"I said NASA tells us you'll be okay. They've figured out how to rescue you."
"I didn't know I needed to be rescued."
"My God, are you serious? You're on your way to Pluto or something. They're sending the Lowell after you."
Charlie waved it away. In the face of everything else that had landed on him, the news seemed almost anticlimactic. "Okay," he said.
He'd been off and on the phone with Al Kerr for the better part of two hours, getting updates on a series of increasingly desperate situations. The United States had literally millions of people on the road for whom there was neither shelter nor food, swamping efforts by relief agencies. Both coasts and the Hawaiian Islands had been heavily damaged by waves and storms. In some places earthquakes had been triggered. Property damage would be in the trillions. And God knew how much loss of life. Medical authorities were already warning about the possibility of infectious outbreaks; more tidal waves were reported in the Pacific.
Financial experts were pointing out that the functional loss of New York and Los Angeles would destroy the banking system, and were advising the government to move immediately.
"What do they suggest?" Charlie asked.
"I don't think they have any idea at this point, Mr. President. But they want us to know that action is of the essence."
What else?
There were major power outages in the Northeast and Northwest; tens of thousands of Mexican refugees for whom no provision could be made were streaming north; a freak electrical storm had virtually destroyed Tucson.
There were, however, some pieces of genuine good news: The heartland was still intact. The federal government was functioning well; early indications were that its agencies and the military were performing miracles. Europe and Asia had not been hit as hard as the Americas, and their allies, and even a few old enemies, were helping where they could. Best of all, the missiles were locked and loaded, and by nine A.M. the Possum would be history.
Charlie outlined his priorities. Foremost, they needed to concentrate on the refugee problem. "Do whatever's necessary to get food and services out. There's a potential here for even worse losses. We need to figure out what we can do for the people on the road, and we need to get it right the first time. And don't feel you have to wait for presidential authorization. Something needs to get done, do it. Just keep me informed. I'll support you."
"Or fire me," said Al, obviously uncomfortable. Kerr had never been a supporter of Charlie Haskell, and now he expected to pay the price.
Charlie had more important things to think about. "I want action plans waiting for me as soon as I get back. Assemble a working group to get ahead of the curve. I don't want to be just reacting to disasters. Put some people together to figure out what else might happen, what else we can do."
"What specifically did you have in mind, Mr. President?"
"Cholera and typhus, for one thing." He took a deep breath because he sensed the man's timidity. Anger flowed through him. There just wasn't time now for people who weren't ready to get things done. "Goddammit, Al," he said, "if I knew, I wouldn't need the working group. Keep it small. I want ideas, not ass-covering. What do we need to do to keep the country alive? Not just people, but the institutions. You got that?
"Get somebody from the military. CDC. FEMA. Some academics. Figure it out. We got blindsided this week, Al. And I think we've had all we can stand. No more surprises."
Was there anything else?
Yeah, there was. His voice softened: "I'm sorry about Henry and Emily. I know you and they were close."
"Thank you, Mr. President."
"I'll expect you to stay on as chief of staff. At least until we get through this."
"Yes, sir."
He broke the connection, wandered back into the passenger cabin, where everyone pretended to be busy reading. "Everything okay, Mr. President?" Evelyn asked.
They'd all gone formal on him again. And maybe it was just as well. He wondered how much Lincoln would have accomplished if everyone in the neighborhood had called him Abe.
"Fine," he said. "We're doing fine."
Which reminded him. He went up the ladder-he was getting good at zero-g moves now-and came in behind Saber. "Hello, pilot," he said.
She raised a hand without looking around. "Hello, Mr. President."
"I understand we're not going to Pluto after all," he said.
"Oh," she said. "You know about that. No, we'll be okay. We were never at risk."
He slid into the copilot's chair. "You're sure?"
"Yes, sir," she said.
"Anything I ought to know about?"
"No, Mr. President."
"If there's another problem, I'd like to be informed," he said.
"Yes, sir. I didn't think of it as a problem. I mean, I knew they had the Lowell in reserve." She smiled up at him. Saber was, he decided, a beautiful woman. Somehow, there hadn't been time to notice before. "I thought you had enough to worry about. Getting the Micro back was my job."
"Do we have any fuel left at all?"
"We've got a couple hundred pounds. Not very much. I'm trying to save it."
"Okay. What's the drill on the rescue?"
She relaxed a little. "Lowell will catch up with us around four. We'll transfer over and cut the Micro loose. They haven't sent me an ETA yet, but I'd guess we'll get back to the station by late evening. That's only a guess. I don't know what the capabilities of the Lowell are."
Charlie looked at the myriad blinking lights and telltales on the Micro's displays. "Can we see the Possum from here?"
She touched a key, and the rock appeared on a heads-up screen. "That's the view from one of the satellites."
The media descriptions said the Possum looked like something that had been cut in half. One side was flat, the other curved and rugged. It was more oblong than spherical, almost resembling a club. He was glad that idea hadn't occurred to anyone in the media. He watched it tumbling slowly across the display.
Saber's fingers moved over the keyboard. "Here's something to compare it with." An image of the Micro blinked on. It shrank until it was almost invisible against the object. "That's us." She pressed another key, and a series of micro-icons lined up along the length of the rock. "There are sixty-one of them," she said. "End to end."
"And how big are we?"
"Twenty-eight meters and change, blister to treads. We're pretty compact."
"We'll be well rid of the thing," he said.
The Possum exerted a near-hypnotic influence. He watched it turning, watched, on another screen, the blue globe of Earth.
The second image, Saber explained, was from the Micro's telescopes.
The distance between the vice presidency and the office of the chief executive, Charlie was discovering, is measured in light-years. It might be that no one really understands that who hasn't stood on both sides of the chasm. A few hours ago he was only worried about saving himself. That concern now seemed almost trivial.
The third decade of the twenty-first century had, until a few days earlier, been a good time for the planet. A hundred million Chinese were driving cars, almost everyone agreed that military incursions were in bad taste, the old economic cycle of boom and bust appeared to have been tamed, and the great powers had discovered that collaboration was more fruitful than competition. Technology was providing better lives for almost everybody. Science was forging ahead, and people now lived longer and stayed younger than ever before. Most cancers were curable; powersats supplied virtually unlimited energy; and the long struggle to reverse environmental damage had finally turned the corner. In the United States, racial tensions had been steadily easing, GNP was up every year, crime rates and population growth were down.
This is not to say there were no problems. There were far more people than the world's natural resources could comfortably support, and ancient traditions and religious groups fought every effort to reduce the numbers. There was still too much crime, and too much of it violent, particularly in Russia, the United States, and China. A recent survey of American adults by USA Today suggested that three-eighths of the population were functionally illiterate. This was the highest ratio of any industrialized society, and it continued to climb steadily. The advantages of participating in the global communications network were still not available to a quarter of the U.S. population, and to more than a third of those living in other Western nations. Every major government carried a staggering burden of debt.