30 MINUTES LATER. OLYMPIA, NEW DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (FORMERLY IN WASHINGTON STATE) AND PUEBLO, COLORADO. 8:15 PM PST/9:15 PM MST. SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 2025.
Ever since high
school, at the beginning of each month, Allie had written out a
list that began a year from now,
copying, crossing out, recopying, and changing as the world and her
goals changed. In August 2024, I don’t think
I’d’ve typed out “a year from now I will be the First Lady,” or
“I’ll be waiting up to hear about Heather’s baby,” let alone “and
it’s Lenny Plekhanov’s.”
Graham Weisbrod
(my husband the president, okay, I couldn’t
have guessed at anything last
year) asked the technician, “So do—”
The technician held
up a hand. “QSL, Pueblo, loud and clear, go to encryption as
previously selected in five, four, three, two, one . . .” She
tripped off the pendulum-clock contraption that turned three
eccentric plywood cams at different speeds, adding noise to encrypt
the signal; in Pueblo, an identical cam set would take it out. The
tech talked to her opposite number to ensure that voice was
intelligible, handed headsets to Graham and Allie, and said, “About
an hour, and you’ve got a nice clear channel right
now.”
A very tired,
weak-sounding Heather O’Grainne said hello. Graham seemed to settle
into his chair in the radio room as if he’d suddenly dropped thirty
years and was back in his office, falling back into the old close
friendship with Heather instantly. Allie felt childish for feeling
left out, as if she were a little girl kicking the ground with a
plastic sandal and complaining to Papa that, Well, but Heather is my friend too and Graham is my mentor too. And she could practically
hear her father saying to be a patient child, a wise child, one who
others would want to have around. Which was
your subtle Khmer way, Papa, of telling me that people didn’t
really want me around.
She tuned out most of
the discussion of the sentimental wonders of perfect little ears
and toes; she’d seen babies turn grown people into idiots before.
This was no more interminable than any other baby, any other time.
As Graham and Heather ran out of things to say, Allie realized
that, lost in her own irritations, she really hadn’t heard much of
the conversation. She sincerely wished Heather a quick recovery and
welcomed little Leo to the world, sat patiently while Graham did
the same in much more time and with many cutesier words, and fought
down sighs of relief and impatience.
Arnie came back on
the line. “I’ve dropped the patch through to Heather’s room, but
we’ve got a good clear channel up and running on crypto, and about
forty minutes left on it, so is there anything you all would like
to talk about? We’ve got most of the section heads for RRC
someplace in the building, and it would only take a minute to get
one of them in here.”
Graham said, “Heather
keeps us very up-to-date, so thanks, but I guess we’ll just say
good night.”
He lifted the phones
off his head without bothering to get Arnie’s acknowledgment.
Or to consult me. Allie said, “Arnie,
if you don’t mind just talking, just to talk, we never get time for
it on the regularly scheduled crypto radio.”
“Sure,” Arnie
said.
Oh, good, he sounds happy. She nodded at Graham,
keeping a straight face at his irritated expression. Looking forward to a Saturday night game of Bang the
Pretty Girl, were we?
Outside the
courthouse, Pueblo would be dark, buzzing with the threat of Aaron,
and besides, Arnie was lonely.
Before he could even
wonder what to talk about, Allie said, “Geez, Arnie, it’s August,
remember how last year the big issue was whether to go to Maine or
to the Virginia beaches for our vacation?”
“Oh yeah. And we
thought it was such a nuisance to have to take the train to Boston
and then rent a car—”
“And then we had so
much fun,” she said. He’d forgotten how musical her voice became
when it was soft and low, across a table in a
café, or with her head on my shoulder sitting on the beach and
watching the waves, or in bed.
The conversation
ranged through a dozen shared experiences, nearly all of them
things that had been routine before Daybreak. They both agreed that
it felt good to talk about it, and that they shouldn’t do it too
often.
“I try not to think
about the old days too much,” he said. “Phoning for a pizza at
midnight, flying to Paris, my old Porsche . . . tonight I put all
my time into thinking about typhus among the tribal population this
winter.”
“Bad?” Allie asked,
suddenly alert.
“Bad. Very bad. It’s
spread by lice, and bathing is plaztatic, not to mention hard to do
out in the woods, especially since with all the soot in the air,
this is gonna be the coldest winter since 1816. One case of typhus
anywhere will spread through that whole population this
winter.”
“Won’t that solve
some of our problem for us?”
“Well, sort of. It’ll
hit the tribes harder than it hits civilization, and if our brewers
can make enough tetracycline—”
“If who can what?”
“Tetracycline stops
typhus cold, and you can make it with a yeast, kind of like brewing
beer. We’ve got a pilot plant running here, and if it works, you
and Athens both get a crash course in brewing the stuff. Once we
have it, some of the tribals might even surrender to get treatment,
especially mothers with young kids. But even if it’s mostly on
their side of the line, I don’t like all that unnecessary suffering
and dying. Hey—there’s only about five minutes left on the
encrypting cogs. Gee,” Arnie said, “it was great to bat ideas
around. Like old times.”
“You romantic devil.
Reminding me of all the good times in the relationship and using it
to segue into typhus, antibiotics, and mass death. You haven’t lost
your touch. I remember how you rubbed lotion into my legs while
talking about the shifting attitude matrix on tax policy,” Allie
said.
“Funny thing, I
remember the legs more than the policy. God, things in the old days
were nice,” he said.
“Yeah. Oh, crap,
Arnie, we don’t have much time and I’ve enjoyed this so much.
Listen, if you’re not doing too much on Saturday nights, can I call
you? Just to talk, old friend to old friend? Sometimes I just need
to blow off some steam. I’ll send you a message to set it up,
regular channels, but save me next Saturday night.”
“Sure, I’d like to
have someone to talk to, too. We’ll talk next week.” The cams came
to a halt as he was speaking; he wasn’t sure whether she’d heard
the last of it.
Darcage was waiting
for her, and grabbed her on the back stairs from the radio room to
the suite she shared with Graham, pressing a hand over her mouth
gently for a moment. “Just so you don’t scream from being startled.
I wanted to discuss something. We very much approve of your idea of
a back-channel contact with Doctor Yang in Pueblo, and we’d be
happy to coordinate.”
“Coordinate what?”
she asked.
“We don’t have to be
enemies, you know. You must realize that once the Tempers are done
with the tribes, they will turn on you, and we are better
fighters—”
“About three thousand
of yours couldn’t take Pullman against five hundred of ours. You
die bravely. As for winning, not so much.”
“Wait until all the
cowardly gunpowder and artillery are gone.” The man’s face was
contorted with rage, but his hand stayed at his side.
“They’ll never be
gone. We make them and we’re going to keep making them. I’ll talk
to anyone, that’s what my job—”
He was
gone.
Why didn’t I shout for help?
Arnie was almost home
when Aaron said, “She’s very unhappy, you know.”
“Who?” Arnie asked,
turning to face the shadowed figure.
Aaron’s face was
completely lost in the dark void under the blanket. “She’s very
unhappy. She will dream all week about talking to you again.” He
vanished backward into the shadows.
Arnie heard the watch
nearby. They’d want to know why he was standing here in the middle
of the street and the middle of the night. He ran, silently, to his
front door.