Aftershocks (37 page)

Yeager sniffed. The odor of fresh-perked coffee wafted in from the kitchen. As much as Fred’s words, that convinced him the guard was telling the truth. He put in his dentures and slid out of bed, asking, “Who is it? And can I get out of my pajamas first?”

“Don’t bother about the PJ’s,” Fred answered. “As for who, come on out front and see for yourself.”

“Okay.” Sam sighed. Whoever was out there would be in a uniform, or maybe a business suit. Facing him in blue-and-white striped cotton pajamas would only put Yeager at a disadvantage. Well, he was at a big enough disadvantage already. His feet slid into slippers. “Let’s go.”

“Attaboy.” Fred made the pistol vanish as smoothly as he’d brought it out.

Up the hall Yeager went. When he walked into the living room, he wasn’t surprised to see John and Charlie already there. With them stood another couple of men he hadn’t seen before. They wore nearly identical off-the-rack suits, and they both looked jumpy and alert despite the hour. Sam noticed that much about them, but nothing more, for his eyes went to the man in the rocking chair by the far wall. Despite pajamas, he wanted to come to attention. He didn’t, not quite. Instead, he nodded and spoke as casually as he could: “Hello, Mr. President.”

Earl Warren returned the nod. “Hello, Lieutenant Colonel Yeager,” he replied. “Officially, I’ll have you know, this conversation is not taking place. Officially, I’m somewhere else—you don’t need to know where—and sound asleep. I wish I were.” He glanced over to one of the strangers in a suit. “Elliott, why don’t you get Yeager here a cup of coffee? I expect he could use one. I know I’m glad to have mine.”

“Sure,” said the Secret Service man—or so Sam assumed him to be. “You take cream and sugar, Lieutenant Colonel?”

“Both, please. About a teaspoon of sugar,” Yeager answered, for all the world as if this were an utterly normal conversation. Elliott went off to the kitchen.

“Sit down, Lieutenant Colonel, if you please,” President Warren said, and Sam saw that all the guards had left the armchair across the room from the rocker for him. The only reason they were there was to make sure he didn’t strangle the president. He’d asked to see Warren not really expecting anyone would pay any attention to him, but now Warren was here.

Elliott brought him the coffee. Not a drop had slopped from cup into saucer; the Secret Service man had steady hands. “Thanks,” Sam told him, and got a curt nod in return. He sipped the coffee. It was hot and strong and good.

President Warren let him drink about a third of the cup, then said, “Shall we get down to brass tacks?”

“Okay by me.” Yeager pointed to Fred and Charlie and John. “But these fellows have said they don’t want to know why they’ve been keeping me here. Should they listen in?”

His guards and the Secret Service men put their heads together. Then, to his surprise, the fellows who’d ridden herd on him trooped out of the living room and out of the house; he heard the door close behind them. President Warren said, “I think Jim and Elliott should be able to keep me safe.” Yeager nodded; they were bound to be armed. Even if they weren’t, either one of them could have broken him in half. With a sigh, the president asked, “Well, Lieutenant Colonel, what’s on your mind?”

Sam took another sip of coffee before answering. He took a deep breath, too. Now that he had to bring them out, the words wanted to stick in his throat. He wished the coffee were fortified with something stronger than cream and sugar. But he said what he had to say: “Sir, why did you order the attack on the colonization fleet?”

Both Secret Service men started. Elliott muttered something under his breath. He and the one named Jim stared at the president. Earl Warren sighed again. “The classic answer is, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And it
did
seem like a good idea. It was the hardest blow humans have even struck against the Race, and the Lizards never really suspected the United States. No one did—except you, Lieutenant Colonel. Are you happy to realize that, by being right, you may have brought your country down in flames?”

That made Sam take another deep, anything but happy breath. “Mr. President, I decided a long time ago that whoever launched missiles at the colonization fleet was a murderer,” he answered. “I swear to God, I thought it was the Nazis or the Reds. I never imagined the trail would lead back to us.”

“But you kept looking, didn’t you?” President Warren said. “You couldn’t take a hint. You just kept poking your nose where it didn’t belong.”

