Mercury Rests (3 page)

Boom! thought Travis. Let’s see the doves in Congress try to block my resolution to use force in the Middle East now.

“Sir, a follow-up, if I may,” Deborah continued. “Are you blaming the antiwar contingent in Congress for the attack on the moon?”

Travis let slip the slightest hint of a smile (Number Three, used for implying an affirmative while delivering a more politic answer). “Let me be clear, Deb,” he said. “The only people responsible for these events are the individuals who planned and executed the attacks. But a shepherd who lets wolves run free around his flock shouldn’t complain when sheep start disappearing. Next question. Yes, Brian.”

“Mr. President, you’ve intimated in the past that you believe Syria or Iran may have been involved in the Anaheim Event. Do you—”

“Let me stop you right there, Brian. I’m not going to speculate about the involvement of any foreign governments in these attacks.”

“Mr. President!”

“Yes, Janice.”

“I’m hearing reports that the moon is dangerously unstable—that it could split apart, causing a new round of tsunamis and hurricanes. Is anything being done about that?”

Travis was taken aback for a moment. “I’m sorry, Janice. Is anything being done about what?”

“The instability of the moon. Is the United States government doing anything to stabilize the moon?”

“Well, Janice,” Travis said thoughtfully. “That’s certainly an area of ongoing concern. We’re awaiting word from NASA before we take any action.” Stabilize the moon! thought Travis. I’m sure we’ll get to that right after Afghanistan.

“What about meteors?” Janice asked. “There have been reports that fragments of the moon could break off and strike Earth.”

Travis shook his head. “The people at NASA are telling me that there do not appear to be any large fragments heading toward Earth. I’m sure we’ll see some fallout over the next few weeks, but I’m told that any fragments heading our way are likely to be small enough that they’ll burn up in atmosphere. Any meteors that make it through the atmosphere will in all likelihood land harmlessly in the ocean. Our main concerns at this point are floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes. We’ve got enough to deal with without worrying about the sky falling. Last question. You, in the back.” Travis didn’t recognize the wiry, bearded man, but he liked to throw an occasional bone to the back row.

“Sten Brillig,” said the man in a high-pitched, nasally voice. “Freedom Media Network. What is your response to the rumors that these attacks were extraterrestrial in nature?”

Travis began to laugh but was greeted only with stony stares from the press corps. It seemed that although Sten was the only one with the balls to ask the question, he wasn’t the only one who had space aliens on the brain.

It was a tricky question: If the attacks were the work of some alien race, then it was possible that the US was dealing with a military force considerably out of its league. On the other hand, if the attacks were the work of ordinary human beings, it meant that a terrorist group had acquired destructive technology that put America’s nuclear arsenal to shame.

Travis composed himself and spoke: “As I said, I’m not going to speculate regarding the identity of the perpetrators. What I can tell you is that whether these folks are huddled in a cave in Pakistan or cruising the galaxy in the Death Star, they are going to be hearing from the men and women of the United States military soon. Thanks, everybody. God bless America.”

Travis flashed a quick Seven (understated pride in American military might) followed by another Fourteen, then turned and walked away from the podium. There were a few obligatory calls of “Mr. President!” followed by polite applause.

The press conference had gone as well as could be expected, given the fact that Travis’s knowledge of what had happened on the moon was limited to what he had learned from FOX News that morning. The boys at NASA had been no help; all they could tell him was that roughly a third of the moon had suddenly disappeared without a trace. The top physicists at JPL were trying to sell him on the idea of some sort of extradimensional portal,
which sounded like a lot of hooey to a straight-talking California almond farmer
¹
like Travis Babcock.

Travis had been adopted at a very young age into a family of wealthy nut farmers in Modesto, California.
²
Modesto was located at the dead center of the California Central valley, which was sometimes charitably referred to as the California Heartland, and less charitably as Appalachia West. A dry, dusty, economically depressed city known primarily for its boxed wine and high incidence of auto theft, Modesto was on exactly no one’s lists of likely origins of future US Presidents. But Travis found inspiration in another native son of Modesto (albeit one who left as soon as he had a chance): George Lucas.

