"You'd be better served running for vice chairman of the NAU." The popular view was that no one of any import wanted the position of vice chairman of the NAU, that is, except Charles Morgan . . . and Luis Gonsalvo, who had no chance, not when half his potential supporters had nowhere to vote. Even Lester wasn't that interested.

"It's a meaningless position in a largely ceremonial organization," he pointed out. "Why would I want to do that? I ran for the NAU a.s.sembly to build name recognition without having to wait for years to work up through the party to run for the U.S. Senate."

I didn't tell him that running for the Senate would have been a stupid decision. "It may seem like a meaningless position, but it has national and international visibility, and you get the NAU to pay for a larger staff. Plus, since they're paid in Canadian loonies, you can get better staff while you wait for the next Senate election. You run next year, and you're against John Jacob Astor. He won with eighty percent of the vote."

"That's because he was a p.o.r.n star. Besides, I've got more than enough money."

So I told him, "You might not take Astor, but you can take Morgan, and the position of vice chairman won't be ceremonial in another two years."

By then, Lester knew enough not to dispute me on things like that. "What do you see happening? What exactly do you have in mind?"

"What's the current U.S. deficit- this past year?"

"Twenty trillion."

"And what are the projections for next year?"

"You're the political scientist."

"That's true." At times, I knew he thought I was a political mad scientist, but I'd been right on so far as he was concerned, all the way.

"So you tell me what this has to do with me . . . and the Senate run."

"Next year's deficit will run to fifty trillion . . . if they're lucky, and the president and the Congress will have to come to the NAU to serve as an intermediary for a bailout from Canada or the Indian multinationals. They won't call it that. It'll be a restructuring of governmental a.s.sets or something like that. The Canadians will have to pony up, because they don't want the Indians getting a foothold, not after what it cost to buy off the Chinese in the second restructuring. You don't want to be the Senate to clean up that mess, but you do want to be in a visible position when that happens. Even if it doesn't happen, the visibility won't hurt your political future. In fact, visibility in a position where you can't be held accountable for the mess will be an a.s.set."

He did nod at that, before he spoke again. "What about Morgan? Charlie's never made a mistake in his life. He's still married to his childhood sweetheart. He's not brilliant, but he's definitely not stupid. He's always hired the best and the brightest staff, and he's listened to them."

"What church does he attend?"

Lester looked puzzled. "That's not an issue. The man hasn't so much as a littering or a water-overuse citation. He's greener than the northern swamps and straighter than a hydropower spillway."

"Don't worry about it. We'll take care of it." And we did.

First, we came up with a series of Webchures- each one targeted at a different voter niche. My favorite was the one for the high-minded hypocrites. We didn't call them that, of course. They were voter group 1A-Beta: Undecided, highly educated, religiously affiliated, self-identified, self-made professionals.

The Webchure was slick. It showed Morgan in a series of images- all with members of his staff, all recognizable, and all digitally "enhanced" to highlight their attractiveness, especially that of the men, and their positions altered to bring them very close together. We also made some very subtle alterations to Morgan's expressions, so that he appeared far more interested in his companion than in the papers or the scene. And the captions were, pardon the pun, apparently straightforward.

"NAU delegate Morgan working closely with trusted aide Mark Roberts . . ."

"Morgan discussing medical issues with . . ."

"Longtime personal a.s.sistant with Delegate Morgan . . ."

The text took Morgan's own words, often from debates before the NAU in Ottawa, ostensibly setting forth his own words.

. . . and I would like to thank the gentlewoman from London, Ontario, and she is a gentle, sensitive, and feeling woman in every sense of the word, for raising the issue of non-a.s.set-based financial and economic interdependence, particularly as it pertains to currency stability across the NAU . . .

. . . we all know what we know, but what we know is not necessarily what we think we know, especially in terms of cybertechnological-a.s.set management interfaces . . .

The Webchures for other groups were more pointed, since most of the other niche voter groups weren't inclined to value subtlety. I particularly liked the one that went to Weapons Unlimited, which featured Lester standing beside an M-98 tank, smiling.

"Tired of tiresome U.S. regulations on the right of self-protection? Ready for a new approach? Then support Bill Lester . . ."

Then again, the one to Trees Unlimited wasn't bad, either. There, Lester was standing before a stand of Mugo pines in northern Saskatchewan and declaiming, "Reforestation is the key to a better environment and more effective government . . . I've known that for years, and that's why I was one of the first to put my own money into growing these very trees . . ."

