The Last President (41 page)

The honor guard of US Army Rangers at the base of the pole were openly weeping as they folded the flag. This flag would be framed and displayed in the Texas Capitol, between the two Declarations.

Then the Texas Rangers stepped forward and briskly ran up the Lone Star, and the applause was so much like thunder that many of the crowd didn't realize that the storm was coming in, till gusts of silvery rain fell on them in sheets, and they fled through the gardens surrounding the Capitol.

Faaj had already handed off the folder, and the aides were gathering up the folding chairs, suddenly emptied of dignitaries. No one was paying much attention to the governor, so he looked around once more before going in. The old man was still standing there, still trying to sing, and Faaj walked down the steps to stand next to him. He had learned “You're a Grand Old Flag” for a President's Day concert in eleventh grade, and he put his arm around the old guy, and sang it all the way through. That seemed to break the spell, and the old man went off sniveling, wiping his face uselessly in the rain.

I was singing it for him, but I wonder if he was singing it for the Stars and Stripes or for the Lone Star? I guess in the long history of the universe that question probably won't matter.

“Governor Faaj, aren't you going to come inside?”

“Son, my people are Hmong and my first job was on a fishing boat. This ain't rain, this is a sprinkle.” Lightning cracked nearby with a deafening boom. “Coming right along, though.”

At the top of the steps he paused and looked. All the flags on all the staffs were now so soaked that you couldn't really see what they were.

ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO. 3:45 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. MONDAY, MAY 11, 2026.

They were at the airfield early because “Let's face it, we want to know what's going on,” Leslie said. “We'd've been no use anyway, sitting around at the office, right?”

“Well, we could have pretended to work, but that's probably your point,” James said.

“I think Leo was just relieved to be dropped off at the sitter's,” Heather said. “He's sort of sensitive to my moods lately and I was making him nervous.” She touched her shoulder holster. “Also I think that I feel weird to him because I'm always extra careful whenever I'm carrying.”

James said, “Why are you? We have guards around and no reason to think Bambi is dangerous.”

“No, but Bambi thinks something is,” Heather said. “Why is she insisting on meeting at the airport? All I can think of is that either she's got urgent information that she can't trust to encryption, or she has reason to fear being attacked in town. Either way means something bad going on that we have no idea about.”

“Is there any possibility that it's us? That she's decided
we're
the enemy, somehow?”

“James, based on what we know right now
anything
is possible. Bambi worked for me for three years back before, and I like to think there's a lot of friendship and respect. But she just lost a husband and we don't know the circumstances except it happened in battle, and something killed General Phat and all we know is that she's apparently the only witness, and we've had traitors in the ranks before, as both of you would know. So I'm just thinking that till I know what's going on, I'd rather have my gun close by and my baby far away. And besides—there she is.” They looked to where Heather pointed to the tiny buzzing dot in the sky.

The Stearman made a slight whump on landing, the greased linen tires having deflated during the long flight from Hays, Kansas. The plane taxied around in a broad circle to stop about ten yards in front of them.

Bambi shut the engine off, braked the prop, climbed out, and walked toward them. Leslie said, very softly, “Her hand is by her holster.”

“I know,” Heather murmured. “I'm keeping my hand away from mine.”

Bambi walked as if she had counted and measured the steps between her plane and her colleagues, and was putting each foot carefully on its mark, like an unconfident movie actor or as if she were crossing a river on not-quite remembered stepping-stones. She had not taken off her flying helmet, but her goggles were pushed up onto her forehead; despite the warm afternoon, she left her jacket zipped. And, as Leslie had noticed, her right hand was resting by the grip of the pistol strapped to her thigh, almost as if she expected a gunfight.

Quietly, Heather said, “You can just tell us what happened, Bambi. We haven't heard anything from anyone else.”

She nodded. “Lyndon Phat decided that my plane and I should stay in Paducah because he needed us and wanted to keep us. He arrested me and locked me up. He didn't let me fly to Pale Bluff, where my husband was fighting for his life, kept me locked up while bad news was pouring in over the radio and barely bothered to tell me about it afterward. Then ten minutes after the EMP, he ordered me to fly him to Pale Bluff for a reconnaissance. I saw Quattro's burned body in the wreckage; all the ground crew died with him too. I think maybe they tried to fly out just as the EMP hit, or maybe they were shot down and the plane flipped. I don't know. It was too badly burned. So . . . I walked back to my plane, and I pointed a gun at General Lyndon Phat, and made him get out of
my
airplane. I left him there on the runway with tribals starting to run up on him. I'm pretty sure he's dead by now but I'm hoping Lord Robert got to take a personal interest and treated him like Steve Ecco.”

The hideous silence stretched as if it might go on forever.

James didn't see any point in bringing up any arguments that she should not have done it; it was done, with nothing to change. He didn't see a reason to blame her; either she would blame herself, or not. He didn't fear the gun at her hip; she clearly had control of herself. He just wished someone would think of something to say.

When it seemed painfully clear that no one else was going to break the silence, James said, “Is there any chance anyone survived, or there might be anybody holding out there?”

Bambi shook her head, and now tears were flowing. “Not a chance. We circled. No fighting. Bodies everywhere. If anyone was still alive they were hiding in a cellar or something, and the tribals were lighting fires everywhere.”

Leslie said, “I am so sorry about Quattro. He was special to all of us but he was your husband and you'd loved him a long time.”

“Even before I knew I did,” Bambi said softly. Her hand moved decisively down away from her holster. “What now?”

Heather asked, “Are we the only people who know? Because if we are, then I think we're the only people who decide. There's nobody I have to report it to, now, and there never will be.”

