Earthbound by Joe Haldeman Page B

an airplane somewhere.”
    “That would be a figure of speech?” Snowbird said. “They don’t bury airplanes?”
    “Right . . . Damn, I threw away my cell. Do you still have yours?”
    “Think I can find it.” I went into the next room, where we’d changed into NASA work clothes. My cell was in the corner where I’d tossed it, the power light a barely visible dull red. I plugged it into the wall and it went bright red, then yellow, then green. I took it in to Paul.
    He punched a few numbers and shook his head. “Nothing’s up and working yet, I suppose. Do you speak any Russian?”
    “No, nyet .”
    “I do,” Snowbird said. “So does Namir. We used it sometimes on the starship.”
    I recalled that Namir’s father had come from Russia. He’d gone back for some Olympics and brought home a souvenir balalaika, which was why our mysterious spy had such an odd instrument aboard a starship.
    I took the phone from Namir and was looking at it, trying to decide what to do next, when it suddenly rang, the anonymous-caller tone. I punched the answer button, and a young woman’s face appeared.
    “Carmen Dula?” she said. “You look just like your picture!”
    “Um . . . most people do.”
    “Sorry.” She covered her eyes with a hand and winced. “I am Wednesday Parkman, calling from the office of the president. At Camp David, Maryland.”
    “Okay. What does the president want?”
    “Well, I don’t know, really. I was told to call your number and Paul Collins’s until one of you answered. But you answered right away. So let me try to find the president?”
    “Sure, and Paul’s here, too.”
    “Hold on!” Her face left, and we saw the ceiling for a moment, and then a slow pan of Monet’s lilies, with a cello playing softly.
    “I don’t guess she’s had this job for too long,” I said.
    “How the hell did they get up to Camp David without power?” Paul said.
    “You couldn’t walk there in a day,” I said.
    The lilies dissolved, replaced by an important-looking man I recognized just as he said his name. “Dr. Dula, I’m Morris Chambers. We met briefly at the White House.”
    “It seems like a long time ago.”
    “Doesn’t it. The president is drawing together a committee to deal with the current”—he made a helpless gesture—“situation, and he’d like you to come here as soon as possible.”
    “Washington,” Paul said, “or Camp David?”
    “Washington is chaos,” he said. “Once you’re in the air, we’ll give you a code word that will allow you to land at Camp David.”
    “Okay. So what do we get into the air with? We’re still on the Armstrong Space Force Base.”
    “Let me check.” He got up from the desk, and we had another minute of Monet and strings. He appeared again.
    “You were rated for multi-engine commercial a half century ago. Airplanes are simpler now, but there’s no GPS.” Of course not, no satellites.
    “If there are charts and a compass, I can sort it out. It would have computers, even without GPS?”
    He looked away from the phone and then nodded. “Navigation computers, yes. There is a subsonic twelve-passenger NASA plane waiting for you on Runway 4, South terminal. That’s the only secure terminal, they say, so go directly there. Security there wants your license-plate number.”
    Alba was leaning in the door. “Government plate, 21D272,” she said. “It’s a little blue bus.” Paul repeated it.
    “What will this committee be doing?” I asked. “What can they do in one week?”
    “The key phrase is ‘maximum survival.’ We estimate that there are still about 300 million people alive in America after yesterday. We would like to have . . . a maximum still alive a year from now. Having learned how to live without technology.”
    “It won’t be 300 million,” Paul said. “It won’t even be 100 million.”
    The bureaucrat’s face didn’t change. “You understand what we’re facing. It will be a disaster of biblical scope no matter what