“She is an important woman, Mike!. Invite her to fly with me to Omaha tonight. Did she explain the nature of her business?”
Mike! cleared his throat and grimaced slightly, as if he found the whole business thoroughly distasteful. “It is slightly awkward, Colonel, relating as it does to a time when her political views were less enlightened than they have since become.” He paused and looked to Andrei, as if to be sure he should go on. When Andrei nodded impatiently, he continued, “It seems that her former husband, Devin Milford, a political dissident, has been released from custody. Although he is being confined to his home county in Nebraska, she fears he may harm her. She seeks the colonel’s reassurance, or perhaps protection.”
Andrei nodded, resigned. Protection. That’s what everyone seemed to want from Mm. But protection from what? From a man as principled and direct as Devin Milford? Andrei was well acquainted with Milford’s character and ruined career. Years ago, in fact, he’d read transcripts of his speeches, circulated underground in crude and illegal mimeographs. He had been struck by the power of Milford’s words, and the name had remained in his memory ever since. “Today, while I am gone, assemble an extensive file on Devin Milford.”
They took the elevator down and walked through the lobby to the waiting limousine. The lobby entrance was discreetly covered by security guards. Two of them escorted Andrei to his limousine. The others climbed into an unmarked vehicle parked behind and followed Andrei’s car as it sped away.
Behind the protective glass in his limousine, indifferent to the security guards, Andrei began studying a pile of photographs. “Is everything in order for the Omaha event?”
“Four of the candidates for area governor-general have been notified,” replied Mikel,
Andrei signed. “Governor-general. A rather stuffy title, don’t you think? Like a Gilbert and Sullivan character.”
“It is a position of authority,” Mikel said.
Andrei thumbed through the pictures again. “You said four have been notified. Why hasn’t the fifth? And which one is it?”
Mike! looked a little uncomfortable. “I have not spoken with the man from Nebraska, Peter Bradford.” Andrei picked out Peter’s photo from the others in the file. He thought about the sarcastic gibes aimed at earlier American presidents: “Would you buy a used car from this man?” And he thought, Yes, he would buy a used car from Bradford. And the rest of America would too.
Andrei turned to face his assistant’s earnest profile. “Your reason, Mikel?”
“The committee noted Mr. Bradford’s lack of experience. There is a feeling that Governor Smith of Missouri would be the nominee of choice.”
“But we must wonder why, Mikel?” Andrei said. “Do you know how Mr. Bradford came to my attention? His county is the most trouble free in the Central
Administrative Area. The Heartland, as it is known. His production is far above quota. There is no significant resistance, although they are only sixty miles from the Omaha Urban Zone. He is a family man, much respected.”
“He is not a party member. The party leader from Milford, a Mr. Herbert Lister, said he was resistant to the revised school curriculum.”
“Are you accusing him of having a backbone, Mikel?”
“I accuse him of nothing.”
Chapter 3
The truck lurched past the iron gates and picked up speed. The rutted road ahead pointed straight across the desert to the east. There were six of them in the back of the truck, blankly looking back as Fort Davis, their only reality for years, receded into the desert. Devin wondered why each of them felt compelled to look back—he knew that he desperately wanted to look forward, to see something bright, something substantial, in the future. But ahead of them was just desert and miles to travel; the only buildings anywhere in this area were the jumble of jerry-rigged structures they’d come from.
Devin tried to keep his emotions in check. Part of him still feared that his release was a trick. There had been so many at Fort Davis. For him, ambiguity was the secret of survivaclass="underline" to hate and not to hate, to fear and not to fear, to resist and not to resist, to dream and not to dream. And yet with every passing moment, he felt assured that he had truly survived.
It would take time to learn to smile again. He reached into the pocket of the denim shirt they had given him as part of his exit uniform and drew out the creased and faded snapshot he had hidden and treasured all those years. The two boys were younger then, of course, and he wondered what they looked like now, at fourteen and nine. Fourteen and nine! The numbers confounded him, confused a memory of tiny little people just beginning to form personalities, likes, and dislikes of their own.
Devin studied the snapshot closely, as though reexamining an icon. Caleb was four, sandy-blond hair, blue eyes, all seriousness. Billy was nine, an older version of Caleb physically but with more of Devin’s free spirit. As he stared at the picture he felt as if he was being watched. He was about to look up to seek out the intruder when the prisoner next to him spoke.
“Yours?”
Devin pulled the snapshot to his chest protectively. He stared at the man intently, finally deciding he could be trusted. He nodded and returned his gaze to the pictures.
“I had a couple of my own,” said the prisoner, a heavyset man with a face that looked as if it had at one time belonged to a jovial man.
“Had?”
The man shrugged. “That was four years ago.”
“You gonna find them?”
The man watched the desert. “You know it.”
Devin looked back at his picture and said softly, “Yeah, I do.”
That morning, at an exclusive private school in Chicago, nine-year-old Caleb M. Andrews, formerly Caleb Milford, was participating in a social-studies class. His school occupied a full block in a comfortable old residential neighborhood, fronting on a gracious street of swaying elms that shaded stately brick houses. Once the domain of industrialists and professionals, the neighborhood was now an enclave of party officials, government lawyers, and scientists. There was a fenced-in playground where carefree children frolicked, but inside the school, much had changed. Teachers were certified by the PPP—the People’s Progressive party, the political juggernaut that had swept into power in the midst of the Transition—and their curriculum was written in Washington and approved in Moscow.
Caleb was answering his teacher’s question about his nation’s past.
“Our ancestors were very rough,” he said. “When Americans conquered the country, they killed Indians who had been living on the land peacefully for thousands of years.”
“Thank you, Caleb,” the teacher, Clara Chavez, said. “Can anyone tell us what the cause of their violence was?”
The boy wrinkled his brow, trying to remember. “It was like… survival of the fittest,” he said. “The rich people controlled everything and ordinary people, even kids, had to work in factories or coal mines for almost nothing. Wars were fought to make rich people richer.”
As Caleb spoke, an elegant woman with commanding eyes, thick wavy coal-black hair, and a sensual, feline smile slipped quietly into the classroom. She had an intense, polished, and somehow serpentlike beauty.
“Good, Caleb,” the teacher said. “Can anyone eke tell me the name of this violent philosophy they followed?”
The children could not answer; their indoctrination had not reached that point. The woman raised a braceleted hand. The teacher beamed at the opportunity to show her admiration and respect for the woman once known as Marion Milford. “Yes, please do tell the class, Ms. Andrews.”
“It’s called Social Darwinism. But now we believe in Social Humanism, which means everyone helps everyone else, and we trust our new leaders to help us do that.” Marion’s voice was gentle, even comforting, but she spoke with absolute conviction.