Free Aftermath by Charles Sheffield

blank displays. "Where are they, General?"
    "The problems are in the receiving stations. We hope to have a couple back on-line in the next forty-eight hours. You'll have your weather pictures again, and if anyone can do ground-based transmission the comsats will give us global communications."
    "Can anyone?"
    "Not for a while yet."
    "Then I won't hold my breath waiting for incoming calls. Anything else?"
    "A confirmation that's not so good." Grace Mackay had been in military and government a long time, much longer than Saul. She knew that a boss didn't like to be told only of problems or setbacks. Saul suspected she would save some good news for the end.
    "The former Vice President's body has finally been located in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We have an updated number for cabinet-level deaths and casualties in Congress."
    Saul made the customary mutterings of regret. He had known that the Vice President was doomed only minutes after that ominous blue sky flash nine days ago, when he had stood at the window in his darkened office and watched planes in approach patterns for National Airport drop from the sky like heavy fruit.
    Vice President Janet Kloos had been riding a six-passenger suborbital, in transit from California, where a new trade deal with Sulawesi called for official presence. Saul had intended to go himself until the last few minutes. It could so easily have been him. The selection and swearing-in of the new Vice President, Brewster Callaghan, now on the West Coast, made one thing very clear: no one was irreplaceable. Everyone was expendable. But Janet had been a terrible loss.
    Saul wasn't nearly as sorry to lose thirty-odd people from Congress. Half of them hated his guts, and the rest hated Brewster Callaghan. A thousand friends have less weight than a single enemy.
    General Mackay was standing, quietly waiting. He had noticed it in his first few days in office. Other people's time was his, while his time was his own. If he was late getting to an event, that event wouldn't start until he arrived. It must be especially hard on someone like Grace Mackay, because a four-star general had her own powers to keep most people waiting.
    "That's not why I told Travis to go look for you." Saul pointed to the window. "Do you know what I saw out there?"
    "No, Mr. President."
    "Well, nor do I. It was an aircraft and it was heading for a landing at Andrews; but it looked like it came out of Noah's Ark. Fixed wing, fixed engines, and no vertical takeoff boosters." He waved to an armchair. "Let's sit down, General, they're not playing the National Anthem. Was that thing the Air Force One substitute you've been promising me for the past few days?"
    Grace Mackay sat down very carefully on the edge of the seat. Steinmetz watched her hands. He had seen the reports based on her secret monitors as recently as two weeks ago, just before the EMP hit. Saul was assured by his intelligence office that the cabinet members had no idea they were being observed, but he had his doubts about that. In any case, what did it matter if Saul knew that his Secretary of Defense ground her teeth every night as she slept? That she was married, but had engaged in sex only once in the past four months? She needed doses of powerful prescription drugs just to keep going. Grace Mackay wouldn't die in office—she wouldn't be allowed to—but three years after that she could well be a goner.
    Yet she would fight like the devil to keep a job that was killing her.
    So how much would President Steinmetz endure, to achieve and hold on to his position? And how worn and exhausted did he seem to others? Saul thought he knew, but chances were he put the estimate for himself way too low.
    It was the worst time in history to be President. If you had an enemy and started a war, you had a fair chance to make heroic decisions and big speeches and come out looking a hero. But what sort of credit did a man receive for dealing with a natural disaster? None at all. You couldn't