Of course, he'd planted them years before as a backdrop for his land deals; so his claim of putting his own money out was perfectly accurate.

The one to the computer professionals was also catchy. We just provided a message that claimed it had a hidden algorithm, designed and concealed by a North American programmer, as opposed to the Microsoft techs who'd run off to India, which was why Lester favored local expertise. There wasn't any algorithm; so no one could find it, and the Microsoft attorneys filed a cease-and-desist order. We complied, and then sent another message that pointed out that Microsoft could only respond with lawyers, not programmers. They couldn't fight that, either, because it was true.

Now, an old-line news a.n.a.lyst of the past century might have caught a certain lack of philosophical consistency, but after the pa.s.sage of the revised Freedom of Information Act of 2040 by the U.S. Congress, which affirmed the right of every citizen to the news of his or her choice, unhampered by contradictory facts, none of the 207 different news channels had a news a.n.a.lyst interested in such, since hiring anyone for such a position might have subjected them to civil action under the FOIA [revised].

All of the Webchures went out under the in dependent information provider provisions of Canadian and U.S. law, and every word in any of them was absolutely factually verifiable.

Parts of Lester's stump speech were tailored to what ever audience he was addressing, the need for ecologically sound maple tree research in Vermont, investigating sustainable and balanced cod harvests and more federal a.s.sistance for bark-beetle eradication in Maine, the need for regional communications tariff subsidies in Ma.s.sachusetts, support of Tar Sands subsidies in Alberta . . . Those sorts of postures have been a political staple since Alcibiades, but since no one studies history anymore, I could adopt strategies and points from everywhere, and no one had a ready counter. But the real gut issue was belief, and that part of Lester's speech always. .h.i.t certain points.

"I stand for the good, old-fashioned values of hard work . . . and the faith behind those values. There are those who condemn people of faith and belief, but what I find truly amazing is that as belief in an Almighty Deity has declined, so has this great American continent. When atheists were five percent of the population, the nations of North America were strong and proud. Today . . . almost a third of North Americans are nonbelievers. Are we as strong? Are we as dedicated to hard and honest work? I'd be the last man to tell you how to believe, but I'll be the first to tell you that belief is important, that trust in the Almighty and the virtues He espouses are the keys to our future . . . Would you trust any politician who puts himself above the Almighty or denies the power that created this vast universe . . . ?"

At first, Morgan didn't even understand what was happening, and by the time he did, it was far too late.

Of course, the liberals in Ma.s.sachusetts, SoCal, and in what was left of flooded New York City screamed and yelled, but they did it all in newsprint, and no one but people who wouldn't have voted for Lester anyway read the handful of remaining newspapers and magazines, online or otherwise. And most of those didn't care that much who won the election.

Although it was close, even if only 10 percent of the eligible voters in Canada and the United States voted, Lester did eke out a victory over Morgan, by a good thirty-thousand votes out of forty million cast on that Sunday in September. No one paid much attention to the votes from Mexico and Central America, because there weren't all that many voters left, not after the hurricanes of the forties, and most of those who could vote, in places where there were even polling places, all voted for Gonsalvo, and he came in a distant third.

"You won," I told Lester when I walked into his small delegate's office in Ottawa on Monday morning.

"Now what?"

"Before long, Chairman Hazlett will discover he doesn't want to really run things, and you'll make yourself indispensable. . . . Just be very visible, and very charming . . . and very helpful. As always."

I could tell he wasn't happy, but I found him a new personal a.s.sistant and lined up as many speaking appearances for him as possible, just to keep him occupied until the inevitable occurred- which it did . . . just about a year later.

The United States deficit topped one hundred trillion, and the remaining Republicans and the Conservative Populists in the U.S. House of Representatives balked at increasing the marginal federal income tax on the upper middle cla.s.s- those making over ten million a year- to 70 percent. The Democrats refused to consider imposing a 1 percent tax on the so-called working poor- those making less than a million. At that point, the Bank of China not only refused to buy American treasuries, but threatened to dump everything they had. Microsoft, headquartered and totally based in India since the Great Seattle Quake of 2057, stopped manufacturing replacement parts for the obsolete computers used by the American government, and the Bank of Canada foreclosed on the U.S. Federal Reserve, which had been privatized after the Collapse of 2050.

