Aftermath (11 page)

Nothing special, according to Celine's displays. She turned to him. "What do you mean? What do you hear?"

He had his control unit on his lap, scanning frequencies. He shook his head. "I don't like this. I was monitoring S-band, low data rate ground-to-space vocal. Then it went dead—and now so has everything else. I'm getting nothing at all, not even video or general communications uplinks from Earth."

It was Wilmer, on Celine's other side, who stirred from an apparent trance and said, "Check space to ground."

Ludwig said nothing, but his fingers stabbed at another section of his lap set. After a few seconds he glanced across at Wilmer. "Weird. Nothing going down from
low
Earth orbit, voice or image or computer bit stream. But for the geosynchronous metsats, higher up, it's business as usual. Do you want me to look at their image data stream?"

"Yes. But not what's being sent out now. Do you receive and store past data?"

"Some. It's a moving window. We store metsats for the past twenty-four hours, that's all."

"That will be ample. Tap us in to fifteen minutes ago, and run a display."

Zoe was finally taking an interest. She had not actually been listening, but she reacted to Wilmer's and Ludwig's tone of voice. She leaned forward toward them. "Hey, what's going on? How long before this gamma surge fades, and we can get out of here?"

Celine glanced across at the readout: forty-two. "It's fading already," she said. "It's down by twenty-one from the last value I saw. That's a factor of more than a billion. If it keeps going like this, we can all leave here in a few minutes."

"I'm going to borrow your display, Celine," Ludwig said. "Here's the metsat images."

Alpha Centauri vanished. In its place came the familiar and comforting sight of Earth as seen from geosynchronous orbit, thirty-five thousand kilometers above the surface. They stared in silence at the great globe, half lit by sunlight, half in darkness. Without knowing how to give a name to it, Celine could see a
strangeness
to the cloud patterns. Instead of broad bands or hurricane swirls, the clouds had an unusual north-south streaky structure, as though the equator—that already imaginary entity—had disappeared.

Peculiar, yes. But menacing? Not really. All seven of them sat watching in silence. At last, as Zoe was saying, "All right, I've enjoyed as much of this as I can stand," it came.

A blue glow started at the South Pole and shimmered north. Like a gas discharge in a fluorescent tube, it moved until it enveloped the whole Earth. And then, while they stared and wondered if they were seeing what they thought they saw, it was gone.

Wilmer leaned back against Celine. "We're screwed," he said. "Dead unlucky, the geometry must have been just wrong. I knew it was a possibility, but I never thought it would happen. Ludwig, check the time codes on the data streams. I bet data loss in and around Earth began coincident with that high-atmosphere free electron phenomenon we just witnessed."

"What will it do?" Reza asked. He had the least electronic background of anyone on board.

"If it was as strong as I think," Wilmer answered, "it will have knocked out a lot of electronic gear down on Earth. Anything with microchips in it is probably dead."

"Well, doesn't that mean . . ." Reza said.

He was asking more questions. Celine could hear him, but his words didn't even register with her. If everything containing microchips no longer worked, then the planet would be plunged back to a pre-electronic age; except that the world of 2026, unlike the world of 1926, depended on electronic devices for every phase of living.

And there was more. Equipment in low Earth orbit would also be affected. That included the space stations—stations on which the Mars expedition had been depending for its safe return to Earth.

Celine thought again of her parents and her brother. They were probably not in situations critically dependent on electronic technology. They were all right.

But she was not. The chances of survival of the first Mars expedition had suddenly dropped by many orders of magnitude.

Sure, they should be able to fire retro-rockets to match speed with Earth. Sure, they ought to be able to park the
Schiaparelli
in Earth orbit. But the most difficult part of the journey home, the final reentry, would still lie ahead. And for that reentry, they needed resources that no longer existed.

5

As Grace Mackay was leaving Saul's office, Auden Travis popped back in the doorway. "You have no other meetings on your calendar this evening, Mr. President—"

"And plenty to do. I'll eat right here, if you could pass the word."

"Yes, sir. But I was about to add, you have two people still waiting to see you, Dr. Singer and Ms. Silvers. Also, we have more working lines. South Carolina is patched in—"

"Good."

