The General's President (39 page)

They got back on the S-70, and guided by the brawny-looking Castro, a Forest Service superintendent on loan, viewed several hundred acres of new loblolly pine plantations planted by the internees. Then they flew over hundreds of acres more of older plantations from which the competing scrub had recently been chopped, the stubs painted blue with biocide to discourage regrowth. Roberg had the helicopter land at one where crews were currently working.

Castro gave them a quick rundown on the projects while curious internees cast glances toward them. "The Sam Houston National Forest," he said, "had about three year's worth of projects backlogged, because of federal budget problems. This internment operation's gotten us caught up on a lot of it. We'd have done the work by machine, if we'd had the money, but the internees have been using handtools, which has the advantage of being more exact, and easier on the ground, than using heavy equipment.

"There are still 187 men here, alternating ten-hour work days with six-hour school days. We work half of them one day and the other half the next, and they've been doing better work than we'd ever imagined they would. The first week we had a lot of trouble with them, but that grew out of the hard cases—the Type D troublemakers. Then those got segregated out and shipped to Nevada, and the rest of these guys settled down pretty quickly."

Category D, the president thought. Category D was out west now, in desert mountains, working and living under heavy guard, doing things like improving primitive access roads with hand drills, sledge hammers, picks and shovels—the techniques and tools of seventy and eighty years earlier.

Castro was still talking about his San Jacinto crews. "They're pretty good-natured, as good as you'd expect any crews to be. They get paid by crew production points, with individual bonuses, and both crews and individuals get deductions for poor work. They really put out. The crews make a contest out of it, and the crew members lean on anyone who goofs off or does sloppy work. But that hasn't happened much since the first couple weeks."

Flying back to camp, the president's thoughts went back to the Type Ds. Each one was a person. And presumably, somewhere beneath the hatreds, fears, violences—the general insanity and ignorance—somewhere beneath all that, presumably there was some decent nucleus, something that could be clean and creative.

Or were some people born evil? Irreversibly and innately hateful and destructive? He acknowledged to himself that it might be, but the concept didn't seem necessary to explain the phenomena, not considering what some people went through, some children.

But we don't know how to clean the shit off to let that nucleus show. Not with anything like reliability, we don't.
It seemed to him that if someone could do that, could come up with a practical, efficient system to salvage Type Ds, it would be as important in the long run as the GPC, transistors, and the budding field of gene splicing. Because as they were, Type Ds produced nothing but trouble, destruction, whether they operated in the streets, with physical violence, or slyly, in board rooms or government, using lies and collusion. They were the instigators, if not the leaders, of trouble, the generators of scorn for whatever was good, whatever was being done to better things. And they were probably a major source of other people's mental problems.

What had Godfrey called Blackburn? A mind-fucker. That was one kind. Blackburn had been a Type D with a tie, gray flannel slacks, and blue blazer.

Haugen sheered away from the subject then. It seemed to him a morass which, in an absence of data, he was not prepared to deal with. He wondered if anyone was researching the subject, making any progress. He'd talk to Wing about that.

The presidential party arrived at the messhall after the internees had begun eating, and following Haugen's lead, the visiting party stood in line to get their food. Then they sat on benches at an oil-cloth covered plank table, to eat from sectioned trays that had probably been waiting in some army warehouse since at least the Viet Nam War. The food was plain but nourishing, the cooking decent, and there were seconds—not bad for these times, the president thought.

After an initial half-minute or so of gawking, most of the internees gave their full attention to eating again.

The Secret Service men were edgy and watchful as they ate, concerned with possible danger to the president. These internees were clean and quiet just now, but a few months earlier they'd been torching buildings, cars and buses, stoning firemen, some of them shooting at police and troops. Special agent in charge Rogers had intended to post his men near the door, to watch the room for any possible threat, but the president had told them to eat with the rest of the government party. They'd done as he'd ordered, most of them resentfully, although they hid it. They had a duty, the responsibility of protecting the president, and didn't appreciate having obstacles put in their way.

