"But you do keep them in your trunk."

"Yeah, but like you, I'm not so much afraid of the aliens. What I'm afraid of is g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ging and looting. Like back in twenty-eight, all the grocery stores in flames."

"You weren't alive in twenty-eight."

"Born in 2030. But my parents would never shut up about it."

The air in Dos Hermanos was warm and heavy with spicy cooking smells. It was early, but they got the last table. Pepe waved to his boss and a black woman who looked familiar.

Something in his manner worried Lisa Marie. He seemed to be studying every customer in the cafe as they were led to their table and seated. Looking for aliens, maybe.

"Is something wrong?" he said.

"I was going to ask you the same thing. Just the message, though?""Yeah, just. I wonder how many people here haven't seen it." He pointed to the cube over the bar, which showed the message on a flatscreen with a commentator being earnest in front of it. You couldn't quite read the words or tell what he was saying, over the cafe hum.

She glanced at the menu but didn't really read it; she'd eaten here a hundred times.

"It's early," she said, "but you want to split a bottle of wine? Celebrate your aliens?"

He shook his head. "Like to, but it's going to be a busy day." The waitress who came up was the owner of the place. "Buenos dias," he said.

Sara "Buenos. Your aliens are at it again."

"Why does everybody call them 'my' aliens? They're Rory's aliens."

She looked over at their table. "Her newsie didn't waste any time getting down here. She called in a lunch reservation from her corporate jet, la-di-da."

"Sure glad I'm an overpaid academic," Pepe said, "and don't have to flit around the world at somebody else's beck and call." He ordered chicken fajitas with a double espresso and milk. His girlfriend, Lisa what's-her-name, got a Cuban sandwich and half carafe of white wine.

She was headed back to Jose with the orders when she heard the shrill emergency whistle from the cube. "Silencio!" she shouted. "Everybody shut up a minute." She cut her eyes to the cube and saw the unthinkable.

It was a long shot of the White House. One end of it was rubble, gray smoke and orange flames.

"We don't know what's happened," a tight, panicky voice said. "One minute ago, something ... some explosion ... we don't know!"

His image appeared in the corner, the normally unflappable Carl Lamb. "Word just coming in." He put his hand flat against his left ear.

"Oh, my G.o.d. The president is dead. Most of her cabinet, too. The vice-president, he, he's ... he was in another room but he's badly hurt. There's an ambulance floater-there; there, you can see it." On the cube, a white floater overshot the flames, spun around, and settled down behind the smoke.

"All the Secret Service can say is it didn't come from outside. It was a powerful bomb that went off in the cabinet room.

"It was an emergency meeting, called about the aliens, the new message. What the Secret Service wonders is how could anybody know they'd all be in that room at that time?"

She sat down in the nearest empty chair, which was Rory's table. "The aliens ... they couldn't've done this?"

Aurora "I don't ... No. No, of course not." Though it was certainly handy for them. She looked over at Pepe, the only other person here who knew how handy. He was looking at her.

A young man ran outside to vomit, falling to his knees on the sidewalk. Rory's own stomach twisted.

Her head felt full of light, as if she were going to faint. Still staring at the screen, she reached across the table at the same time Marya did. Her grip was firm and dry but she was trembling.

"This couldn't be a movie or something?" Sara said. "This can't be happening."

Marya gulped. "A War of the Worlds thing, Orson Welles? They wouldn't do it, they couldn't."

Rory could only shake her head. She tried to say something but her mouth and throat were suddenly dry. She took a sip of water and it was like glue. Was she going into shock?

"Jesus," Marya croaked. Her dark skin was gray, bloodless. "It's like a palace coup. Who's left?"Her phone buzzed. She took it out of her purse, listened for a moment, and said, "Okay." She put it back. "They want me to stay here," she said quietly.

There was a murmur of conversation. Two or three people were sobbing.

"Wait," the commentator said. "There is what? There is a message. Our station, many stations, received it right after the tragedy."

He looked off-camera and nodded, openmouthed. "This is Grayson Pauling, President LaSalle's, the late president's, science adviser."

Pauling looked tired and miserable. "Good morning. I have a grave duty today, which must be explained.

