Fevered Fall part 16 of 16 (NND) Chapter Sixteen They glided out onto the bay. The disruption of the waters caused by the downed building was subsiding. Around them wavelets still churned, silent testament to their destruction. But much of the building, so mightily suspended in the air only minutes before, was now lost under the calming waters of New Washington Bay. The silence of the sea was returning after a passing thunderclap; the watery grave had enveloped the once-living building, and flooded it and put it to eternal rest. Tongsun gazed at the chunks of dead lives, interrupted by his will, as they sailed toward the Presidio. A paper box floated by, stuffing from an armchair, a broken piece of plastic. As they moved across the bay and through increasing amounts of flotsam and jetsam, they began to see bodies. On their left, suddenly, loomed the Coast Guard cutter. Gunfire had resumed on the Golden Gate Bridge to their right. Tongsun felt trapped, suddenly. Sheriffs on the bridge, Imperial Sailors on the large ship, and the white lights on the veranda of the White House in front of him. He wanted, for a moment, to return to Lime Point, to the security of the cove. But it wasn’t possible, he told himself. If he was to avenge his beloved’s death, he must press on. He must attack and eliminate the linchpin of the regime that held everything together, and had made it possible for the police to come to his home, seeking to put his beloved in prison. He must go forward! Tongsun thought hard, watching the Coast Guard cutter that was bearing down on them. Then he got an idea. He turned to his crew. “We’re on a mission of mercy, for the next few minutes,” Tongsun said. The cold, huddling boys looked up at him. “Get scarves, shirts, anything. Cover your faces. We’re going to be pulling bodies from the water as we make our way over to the Presidio side of the bay. >From the point of view of the cutter, we’ll appear to be covering our faces against contamination from the corpses. But really, we’ll be covering our faces so that none of us, especially myself, am recognized.” “You mean we gotta pull those dead fucks from the water? The ones we just killed?” a boy protested. “That’s right,” Tongsun answered. “Expect that Coast Guard cutter to shine searchlights on us. We must make ourselves look like we’re on a mission of mercy, hunting for survivors amidst the wreckage of the downed Sky Dwelling. And pulling out bodies, to help in the policing of the corpses. In fact, though, we’ll be closing in on the White House. We don’t want that cutter deciding to blow us out of the water with its guns. So we’ll look like people trying to help out, not a bunch of assassins on our way to kill the president.” “Cool,” Harold murmured. He glanced over his shoulder. The cutter was moving in on them and was quite close now. “Get a scarf over your face, T,” Harold said. “You’re going to be on Candid Camera in a minute.” The boys covered their faces. Tongsun went back to the girl in the wheelhouse and explained his plan to her. She altered the boats course; instead of heading directly for their goal, the White House, she circled amidst the wreckage of the Sky Dwelling. The Coast Guard cutter lit up their boat with searchlights. The boys on deck waved. Then, with muffled groans of distaste, they hauled their first corpse from the water. The small boat approached the Presidio side of the bay in a widening arc of circles. At last, with a dozen corpses on board, the boat scraped against half-submerged weeds and rocks on the Presidio side of the bay. To their right, the shoreline sloped upward to the back lawn of the White House. Three of the stronger boys picked up the boat’s anchor and tossed it into the shallows beside the shore. “Good,” Tongsun said, watching. “Now, we must toss out the bodies,” Tongsun said to his crew. “Throw them high. Don’t just dump them over the side. We’ve got to make the bodies hit the shore as high up as we can, so we can test the land for mines.” They obeyed. With a “Heave Ho!” the boys threw the first body onto the land. It hit. It rolled down the slope to bump and rest against the side of their grounded boat. But there was no explosion. “What happened? Did somebody up in the White House turn off the mines?” Harold asked. He said this in reference to mines he presumed were buried on shore. The dropped Sky Dwelling had blown up the mines in the water. “Yes,” Tongsun said. “That’s my best guess. Some poor deluded soul thinks we’re here to help. He thinks we’ve just accidentally pulled up next to the White House to offload our cargo of corpses. Now, it’s time for you and me to go up to the White House and ring the doorbell.” “Good evening, Mr. President, mind if we stow some corpses on your property?” Harold said with a low chuckle. “In fact, if you don’t mind, we’d like you to join them.” “You’ve got the idea,” Tongsun said. “Let’s go. Before somebody comes out and asks to help.” “What about our guns?” Harold asked. He gazed uneasily at the Coast Guard cutter. It was now circling in the bay, moving through the wreckage and lowering down lifeboats off its sides to search for survivors. Unlike the people shot from Clinton bridge, the people who lived in the Sky Dwellings mattered. They had money and power. They weren’t ‘protected,’ as the kids on the bridges ostensibly were. They were the ‘protectors.’ They made the laws, and enforced them, and even killed human beings for the sake of their laws. Hence, when they themselves met death, or stood the chance of possibly, barely surviving it, the government raced to the rescue. The lifeboats from the Coast Guard cutter moved into the bay, but Harold felt uneasy with the cutter so close, and so watchful. “We just take our guns along,” Tongsun said. He unwrapped a Thermite Grenade and stuffed it in his trouser pocket. Then he set his plastic-wrapped Laser Rifle up on the cowl of their boat’s side. He could not unwrap it down on the deck because there was still water sloshing around on the deck, from the waves that had splashed over the boat when the Sky Dwelling dropped. He ripped off the plastic. “So we go waltzing up to the White House with guns in our hands, eh?” Harold asked. “Sometimes the obvious way is the best way, Harold,” Tongsun answered. He examined his Laser Rifle to see that it was dry and ready. It was. “We look like we’re helping. There’s riots going on all over the place. They’ll wonder about the guns, out there on that cutter, if they’re watching us. The same goes for anyone watching us from the White House. They’ll wonder, but they won’t be sure. Maybe we’re carrying guns to protect ourselves from rioters. Not being sure, whoever’s watching us won’t open fire right away.” “Okay then,” Harold said. He leaped over the side of their boat. He landed on the solid ground of the slope. Tongsun turned to his crew. “Five of you stay here to cover us if anyone opens fire on us. The rest of you follow me and Harold. Don’t shoot until someone fires at us. With luck, we may get all the way in to the president before we need to open fire. You all know what he looks like?” “Who doesn’t? Anytime there’s something not worth talking about, he interrupts Fuller House,” one of the boys replied. “So we shoot him? What then?” someone asked. Tongsun looked puzzled for a moment. Finally, he said: “Then our mission’s accomplished. We, uh, exit the White House by the safest way possible. Out the front, I guess. No... Wait. We’ve got to get the covering force that we’re leaving down here in the boat up the slope.” Tongsun paused, reflected, then said: “We’ll exit out the back, or take up positions inside the White House, facing the cutter.” “Yeah, yeah, fine,” Harold said. He looked at the five that were to remain. “We’ll cover you, or you get your asses up the slope as soon as we’ve disappeared. C’mon, Tongsun!” Harold ran up the slope, with Tongsun following. The rest of the boys, hustling along with their equipment, went running up the slope after them. Meanwhile, back on the boat, two boys kept throwing corpses over the side, to disguise the real purpose of their mission. Three other boys gazed at the Coast Guard cutter. They kept their unwrapped guns just out of sight; bending down and holding them below the side of the boat. In the wheelhouse, the girl had remained behind. It was foolish; there was no chance they would ever use the boat again, even if everything went perfectly. Yet she remained, standing there, as if to drive the boat off again, when ordered. Tongsun and Harold had just cleared the top of the slope when they heard a voice bellow at them from behind: “HALT! YOU THERE, HALT!” “Shit!” Harold cursed. He dashed for the White House. Without turning, he knew where the voice was coming from. It was being spoken at them from the deck of the Coast Guard cutter. “KA-BOOM!” sounded suddenly, on the slope behind Harold, the one he’d just climbed with Tongsun. The Samoan boy ran beside him, panting. Together they dashed across the back lawn of the White House. The windows of the large house peered down at them, and they both felt as if they were being stared at by a thousand snipers. “Damn! They’ve turned on the mines!” Tongsun said to Harold. There were screams, of boys being blown to bits, followed by more explosions on the slope behind them. Gunfire erupted from the White House. Harold and Tongsun were halfway across the lawn. They threw themselves into the grass. It was wet, from the fog and perhaps, Harold guessed, from the waves tossed inland by the downed Sky Dwelling. Harold and Tongsun returned fire. With his nose in the grass, Harold wondered if he and Tongsun had cleared the last of the mines. He hoped they had; he doubted the President of the Imperium went walking around in a minefield when he walked his dog on the back lawn, even if the mines could be switched on and off. A sound of gunfire erupted from behind them. Harold felt a chill of fear run down his back as he lay in the wet grass on the back lawn of the White House. The boys behind them, if they had survived the minefield, were now being decimated by the Coast Guard cutter. He could not see, but he could hear, with deafening certainty, the sound of the cutter raking the sloping shoreline behind them. Tongsun got up and ran. “T!” Harold shouted. Harold leaped to his feet and ran after Tongsun. Miraculously, they both made it to the veranda at the back of the White House. They threw themselves onto its polished wood decking. Harold felt a burst of laser fire pass over his head from somewhere within the building. He aimed at the spot where he’d seen a green flash, and fired. He heard a scream. “I shot the sheriff,” Harold muttered to Tongsun, who was lying to his left. “No, you only shot the deputy,” Tongsun grinned. They began crawling forward across the veranda. Naked, her hair hardly in regulation order, Judy Dan walked up to the Hoodoo. The sheriffs standing around it gaped at her. “HALT!” one of the sheriffs said. He pointed his weapon at her. Judy Dan had a creepy feeling that, if she weren’t a woman, and attractive to boot, she would have already been shot dead by the man. She looked at his glowering face in the half light of the street. The street lamps were out, but a building, burning nearby, cast a wavering light upon the figures standing before her. “Hi, I’m Judy Dan, Sanramento Police,” Judy said in as disarming a manner as she could. The sheriff’s gun wavered, then lowered slightly. “Show me some I.D.,” the sheriff groused. “I just got shot out of the air,” Judy said. She walked up to the sheriff and got right next to him. He lowered his pistol further. “Where’s your clothes?” the sheriff asked in a gruff voice. “Nudity is illegal!” “Sanramento Police!” Judy said to the man, with as much of an air of authority as a woman, half-drowned, and exhausted from swimming, could muster. “Didn’t you see the Hoodoo that got shot down?” “No,” the sheriff answered. “We just landed. Some fuck shot our pilot.” Judy walked around to the front of the Hoodoo, past the sheriff who wanted to arrest her for streaking, past the other sheriffs, who seemed dazed by her presence. She looked over the aircraft with an expert’s eye, despite being reduced to a shivering, wet, bone-white human being, naked as Eve in Eden. She spotted the place where a single laser blast had sliced through the windshield of the Hoodoo, hitting its