Aftermath

29

Grace Mackay left Saul’s office at close to two o’clock. He worked nonstop for the rest of the afternoon, devouring his backlog of calls and throwing off decisions with a speed and energy that had Auden Travis in a daze. Dozens of items were delegated to agency heads, with a brief scribbled note: Handle as you consider appropriate, feedback to me only if problems.

At five-thirty, Saul poured himself a stiff single malt on the rocks. He went on working. At five forty-five he refilled his glass with ice and whiskey.

At six precisely, Auden stuck his harried head inside the door.

“You told me not to tell you before six o’clock whether or not Mrs. Goldsmith had arrived. It is now six. Mrs. Goldsmith arrived at five-thirty. Major Gallini took her to the small west wing dining room, poured her a glass of white wine, and sought to engage her in conversation. She expressed a preference to be left alone, but asked him to leave the bottle.”

Travis seemed tired, but he also had an air of excitement. Saul looked for, and did not find, any hint that the aide disapproved of what he must surely regard as a coming presidential tryst.

“Thank you, Auden. Would you please pass the word to Mrs. Goldsmith that I will join her in ten minutes.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Auden retreated. Saul swirled melting ice cubes in his tired drink and drained the remaining half inch of whiskey. He walked over to the portrait on the wall and spoke aloud to it.

“I’m nervous, you know.”

“I realize that.”

“What would you advise, Dizzie, speaking as an old friend?”

“Marry an older woman, as I did. Mary gave me both a fortune and unceasing devotion.”

“Isn’t it rather late for me to consider that solution?”

“I do not see why. In political terms, you are a young man.”

“But this isn’t politics. You were only in your early thirties when you married. I’m in my mid-fifties. Anyway, I wasn’t asking for advice in the long term. I meant, what would you advise for tonight.”

The room remained silent. The hologram projection area sat empty, as it had been for two weeks.

Another casualty of Supernova Alpha; Saul had loaded into the Persona every recorded word spoken or written by Benjamin Disraeli. The Persona had a realtime bus to every relevant history site. Each incident of the Prime Minister’s life, well known or newly discovered, was contained in the data base, and the Persona employed a state-of-the-art expert system. Two months ago, this dialogue would have been real rather than imagined. The Disraeli Persona would have offered useful advice. Now it was not clear that the Persona existed even in backup storage. Had any of it been placed in a medium unaffected by the electromagnetic pulse?

“I guess I’m on my own.”

Saul walked through to the outer office. The two drinks had been strong ones, and he felt slightly off balance.

“Auden, I don’t think I will be back in the office this evening.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I will not be leaving the White House. I will have no need of security, and short of another supernova or a major war I do not want to be interrupted.”

“Yes, sir.”

Still no hint of censure, but as Saul walked past, Travis added, “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Since you will not be working here, I would like to go out for the evening. Friends of mine are holding a small party, and they have invited me.”

“Go, Auden, go. Have some fun. Fill the cup that cheers. You know what they say, all work and no play . . .”

He walked on, wondering what had made Auden Travis jerk up in his chair at those final words. Did Auden have some assignation of his own? If he did, good luck to him. The man deserved a break.

The interior of the White House was unusually quiet. Saul’s heart was thumping as he walked slowly to the west wing dining room. He wondered why he was having dinner with Tricia at all; it no longer seemed a good idea.

She was the only person in the room, seated at a long, low-backed green couch on the wall by the window. As he entered she came to her feet and turned toward him in a single graceful movement.

“Saul! It’s wonderful to see you.”

No hint in her manner of any breakup. No suggestion of a two-year separation. Tricia was elegant as ever, dressed in a knee-length dress of midnight blue that outlined her small, firm breasts and showed off one bare shoulder. The kiss on the cheek that she gave Saul was a model of proper formality. But before she moved away she kissed him again, a quick and searching contact of lips and tongue with quite a different message.

“Here,” she went on calmly. She turned to the side table, picked up two glasses of white wine, and handed the fuller one to Saul. “I was drinking before you arrived. I don’t want to get too far ahead — you know me, two glasses and I’m out of it.”

Saul took a cautious sip. It tasted like a fine Puligny Montrachet, with none of the additives that Tricia on occasion indulged in. She didn’t know he’d had two substantial scotches and was actually ahead of her.

