They had to follow out of conviction.
“My office will be open, if any of you want to discuss this privately,” he said. “Let’s adjourn. I’m hungry.”
It was a weak joke. They were all hungry, going on the same half rations as the men. Hell, at this rate it wouldn’t be long before the Charlies starved them out, with or without the help of another Chinese warship.
There had to be another way, another option. Had to be…
The problem was going to be finding it.
24 OCTOBER, 2067
Senate Floor,
Capitol Building, Washington DC
1420 hours EDT
“Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, I have been accused of bias in this matter, of letting my old loyalties, my old brotherhood, stand in the way of what is perceived by a majority within this august body as a good thing, a positive thing.”
Senator Carmen Fuentes was just getting warmed up.
She’d never participated in a filibuster before, that uniquely American expression of politics: the chance to stand up in front of her fellow senators and simply talk—talk for hour upon hour, refusing to yield, holding the floor against the opposition for the simple purpose of preventing a motion for a vote.
“It’s true that I am a Marine. I retired from the Corps twelve years ago, but I am still a Marine. More, I am a blood member of that small and select brotherhood, beginning a century ago with Major John Glenn…a spacefaring Marine, who has also had the honor to be elected to this body. Major Glenn started something, you see, something that he himself could not have imagined at the time. A Marine fighter pilot in World War II and Korea, first American to orbit the Earth, ultimately a senator from Ohio who then became the first man to return to space at the age of seventy-seven…when he was what was back then considered old.
“Since Glenn’s day, there have been fourteen other Marines who have also flown in space, and also served in the U.S. Senate.”
She spoke easily, dropping the facts and figures without effort, without using notes. Though her colleagues couldn’t tell the fact, she was enjoying the use of a new and particularly high-tech toy, one that promised to vastly extend the power and scope of all speechmaking on the Hill. Truly great orators—the Websters and Disraelis and Churchills—were rarities in every century; it didn’t help when you were shuffling papers or note cards or, worse, trying to talk off the top of your head, making it up as you went along and trying to have the result be reasonably coherent.
Carmen, however, was wearing a contact display, a soft plastic contact lens in her right eye which served as a kind of HUD projecting scrolling words and data directly onto her retina.
At the other end of her in-eye prompter was Abe, her personal AI secretary resident within her PAD. She’d stored large pieces of the speech she wanted to give, along with all the facts and figures she needed to back up her words. Abe was arranging those words as she spoke, listening to her talk, and shaping suggestions for new topics, new ideas, new directions to go in.
She could ignore the scrolling words if she wished, choose any of a variety of possible directions to go in, and pretty much make up the speech as she went on, but it was a great way to avoid getting stuck, and wondering what the hell to say next. She could trust Abe to stay a step or two ahead of her, arranging the data she needed, even making suggestions as to what she might want to talk about next.
“So I suppose I am a member of an extremely small and elite society. Elite That’s something of a dirty word these days, I know. None of us is supposed to be any better than anyone else…at anything. But I’m here to tell you today that that is a lie, and a pernicious one. There are some men and women, a select few, better than others in an important way—young men and women willing to put themselves in harm’s way, willing to lay down their very lives to serve the interests of their families and fellow Americans, their country, and their government.
“And we, distinguished colleagues, have a miserable record in our attempts at repayment of a debt that we can never truly begin to repay. How often, I ask you, have we accepted the sacrifices made by these excellent young Americans, only to trample on what they have given us?
“My God, look at the record! Look at it, and weep at how politics has repaid the sacrifice in lives and blood made by our children! A century ago, Congress sent American troops to Vietnam, then decided to abandon the country to its own devices, after over fifty thousand Americans—including, I might add, thirteen thousand Marines—had been sacrificed there.
“In Beirut, in 1983, we sent the Marines in with orders that said they couldn’t even load their weapons, couldn’t even protect themselves in the middle of a war. Two hundred thirty-eight Marines were killed, and our thanks was to tacitly admit defeat, pull out, and abandon the peace that they had already attempted to purchase with their blood.