After the meal, the internees on their study day had till two o'clock to loaf and nap. The teaching supervisor, Warrant Officer Willard Light, took the presidential party through the classroom building, a building considerably longer than the messhall but with the same asphalt siding. There was a large room for assemblies and for showing films, plus a library-reading room and several smaller rooms. There was a large globe in every room; ancient army typewriters from god knew where, perhaps thirty in all; books and chalkboards; abacuses to learn the principles behind arithmetic; modeling clay; stacks of cheap paper; several ancient personal computers....

General Ballister had just previously been in charge of army technical training. And more relevant, before that he'd been in charge of remedial education in the army, a post he'd held with exceptional success. He'd overhauled the system, innovating freely and brilliantly; it was that which had gotten him the command of internment centers. The teaching supervisors were products of his training system, as were the teachers themselves.

Mister Light stated that the average reading skill of his students had already increased by two grade levels, that mathematical skills had increased even more, and that average IQ had risen a dozen points, which said something about IQ tests and human potentials. And most important, the attitude toward classroom learning had improved radically.

The president wondered what the results would have been if the Type Ds had still been there; poor, he suspected.

After touring the classroom building, the presidential party had gotten back aboard the S-70 and taken off for Houston. Then, in the air on Air Force One, they'd had a meeting and made their decisions. In part they'd already been more or less determined: The Type Ds would be formally charged with the appropriate felonies and tried, and their status changed from internee to convict or free person. Martial law would then be cancelled. The remaining internees could be returned home, or they could stay where they were, as Conservation Corps employees instead of internees. The fences and watchtowers would come down.

Grosberg and Lynch were more than a little pleased. The Congress had wanted to cancel martial law, but most had felt constrained to retain it as the basis for keeping the internees interned. And this seemed a major symbolic step toward normal government.

THIRTY-FIVE

"Thanks, Jeanne, I'll take it." The phone had interrupted the president in the midst of his morning routine; he touched the flashing key. "What can I do for you this morning, Steve?"

"May I speak with you for a few minutes, Arne? Personally? It's something that's been weighing on my mind since your speech the night before last."

"Sure. Come on down."

"Thank you. I'll be there in two minutes."

The screen went dark. From the third floor to the Oval Office in the Executive Wing, two minutes would be good time even for Flynn's long legs, Arne Haugen told himself. He got up to check the hot water supply in the coffee station, then made himself a cup of coffee. He'd just sat down again when Flynn arrived.

"Have a chair," Haugen said. "Tell me what's on your mind."

Flynn sat. "It's what you said about suicide."

"Oh?"

"This argument may not mean much to someone who's not a committed Christian, but I know you're a man who respects others, respects their beliefs. And I need to tell you mine about this—mine and just about every other devout Catholic.

"You see—There's a law above the law of man; Natural Law, the Law of God. Life is something given to us by God to care for, to live and to cherish. And suicide is murder, Arne, self-murder, a mortal sin. It's not that God or the Church would prolong suffering, but life is sacred, and shouldn't be deliberately destroyed. Even by one's self."

The priest looked painfully earnest. "Suicide is
not
a private act, you see, even when done in private. It's a form of violence against family, neighbor, and society."

Arne Haugen ignored the brief impulse to mention the crusades and inquisitions. Those had been long ago, in more barbaric times, and no doubt the Church had long regretted the bloodshed and anguish it had caused. Instead he nodded. "But Steve, I didn't recommend suicide," he pointed out reasonably. "I tried to discourage it. My purpose was and is to reestablish principles of personal liberty and responsibility."

"I know. And I appreciate that. But ... law has an influence on morals. And so do the words of someone as widely respected and admired as yourself. So people are likely to commit self-murder who otherwise would not have. You see."

The priest stopped, but the president kept quiet, sensing more to come.

