“Mr. President,” Kennecott said. “This is Dr. Madeleine Liebchen. She is the person best qualified to answer any technical questions you may have.”
Liebchen. Little love. Saul did the translation instinctively as he shook her hand. I think not. Eyes of a wonderful sapphire blue gazed coldly into his.
That look of unconcealed contempt gave Saul another reason why Captain Kennecott was likely to accompany them everywhere. I am President of all the people — if they will allow it. Many people disliked politicians. A rather smaller number hated them. A few went past that, and tried to kill them. Saul possessed various built-in protections, painfully installed after nomination night. His blood seethed with morphing antibodies, supposedly able to handle any natural or manufactured virus or bacterium (including the interlocking plasmid composite that got President Johannsen, in ’18; it was the top-secret pictures of Johannsen’s corpse, bloated so that the nose was no more than a dimple in the swollen head and the testicles were the size of grapefruit, that had persuaded Saul to take the treatment).
The implant in the roof of his mouth offered different protection. It would supposedly detect a million different poisons alone or in lethal combination, and trigger an involuntary regurgitation reflex. Except that the damned thing surely wouldn’t work at all now, since all the chips had gone belly-up.
Saul took a second look at the scowling Dr. Liebchen. No virus, and perhaps no poisons, but that still left bullets, bombs, teeth, wild animals, knives, nooses, and nuclear weapons.
Dr. Liebchen was probably just a woman who regarded politics and politicians as beneath her. That did not make her dangerous. Kennecott must know her well. He did not judge her a threat. But how well had Johannsen’s sister known Eileen Wilmore Bretherton, when she brought her to that fatal dinner?
Unlike one of his less illustrious predecessors, Saul could chew gum and walk (oral history suggested a more basic body function) at the same time. He could in fact do much more. While his internal thoughts reviewed the fate and frailties of past Presidents, he offered polite conversation to Kennecott and Liebchen. And at the same time he examined a variety of proximity fuses, artillery and artillery shells, rockets and rocket launchers, mines, torpedoes, and depth charges, all massed in tight phalanxes along the building’s concrete floor.
After ten minutes he halted. The entourage came to a stop with him. “Captain. Dr. Liebchen. When I asked to see the weapons stored here, I meant active, usable weapons. This seems more like a museum.” He gestured around him. “I know the Indian Head facility contained modern weapons, but everything here is very old. Those torpedoes . . .”
Dr. Liebchen said in a brittle voice, “Every one of the weapons you are looking at is in perfect working order. If you would care for a demonstration—”
“Allow me, Madeleine. I know you never take credit.” Captain Kennecott stepped in front of her. “Mr. President, when this base was hit by the gamma pulse we lost all external communications. For the first seventy-two hours I did not know if we were dealing with a natural phenomenon or the first stage of an external attack. It seemed safer to assume the latter. Dr. Liebchen’s discovery that many of our weapons were useless seemed to reinforce the notion of a coming assault by external agencies. Without direct orders, Dr. Liebchen embarked at once on an all-out night-and-day effort to divide the weapons stored here into two classes: working and nonworking. At first it seemed that the division was chronological. Old weapons worked, newer ones did not. As the effort proceeded, Dr. Liebchen determined that the problem was in fact electronic in nature. A wide class of electronic devices no longer functioned at all. New weapons are more dependent on such devices. The age correlation was an effect, not a cause.” Kennecott swept his arm around to cover the whole building. “Everything here may look old — and be old — but it works. If Indian Head were called upon for combat support, today, thanks to Dr. Liebchen’s tireless efforts we would be able to provide it.”
“My congratulations to everyone here.” Saul turned back to Madeleine Liebchen. “Particularly to you, Doctor. And the other weapons, the new ones that don’t work?”
“They are separately warehoused, pending a decision as to their disposal.” The bright blue eyes were no longer cold. They were sparkling. Saul was not naive enough to take credit. It wasn’t his praise, or anything else he had done. It was pure passion for her work. Madeleine Liebchen had done a superior job, and took pleasure in that.
She went on, “The nature of the malfunctions soon made it clear that the problem lay in the microchips. They cannot be repaired. They must be replaced. I could do that work, in many cases — if there were a source of replacements. But recent contact with other defense facilities suggests no such possibility in the immediate future.”
“Have you been able to do an assessment of your overall war-fighting support potential, compared with that before the gamma pulse?” Saul had picked up a good deal of military jargon from General Grace Mackay.
“It is between seventy and one hundred and forty percent.” Dr. Liebchen answered without hesitation.
“One hundred and forty! You mean you might be more able to provide support now?”
“No. I mean that the answer to your question depends upon the nature of the assumed threat. The seventy percent number measures our support capability compared with its level before the gamma pulse, against an adversary whose fighting potential is unaffected by the pulse. That is not at all a reasonable scenario. Therefore, I estimated the effects of the pulse in diminishing adversarial war-fighting capability. To do so, I made use of previous estimates of the technological basis for foreign weapons. It turns out that our most likely and formidable potential foes — the Golden Ring compact — rely on chip-based weaponry even more than we do. We are, in that sense, better off — one hundred and forty percent better off — than before. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly clear.” Saul wanted to add, Dr. Liebchen, I think you are absolutely wonderful. How about a job in Washington?
He had enough sense not to say any of that (although the offer of a Washington position would indeed come, via Grace Mackay). What was Madeleine Liebchen doing here, in the middle of nowhere? Maybe she was a wind-and-water fanatic, as her ruined complexion suggested. Saul, whose idea of wide-open spaces was the atrium of a big hotel, was not going to find out. He went on, “I am terrifically impressed by the speed with which you have reacted to a unique problem.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Captain Kennecott said gruffly. “We just think of it as standard operations, Navy style. I’m sure other naval facilities have done no less. Shall we continue the tour of inspection?”
“Certainly.” Saul had learned something enormously important in the tour of Indian Head. He couldn’t yet say quite what it was. Everything had to ferment for an hour or a day in the murky wort of his subconscious, then he would know.
They moved on, wandering through the married housing with its children’s playground, past the deserted gymnasium, into the dusty library. Lots of old books there, and in the aisles between the stacks the forlorn and useless terminals. Beside the buildings, heaps of snow had a shrunken, defeated look. Clouds of gnats burst from the shade of towering magnolias, heading for sweaty faces and every square inch of exposed skin. The tall privet hedge on the road to the dead weapons warehouse, confused by weather that made no sense, had blossomed in a wild, perfumed, over-the-top-boys-it’s-now-or-never riot of white.
Saul was having the same spring-is-busting-out feelings. Indian Head had been a stimulant and a restorative — even the cathartic session with Yasmin felt full of future promise. He looked fondly on everything, including Dr. Liebchen, and did not mind when she frowned back at him.