At the entrance to another anonymous warehouse, he paused. Magnolias and munitions were all very well, but it was reality time. Washington waited.
“Captain Kennecott, this has been so interesting, I’ve lost track of everything. What time is it?”
“Ten minutes before noon, Mr. President.” The captain apparently had access to the Great Chronometer of the Universe, or at least a wholly nondigital watch.
“So late? I had no idea. I’m afraid I must be leaving. I must be back at the White House this afternoon.”
He had expected at least a token expression of regret. Kennecott said only, “Yes, Mr. President,” but Saul was trained in nuances. He heard unexpected satisfaction in the captain’s voice, and he caught the rapid eye contact with Dr. Liebchen.
It could be simple relief at getting rid of him, but Saul didn’t believe it. The pair of them were up to something. He would have suspected a formal salute and maybe the presentation of a memento of Indian Head, except that it was such a mismatch with his mental picture of Madeleine Liebchen. She would recoil at the notion of lapel pins and ceremonial farewells.
He was right, and he was wrong.
Saul and his band of followers and security staff walked back toward the river. The memento was waiting behind Mix House. A gigantic gray machine stood on a level concrete pad forty yards from the water, its forty-foot rotors drooping.
“All yours,” Captain Kennecott said. “Of course, you might say that as Commander in Chief it was yours already. And it is rather old. But we can guarantee this machine is perfectly airworthy. We’d be honored if you would take it for your use in Washington, maybe station it at Andrews AFB along with Air Force One.”
“What model is this?” Saul didn’t want to mention that he couldn’t identify most modern fighters, still less an ancient helicopter.
“A Sikorsky CH-53A — a Sea Stallion. It went out of use more than thirty years ago, but I’ll still take it over most modern choppers.” Kennecott patted the side of the monster affectionately. “Carries eight tons, travels five hundred miles at up to a hundred and seventy knots. You and your whole party can be landing on the White House lawn in twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes. No leisurely return trip, then, but Saul didn’t regret that. He shook hands all around and his thanks to Captain Kennecott were totally sincere. From the moment when he saw the Sea Stallion, he had known what needed to be done when he arrived back at the White House.
As Saul climbed into the helicopter’s great hollow interior, big enough to take a fair-sized truck, another thought hit him.
Washington waited. Tricia also waited. In six hours, he would be face-to-face with her for the first time in over two years.
26
From the secret diary of Oliver Guest.
Never match wits with a Jesuit. I don’t claim that was my waking thought, because in those first few minutes I either had no thoughts at all or I did not later remember them. Returning from the dead is nothing if not confusing.
But I did think about Father Carmelo Diaz and the deal that we had made. Then not long afterward I realized that my eyes were open. I could see a light. I also realized that someone was speaking, although not to me; and I found that I could not move a muscle, not even an eye muscle. This was terribly frustrating. I saw only what was right in front of me, and that badly out of focus.
Wherever I was, and whenever I was, I knew two things with certainty: I was alive; and I was not undergoing a standard revivification.
Not, at least, revivification as it had been known at the time of my descent into abyssal sleep in the year 2021. For of course, I assumed on waking that I had been in abyssal sleep. Only later did I learn otherwise. So my mind said, this is 2621. I have served my sentence, and I have survived.
Consciousness was not continuous. Clouds of darkness billowed in and out. In random snapshots, by a weak and flickering light, I saw people.
First it was a stocky, strongly built man with ill-cut short hair and a two-week stubble of black beard. He was dressed in grubby black pants and jacket, and he was wrapping a blanket around me.
A total collapse of civilization, with this as a specimen of degraded humanity? Possible, but not plausible. What he said was nothing out of the ordinary ("He’s a weight. We’ll have one hell of a time gettin him down them stairs ’less he can walk.") but the accent was pure West Virginia. I couldn’t believe that the dialect would have survived unchanged over six centuries. Could he be a criminal, sentenced like me in 2021 and only recently revived?
Someone else was behind me, moving my head. A woman’s voice sounded close to my ear; low, pleasant, New England. I made a huge but unsuccessful attempt to turn and look in that direction. Another man moved across my field of vision. He was older than the first by fifteen to twenty years, but just as badly dressed. As he peered intently into my eyes, he said, “There’s no pain when you wake up, but sensory systems respond before motor systems.”
Local accent, Baltimore-Washington corridor, for a guess. I didn’t think he was talking to me. I was just a piece of near-dead meat, and his words were addressed to his companions. He was right about the lack of motor control, wrong about the pain. I was on fire from head to toes, and I couldn’t even moan.
I suffered another welcome voyage to nowhere, short or long. When I came back there was less burning in my veins, and a new urgency in West Virginia’s voice. “We’re in trouble, amigos, like Dana says. Question is, what we gonna do? We’ve come too far to give up now.”
Even crumbs are welcome when you are starving. Dana. I had a name.
Baltimore answered, “Only one thing for it. He has to go back in the drawer for a while, and we have to split up.”
“Why, Art?” It was the woman. “Why not all go to the ground floor together, and try to talk our way out of it? We can say we came to look for a friend who’d been put here. We found the gate open — which is true — and we found him dead. Whoever they are, they’d have no reason to think we were lying.”
“No good,” West Virginia said. “We might be able to talk our way clear. But what if Joy boy here gets so he can move while we’re doin’ it, an’ starts rattlin’ his cage? We’d be in deep shit. An’ no matter what happened they’d have old Ollie instead of us.”
“But what else can we do, Seth?”
“Art’s right. We split up. Here’s my suggestion. You an’ Art go do your song an’ dance for whoever’s down there. Before that, you stick me an’ Dr. G. back in his body drawer, both of us together. I’ll take responsibility for keepin’ him quiet — one way or another.” His voice took on a sly and mocking tone. “ ’Less you want to switch, sweetheart, an’ you cuddle up with Doctor De-mento. You ever get cozy with a homicidal maniac?”
I knew two more things with reasonable certainty. One: I could not be six hundred years in the future. All the speech patterns were too little changed. Two: West Virginia Seth was not my first choice as a dinner companion. I would find a way to get rid of him.
Not today, though. I needed a lot of information about my present surroundings before I made any moves. I also had as little control over my own body as a dead pig. The three of them grabbed me. There was a good deal more talk among them, that I was too sick or bewildered to follow. My carcass, attired from the feel of it in the same ragtag assortment of clothing as my captors/saviors, was rolled unceremoniously into a deep drawer. One of the people — presumably Seth — squeezed in next to me. The drawer silently closed.