President Huston demanded that the congressional leaders work out a compromise, and they did. They impeached him. Vice President Ramirez resigned, and Speaker of the House Coulter became president. She still couldn't get the votes to break the impa.s.se and proclaimed Martial Law under the provisions of the Patriot Act of 2051.

General Simplot, the U.S. Armed Forces Chief of Staff, threatened to release all military personnel from active duty, because none had been paid in two months.

That was the point at which I made my next suggestion to Lester. "Have Hazlett recommend that the North American Union take over government functions for the United States, using the Canadian dollar. By eliminating Congress and not funding the bureaucracies and lobbyists in Washington, the lower tax rates will cover paying the military so that Americans can feel protected by American soldiers and sailors, while finally getting real universal health care, and not the charades of 2010 and 2035. Tell everyone that the military uniforms won't change, and neither will their responsibilities, and that they'll remain right where they are, since the Canadians might get touchy, otherwise. Since you're an American, elected by Americans . . ."

It wasn't all that simple, as the ma.s.sacre in Berkeley and the famine in Illinois and Indiana proved, but by the winter of 2071, the NAU was effectively governing North America. Hazlett wasn't that young, and more and more he had to rely on Lester- and his staff.

Hazlett's wife had left him because she thought he was a traitor to Canada, and fled to Buffalo Narrows, way up north. She drowned in the floods of 2072, almost instantly, when a methane belch caught fire in the permafrost and melted everything in sight. I arranged matters to provide him with some enthusiastic consolation; seven months later, he died a very happy man, and William Lester became chairman of the NAU.

Matters to the south of Ottawa weren't getting any better, especially in the USA and Central America, and the Canadians- particularly former U.S. residents who'd fled the three banking restructurings, the financial restoration surtaxes, and Buy U.S. Transport Acts- were deeply concerned that Canada had ended up funding the rebuilding of the nearly prostrate United States, despite the fact that, or perhaps because of, more than 25 percent of the U.S. population in 2050 had since emigrated to Canada.

So Lester proposed a raft of reorganization programs, among them the Regional Area Prosperity Effort, the American Financial Transformation plan, the Social Cooperation and Regional Economic Work plan, and the Financial Reconstruction and Infrastructure Grants. The most immediately effective of these was the Youth Alliance for Restoration and Progress, a regional plan for those areas of the NAU where social order was degenerating, notably those declining piles of stone south of Ottawa.

While the Union a.s.sembly had some qualms, Lester had the answers we'd prepared, particularly in his second state of the North American Union address: "When social order begins to degenerate, the first signs are small things: loitering, littering, broken windows, lazy people using public s.p.a.ces for private functions. YARP is designed to mobilize the talents of young people who would otherwise be unemployed or underemployed to combat this kind of deterioration. Those without homes will be relocated to appropriate housing elsewhere. Those who persist in unrestricted tagging or decoration or socially nonconstructive protests and objections will be detained and reeducated in socially acceptable decorative endeavors, beautifying cities and parks . . ."

The dark gray YARP uniforms were sharp, too, and . . . within a year, all sorts of crime in the old USA had dropped precipitously, except in Washington, D.C., where YARP was precluded by a provision requested by Acting President Coulter, and in SoCal, because the NAU had decided that the better part of valor was to wait until the various factions had determined who governed what, since the Republicans insisted on balancing local budgets with a 90 percent deficit, and the Demo crats refused to cut non ex is tent spending for a state workforce that no longer existed, and CrackArmy was taking over most of the urban areas.

The U.S. Army troops were, for the most part, more than happy to transfer to the NAU unified military, with their old commanders and new funding to repair their old bases, and to fuel their tanks and aircraft. They also appreciated getting regular pay and medical benefits. Not long after that, Lester returned areas of old Mexico to "local authorities," delegating all functions to the locals and surrounding such areas with remote automatic weapons. That had the effect of reducing drug deaths and related hospitalization costs, after, of course, the initial depopulation and the spate of acute withdrawal deaths, which weren't covered by NAU universal health care.

With some credit available and seaway control reestablished, Qataran LNG shipments resumed, and that allowed enough power for some air-conditioning, at least in Ottawa, and in the Toronto financial centers, and the Albertans got back full-time power, and more fertilizer was manufactured and sent to Saskatchewan, and the Tar Sands Fourth Phase really got going. Lester did have to divert money to rebuild port facilities in Victoria to replace those inundated by the rise in the Pacific Ocean.

