stayed by the door. Lilac’s a good colour for her. It lets her face shine. And as the band finished and Hiram readied himself to begin, the doors at the back clattered open.
“It’s Greta!” Jay yelled. “Her water’s broke!”
The room filled with the swish of cloth as people turned to look at Jay, then back at the dais.
“Then we have no time to waste,” Janet announced, just as loudly.
I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth as the laughter, polite but laughter nonetheless, slowly subsided. The oath was given and repeated without any omissions, additions, or mistakes. As Hiram finished, he stepped back, letting Janet take centre stage.
“Thank you, Judge Sterne. Thank you, Major. Chief Seward.” She turned back to the crowd. “Thank you everyone. The next chapter in the great experiment in democracy has truly begun, but as you heard, I’m required elsewhere. Do please excuse me.”
As she walked off the stage, and certainly loud enough to be picked up by the microphone, I heard Jay say, “Finally!”
Chapter 6 - The First Lady
San Juan Island
“On balance, Jay’s was the perfect response,” Sholto said as he slipped a glass into my hand five minutes later.
“People are going to say it was staged,” I said.
“You think the birth was induced?” he asked. “Janet wouldn’t do that. I’m putting that into my top three inaugurations,” he added.
“Oh? Who are the other two?”
“First is LBJ, sworn in while JFK’s body was still warm. The other spot has to go to William Henry Harrison. He gave a two-hour speech and spent three hours glad-handing, in freezing weather, while vocally refusing to wear a coat. He caught a cold and died a month later.”
“Was he one of the good ones?” I asked.
“Harrison? He was pro-slavery.”
“Ah. And no one back then took that a sign of divine intervention?”
“If there ever was to have been intervention, you’d have thought it be around the time they came up with the three-fifths clause.”
“This is a workday,” Kim said, appearing from nowhere, now dressed in a crimson suit. She took the glass from my hand, took a gulp, and scowled.
“Sorry, it’s only grape juice,” I said. “You changed.”
“Of course. Gowns are too impractical for mingling. Speaking of which, that’s what you both should be doing. Go talk to Jonas, Bill.”
“I think he’s still mad at me,” I said.
“Don’t make me lock you both in a room until you learn to play nice,” Kim said.
“Whatever issues he has, Martha’s good with it,” Sholto said. “Look at her. We might as well take a picture and stick it in the dictionary as the definition of holding court.”
Martha stood near the orchestra. She hadn’t changed. Her gown and jewels glittered as she entertained a crowd with tall tales of the mafia-adjacent low-society of her former life. Jonas stood by the maps, alone, looking tired and old.
“Excuse me,” I said. As I made my way over to him, I signalled to Ms Nahon. Since the event was at ten, I’d swapped most of the wine with grape juice, of which we had quite a volume; they’d wanted to test out the presses and bottling machines long before the real harvest. What was delivered as I reached Jonas was the genuine stuff.
“Cheer yourself up with that,” I said as I took a glass from the tray, handed it to him, and took another for myself. “It’s from twelve years ago.”
“Genuine vintage,” he muttered sardonically. “I suppose we’re going to have to go through all this again when Janet gets back.”
“Nope. Now Janet’s president, she can sign the letters, and you’ll be our vice president. No ceremony. No photographs.”
He cheered up a smidge and ran a finger around the neck of the clearly uncomfortable collar. “Then I’m going to change.” He glanced over at Martha. “When she’s finished being first lady.”
To prevent our line of succession becoming a full stop, we need more than just a president. The only constitutional qualification for vice president is that they can ascend to the presidency, hence they must be a natural-born American over the age of thirty-five. The first stipulation rules out all us Europeans and Canadians. The age requirement rules out most of the sailors and Marines, and most frustratingly, both of the Guinns. Tom Wilgus had ruled himself out, point blank, threatening to leave for Indiana immediately if we even brought the subject up again. Jonas had refused, too. Twice. But Martha had somehow managed to talk him around. I suspect it was because, as Janet is single, and with no close relative to undertake the duties, the veep’s spouse got an automatic upgrade to first lady. She was clearly loving it.