Or did she? She might well have smelled whiskey on his breath. Tricia was alert in all her senses.

And she was as beautiful as ever.

“It’s good to see you, too, Tricia. Where’s Pomerance? He was supposed to be here.”

“He was. I told Mungo that if he didn’t mind I wanted to serve dinner for you myself. I’ve known him for ages, and like a dear he agreed.”

Tricia’s comment went beyond a simple statement of fact. Her acquaintance with the White House extended beyond Saul’s tenure. He could certainly deal with Mungo Pomerance, the White House head of arrangements and master of the kitchen for fifteen years, but he would hesitate to attempt what Tricia had done, banishing the majestic and magisterial Pomerance from his own domain.

See, Tricia was saying. I know how to handle the White House staff, and they like me. Wouldn’t I make a wonderful First Lady?

The truth was, she would. Tricia had all the charm and social graces that Saul felt he lacked. She was at ease with diplomats and ministers. At the same time, her early years had given her a rapport with service personnel from waitresses to window washers. She would make a marvelous First Lady for President Saul Steinmetz.

There was, of course, a minor problem. Tricia happened to be married to someone else.

“How’s your husband?” Saul asked abruptly.

Tricia glanced at him over the top of her glass, her dark eyes catching color from her dress. “Joseph is fine.”

It was a typical Tricia answer. She had never said one negative word to Saul about her former husbands, why would she be any different with her current one? But there was an obvious next question: Does Joseph Goldsmith know you are here tonight, dining alone with a former lover?

Saul did not ask. Tricia could reply, in all innocence, that she had no idea they would be dining alone. Hadn’t Saul told her that he had business to conduct, and others would be present?

On the other hand, she knew his strong preference for one-on-one meetings.

She gestured to the table, where two places were set on the red cloth. “I don’t want to rush you, but if I don’t get some food soon, the wine will make me woozy.”

Saul sat down. He had offered the dinner invitation, but Tricia was apparently in charge. She was over by the side table, adding dressing to the endive salad, tossing it, and transferring it into two bowls using a long silver fork and spoon. She lifted the lids of the serving dishes and rapidly served medallions of beef, green beans, roasted peppers, and potato croquettes. The portions were generous.

“Pour the wine, would you?”

Again there was an unstated message. I know you like to handle the wine. I know you like your salad served at the same time as your entree. I know you like your plate well filled. I know you’d starve rather than eat a parsnip. I know your tastes, you see — all your tastes. Don’t we make a wonderful couple?

We do indeed. But we’re not a couple anymore. Saul poured the wine, a Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon ’05. Tricia possessed an uncanny ability to ferret out his likes and dislikes and remember them exactly. She would never wear yellow when they were together, or serve him cheese at less than room temperature, or pour wine into small glasses, or bring cooked cabbage or tomato juice within a mile of him.

“Here’s to us.” She slipped into her usual seat on his left, squeezed his hand for a moment, and raised her wineglass. “You’ll have to say if this is all right. I opened it to let it breathe, but you know me and red wines. I never can tell.”

Saul tasted the wine, aware as he did so that her fingers were gently rubbing his palm. “It’s fine. In fact, better than fine. Splendid.”

It was as if there had been no breakup between them, no election, no long separation, no supernova; the world not in chaos, whole continents not blighted, darkened Washington beyond the curtained window not torn by upheaval worse than the burning of the sixties or the Turnabout riots of ’07.

Oh, call back yesterday, bid time return. The temptation was strong. For one evening at least, bring the past alive; eat, drink, talk, and laugh together, and see where the night leads.

But to do that, you must forget the suffering beyond the White House walls. While you are enjoying your meal, dining as well as if there has been no worldwide disaster, what are Americans across the country eating? Are they eating at all?

You are the President of all the people.

Saul ate and drank in silence. He was a man complex enough to enjoy thoroughly the food and wine, while at the same time aware of those less fortunate. After a few minutes he realized that Tricia was staring at him, waiting.

She smiled when she caught his eye. “Ignore me, sweetie. I know you have lots on your mind. I’m fine just sitting here. Unless you feel like talking about it?”