When the time came for elections in 2073, only Johnstone Byron III, filed to run against Lester. He was a good opponent, that fair-haired and wealthy do-gooder out of old New England, even if he hadn't learned much from his first contest against Lester. He got 31 percent of the vote, most of that from the provinces of Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, NorCal, and Oregon.

On the other hand, turnout was light in the Old South of the USA, but that was hardly unexpected after the 2072 hurricane that sank half of Louisiana and Mississippi, and eradicated the remains of Florida. Washington Province went heavily for Lester, since there weren't that many liberals or Democrats left after Microsoft closed down all its plants there years earlier, and the dryland farmers of Montana, the Dakotas, and lower Minnesota really didn't have anyone else to support.

Most of Alberta voted for Lester. That wasn't surprising, following the Colorado River Water Wars, since after the spruce and pine bark devastation had wiped out all the Utah mountain forests and the Great Salt Lake had become a salt flat, most of the Utah population had migrated into Alberta to follow their LDS brethren. The Temple in Salt Lake City did remain a holy place, standing in the middle of a desert- a sort of American Mecca. There was only a 30 percent turnout in Saskatchewan, because most of the voters didn't like either American candidate, although I would have thought that a few more would have supported Lester, given all the jobs his land booms had created in the northern part of the province.

Following the NAU election, it only made sense for NAU to disband the Canadian parliamentary government, and although some complained that the NAU military was overly demonstrative, particularly in Quebec, the subsequent savings certainly justified the effort, especially since bilingualism was no longer necessary in that province. And the northern relocation efforts have certainly resulted in a more equitable population distribution, and an increased labor force for the alternative minerals extraction program being pioneered by the NAU. All in all, we've created a more perfect union, and who would have thought it just a few short years ago?

Now that that the NAU has restructured North America into a far more productive and efficient nation, and all of those ills of the recent past are largely behind us, you can all set aside your fears about how a big and inefficient government will take over everything. Government is already smaller and more efficient. North Americans are keeping a greater percentage of their income because of the centralization of government and the elimination of local bureaucracies and excessive local elected bodies. With the new physical fitness initiatives, deaths from poor exercise and diet are down, as are the medical costs a.s.sociated with them, after the initial readjustments, of course. The civic improvement brigades across all of NAU have lowered local infrastructure costs. With the integration of the Offsh.o.r.e Patrol, the former U.S. Navy, and the Canadian Naval Forces, there's absolutely no need to worry about illegal immigration, not with the wide-scale deployment of the new AI-guided limpet mines. The enactment and implementation of the Freedom of Choice Acts mean that you don't need to worry about spending your last years as a semi-sentient vegetable . . . and wasting your estate. With the reform of estate taxes and the revenues from FOCA violators, we've lowered income and property taxes, and the new educational curricula are instilling a greater reverence for the value of manual and skilled labor.

All this because of the enlightened policies of Chairman Lester . . . and a more perfect Union.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr. is the best-selling author of the Saga of Recluse, the Spellsong Cycle, the Corean Chronicles, and several other series, as well as a number of stand-alone novels, such as The Eternity Artifact and The Elysium Commission. His most recent books include Haze, Arms-Commander, Empress of Eternity, and the Imager Portfolio series. His short fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies- including John Joseph Adams's Federations- and was recently collected in Viewpoints Critical.

What does it take to be a supervillain? Brains, obviously, or the run-of-the-mill baddies would be a lot more dangerous. A certain moral flexibility, of course. It's not easy for a normal human being to set aside their sense of good and evil. Technology and luck certainly help.

But empathy? No one ever expects a villain to feel for his victims. But Alexander Bane is no ordinary supervillain.

For one, he carries an iPhone. For another, he can feel the pain of every one of the people he kills. But it's not enough to stop him. Perhaps his gifts have sent him over the brink of madness. Perhaps his wife's death drove him crazy. Or maybe he really does have a plan to save the world.

But it doesn't really matter. Because rocks fall. And unless this supervillain has a backup plan, a pile of ordinary rubble might be his ultimate foil.

In this tale, we offer you a chance to a see madness and brilliance unmasked- but no less in the dark.

ROCKS FALL.

NAOMI NOVIK.

"Well, that's unfortunate," he said, surveying the extremely large pile of rock.

