Chicago…destroyed. The thought went around and around in his mind, inescapable, incomprehensible. The news hit him on several different levels. On the one hand, it meant that the UN had just drastically escalated the war, that they were no longer trying for some mere political victory, but to destroy the United States itself, or at least to cause such terror and devastation that Washington would be forced to surrender.
That was bad enough, though the information had the cold and remote feel of a class text download in civics or history. On a far more very personal, more direct level was the shock of personal loss. He’d never cared much for Liana Alexander, but he knew his mother loved her, knew that Liana’s death was going to hurt his mother a lot. And even the death of a relative you didn’t like carried with it a shock and a cold ache in the heart that wasn’t going to go away soon.
And as for David…
Hell, David Alexander had been more like a father than an uncle for a good many years. So much of Jack’s own life—his fascination with ETs and the discoveries on Mars, his joining the Corps, his love of space—all had been the direct result of his uncle’s stories. David Alexander had shaped one hell of a lot of Jack’s life, and his dying meant that a part of Jack had died as well.
Jack couldn’t look at the possibility of David’s death with anything like rationality. There was a chance, maybe even a good chance, that his uncle was still alive. Joliet was a good sixty miles from downtown Chicago, and the last Jack had heard, his uncle had been in the federal prison there.
He’d heard a story, once, about the sole survivor of a devastating volcanic eruption on the island of Martinique back in 1902. He’d been a prisoner in the deepest-buried cell in the city’s jail.
At the same time Jack felt that stirring of hope, he shoved it back, told himself that David had to be dead as well. He couldn’t bear the thought of being hit by this icy shock twice, to allow himself to hope that his uncle was alive, then to find out that whatever had hit Chicago had been big enough to take out Joliet as well.
Someone had once pointed out that ignorance is bliss, knowledge is power…and uncertainty is sheer hell.
He knew the truth behind those words now, in a way he’d never before imagined.
TWENTY-TWO
TUESDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER 2042
Reagan Arms Hotel, Washington,
DC
1348 hours EDT
When the knock sounded on the door, David very nearly did not rise to answer it. He’d been sitting alone in the hotel room, the lights off, the curtains closed, the wall screen switched off, all morning. He didn’t want to see anyone just now.
But he thought he knew who it was, and he knew he had to answer. When the knock sounded a second time, he struggled up off the bed, made his way to the door, and opened it.
General Warhurst stood on the other side, with one of his aides, a captain, and a pair of enlisted Marines in combat dress, with visored helmets and rifles.
“Good morning, General,” he said. His mouth was dry, and the words came with difficulty.
“Good afternoon, Professor. May we come in?”
David stepped aside, waving them through the door. The two enlisted men took up posts to either side of the door in the corridor outside, their weapons at port arms. Warhurst palmed the room lights on and walked through, taking a seat in the small lounge area beyond the room’s two beds. The aide took up a silent stance at parade rest nearby.
It was still all a little unreal. General Warhurst had met him as he was being released from Joliet and asked if he would come to Washington for a series of meetings. He’d been that close to telling Warhurst to forget it, that he had to go talk to Liana, that he needed to get his own life together first, that above all he didn’t owe the government or anyone who worked for it a damned thing after they’d stolen so much of his life and work.
But it was Warhurst who’d been responsible for his freedom in the first place. David was grateful; more than that, though, he always paid his debts, and Warhurst’s tone had suggested that something important was happening, something in which David’s participation was necessary.
And so, David had let them drive him to his home in the Chicago suburbs, where he’d packed a bag and left a v-mail for the absent Liana on the home computer. An hour later, he’d been on a military VTOL transport from O’Hare International to Andrews Aerospace Force Base outside of Washington.
And if he hadn’t agreed, if he hadn’t made that flight, he would likely have been in Chicago Monday evening when the shock wave rolled across the city from the lake…either in a hotel room or else working late at the Institute, which now no longer existed.