Heather went into the main room. She missed Quattro and Bambi, still stuck in California straightening out the mess of merging the Leagues, and the presence of so many friends seemed only to remind her of the ones who were not there.
When she saw Chris talking with Phat—and taking notes as he did—she came over and said, “Hey, this is a party. No working at the party.”
“Okay,” Chris said, slamming his notepad shut and mock-whining like a small boy, “but I want to get started turning the general into a hero. Remember, when Leo over here is an old fart like us, he’ll tell stories, and the more heroes and the less truth they contain, the better everyone will like them. Right, Leo?”
Leo made a sleepy, whining noise.
“I think that means ‘leave me out of this,’” Heather said. “And it’s probably time for me to call it an evening.”
With no moon out, the clear sky was smeared with stars, twinkling fiercely through the still-sooty upper air. Leo was pressed in tight against her, under her cloak, and she hurried toward home in the cold.
Ahead of her, lights were disappearing as candles and lanterns were blown out; nowadays, Pueblo, the liveliest city in America, went to bed early. The day you died, Lenny, we were a united country, but in the deepest shit we’d ever been in. And here we are again, except less united and in deeper shit. But overall, it feels like a victory, which makes no sense.
She stood a moment in the street, as if listening to his voice, and then turned to look back at James’s house, still crowded with light and people—her people—and saw, as plainly as all the lines and charts, tables and notes that occupied her working hours, that it did make sense, after all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND A THIRD-HAND STATEMENT
Among people who were very useful in formulating this second installment of the story were Ashley Grayson, Soren Roberts, Diane Talbot, James Fallows, Trent Telenko, S. M. Stirling, John Ringo, Tom Holsinger, John E. Johnston III, Mike Robell, Jack Greene, and the utterly invaluable Howard Davidson. Special thanks are due to Susan Allison for immense patience and for a number of absolutely necessary commandments; to Michelle Kasper, the production editor, who took the immense, sprawling mess I had made and my notes about what I wanted it to become and fought with the mess and the notes until they worked together, making it look as if I’d known what I was doing all along; and to Deanna Hoak, who achieved the miraculous: a copy edit which was a positive pleasure for me to review. Because of all those good people, this is a much better book than it might otherwise have been, and I’m deeply grateful.
Len Deighton attributed to James Jones the statement that “Readers should remember that the opinions expressed by the characters are not necessarily those of the author.” I would go farther and say that if the author is keeping faith with characters and readers, it is essential that any opinion expressed by a character be the opinion the character would have in the imagined world, rather than anything the author might have in the real one. That is, characters should—artistically, must—hold the ideas and say the words that fit with who, what, and where they are imagined to be, taking the actions they take, and not the ideas and sayings that the author might have included in a letter to the editor or a blog post. (Unless the unfortunate character has been created to always agree with the author, a situation which I think is best avoided, however difficult it may be to avoid.) Within the imagined world, the author, of course, has full responsibility to the readers for whatever happens, which necessarily reflects the author’s sense of what is possible in the universe of human thought, feeling, and behavior. Any responsibility of the author to the characters for what happens in their universe must be answered as Jehovah answered Job, except without giving them all their stuff back.
ACE BOOKS BY JOHN BARNES
Directive 51
Daybreak Zero
About the Author
John Barnes is the author of The Return with Buzz Aldrin.
Copyright
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barnes, John, 1957-
p. cm.—(A novel of Daybreak; 2)
eISBN : 978-1-101-47589-8
1. United States—Officials and employees—Fiction. 2. Regression (Civilization)—Fiction. 3. Political fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.A677D39 2011
813’.54—dc22
2010047491