One of Travis’s uncles, in fact, had the dubious distinction of serving as the inspiration for the character played by Harrison Ford in Lucas’s 1973 movie
American Graffiti
. That movie romanticized the fad known as “cruising,” which was a cool-sounding name for driving around aimlessly because there was nothing else to do. Travis remembered when, in the 1980s, the Modesto city fathers addressed this dearth of entertainment options by putting up signs on main thoroughfares that read NO CRUISING.

Travis was ten years old when
Star Wars
was released. Every generation has its defining events, and
Star Wars
was Travis’s Woodstock, moon landing, and D-Day, all combined into a single all-pervasive cultural wave of interstellar awesomeness. He was thirteen when
The Empire Strikes Back
came out and sixteen when
Return of the Jedi
premiered. His childhood was so infused with
Star Wars
that third-tier denizens of the Empire like Boba
Fett and Admiral Akbar of the Mon Calamari were more real to him than most of his cousins who lived in Iowa.

Every kid Travis’s age was crazy about
Star Wars
, but Travis identified with Luke Skywalker on a much deeper level. The desert planet Tatooine was clearly a thinly disguised version of the California Central Valley, and Modesto was the real-world Mos Eisley, that “wretched hive of scum and villainy.” And that could only mean that Travis Babcock, the adopted son of simple farming folk, was destined to lead the rebellion against the forces of evil.

With that simplistic narrative always in the back of his mind, Travis graduated from high school with honors and went on to receive an MBA from Stanford. He returned to Modesto to work for his father’s nut consortium (which at that time had the unfortunate name Blue Ball Nuts). He rapidly climbed the ranks, becoming CEO at the age of thirty-two, at which point he successfully lobbied to change the name of the company to Blue Sapphire Agricultural.

Travis got involved in politics, becoming a champion of smaller, more efficient government that would deliver millions of gallons of irrigation water without making him pay for it. At thirty-seven he became the governor of California, and at forty-three he was elected vice president of the United States. When President Alexis Friedman died of food poisoning after eating a tainted bratwurst from a Philadelphia street vendor, Travis ascended to the presidency.

So far, Travis’s presidency had gone reasonably well. Sure, his approval ratings hovered around 45 percent, but he’d been taking a lot of heat lately on the Medicare deal and the mess in the Middle East, not to mention the Anaheim Event. If he played his cards right, this moon thing could be his ticket to a second term.
Of course, if the terrorists or aliens or whoever blew up Manhattan next, he’d have a tough time spinning it to his advantage. His plan rested on the assumption that whatever point the aliens/terrorists were trying to make, they had made it with their attack on the moon. If that was true, then it was just a matter of hoping FEMA didn’t screw up the relief efforts too badly and riding Smile Fourteen to reelection. Still, he’d feel better if he knew what the hell was going on.

Gabe Horton, his chief of staff, was nodding in approval as Travis left the podium. “Nice job,” said Gabe. “Vague but decisive and reassuring. That’s exactly what we needed to do.”

Travis grunted in reply. Smile Fourteen had left his face, replaced by the no-nonsense demeanor that was seldom seen by the press. He brushed past Gabe and fixed his eyes on a stocky, gray-haired man standing in the hall. The man’s face reminded Travis of a bulldog—and not just the
face
of a bulldog. Somehow he gave the impression of having an entire bulldog sticking out of his collar. The man fidgeted nervously as Travis approached.

“Lubbers,” said Travis, jerking his head to indicate he wanted Lubbers to walk with him. “What have you got for me?”

Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI Dirk Lubbers fell into a brisk walk alongside the president, trying to stifle his anxiety. Lubbers had been getting pressure from higher-ups to deliver some actionable intelligence about the Anaheim Event, but his team of scientists had come up with virtually nothing. The most likely explanation that he had heard so far was that Anaheim Stadium had somehow been sucked into another dimension. The notion had seemed like pure fantasy at the time, but then a third of the moon had gone missing, and coincidentally the theory’s proponent—a forensic blast investigator by the name of Jacob
Slater—had mysteriously disappeared. Lubbers was starting to think that Slater knew more than he let on.