"It has been obvious for many months that our president is mentally ill, profoundly so. It has been a source of amus.e.m.e.nt in Washington, and a weakness for the brokers of power to exploit.

"The union has survived mentally ill and incompetent leaders, and it might have survived Carlie LaSalle, but for the Coming. Especially in light of this morning's message.

"Ms. LaSalle, with the very active cooperation of the secretary of defense, proposes to orbit killer weapons that will supposedly destroy the aliens before they have a chance to land. This would be suicide, genocide ... there is no word for it. The destruction of our entire species.

"She does not truly understand the amount of power these aliens have demonstrated. To the extent that she does understand, she sees it as a challenge to her own power. It is not. It's just a statement of fact."

He looked down and sighed, and then looked into the camera again. "When I was a young man, I was a military officer. Often I had to order men and women into action, knowing that some of them would die. I often went along with them, and the possibility of my own death-sometimes what I saw as the certainty of my death-was of no consequence, compared to the responsibility I felt for them. The guilt, perhaps.

"So today I'm going to die, and in the process, sacrifice the lives of many people who didn't even know there was a war. I'm sorry. My sorrow is no comfort to those of you who are going to lose loved ones. But we'll all be dead in one month if I do not do this.

"When I turn off the camera and set the delay on this message, I will leave for an emergency cabinet meeting set for noon. In my briefcase, I have twelve pounds of C-9, a powerful plastic explosive. When I am in the cabinet room with the president and the secretary of defense, I will open the briefcase and we will all die, as well as others, who are innocent bystanders. Collateral casualties, as they say.

"I have always liked Carlie LaSalle, in spite of her craziness, perhaps because of it, and now I am repaying her trust with murder. History will vindicate me, or at least admit the necessity for this, but that gives me no satisfaction this morning." He reached out of the cube and turned off the camera.

Rory found her voice. "What happens now?"

Marya shook her head. "Pray the vice-president survives. The speaker of the House makes Carlie LaSalle look like a Phi Beta Kappa."

"Who would've thought it," Sara said in a stunned whisper. "Here in America."

"Yeah, America. I wouldn't've predicted LaSalle, either." Rory shook her head. "Washington's a zoo." Carl Lamb was back on the cube, saying that the vice-president was being rushed to Walter Reed, but was not expected to live.

"It makes a kind of sense," Marya said, rubbing her chin hard. "I mean story sense. Grayson Pauling always was a wild card. You know he was DDT in Desert Wind?"

"No," Rory said, staring at the cube. "What's DDT?"

"It's a unit of the Special Forces they call 'Department of Dirty Tricks.' Unconventional warfare; I forget its actual name. He never talked about it; claimed he wasn't allowed to. But that may be how heknew how to build a bomb he could carry into the White House."

As if to back her up, the cube showed a gray positron scan of the briefcase. "Even cabinet members are checked when they enter the White House," Carl Lamb said. "Grayson Pauling appeared to have nothing but books and papers."

A security guard came into the cube, the side of his head bandaged, blood drops on his tunic.

"Maybe we shoulda wondered about those books. Why would someone carry big books into a cabinet meeting?"

Lamb made rea.s.suring noises. "His mind was made up this morning," Rory said. "He might have done it without the new message, eventually."

"This morning." Marya stared at her. "That meeting."

They looked at Sara and she got up. "Yeah, I got to go."

Everybody was hypnotized by the cube, but Rory lowered her voice to a whisper anyhow. "He was openly rebellious and she was really p.i.s.sed off. It looked as if she'd allowed him to be in on the conference call if he promised to behave. But then he wouldn't go along with the party line."

"This is the scoop you called about?"

"Yes. The president was going to authorize three orbital weapons: masers powered by H-bombs.

Pauling seemed to think they would wind up pointed the wrong way. Toward France."

"Ah. That's the DOD connection."

"What?"

"He said on the cube he was after the secretary of defense as well as the president."

"He did, right. Another interesting thing ... the president cut him off, but I think there's only one of these masers. I guess the other two are decoys."

"I don't know how much of this I can use. Though I appreciate knowing it."

"What could they do to you?"

"Cut me off from Washington sources, at the least. Haul me up in front of a security committee-h.e.l.l, they've got the undersecretary of defense under house arrest."

"Isn't he the secretary now?"