"But what concerns me most deeply," Flynn went on, "is that self-murder is not only a mortal sin, one that damns the suicide's soul. Self-murder also ends the murderer's life,
so that he or she cannot confess the sin and ask for absolution!
"

Jesus
, Haugen thought,
believing that, no wonder he looks so troubled.
"I see your point," he said, "and I make you a promise. I'm supposed to talk to the press briefly at noon, and I'll tell 'em what you've told me. As the Catholic point of view. As something they should know about. It'll be on the Networks.

"How's that?"

For a few seconds the Jesuit mistrusted his voice. Then he said, "Mr. President, as Professor Rabinowich would have said, you are a mensch."

Haugen grinned. "A mensch? I hope that's good."

Flynn smiled back. "It is, Arne, it is."

***

Arne and Lois Haugen were enjoying a nightcap when the first automatic rifle fire erupted, three separate bursts, near enough to hear clearly inside the thick-walled White House with its tempered-glass windows and heavy drapes closed against winter.
From Lafayette Park again
, the president told himself.

Things were quiet then, and he didn't take the trouble to call the marine command room on the top floor. If there was anything he needed to know, they'd call him.

The next shooting was nearer, seemingly on the north lawn not far outside their window, and he heard glass breaking. The firing repeated in fast, vicious bursts as he waved Lois to the Center Hall, then crouching, moved quickly to his bedside table, took his .357 magnum from its drawer, and followed her out, both wearing light robes. Two Secret Service men were there, pistols in their hands, one listening on a hand radio. There was more gunfire, then quiet. The four of them stood in the hall, three with guns in hand. After a minute, the agent with the radio looked at the president.

"Some armed men got inside the grounds somehow, sir. The marines don't know if they..."

He was interrupted by more gunfire, overlapping bursts, muffled in the interior hall. The four of them looked at each other in the following silence.

"They didn't know if they'd gotten..."

This time the gunburst that cut him off sounded closer, perhaps on the south lawn. Haugen grinned.

"They didn't know if they'd gotten them all," he said, finishing for the agent. "Maybe they have now."

He'd barely gotten it out when the alarm began—not the great blaring nuclear attack alarm, but a constant high-pitched howl. The president scowling, the first couple went quickly to the emergency elevator, and with the bodyguards rode it down to the deep, heavily-reinforced shelter, where Flynn soon appeared, along with the staff members on duty at that hour. The president was glowering now—a rare occurrence. He had the distinct notion that the danger had been over before the alarm went off.

He and Lois sat up for a few minutes, then went to bed in their shelter quarters. Not long after they got to sleep, the all clear sounded. They could have stayed where they were, but the president got up so Lois did too, and they went back to their apartment. The ice had mostly melted in their drinks there. They finished them dilute, then went to bed.

His eyes were closed when he heard a distant explosion.
To hell with it
, he thought, and a minute or two later was asleep.

***

In the morning, as soon as he'd wakened, he called the marine command post. "They were ninjas, sir," the captain told him. "Apparently eight of them, wearing black. Japanese; real ninjas." He sounded impressed. "They seem to have jumped from a plane at high elevation and body planed in before pulling their chutes. We found their equipment. Some of them landed outside the fence, but three came down inside."

The captain still sounded wound up, Haugen thought.

"The first one we saw," the marine went on, "was in Lafayette Park. He carried ten kilos of air-miscible high explosive in a flat backpack. When we discovered that, that's when the alarm was sounded. We didn't know if there were any other human bombs or not. If one of them somehow got inside the White House, or even to the north portico...

"One of them came down way over near the Lincoln Memorial, and he carried HE too. Apparently he was disoriented and didn't know where he was; anyway he blew himself up by the reflecting pool.

"It was so dark last night, we'd have had a hard time finding them if it hadn't been for our night visors. They were using the trees for cover, sneaking along—eight of them, including the one that blew himself up."