He sat down across from me, just out of arm's length. The helmet had come off during the cave-in, and even in the sickly glow of his handheld, he didn't look much like I would've imagined. He had a nice face, pointed chin with laugh wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, and sandy blond hair. He ran a hand through it, scattering dust, and he could have been anyone: a math teacher or an optometrist or an accountant, someone not very important and not very dangerous.

"Are you in any pain?" he asked.

"I'd be better if you wouldn't mind shifting some of these boulders off me," I said.

He smiled, briefly. "No, I don't think so, but I do have some Vicodin I could toss in reach."

Alexander Bane offering me painkillers: brilliant. I wouldn't have minded something, although preferably served in a gla.s.s and out of a bottle of Macallan, but a fuzzy head didn't seem as though it would do me much good in the present circ.u.mstances. Not that the clear one was going to be particularly useful, either.

My right arm was still loose, but I couldn't reach around well enough to get hold of the big rocks pinning everything else, not with enough momentum to do anything useful. I picked one of the smaller rocks away and put it down on the cave floor and swung my fist down to crush it, more to amuse myself than anything.

"I wouldn't rely on the cave having stabilized," Bane said.

"I'm already under most of it," I said cheerily. A little anxiety wouldn't do him any harm. No one had a very clear notion of what his powers really were- there were at least fourteen different versions of his childhood records scattered about, with wildly different test results- but it was fairly settled that invulnerability wasn't one of them.

It wasn't, strictly speaking, one of mine, either, but I could hold up reasonably well under a pile of rocks, at least for a few hours.

"You might bring more of it down on whoever is digging us out," Bane said, and if I listened I could hear it, the distant rattle and sc.r.a.pe of shifting rubble, indistinct voices.

"Always comforting when the backup arrives only an hour late," I said, playing off my very real relief. I hadn't taken the matter seriously at first- a routine break-in at a small office building according to the incident report; nothing to merit the attention of anyone over a GS-3, except that I'd randomly been at the local precinct that morning to do a safety presentation for schoolchildren.

My call-in had been perfunctory. I recalled saying something like, "Alice, I'll look into this as long as I'm in town; send a spotter over if you have a minute, unless I'm done before they can leave. Bring you a latte on my way back!"

And then there I was, walking along an enormous room full of gray cubicles and outdated computer equipment- deserted; everyone had evacuated, for reasons about to become apparent- and out comes Alexander Bane from the corner office in his red and gold, carrying one of those old almond-colored midsize computer towers under an arm.

It was a pyrrhic comfort that he'd been equally surprised, and whatever he'd been stealing had been lost after our subsequent discussion. Along with a significant portion of the wall of the building and at least eleven million dollars' worth of structural damage to the nearest intersection. So much for my streak of six years in a row of safety-performance bonuses.

I wasn't going to regret it, if I pulled this off. The capabilities of Bane's suit were fairly well doc.u.mented, barring the regular changes he made, but I hadn't reviewed his records in years. When Bane reared his shiny helmeted head, they called in the big guns: Marcus Leo, Tamisha Victoire; Calvin Washington if they could get him. Not that my gun wasn't perfectly respectable in every dimension, but there's a reason I'm a GS-12 in Maine and not a GS-15 in New York, and it's not for lack of scintillating conversation.

"I will take some of that, though, if you don't mind sharing," I said; he was drinking from a small flask.

"I'm afraid it's only Evian," he said, rolling it toward me. "You're a Macallan man, I think."

"Yes," I said, glumly. Well, that was horrifying. No reason he should ever have looked up James Wright Ellroy, twenty-eight, GS-12, Portland-based, outside his notice by any sensible standards; and it didn't matter whether he knew about my powers- he knew my drink.

I was grateful for the water anyway; the dust was settling, but my mouth was still thick with it. I capped the flask and rolled it back to him, and watched him put it away. He seemed remarkably unconcerned about the oncoming rescuers.

"Ah," he said, when I mentioned as much. "Not to make you uncomfortable, but they might be my people, actually. My suit sends an alert whenever it takes damage."

That gave the rattling and grinding outside a potentially more ominous character. "I don't suppose you can call them and find out for sure," I said, trying to listen to the voices. Would I recognize the nearest rescue crew?

"No reception," he said, raising the handheld.

"Really? No special secret network?"

"It's too annoying to keep it jailbroken," Bane said.

"Wait, what, are you actually using an iPhone?" I said.

"I like Plants vs. Zombies," he said, unrepentantly.