"—and Mrs. Steinmetz is on the line. It's not one of her better days, sir. She is referring to you as Ben."

"Bring Dr. Singer in, and tell him to take the other headset. Then put Mrs. Steinmetz on the line. I want Dr. Singer to hear her. I'll see Ms. Silvers last, and she can eat with me. Order for two."

"Very good, sir."

Was that a faint look of distaste on Auden Travis's handsome face as he left? Better that, Saul decided, than the knowing smirk that a heterosexual aide might offer.

He sighed—
Why me, God?
—and picked up the old-fashioned headset as Dr. Forrest Singer entered, nodded, and moved to the other working telephone.

"Hello, Mother." Saul waited. When there was no reply, he went on, "How are you feeling?"

"They're not feeding me right." The voice on the other end of the line came through faint and scratchy, with odd breaks between the words. "And they have different people giving me my bath and cleaning my rooms."

"I'll talk to them, Mother. I'll make sure it gets fixed. We have trouble lots of places, because of the supernova."

"Oh? Well, you know that's nothing to do with me. I can't do anything about that. What are you doing, Ben? Are you meeting any nice girls?"

"This is Saul, Mother. I'm very busy. Too busy to think much about meeting girls."

"Why haven't you been calling me? I don't think you've called for a long time. I don't know when you last called me."

"I'm sorry, Mother. They've had a lot of trouble with the telephones. I'll try to call more often."

"You ought to take a break, you work too hard. Make them fix the food better here. They'll listen to you, they don't seem to listen to me at all."

"I'll tell them, Mother."

"And make sure you take a break from work sometimes. Go down to the temple, have a social life."

"I'll try, Mother. It's hard to get out at the moment, there's so much going on here."

"How's Tricia?"

"I guess she's fine. But I haven't seen her for ages."

"You need to meet some nice girls."

"I know. I'll keep looking, Mother."

"Girls like Tricia. Don't you be going with any of those dirty Washington women. You don't need those, the world is full of nice
respectable
girls."

Saul made the translation. For respectable, read Jewish. For Jewish, read Tricia Goldsmith—who was not in fact Jewish.

"I'd like to meet a nice girl, Mother. But right now I have to make sure you get better food, and have your rooms cleaned the way you like them. So I'm going to get off the phone this minute, and tell them to give you special attention."

"Not special attention, just the way it's supposed to be. I'm sure we're paying enough. We need to get our money's worth."

"I know. I'll take care of it, right now. And I'll call you tomorrow. I love you, Mother."

"I love you, too, Saul. You're a good son. I'm proud of you."

"Good-bye, Mother."

As Saul removed the headset he found he was gripping it so hard that the knuckles on his left hand were white. He glanced over at Forrest Singer. The doctor shrugged.

"I see no signs of further deterioration. She started out confusing you with your father, but by the end of the conversation she knew who you were and she got your name right."

"Before all the troubles started, I had a report dropped off on my desk about a new treatment at the Institute for Probatory Therapies. Telomod therapy? It sounded promising. I was wondering if it might help Mrs. Steinmetz."

"I recommend against that, very strongly." Forrest Singer, it always seemed to Saul, spoke as though the two of them were equals. Saul possibly held the slightly inferior position in the doctor's eyes. Saul was the President of the United States, true; but Forrest Singer was an M.D.

"First," Singer went on, "the treatment you refer to is in the earliest stages of testing. It is quite likely to cause unpredictable and possibly catastrophic side effects. And even if telomod therapy were able to improve your mother's health or longevity, it could do little or nothing for her mental state. Is there any value to turning back the physical clock, if we cannot do the same for the mental one? Hannah Steinmetz's mind will remain as it is today, that of a ninety-two-year-old lady with moderate dementia. Telomod therapy might recondition the glial cells of the brain, but too many neurons are already dead for restoration of mental functions."

Forrest Singer sounded very sure of himself. Unlike Saul, he didn't have to deal with the choice of guilts that went with doing something, or of doing nothing.

