The Unincorporated Future (17 page)

“Kidding. Jeez, calm down. But seriously, J.D. You gonna use it or what?”

“You
may not
use my bed!”

“What? You’re not using it,” protested Sandra, getting up out of her chair and heading over to the living quarters. “Shouldn’t be wasted … perfectly good bed.”

J.D. stood up and watched as the President made a beeline for her bedroom. “Is
this
how you help?” J.D. hollered after her.

“Help?” answered Sandra, crawling onto the bed. “Who said anything about help? I just wanna get some sleep.… Do me a favor.”

“Do you a…” J.D. found herself unable even to say the word.

Sandra stretched out like a cat. “Ooh, down pillows. Wake me in an hour—” Her brow crinkled slightly. “—and a half.” Within seconds, the President of the Outer Alliance was snoring again.

J.D. quietly got up from her chair and marched over to the bed, staring wide-eyed at the sleeping President. “I will do no such thing.”

But Sandra didn’t hear.

“I said,” bellowed J.D., kicking at the bed, “I will do no such thing.”

Sandra rolled over onto her elbows and stared up. “What’s your problem? All I want to do is catch a little shut-eye. You of all people should understand that.”

“Then do it in your own damned quarters!”

Sandra blew a wisp of hair off her face. “I
tried
that, remember? Bastards wouldn’t leave me alone—because of
you
! If there’s any justice in the world, it’s me getting to saw logs on
this
bed!”

“Saw what?”

“Sleep soundly.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I seem to have caused you a minor sleep—”

“
Minor,
my ass, lady. I’ve averaged a little over three hours a night for the past three weeks, and while I may not be the Blessed One, I am the goddamned President, and contrary to what
you
might think, I do need my sleep. So unless you’ve got a compelling reason for me
not
to use this perfectly good bed, I’m gonna damn well take advantage of the fact that you don’t seem to want to talk to anyone—which, by the way, you’re rather annoyingly
not
doing—add to that the fact that you don’t seem to have much use for this thing anyhow. Now, if you don’t mind.” Sandra flipped her body over, giving J.D. the cold shoulder.

“But I do,” whispered J.D., eyes wide and alert, like a condemned prisoner desperately seeking salvation.

With a heavy sigh, Sandra once again flipped over onto her elbows. “Do what?”

“Want to talk.”

“Oh,” answered Sandra, her tone now more conciliatory. She pushed herself up from the bed into a sitting position along its edge and then invited J.D. over with a slight tap on the mattress.

J.D. eyed the space warily but then slowly sat down next to where Sandra had indicated. Tears pricked her eyelids, and she struggled to push them back. Sandra could now see in the formality of J.D.’s movements that the admiral was desperately wanting to speak but was restraining herself, lest the spilled words reveal too much of the emotions roiling within.

“What about?” asked Sandra.

When J.D. finally answered, it was low and almost imperceptible. “Everything.”

Sandra nodded, put her arm gently around J.D.’s still rigid frame, and pulled her in. It was at first a timid embrace—handled with the delicacy of someone mending a child’s wound.

A deep sigh emanated from J.D. as her whole body began to shake. The more she tried to control it, the more violently it rebelled. With each shudder, Sandra pulled the woman in tighter until there was no resistance at all. And then the trembling finally subsided, overwhelmed by J.D.’s sudden outpouring of tears.

*   *   *

J.D.’s lids slowly fluttered open. Her eyes searched about for the familiar, but could not find it. She then turned her head from side to side and only then noticed that it was in someone else’s lap.

“Good morning, Janet,” chimed a voice from directly above. It come from the yawning President as if it were the most natural thing in the solar system for the Commanding Officer of the last fleet in the Outer Alliance to take naps in the lap of her Commander-in-Chief.

“Allah,” gasped J.D., springing up to a sitting position on her knees, “please don’t let this get in the history books.”

Sandra laughed as her eyes crinkled gently. “We’ll make up something suitable, I’m sure, but if you wouldn’t mind, I’ll need a little help getting to my feet. I’m afraid my legs are a little cramped.”

J.D. was standing in a heartbeat. “Of course, Madam President,” she said, extending her outstretched arms. “How long have you, I mean I, I mean we—?”

“As long as you needed,” assured Sandra, grabbing hold of J.D.’s wrists and allowing herself to be gently pulled forward. “I will ask one small favor.”

“Of course,” answered J.D., attempting to smooth out her rumpled uniform and unkempt hair.

“A bit of tea?”

It took J.D. a moment to register the request. “Preference?” she finally managed.

“If you have any peppermint and some honey, I would be ecstatic.”

J.D. nodded brusquely and then stepped into the galley as she busied herself fulfilling the request. That the water was boiled in indestructible cylinders bombarded by microwaves, the tea made from dissolvable cubes, and the honey from reconstituted powder made no difference in the end. It was a process that took time and told the brewer that some peace was coming. The tea service Janet brought out would not have looked out of place on Charles Dickens’s table. It was one of the few concessions to luxury J.D. had allowed herself. When the little table was set up between the chairs and the tray placed between them, J.D. poured for Sandra.

Sandra brought the cup to her pursed lips and drank. “Oh, my, that is good, Janet—thank you.”

The two drank quietly until J.D. finally blurted, “I don’t understand why I did that.”

“Did what?” asked Sandra.

“Lost it like that.”

“Really, now,” said Sandra. “Is that the story you’re going to stick with?”

J.D.’s eyes flared for a brief second but just as quickly retreated. “I guess not.” Then a moment later, “I was able to avoid feeling anything for so long, I just assumed it was natural.”