“A hint, sir?” Yeager said in real puzzlement. “What kind of hint?”

Warren sighed again. “Wouldn’t you say that the unfortunate things that kept almost happening to you and your family—that would have happened if you’d been less on your guard—were a hint that you were digging in places you shouldn’t be? We even tried to pass that message to you, first through General LeMay and then through Straha’s driver.”

“General LeMay was only talking about the
Lewis and Clark,”
Sam said, “and I didn’t know just what Straha’s driver was talking about—not till I found out what had happened to the colonization fleet, anyway. And by then it was too late.”

“It may be too late for all of us,” the president said heavily. “What on earth possessed you to give Straha a printout of what you’d found?”

“When I did find it, Mr. President, all of a sudden I understood why I’d been having all the trouble I’d been having,” Yeager answered. “I thought of Straha as a life-insurance policy—if anything happened to me or to my kin, the word would still get out. I guess it has?”

“Oh, it has, all right.” Earl Warren glared at him. “That damned Lizard sneaked out of the USA and into Cairo, and by every sign those documents got there ahead of him. And Atvar has been threatening war against the United States ever since. That is a war you must know we would lose.”

“Yes, sir, I do know that,” Sam said. “I’ve known it all along. I thought you did, too. The Lizards have always said they’d do something dreadful if they ever found out who hit the colonization fleet. I figured Germany or Russia would deserve it. I have trouble thinking we don’t. I’m sorry, sir, but that’s how it looks to me.”

“Do you know what one of the Race’s principal demands has been?” the president asked with an angry toss of the head.

“No, sir. I have no idea,” Sam replied. “I haven’t seen much in the way of news lately. Is my family all right?” They could have held him and done God knows what to Barbara and Jonathan. The guards had said they hadn’t, but still. . . . Doing that would screw up the experiment with Mickey and Donald, but they probably wouldn’t care. They’d figure keeping a secret was more important.

But now President Warren nodded. “Your wife and son are fine. You have my word on it.” Yeager had always thought his word good. Now he knew it wasn’t, or wasn’t necessarily. Before he could do more than realize that, Warren went on, “The Lizards are insisting that you be released unharmed, and that no harm befall your kin. It is a condition we intend to meet.”

God bless Straha,
Sam thought.
He lived among Big Uglies so long, he got some notion of how important family members are to us. And thank heaven he managed to get that across to the Lizards in Cairo.
Aloud, he made his voice harsh: “Is that the reason I’m still breathing? And my wife and son?”

“It is . . . one of the reasons,” Warren answered. Yeager gave the president reluctant credit for not flinching from the question. “It is also the only condition we find easy to meet. The Race is demanding that we either let them incinerate one of our cities with an explosive-metal bomb or make concessions to them that would permanently weaken us—not quite to the degree the
Reich
has been diminished, but something not far from that.”

Yeager winced. Sure enough, the Lizards hadn’t been kidding. “And if you tell them no on both those counts, it’s war?”

“That is about the size of it, Lieutenant Colonel Yeager,” the president said. “We have you to thank for it.”

But Yeager shook his head. “No, sir. You were the one who ordered the launch. The Race would have found out sooner or later, and they’d have been just as furious a hundred years from now as they are right this minute.”

“We would be in a stronger position to fight back a hundred years from now,” Warren said.

“Maybe,” Sam said, “but maybe not, too. Who knows what’ll be heading this way from Home now that the Lizards know we’re not pushovers?”

“At any rate, we have to deal with what is happening now,” the president said, “which is to say, with what you’ve wrought. The Russians may stand with us. The thought that they might has given the Lizards pause.”

“Would they?” Sam knew he sounded surprised. After a little thought, though, it seemed less implausible. “If we go down, they know they’re next, and they haven’t got a prayer of fighting off the Lizards by themselves.” He didn’t think the USA and the USSR together could beat the Race, but they’d sure as hell let the Lizards know they’d been in a fight.

President Warren’s big head soberly went up and down. “I believe that is Molotov’s reasoning, yes, although you never can tell with Russians.”

In all his days, Sam Yeager had never imagined he would sit in judgment on a president of the United States. His voice hardly more than a whisper, he asked, “What will you do, sir?”