She leaned over and refilled his glass. He noticed that hers was almost untouched. Tricia had the same attitude as Henry Ford, who believed that a car could be any color so long as it was black. For Tricia, a wine could be any color provided it was white.

He had nothing to say; then suddenly, with Tricia’s eyes fixed steadily on him, he desperately needed to spill out the thoughts that had been boiling in his mind for the past two weeks.

He pushed away his empty plate. “I was thinking this afternoon about the supernova. Trying to put it in some sort of perspective. I started to think about my father. I’ve told you about him before, haven’t I?”

“Yes, but tell me again.” She was half smiling, the tips of her teeth just showing. “This time it will be different.”

Saul picked up his glass, peering into its ruddy crystal ball. “Maybe it will. Maybe it will. I was born the year after men first landed on the moon. My father worked at Lewis Research Center, one of the facilities of the old NASA. Space exploration was his life. If my mother hadn’t put her foot down, my name would be Saul Armstrong Aldrin Collins Steinmetz. He was sure that we would have a colony on Mars by the end of the last century, that by now we’d be settling the Jupiter system and beyond. He didn’t realize — ever — that the space program had been born ahead of its time, as a political stunt.

“He died in 1999, when he was sixty-five. That was young to die, even then. What happened in the seventies, eighties, and nineties broke his heart. When I was twenty he was my age now, but he was a sad, disheartened old man. He would sit on the porch and reminisce about the sixties, what he called the ’Golden Age’ of space exploration.

“He didn’t live long enough to learn that the Golden Age was in the future, not the past. When people first went into space it was a balancing act where you might fall over anytime. Every component was stressed to the limit, just to get to orbit and back. The pioneers had all the courage in the world. What they didn’t have were good computers, molecular machines, and designed construction materials.

“Worst of all, they didn’t have the right energy sources. Nuclear power is the key to space, but it was ruled out for forty years by the 1963 Test Ban Treaty. Can you imagine riding a chemical explosion to orbit? That’s what the designers were told to use, chemical reactions with one-millionth the energy of nuclear reactions. It’s as though you called in the world’s best bridge builders and said, we want you to build bridges across the San Francisco Gate, or Sydney Harbor, or the Verrazano Narrows. We’ll give you money — though not quite as much as you need. And oh, yes, there’s one other point. You’ve got to use wood as your building material. We know about iron and steel and aluminum, but for social reasons they are unacceptable.

“So the astronauts and cosmonauts were hurled into space using chemical rockets. There was no margin for error. And most of them lived, and a few of them died, and people like my father faded into despair. By the time the revised outer space treaty was signed in ’05, it was too late for him.”

He was lecturing, to Tricia who either knew it already or didn’t need to. She didn’t seem to mind. She was leaning forward, food and drink forgotten. It was one of her most endearing aspects. When she was your partner she focused her attention on you and you alone, as if there were no other people in the world.

Except that she wasn’t his partner, not now and not for more than two years. She was married to Joseph Goldsmith. Saul ought to be asking what she was doing here tonight rather than dwelling on his own obsessions.

She was nodding at him eagerly. “Go on, Saul. I’m listening. If you are worried, I want to hear.”

“I am worried, but more than that I’m thinking I’m a lucky man. I always told myself that I was so different from my father. Now I realize I’m just like him. He spent decades pining for the space program that seemed within reach when he was twenty-five years old. It didn’t happen, not in his lifetime.

“When I was twenty-five, I had my own vision. The whole world was going to be one, tied together by electronic information transfers. I wondered when I would find time to sleep, because the financial deals I wanted to follow around the world were in every time zone. I knew the markets by heart, and all their hours of opening and closing: Auckland, Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Jakarta, Rangoon, Bombay, Karachi, Tehran, Beirut, St. Petersburg, Cairo, Cape Town, Rome, Paris, London, Rio, Buenos Aires, Santiago, New York, Toronto, Chicago, Houston, Mexico City, San Francisco, Honolulu. I zigzagged north and south while moving west with the sun, hemstitching the world. I was sure what the future held, and it meant that I had to be everywhere.”

Saul paused. “I’m sorry, Tricia, you know all this stuff. I’m babbling at you. It’s the wine.”