“You’re human, Janet. Emotions come with the territory. You were bound to lose it eventually.”

“Allah, forgive me,” sighed J.D., refilling her cup. “I’m useless.”

“I wish I had ten more—no, three more—people as useless as you. My God, Janet, you waited until the fleet was in orbit, Ceres was safe, and the enemy in full retreat before you had your collapse. Your timing couldn’t have been
more
perfect.”

“But I’ve been at this for years. Why now?”

“I think you know why,” contended Sandra. “What’s different?”

It took J.D. a moment, but then her eyes brightened considerably. “Katy.”

“Yes,” agreed Sandra. “But what about her?”

A long silence hung on Sandra’s question until J.D. slowly pulled a crumpled picture from inside her pocket and dropped it onto the table between them. It showed a picture of a young, smiling girl being held aloft in the hands of a man as a woman looked on adoringly.

“I killed her parents.”

Sandra took the picture from the table and studied it closely.

“I killed her parents,” repeated J.D., “or if you prefer, I sacrificed them to the god of victory as surely as if I’d made an altar and slit their throats myself. And I did it one hundred seventy-nine million times.”

Sandra continued to listen quietly, placing the picture in her lap.

J.D. did not ask for it back. “I’ve sacrificed homes, habitats, mosques, churches, and businesses. Damsah—an entire subplanetary system of Jupiter for victory. And I’ve been laying waste like this for the past six years. But I never felt it till now. Till—” J.D. looked at the ragged picture in the palm of Sandra’s hands. “—her.”

“She does love you.”

J.D. wiped a tear from her eye. “Do you have any idea how much that hurts?”

“No.”

“I sacrificed her parents and she loves me. And
if
I survive, what happens on the day the Unincorporated War ends? What happens when Katy looks at me and asks how come I didn’t show myself sooner? How come I didn’t go out and fight Gupta before he murdered her parents?”

Sandra’s eyes remained fixed and absorbed.

“I could’ve won and if I had, Jupiter would be Jupiter and not a place of ghosts and refugees. What do I say on the day she asks me why, when I had Gupta in my hands, I gave him back? What do I tell Katy on that day? What do I tell anyone? The Alliance loves me too, and that hurts almost as much. Their adulation is just as much a knife thrust into my chest as is Katy’s love. And every look of admiration is a deeper thrust. I lead them to death, Sandra, and they still love me. What do I tell them when they ask?”

Sandra waited patiently. When she saw the question was no longer of a rhetorical nature, she said, “You tell them the truth, Janet. That you
did
sacrifice their homes and loved ones. That you
did
decide when to fight and when to wait. And that you did everything that was asked of you because we have only
one
narrow, twisted path we must walk and if we’re going to survive, we must walk it.”

“For what?” demanded J.D. “The god of victory?”

“Yes, the god of victory.”

“But what if that god is too hungry? What if no matter how much I feed her, she keeps demanding more?”

Sandra’s voice remained firm but comforting. “If that’s what it takes.”

J.D. shook her head. “No victory can emerge from that level of insatiability. All I have done, all I can do, is delay the inevitable. Trang will rebuild and come back. And if I do manage to win again, he’ll just come back—again. And so I’ll sacrifice how many more parents? And how many more children? Everybody’s looking to me to win this war, and I feel like I’m the only one who knows the unequivocal truth: I can’t do it!”

“Yes,” replied Sandra, voice hardened, “you can.”

“No, Sandra. I
can’t.
Battles, yes. By the beard of the Prophet, I may have just won the biggest one yet, and it’s still not enough.”

“By whose estimation, J.D.?”

“By mine! Don’t you get it?”

“I believe I do, but please, elucidate.”

“I’ll put it in lawyerly terms—my last job.”

Sandra nodded.

“Imagine I
have
to win a case. And I do. But the prosecution gets another try—this time with a different jury; and if I win again, they’ll get a different judge; and if I win after that, a different law firm. No matter how many times I win the case, the prosecution gets to try it again and again and again. And here’s the thing: The first time the prosecution wins, I lose with no chance for a retrial. So it doesn’t matter what brilliant arguments I make, what witnesses I produce, what evidence I find. Because eventually one of those trials I
will
lose. It’s inevitable. The UHF has more people, industry, and credits. They will eventually succeed because they really only need to win once. So how am I supposed to face my people knowing that? Knowing that the court is stacked against me?”

Sandra smiled, leaned forward, and took J.D.’s hand in her own. “Janet, dear, that’s easy.” The President’s tawny eyes seemed to flare a deeper shade of amber. “We’re going to burn the courthouse to the ground.”

Executive office
Burroughs
Mars

Irma Sobbelgé stood outside the door of the executive office, hesitant and afraid. There was a time when raised hairs on the back of her neck would have been nothing more than mildly annoying. Being under constant surveillance and the threat of imminent danger were, especially in her position, par for the course. She could respect those feelings, but to kowtow to them would’ve been foolish, not to mention a possible prescription for forced therapy. In her life as the UHF’s Minister of Information, those standing hairs were merely looking out for her, and not, as they were now, exhausting her. She knew that she, like any of the other Cabinet ministers, had a target painted on her back and that any misstep would cause her to vanish from the center of power or, more likely, from existence. But she was tired of being afraid. And the person she most feared was now waiting patiently on the other side of the door. She took a barely perceptible breath, steeled herself, and entered.

The seemingly genuine smile of warmth from Hektor was more disturbing than the metallic, impersonal stare of Tricia—that, Irma had become inured to. But seeing Justin Cord’s former wife, Neela Harper, had taken her by complete surprise. She allowed those feelings to register on her face, as there was no harm in anyone seeing them.