Bambi's shoulders began to shake, and Heather said, “I don't want any accidents, so, is it okay if I come over there and hold you? You know, old friend to old friend, not—”

Bambi raised her hands away from her weapon, and the two women embraced.

Heather looked at James and Leslie over her friend's shoulder. “Uh, guys.”

Taking their cue, they went into the office.

After a long time, Heather and Bambi joined them. Bambi sat quietly, looking at her boots. Heather said, “Well, to begin with, Bambi knows I'm now the President. So really, this is the President and her closest advisors dealing with a difficult situation. I guess . . . Bambi, can you tell them about how you feel about the Duchy of California? The same way you told me?”

Bambi said, “I can try. It's hard to say this. Look, my father . . . the whole time I was raised with his libertarian Ayn Rand right-wing thing going on, and hating it, because, well, Daddy always thought somehow or other that everything that happened around all that money and all those people working, he thought he did it. Like, all by himself, you know? Ten years after Obama said ‘You didn't build that' he was still in hysterics about it because he couldn't stand the idea that the people who drew a paycheck from him had anything to do with the work that got done.

“So you know, you want to piss off your parents, or anyway at least I wanted to piss off mine. In eighth grade, I showed him a copy of ‘Questions from a Worker Who Reads' and he tried to get my English teacher fired, and I went to the School Board meeting to testify against him. He had a whole career track laid out for me at Castro Enterprises and I never showed up to do anything he wanted me to, instead I went to a public university and volunteered for all kinds of unpaid do-gooding and ended up as a Federal agent. I don't think you can imagine how angry that made him, that I was working for the tax-and-spenders and revenuers and gun-grabbers, even if I was carrying a gun myself.

“But he was proud of me too, in his weird way. And he kept telling me to take care of things, make sure guys like Donald, his favorite chauffeur, were taken care of. And then later . . . Quattro was one of the few other people in the world who understood me, I think. You know he was raised all his life to figure that someday the government would be all gone, and it would just be crazy looters in the street and red barbarians in the Statehouse, and . . . but he'd loved me, forever, really, I guess, since we were kids, and since putting the United States back together was what mattered to me, and my oath, and being part of society, and being in it for something bigger than myself, and all that”—her hands sawed the air—“it's important and I can't seem to keep it all in order, but you get the idea. Since I wanted my United States put back together, Quattro wanted me to have that.

“But he always wanted to go home and take care of the duchy—
his
duchy, as far as he was concerned. He joked about it and made fun of it and wore those silly hats, but he thought about California as
ours
. Ours to take care of, ours to protect and guide . . . it was all personal to Quattro Larsen, and, well, I think he was right. Or if he wasn't right then, he sure is now. We need to look after our own.

“I had a lot of time flying to think. I know that the general saw a pilot and a plane and said,
vital resource, have to have that for the country
. Well, I say,
fuck that. My airplane. Me. My duchy. I will take better care of them and besides they are mine.
So I left him there to take care of his own shit, with the tribals, and I sure hope they took care of it for him.

“I still love you all and you can come for asylum any time.” She made a strange choking noise, and then smiled strangely. “After all, Daddy always said California was one big asylum. Or a visit or because you'd just like to say hi. But the years I put into the United States of America . . . and the husband I lost for the cause . . . none of that was worth shit, and I wish I had everything back. From now on, I take care of my duchy. And Heather, I wish you'd just resign as President, come out to California, I'll give you a fief somewhere where you can have your dad with you and raise Leo and make your part of the world decent. Because I think you're going to end up losing everything else, and there still won't be any United States, and even if there was, it would never be what you imagine. It never even
was
, you know?”

Heather said, “Bambi, I'm so close to agreeing with you.”

“Come down to Castle Castro at San Diego. Stay with me for a long while. Get reacquainted with your father and let him get to know his grandson. Seriously, think about it. You could get Leo, climb into the front cockpit, and be gone with me today. You have your oath, but there's no country to keep it to.”

Heather thought for a long while. At last she said, “James, maybe it is just because of the compliment you paid me earlier, about how I don't give up and so on. But I can't help thinking, before we all part company, you said there was one more thing we might try before we give up forever. And you said it was something I might not forgive you for.”

“Actually I don't think anyone will forgive me for it. Anyone on our side, I mean. And it really . . . it isn't something we can do. I don't think it will even lead to anything we can do. But it's one last place we could look for a suggestion, or an idea, or some pathway or approach. And chances are there will be nothing in it.”

“You're a hell of a salesman,” Leslie said flatly, and they all began to laugh, even James. “Seriously, dude, do you want us all to think about this, or is this something you're trying to scare us away from before we even hear it?”

“Some of both.” James looked back at each of them, drew a deep breath, and said it. “I kept Arnie Yang alive. He's Interrogation Subject 162. I switched in a different prisoner when he had that seizure on the way to his hanging, and we hooded him. He wasn't very happy when he woke up from his seizure and found us still prying at the Daybreak in his head. About half the time he warns us about how dangerous it is, and the other half he sounds perfectly reasonable and helpful—sometimes because he's actually providing insights and helping us, and sometimes because Daybreak has taken him back over and he's trying to trick us into doing something against our interests. The problem the interrogation team and I have is sorting out which is which, at any given time. But he's alive, and we've been using him all along.”

Heather was staring at him, slowly shaking her head. “So your little digs at me about getting carried away and executing him and how much that was senseless, you were just . . . getting me ready for when you pulled him out of your hat?”

“I'm afraid so.”

She shrugged. “He was one of my closest friends for a long time. A day hasn't gone by that I haven't missed him. I think I might even be glad to see him alive. You'd better take me to him. Bambi, would you like to join us for this?”

“Arn and I used to be regulars at the departmental happy hour, back before,” Bambi reminded her. “I guess it's going to be old home week. Keep our guns or check them at the door?”