But it wasn’t the wine. It was Tricia’s eyes, intent on his, signaling that he was telling her the newest, most important, most fascinating information in the world.

“Go on, Saul.”

“Well, I’ll keep it short. My future didn’t happen, either. The Turnabout Riots happened instead. Fears of invasion of privacy, return to real currency, the mektek factory revolt, the jobs-for-humans movement, refusal to accept electronic data. This country led the retreat. I felt twenty years ago as my father must have felt fifty years ago. My future was destroyed. I went into politics to try to save it.

“I failed here at home. But other nations and strategic alliances moved ahead while we seemed to be stuck, going nowhere.

“Now I imagine what would have happened to this country if I had succeeded. We would have been twenty more years down the road to a total electronic culture. Supernova Alpha would have done to us what it did to the Golden Rim and the Sino Consortium, every element of the economy ruined.

“I totally believe what I’m going to say now, although I can never suggest it in public: the Turnabout Riots were the best thing that ever happened to this country. We could be infinitely worse off. And we would have been — if my future had happened.”

Saul studied his glass. He didn’t remember drinking from it, but again it was empty. Three-fourths of the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon was gone. He wondered if he was boring Tricia, despite her apparent rapt attention. He was certainly talking too much. More than he had ever intended to. He turned to her.

She read it as an invitation to speak, but her response surprised him. “Do you think there is any way that the supernova could make someone go insane?”

“Not that I can imagine. Who’s the person?”

“Joseph. My husband.”

“I know who your husband is.” It occurred to Saul that in fact he knew little about her husband beyond his name, and that he disliked the man for the good and at the moment sufficient reason that Joseph Goldsmith had Tricia, and Saul did not. Of course, she must have somehow agreed to the arrangement, but that was not the point. The point was that Tricia was really his, not Goldsmith’s.

He had the sense not to mention this. Instead he said, “How old is he?”

“He’s fifty-six.”

“Joseph Goldsmith is fifty-six? But that’s my age!”

She laughed at him, the throaty chuckle that he liked so much. “I know. I’m told that more than one person can have it. But you are in much better shape than he is.”

“He’s too old for you. Why do you think he might be going mad?”

“He won’t leave the house. He won’t even come out of the basement. He says there are rays from the supernova that will sterilize him.”

“That’s news to me. My scientific advisers have said a lot of things about the supernova, but not that.”

“Joseph doesn’t take any notice of scientists. He’s quite well off, you know.”

It was like saying that Hitler was not altogether a nice chap, but Saul just nodded.

“He’s planning to have deeper and deeper levels dug,” Tricia went on. “Under the house, so we can go down there and save ourselves from the rays. There’s no way he could be right, is there?”

“He sounds insane.”

“I think he is. He wants me to stay down there with him. But I won’t.” Tricia popped to her feet, went across to the side table, and poured the remainder of the bottle of white wine into her glass. She drank it in two gulps, returned, and leaned over to run her wet tongue over Saul’s ear. “Hearing you say that is a big load off my mind.”

Hearing that your husband is crazy is a load off your mind? Saul didn’t say that. He could feel the mood swing. Tricia’s face was different now. In the old days, the looseness of mouth and flushed cheeks signaled sexual urgency. She sat down, and her stockinged foot touched his ankle and wriggled up his calf.

How could she move so quickly from worry to open lust? In the same way that he had moved in that direction himself, from the moment when she spoke of her husband as though of some stranger. Tricia always claimed that she just read Saul’s moods and responded to them. A chameleon, he thought. And then, a sign of how far from sober he was, La Dame aux Chameleons.

“Back in a moment.” Tricia was on her feet again. She slipped out of the room, touching the light switch as she went to leave Saul in semidarkness.

He stood up, too, and went to stand in front of the couch by the window. Outside, the city was brighter. General use of electricity was heavily restricted, but power was creeping back into the grid. Two weeks ago it had been riots and fires and murder in the streets. He had feared the collapse of society and a countrywide descent to barbarism. It turned out that most people, no matter what they might have said before Supernova Alpha, wanted their central government. To restore it, and keep it, they were performing miracles of improvisation.

An old cargo plane lifting off from National Airport reminded Saul of his flight back from Indian Head. That led his thoughts to Yasmin. By now she must have been to Maryland Point and the Q-5 Syncope Facility. She would be rejoicing, or she would be in mourning.