pilot. “Where’s your co-pilot?” Judy asked. “Didn’t make the flight,” one of the sheriffs answered. “What kind of condition is your pilot in?” Judy said. “Not with us, anymore,” a sheriff said. He pointed to a body lying on a stretcher on the ground. “We’re lucky to have gotten down safely,” another sheriff said. Judy looked at the dead pilot. Then she looked at the sheriffs. “I can fly it,” she said. The sheriffs shook their heads. It was not an affirmative shake. “Trust me,” Judy said. “It’d be easier to trust you if you got some goddam clothes on,” one of the sheriffs answered. “Then strip the corpse,” Judy said. She pointed to the dead pilot, lying there on the stretcher, in his flightsuit. Sure, it was a man, in a male’s flightsuit, but a flightsuit was rather like a rose, which, by any other name, is still a rose. “No way,” one of the sheriffs answered. “Fine. I’ll fly it naked,” Judy said. “Shit. Are you really a pilot?” one of the sheriffs asked. “I think you guys are scared shitless from almost getting shot out of the sky, and don’t want to take off,” Judy said. She eyed them boldly. “It’s not that we’re--” one of the sheriffs began. “Then let’s go,” Judy said. She motioned for them to board the Hoodoo. Naked, but with a graceful, self-assured step, she walked toward the open hatch in the side of the craft. “Do we have somebody to man the Gatling?” “Here,” a sheriff said. “Good,” Judy answered. And, still quite naked, and dripping from the bay, she stepped aboard the Hoodoo. Tongsun gazed around the Oval Office. Harold raised his gun and pointed it at a picture on the wall, of President Nelson. Tongsun reached over and pushed Harold’s gun toward the floor. “Nobody’s home,” Harold whispered. His voice sounded awe-struck. “We killed whoever was here,” Tongsun replied. Harold looked at the president’s desk. It had papers scattered across it. “The bastard left before we ever arrived,” Harold said. Tongsun nodded. “Let me ask you something, Harold,” Tongsun said. “Yeah?” Harold asked. “If you were the President of the Imperium, and you felt forced to flee the White House, what would you do?” Harold thought for a moment. He gazed around them. He listened, and heard only silence, punctuated by occasional gunfire. It sounded distant, haphazard. With a chill he realized that none of the other boys had made it up the slope They were all dead, plus both girls, as far as he could tell. And he felt a sudden fear that he and Tongsun were about to join them. Harold drew in his breath. Then he said, in the encroaching silence of the Oval Office, “I’d booby-trap the place, and blow it the minute I got wind of someone intruding into it.” “Let’s go!” Tongsun shouted. Together, they ran toward the far window at the back of the Oval Office, behind the president’s desk. Dropping their guns, they crossed behind the desk and leapt through the glass. There was a roar, and for a minute they both thought the explosion had enveloped them, and was inside them. When they recovered, Harold and Tongsun found themselves lying outside the Oval Office, amidst splintered glass and wood. A combustion of smoke and flames billowed beyond their feet. They looked for the White House and saw only wreckage. “Are you okay, T?” Harold asked. He felt surprised, and relieved, that he could still speak. “I’m-- okay,” Tongsun answered. He moved an arm, then a leg, then both legs. Gradually, with uncertainty, he moved into a crouch, then stood up. A Hoodoo circled overhead. It began to descend. “Shit!” Harold swore. He looked up at the craft. “Play it cool,” Tongsun said. To hide his face, he bent down. He reached for Harold and slowly helped the boy stand. “Man, they’ll arrest us!” Harold said. “If they even know what’s going on,” Tongsun answered. When Harold was steady on his feet, Tongsun, still keeping his head bowed, yanked up his own shirt. “What are you doing?” Harold asked. “I’m going to pretend I’ve got a bloody nose, Harold, so they don’t recognize me,” Tongsun said. “Oh, yeah. We’re now both White House interns,” Tongsun said. “What?” Harold asked. “You know, we help out and stuff. The president left us behind to look after things.” “Nice work, if you can get it, except for the occasional blow job,” Harold smirked. “Be polite. Be a nerd,” Tongsun cautioned. “Offer them oral sex,” Harold said. “You’ve got some kind of a bruise on your forehead, T.” “Good,” Tongsun said. “Now I know why it hurts so much.” Together, they watched the Hoodoo land. When it was down, and the roar of its engines had diminished, they began walking toward it. KA-WHOOM! A blast of sound, of hot air, and of flying earth and debris threw them backwards. Both boys, so recently risen from the earth, were both thrown back down onto it. “Are you boys okay?” Harold heard, as if far off. Something shook his shoulder. “Shit! Not another explosion!” Harold’s mind said. When he thought the blast had passed, he found himself staring into the eyes of a D.C. Sheriff. There was a small American flag etched into the six-pointed gold star on his chest. Above the flag were the words, “Imperial States of America.” There were only 27 stars, not 50, but the name of the united American states had grown more regal as their numbers had diminished. Like the Janitor who becomes, over time, an Environmental Services Engineer, whilst still cleaning toilets, the American states had changed. America’s colonies had gone from states in a confederation to states in a union to, finally, world guarantor of peace, security, and order. When the Chinese, unshackled from communism, proved more numerous, more intelligent, more vigorous, and (most notably) more committed to freedom, America found itself the loser in an overseas war and settled for security in a world policed by China. Its nuclear bombs, its warplanes, its biological and chemical weapons were all taken away. But it was left with its right to police its buildings for smokers; to ‘protect’ its children, and to enforce its Smog 2 regulations. Americans found they disliked nuclear weapons anyway, disliked having overseas commitments, and didn’t mind terribly much (as long as it was taken out, beforehand, from their wages) paying 10 percent of their taxes