Tintagel (5 page)

Then came the personal touches to her administration. A divorcée was in the White House. That was scandal enough. In her late forties, Katie Babcock—née Katie Shull—had become one of the youngest Presidents to take office. She still retained her thin figure and much of that stern facial beauty that made her former marriage the modern fairy tale into which it had degenerated. Politics had always contained a certain amount of myth making, and charisma was something that the White House hadn't seen the previous century.

Still, she was honest, and never truly lost her devotees. Her workers, her coterie of like-minded progressives were determined, this time, to make the System work.

Like all the others
… Katie thought to herself bitterly. You start out wanting to do so much good, then the Lady of the Lake withdraws her offer and things quickly become
real
: a four-year term of shit-catching and shit-flinging. She was the woman in the middle. And she often thought that whoever was on top—for it never seemed to be her—had a very peculiar sense of humor.

Yet she survived her spell in the Senate and her first two years as President with only a small ulcer to show for it. She was tough, the Iron Lady, the warlord of the White House: at press conferences, or any public appearance, she smiled when she chose and spoke to whom she pleased. She never did see the office of the President as a master of ceremonies. She had no jokes to tell; only work to do. And she made enemies very easily.

The Iron Lady bore her stature well her first year, a year of global disaster. The Russian wheat crop failed completely. Diseases that the WHO had declared eradicated from human history had begun appearing in the stagnant Mediterranean area. Worst of all was the Indian experiment in cultivating a genetically altered form of zooplankton which produced tiny, almost microscopic pockets of hydrogen that allowed for the organism to become airborne. Working out of a starving Calcutta, the scientists there thought that the aeroplankton would bolster the world's dwindling food supply. Farmed in the high valleys of the Tibetan

Himalayas, the aeroplankton now drifted hundreds of kilometers thick in enormous fronts all over the world due to a jet stream knocked off course by a Chinese nuclear test. Katie had a hard time being friendly to India anyway, with their official starvation policies and suicide lotteries. And thanks to the aeroplankton, everyone now had to own, and wear during the aeroplankton storms, filter-masks conveniently designed to filter out the microorganism and forty-seven varieties of industrial pollutants. And this included, for future use, radioactive wastes in the air.

On her nightstand lay two of the filter-masks, the best American ingenuity could design. With easy-to-replace mouthpieces, they also had polarized lenses for indoor and outdoor convenience. They also came with adjustable straps. These were custom made.

She hefted one of the masks, the Rockwell "Warrior Blue" model. Its plastic frame was meant to withstand any and all possible corrosive elements that could be carried in the air. It was guaranteed to last a lifetime. Just whose lifetime they meant, she had no idea.

She looked at herself in the mirror with the thing on. The roundness of the mouthpiece stuck out about four centimeters and gave her the appearance of one of the soldiers from the First World War. Wearing it, she was featureless, anonymous. Only her eyes showed.

Death masks
, she thought suddenly, and whipped it off.

She tabbed the intercom. "Rita, get me the scoop on the aeroplankton drifts for today. And any projections for the week. We've got Chicago to think about."

"Right," came Rita's firm voice.

Katie leaned back, staring at the clock.

"Damn," she muttered.
Time
, she thought,
there's never enough time
.…

She was just barely awake, and three cups of coffee were necessary in the first stages of consciousness. She was now in the second stage. The gathering-of-the-wits-and-clothing stage. From the soft chair before the mirror, she looked into the enormous closet at the various dresses and outfits that hung on the racks. She got up.

As she stood, she rose a little too quickly and took on a sudden rush of blood from her head. Teetering on the brink of blacking out, she thrust forward a hand for support and banged a closet door shut. She dropped back into her chair and waited for the tiny lights behind her eyes to twinkle back into oblivion.

But they didn't.

Light-headed and woozy with the temporary euphoric rush, she suddenly felt a chill at the back of her neck. And suddenly the little tune she had woken up with, and hummed for the first few minutes after her morning encounter with her aides, returned soothingly to her mind. And her mind reeled.