Yasmin was deeply suspicious of Tricia, without ever meeting her. She’s divorced again, and she’s hunting.

Yasmin sounded confident, a woman assessing another woman’s motives. But Yasmin admitted that she didn’t understand at all why Tricia had walked out of Saul’s life two and a half years ago. And Yasmin was not unbiased. Saul played a role in her own ambitions.

He heard a rustle of fabric behind him, and turned not knowing what to expect. In the old days Tricia had been a constant sexual surprise, coming to him as anything from demure virgin to nude porn star.

She was still wearing the dress of midnight blue, but she was now barefoot. She came into his arms and nestled her face against his neck.

“You’re still thinking, aren’t you? Saul, you shouldn’t. This is the time in the evening when your brain ought to be turned off.”

She snuggled close. He leaned over and smelled her skin, perfumed now with the added musk of sexual desire. He reached down to the hem of her dress and ran his hand up inside the front of it. As he expected, she was bare; and she was ready.

So was he, reassuringly erect and firm. Yasmin’s warning from the previous night was faint and far-off. But it was enough to make Saul murmur, as he nuzzled Tricia’s bare shoulder, “You feel so good. Why did you ever leave me?”

She was breathing hard through her mouth. She pulled away to look into his eyes. “I thought you didn’t want me. It broke my heart. I couldn’t bear it and I ran away.”

It didn’t make sense — he had told her that he did want her, very much. But in Saul’s present condition, perfect logic was not important. He put his arm around her and tried to ease her down onto the couch.

To his surprise, she resisted. “No, Saul. Not now.”

It could be part of a game, although it didn’t sound like one. He tried again. She pulled away and stood head lowered, her arms by her sides.

“I’m sorry.” Saul reached out and stroked her bare shoulder. “I thought you were ready.”

Thought. He had been absolutely sure. But Tricia was shaking her head and backing away.

“It’s not that, Saul. This is all my fault, I should never have started. I’m still a married woman. But seeing you, and kissing you, and you touching me, it made me so excited. I felt as though we had never been away from each other. But now — I can’t.”

She was leaning over, picking up her shoes. She hurried to the door, paused on the threshold, and turned her dark head. “Oh, Saul.” Her voice trembled. “I’ve missed you so much. You have no idea. I wish we could, but I just can’t. Not while I’m still married. Please forgive me, and let me go.”

She vanished into the darkened room beyond the door. Saul took two steps after her, and stopped. What would he do if he caught up with her? It wasn’t a sex game, she wasn’t being coy. He couldn’t — and wouldn’t — drag her back against her will.

Saul wandered through into the bathroom off the dining room. Tricia’s stockings and panties formed a crumpled ball in front of the sink. He reached down, picked them up, and stood with them in his hand. They provided more proof that Tricia had been very ready for lovemaking before she abruptly changed her mind. He thrust the stockings and flimsy damp panties into his pocket and stared at his own reflection in the long bathroom mirror.

He thought he looked normal enough. No visible evidence of the overwhelming sexual excitement that he had felt three minutes ago, or the awful sense of letdown he was feeling now. Tricia was probably feeling even worse.

But …

His instincts told him that something else was going on, something that he did not understand. He could not get to it without more information — and not in his present fuddled condition.

I’m still a married woman. And again. Not while I’m still married. Was she saying that she and Joseph Goldsmith were in the process of splitting up? She certainly had grounds, if Goldsmith had become a raving lunatic. But if she was in the process of getting a divorce, why hadn’t she said so outright?

Saul wandered slowly back toward his bedroom through a silent White House. He could see the irony, even if he could not appreciate it. He had been without sex for a long time, more than two years. There had been opportunities, with willing partners, but he had been unable to perform.

Now in the last two evenings he had been ready, eager, and able. In both cases, after a roaring start, the woman had balked and left him frustrated.

Saul took off his clothes and went naked to bed. Two successive blue-ball nights. He had known nothing like it in the four decades since he was an eager teenager.

There was only one consolation. Even if the statistic formed some kind of melancholy presidential record, it was not likely to find its way into the histories of the Steinmetz White House.