to Beijing. “I call it a bargain, the best I ever had,” a line from a song by the Who, from the soundtrack of Tommy, played briefly on radio stations after the signing of the International Accords. (Though most people did mutter “damn Chinese” under their breaths when they heard the song.) Harold, his face blackened now from two explosions, stared up at the uniformed officer. “I’m-- God, my office must be a complete mess!” Harold said. “Your office?” the sheriff asked. He looked past Harold at the wrecked White House. “Son, that place is a disaster,” the sheriff said. Harold looked over at Tongsun. The Samoan boy’s face was bruised, and streaked with soot. Tongsun looked up at the two sheriffs standing over him. There were others, nearby, milling about. Harold had briefly lost consciousness but Tongsun seemed to have a good grasp of what was going on. Tongsun nodded at Harold, slightly, and Harold understood that Tongsun was proud of him for what he’d said to the sheriff. Harold had remembered their new M.O., despite losing himself briefly in the explosion. “God, the president is going to hate this,” Tongsun said, rolling onto his side and looking back at the flaming debris of the White House. “Shit! What are we going to tell him?” Harold asked, himself rolling also onto his side and glancing back at the White House. “Do you work here?” a sheriff asked, taking the bait. “God, yes! And I just got a shipment of those new skid-free paperclips in this morning too,” Harold said. “Now I’ll have to reorder!” Tongsun frowned, just a little, as if to indicate that Harold should not play his new identity too broadly. “Do you know where the president is?” Tongsun asked one of the sheriffs. He groped on the ground beside him. “Damn! Where’s my briefcase? Oh shit, how am I going to get that urgent message to him now?” “If you boys need to see the president, we’ve got a Hoodoo,” one of the sheriffs said helpfully. “But it’s been hit, as we tried to come down and land.” “Damn thing’s on fire, Butch! You can’t send them up in that,” another sheriff said, speaking up. Tongsun sat up. The two sheriffs standing over him crouched down. Together, they stared at the Hoodoo. It sat on the front lawn of the White House. Its body, in the rear section, burned with small, crackling flames. “We’ll take it,” Tongsun said, gazing at the craft. “Well, I’m sure glad we decided to land, to see what was going on,” a sheriff crouched next to him said. “God knows, though. I don’t want to get back into that thing.” “It’s fine,” Tongsun said. “We MUST reach the president. We have no choice. Do you know where he is?” “President Nelson? God no. We’re not cleared for that sort of information,” a sheriff told Tongsun. Tongsun, a bit unsteadily, stood up. He looked down at the crouching sheriffs. Another shell sailed over the tops of the low-rise buildings across the street. The sheriffs who were crouching flattened themselves to the grass. One of them grabbed Tongsun’s ankle, but he deftly pulled his foot free. The shell hit some distance away, and exploded. Harold cringed, waited a moment, then jumped up beside Tongsun. The Samoan boy caught him and kept him from toppling over as he nearly lost his footing again. “Ah!” Harold said. “You okay?” Tongsun asked him. “I think something’s wrong with my leg,” Harold said. He limped forward toward the Hoodoo. To his great surprise, a nude woman stepped out of the Hoodoo’s open hatch in the side of the craft. Tongsun put one of Harold’s arms around his broad shoulders. Then he walked forward, carrying the limping boy along with him. Judy Dan found herself staring at one of the most attractive boys she’d seen in a long while. He had a bruise on his forehead and his face was blackened from explosions, but he was still quite handsome to look upon. She noticed that his shirt was torn open, revealing his muscled chest. At the same time, Tongsun was struck by how closely Judy Dan resembled his dead beloved. It wasn’t the same woman, but she was blonde, attractive, and in her mid 30’s. She had a sprightly gait as she walked toward him completely naked. For a moment he thought she was some slightly altered apparition of his beloved, come to take him away to Heaven with her. Then the nude woman extended her bare hand, her breasts quivering nicely, and said, “Hi. I’m Judy Dan. Do you young men need some help?” “We’re White House interns,” Harold said, wincing as he drew his sprained leg forward. “We’ve got to get to the president,” Tongsun told the woman. “Sure,” Judy Dan said. “I mean, this thing’s a wreck,” she pointed with her thumb to the Hoodoo behind her. “But if you really need to get someplace, guys--” “We do,” Tongsun said. “Do you know where the president is?” Dan looked at him. “Not officially,” she said. “Never mind officially,” Harold said. He tossed back his stringy, blackened blonde locks from his forehead and Judy Dan was struck by how like River Phoenix, her favorite old-time movie star, he looked. Perhaps, she wondered in an idle second, he was River Phoenix, come to ride with her in a final flight to the very pinnacle of New Washington society. “Well, sure, I think I know where he is,” Judy Dan said. “Let’s go!” Tongsun said. Still holding Harold, he drew the stumbling boy forward to the open hatch on the Hoodoo. “Shit. The fire’s spreading,” Harold said. He looked up at the body of the Hoodoo. The flames had run farther along it, moving toward the hatch door. “We can make it. We have to,” Tongsun said. “Wait!” Judy said. She turned. She ran after the boys. “Are you sure you want to go back up in that?” Judy asked. “Very sure,” Tongsun said. He pulled Harold into the hatch with him. “Damn!” Judy swore. She had misgivings now, about flying the Hoodoo, seeing the craft from outside, and how it was sprouting small flames along its back and its sides. Yet the two boys had just stepped into it! She ran up to the hatch and jumped inside. Tongsun had just seated Harold in one of the sling seats. He turned, and gazed at Judy. She stared at him. “If you really want to,” Judy said. “Yes!” Tongsun said. “Take me to the president. I have an urgent message for him.” “This will never work,” Harold, stretched out in a