“Is that a tiara she’s wearing?” I asked.
“The kids loaned it to her,” Jonas said. “Janine said it belonged to Queen Mary but was last worn by Princess Margaret. She’s Martha’s favourite of the royals. By the way, the kids are mad at you for cancelling the ball.”
“From the number who turned up today, when it was open to all of them, I’m guessing it’s only a small minority who are upset there isn’t a dance.”
“A vocal minority. I was explaining to them how the trick part of trick-or-treat is taken much more seriously in America, so you should expect retribution come Halloween.”
“I’ll make sure to be away that night.” I turned to the map behind him, where small settlements like Cooking Lake and battlegrounds like Bellingham were as prominently marked as Colwood and San Juan. But those pins and circles of thread represented more than just our current settlements. They were a potential for the future, a statement that there would be a future.
“Where are you going to put the passengers from the cruise ship?” Jonas asked.
“There might be a few specialists we can send up to Fort St John; otherwise, I’m assuming they’ll want to remain as a cohesive group. Vancouver Island is the obvious choice, being where they’ll come ashore. There’s still a lot of farmland in northern Saanich that we’re not exploiting. Heather wants us to open a harbour there since it’d be a shorter distance to San Juan. But Joseph is against more than a few hundred being settled on the island, until the Canadian population has reached six figures.”
“It’s madness even paying lip service to the old borders,” Jonas said. “Still, I’d be doing the same if I were him. If he opens the island to anyone, we’d soon be housing everyone there.”
“There is an argument for doing just that,” I said.
“There might have been,” he said, “but that time’s over.”
“Well, the only alternative available now is the Skagit River Valley, which would mean splitting them up among the various villages, and among people who’ve barely had a chance to unpack. They’d have electricity, though.”
“I take it you haven’t spoken with Pastor Roberts?” Jonas asked.
“From Concrete? I said hello before the ceremony, but no, there hasn’t been time.”
“He’s already spitting mad because of all the people we’ve moved to the valley. There were only three hundred of them a season ago, and his was the largest community in the region. He thought he was being generous offering us five houses for religious-minded families. Now, he’s boxed in.”
“Aren’t we running a bus to his religious services?”
Jonas grinned. “Well, yes. Except a market sprung up after the service. More a swap meet than anything else. More people use the bus for the market than attend any of the pastor’s masses. Last week, some of the LDS turned up from Diablo Lake to do a bit of outreach, while Sister Anne held a prayer session.”
“Well, that’s good. We want religious pluralism.”
“We might. That doesn’t mean he does. The arrival of a couple of thousand Buddhists might push him over the edge. Then you have his deacons. Hotheads every one. Young, male, and top of the heap three months ago. Now they’ve got to compete with exotic foreigners with fancy accents and the scars from war. Remember, the dam is in their town. All it would take is one angry fool with a sledgehammer getting access to the control room and the valley would be out of power for months.”
“How likely is that?” I asked.
“Likely enough for me to warn you. We should let this new status quo settle before moving too many more people there.”
“Well, if it’s not Vancouver Island or the Skagit River Valley, I don’t know where we’d send the passengers. If this was two weeks from now, I might be able to say Cascadia, but Kim and Sholto haven’t even left yet.”
“Cascadia? Don’t say you’re calling it that, too. It’s nowhere near the mountains.”
“It’s easier than saying Southern Central Washington State.”
“I’ll tell you somewhere even easier to say,” Jonas said, tapping the map to the north of Bellingham, and east of the Vancouver Ruins. “Chilliwack for the farming, Harrison for the hot springs, and Wahleach for the dam. Three neighbouring communities, all an hour’s drive from Bellingham.”
“By the Fraser River? No one’s living there yet.”
“Exactly. We put it on the back-burner because the maximum population is capped by the mountains to the east, the ruins of the metro area to the west, and the Fraser River to the north, but I’d estimate fifty thousand could live there this winter with few troubles.”
“Well, perhaps,” I said, “but we can’t dump two thousand people there and tell them to get on with it.”