Then came the vibrations, a mellow drifting. One part of her started letting go. The other, in a dispassionate voice, considered the symptoms of what the Surgeon General had mentioned to the nation in his report on Liu Shan's Syndrome. But she didn't listen. The music began to absorb her.

The music was hypnotic. Fascinating. She knew it from a concert she attended years ago, but couldn't identify the piece by name. Something to do with England or Denmark. It had that aura about it.

Fog. Coastline all rocky and brooding. A cry of a lone gull in the nonexistent wind. A crashing of desolate breakers on the shore.

She could hear a chorus of voices, singing, but couldn't move from her chair—didn't
want
to move—for she felt that such beauty in the music would be shattered the instant she did. Her fingers began tingling as if not enough blood was reaching them. A lightness swelled in the center of her forehead and just below the heart. She drifted. Closing her eyes, she could feel the loneliness, the desolation. She could envision the treacherous coastline of England or some other land along the North Sea. A man floating alone came to her mind's eye. But he was not quite alone, for he pulled behind him a line of men, all too exhausted to swim on their own. Their armor clearly sparkled in the dull light of the vision. They each wore expressions of men lost to the world of the living.

The music coalesced upon the man who frantically towed the nearly drowned warriors. She could feel his urgency in the simple yet heroic task. Slowly she began losing her grip on reality. Every inch of her skin vibrated with the tones of the music that rose and swelled with the tides of the North Sea.
Beowulf. Oh
!

"Katie?" the intercom suddenly broke in.

She sagged in her chair, her eyes rolling upward in their sockets as if trying to glimpse a third eye in the center of her forehead. Her breath came in short gasps. Her pulse raced.

Outside there was a commotion and a bustling beyond the door. Rita Hanks and Ken Collins, who had just returned, stumbled in. Beverly Silva was right behind them.

"
Sweet Jesus, she's going under!
" Beverly screamed.

Katie Babcock's hands twitched freely as she slumped in the chair.

Collins bent over her quickly.

Rita stood pale at the door. "What'll we do?"

Ken grabbed Katie and shook her violently, trying to wake her. "Katie! Katie! Pull out of it!"

The President, with her eyes half-open and her face wan in the luminescence of the wardrobe room's light, rotated her head as if it were barely attached to her body.

"Katie!" He shook her again.

Ken looked back at Rita Hanks, who stood horrified, her hands bunched at he mouth.

"Rita, get the Baktropol from my attaché case. Hurry! I'll administer it. I think we can get her out of it."

Rita spun around and ran into the outer room. Ken pulled Katie up from the chair and carried her to the bed. He could almost feel her skin tingle himself as he bore her in his arms. She still seemed quite tangible to him as he set her onto the rumpled bed.

"Beverly, get Dr. Vucich down here fast!"

He couldn't believe such a thing could happen to anyone, let alone the President of the United States! He tried slapping her wrists.

Rita ran in with a small case, followed by two maids. Collins slipped the tab back and pulled out a bottle of blue pills. He tossed them aside onto the divan. He wanted a liquid formula. Rita gasped when she saw the hypo.

He held it up to the light and drew in a few cubic centimeters. He didn't know how much to use, but decided to gamble on a modest dosage. Katie's arm was outflung beside him. He found a strong vein and, without so much as thinking of sterilizing the skin with alcohol, he plunged the needle in. A long strand of his brown hair dropped down next to his left eye with a small drop of sweat on the tip. Salty, it touched his eye, stinging somewhat. He was suddenly frightened.

He put the hypo aside.

Katie rolled her eyes and moved her head from one side to the other. She tried moving her arms, but found that it was more trouble than it was worth.

"Easy. Easy now, Katie. Take it easy." He rubbed her cheeks.

Looking at Rita, who stood frozen like a column of ice in her horror, he said, "I want some fresh coffee, and all the morning's appointments canceled. And not a word of this to anyone. Even the Joint Chiefs. No one." He turned away.