sling seat, muttered. An explosion shook the craft, as whoever was shelling the White House lobbed in another round. When it diminished, and the Hoodoo was still again, Judy walked forward into the cockpit. Naked, a bit dazed, she sat back down in the pilot’s seat that she knew so well. She strapped herself in. She revved the craft’s engine. The dials on the console in front of her still had passable readings. It was crazy to take off, but it did seem the right thing to do. Judy Dan had always loved the heroic parts of action films, where the hero (always a male) had defied the odds to accomplish an important mission. “Well,” Judy told herself. “Today the hero is going to be a woman!” She threw the Hoodoo’s controls into ‘takeoff’ mode and the craft lifted up. It was an unsteady takeoff, as unsteady as its landing had been. But it did rise, it did glide up, and it did (rather narrowly) clear the top of a building across the street from the White House. Tongsun walked forward, into the cockpit. He gazed down at Judy from behind. He admired the certain grip of her hands on the Hoodoo’s controls. He gazed at the dials, but had no idea what they meant. “You doing okay?” Tongsun asked. “Sure,” Judy said. She reached over to flick on the Comm screen. “No!” Tongsun caught her hand. “Don’t you want me to try to contact them?” Judy asked. She looked up at Tongsun. She noticed, with feminine delight, how close his sweaty, half-naked chest was to her. “Maintain Comm silence,” Tongsun said. “If you think you know where he is, just fly there. I don’t want us getting hit by groundfire. The rioters could be monitoring the comm network.” “Good idea,” Judy said, though she probably would have said it even if it were a bad idea, so pleased was she to be in the presence of the handsome Samoan boy. He was a rare one, she admitted to herself. Strong, good-looking, yet with a surprisingly youthful aspect, while at the same time having a maturity to his gaze that she found slightly unsettling. “Oh, by the way,” Tongsun said. “Do you have a wrench?” “Sure,” Judy said. She pointed to a tool box strapped to the base of the empty co-pilot’s seat. “In there. Did something in back come loose?” “Yeah,” Tongsun said. “But don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” He looked at the dials again. “Will we make it?” “I-I hope so,” Judy said. The temperature gauge was now troublesomely high. “If we don’t blow up in mid-air,” she added. “Fly as fast as you can,” Tongsun said. “Roger,” Judy answered. The city of New Washington slipped by underneath them. The Hoodoo became balky in Judy’s hands. But she was an expert flier, and did her best, with her skills, to compensate for the increasing instability of the craft’s flight. It darted out over the bay and she looked down on the bay with a kind of God-like stare in her eyes. Strangely, instead of fearing the bay, which had so recently almost taken her life, she now felt like a victor, gazing upon a defeated opponent. “Face your fear, and you will overcome it,” a voice said quietly in Judy’s head. She nodded. She’d already been dumped into the bay once this evening. The prospect of going down a second time troubled her not in the least. She was, suddenly, like a man being re-arrested, perhaps for the fifth or sixth time. She was like a ghetto child, who took no umbrage at prison time, seeing it simply as an opportunity to socialize with his father, his brother, and his uncle. Tossing her blonde hair back over her naked shoulder, she flew with a sureness to her grip that she’d never felt before. “Perhaps,” she reflected. “I never made it out of the bay, the first time. I died there, and now I’m flying naked to Heaven, with a God-like young man to guide me.” Then she shook her head, told herself she was, despite her nudity, quite alive (though she half-disbelieved it), and she headed for the Sky Dwelling where she guessed the president was. President Nelson gazed into the T.V. screen. “And so, my fellow citizens of the Imperium, let me apologize once again for interrupting your late night viewing. I am continuing to monitor the situation here at the White House. The reports, as I’ve said, are now good. We have things under control. There is no need to leave your home. Please take this time to be with your loved ones, and enjoy the fellowship of your friends and family. I shall speak to you again as soon as there are new developments to report. Until then, I remain your faithful servant, maintaining our Imperial security for the safety of every family.” “Very good, President Nelson,” an aide said, as the T.V. cameras ceased filming him. “Thank you,” President Nelson said. “Would you like to go to the party sir?” another aide asked. “Of course!” President Nelson said. “That’s some of the best legislation I’ve signed in years!” In the cabin of the Hoodoo, Tongsun worked with the wrench. He was without any weapon. There appeared to be none aboard the Hoodoo, except one very large, and very heavy one. He hoped he was strong enough to carry it. With another turn of his wrench, he continued to loosen the bolts holding the Gatling gun to its housing. Harold, sprawled in a sling seat, stared at him from behind. “We’ll make it, T,” he murmured. “Harold?” T said. “Yeah?” Harold asked. Tongsun noticed, as he worked, that the craft was vibrating with a nerve-wracking intensity. He looked up, briefly, at the ceiling, then toward the back. The flames were not inside the cabin but he guessed they soon would be. “Yeah?” Harold asked again. “She’s quite nice-looking, Harold,” Tongsun said. “But you know what I may have to do.” “Her?” Harold asked. He guessed Tongsun meant the pilot. “Yeah. Her,” Tongsun said. He felt the Gatling come loose from its housing. “God,” Harold said. “Try not to, Tongsun. I rather like her.” “I do too, Harold,” Tongsun said. “We’re coming in for a landing,” the interior loudspeaker suddenly blurted. It was a female’s voice. Judy’s. “Brace yourself,” she announced. Tongsun grabbed onto the housing of the Gatling. Harold gripped the sides of his seat. The Hoodoo, aflame, burst through a mesh of netting covering a Service Entrance on the back of the Abraham Lincoln Sky Dwelling. As it broke