Which was the greater sin? To allow your mother to sink steadily to incontinence and total mindlessness; or to arrest the progress of her condition, and subject her to years of miserable dependence on others, illuminated by an occasional faint flash of memory and the knowledge of what she once was.

"I am always happy to advise you concerning your mother," Singer went on. Saul knew that was not true, but it was the socially acceptable lie. "However, Mr. President, my principal reason for coming here as your personal physician is to discuss your own health."

"I feel fine." Another socially acceptable lie.

"You are, for a man of fifty-six with your lifestyle and the unusual stresses of your job, in good condition. Early symptoms of osteoarthritis are still present, and I have sent to the White House kitchen a menu with somewhat different supplements designed to reverse that. I do not think you will notice any changes in the food. As usual, I am recommending a decreased consumption of alcohol."

Singer smiled, though with little evidence of humor. "But as usual, I doubt that my recommendation will have any effect on your behavior. Principally, however, I am here to discuss with you the series of tests we have been conducting for the past few months. They were interrupted just over a week ago, when the equipment failed. However, I had already drawn my main conclusions. First, in sexual terms you are physiologically normal, unremarkable in any way."

"You might find another way to put that."

Saul smiled as he spoke, but Singer still looked puzzled. At forty-eight he was somber and literal-minded, and Saul's guess was that he had been equally somber and literal-minded at twenty-one. He was also thoughtful, meticulous, and the best diagnostician Saul had ever met. Saul had long since accepted the fact that his own body was now public property. For two years, everything from his bowel movements to a spot on the end of his nose was grist for the media. But they wouldn't get the information from Forrest Singer. The man would freeze-dry them if they touched on anything that he considered protected by the doctor-patient relationship.

After a moment the physician continued, "I find your general activity level for your age to be above average, though well within the normal bounds of variability. Furthermore, all the chemical and ionic levels within your body are satisfactory."

The physician sounded as though he was imparting news, but nothing so far was a surprise to Saul. He nodded. "So, put it together and what have you got?"

"You have a conclusion which supports my original suspicion and, I would suppose, your own. You are impotent; but it arises from psychological rather than from physical causes. That you have become so since taking the oath as President is unlikely to reflect a coincidence."

"I agree." Saul knew that Forrest Singer was not the man to appreciate the irony of the situation. Here he was, President, a position that many of his predecessors had regarded as providing an endless sexual free lunch with more offers than a man could possibly accept. And most of them had been
married.
He was healthy, long-since divorced, reluctantly celibate—and surrounded by willing young women. There were groupies for sky guys and groupies for media stars, but a President presented a special challenge. For while you could count astronauts and rollers in the hundreds, the country had only one President.

"So what's your advice, Doctor?"

"Normally, I would recommend that a man in your situation should make opportunity follow desire. By this I mean that when next you feel strong sexual arousal, you should seek to act on it immediately. However, your position as President makes that course of action rather difficult."

Saul stared at him. Forrest Singer didn't joke, and he wasn't joking now.
When next you feel strong sexual arousal, you should seek to act on it immediately.
That certainly had the potential to enliven a White House dinner party.

"As it is," Singer went on, "I recommend that you do nothing, and continue to live as normally as possible. Eat more. Drink less alcohol. And try not to worry about your condition, which can only make it worse."

"I've certainly got plenty of other things to worry about." Saul turned to stare out of the window. "Thank you, Doctor."

"It is, as always, an honor to serve the President."

"And ask the lady waiting outside to come in, would you."

Saul was being a little petty, and he knew it. He didn't want Auden Travis ushering Yasmin Silvers into the Oval Office and standing there until he was told to go away. Yasmin was newer to the White House than Auden, and he surely resented her frequent meetings with the President.

Saul was still facing the window. It was dusk, and the emergency lighting system of the White House did not include the grounds and outside streets. Washington was darker than it had been in a century and a half. The glass of the window was like a mirror. Saul saw his own reflection and recognized a resemblance. He was an inch shorter than Grace Mackay, and he had a scholar's stoop where she was all straight-backed military, but they shared the gaunt, spectral look of people too preoccupied to think much about food.