“We’ve got another day before they dock, and they’ll need at least a day to be triaged and acclimatised, so it’s at least three days before we need to start moving them on, and we don’t need to move them all at once. I’ll go there tonight. Me, Martha, ten others. We’ll take a boat to Bellingham, drive up, and have a base of operations ready by tomorrow afternoon. It’ll be Kim’s hub-and-spoke plan, just sped up.”
I opened my mouth to object but caught myself in time. I looked at the map, ostensibly measuring the distances between Harrison Hot Springs and the Wahleach Dam while I gathered my thoughts. “There is potential there. But ten people can’t administer two thousand, even if you and Martha are among them.”
“And Diana Fenton, for now, anyway, until her ship is built. But you’re right. We need more folks, so we’ll take the traders.”
“Tom’s people? But they were heading down to Cascadia. That’s the whole point of the expedition.”
“No, the point of that was to find somewhere Pete Guinn’s people could settle. Otter Rapids amounts to three thousand people. Tom’s group is a tenth of that. They’d be a minority. Besides, the Guinns’ folks are all experienced survivors. Aren’t half military?”
“A quarter, roughly.”
“But more active since the outbreak than most. They don’t need Tom’s people there as an advanced team, so send the traders north with us. We can have housing for all the Japanese arrivals arranged within three days. It won’t be much to start with, but we’ll be able to offer a nice natural hot spring for baths. They’re big on those in Japan, aren’t they? It might make them feel right at home.”
I turned to the map again. It was a good idea, but only assuming you accepted the wisdom of the hub-and-spoke system Kim had devised. I’m sure I’ve written about my objections. Unfortunately, they came too late, and the wheel is very much in motion. “I know what sold it to Minnie was the idea that they’d have Seattle, Everett, and Tacoma to use as stock houses for their trade route,” I said instead.
“From Chilliwack, they’d have the entire Vancouver Metro area. According to the aerial photography, it’s in much better condition. Plus, it’s only fifty miles from Bellingham. It’s closer than the Skagit River Valley. It’ll be easier to send supplies, and quicker to get people settled.”
That was very true. “Well, it does solve a problem, and I would like to visit a hot spring. I better speak with Tom.” As I looked around for him, I saw Lieutenant Miller pushing his way through the crowd towards us.
“Has there been more news from the ship?” I asked.
“No, sir. Can we speak privately?”
I gestured towards the doors. Jonas followed. After all, there were no secrets from the vice president, at least not in this administration.
“What is it?” I asked when we were out in the service corridor that linked the tasting room to the kitchens.
“A message from Nanaimo, sir. A plane just landed. Scott Higson’s aboard with three hundred and thirty passengers, and a warning that three more planes are due before dusk.”
Chapter 7 - An Evacuation in Reverse
San Juan Island
I asked Jonas to spread the news about this new wave of migrants; there was no point keeping it secret. Upstairs, Sergeant Fonseca was on duty in the radio room, frantically transcribing his illegible shorthand into more formal notes.
“With whom are we speaking?” I asked.
“Fatima Khalil is on tower duty.”
“Wonderful. Pop her on speaker, please.”
Fonseca tapped at the keyboard. “You’re live, sir.”
“Fatima, it’s Bill. What’s the situation there?”
Instead of the harried tones of the Canadian police officer, it was Colonel Judith Bell who answered. “It’s Judith, Bill. Fatima had to speak to the pilot of the next plane. How did the festivities go?”
“The inauguration? Well, it happened. Janet’s now president. As for the rest, it got a little eventful, but you’ll want to see it for yourself. We’ve got it on video, and I don’t want to spoil your fun. What’s the situation there?”
“A modified 777 landed ten minutes ago. Scott Higson is the pilot. There are three hundred and thirty passengers aboard. Three more planes are inbound, each an hour behind the last. They carry no cargo, only luggage.”
“To confirm, we’re to expect a total of twelve hundred passengers within the next four hours?” I asked.
“Three hours, and about thirteen hundred, but yes.”