Before he could look into the matter further, though, Lubbers had been ordered to return to Washington. At first he had assumed he was being relieved of his authority, but in fact he had received a promotion of sorts: everybody assumed that the moon implosion was somehow related to what had happened in Anaheim, which meant that Lubbers was the closest thing they had to an expert in the matter. Of course, if he failed to deliver results, he’d soon find himself turned into a scapegoat. Fortunately, he had received some good news only minutes before.

“Mr. President,” said Lubbers as they made their way down the hall. “We may have had a break in the Anaheim case. There was a report of a break-in at Katie Midford’s house in Burbank two days ago. It isn’t clear what happened exactly, but there was some sort of altercation. Shots were fired.”

“Katie Midford? The woman who wrote those terrible children’s books?”

“Young adult fantasy,” corrected Lubbers. He would never admit it publicly, but Lubbers was a closet Charlie Nyx fan.

The president glared at him. “What does Katie Midford have to do with anything?”

“We’re not sure,” said Lubbers. “But the description of one of the suspects matches that of a missing FBI employee named Jacob Slater. Slater was on the Anaheim blast team.”

“You lost an FBI agent?” the president asked, frowning.

“He’s a forensic blast investigator,” said Lubbers. “Not a field agent. Slater had some, uh, interesting theories about the Anaheim Event. Theories that in retrospect seem to be a little too accurate.”

“You think Slater is a double agent? Working for Syria or somebody?”

“We’re looking into it,” said Lubbers. “A witness got a plate number of a vehicle that was seen at Midford’s place. The plate is assigned to a BMW that was rented by Midford’s publisher, the Finch Group. We’ve made some inquiries about who was driving the car, but so far no one in the Finch Group has been able to tell us anything.”

“You said you had a break in the case,” said Babcock. “This sounds like a lot of unconnected facts and innuendo.”

It was true, thought Lubbers. He was starting to wish he had kept his mouth shut and waited until he had more information before talking to the president. But Babcock had demanded a briefing immediately after the press conference, and Lubbers was so relieved to have something to report that he hadn’t considered that
something
might actually be worse than nothing. Still, now that he had gone this far, there was no point in being coy.

“Sir,” he said, “how familiar are you with the Charlie Nyx books?”

Babcock gave him a pained look. “You’re kidding.”

“No, sir, Mr. President. The fact is that there are some strange parallels between the Charlie Nyx books and what is happening in Anaheim. The shafts we found below the stadium, for instance. In the Charlie Nyx books, there is a network of tunnels underneath Los Angeles, and our excavations lead us to believe that...” He was clearly losing the president. “The point, sir, is that Midford seems to have had access to some information that was not publicly available. We’re looking into whether she or the Finch group may have had something to do with the destruction of Anaheim Stadium.”

“Hmm,” said Babcock. He was obviously not impressed.

Lubbers found himself blathering on, despite his better judgment. “We’ve located the car and we’re following the driver. We haven’t identified him yet, but he seems to be—”

The president held up his hand. “That’s enough,” he said. “I’m a busy man, Mr. Lubbers. I don’t need to hear every detail of your operation. Get back to me when you have something solid.”

“Yes, sir!” said Lubbers.

“And Lubbers?”

“Yes, sir?”

“It had better be soon.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

“Are you insane?” Wanda Kwan asked, her perfectly proportioned Asiatic features scrunching into an unsettling scowl. The way she paused, it didn’t seem like a rhetorical question, but Eddie wasn’t sure what to say in reply. He sat in glum silence, waiting for some kind of cue.

“Are you?” she demanded.

Eddie smiled weakly and shrugged. “No?” he ventured.

Wanda snorted in disgust. “It’s a rhetorical question, Eddie. You know what a rhetorical question is, right?”

Eddie sat in silence, fearing a trap.

“It’s a question posed in order to make a point, not to evoke an answer,” Wanda explained, her words coated in condescension. “The reason I feel the need to explain this, Eddie, is that you don’t seem to understand the first goddamn thing about being a writer.”

Eddie cleared his throat. “Is there something wrong with the manuscript? If there is, I’m sure I can fix it...”