through the netting, alarms were triggered. Security cameras pivoted to catch the Hoodoo on film. It bulked large in their fisheye lenses. The room into which the Hoodoo had thrown itself filled with smoke as the burning craft skidded across its floor and struck the far wall. Downstairs, in the lowest floor of the building, security guards and two Secret Service officers monitored the arrival of the craft. “Damn. It came crashing right through. It didn’t answer any of our calls to it,” one of the guards, seated before a television monitor, said. He watched as the Service Entrance landing bay caught on fire, the flames leaping up from the Hoodoo to ignite the ceiling. “Probably lost its Comm,” one of the Secret Service officers said. “Damn construction workers! I’ll bet it’s one of their fucking ships!” a security guard said. “When the president pays a visit, everything’s got to be spruced up,” a security guard said. He looked at the guard sitting in front of a television monitor next to him. “I hear we’re even getting new carpeting down here.” “That’ll be the day,” the other man laughed. “Mayday! Mayday!” came suddenly from a speaker next to one of the T.V. screens. “There. It’s got Comm now!” one of the security guards said. He amplified the transmission from the craft as a nude woman appeared on one of the T.V. screens. “Hello, I’m Judy Dan,” the woman said. “My Hoodoo’s on fire and I’ve got two White House interns on board who say they have an urgent message for the President of the Imperium.” The guards and the Secret Service officers found themselves staring at the way her naked breasts rose and fell as she spoke quickly into her onboard T.V. camera, next to her Comm screen. “Sorry about my clothes,” Judy Dan added. “It’s a mess down there.” Tongsun emerged from the Hoodoo into the Landing Bay. He coughed as his lungs inhaled the smoke that was rapidly filling the room. “Hey! You can’t land here!” a man said. The security cameras pivoted, but the smoke filling the room obscured their view. The man stepped into the Service Entrance Landing Bay from an open doorway. Tongsun approached him. With a quick burst from the Gatling, Tongsun silenced him. Then he stepped over the man and walked quickly into the myriad of hallways beyond the Landing Bay. The guards downstairs, mesmerized by the image of Judy Dan, failed to see him pass out of the Landing Bay, despite cameras perched in the hall that filmed Tongsun. Judy Dan looked to her right. What was that noise? She looked startled. She did not know that Tongsun had left her craft, or that he’d stolen her Gatling. She looked into her onboard T.V. camera again. “Mayday,” she repeated. A Secret Service officer, staring at Judy’s image, frowned. “Damn. I don’t like the looks of this,” he muttered. “Let’s go,” the other officer said. Quickly they hurried from the room, with five security guards leaping up to follow them. Judy Dan unstrapped herself in the Hoodoo. She stood up. The two guards remaining stationed before the T.V. cameras in the lowest floor of the Sky Dwelling got an excellent view of her bush. “Nice,” one of them said to the other. Upstairs, the party was underway. The bunting was up and the purpose of the party (for, in Washington, no party was held without a purpose) was written in large letters on a banner overhanging the speaker’s podium. “PROTECT THE CHILDREN,” the banner read. President Nelson stood under the banner, before a microphone on the speaker’s podium. He lifted a glass of wine in toast to the crowd. “Here’s to our new legislation, raising the voting age and the age of consent to 21,” President Nelson told the assembled crowd with a grin. There was applause. “Twenty-five next year!” a person, wearing a fine tuxedo, shouted from the crowd. “Thirty!” a woman in a shimmering cocktail gown yelled, her glass of wine uplifted. “Thirty-five!” someone else said, and there was genial laughter. They drank to their new law, and assured themselves that they would write more, in the coming days and weeks. After all, though the Imperial code now stretched to two billion volumes, all of them filled with laws which it was no excuse to be ignorant of, the rioting on the streets below was clear evidence that yet more laws needed to be written. “In our modern age, there is increasing stress on the families of the Imperium,” President Nelson said, as the applause dwindled away. “But our Imperial government stands ready to help the hard-working mothers and fathers of our great nation to raise their children in safety and peace.” A new round of applause broke out. There were politely voiced cheers, and more toasts. “To President Nelson!” someone cried. “To the Imperium!” someone else said. And, with a toast most appropriate to the moment, some else shouted, “To the safety of our children!” Judy Dan stood in the cabin of the Hoodoo. She gazed at Harold through the smoke. She looked again at the place where the Gatling had been wrenched from its housing. “You lied to me,” Judy said to Harold. She wished she had her laser pistol with her but it was drowned, like her flightsuit, her boots, her helmet and her gloves, in the bay. It was foolish not to have grabbed a weapon from someone along the way; the dead pilot who’s place she’d taken, perhaps, but in the rush of events she’d not bothered to. Now, as she stared at Harold, she realized that was a mistake. “For every time, there is a season,” Harold said, and felt rather proud of himself, in his crippled condition, for coming up with such a fine, cryptic phrase, just as Tongsun would have. “I can’t belive that’s-- that’s him--” Judy replied. “It’s... the real McCoy,” Harold said. He grinned. “No use chasing after him. He’s already gone. And he’ll kill you if you try to stop him. Help me up. We’re going to roast in here.” “Damn you,” Judy swore. “Whatever,” Harold said. “Are you just going to leave me here, to burn alive, or will you see that I get justice?” “Burning would be good justice for you,” Judy said. “Then leave me, bitch,” Harold said. And, inside his head, he thought: “I don’t really care what you do, honey. All I care is that I stall you long enough for Tongsun to get as far up into the building as he