Katie blinked, feeling the music and voices in her head subside. The vision of Beowulf towing those men back to the shore began to fade away. And with it, the loneliness of the struggle: it was so like
her
struggle. The coldness of the North Sea. The dead of winter. He was about to make it.…

She had nearly become that man. Beowulf! A strange interphasing of the man's character and hers nearly overwhelmed her. Those dying men and the forlorn looks to their faces tore her with despair. The music was so compelling, and he, Beowulf, was so strong! He wasn't frightened, not chilled by the terrible gripping cold of the sea. Sea gulls dipped like vultures. She could actually smell the salt, feel the entangling seaweed.

She had almost become Beowulf.
Almost
.

She squirmed, trying to roll over, like one struggling to wrest herself from a nightmare.

"Hold on," came Ken's gentle voice.

He gestured to Rita. "Bring me a cold washrag," he whispered. He gave Katie a tiny slap to her wrists. She blinked.

The last thing to vanish from her mind was the music. The vision of Beowulf faded away, drawing back into the nebulous haunting-grounds of her memory, ready to be evoked at any time in the future. She groaned, feeling a slight pain in the crook of her elbow.

Collins leaned back with relief.

"Where the hell am I? she breathed faintly. A slight humming remained in her consciousness.

"Right where you're supposed to be," Ken said. Beverly Silva leaned against the back of the chair, her heart wanting to leap from her chest.

Outside poured in the gray light of the early morning sun as it tried to pierce the smog and aeroplankton flurry. It was building up to be another normal day for the President of the United States.

Chapter Four

Second Essay for Orchestra

Samuel Barber

It was ten o'clock by the time he had showered and breakfasted. Lanier spread himself out luxuriously on his wide couch, enjoying the late morning sunshine that poured lazily through his window. Malibu Canyon had its advantages. Morning came late and evening early. It was an advantage Lanier always enjoyed, because his days often became so much more compressed than those in the Valley, where he used to live. Nights were longer, more relaxing, and he needed that edge.

Christy, in since seven, brought him his tea. With it, she produced three portfolios.

"These," she announced, "seem to be pretty much rush jobs."

Still in his robe, he leaned over the table, drawing the folios out before him.

"What are they?"

Christy folded her arms, smiling coyly. The sunlight haloed through her blond hair. "One is a movie star, I hope you know. The others are technicians the Defense Department says we can't live without. All have been reported missing, and none have returned in two weeks. The Syndrome is suspected in all cases."

Lanier resisted the temptation to consider the movie star's folio first. He knew their lot to be rather consistently neurotic, most of whom easily became lost in their megalomania. The last movie professional he tried to retrieve nearly killed him while they were under Gustav Holst's
Fugal Overture
. He finally managed to elude Lanier's attempts at rescuing him. Lanier had given up and refunded the family money, telling them to hire another Stalker. The rich were easily able to afford the price.

"And these two here?"

"Right." Christy bent over them. "Seth Bryant, working out of Seattle." She gestured slightly to the one folder Lanier held in his hand. "His wife and brother went under a couple of months ago, and his brother returned in a week's time, no worse for wear."

Lanier looked at her, knowingly. "But not his wife."

"Right," she confirmed. "Bryant's in with Lindroth Space and Aviation, working on the moon-mining contract. He has the inside lane on the development of that rail-launcher for the mining team that's up there now. Better than the steam track the Japanese are using. It's supposed to be much more efficient, but they wouldn't tell me any more than that when they contracted you. He has been seconded by the Defense Department and NASA, no less."

Lanier pondered the report on Seth Bryant.

Bryant was middle-aged, far from being handsome, but the photograph showed intelligence and a facial structure that hinted at a fanatical sense of devotion. Eyes wide, harried. The photo revealed a man weighted with more than a man should carry.

Lanier peeled back the pages.

"Says he vanished in his car. Did they explain that?"

"Yes, they did. It was up along a lovers' lane east of the city, believe it or not. He obtained an illegal tape of the Equinox Quintet. We don't know which of the thirteen cuts took him down, but we do have access to the tape. The Quintet never pressed any sonic-wafers in those days, but the Defense Department copied one for us."