She shook her head. "Doesn't work that way. The president, whoever that may be, appoints a new one. If he can find anybody at home-I suspect half of Washington will be out beyond the Beltways before quitting time."

"France might do something?"

"More likely the Jihad. But we have lots of enemies who can see that it would be a good time for a couple of strategically placed bombs. Convenient to be out of New York, too."

"Sleepy college towns have their advantages."

"This one, I don't know. The way the Jihad rails about the Coming, they might be able to spare a bomb for here or the Cape. As long as they're bombing."

"You're not kidding?"

"Just professionally paranoid. Look at that. They kept turning rocks over until they found him."

Carl Lamb was standing on the Capitol steps next to Cool Moon Davis, who looked like a ninety-year-old Native American who had just been dragged out of a deep sleep. He was only seventy-two, actually, but had had an eventful life.

"Speaker Davis, do you have any words for America at this tragic time?"

He looked up into the camera, eyes dull, and straightened up slightly when his earphone started feeding him lines. "I've always admired Carly Simon-Carly LaSalle, that is, for her spirit and her dedication to American ideals of America. Like all Americans I feel a deep lens of sauce, I mean sense ofsauce, and a truly deep outrage at this crime against the Republic. The crime of a.s.sa.s.sination."

"He came up with that himself," Marya muttered.

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We ... uh ... we have a link to Walter Reed, and the vice-president, I mean President Mossberg, wants to address the nation."

He looked bad, his chest a tight wrapping of bloodstained bandage, arms inert at his sides, breathing tube taped to his nose.

His normally clear voice was gravelly and nasal. "The doctors say I have a good chance of surviving, but I have spent most of my life in the company of professional liars, and I can see through them." He coughed violently, and a nurse cut off the view for a moment.

"I am ordering that an election be held as soon as possible after my death, and I'm sure Mr. Cool agrees." He spoke slowly, teeth clenched. "The nation faces-the world and this nation face an unprecendented historical challenge one month from now. We need a leader in place who is ... is not Cool Moon Davis." He grimaced and his head lolled to one side. "Am I still alive?"

"Your brain is alive," a male voice said. "Not much else is."

"Thank you. In fact, I believe that you could pull a random citizen off the street and find him or her better able to deal with this crisis than Representative Davis. Or the late president, for that matter.

Forgive me for speaking plainly, but-" The cube went dark, and faded back in with Carl Lamb and Davis, both looking a little pale.

"We seem to have lost-"

"The vice-president," Davis cut in, "has not been sworn into office ... " He paused, listening. "And cannot yet speak as president. The laws of succession are plain, and there is no need for a special election."

"Chief Justice West is hurrying to Walter Reed as we speak," Lamb said. "He was en route to New York when this disaster struck."

Miguel Parando The bartender realized he'd been cleaning the same gla.s.s for several minutes, ever since the emergency signal came from the cube. Someone broke a rack with a loud crash.

"Hey!" He spun around. "You show some respect?"

It was Leroy, a tall white guy, dealer. "I'm payin' for this table by the hour. You show me some respect." He lined up an easy shot and hit hard with a lot of draw, whack-thump, and the cue ball glided back to its starting place. "She was the worst president we ever had. So somebody finally punched her f.u.c.kin' ticket. What took so long, is what I wonder."

"You a hard f.u.c.kin' case, Leroy. She was a nice lady."

"Nice lookin'," said a short fat man at the bar. "I wouldn't go no farther than that. People in Washington didn't think much of her."

"You think much of them?"

A woman in a sparkly silver shift, blue eyes and black skin like the bartender's, smoothed a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. "I'd like a whiskey, Miguel." She put another bill on top. "And anybody else who wants one."

"When did you start drinkin', Connie?"

"Just now. A little ice?"

Leroy came up, emptied his gla.s.s, and put it on the bar. "I'll have one for her vaporized a.s.s."

"Somebody gonna vaporize your a.s.s someday, Leroy," Connie said. "You ought to get in some other business. The people you run with."He pointed up at the cube, which was back to Cool Moon Davis. "Not as dangerous as those guys." Miguel poured four gla.s.ses, one for himself, and slid them over. "Or the frogs, if it's them that did it."

"That would be crazy," Miguel said. "The French don't want us in the war."