can.” “Alright,” Judy said. “I’ll help you. But God, will I testify against you at trial. You two have probably broken all two billion laws in the Imperium!” “We’re doing our best,” Harold answered. Tongsun found an elevator. Its panel offered service to the top floor, but when the elevator had risen and stopped, he found he was a floor below the top floor. He could not get it to go any higher. He pressed the top button repeatedly, but it wouldn’t budge. However, when its doors began closing and it offered to take him to the basement, Tongsun quickly stepped out. He found a stairway. It had a police cordon across it, plus a desk. There was a magazine open on the desk. It was Sports Illustrated. But nobody was manning the desk, at the moment, and Tongsun stepped past it, ripped away the police cordon, and quickly mounted the stairs leading to the top floor. He emerged into a hallway. There was no desk in this hallway, but he could hear voices coming from around a corner in the hall nearby. He walked quickly toward the corner, his Gatling held in a ready-to-fire position at his waist. “Hey, you! This is a secured area!” a group of guards said to Tongsun as he rounded the corner, on the top floor of the building. He didn’t wait to argue. He opened fire with the Gatling. He strained as he held the big gun. It was heavy, and it possessed a significant recoil. Nonetheless, he was strong enough to manage it, and before the Secret Service officers could draw their guns, the powerful weapon from the Hoodoo tore their bodies to shreds. Tongsun ceased swinging the gun back and forth and advanced down the hall. He heard sounds of a party. He rounded another corner. He met another cluster of guards. He opened fire again. The Secret Service officers were blown to bits. The noise of the revelry in the party room was so loud, accompanied by the band, that the brief burst of gunfire out in the hall failed to catch the notice of all but a few partiers at the back of the room. Worse, from their standpoint, a sliding glass door, communicating with the hallway, decorated with gold lettering that read “Abraham Lincoln Party Room,” had been closed. From within the room, celebrating its new statutory triumph, a shadow loomed on the other side of the door. The glass slid back. Heads turned. Tongsun stepped into the room. His head was bruised. His face, brown-skinned, was smeared with soot. His black hair was uncombed. He smelled of sweat. His clothes were torn, and grimy. His shirt was ripped open to reveal his deep-breathing chest. There was a look of anxious alarm on his face. A woman, dressed in sequined gown, noticed how her 40-something friend stared with wonder at the figure in the doorway. He was quite handsome, she admitted to herself, but surely, from his youthful visage, he must be underage? She saw the gun at his waist but did not immediately recognize it as such, for there was construction going on elsewhere in the building, and, having passed workmen on her way up to the party, she assumed he was part of a construction crew. “Well,” she told herself. “He might be old enough to work, but he surely wasn’t old enough for what her friend found him so appealing for.” With a light touch on her friend’s gown, she reminded her, politely but firmly, speaking it aloud, “Remember, Justina, sex with a minor is a major crime.” Intending to share more of her legalistic wisdom, derived from many viewings of afternoon television, Gloria Selvine was interrupted. A rude burst of laser fire shot from the barrel of the Gatling and, instead of sharing additional cautionary phrases with her friend, Mrs. Selvine instead splattered her with her own body fat and body tissue, and a substantial quantity of bodily fluid. The contents of her wine cup also went splashing across her friend. Justina had no time to react, however, for a slight movement of the Gatling brought its laser fire into contact with her own body. She burst apart, splattering other guests with her blood, who, themselves, had no time to contemplate her effect on them, for they too were torn apart by the Gatling as Tongsun sprayed the room. There were screams. Shots were fired. Tongsun felt a laser blast nip his head. He stepped to one side, out of the silhouetting doorway behind him, and kept firing. He reaped through the crowd with his Gatling like Death itself, felling the bodies easily and quickly. “Mr. President, this way!” a voice shouted. President Nelson felt himself yanked down from the podium at the far end of the room. He was dragged through a doorway. Secret Service officers carried him quickly up a flight of stairs to the roof of the building. Down in the Service Entrance Landing Bay, two Secret Service officers and five security guards were busy arresting both Judy Dan and Harold. “Dammit! I’m a pilot! Sanramento Police!” Judy Dan protested, as her hands were bound behind her back by two security guards. She coughed at the smoke billowing from her burning Hoodoo. “And I’m a White House intern!” Harold said, mustering as much indignity as he could. Then he coughed also. “No he’s not!” Judy Dan gasped. “Let’s get out of here,” one of the security guards said to a Secret Service agent. They turned, dragging Judy Dan and Harold with them. Two maintenance men rushed into the room, holding fire extinguishers. They stared at the burning Hoodoo. They looked ill-equipped for their job. Perhaps, hearing the alarms, they had suspected a usual, run of the mill emergency. Like men with buckets staring at a burning skyscraper, they gaped up at the Hoodoo. “Holy shit!” one of the maintenance men yelled. The entire room was a billowing mass of smoke. “Where’s the fire detail?” the other maintenance man asked. “God if I know. Probably at that damn party!” a security guard yelled. The building quivered. “What the Hell?” a Secret Service agent, holding Harold by his hands, which were cuffed behind his back, blurted out. Up on the roof, the Hoodoo began to rise. President Nelson, slightly rumpled but otherwise unhurt, sat with a wine glass in his hand. It was empty, but an onboard servant, quick to notice the lack of liquor in the president’s glass, rushed to fill it with a bottle of the president’s