“What I have to do,” Earl Warren answered. “What seems best for the United States and for all of humanity. That’s what I’ve been doing all along.” What was intended as a smile lifted only one corner of his mouth. “Thanks to you, it didn’t work out quite the way I expected.”

Sam let out a long sigh. “No, sir, I guess not.” He started to add,
I’m sorry,
but that didn’t pass his lips. Part of him was, but a much bigger part wasn’t.

President Warren said, “I shall of course arrange for your release. I would be grateful for your public silence and that of any loved ones you may have informed until the present crisis ends. I am not going to order it, but I would be grateful for it.”

“How will I know when that is?” Sam asked.

The president looked at him—looked through him. “Believe me, Lieutenant Colonel, you will not be left in any doubt.”

Pshing came up to Atvar and said, “Exalted Fleetlord, the ambassador from the not-empire of the United States is here to see you.”

Atvar made the affirmative gesture. “I will see him. Show him in. No—wait. First bring in a chair suitable for a Tosevite’s hindquarters. I do not intend to insult him in any trivial way.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord.” Pshing hurried off. He brought in first the chair and then the Big Ugly named Henry Cabot Lodge.

“I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” the ambassador said.

“And I greet you,” Atvar replied. “You may sit.” As far as he was concerned, the wild Tosevite didn’t really deserve the privilege, but the fleetlord had grown used to diplomatic niceties since the first round of fighting stopped. The USA and the Race were theoretically equals and were not at war—not yet. Not offering Lodge a chair would have been an insult: a small one, but an insult nonetheless. No, Atvar did not intend to offer the United States any small insults.

“I am here, Exalted Fleetlord, among other reasons, to bring you the apology of the government of the United States for the unfortunate incident involving the colonization fleet,” Lodge said.

“I am here to tell you, Ambassador, that no apology is adequate,” Atvar replied. “No apology can be adequate. I am here to tell you that the Race will have compensation for what the United States did.”

Henry Cabot Lodge’s gray-maned head bobbed up and down, the Tosevite equivalent of the affirmative gesture. “I am prepared to negotiate such compensation if you truly require it.”

“If we truly require it?” Atvar sprang to his feet. His mouth opened, not in a laugh but in a way that suggested his ancestors had been carnivores. He held out his hand so his fingerclaws were ready to tear. Had he been standing erect instead of leaning forward, had his crest risen, he would have looked ready to fight a mating battle. “We have said from the moment this outrage occurred that we would require it, once we learned who the guilty party was. You may be grateful that we have not already embarked on war without limits.”

In the abstract, he had to admire the American ambassador. The Big Ugly sat there as calmly as if he hadn’t embarked on his tirade. When he finished, Lodge said, “One reason you have not, of course, is that we could hunt you badly if you did. If the Russians join us—and we are no more certain about that than you—the damage to the Race and the lands it rules will be even greater.”

He was all the more infuriating partly because he stayed calm, partly because he was without a doubt correct. But Atvar would not admit that no matter how obvious it was. He said, “Regardless of what you can do to us, we can do far more to you.” That was also a manifest truth. “And we shall, to avenge the murder of males and females in cold sleep, before they ever had the chance to come down to the surface of Tosev 3.”

“Unless I can negotiate some other solution that would satisfy you and my government at the same time,” Lodge said.

“You know what our demands are.” Atvar made his voice hard as stone, hoping the Big Ugly would grasp his tone. “Return of the
Lewis and Clark
and the new ship from their present location among the minor planets. No further expeditions to those planets. American orbital forts to have their explosive-metal weapons removed to prevent further unprovoked attacks. American ground-based missiles to be reduced in number. American submersible-ship-based missiles to be eliminated. The Race’s inspectors to go where they please when they please in the United States to make certain these terms are carried out.”

“No,” Henry Cabot Lodge said. “My instructions are specific on that point. These terms are unacceptable to the United States. President Warren has not given me permission to deal with them even hypothetically.”

“You also know the other alternative,” Atvar said. “To let one of your cities be incinerated, as our colonists were incinerated.”

“No,” the American ambassador said again. “That is also unacceptable.”