favorite vintage. President Nelson gazed at a T.V. screen next to his seat, which was a large, plump, well-stuffed chair. He saw the ruined ballroom on his screen. A producer, in a small room off to one side of the large Hoodoo’s main cabin, selected another view for the president’s eyes. The camera feeds were arriving from the security office in the bottom floor of the Abraham Lincoln building, and the producer chose from them with the deftness and grace of a programmer selecting an evening’s viewing. He found a live shot of Judy Dan, quite naked, her arms bound behind her back, and of Harold, looking sooty and disheveled, also with his hands imprisoned behind him. Secret Service agents and guards surrounded the two. They were coming through a doorway labelled “Service Entrance Landing Bay” into an interior hall. The president laughed. The wine sloshed in his glass as he laughed. He studied the screen as the roar of the Hoodoo’s engines grew louder. “HA! HA! HA! Damn kids!” President Nelson said. Unlike the women in the party room, he was under no illusions about what he was seeing. “Damn kids!” he said again. “They’re hippies, that’s what they are. Well, well. I have two words for you,” President Nelson said, gazing at the captured figures on the T.V. screen. He had no idea how many other rioters had penetrated the building, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. Grinning, he asked the two handcuffed figures on the T.V., who could not, of course, see him, and no idea he was talking them, a simple question: “Going down?” He laughed again, and drank from his wine glass. “Do you want to do a full drop, Mr. President?” a Secret Service officer asked. “Yep. Full drop,” President Nelson said. “Overriding,” a man stated. He sat at a console with two T.V.s, which showed a view of internal computer screens in the building below. He’d already switched the Abraham Lincoln Building’s Main Lift Engine from automatic to manual, causing the building to tremble at the sudden, if brief, loss of power. Now, very precisely and deliberately, he shut the Main Lift Engine off. Then he prevented, with several taps on his keyboard, and a click of his mouse, the Backup Lift Engine from switching on and taking the load. The Hoodoo’s landing gear rose off the cement of the building’s roof. Just as it did, a metal hatch, used for maintenance work, was flung open. Standing on a ladder within the hole over which the metal hatch had been closed, was Tongsun. He had been unable to climb the ladder with his Gatling, and it lay at the bottom of the ladder in the maintenance shaft. Seeing the Hoodoo, guessing the president might be aboard, he didn’t pause to think. He jumped. It was a lucky decision, for as he did the building beneath him fell away. He gasped as his arms caught onto the Hoodoo’s landing gear. His knee had bumped the hatchway’s metal opening as he leapt, shooting pain up through his thigh. But he did not gasp at the pain caused by his knee. Instead, he stared disbelievingly as the building in which he had so recently stood fell away from him toward the earth. Inside the Hoodoo, the producer found a view of Tongsun on one of his screens, clutching the right-side aft landing gear of the Hoodoo. It was broadcast to him by a special camera on the underside of the Hoodoo. He clicked on a button. The shot was transmitted to the president’s screen in the main cabin. “Shit! There’s some kid on our landing gear!” a Secret Service agent yelled. He stared at the president’s T.V. screen. “Damn kids!” the president shouted. A Secret Service agent unholstered his laser pistol and began firing into the floor of the Hoodoo, at the place where he guessed the right-side aft landing gear was. “No! You’ll hit a fuel line!” another Secret Service agent yelled to the one who was firing. Tongsun heard the explosion as the Abraham Lincoln Sky Dwelling smashed into the ground below. With terrified eyes he stared down at a view of New Washington, so far below him, his feet dangling above it, his arms straining as he struggled to keep his hold on the Hoodoo’s landing gear. The Hoodoo rose higher. A shot penetrated the bottom of the craft and hit Tongsun in the shoulder. He lost his grip on the landing gear. He fell. “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” Tongsun said to himself, cryptically, as he fell through the fog. Then, as he gazed upward, trying to spot the Hoodoo which had now disappeared in the clouds above him, the ground below rushing up to capture him forever, he remembered a question, posed on a record his grandfather owned. It was a record by the Kinks. It had asked a simple question, but one that held profound implications for Tongsun. It was: “Should I stay, or should I go?” Much to his regret, Tongsun, while still gripping the landing gear, had decided that his odds of clinging successfully to the landing gear for the Hoodoo’s entire flight were impossible. He was dog tired and he’d worn out his arms completely carrying the Gatling around. The wind whipped coldly at his body, urging him to let go. His arms screamed for mercy. Tightening his grip with one hand, he’d let go with the other. Fighting the onrushing wind, he’d reached into his pocket. >From it he’d pulled the Thermite grenade, only remembering it now, desperately, looking for some way to finish his mission. He hadn’t been sure the president of the Imperium was aboard the Hoodoo, but he’d felt an eerie certainty that he was. On the underside of the Hoodoo Tongsun had placed a Thermite grenade. It was attached by magnetism to the underside of the Hoodoo. He’d pulled its pin, despite the fact that it would blow him apart as surely as it blew apart the Hoodoo. Then he’d been shot. Tongsun gaped upward, into the clouds. He continued to fall. Somewhere, up there, was a Hoodoo. Tongsun didn’t know how many seconds had passed since he’d pulled the pin from the Thermite grenade, but he prayed he had more seconds left to him than the Hoodoo did. Tongsun watched the sky, attentively, paying no mind whatever to the ground rushing up to break his bones and smash his skull. Just before he hit the ground, through the fog, he saw a bright explosion far overhead.